The Daughters of Danaus Part 31

Mrs. Walker was stiffening in every limb.

"The children would have the usual chances of their cla.s.s; neither more nor less, as it seems to me, for lack of a maternal burnt-offering."

Mrs. Walker rose, gathered her daughters about her, and came forward to say good-bye. She was sure her husband would be annoyed if she did not return. She retired with nervous precipitation.

"Really you will depopulate this village, Mrs. Temperley," cried Lady Engleton with a laugh; "it is quite dangerous to bring up a family within your reach. There will be a general exodus. I must be going myself, or I shan't have an orthodox sentiment left."

CHAPTER XX.

Henriette had secured Mrs. Fullerton for an ally, from the beginning.

When Hadria's parents visited the Red House, Miss Temperley was asked to meet them, by special request. Henriette employed tact on a grand scale, and achieved results in proportion. She was sorry that dear Hadria did not more quickly recover her strength. Her health was not what it ought to be. Mrs. Fullerton sighed. She was ready to play into Miss Temperley's hands on every occasion.

The latter had less success in her dealings with Miss Du Prel. She tried to discover Hadria's more intimate feelings by talking her over with Valeria, ignoring the snubs that were copiously administered by that indignant lady. Valeria spoke with sublime scorn of this attempt.

"To try and pump information out of a friend! Why not listen at the key-hole, and be done with it!"

Henriette's neat hair would have stood on end, had she heard Miss Du Prel fit adjectives to her conduct.

"I have learnt not to expect a nice sense of honour from superior persons with unimpeachable sentiments," said Hadria.

"You are certainly a good hater!" cried Valeria, with a laugh.

"Oh, I don't hate Henriette; I only hate unimpeachable sentiments."

The sentiments that Henriette represented had become, to Hadria, as the walls of a prison from which she could see no means of escape.

She had found that life took no heed either of her ambitions or of her revolts. "And so I growl," she said. She might hate and chafe in secret to her heart's content; external conformity was the one thing needful.

"Hadria will be so different when she has children," everyone had said.

And so she was; but the difference was alarmingly in the wrong direction. Throughout history, she reflected, children had been the unfailing means of bringing women into line with tradition. Who could stand against them? They had been able to force the most rebellious to their knees. An appeal to the maternal instinct had quenched the hardiest spirit of revolt. No wonder the instinct had been so trumpeted and exalted! Women might harbour dreams and plan insurrections; but their children--little amba.s.sadors of the established and expected--were argument enough to convince the most hardened sceptics. Their helplessness was more powerful to suppress revolt than regiments of armed soldiers.

Such were the thoughts that wandered through Hadria's mind as she bent her steps towards the cottage near Craddock Church, where, according to the gravedigger's account, the baby of the unhappy schoolmistress was being looked after by Mrs. Gullick.

It would have puzzled the keenest observer to detect the unorthodox nature of Mrs. Temperley's reflections, as she leant over the child, and made enquiries as to its health and temperament.

Mrs. Gullick seemed more disposed to indulge in remarks on its mother's conduct than to give the desired information; but she finally admitted that Ellen Jervis had an aunt at Southampton who was sending a little money for the support of the child. Ellen Jervis had stayed with the aunt during the summer holidays. Mrs. Gullick did not know what was to be done. She had a large family of her own, and the cottage was small.

Mrs. Temperley asked for the address of the aunt.

"I suppose no one knows who the father is? He has not acknowledged the child!"

No; that was a mystery still.

About a week later, Craddock Dene was amazed by the news that Mrs.

Temperley had taken the child of Ellen Jervis under her protection. A cottage had been secured on the road to Craddock, a trustworthy nurse engaged, and here the babe was established, with the consent and blessing of the aunt.

"You are the most inconsistent woman I ever met!" exclaimed Miss Du Prel.

"Why inconsistent?"

"You say that children have been the means, from time immemorial, of enslaving women, and here you go and adopt one of your enslavers!"

"But this child is not legitimate."

Valeria stared.

"Whatever the wrongs of Ellen Jervis, at least there were no laws written, and unwritten, which demanded of her as a duty that she should become the mother of this child. In that respect she escapes the ignominy reserved for the married mother who produces children that are not even hers."

"You do manage to ferret out the unpleasant aspects of our position!"

Miss Du Prel exclaimed. "But I want to know why you do this, Hadria. It is good of you, but totally unlike you."

"You are very polite!" cried Hadria. "Why should I not lay up store for myself in heaven, as well as Mrs. Walker and the rest?"

"You were not thinking of heaven when you did this deed, Hadria."

"No; I was thinking of the other place."

"And do you hope to get any satisfaction out of your _protegee_?"

Hadria shrugged her shoulders.

"I don't know. The child is the result of great sorrow and suffering; it is the price of a woman's life; a woman who offended the world, having lived for nearly forty weary obedient years, in circ.u.mstances dreary enough to have turned twenty saints into as many sinners. No; I am no Lady Bountiful. I feel in defending this child--a sorry defence I know--that I am, in so far, opposing the world and the system of things that I hate----. Ah! _how_ I hate it!"

"Is it then hatred that prompts the deed?"

Hadria looked thoughtfully towards the church tower, in whose shadow the mother of the babe lay sleeping.

"Can you ever quite unravel your own motives, Valeria? Hatred? Yes; there is a large ingredient of hatred. Without it, probably this poor infant would have been left to struggle through life alone, with a mill-stone round its neck, and a miserable const.i.tution into the bargain. I hope to rescue its const.i.tution. But that poor woman's story touched me closely. It is so hard, so outrageous! The emptiness of her existence; the lack of outlet for her affections; the endless monotony; and then the sudden new interest and food for the starved emotions; the hero-wors.h.i.+p that is latent in us all; and then--good heavens!--for a touch of poetry, of romance in her life, she would have been ready to believe in the professions of the devil himself--and this man was a very good understudy for the devil! Ah! If ever I should meet him!"

"What would you do?" Valeria asked curiously.

"Avenge her," said Hadria with set lips.

"Easier said than done, my dear!"

Gossip a.s.serted that the father of the child was a man of some standing, the bolder spirits even accusing Lord Engleton himself. But this was conjecture run wild, and n.o.body seriously listened to it.

Mrs. Walker was particularly scandalized with Mrs. Temperley's ill-advised charity. Hadria had the habit of regarding the clergyman's wife as another of society's victims. She placed side by side the schoolmistress in her sorrow and disgrace, and the careworn woman at the Vicarage, with her eleven children, and her shrivelled nature, poor and dead as an autumn leaf that s.h.i.+vers before the wind. They had both suffered--so Mrs. Temperley dared to a.s.sert--in the same cause. They were both victims of the same creed. It was a terrible cultus, a savage idol that had devoured them both, as cruel and insatiable as the brazen G.o.d of old, with his internal fires, which the faithful fed devoutly, with shrinking girls and screaming children.

"I still fail to understand why you adopt this child," said Valeria. "My _Caterina_ would never have done it."

"The little creature interests me," said Hadria. "It is a tiny field for the exercise of the creative forces. Every one has some form of active amus.e.m.e.nt. Some like golf, others flirtation. I prefer this sort of diversion."

"But you have your own children to interest you, surely far more than this one."