The Daughters of Danaus Part 46

Heredity a.s.serted itself, as it will do, in the midst of the fray, just when its victim seems to have shaken himself free from the mysterious obsession. But Hadria did not visibly flinch. Lady Engleton received the impression that Mrs. Temperley was too sure of her own judgment to defer even to the wisest.

She experienced a pleasant little glow of humility, wrapping herself in it, as in a protecting garment, and unconsciously comparing her more moderate and modest att.i.tude favourably with her companion's self-confidence. Just at that moment, Hadria's self-confidence was gasping for breath. But her sense of the comic in her companion's tactics survived, and set her off in an apparently inconsequent laugh, which goaded Lady Engleton into retreating further, to an encampment of pure orthodoxy.

"I fear there is an element of the morbid, in all this fretful revolt against the old-established destiny of our s.e.x," she said.

The advance-guard of Professor Theobald's party was coming up. The Professor himself still hung back, playing the Ancient Mariner to Joseph Fleming's Wedding Guest. Most unwilling was that guest, most pertinacious that mariner.

Hadria had turned to speak to Dodge, who had approached, broom in hand.

"Seems only yesterday as we was a diggin' o' that there grave, don't it, mum?" he remarked pleasantly, including Hadria in the credit of the affair, with native generosity.

"It does indeed, Dodge. I see you have been tidying it up and clearing away the moss from the name. I can read it now. _Ellen Jervis.--Requiescat in pace._"

"We was a wonderin' wot that meant, me and my missus."

Hadria explained.

"Oh indeed, mum. She didn't die in peace, whatever she be a doin' now, not _she_ didn't, pore thing. I was jest a tellin' the gentleman" (Dodge indicated Professor Theobald with a backward movement of the thumb), "about the schoolmarm. He was talkin' like a sermon--beautiful--about the times wen the church was built; and about them as come over from France and beat the English--shameful thing for our soldiers, 'pears to me, not as I believes all them tales. Mr. Walker says as learnin' is a pitfall, wich I don't swaller everything as Mr. Walker says neither.

Seems to me as it don't do to be always believin' wot's told yer, or there's no sayin' wot sort o' things you wouldn't come to find inside o'

yer, before you'd done."

Hadria admitted the danger of indiscriminate absorption, but pointed out that if caution were carried too far, one might end by finding nothing inside of one at all, which also threatened to be attended with inconvenience.

Dodge seemed to feel that the _desagrements_ in this last case were trivial as compared with those of the former.

"Dodge is a born sceptic," said Lady Engleton. "What would you say, Dodge, if some tiresome, reasonable person were to come and point out something to you that you couldn't honestly deny, and yet that seemed to upset all the ideas that you had felt were truest and best?"

Dodge scratched his head. "I should say as what he said wasn't true,"

replied Dodge.

"But if you couldn't help seeing that it was true?"

"That ud be arkard," Dodge admitted.

"Then what would you do?"

Dodge leant upon the broom-handle, apparently in profound thought. His words were waited for.

"I think," he announced at last, "as I shouldn't do nothin' partic'lar."

"Dodge, you really are an oracle!" Hadria exclaimed. "What could more simply describe the action of our Great Majority?"

"You are positively impish in your mood to-day!" exclaimed Lady Engleton. "What should we do without our Great Majority, as you call it? It is absolutely necessary to put some curb on the wild impulses of pure reason"--a sentiment that Hadria greeted with chuckles of derision.

Joseph Fleming was looking longingly towards the grave, but his face was resigned, for the Ancient Mariner had him b.u.t.ton-holed securely.

"What _are_ they lingering for so long, I wonder?" cried Lady Engleton impatiently. "Professor Theobald is really too instructive to-day. I will go and hurry him."

Joseph welcomed her as his deliverer.

"I was merely waiting for you two ladies to move; I would have come on with Mr. Fleming. I am extremely sorry," said the Professor.

