Part 68 (1/2)
Professor Theobald s.h.i.+fted his position slightly.
”Ah, well it were to love, my love, And cheat of any laughter The fate beneath us and above, The dark before and after.
”The myrtle and the rose, the rose, The sunlight and the swallow, The dream that comes, the dream that goes, The memories that follow.”
The song was greeted with a vague stir among the silent audience. A little breeze gave a deep satisfied sigh, among the trees.
Several other songs followed, and then the party broke up. They were to amuse themselves as they pleased during the afternoon, and to meet on the same spot for five o'clock tea.
”I _wish_ Hadria would not be so reckless!” cried Algitha anxiously.
”Have you seen her lately?”
”When last I saw her,” said Valeria, ”she had strolled off with the Professor and Mr. Moreton. Mr. Fleming and Lord Engleton were following with Mrs. Fenwick.”
”There is safety in numbers, at any rate, but I am distressed about her.
It is all very well what she says, about not allowing her woman's sole weapon to be wrenched from her, but she can't use it in this way, safely. One can't play with human emotions without coming to grief.”
”A man, at any rate, has no idea of being led an emotional dance,” said Miss Du Prel.
”Hadria has, I believe, at the bottom of her heart, a lurking desire to hurt men, because they have hurt women so terribly,” said Algitha.
”One can understand the impulse, but the worst of it is, that one is certain to pay back the score on the good man, and let the other go free.”
Algitha shook her head, regretfully.
”Did Hadria never show this impulse before?”
”Never in my life have I seen her exercise her power so ruthlessly.”
”I rather think she is wise after all,” said Miss Du Prel reflectively.
”She might be sorry some day never to have tasted what she is tasting now.”
”But it seems to me dreadful. There is not a man who is not influenced by her in the strangest manner; even poor Joseph Fleming, who used to look up to her so. In my opinion, she is acting very wrongly.”
”'He that has eaten his fill does not pity the hungry,' as the Eastern proverb puts it. Come now, Algitha, imagine yourself to be cut off from the work that supremely interests you, and thrown upon Craddock Dene without hope of respite, for the rest of your days. Don't you think you too might be tempted to try experiments with a power whose strength you had found to be almost irresistible?”
”Perhaps I should,” Algitha admitted.
”I don't say she is doing right, but you must remember that you have not the temperament that prompts to these outbursts. I suppose that is only to say that you are better than Hadria, by nature. I think perhaps you are, but remember you have had the life and the work that you chose above all others--she has not.”
”Heaven knows I don't set myself above Hadria,” cried Algitha. ”I have always looked up to her. Don't you know how painful it is when people you respect do things beneath them?”
”Hadria will disappoint us all in some particular,” said Miss Du Prel.
”She will not correspond exactly to anybody's theory or standard, not even her own. It is a defect which gives her character a quality of the unexpected, that has for me, infinite attraction.”
Miss Du Prel had never shewn so much disposition to support Hadria's conduct as now, when disapproval was general. She had a strong fellow-feeling for a woman who desired to use her power, and she was half disposed to regard her conduct as legitimate. At any rate, it was a temptation almost beyond one's powers of resistance. If a woman might not do this, what, in heaven's name, _might_ she do? Was she not eternally referred to her woman's influence, her woman's kingdom? Surely a day's somewhat murderous sport was allowable in _that_ realm! After all, energy, ambition, nervous force, _must_ have an outlet somewhere.
Men could look after themselves. They had no mercy on women when they lay in their power. Why should a woman be so punctilious?