The Daughters of Danaus Part 29

"So much the better," said Hadria; "and when the waters sink again, a nice fresh clean world!"

CHAPTER XIX.

On the lawn of the Red House, a little group was collected under the big walnut tree. The sunlight fell through the leaves on the singing tea-kettle and the cups and saucers, and made bright patches on the figures and the faces a.s.sembled round the tea-table.

Hubert Temperley had again brought his friend Joseph Fleming, in the forlorn hope, he said, of being able to give him something to eat and drink. Ernest and Algitha and Fred were of the party. They had come down from Sat.u.r.day till Monday. Ernest was studying for the Bar. Fred had entered a merchant's office in the city, and hated his work cordially.

Miss Du Prel was still at the Red House.

Lady Engleton had called by chance this afternoon, and Mrs. Walker, the vicar's wife, with two of her countless daughters, had come by invitation. Mrs. Walker was a middle-aged, careworn, rather prim-looking woman. Lady Engleton was handsome. Bright auburn hair waved back in picturesque fas.h.i.+on from a piquant face, and const.i.tuted more than half her claim to beauty. The brown eyes were bright and vivacious. The mouth was seldom quite shut. It scarcely seemed worth while, the loquacious lady had confessed. She showed a delicate taste in dress. Shades of brown and russet made a fine harmony with her auburn hair, and the ivory white and fresh red of her skin.

She and Temperley always enjoyed a sprightly interchange of epigrams.

Lady Engleton had the qualities that Hubert had admired in Hadria before their marriage, and she was entirely free from the other characteristics that had exasperated him so desperately since that hideous mistake that he had made. Lady Engleton had originality and brilliancy, but she knew how to combine these qualities with perfect obedience to the necessary conventions of life. She had the sparkle of champagne, without the troublesome tendency of that delicate beverage to break bounds, and brim over in iridescent, swelling, joyous foam, the discreet edges of such goblets as custom might decree for the sunny vintage. Lady Engleton sparkled, glowed, nipped even at times, was of excellent dry quality, but she never frothed over. She always knew where to stop; she had the genius of moderation. She stood to Hadria as a correct rendering of a cherished idea stands to a faulty one. She made Hubert acutely feel his misfortune, and shewed him his lost hope, his shattered ideal.

"Is the picture finished?" he enquired, as he handed Lady Engleton her tea.

"What, the view from your field? Not quite. I was working at it when Claude Moreton and Mrs. Jordan and Marion arrived, and I have been rather interrupted. That's the worst of visitors. One's little immortal works do get put aside, poor things."

Lady Engleton broke into the light laugh that had become almost mechanical with her.

"Your friends grudge the hours you spend in your studio," said Temperley.

"Oh, they don't mind, so long as I give them as much time as they want,"

she said. "I have to apologise and compromise, don't you know, but, with a little management, one can get on. Of course, society does ask a good deal of attention, doesn't it? and one has to be so careful."

"Just a little tact and thought," said Temperley with a sigh.

Lady Engleton admired Algitha, who was standing with Ernest a little apart from the group.

"She is like your wife, and yet there is a singular difference in the expression."

Lady Engleton was too discreet to say that Mrs. Temperley lacked the look of contentment and serenity that was so marked in her sister's face.

"Algitha is a thoroughly sensible girl," said the brother-in-law.

"I hear you have not long returned from a visit to Mr. Fullerton's place in Scotland, Mr. Temperley," observed the vicar's wife when her host turned to address her.

"Yes," he said, "we have been there half the summer. The boys thoroughly enjoyed the freedom and the novelty. The river, of course, was a source of great joy to them, and of hideous anxiety to the rest of us."

"Of course, of course," a.s.sented Mrs. Walker. "Ah, there are the dear little boys. Won't you come and give me a kiss, darling?"

"Darling" did what was required in a business-like manner, and stood by, while the lady discovered in him a speaking likeness to his parents, to his Aunt Algitha and his Uncle Fred, not to mention the portrait of his great-grandfather, the Solicitor-General, that hung in the dining-room.

The child seemed thoroughly accustomed to be thought the living image of various relations, and he waited indifferently till the list was ended.

"Do you know, we are half hoping that Professor Fortescue may be able to come to us for a week or ten days?" said Lady Engleton. "We are so looking forward to it."

"Professor Fortescue is always a favourite," remarked Mrs. Walker. "It is such a pity he does not return to the Priory, is it not?--a great house like that standing empty. Of course it is very natural after the dreadful event that happened there"--Mrs. Walker lowered her voice discreetly--"but it seems a sin to leave the place untenanted."

