Part 66 (1/2)

She did not look pleased to see him, and as they shook hands, his mouth shut sharply, as it always did when his self-love was wounded. Then, a gleam of resolve or cunning came into his face, and the next instant he was at his suavest.

”Do you know, Mrs. Temperley, I scarcely recognized you when you first came in. 'Who can this beautiful, distinguished-looking woman be?' I said to myself.”

Hadria smiled maliciously.

”You think I am so much changed?”

Professor Theobald began to chuckle.

”The trowel, I see, is still your weapon,” she added, ”but I am surprised that you have not learnt to wield the implement of sway with more dexterity, Professor.”

”I am not accustomed to deal with such quick-witted ladies, Mrs.

Temperley.”

”You shew your hand most frankly,” she answered; ”it almost disarms one.”

A few introductory chords sounded through the room. Hadria was sitting in front of the window, across which the pale green curtains had been drawn. Many eyes wandered towards her.

”I should like to paint you just like that,” murmured Lady Engleton; ”you can't imagine what a perfect bit of harmony you make, with my brocade.” A cousin of Lord Engleton was at the piano. He played an old French gavotte.

”That is the finis.h.i.+ng touch,” added Lady Engleton, below her breath. ”I should like to paint you and the curtains and Claude Moreton's gavotte all together.”

The performance was received with enthusiasm. It deepened Hadria's mood, set her pulses dancing. She a.s.sented readily to the request of her hostess that she should play. She chose something fantastic and dainty.

It had a certain remoteness from life.

”Like one of Watteau's pictures,” said Claude Moreton, who was hanging over the piano. He was tall and dark, with an expression that betrayed his enthusiastic temperament. A group had collected, among them Professor Theobald. Beside him stood Marion Fenwick, the bride whose wedding had taken place at Craddock Church about eighteen months before.

It seemed as if Hadria were exercising some influence of a magnetic quality. She was always the point of attraction, whether she created a spell with her music, or her speech, or her mere personality. In her present mood, this was peculiarly gratifying. The long divorce from initiative work which events had compelled, the loss of nervous vigour, the destruction of dream and hope, had all tended to throw her back on more accessible forms of art and expression, and suggested pa.s.sive rather than active dealings with life. She was wearied with petty responsibilities, and what she called semi-detached duties. It was a relief to sit down in white silk and lace, and draw people to her simply by the cheap spell of good looks and personal magnetism. That she possessed these advantages, her life in Paris had made obvious. It was the first time that she had been in contact with a large number of widely differing types, and she had found that she could appeal to them all, if she would. Since her return to England, anxieties and influences extremely depressing had accustomed her to a somewhat gloomy atmosphere.

To-night the atmosphere was light and soft, brilliant and enervating.

”This is my Capua,” she said laughingly, to her hostess.

It invited every luxurious instinct to come forth and sun itself. Marion Fenwick's soft, sweet voice, singing Italian songs to the accompaniment of the guitar, repeated the invitation.

It was like a fairy gift. Energy would be required to refuse it. And why, in heaven's name, if she might not have what she really wanted, was she to be denied even the poor little triumphs of ornamental womanhood?

Was the social order which had frustrated her own ambitions to dominate her conscience, and persuade her voluntarily to resign that _one_ kingdom which cannot be taken from a woman, so long as her beauty lasts?

Why should she abdicate? The human being was obviously susceptible to personality beyond all other things. And beauty moved that absurd creature preposterously. _There_, at least, the woman who chanced to be born with these superficial attractions, had a royal territory, so long as she could prevent her clamorous fellows from hara.s.sing and wearing those attractions away. By no direct attack could the jealous powers dethrone her. They could only do it indirectly, by appealing to the conscience which they had trained; to the principles that they had instilled; by convincing the woman that she owed herself, as a debt, to her legal owner, to be paid in coined fragments of her being, till she should end in inevitable bankruptcy, and the legal owner himself found her a poor investment!

It would have startled that roomful of people, who expressed everything circuitously, pleasantly, without rough edges, had they read beneath Mrs. Temperley's spoken words, these unspoken thoughts.

Marion Fenwick's songs and the alluring softness of her guitar, seemed the most fitting accompaniment to the warm summer night, whose breath stirred gently the curtains by the open window, at the far end of the room.

Lady Engleton was delighted with the success of her efforts. Mrs.

Temperley had not looked so brilliant, so full of life, since her mother's illness. Only yesterday, when she met her returning from the Cottage, her eyes were like those of a dying woman, and now----!

”People say ill-natured things about Mrs. Temperley,” she confided to an intimate friend, ”but that is because they don't understand her.”

People might have been forgiven for not understanding her, as perhaps her hostess felt, noticing Hadria's animation, and the extraordinary power that she was wielding over everyone in the room, young and old.