“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?