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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Daughters of Danaus, by Mona Caird
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Daughters of Danaus
+
+Author: Mona Caird
+
+Release Date: June 18, 2007 [EBook #21858]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DAUGHTERS OF DANAUS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Anne Storer, Suzanne Shell and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+[Transcriber's Note: This e-book was produced from a reprint of the
+edition first published in 1894 in London by Bliss, Sands, and Foster.
+Inconsistent spellings and hyphenations have been standardized. There
+is one instance each of Cruachmore and Croachmore, so they have been
+left as printed.]
+
+
+
+
+_The Daughters of Danaus_
+
+_Mona Caird_
+
+1894
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+_The Daughters of Danaus_                                       1
+
+Appendix: "Does Marriage Hinder a Woman's Self-development?"
+by Mona Caird                                                 535
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE DAUGHTERS OF DANAUS
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+It was only just light enough to discern the five human forms in the
+dimness of the garret; the rays of the moon having to find their way
+through the deep window-embrasures of the keep. Less illumination would
+have sufficed to disclose the ancient character of the garret, with its
+low ceiling, and the graduated mouldings of the cornice, giving the
+effect of a shallow dome. The house stood obviously very high, for one
+could see from the windows for miles over a bleak country, coldly lit by
+the rays of the moon, which was almost at the full. Into the half light
+stole presently the sound of some lively instrument: a reel tune played,
+as it were, beneath one's breath, but with all the revel and rollicking
+emphasis of that intoxicating primitive music. And then in correspondingly
+low relief, but with no less emphasis, the occupants of this singular
+ball-room began to dance. One might have fancied them some midnight
+company of the dead, risen from their graves for this secret revelry,
+so strange was the appearance of the moving figures, with the moonlight
+catching, as they passed, the faces or the hands. They danced excellently
+well, as to the manner born, tripping in and out among the shadows, with
+occasional stamping, in time to the music, and now and again that wild
+Celtic shout or cry that sets the nerves athrill. In spite of the whole
+scene's being enacted in a low key, it seemed only to gain in intensity
+from that circumstance, and in fantastic effect.
+
+Among the dancers was one who danced with peculiar spirit and brilliancy,
+and her little cry had a ring and a wildness that never failed to set the
+others going with new inspiration.
+
+She was a slight, dark-haired girl, with a pale, rather mysterious face,
+and large eyes. Not a word was spoken, and the reel went on for nearly
+ten minutes. At length the girl with the dark hair gave a final shout,
+and broke away from the circle.
+
+With her desertion the dance flagged, and presently came to an end. The
+first breaking of the silence gave a slight shock, in spite of the
+subdued tones of the speaker.
+
+"It is no use trying to dance a reel without Hadria," said a tall youth,
+evidently her brother, if one might judge from his almost southern
+colouring and melancholy eyes. In build and feature he resembled the
+elder sister, Algitha, who had all the characteristics of a fine
+northern race.
+
+"Old Maggie said the other day, that Hadria's dancing of the reel was no
+'right canny,'" Algitha observed, in the same low tone that all the
+occupants of the garret instinctively adopted.
+
+"Ah!" cried Fred, "old Maggie has always looked upon Hadria as half
+bewitched since that night when she found her here 'a wee bit bairn,' as
+she says, at this very window, in her nightshirt, standing on tiptoe to
+see the moonlight."
+
+"It frightened the poor old thing out of her wits, of course," said
+Algitha, who was leaning with crossed arms, in a corner of the deep-set
+window. The fine outlines of face and form were shewn in the strange
+light, as in a boldly-executed sketch, without detail. Pride and
+determination were the dominant qualities so indicated. Her sister
+stood opposite, the moonshine making the smooth pallor of her face
+more striking, and emphasizing its mysterious quality.
+
+The whole group of young faces, crowded together by the window, and lit
+up by the unsympathetic light, had something characteristic and unusual
+in its aspect, that might have excited curiosity.
+
+"Tell us the story of the garret, Hadria," said Austin, the youngest
+brother, a handsome boy of twelve, with curling brown hair and blue
+eyes.
+
+"Hadria has told it hundreds of times, and you know it as well as she
+does."
+
+"But I want to hear it again--about the attack upon the keep, and the
+shouting of the men, while the lady was up here starving to death."
+
+But Algitha shook her head.
+
+"We don't come up here to tell stories, we must get to business."
+
+"Will you have the candle, or can you see?" asked Fred, the second
+brother, a couple of years younger than Hadria, whom he addressed. His
+features were irregular; his short nose and twinkling grey eyes
+suggesting a joyous and whimsical temperament.
+
+"I think I had better have the candle; my notes are very illegible."
+
+Fred drew forth a candle-end from his pocket, stuck it into a
+quaint-looking stand of antique steel, much eaten with rust, and set the
+candle-end alight.
+
+Algitha went into the next room and brought in a couple of chairs. Fred
+followed her example till there were enough for the party. They all took
+their places, and Hadria, who had been provided with a seat facing them,
+and with a rickety wooden table that trembled responsively to her
+slightest movement, laid down her notes and surveyed her audience. The
+faces stood out strangely, in the lights and shadows of the garret.
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen," she began; "on the last occasion on which the
+Preposterous Society held its meeting, we had the pleasure of listening
+to an able lecture on 'Character' by our respected member Demogorgon"
+(the speaker bowed to Ernest, and the audience applauded). "My address
+to-night on 'Fate' is designed to contribute further ideas to this
+fascinating subject, and to pursue the enquiry more curiously."
+
+The audience murmured approval.
+
+"We were left at loggerheads, at the end of the last debate. I doubted
+Demogorgon's conclusion, while admiring his eloquence. To-night, I will
+put before you the view exactly contrary to his. I do not assert that I
+hold this contrary view, but I state it as well as I am able, because I
+think that it has not been given due consideration."
+
+"This will be warm," Fred was heard to murmur with a chuckle, to an
+adjacent sister. The speaker looked at her notes.
+
+"I will read," she said, "a passage from Emerson, which states very
+strikingly the doctrine that I am going to oppose."
+
+Hadria held her paper aslant towards the candle-end, which threw a murky
+yellow light upon the background of the garret, contrasting oddly with
+the thin, clear moonbeams.
+
+"'But the soul contains the event that shall befall it, for the event is
+only the actualization of its thoughts; and what we pray to ourselves
+for is always granted. The event is the print of your form. It fits you
+like your skin. What each does is proper to him. Events are the children
+of his mind and body.'"
+
+Algitha leant forward. The members of the Preposterous Society settled
+into attitudes of attention.
+
+Hadria said that this was a question that could not fail to be of
+peculiar interest to them all, who had their lives before them, to make
+or mar. It was an extremely difficult question, for it admitted of no
+experiment. One could never go back in life and try another plan. One
+could never make sure, by such a test, how much circumstance and how
+much innate ideas had to do with one's disposition. Emerson insisted
+that man makes his circumstance, and history seemed to support that
+theory. How untoward had been, in appearance, the surroundings of those
+who had made all the great movements and done all the great deeds of the
+world. Let one consider the poverty, persecution, the incessant
+discouragement, and often the tragic end of our greatest benefactors.
+Christ was but one of the host of the crucified. In spite of the theory
+which the lecturer had undertaken to champion, she believed that it was
+generally those people who had difficult lives who did the beneficent
+deeds, and generally those people who were encouraged and comfortable
+who went to sleep, or actively dragged down what the thinkers and actors
+had piled up. In great things and in small, such was the order of life.
+
+"Hear, hear," cried Ernest, "my particular thunder!"
+
+"Wait a minute," said the lecturer. "I am going to annihilate you with
+your particular thunder." She paused for a moment, and her eyes rested
+on the strange white landscape beyond the little group of faces upturned
+towards her.
+
+"Roughly, we may say that people are divided into two orders: first, the
+organizers, the able, those who build, who create cohesion, symmetry,
+reason, economy; and, secondly, the destroyers, those who come wandering
+idly by, and unfasten, undo, relax, disintegrate all that has been
+effected by the force and vigilance of their betters. This distinction
+is carried into even the most trivial things of life. Yet without that
+organization and coherence, the existence of the destroyers themselves
+would become a chaos and a misery."
