Madame Vauchelet recommended an excellent woman who would cook and market, and, with Hannah’s help, easily do all that was necessary. After many calculations and consultations with Madame Vauchelet, Hadria finally decided to rent, for three months, a cheerful little suite of rooms near the Arc de Triomphe.
Madame Vauchelet drank a cup of tea in the little salon with quiet heroism, not liking to refuse Hadria’s offer of the friendly beverage. But she wondered at the powerful physique of the nation that could submit to the trial daily.
Hadria was brimming over with pleasure in her new home, which breathed Paris from every pore. She had already surrounded herself with odds and ends of her own, with books and a few flowers. If only this venture turned out well, how delightful would be the next few months. Hadria did not clearly look beyond that time. To her, it seemed like a century. Her only idea as to the farther future was an abstract resolve to let nothing short of absolute compulsion persuade her to renounce her freedom, or subject herself to conditions that made the pursuit of her art impossible. How to carry out the resolve, in fact and detail, was a matter to consider when the time came. If one were to consider future difficulties as well as deal with immediate ones, into what crannies and interstices were the affairs of the moment to be crammed?
There has probably never been a human experience of even a few months of perfect happiness, of perfect satisfaction with conditions, even among the few men and women who know how to appreciate the bounty of Fate, when she is generous, and to take the sting out of minor annoyances by treating them lightly. Hadria was ready to shrug her shoulders at legions of these, so long as the main current of her purpose were not diverted. But she could not steel herself against the letters that she received from England.
Everyone was deeply injured but bravely bearing up. Her family was a stricken and sorrowing family. Being naturally heroic, it said little but thought the more. Relations whose names Hadria scarcely remembered, seemed to have waked up at the news of her departure and claimed their share of the woe. Obscure Temperleys raised astounded heads and mourned. Henriette wrote that she was really annoyed at the way in which everybody was talking about Hadria’s conduct. It was most uncomfortable. She hoped Hadria was able to be happy. Hubert was ready to forgive her and to receive her back, in spite of everything. Henriette entreated her to return; for her own sake, for Hubert’s sake, for the children’s. They were just going off to school, poor little boys. Henriette, although so happy at the Red House, was terribly grieved at this sad misunderstanding. It seemed so strange, so distressing. Henriette had thoroughly enjoyed looking after dear Hubert and the sweet children. They were in splendid health. She had been very particular about hygiene. Hubert and she had seen a good deal of the Engletons lately. How charming Lady Engleton was! So much tact. She was advanced in her ideas, only she never allowed them to be intrusive. She seemed just like everybody else. She hated to make herself conspicuous; the very ideal of a true lady, if one might use the much-abused word. Professor Fortescue was reported to be still far from well. Professor Theobald had not taken the Priory after all. It was too large. It looked so deserted and melancholy now.
Henriette always finished her letters with an entreaty to Hadria to return. People were talking so. They suspected the truth; although, of course, one had hoped that the separation would be supposed to be temporary—as indeed Henriette trusted it would prove.
Madame Bertaux, who had just returned from England to her beloved Paris, reported to Hadria, when she called on the latter in her new abode, that everyone was talking about the affair with as much eagerness as if the fate of the empire had depended on it. Madame Bertaux recommended indifference and silence. She observed, in her sharp, good-natured, impatient way, that reforming confirmed drunkards, converting the heathen, making saints out of sinners, or a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, would be mere child’s play compared with the task of teaching the average idiot to mind his own business.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE new ménage went well. Therése was a treasure, and Martha’s willing slave. Expenses were kept fairly reasonable by her care and knowledge. Still it must not be forgotten that the little income needed supplementing. Hadria had been aware of this risk from the first, but had faced it, regarding it as the less perilous of the alternatives that she had to choose between. The income was small, but it was her own absolutely, and she must live on that, with such auxiliary sums as she could earn. She hoped to be able to make a little money by her compositions. The future was all vague and unknown, but one thing was at least certain: it cost money to live, and in some way or other it had to be made. She told her kind friend, Madame Vauchelet, of her plan. Madame Vauchelet consulted her musical friends. People were sympathetic, but rather vague in their advice. It was always difficult, this affair. The beginning was hard. M. Thillard, a kindly, highly-cultivated man of about sixty, who had heard Hadria play, took great interest in her talent, and busied himself on her behalf.