"Professor Theobald, if you are able to resist the fascinations of this
old house you are made of sterner stuff than I thought."
"I can never resist fascinations, Lady Engleton."
"Do you ever try?"
"My life is spent in the endeavour."
"How foolish!" Whether this applied to the endeavour or to the remark,
did not quite appear. Lady Engleton's graceful figure leant over the
parapet.
"Do you know, Mrs. Temperley," she said in her incessantly vivacious
manner, "I have scarcely heard a serious word since our two Professors
came to us. Isn't it disgraceful? I naturally expected to be improved
and enlightened, but they are both so frivolous, I can't keep them for a
moment to any important subject. They refuse to be profound. It is _I_
who have to be profound."
"While _we_ endeavour to be charming," said Professor Theobald.
"You may think that flattering, but I confess it seems to me a beggarly
compliment (as men's to women usually are)."
"You expect too much of finite intelligence, Lady Engleton."
"This is how I am always put off! If it were not that you are both such
old friends--you are a sort of cousin I think, Professor Fortescue--I
should really feel aggrieved. One has to endure so much more from
relations. No, but really; I appeal to Mrs. Temperley. When one is
hungering for erudition, to be offered compliments! Not that I can
accuse Professor Fortescue of compliments," she added with a laugh;
"wild horses would not drag one from him. I angle vainly. But he is so
ridiculously young. He enjoys things as if he were a schoolboy. Does one
look for that in one's Professors? He talks of the country as if it were
_Paradise Regained_."
"So it is to me," he said with a smile.
"But that is not your _rôle_. You have to think, not to enjoy."
"Then you must not invite us to Craddock Place," Professor Theobald
stipulated.
"As usual, a halting compliment."
"To take you seriously, Lady Engleton," said Professor Fortescue,
"(though I know it is a dangerous practice) one of the great advantages
of an occasional think is to enable one to relish the joys of mental
vacuity, just as the pleasure of idleness is never fully known till one
has worked."
"Ah," sighed Lady Engleton, "I know I don't extract the full flavour out
of _that_!"
"It is a neglected art," said the Professor. "After worrying himself
with the problems of existence, as the human being is prone to do, as
soon as existence is more or less secure and peaceful, a man can
experience few things more enjoyable than to leave aside all problems
and go out into the fields, into the sun, to feel the life in his veins,
the world at the threshold of his five senses."
"Ah, now you really are profound at last, Professor!"
"I thought it was risky to take you seriously."
"No, no, I am delighted. The world at the threshold of one's five
senses. One has but to look and to listen and the beauty of things
displays itself for our benefit. Yes, but that is what the artists say,
not the Professors."
"Even a Professor is human," pleaded Theobald.
Valeria quoted some lines that she said expressed Professor Fortescue's
idea.
"Carry me out into the wind and the sunshine,
Into the beautiful world!"
Lady Engleton's artistic instinct seemed to occupy itself less with the
interpretation of Nature than with the appreciation of the handiwork of
man. The lines did not stir her. Professor Theobald shared her
indifference for the poetic expression, but not for the reality
expressed.
"I quarrel with you about art," said Lady Engleton. "Art is art, and
nature is nature, both charming in their way, though I prefer art."
"Our old quarrel!" said the Professor.
"Because a wild glade is beautiful in its quality of wild glade, you
can't see the beauty in a trim bit of garden, with its delightful
suggestion of human thought and care."
"I object to stiffness," said Professor Theobald.
His proposals to improve the stately old gardens at the Priory by adding
what Lady Engleton called "fatuous wriggles to all the walks, for mere
wrigglings' sake," had led to hot discussions on the principles of art
and the relation of symmetry to the sensibilities of mankind. Lady
Engleton thought the Professor crude in taste, and shallow in knowledge,
on this point.
"And yet you appreciate so keenly my old enamels, and your eye seeks
out, in a minute, a picturesque roof or gable."
"Perhaps Theobald leans to the picturesque and does not care for the
classic," suggested his colleague; "a fundamental distinction in mental
bias."