+
+The oak table over which Hadria bent forward towards her audience,
+appeared to be applauding this sentiment vigorously. It rocked to and
+fro on the uneven floor with great clamour.
+
+"Thus," the speaker went on, "these relaxed and derivative people are
+living on the strength of the strong. He who is strong must carry with
+him, as a perpetual burden, a mass of such pensioners, who are scared
+and shocked at his rude individuality; and if he should trip or stumble,
+if he should lose his way in the untrodden paths, in seeking new truth
+and a broader foundation for the lives of men, then a chorus of censure
+goes up from millions of little throats."
+
+"Hear, hear!" cried Algitha and Fred, and the table rocked
+enthusiastically.
+
+"But when the good things are gained for which the upholders have
+striven and perhaps given their lives, then there are no more greedy
+absorbers of the bounty than these same innumerable little throats."
+
+The table led the chorus of assent.
+
+"And now," said the lecturer slowly, "consider this in relation to the
+point at issue. Emerson asserts that circumstance can always be conquered.
+But is not circumstance, to a large extent, created by these destroyers,
+as I have called them? Has not the strongest soul to count with these,
+who weave the web of adverse conditions, whose dead weight has to be
+carried, whose work of destruction has to be incessantly repaired? Who
+can dare to say 'I am master of my fate,' when he does not know how large
+may be the share of the general burden that will fall to him to drag
+through life, how great may be the number of these parasites who are
+living on the moral capital of their generation? Surely circumstance
+consists largely in the inertia, the impenetrability of the destroyers."
+
+Ernest shewed signs of restiveness. He shuffled on his chair, made
+muttered exclamations.
+
+"Presently," said the lecturer reassuringly.
+
+"Or put it in another way," she went on. "A man may make a
+thing--circumstance included--but he is not a sort of moral spider; he
+can't spin it out of his own inside. _He wants something to make it of._
+The formative force comes from within, but he must have material, just
+as much as a sculptor must have his marble before he can shape his
+statue. There is a subtle relation between character and conditions, and
+it is this _relation_ that determines Fate. Fate is as the statue of
+the sculptor."
+
+"That's where Hadria mainly differs from you," said Fred, "you make the
+thing absolute; Hadria makes it a matter of relation."
+
+"Exactly," assented the lecturer, catching the remark. "Difficulties
+need not be really obstructive to the best development of a character or
+a power, nor a smooth path always favourable. Obstacles may be of a kind
+to stimulate one person and to annihilate another. It is _not_ a
+question of relative strength between character and circumstance, as
+people are so fond of asserting. That is mere gibberish. It means nothing.
+The two things cannot be compared, for they are not of the same nature.
+They can't be reduced to a common denominator."
+
+Austin appreciated this illustration, being head of his class for
+arithmetic.
+
+"We shall never be able to take a reasonable view of this question till
+we get rid of that ridiculous phrase, '_If the soul is strong enough, it
+can overcome circumstance._' In a room filled with carbonic acid instead
+of ordinary air, a giant would succumb as quickly as a dwarf, and his
+strength would avail him nothing. Indeed, if there is a difference, it
+is in favour of the dwarf."
+
+Ernest frowned. This was all high treason against his favourite author.
+He had given his sister a copy of Emerson's works last Christmas, in the
+hope that her views might be enlightened, and _this_ was the disgraceful
+use she made of it!
+
+"Finally," said Hadria, smiling defiantly at her brother, "let us put
+the question shortly thus: Given (say) great artistic power, given also
+a conscience and a strong will, is there any combination of circumstances
+which might prevent the artistic power (assuming it to be of the highest
+order and strength) from developing and displaying itself, so as to meet
+with general recognition?"
+
+"No," asserted Ernest, and there was a hesitating chorus on his side.
+
+"There seem to me to be a thousand chances against it," Hadria
+continued. "Artistic power, to begin with, is a sort of weakness in
+relation to the everyday world, and so, in some respects, is a nice
+conscience. I think Emerson is shockingly unjust. His beaming optimism
+is a worship of success disguised under lofty terms. There is nothing
+to prove that thousands have not been swamped by maladjustment of
+character to circumstance, and I would even go so far as to suggest that
+perhaps the very greatest of all are those whom the world has never
+known, because the present conditions are inharmonious with the very
+noblest and the very highest qualities."
+
+No sooner was the last word uttered than the garret became the scene of
+the stormiest debate that had ever been recorded in the annals of the
+Preposterous Society, an institution that had lately celebrated its
+fifth anniversary. Hadria, fired by opposition, declared that the
+success of great people was due not simply to their greatness, but to
+some smaller and commoner quality which brought them in touch with the
+majority, and so gave their greatness a chance.
+
+At this, there was such a howl of indignation that Algitha remonstrated.
+
+"We shall be heard, if you don't take care," she warned.
+
+"My dear Algitha, there are a dozen empty rooms between us and the
+inhabited part of the house, not to mention the fact that we are a
+storey above everyone except the ghosts, so I think you may compose
+yourself."
+
+However, the excited voices were hushed a little as the discussion
+continued. One of the chief charms of the institution, in the eyes of
+the members of the Society, was its secrecy. The family, though united
+by ties of warm affection to their parents, did not look for
+encouragement from them in this direction. Mr. Fullerton was too
+exclusively scientific in his bent of thought, to sympathize with the
+kind of speculation in which his children delighted, while their mother
+looked with mingled pride and alarm at these outbreaks of individuality
+on the part of her daughters, for whom she craved the honours of the
+social world. In this out-of-the-way district, society smiled upon
+conformity, and glared vindictively at the faintest sign of spontaneous
+thinking. Cleverness of execution, as in music, tennis, drawing, was
+forgiven, even commended; but originality, though of the mildest sort,
+created the same agonizing disturbance in the select circle, as the
+sight of a crucifix is wont to produce upon the father of Evil. Yet by
+some freak of fortune, the whole family at Dunaghee had shewn obstinate
+symptoms of individuality from their childhood, and, what was more
+distressing, the worst cases occurred in the girls.
+
+In the debate just recorded, that took place on Algitha's twenty-second
+birthday, Ernest had been Hadria's principal opponent, but the others
+had also taken the field against her.
+
+"You have the easier cause to champion," she said, when there was a
+momentary lull, "for all your evidences can be pointed to and counted;
+whereas mine, poor things--pale hypotheses, nameless peradventures--lie
+in forgotten churchyards--unthought of, unthanked, untrumpeted, and all
+their tragedy is lost in the everlasting silence."
+
+"You will never make people believe in what _might_ have been," said
+Algitha.
+
+"I don't expect to." Hadria was standing by the window looking out over
+the glimmering fields and the shrouded white hills. "Life is as white and
+as unsympathetic as this," she said dreamily. "We just dance our reel in
+our garret, and then it is all over; and whether we do the steps as our
+fancy would have them, or a little otherwise, because of the uneven floor,
+or tired feet, or for lack of chance to learn the steps--heavens and earth,
+what does it matter?"
+
+"Hadria!" exclaimed an astonished chorus.
+
+The sentiment was so entirely unlike any that the ardent President of
+the Society had ever been known to express before, that brothers and
+sisters crowded up to enquire into the cause of the unusual mood.
+
+"Oh, it is only the moonlight that has got into my head," she said,
+flinging back the cloudy black hair from her brow.
+
+Algitha's firm, clear voice vibrated through the room.
+
+"But I think it matters very much whether one's task is done well or
+ill," she said, "and nobody has taught me to wish to make solid use of
+my life so much as you have, Hadria. What possesses you to-night?"
+
+"I tell you, the moonlight."
+
+"And something else."
+
+"Well, it struck me, as I stood there with my head full of what we have
+been discussing, that the conditions of a girl's life of our own class
+are pleasant enough, but they are stifling, absolutely _stifling_;
+and not all the Emersons in the world will convince me to the contrary.
+Emerson never was a girl!"
+
+There was a laugh.
+
+"No; but he was a great man," said Ernest.
+
+"Then he must have had something of the girl in him!" cried Hadria.
+
+"I didn't mean that, but perhaps it is true."
+
+"If he had been a girl, he would have known that conditions _do_ count
+hideously in one's life. I think that there are more 'destroyers' to be
+carried about and pampered in this department of existence than in any
+other (material conditions being equal)."
