Henrietta found a band of enthusiasts at the lecture; it seemed her fate to run up against enthusiasm she could not share. Young ladies, middle-aged ladies, even old ladies, all listening spellbound—at least if not absolutely spellbound, spellbound compared to Henrietta—to an elderly gentleman discoursing on Aristotle. For most of them Aristotle, and the satisfaction of using their minds were sufficient, but a little knot of middle-aged women in the front, with hair inclined to be short, and eyes bursting with intelligence, used learning as a symbol of emancipation. Lectures were their vote. Now they would be in prison.
Henrietta listened for five minutes, then suddenly her thoughts darted to her portmanteau: she had lost the key at Dieppe. They went on to the incivility at the Custom-house, the incivility of the waiter at Bâle, the incivility of the gardener at her old home, the geranium bed in the garden—would her stepmother attend to it?—her father, was his eyesight really failing? She came back with a jump to find that the lecture had moved on several pages. She listened with fair success for another five minutes, then her mind wandered to her landlady at the lodgings; was she perfectly honest, did her expression inspire confidence? There was that pearl brooch Louie had given her; it was Louie's birthday to-morrow, she must write, and hear also how Tom was getting on in this his second term at school, she must send him a hamper. She had settled the contents of the hamper when she found that someone was speaking to her. The lecturer was asking whether she felt she would care to write a paper. He hoped as many ladies as possible would make an attempt at the papers; it would be a great pleasure and interest to him to look through them, etc.
On the way back she found Miss Gurney entranced with everything; she seemed to have picked up a great deal more than Henrietta. They went at once to a library and a bookshop to get what they had been advised to read, and Miss Gurney bought reams of paper. She was hard at work the whole evening. Henrietta had one of the books open before her, but she found the same difficulty in concentrating herself that she had done at the lecture. Miss Gurney was rapidly filling an exercise book with an abstract, and was keeping up a conversation as well.
"Ah that was the piece I couldn't quite understand this morning. Yes I see, now it is quite clear. Look, Miss Symons. Oh, I shall learn Greek, I certainly shall, as he said, it will make it twenty times more interesting."
What were they all so excited about? Henrietta had never cared about abstract questions, and she could not see that there was any object in discovering what the ancient Greeks thought about them more than two thousand years ago. The evening before, she and Miss Gurney had had an interesting conversation on the weekly averages of house-books. Then she felt comfortable and on the solid earth. Why then, was she attending lectures on Aristotle? Well, because Miss Gurney had a friend whose cousin had married the lecturer, Professor Amery, and in the difficult problem of choosing a subject, when there was nothing she really cared to know about, this was as good a reason as any other.
Then Henrietta remembered how she and Emily Mence years ago at school, had argued the whole of Saturday afternoon about Mary Queen of Scots, and had not been on speaking terms the following day, because Emily had called Mary frivolous. Had she ever really been that queer little girl? Still she was anxious to give the lecturer a chance, most anxious, for she had already had to suffer from Minna and Louie's sympathy that the parish work was a failure. She read three chapters and fell asleep in the middle of the fourth, and went to bed half an hour earlier than usual. Next morning she could not remember a word of what she had read, but for two dates and one sentence, which remained in her head. "Even now, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, in spite of an unparalleled advance in our knowledge of the natural sciences, the world has not yet produced a mind, which can equal that of Aristotle in its astounding versatility and profundity of learning." She determined to persevere, but was it her subconscious self which discovered a vast arrear of letters which it was incumbent on her to answer before she thought of anything else?
After the lecture there was a class at which everyone talked. Even the dear old lady next to Henrietta was asking a quavering question. Yes, a little delicate old lady had energy to keep the current of the lecture in her head. She said that Aristotle's problem whether it was possible for slaves to have ordinary virtues, made her think of the difference in the Christian teaching of St. Paul's epistles. Had any of the other Greek philosophers been more humane in their views on slavery? Then another voice struck in, and compared the ancient idea of slavery with the slave code of the United States. The voice was rather strident, but not unpleasant. It had a great deal to say, and for some minutes seemed likely to take the lecture altogether from the mouth of the lecturer. Henrietta looked in its direction, and saw a small apple-cheeked elderly lady. The voice and the face both set her thinking, and by the end of the lecture she was certain that the elderly lady was Miss Arundel. She spoke, and when Miss Arundel had recollected who she was (it took a little time), Henrietta received a most cordial invitation to tea.
Miss Arundel lived with a niece in a couple of rooms quite close to Henrietta. Mrs. Marston was dead, and Miss Arundel had retired from the school with just enough to live in decent comfort.
"So now, after teaching all my life, I am giving myself the treat of learning, and I can't tell you how I am enjoying it, Miss Symons. Ada and I both like Professor Amery so much." And she prosed on about the lecture and the books she was reading, and did not much care to talk over the old times, which were still very dear to Henrietta. It amazed Henrietta to think that she had once blushed and trembled at the look of this fussy, garrulous little governess.
She might be something of a bore, but there was no question of her happiness, her interest in life. She had been getting up at six the last three mornings that she might finish a book, a large book in two volumes with close print, that had to be returned to the library. Henrietta could imagine nothing in the world for which she would get up at six o'clock. Then her thoughts went like lightning to the morning when the telegram had come telling of little Madeline's death. The wound she had thought healed burst out afresh; for a few seconds she felt as if she could hardly breathe. Get up at six o'clock, of course she would have forfeited her sleep with joy, night after night. In the midst of envy, she felt something like contempt for Miss Arundel as a child running after shadows.