He followed Lady Engleton down the path between the graves, with something of the same set expression that had been on his face when he came up the path of the cottage garden to admire the baby.

"It appears that we were all waiting for each other," said Lady Engleton.

"This 'ere's the young woman's grave, sir--Ellen Jervis--'er as I was a tellin' you of," said Dodge, pointing an earth-stained finger at the mound.

"Oh, yes; very nice," said the Professor vaguely. Hadria's laugh disconcerted him. "I mean--pretty spot--well chosen--well made."

Hadria continued to laugh. "I never heard less skilled comment on a grave!" she exclaimed. "It might be a paG.o.da!"

"It's not so easy as you seem to imagine to find distinctive epithets. I challenge you. Begin with the paG.o.da."

"One of the first canons of criticism is never to attempt the feat yourself; jeer rather at others."

"The children don't like the new schoolmarm near so well as this 'un,"

observed Dodge, touching the grave with his broom. "Lord, it was an unfort'nate thing, for there wasn't a better girl nor she were in all Craddock (as I was a tellin' of you, sir), not when she fust come as pupil teacher. It was all along of her havin' no friends, and her mother far away. She used to say to me at times of an afternoon wen she was a pa.s.sin' through the churchyard--'Dodge,' says she, 'do you know I have no one to care for, or to care for me, in all the world?' I used to comfort her like, and say as there was plenty in Craddock as cared for her, but she always shook her head, sort o' sad."

"Poor thing!" Lady Engleton exclaimed.

"And one mornin' a good time after, I found her a cryin' bitter, just there by her own grave, much about where the gentleman 'as his foot at this moment" (the Professor quickly withdrew it). "It was in the dusk o'

the evenin', and she was a settin' on the rail of old Squire Jordan's grave, jes' where you are now, sir. We were sort o' friendly, and wen I heard 'er a taking on so bad, I jes' went and stood alongside, and I sez, 'Wy Ellen Jervis,' I sez, 'wot be you a cryin' for?' But she kep'

on sobbin' and wouldn't answer nothin'. So I waited, and jes' went on with my work a bit, and then I sez again, 'Ellen Jervis, wot be you a cryin' for?' And then she took her hands from her face and she sez, 'Because I am that miserable,' sez she, and she broke out cryin' wuss than ever. 'Dear, dear,' I sez, 'wot is it? Can't somebody do nothin'

for you?'

"'No; n.o.body in the world can help me, and n.o.body wants to; it would be better if I was under there.' And she points to the ground just where she lies now--I give you my word she did--and sure enough, before another six months had gone by, there she lay under the sod, 'xacly on the spot as she had pointed to. She was a sinner, there's no denyin', but she 'ad to suffer for it more nor most."

"Very sad," observed Professor Theobald nervously, with a glance at Hadria, as if expecting derision.

"It is a hard case," said Lady Engleton, "but I suppose error _has_ to be paid for."

"Well, I don't know 'xacly," said Dodge, "it depends."

"On the s.e.x," said Hadria.

"I have known them as spent all their lives a' injurin' of others, and no harm seemed to come to 'em. And I've seed them as wouldn't touch a fly and always doin' their neighbours a kind turn, wot never 'ad a day's luck."

"Let us hope it will be made up in the next world," said Lady Engleton.

Dodge hoped it would, but there was something in the turn of his head that seemed to denote a disposition to base his calculations on this, rather than on the other world. He was expected home by his wife, at this hour, so wis.h.i.+ng the company good day, and pocketing the Professor's gratuity with a gleam of satisfaction in his shrewd and honest face, he trudged off with his broom down the path, and out by the wicket-gate into the village street.

"I never heard that part of the story before," said Lady Engleton, when the gravedigger had left.

It was new to everybody. "It brings her nearer, makes one realize her suffering more painfully."

Hadria was silent.

Professor Theobald cast a quick, scrutinizing glance at her.

"I can understand better now how you were induced to take the poor child, Mrs. Temperley," Lady Engleton remarked.