+
+"Do you mean that a girl would have more difficulty in bringing her
+power to maturity and getting it recognized than a man would have?"
+asked Fred.
+
+"Yes; the odds are too heavy."
+
+"A second-rate talent perhaps," Ernest admitted, "but not a really big
+one."
+
+"I should exactly reverse that statement," said Hadria. "The greater the
+power and the finer its quality, the greater the inharmony between the
+nature and the conditions; therefore the more powerful the leverage
+against it. A small comfortable talent might hold its own, where a
+larger one would succumb. That is where I think you make your big
+mistake, in forgetting that the greatness of the power may serve to
+make the greatness of the obstacles."
+
+"So much the better for me then," said Algitha, with a touch of satire;
+"for I have no idea of being beaten." She folded her arms in a serene
+attitude of determination.
+
+"Surely it only wants a little force of will to enable you to occupy
+your life in the manner you think best," said Ernest.
+
+"That is often impossible for a girl, because prejudice and custom are
+against her."
+
+"But she ought to despise prejudice and custom," cried the brother,
+nobly.
+
+"So she often would; but then she has to tear through so many living
+ties that restrain her freedom."
+
+Algitha drew herself up. "If one is unjustly restrained," she said, "it
+is perfectly right to brave the infliction of the sort of pain that
+people feel only because they unfairly object to one's liberty of
+action."
+
+"But what a frightful piece of circumstance _that_ is to encounter,"
+cried Hadria, "to have to buy the mere right to one's liberty by cutting
+through prejudices that are twined in with the very heart-strings of
+those one loves! Ah! _that_ particular obstacle has held many a
+woman helpless and suffering, like some wretched insect pinned alive to
+a board throughout a miserable lifetime! What would Emerson say to these
+cases? That 'Nature magically suits the man to his fortunes by making
+these the fruit of his character'? Pooh! I think Nature more often makes
+a man's fortunes a veritable shirt of Nessus which burns and clings, and
+finally kills him with anguish!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+Once more the old stronghold of Dunaghee, inured for centuries to the
+changes of the elements, received the day's greeting. The hues of dawn
+tinged the broad hill pastures, or "airds," as they were called, round
+about the Tower of the Winds. No one was abroad yet in the silent lands,
+except perhaps a shepherd, tending his flock. The little farmstead of
+Craw Gill, that lay at a distance of about a couple of miles down the
+valley, on the side of a ravine, was apparently dead asleep. Cruachmore,
+the nearest upland farm, could scarcely be seen from the stronghold. The
+old tower had been added to, perhaps two hundred years ago; a
+rectangular block projecting from the corner of the original building,
+and then a second erection at right angles to the first, so as to form
+three sides of an irregular courtyard. This arrangement afforded some
+shelter from the winds which seldom ceased to blow in these high
+regions. The spot had borne the same reputation for centuries, as the
+name of the old tower implied.
+
+The Tower of the Winds stood desolately, in the midst of a wide-eyed
+agricultural country, and was approached only by a sort of farm track
+that ran up hill and down dale, in a most erratic course, to the distant
+main road.
+
+The country was not mountainous, though it lay in a northern district of
+Scotland; it was bleak and solitary, with vast bare fields of grass or
+corn; and below in the valley, a river that rushed sweeping over its
+rough bed, silent where it ran deep, but chattering busily in the
+shallows. Here was verdure to one's heart's content; the whole country
+being a singular mixture of bleakness on the heights, and woodland
+richness in the valleys; bitterly cold in the winter months, when the
+light deserted the uplands ridiculously early in the afternoon, leaving
+long mysterious hours that held the great silent stretches of field and
+hill-side in shadow; a circumstance, which had, perhaps, not been
+without its influence in the forming of Hadria's character. She, more
+than the others, seemed to have absorbed the spirit of the northern
+twilights. It was her custom to wander alone over the broad spaces of
+the hills, watching the sun set behind them, the homeward flight of the
+birds, the approach of darkness and the rising of the stars. Every
+instinct that was born in her with her Celtic blood--which lurked still
+in the family to the confounding of its fortunes--was fostered by the
+mystery and wildness of her surroundings.
+
+Dawn and sunset had peculiar attractions for her.
+
+Although the Preposterous Society had not separated until unusually late
+on the previous night, the President was up and abroad on this exquisite
+morning, summoned by some "message of range and of sweep----" to the
+flushing stretches of pasture and the windy hill-side.
+
+In spite of the view that Hadria had expounded in her capacity of
+lecturer, she had an inner sense that somehow, after all, the will _can_
+perform astonishing feats in Fate's despite. Her intellect, rather than
+her heart, had opposed the philosophy of Emerson. Her sentiment recoiled
+from admitting the possibility of such tragedy as her expressed belief
+implied. This morning, the wonder and the grandeur of the dawn supplied
+arguments to faith. If the best in human nature were always to be hunted
+down and extinguished, if the efforts to rise in the scale of being, to
+bring gifts instead of merely absorbing benefits, were only by a rare
+combination of chances to escape the doom of annihilation, where was one
+to turn to for hope, or for a motive for effort? How could one reconcile
+the marvellous beauty of the universe, the miracles of colour, form,
+and, above all, of music, with such a chaotic moral condition, and such
+unlovely laws in favour of dulness, cowardice, callousness, cruelty? One
+aspired to be an upholder and not a destroyer, but if it were a useless
+pain and a bootless venture----?
+
+Hadria tried to find some proof of the happier philosophy that would
+satisfy her intellect, but it refused to be comforted. Yet as she
+wandered in the rosy light over the awakening fields, her heart sang
+within her. The world was exquisite, life was a rapture!
+
+She could take existence in her hands and form and fashion it at her
+will, obviously, easily; her strength yearned for the task.
+
+Yet all the time, the importunate intellect kept insisting that feeling
+was deceptive, that health and youth and the freshness of the morning
+spoke in her, and not reason or experience. Feeling was left untouched
+nevertheless. It was impossible to stifle the voices that prophesied
+golden things. Life was all before her; she was full of vigour and
+longing and good will; the world stretched forth as a fair territory,
+with magical pathways leading up to dizzy mountain tops. With visions
+such as these, the members of the Preposterous Society had fired their
+imaginations, and gained impetus for their various efforts and their
+various ambitions.
+
+Hadria had been among the most hopeful of the party, and had pointed to
+the loftier visions, and the more impersonal aims. Circumstance must
+give way, compromise was wrong; we had but a short time in this world,
+and mere details and prejudices must not be allowed to interfere with
+one's right to live to the utmost of one's scope. But it was easier to
+state a law than to obey it; easier to inspire others with faith than to
+hold fast to it oneself.
+
+The time for taking matters in one's own hands had scarcely come. A girl
+was so helpless, so tied by custom. One could engage, so far, only in
+guerilla warfare with the enemy, who lurked everywhere in ambush, ready
+to harass the wayfarers with incessant petty attack. But life _must_
+have something more to offer than this--life with its myriad interests,
+dramas, mysteries, arts, poetries, delights!
+
+By the river, where it had worn for itself a narrow ravine, with steep
+rocky sides or "clints," as they were called, several short tunnels or
+passages had been cut in places where the rock projected as far as the
+bank of the river, which was followed in its windings by a narrow
+footway, leading to the farmstead of Craw Gill.
+
+In one part, a series of such tunnels, with intervals of open pathway,
+occurred in picturesque fashion, causing a singular effect of light and
+shade.
+
+As Hadria stood admiring the glow of the now fully-risen sun, upon the
+wall of rock that rose beyond the opening of the tunnel which she had
+just passed through, she heard footsteps advancing along the riverside
+path, and guessed that Algitha and Ernest had come to fetch her, or to
+join in any absurd project that she might have in view. Although Algitha
+was two-and-twenty, and Hadria only a year younger, they were still
+guilty at times of wild escapades, with the connivance of their
+brothers. Walks or rides at sunrise were ordinary occurrences in the
+family, and in summer, bathing in the river was a favourite amusement.
+
+"I thought I recognised your footsteps," said Hadria, as the two figures
+appeared at the mouth of the tunnel, the low rays of the sun lighting
+them up, for a moment, as they turned the sharp bend of the narrow path,
+before entering the shadow.