"Then why does he enjoy so much of the _Renaissance_ work on caskets and
goblets? He was raving about them last night in the choicest English."
Lady Engleton crossed over to speak to Miss Du Prel. Professor Theobald
approached Mrs. Temperley and Joseph Fleming. Hadria knew by some
instinct that the Professor had been waiting for an opportunity to speak
to her. As he drew near, a feeling of intense enmity arose within her,
which reached its highest pitch when he addressed her in a fine,
low-toned voice of peculiarly fascinating quality. Every instinct rose
up as if in warning. He sat down beside her, and began to talk about
the Priory and its history. His ability was obvious, even in his choice
of words and his selection of incidents. He had the power of making dry
archæological facts almost dramatic. His speech differed from that of
most men, in the indefinable manner wherein excellence differs from
mediocrity. Yet Hadria was glad to notice some equally indefinable lack,
corresponding perhaps to the gap in his consciousness that Lady Engleton
had come upon in their discussions on the general principles of art.
What was it? A certain stilted, unreal quality? Scarcely. Words refused
to fit themselves to the evasive form. Something that suggested the term
"second class," though whether it were the manner or the substance that
was responsible for the impression, was difficult to say.
Sometimes his words allowed two possible interpretations to be put upon
a sentence. He was a master of the ambiguous. Obviously it was not lack
of skill that produced the double-faced phrases.
He did not leave his listeners long in doubt as to his personal history.
He enjoyed talking about himself. He was a Professor of archæology, and
had written various learned books on the subject. But his studies had by
no means been confined to the one theme. History had also interested him
profoundly. He had published a work on the old houses of England. The
Priory figured among them. It was not difficult to discover from the
conversation of this singular man, whose subtle and secretive instincts
were contradicted, at times, by a strange inconsequent frankness, that
his genuine feeling for the picturesque was accompanied by an equally
strong predilection for the appurtenances of wealth and splendour; his
love of great names and estates being almost of the calibre of the
housemaid's passion for lofty personages in her penny periodical. He
seemed to be a man of keen and cunning ability, who studied and played
upon the passions and weaknesses of his fellows, possibly for their
good, but always as a magician might deal with the beings subject to his
power. By what strange lapse did he thus naïvely lay himself open to
their smiles?
Hadria was amused at his occasional impulse of egotistic frankness (or
what appeared to be such), when he would solemnly analyse his own
character, admitting his instinct to deceive with an engaging and
scholarly candour.
His penetrating eyes kept a watch upon his audience. His very simplicity
seemed to be guarded by his keenness.
Hadria chafed under his persistent effort to attract and interest her.
She gave a little inward shiver on finding that there was a vague,
unaccountable, and unpleasant fascination in the personality of the man.
It was not charm, it was nothing that inspired admiration; it rather
inspired curiosity and stirred the spirit of research, a spirit which
evidently animated himself. She felt that, in order to investigate the
workings of her mind and her heart, the Professor would have coolly
pursued the most ruthless psychical experiments, no matter at what cost
of anguish to herself. In the interests of science and humanity, the
learned Professor would certainly not hesitate to make one wretched
individual agonize.
His appeal to the intellect was stimulatingly strong; it was like a
stinging wind, that made one walk at a reckless pace, and brought the
blood tingling through every vein. That intellectual force could alone
explain the fact of his being counted by Professor Fortescue as a
friend. Even then it was a puzzling friendship. Could it be that to
Professor Fortescue, he shewed only his best side? His manner was more
respectful towards his colleague than towards other men, but even with
him he was irreverent in his heart, as towards mankind in general.
To Hadria he spoke of Professor Fortescue with enthusiasm--praising his
great power, his generosity, his genial qualities, and his uprightness;
then he laughed at him as a modern Don Quixote, and sneered at his
efforts to save animal suffering when he might have made a name that
would never be forgotten, if he pursued a more fruitful branch of
research.
Hadria remarked that Professor Theobald's last sentence had added the
crowning dignity to his eulogium.
