Professor Theobald had been engaged, for the last ten minutes, in
instructing Joseph Fleming and a few stragglers, among whom was Dodge,
in the characteristics of ancient architecture. He was pointing out the
fine Norman window of the south transept, Joseph nodding wearily, Dodge
leaning judicially on his broom and listening with attention. Joseph, as
Lady Engleton remarked, was evidently bearing the Normans a bitter
grudge for making interesting arches. The Professor seemed to have no
notion of tempering the wind of his instruction to the shorn lambs of
his audience.
"I _can't_ understand why he does not join us," said Lady Engleton. "It
must be nearly luncheon time. However, it doesn't much matter, as
everyone seems to be up here. I wonder," she went on after a pause,
"what the bride would think if she had heard our conversation this
morning!"
"Probably she would recognize many a half-thought of her own," said
Hadria.
Lady Engleton shook her head.
"They alarm me, all these ideas. For myself, I feel bound to accept the
decision of wise and good men, who have studied social questions
deeply."
Personal feeling had finally overcome her desire to fight off the
influence of tradition.
"I do not feel competent to judge in a matter so complex, and must be
content to abide by the opinions of those who have knowledge and
experience."
Lady Engleton thus retreated hastily behind cover. That was a strategic
movement always available in difficulties, and it left one's companion
in speculation alone in the open, arrogantly sustaining an eagle-gaze in
the sun's face. The advantages of feminine humility were obvious. One
could come out for a skirmish and then run for shelter, in awkward
moments. No woman ought to venture out on the bare plain without a
provision of the kind.
Hadria had a curious sensation of being so exposed, when Lady Engleton
retreated behind her "good and wise men," and she had the usual feminine
sense of discomfort in the feeling of presumption that it produced.
Heredity asserted 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 attitude 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 sex," 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 _désagréments_ 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 button-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 pagoda!"
"It's not so easy as you seem to imagine to find distinctive epithets. I
challenge you. Begin with the pagoda."
"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
passin' 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; nobody in the world can help me, and nobody 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 sex," 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 wishing 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.
They were strolling down the path, and Professor Theobald was holding
open the gate for his companions to pass through. His hand seemed to
shake slightly.
"I don't enjoy probing my motives on that subject," said Hadria.
"Why? I am sure they were good."
"I can't help hoping that that child may live to avenge her mother; to
make some man know what it is to be horribly miserable--but, oh, I
suppose it's like trying to reach the feelings of a rhinoceros!"
"There you are much mistaken, Mrs. Temperley," said the Professor. "Men
are as sensitive, in some respects, as women."
"So much the better."
"Then do you think it quite just to punish one man for the sin of
another?"
"No; but there is a deadly feud between the sexes: it is a hereditary
vendetta: the duty of vengeance is passed on from generation to
generation."
"Oh, Mrs. Temperley!" Lady Engleton's tone was one of reproach.
"Yes, it is vindictive, I know; one does not grow tender towards the
enemy at the grave of Ellen Jervis."
"At least, there were _two_ sinners, not only one."
"Only one dies of a broken heart."
"But why attempt revenge?"
"Oh, a primitive instinct. And anything is better than this meek
endurance, this persistent heaping of penalties on the scapegoat."
"No good ever came of mere revenge, however," said Professor Theobald.
"Sometimes that is the only form of remonstrance that is listened to,"
said Hadria. "When people have the law in their own hands and Society at
their back, they can afford to be deaf to mere verbal protest."
"As for the child," said Lady Engleton, "she will be in no little danger
of a fate like her mother's."
Hadria's face darkened.
"At least then, she shall have some free and happy hours first; at least
she shall not be driven to it by the misery of moral starvation,
starvation of the affections. She shall be protected from the solemn
fools--with sawdust for brains and a mechanical squeaker for heart--who,
on principle, cut off from her mother all joy and all savour in life,
and then punished her for falling a victim to the starved emotional
condition to which they had reduced her."
"The matter seems complex," said Lady Engleton, "and I don't see how
revenge comes in."
"It is a passion that has never been eradicated. Oh, if I could but find
that man!"
"A man is a hard thing to punish,--unless he is in love with one."
"Well, let him be in love!" cried Hadria fiercely.