+
+A quantity of brown dead leaves were strewn upon the floor of the
+rock-passage, blown in by the wind from the pathway at each end, or
+perhaps through the opening in the middle of the tunnel that looked out
+upon the rushing river.
+
+A willow-tree had found footing in the crevice of the rock just outside,
+and its branches, thinly decked with pale yellow leaves, dipped into the
+water just in front of the opening. When the wind blew off the river it
+would sweep the leaves of the willow into the tunnel.
+
+"Let's make a bonfire," suggested Ernest.
+
+They collected the withered harvest of the winds upon the cavern floor,
+in a big brown heap, and then Ernest struck a match and set light to it.
+Algitha, in a large black cloak, stood over it with a hazel stick--like
+a wand--stirring and heaping on the fuel, as the mass began to smoulder
+and to send forth a thick white smoke that gradually filled the cavern,
+curling up into the rocky roof and swirling round and out by the
+square-cut mouth, to be caught there by the slight wind and illumined
+by the sun, which poured down upon the soft coils of the smoke, in so
+strange a fashion, as to call forth a cry of wonder from the onlookers.
+Standing in the interval of open pathway between the two rock-passages,
+and looking back at the fire lit cavern, with its black shadows and
+flickering flame-colours, Hadria was bewildered by what appeared to her
+a veritable magic vision, beautiful beyond anything that she had ever
+met in dream. She stood still to watch, with a real momentary doubt as
+to whether she were awake.
+
+The figures, stooping over the burning heap, moved occasionally across
+the darkness, looking like a witch and her familiar spirit, who were
+conjuring, by uncanny arts, a vision of life, on the strange, white,
+clean-cut patch of smoke that was defined by the sunlit entrance to the
+tunnel. The witch stirred, and her familiar added fuel, while behind
+them the smoke, rising and curdling, formed the mysterious background
+of light: opaque, and yet in a state of incessant movement, as of some
+white raging fire, thinner and more deadly than any ordinary earthly
+element, that seemed to sicken and flicker in the blast of a furnace,
+and then rushed upwards, and coiled and rolled across the tunnel's
+mouth. Presently, as a puff of wind swept away part of the smoke, a
+miraculous tinge of rosy colour appeared, changing, as one caught it,
+into gold, and presently to a milky blue, then liquid green, and a
+thousand intermediate tints corresponding to the altering density of
+the smoke--and then! Hadria caught her breath--the blue and the red
+and the gold melted and moved and formed, under the incantation, into
+a marvellous vision of distant lands, purple mountains, fair white
+cities, and wide kingdoms, so many, so great, that the imagination
+staggered at the vastness revealed, and offered, as it seemed, to him
+who could grasp and perceive it. Among those blue deeps and faint
+innumerable mountain-tops, caught through a soft mist that continually
+moved and lifted, thinned and thickened, with changing tints, all the
+secrets, all the hopes, all the powers and splendours, of life lay
+hidden; and the beauty of the vision was as the essence of poetry and
+of music--of all that is lovely in the world of art, and in the world of
+the emotions. The question that had been debated so hotly and so often,
+as to the relation of the good and the beautiful, art and ethics, seemed
+to be answered by this bewildering revelation of sunlit smoke, playing
+across the face of a purple-tinted rock, and a few feet of grass-edged
+pathway.
+
+"Come and see what visions you have conjured up, O witch!" cried Hadria.
+
+Algitha gave a startled exclamation, as the smoke thinned and revealed
+that bewildering glimpse of distant lands, half seen, as through the
+atmosphere of a dream. An exquisite city, with slender towers and
+temples, flashed, for a moment, through the mist curtain.
+
+"If life is like that," she said at length, drawing a long breath,
+"nothing on this earth ought to persuade us to forego it; no one has the
+right to hold one back from its possession."
+
+"No one," said Hadria; "but everyone will try!"
+
+"Let them try," returned Algitha defiantly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+Ernest and his two sisters walked homeward along the banks of the river,
+and thence up by a winding path to the top of the cliffs. It was mild
+weather, and they decided to pause in the little temple of classic
+design, which some ancient owner of the Drumgarran estate, touched with
+a desire for the exquisiteness of Greek outline, had built on a
+promontory of the rocks, among rounded masses of wild foliage; a spot
+that commanded one of the most beautiful reaches of the river. The scene
+had something of classic perfection and serenity.
+
+"I admit," said Ernest in response to some remark of one of his sisters,
+"I admit that I should not like to stay here during all the best years
+of my life, without prospect of widening my experience; only as a matter
+of fact, the world is somewhat different from anything that you imagine,
+and by no means would you find it all beer and skittles. Your smoke and
+sun-vision is not to be trusted."
+
+"But think of the pride and joy of being able to speak in that tone of
+experience!" exclaimed Hadria mockingly.
+
+"One has to pay for experience," said Ernest, shaking his head and
+ignoring her taunt.
+
+"I think one has to pay more heavily for _in_experience," she said.
+
+"Not if one never comes in contact with the world. Girls are protected
+from the realities of life so long as they remain at home, and that is
+worth something after all."
+
+Algitha snorted. "I don't know what you are pleased to call realities,
+my dear Ernest, but I can assure you there are plenty of unpleasant
+facts, in this protected life of ours."
+
+"Nobody can expect to escape unpleasant facts," said Ernest.
+
+"Then for heaven's sake, let us purchase with them something worth
+having!" Hadria cried.
+
+"Hear, hear!" assented Algitha.
+
+"Unpleasant facts being a foregone conclusion," Hadria added, "the point
+to aim at obviously is _interesting_ facts--and plenty of them."
+
+Ernest flicked a pebble off the parapet of the balustrade of the little
+temple, and watched it fall, with a silent splash, into the river.
+
+"I never met girls before, who wanted to come out of their cotton-wool,"
+he observed. "I thought girls loved cotton-wool. They always seem to."
+
+"Girls _seem_ an astonishing number of things that they are not,"
+said Hadria, "especially to men. A poor benighted man might as well try
+to get on to confidential terms with the Sphinx, as to learn the real
+thoughts and wishes of a girl."
+
+"You two are exceptional, you see," said Ernest.
+
+"Oh, _everybody's_ exceptional, if you only knew it!" exclaimed his
+sister. "Girls;" she went on to assert, "are stuffed with certain
+stereotyped sentiments from their infancy, and when that painful process
+is completed, intelligent philosophers come and smile upon the victims,
+and point to them as proofs of the intentions of Nature regarding our
+sex, admirable examples of the unvarying instincts of the feminine
+creature. In fact," Hadria added with a laugh, "it's as if the trainer
+of that troop of performing poodles that we saw, the other day, at
+Ballochcoil, were to assure the spectators that the amiable animals were
+inspired, from birth, by a heaven-implanted yearning to jump through
+hoops, and walk about on their hind legs----"
+
+"But there _are_ such things as natural instincts," said Ernest.
+
+"There _are_ such things as acquired tricks," returned Hadria.
+
+A loud shout, accompanied by the barking of several dogs, announced the
+approach of the two younger boys. Boys and dogs had been taking their
+morning bath in the river.
+
+"You have broken in upon a most interesting discourse," said Ernest.
+"Hadria was really coming out."
+
+This led to a general uproar.
+
+When peace was restored, the conversation went on in desultory fashion.
+Ernest and Hadria fell apart into a more serious talk. These two had
+always been "chums," from the time when they used to play at building
+houses of bricks on the nursery floor. There was deep and true affection
+between them.
+
+The day broke into splendour, and the warm rays, rounding the edge of
+the eastward rock, poured straight into the little temple. Below and
+around on the cliff-sides, the rich foliage of holly and dwarf oak, ivy,
+and rowan with its burning berries, was transformed into a mass of warm
+colour and shining surfaces.
+
+"What always bewilders me," Hadria said, bending over the balustrade
+among the ivy, "is the enormous gulf between what _might be_ and what
+_is_ in human life. Look at the world--life's most sumptuous stage--and
+look at life! The one, splendid, exquisite, varied, generous, rich
+beyond description; the other, poor, thin, dull, monotonous, niggard,
+distressful--is that necessary?"
+
+"But all lives are not like that," objected Fred.
+
+"I speak only from my own narrow experience," said Hadria.
