“But I thought Professor Theobald said something about calling.”
“I leave you to entertain him, if he comes,” Hadria returned, and hastened away. She stopped at Martha’s cottage for the child. Ah! What would become of her if it were not for Martha? The two sauntered together along the Craddock road.
All night long, Hadria had been trying to decide when and how to speak to Professor Theobald. Should she send for him? Should she write to him? Should she trust to chance for an opportunity of speaking? But, no, she could not endure to see him again in the presence of others, before she had spoken! Yesterday’s experience had been too terrible. She had brought pencil and paper with her, in order to be able to write to him, if she decided on that course. There were plenty of retired nooks under the shade of the yew-trees in the churchyard, where one could write. The thick hedges made it perfectly secluded, and at this hour, it was always solitary. Little Martha was gathering wild-flowers in the hedges. She used to pluck them to lay on her mother’s grave. She had but a vague idea of that unknown mother, but Hadria had tried to make the dead woman live again, in the child’s mind, as a gentle and tender image. The little offering was made each time that they took their walk in the direction of Craddock. The grave looked fresh and sweet in the summer sunshine, with the ivy creeping up the tomb-stone and half obliterating the name. A rose-tree that Hadria and Martha had planted together, was laden with rich red blooms.
The two figures stood, hand in hand, by the grave. The child stooped to place her little tribute of flowers at the head of the green mound. Neither of them noticed a tall figure at the wicket gate. He stood outside, looking up the path, absolutely motionless. Martha let go Hadria’s hand, and ran off after a gorgeous butterfly that had fluttered over the headstone: a symbol of the soul; fragile, beautiful, helpless thing that any rough hand may crush and ruin. Hadria turned to watch the graceful, joyous movement of the child, and her delight in the beauty of the rich brown wings, with their enamelled spots of sapphire.
“Hadria!”
She gave a little gasping cry, and turned sharply. Professor Theobald looked at her with an intent, triumphant expression. She stood before him, for the moment, as if paralysed. It was by no means the first time that this look had crossed his face, but she had been blind, and had not fully understood it. He interpreted her cry and her paleness, as signs of the fullness of his power over her. This pleased him immeasurably. His self-love basked and purred. He felt that his moment of triumph had come. Contrasting this meeting with the last occasion when they had stood together beside this grave, had he not ground for self-applause? He remembered so well that unpleasant episode. It was Hadria who stood then in the more powerful position. He had actually feared to meet her eye. He remembered how bitterly she had spoken, of her passion for revenge, of the relentless feud between man and woman. They had discussed the question of vengeance; he had pointed out its futility, and Hadria had set her teeth and desired it none the less. Lady Engleton had reminded her of a woman’s helplessness if she places herself in opposition to a man, for whom all things are ordered in the society that he governs; her only chance of striking a telling blow being through his passions. If he were in love with her, then there might be some hope of making him wince. And Hadria, with a fierce swiftness had accepted the condition, with a mixture of confidence in her own power of rousing emotion, if she willed, and of scorn for the creature who could be appealed to through his passions, but not through his sense of justice. That she might herself be in that vulnerable condition, had not appeared to strike her as possible. It was a challenge that he could not but accept. She attracted him irresistibly. From the first moment of meeting, he had felt her power, and recognized, at the same time, the strange spirit of enmity that she seemed to feel towards him, and to arouse in him against her. He felt the savage in him awake, the desire of mere conquest. Long had he waited and watched, and at last he had seen her flush and tremble at his approach; and as if to make his victory more complete and insolent, it was at this grave that she was to confess herself ready to lose the world for his sake! Yes; and she should understand the position of affairs to the full, and consent nevertheless!
Her adoption of the child had added to his triumph. He could not think of it without a sense of something humourous in the relation of events. If ever Fate was ironical, this was the occasion! He felt so sure of Hadria to-day, that he was swayed by an overpowering temptation to reveal to her the almost comic situation. It appealed to his sense of the absurd, and to the savagery that lurked, like a beast of prey, at the foundation of his nature. Her evident emotion when he arrived yesterday afternoon and all through his visit, her agitation to-day, at the mere sound of his voice, assured him that his hold over her was secure. He must be a fool indeed if he could not keep it, in spite of revelations. To offer himself to her threatened vengeance of his own accord, and to see her turned away disarmed, because she loved him; that would be the climax of his victory!
There was something of their old antagonism, in the attitude in which they stood facing one another by the side of the grave, looking straight into one another’s eyes. The sound of the child’s happy laughter floated back to them across the spot where its mother lay at rest. Whether Theobald’s intense consciousness of the situation had, in some way, affected Hadria, or whether his expression had given a clue, it would be difficult to say, but suddenly, as a whiff of scent invades the senses, she became aware of a new and horrible fact which had wandered into her mind, she knew not how; and she took a step backwards, as if stunned, breathing shortly and quickly. Again he interpreted this as a sign of intense feeling.
“Hadria,” he said bending towards her, “you do love me?” He did not wait for her answer, so confident did he feel. “You love me for myself, not for my virtues or qualities, for I have but few of those, alas!” She tried to speak, but he interrupted her. “I want to make a confession to you. I can never forget what you said that day of Marion Fenwick’s wedding, at the side of this very grave; you said that you wanted to take vengeance on the man who had brought such misery to this poor woman. You threatened—at least, it amounted to a threat—to make him fall in love with you, if ever you should meet him, and to render him miserable through his passion. I loved you and I trembled, but I thought to myself, ‘What if I could make her return my love? Where would the vengeance be then?’”
Hadria had remained, for a second, perfectly still, and then turned abruptly away.