Part 47 (1/2)
They were strolling down the path, and Professor Theobald was holding open the gate for his companions to pa.s.s through. His hand seemed to shake slightly.
”I don't enjoy probing my motives on that subject,” said Hadria.
”Why? I am sure they were good.”
”I can't help hoping that that child may live to avenge her mother; to make some man know what it is to be horribly miserable--but, oh, I suppose it's like trying to reach the feelings of a rhinoceros!”
”There you are much mistaken, Mrs. Temperley,” said the Professor. ”Men are as sensitive, in some respects, as women.”
”So much the better.”
”Then do you think it quite just to punish one man for the sin of another?”
”No; but there is a deadly feud between the s.e.xes: it is a hereditary vendetta: the duty of vengeance is pa.s.sed on from generation to generation.”
”Oh, Mrs. Temperley!” Lady Engleton's tone was one of reproach.
”Yes, it is vindictive, I know; one does not grow tender towards the enemy at the grave of Ellen Jervis.”
”At least, there were _two_ sinners, not only one.”
”Only one dies of a broken heart.”
”But why attempt revenge?”
”Oh, a primitive instinct. And anything is better than this meek endurance, this persistent heaping of penalties on the scapegoat.”
”No good ever came of mere revenge, however,” said Professor Theobald.
”Sometimes that is the only form of remonstrance that is listened to,”
said Hadria. ”When people have the law in their own hands and Society at their back, they can afford to be deaf to mere verbal protest.”
”As for the child,” said Lady Engleton, ”she will be in no little danger of a fate like her mother's.”
Hadria's face darkened.
”At least then, she shall have some free and happy hours first; at least she shall not be driven to it by the misery of moral starvation, starvation of the affections. She shall be protected from the solemn fools--with sawdust for brains and a mechanical squeaker for heart--who, on principle, cut off from her mother all joy and all savour in life, and then punished her for falling a victim to the starved emotional condition to which they had reduced her.”
”The matter seems complex,” said Lady Engleton, ”and I don't see how revenge comes in.”
”It is a pa.s.sion that has never been eradicated. Oh, if I could but find that man!”
”A man is a hard thing to punish,--unless he is in love with one.”
”Well, let him be in love!” cried Hadria fiercely.
CHAPTER XXIX.
The sound of music stole over the gardens of the Priory, at sunset. It was the close of one of the most exquisite days of Spring. A calm had settled over the country with the pa.s.sing away of the sun-G.o.d. His attendant winds and voices had been sacrificed on his funeral pyre.