+
+"Oh, she is thinking, as usual, of that unfortunate Mrs. Gordon!" cried
+Ernest.
+
+"Of her, and the rest of the average, typical sort of people that I
+know," Hadria admitted. "I wish to heaven I had a wider knowledge to
+speak from."
+
+"If one is to believe what one hears and reads," said Algitha, "life
+must be full of sorrow indeed."
+
+"But putting aside the big sorrows," said her sister, "the ordinary
+every day existence that would be called prosperous, seems to me to be
+dull and stupid to a tragic extent."
+
+"The Gordons of Drumgarran once more! I confess I can't see anything
+particularly tragic there," observed Fred, whose memory recalled troops
+of stalwart young persons in flannels, engaged for hours, in sending a
+ball from one side of a net to the other.
+
+"It is more than tragic; it is disgusting!" cried Hadria with a shiver.
+Algitha drew herself together. She turned to her eldest brother.
+
+"Look here, Ernest; you said just now that girls were shielded from the
+realities of life. Yet Mrs. Gordon was handed over by her protectors,
+when she was little more than a school-girl, without knowledge, without
+any sort of resource or power of facing destiny, to--well, to the
+hateful realities of the life that she has led now for over twenty
+years. There is nothing to win general sympathy in this case, for Mr.
+Gordon is good and kind; but oh, think of the existence that a
+'protected,' carefully brought-up girl may be launched into, before she
+knows what she is pledged to, or what her ideas of life may be! If
+_that_ is what you call protection, for heaven's sake let us remain
+defenceless."
+
+Fred and Ernest accused their elder sister of having been converted by
+Hadria. Algitha, honest and courageous in big things and in small, at
+once acknowledged the source of her ideas. Not so long ago, Algitha had
+differed from the daughters of the neighbouring houses, rather in force
+of character than in sentiment.
+
+She had followed the usual aims with unusual success, giving unalloyed
+satisfaction to her proud mother. Algitha had taken it as a matter of
+course that she would some day marry, and have a house of her own to
+reign in. A home, not a husband, was the important matter, and Algitha
+had trusted to her attractions to make a good marriage; that is, to
+obtain extensive regions for her activities. She craved a roomy stage
+for her drama, and obviously there was only one method of obtaining it,
+and even that method was but dubious. But Hadria had undermined this
+matter of fact, take-things-as-you-find-them view, and set her sister's
+pride on the track. That master-passion once aroused in the new
+direction, Algitha was ready to defend her dignity as a woman, and as a
+human being, to the death. Hadria felt as a magician might feel, who has
+conjured up spirits henceforth beyond his control; for obviously, her
+sister's whole life would be altered by this change of sentiment, and,
+alas, her mother's hopes must be disappointed. The laird of Clarenoc--a
+fine property, of which Algitha might have been mistress--had received
+polite discouragement, much to his surprise and that of the
+neighbourhood. Even Ernest, who was by no means worldly, questioned the
+wisdom of his sister's decision; for the laird of Clarenoc was a good
+fellow, and after all, let them talk as they liked, what was to become
+of a girl unless she married? This morning's conversation therefore
+touched closely on burning topics.
+
+"Mrs. Gordon's people meant it for the best, I suppose," Ernest
+observed, "when they married her to a good man with a fine property."
+
+"That is just the ghastly part of it!" cried Hadria; "from ferocious
+enemies a girl might defend herself, but what is she to do against the
+united efforts of devoted friends?"
+
+"I don't suppose Mrs. Gordon is aware that she is so ill-used!"
+
+"Another gruesome circumstance!" cried Hadria, with a half laugh; "for
+that only proves that her life has dulled her self-respect, and
+destroyed her pride."
+
+"But, my dear, every woman is in the same predicament, if predicament it
+be!"
+
+"What a consolation!" Hadria exclaimed, "_all_ the foxes have lost
+their tails!"
+
+"It may be illogical, but people generally are immensely comforted by
+that circumstance."
+
+The conversation waxed warmer and more personal. Fred took a
+conservative view of the question. He thought that there were instincts
+implanted by Nature, which inspired Mrs. Gordon with a yearning for
+exactly the sort of existence that fate had assigned to her. Algitha,
+who had been the recipient of that lady's tragic confidences, broke into
+a shout of laughter.
+
+"Well, Harold Wilkins says----"
+
+This name was also greeted with a yell of derision.
+
+"I don't see why you girls always scoff so at Harold Wilkins," said
+Fred, slightly aggrieved, "he is generally thought a lot of by girls.
+All Mrs. Gordon's sisters adore him."
+
+"He needs no further worshippers," said Hadria.
+
+Fred was asked to repeat the words of Harold Wilkins, but to soften them
+down if too severe.
+
+"He laughs at your pet ideas," said Fred ruthlessly.
+
+"Break it gently, Fred, gently."
+
+"He thinks that a true woman esteems it her highest privilege to--well,
+to be like Mrs. Gordon."
+
+"Wise and learned youth!" cried Hadria, resting her chin on her hand,
+and peering up into the blue sky, above the temple.
+
+"_Fool!_" exclaimed Algitha.
+
+"He says," continued Fred, determined not to spare those who were so
+overbearing in their scorn, "he says that girls who have ideas like
+yours will never get any fellow to marry them."
+
+Laughter loud and long greeted this announcement.
+
+"Laughter," observed Fred, when he could make himself heard, "is among
+the simplest forms of argument. Does this merry outburst imply that you
+don't care a button whether you are able to get some one to marry you or
+not?"
+
+"It does," said Algitha.
+
+"Well, so I said to Wilkins, as a matter of fact, with my nose in the air,
+on your behalf, and Wilkins replied, 'Oh, it's all very well while girls
+are young and good-looking to be so high and mighty, but some day, when
+they are left out in the cold, and all their friends married, they may
+sing a different tune.' Feeling there was something in this remark,"
+Fred continued, "I raised my nose two inches higher, and adopted the
+argument that _I_ also resort to _in extremis_. I laughed.
+'Well, my dear fellow,' Wilkins observed calmly, 'I mean no offence, but
+what on earth is a girl to do with herself if she _doesn't_ marry?'"
+
+"What did you reply?" asked Ernest with curiosity.
+
+"Oh, I said that was an unimportant detail, and changed the subject."
+
+Algitha was still scornful, but Hadria looked meditative.
+
+"Harold Wilkins has a practical mind," she observed. "After all, he is
+right, when you come to consider it."
+
+"_Hadria!_" remonstrated her sister, in dismay.
+
+"We may as well be candid," said Hadria. "There _is_ uncommonly little
+that a girl can do (or rather that people will let her do) unless she
+marries, and that is why she so often does marry as a mere matter of
+business. But I wish Harold Wilkins would remember that fact, instead of
+insisting that it is our inherent and particular nature that urges us,
+one and all, to the career of Mrs. Gordon."
+
+Algitha was obviously growing more and more ruffled. Fred tried in vain
+to soothe her feelings. He joked, but she refused to see the point. She
+would not admit that Harold Wilkins had facts on his side.
+
+"If one simply made up one's mind to walk through all the hampering
+circumstances, who or what could stop one?" she asked.
+
+"Algitha has evidently got some desperate plan in her head for making
+mincemeat of circumstances," cried Fred, little guessing that he had
+stated the exact truth.
+
+"Do you remember that Mrs. Gordon herself waged a losing battle in early
+days, incredible as it may appear?" asked Hadria.
+
+Algitha nodded slowly, her eyes fixed on the ground.
+
+"She did not originally set out with the idea of being a sort of amiable
+cow. She once aspired to be quite human; she really did, poor thing!"
+
+"Then why didn't she do it?" asked Algitha contemptuously.
+
+"Instead of _doing_ a thing, she had to be perpetually struggling for
+the chance to do it, which she never achieved, and so she was submerged.
+That seems to be the fatality in a woman's life."
+
+"Well, there is one thing I am very sure of," announced Algitha, leaning
+majestically against a column of the temple, and looking like a
+beautiful Greek maiden, in her simple gown, "I do not intend to be a
+cow. I do not mean to fight a losing battle. I will not wait at home
+meekly, till some fool holds out his sceptre to me."
+
+All eyes turned to her, in astonishment.