He glanced at her, as if taking her measure.
"Fortescue," he called out, "I envy you your champion. You point, Mrs.
Temperley, to lofty altitudes. I, as a mere man, cannot pretend to scale
them."
Then he proceeded to bring down feminine loftiness with virile reason.
"In this world, where there are so many other evils to combat, one feels
that it is more rational to attack the more important first."
"Ah! there is nothing like an evil to bolster up an evil," cried
Professor Fortescue; "the argument never fails. Every abuse may find
shelter behind it. The slave trade, for instance; have we not white
slavery in our midst? How inconsistent to trouble about negroes till our
own people are truly free! Wife-beating? Sad; but then children are
often shamefully ill-used. Wait till _they_ are fully protected before
fussing about wives. Protect children? Foolish knight-errant, when you
ought to know that drunkenness is at the root of these crimes! Sweep
away _this_ curse, before thinking of the children. As for animals, how
can any rational person consider _their_ sufferings, when there are men,
women, and children with wrongs to be redressed?"
Professor Theobald laughed.
"My dear Fortescue, I knew you would have some ingenious excuse for your
amiable weaknesses."
"It is easier to find epithets than answers, Theobald," said the
Professor with a smile. "I confess I wonder at a man of your logical
power being taken in with this cheap argument, if argument it can be
called."
"It is my attachment to logic that makes me crave for consistency," said
Theobald, not over pleased at his friend's attack.
Professor Fortescue stared in surprise.
"But do you really mean to tell me that you think it logical to excuse
one abuse by pointing to another?"
"I think that while there are ill-used women and children, it is
certainly inconsistent to consider animals," said Theobald.
"It does not occur to you that the spirit in man that permits abuse of
power over animals is precisely the same devil-inspired spirit that
expresses itself in cruelty towards children. Ah," continued Professor
Fortescue, shaking his head, "then you really are one of the many who
help wrong to breed wrong, and suffering to foster suffering, all the
world over. It is you and those who reason as you reason, who give to
our miseries their terrible vitality. What arguments has evil ever given
to evil! What shelter and succour cruelty offers eternally to cruelty!"
"I can't attempt to combat this hobby of yours, Fortescue."
"Again a be-littling epithet in place of an argument! But I know of old
that on this subject your intellectual acumen deserts you, as it deserts
nearly all men. You sink suddenly to lower spiritual rank, and employ
reasoning that you would laugh to scorn in connection with every other
topic."
"You seem bent on crushing me," exclaimed Theobald. "And Mrs. Temperley
enjoys seeing me mangled. Talk about cruelty to animals! I call this
cold-blooded devilry! Mrs. Temperley, come to my rescue!"
"So long as other forms of cruelty can be instanced, Professor Theobald,
I don't see how, on your own shewing, you can expect any consistent
person to raise a finger to help you," Hadria returned. Theobald
laughed.
"But I consider myself too important and valuable to be made the subject
of this harsh treatment."
"That is for others to decide. If it affords us amusement to torment
you, and amusement benefits our nerves and digestion, how can you justly
object? We must consider the greatest good of the greatest number; and
we are twice as numerous as you."
"You are delicious!" he exclaimed. Mrs. Temperley's manner stiffened.
Acute as the Professor was in many directions, he did not appear to
notice the change.
His own manner was not above criticism.
"It is strange," said Lady Engleton, in speaking of him afterwards to
Hadria, "it is strange that his cleverness does not come to the rescue;
but so far from that, I think it leads him a wild dance over boggy
ground, like some will-o'-the-wisp, but for whose freakish allurements
the good man might have trodden a quiet and inoffensive way."
The only means of procuring the indispensable afternoon tea was to go on
to the Red House, which Mrs. Temperley proposed that they should all do.
"And is there no shaking your decision about the Priory, Professor
Theobald?" Lady Engleton asked as they descended the steps.
The Professor's quick glance sought Mrs. Temperley's before he answered.
"I confess to feeling less heroic this afternoon."
"Oh, good! We may perhaps have you for a neighbour after all."