Lady Engleton explained that there was some prospect of the house being let at last to a friend and colleague of the Professor. Mrs. Walker doubtless would remember Professor Theobald, who used to come and stay at Craddock Place rather frequently some years ago, a big man with beard and moustache, very learned and very amusing.

Mrs. Walker remembered him perfectly. Her husband had been so much interested in his descriptions of a tour in Palestine, all through the scenes of the New Testament. He was a great archaeologist. Was he really coming to the Priory? How very delightful. John would be so glad to hear it.

"Oh, it is not settled yet, but the two Professors are coming to us some time soon, I believe, and Professor Theobald will look over the house and see if he thinks it would be too unmanageably big for himself and his old mother and sister. I hope he will take the place. He would bring a new and interesting element into the village. What do you think of it, Mrs. Temperley?"

"Oh, I hope the learned and amusing Professor will come," she said. "The worst of it is, from my point of view, that I shall have to give up my practices there. Professor Fortescue allows me to wake the old piano from its long slumbers in the drawing-room."

"Oh, of course. Marion Jordan was telling me that she was quite startled the other day, in crossing the Priory garden, to hear music stealing out of the apparently deserted house. She had heard the country people say that the ghost of poor Mrs. Fortescue walks along the terrace in the twilight, and Marion looked quite scared when she came in, for the music seemed to come from the drawing-room, where its mistress used to play so much after she was first married. I almost wonder you can sit alone there in the dusk, considering the dreadful a.s.sociations of the place."

"I am used to it now," Mrs. Temperley replied, "and it is so nice and quiet in the empty house. One knows one can't be interrupted--unless by ghosts."

"Well, that is certainly a blessing," cried Lady Engleton. "I think I shall ask Professor Fortescue to allow me also to go to the Priory to pursue my art in peace and quietness; a truly hyperborean state, beyond the region of visitors!"

"There would be plenty of room for a dozen unsociable monomaniacs like ourselves," said Mrs. Temperley.

"I imagine you are a G.o.d-send to poor Mrs. Williams, the caretaker,"

said Joseph Fleming. "She is my gamekeeper's sister, and I hear that she finds the solitude in that vast house almost more than she can stand."

"Poor woman!" said Lady Engleton. "Well, Mr. Fleming, what are the sporting prospects this autumn?"

He pulled himself together, and his face lighted up. On that subject he could speak for hours.

Of Joseph Fleming his friends all said: The best fellow in the world. A kinder heart had no man. He lived on his little property from year's end to year's end, for the sole and single end of depriving the pheasants and partridges which he bred upon the estate, of their existence. He was a confirmed bachelor, living quietly, and taking the world as he found it (seeing that there was a sufficiency of partridges in good seasons); trusting that there was a G.o.d above who would not let the supply run short, if one honestly tried to do one's duty and lived an upright life, harming no man, and women only so much as was strictly honourable and necessary. He spoke ill of no one. He was diffident of his own powers, except about sport, wherein he knew himself princely, and cherished that sort of respect for woman, thoroughly sincere, which a.s.signs to her a pedestal in a sheltered niche, and offers her homage on condition of her staying where she is put, even though she starve there, solitary and esteemed.

"Do tell me, Mr. Fleming, if you know, who is that very handsome woman with the white hair?" said Lady Engleton. "She is talking to Mrs.

Walker. I seem to know the face."

"Oh, that is Miss Valeria Du Prel, the auth.o.r.ess of those books that Mrs. Walker is so shocked at."

"Oh, of course; how stupid of me. I should like to have some conversation with her."

"That's easily managed. I don't think she and Mrs. Walker quite appreciate each other."

Lady Engleton laughed.

Mrs. Walker was anxiously watching her daughters, and endeavouring to keep them at a distance from Miss Du Prel, who looked tragically bored.

Joseph Fleming found means to release her, and Lady Engleton's desire was gratified. "I admire your books so much, Miss Du Prel, and I have so often wished to see more of you; but you have been abroad for the last two years, I hear."

Lady Engleton, after asking the auth.o.r.ess to explain exactly what she meant by her last book, enquired if she had the latest news of Professor Fortescue. Lady Engleton had heard, with regret, that he had been greatly worried about that troublesome nephew whom he had educated and sent to Oxford.

"The young fellow had been behaving very badly," Miss Du Prel said.

"Ungrateful creature," cried Lady Engleton. "Running into debt I suppose."

Miss Du Prel feared that the Professor was suffering in health. He had been working very hard.