+
+"But what are you going to do?" asked a chorus of voices. Hadria's was
+not among them, for she knew what was coming. The debate of last night,
+and this morning's discussion, had evidently brought to a climax a
+project that Algitha had long had in her mind, but had hesitated to
+carry out, on account of the distress that it would cause to her mother.
+Algitha's eyes glittered, and her colour rose.
+
+"I am not going to be hawked about the county till I am disposed of. It
+does not console me in the least, that _all_ the foxes are without
+tails," she went on, taking short cuts to her meaning, in her
+excitement. "I am going to London with Mrs. Trevelyan, to help her in
+her work."
+
+"By _Jove_!" exclaimed Fred. Ernest whistled. Austin stared, with
+open mouth.
+
+Having recovered from the first shock of surprise, the family plied
+their sister with questions. She said that she had long been thinking of
+accepting the post offered her by Mrs. Trevelyan last year, and now she
+was resolved. The work was really wise, useful work among the poor,
+which Algitha felt she could do well. At home, there was nothing that
+she did that the housekeeper could not do better. She felt herself
+fretting and growing irritable, for mere want of some active employment.
+This was utterly absurd, in an overworked world. Hadria had her music
+and her study, at any rate, but Algitha had nothing that seemed worth
+doing; she did not care to paint indifferently on china; she was a mere
+encumbrance--a destroyer, as Hadria put it--while there was so much, so
+very much, that waited to be done. The younger sister made no comment.
+
+"Next time I meet Harold Wilkins," said Fred, drawing a long breath, "I
+will tell him that if a girl does not marry, she can devote herself to
+the poor."
+
+"Or that she can remain to be the family consolation, eh, Hadria? By
+Jove, what a row there will be!"
+
+The notion of Hadria in the capacity of the family consolation, created
+a shout of laughter. It had always been her function to upset foregone
+conclusions, overturn orthodox views, and generally disturb the
+conformity of the family attitude. Now the sedate and established
+qualities would be expected of her. Hadria must be the stay and hope
+of the house!
+
+Fred continued to chuckle, at intervals, over the idea.
+
+"It _does_ seem to indicate rather a broken-down family!" said Ernest.
+
+"I wish one of you boys would undertake the position instead of laughing
+at _me_," exclaimed Hadria in mock resentment. "I wish _you_ would go to
+eternal tennis-parties, and pay calls, and bills, and write notes, and
+do little useless necessary things, more or less all day. I wish _you_
+had before you the choice between that existence and the career of Mrs.
+Gordon, with the sole chance of escape from either fate, in ruthlessly
+trampling upon the bleeding hearts of two beloved parents!"
+
+"Thank you kindly," said Fred, "but we infinitely prefer to laugh at you."
+
+"Man's eternal reply to woman, admirably paraphrased!" commented Hadria.
+
+Everyone was anxious to know when Algitha intended to go to London.
+Nobody doubted for a moment that she would hold to her purpose; as Fred
+said, she was so "beastly obstinate."
+
+Algitha had not fixed any time. It would depend on her mother. She
+wished to make things as little painful as possible. That it was her
+duty to spare her pain altogether by remaining at home, Algitha refused
+to admit. She and Hadria had thought out the question from all sides.
+The work she was going to do was useful, but she did not justify herself
+on that ground. She claimed the right to her life and her liberty, apart
+from what she intended to do with either. She owed it to her own
+conscience alone to make good use of her liberty. "I don't want to pose
+as a philanthropist," she added, "though I honestly do desire to be of
+service. I want to spread my wings. And why should I not? Nobody turns
+pale when Ernest wants to spread _his_. How do I know what life is like,
+or how best to use it, if I remain satisfied with my present ignorance?
+How can I even appreciate what I possess, if I have nothing to compare
+it with? Of course, the truly nice and womanly thing to do, is to remain
+at home, waiting to be married. I have elected to be _un_womanly."
+
+"I wonder how all this will turn out," said Ernest, "whether you won't
+regret it some day when it is too late."
+
+"Don't people _always_ regret what they do--some day?" asked Hadria.
+
+"Perhaps so, especially if they do it sooner than other people."
+
+"When are you going to make the announcement at head quarters?" asked
+Fred.
+
+There was a pause. The colour had left Algitha's cheeks. She answered at
+length with an effort--
+
+"I shall speak to mother to-day."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+Mrs. Fullerton had gone to the study, to consult with her husband on
+some matter of domestic importance. It was a long, low-pitched room,
+situated in the part of the house that stood at right angles to the
+central block, with long, narrow windows looking on to a rough orchard.
+A few old portraits, very yellow and somewhat grotesque, hung on the
+walls; a wood fire burnt on the hob-grate, and beside it stood a vast
+arm chair, considerably worn, with depressions shewing where its owner
+had been leaning his head, day after day, when he smoked his pipe, or
+took his after-dinner nap. The bookshelves were stocked with scientific
+works, and some volumes on philosophy of a materialistic character. With
+the exception of Robert Burns, not one poet was represented.
+
+The owner of the house sat before a big writing-table, which was covered
+with papers. His face was that of a hard thinker; the head was fine in
+form, the forehead broad and high; the features regular, almost severe.
+The severity was softened by a genial expression. Mrs. Fullerton, though
+also obviously above the average of humanity, shewed signs of incomplete
+development. The shape of the head and brow promised many faculties that
+the expression of the face did not encourage one to expect. She was
+finely built; and carried herself with dignity. When her daughters
+accompanied her on a round of calls in the neighbourhood, they expressed
+a certain quality in her appearance, in rough and ready terms: "Other
+married women always look such fools beside mother!"
+
+And they did.
+
+Mrs. Fullerton wore her fine black hair brushed neatly over her
+forehead; her eyes were large, and keen in expression. The mouth shewed
+determination. It was easy to see that this lady had unbounded belief in
+her husband's wisdom, except in social matters, for which he cared
+nothing. On that point she had to keep her ambitions to herself. In
+questions of philosophy, she had imbibed his tenets unmodified, and
+though she went regularly every Sunday to the close little Scottish
+church at Ballochcoil, she had no more respect than her husband had,
+for the doctrines that were preached there.
+
+"No doubt it is all superstition and nonsense," she used to say, "but in
+this country, one can't afford to fly in the face of prejudice. It would
+seriously tell against the girls."
+
+"Well, have your own way," Mr. Fullerton would reply, "but I can't see
+the use of always bothering about what people will think. What more do
+the girls want than a good home and plenty of lawn-tennis? They'll get
+husbands fast enough, without your asphyxiating yourself every Sunday
+in their interests."
+
+In her youth, Mrs. Fullerton had shewn signs of qualities which had
+since been submerged. Her husband had influenced her development
+profoundly, to the apparent stifling of every native tendency. A few
+volumes of poetry, and other works of imagination, bore testimony to
+the lost sides of her nature.
+
+Mr. Fullerton thought imagination "all nonsense," and his wife had no
+doubt he was right, though there was something to be said for one or two
+of the poets. The buried impulses had broken out, like a half-smothered
+flame, in her children, especially in her younger daughter. Singularly
+enough, the mother regarded these qualities, partly inherited from
+herself, as erratic and annoying. The memory of her own youth taught her
+no sympathy.
+
+It was a benumbed sort of life that she led, in her picturesque old
+home, whose charm she perceived but dimly with the remnants of her lost
+aptitudes.
+
+"Picturesque!" Mr. Fullerton used to cry with a snort; "why not say
+'unhealthy' and be done with it?"
+
+From these native elements of character, modified in so singular a
+fashion in the mother's life, the children of this pair had drawn
+certain of their peculiarities. The inborn strength and authenticity
+of the parents had transmuted itself, in the younger generation, to a
+spirit of free enquiry, and an audacity of thought which boded ill for
+Mrs. Fullerton's ambitions. The talent in her daughters, from which she
+had hoped so much, seemed likely to prove a most dangerous obstacle to
+their success. Why was it that clever people were never sensible?
+
+The gong sounded for luncheon. Austin put his head in at the door of the
+study, to ask if his father would shew him a drop of ditch-water through
+the microscope, in the afternoon.
+
+"If you will provide the ditch-water, I will provide the microscope,"
+promised Mr. Fullerton genially.
+
+Luncheon, usually a merry meal at Dunaghee, passed off silently. There
+was a sense of oppression in the air. Algitha and her sister made
+spasmodic remarks, and there were long pauses. The conversation was
+chiefly sustained by the parents and the ever-talkative Fred.
+
+The latter had some anecdotes to tell of the ravages made by wasps.
+
+"If Buchanan would only adopt my plan of destroying them," said Mr.
+Fullerton, "we should soon get rid of the pest."
+
+"It's some chemical, isn't it?" asked Mrs. Fullerton.
+
+"Oh, no; that's no use at all! Wasps positively enjoy chemicals. What
+you do is this----." And then followed a long and minute explanation of
+his plan, which had the merit of extreme originality.
+
+Mr. Fullerton had his own particular way of doing everything, a piece
+of presumption which was naturally resented, with proper spirit, by his
+neighbours. He found it an expensive luxury. In the management of the
+estate, he had outraged the feelings of every landlord and land-agent
+within a radius of many miles, but he gained the affection of his
+tenants, and this he seemed to value more than the approval of his
+fellow-proprietors. In theory, he stuck out for his privileges; in
+practice, he was the friend and brother of the poorest on the estate. In
+his mode of farming he was as eccentric as in his method of management.
+He had taken Croachmore into his own hands, and this devoted farm had
+become the subject of a series of drastic scientific experiments, to the
+great grief and indignation of his bailiff.
+
+Mrs. Fullerton believed implicitly in the value of these experiments,
+and so long as her husband tried science only on the farm she had no
+misgivings; but, alas, he had lately taken shares in some company, that
+was to revolutionize agriculture through an ingenious contrivance for
+collecting nitrogen from the atmosphere. Mr. Fullerton was confident
+that the new method was to be a gigantic success. But on this point,
+his wife uneasily shook her head. She had even tried to persuade Mr.
+Fullerton to rid himself of his liability. It was so great, she argued,
+and why should one be made anxious? But her husband assured her that she
+didn't understand anything about it; women ought not to meddle in
+business matters; it was a stupendous discovery, sure to make the
+fortunes of the original shareholders.
+
+"When once the prejudice against a new thing has been got over," said
+the man of science, "you will see----the thing will go like wild-fire."
+
+Many years afterwards, these words were remembered by Mrs. Fullerton,
+and she bitterly regretted that she had not urged the matter more
+strenuously.
+
+"Well, Algitha," said her father, wondering at her silence, "how are the
+roses getting on? And I hope you have not forgotten the sweet-brier that
+you promised to grow for me."
+
+"Oh, no, father, the sweet-brier has been ordered," returned Algitha,
+without her usual brightness of manner.
+
+"Have you a headache?" enquired Mrs. Fullerton. "I hope you have not all
+been sitting up talking in Hadria's room, as you are too fond of doing.
+You have the whole day in which to express your ideas, and I think you
+might let the remainder wait over till morning."
+
+"We _were_ rather late last night," Algitha confessed.
+
+"Pressure of ideas overpowering," added Fred.
+
+"When _I_ was young, ideas would never have been tolerated in young
+people for a moment," said Mrs. Fullerton, "it would have been considered
+a mark of ill-breeding. You may think yourselves lucky to be born at this
+end of the century, instead of the other."
+
+"Indeed we do!" exclaimed Ernest. "It's getting jolly interesting!"
+
+"In some respects, no doubt we have advanced," observed his mother, "but
+I confess I don't understand all your modern notions. Everybody seems to
+be getting discontented. The poor want to be rich, and the rich want to
+be millionaires; men want to do their master's work, and women want to
+do men's; everything is topsy-turvy!"
+
+"The question is: What constitutes being right side up?" said Ernest.
+"One can't exactly say what is topsy-turvy till one knows _that_."
+
+"When I was young we thought we _did_ know," said Mrs. Fullerton,
+"but no doubt we are old-fashioned."
+
+When luncheon was over, Mr. Fullerton went to the garden with his
+family, according to a time-honoured custom. His love of flowers
+sometimes made Hadria wonder whether her father also had been born with
+certain instincts, which the accidents of life had stifled or failed to
+develop. Terrible was the tyranny of circumstance! What had Emerson been
+dreaming of?
+
+Mr. Fullerton, with a rose-bud in his button-hole, went off with the
+boys for a farming walk. Mrs. Fullerton returned to the house, and the
+sisters were left pacing together in the sheltered old garden, between
+two rows of gorgeous autumn flowers.
+
+Hadria felt sick with dread of the coming interview.
+
+Algitha was buoyed up, for the moment, by a strong conviction that she
+was in the right.
+
+"It can't be fair even for parents to order one's whole life according
+to their pleasure," she said. "Other girls submit, I know----"
+
+"And so the world is full of abortive, ambiguous beings, fit for
+nothing. The average woman always seem to me to be _muffled_----or
+morbid."
+
+"That's what _I_ should become if I pottered about here much longer,"
+said Algitha--"morbid; and if there is one thing on the face of the
+earth that I loathe, it is morbidness."
+
+Both sisters were instinctively trying to buttress up Algitha's courage,
+by strengthening her position with additional arguments.
+
+"Is it fair," Hadria asked, "to summon children into the world, and then
+run up bills against them for future payment? Why should one not see the
+bearings of the matter?"
+
+"In theory one can see them clearly enough; but it is poor comfort when
+it comes to practice."
+
+"Oh, seeing the bearings of things is _always_ poor comfort!" exclaimed
+the younger sister, with sudden vehemence. "Upon my word, I think it is
+better, after all, to absorb indiscriminately whatever idiotcy may
+happen to be around one, and go with the crowd."
+
+"Nonsense!" cried Algitha, who had no sympathy with these passionate
+discouragements that alternated, in Hadria, with equally passionate
+exaltations.
+
+"When you have gone, I will ask Mrs. Gordon to teach me the spirit of
+acquiescence, and one of those distracting games--besique or halma, or
+some of the other infernal pastimes that heaven decrees for recalcitrant
+spirits in need of crushing discipline."
+
+"I think I see you!" Algitha exclaimed with a dispirited laugh.
+
+"It will be a trial," Hadria admitted; "but it is said that suffering
+strengthens the character. You may look forward before long, to claiming
+as sister a creature of iron purpose."
+
+"I wonder, I wonder," cried Algitha, bending her fine head; "we owe
+everything to her."
+
+"I know we do. It's of no use disguising the unpleasant side of the
+matter. A mother disappointed in her children must be a desperately
+unhappy woman. She has nothing left; for has she not resigned everything
+for them? But is sacrifice for ever to follow on sacrifice? Is life to
+go rolling after life, like the cheeses that the idiot in the fable sent
+running downhill, the one to fetch the other back?"
+
+"Yes, for ever," said Algitha, "until a few dare to break through the
+tradition, and then everyone will wonder at its folly. If only I could
+talk the matter over, in a friendly spirit, with mother, but she won't
+let me. Ah! if it were not that one is born with feelings and energies
+and ambitions of one's own, parents might treat one as a showman treats
+his marionettes, and we should all be charmed to lie prone on our backs,
+or to dance as may be convenient to our creators. But, as it is, the
+life of a marionette--however affectionate the wire-pullers--does become
+monotonous after a time."
+
+"As to that," said the younger sister, with a little raising of the
+brows, as if half shrinking from what she meant to say, "I think most
+parents regard their children with such favourable eyes, not so much
+because they are _they_ as because they are _theirs_."
+
+The sisters paced the length of the garden without speaking. Then Hadria
+came to a standstill at the sun-dial, at the crossing of the paths, and
+began absently to trace the figures of the hours, with the stalk of a
+rose.
+
+"After all," she said, "parents are presumably not actuated by
+humanitarian motives in bringing one into this wild world. They don't
+even profess to have felt an unselfish desire to see one enjoying
+oneself at their expense (though, as a matter of fact, what enjoyment
+one has generally _is_ at their expense). People are always
+enthusiastically congratulated on the arrival of a new child, though it
+be the fourteenth, and the income two hundred a year! This seems to
+point to a pronounced taste for new children, regardless of the
+consequences!"
+
+"Oh, of course," said Algitha, "it's one of the canons! Women, above
+all, are expected to jubilate at all costs. And I think most of them do,
+more or less sincerely."
+
+"Very well then," cried Hadria, "it is universally admitted that
+children are summoned into the world to gratify parental instincts. Yet
+the parents throw all the onus of existence, after all, upon the children,
+and make _them_ pay for it, and apologise for it, and justify it by
+a thousand sacrifices and an ever-flowing gratitude."
+
+"I am quite ready to give gratitude and sacrifice too," said Algitha,
+"but I don't feel that I ought to sacrifice _everything_ to an idea
+that seems to me wrong. Surely a human being has a right to his own life.
+If he has not that, what, in heaven's name, _has_ he?"
+
+"Anything but that!" cried Hadria.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+While the momentous interview was going on, Hadria walked restlessly up
+and down the garden, feverishly waiting. The borders were brilliant with
+vast sunflowers, white lilies, and blazing "red-hot pokers" tangled
+together in splendid profusion, a very type of richness and glory of
+life. Such was the sort of existence that Hadria claimed from Fate. Her
+eyes turned to the bare, forlorn hills that even the August sunshine
+could not conjure into sumptuousness, and there she saw the threatened
+reality.
+
+When at last Algitha's fine figure appeared at the further end of the
+path, Hadria hastened forward and took her sister's arm.
+
+"It was worse than I had feared," Algitha said, with a quiver in her
+voice. "I _know_ I am right, and yet it seems almost more than I am
+equal for. When I told mother, she turned deadly white, and I thought,
+for a moment, that she was going to faint. Let's sit down on this
+seat."
+
+"Oh, it was horrible, Hadria! Mother must have been cherishing hopes
+about us, in a way that I don't think she quite knew herself. After that
+first moment of wretchedness, she flew into a passion of rage--that
+dreadful, tearing anger that people only feel when something of
+themselves is being wrenched away from them. She said that her children
+were all bad and unnatural; that she had spent her whole life in their
+interests; that if it had not been for her, we should all of us have
+grown up without education or accomplishments, or looks, or anything
+else; that she watched over us incessantly when we were little children,
+denying herself, spending her youth in devotion to us, when she might
+have gone into the world, and had some brightness and pleasure. If we
+imagined that she had never felt the dulness of her life, and never
+longed to go about and see people and things, we were much mistaken. But
+she had renounced everything she cared for, from her girlhood--she was
+scarcely older than I when her sacrifices began--and now her children
+gave no consideration to her; they were ready to scatter themselves
+hither and thither without a thought of her, or her wishes. They even
+talked scoffingly of the kind of life that she had led for _them_--for
+_them_, she repeated bitterly."
+
+Hadria's face had clouded.
+
+"Truly parents must have a bad time of it!" she exclaimed, "but does it
+really console them that their children should have a bad time of it
+too?"
+
+Algitha was trembling and very pale.
+
+"Mother says I shall ruin my life by this fad. What real good am I going
+to do? She says it is absurd the way we talk of things we know nothing
+about."
+
+"But she won't let us know about things; one must talk about
+_some_thing!" cried Hadria with a dispirited laugh.
+
+"She says she has experience of life, and we are ignorant of it. I
+reminded her that our ignorance was not exactly our fault."
+
+"Ah! precisely. Parents throw their children's ignorance in their teeth,
+having taken precious good care to prevent their knowing anything. I can't
+understand parents; they must have been young themselves once. Yet they
+seem to have forgotten all about it. They keep us hoodwinked and infantile,
+and then launch us headlong into life, with all its problems to meet, and
+all momentous decisions made for us, past hope of undoing." Hadria rose
+restlessly in her excitement. "Surely no creature was ever dealt with so
+insanely as the well-brought-up girl! Surely no well-wisher so sincere as
+the average parent ever ill-treated his charge so preposterously."
+
+Again there was a long silence, filled with painful thought. "One begins
+to understand a little, why women do things that one despises, and why
+the proudest of them so often submit to absolute indignity. You remember
+when Mrs. Arbuthnot and----"
+
+"Ah, don't!" cried Algitha, flushing. "_Nothing_ ought to induce a
+woman to endure that."
+
+"H'm----I suspect the world that we know nothing about, Algitha, has
+ways and means of applying the pressure such as you and I scarcely dream
+of." Hadria spoke with half-closed eyes that seemed to see deep and far.
+"I have read and heard things that have almost taken my breath away! I
+feel as if I could _kill_ every man who acquiesces in the present
+order of things. It is an insult to every woman alive!"
+
+In Hadria's room that night, Algitha finally decided to delay her going
+for another six months, hoping by that time that her mother would have
+grown used to the idea, and less opposed to it. Mr. Fullerton dismissed
+it, as obviously absurd. But this high-handed treatment roused all the
+determination that Algitha had inherited from her father. The six months
+had to be extended, in order to procure funds. Algitha had a small
+income of her own, left her by her godmother, Miss Fortescue. She put
+aside this, for her purpose. Further delay, through Mrs. Trevelyan,
+brought the season round again to autumn, before Algitha was able to
+make her final preparations for departure.
+
+"Do try and reconcile them to the idea," she said to her sister, as they
+stood on the platform of Ballochcoil station, very white and
+wretched-looking.
+
+"It breaks my heart to see father look so fixed and angry, and mother so
+miserable. I am not going away for ever. Dear me, a day's journey will
+bring me back, at any time."
+
+"I'll do my best," said Hadria, "here's your train; what a clumsy
+instrument of fate it does look!"
+
+There was not much time for farewells. In a few minutes the train was
+steaming out of the station. A solitary figure stood on the platform,
+watching the monster curving and diminishing along the line, with its
+white smoke soaring merrily into the air, in great rolling masses, that
+melted, as if by some incantation, from thick, snow-like whiteness to
+rapid annihilation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+As Hadria drove over the winding upland road back to her home, her
+thoughts followed her sister into her new existence, and then turned
+wistfully backwards to the days that had been marked off into the past
+by Algitha's departure. How bright and eager and hopeful they had all
+been, how full of enthusiasm and generous ambitions! Even as they talked
+of battle, they stretched forth their hands for the crown of victory.
+
+At the last meeting of the Preposterous Society, Ernest had repeated a
+poem of his favourite Emerson, called _Days_, and the poem, which
+was familiar to Hadria, sounded in her memory, as the pony trotted merrily
+along the well-known homeward way.
+
+          "Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days,
+           Muffled and dumb, like barefoot Dervishes,
+           And marching single in an endless file,
+           Bring diadems and faggots in their hands.
+           To each they offer gifts after his will,
+           Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all.
+           I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp,
+           Forgot my morning wishes, hastily
+           Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day
+           Turned and departed silent. I, too late,
+           Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn."
+
+In spite of Hadria's memorable lecture of a year ago, it was still the
+orthodox creed of the Society, that Circumstance is the handmaid of the
+Will; that one can demand of one's days "bread, kingdoms, stars, or
+sky," and that the Days will obediently produce the objects desired. If
+one has but the spirit that can soar high enough to really be resolved
+upon stars, or the ambition sufficiently vaulting to be determined on
+kingdoms, then--so ran the dogma--stars and kingdoms would be
+forthcoming, though obstacles were never so determined. No member except
+Hadria had ever dreamt of insinuating that one might have a very
+pronounced taste for stars and kingdoms--nay, a taste so dominant that
+life would be worthless unless they were achieved--yet might be forced,
+by the might of events, to forego them. Hadria's own heresy had been of
+the head rather than of the heart. But to-day, feeling began to share
+the scepticism of the intellect.
+
+What if one's stars and kingdoms lay on the further side of a crime or a
+cruelty?
+
+What then was left but to gather up one's herbs and apples, and bear, as
+best one might, the scorn of the unjust Days?
+
+Hadria cast about in her mind for a method of utilizing to the best
+advantage possible, the means at her disposal: to force circumstance to
+yield a harvest to her will. To be the family consolation meant no light
+task, for Mrs. Fullerton was exacting by nature: she had given much, and
+she expected much in return. Her logic was somewhat faulty, but that
+could not be gracefully pointed out to her by her daughter. Having
+allowed her own abilities to decay, Mrs. Fullerton had developed an
+extraordinary power of interfering with the employment of the abilities
+of others. Hadria had rather underrated than exaggerated this
+difficulty. Her mother would keep her for hours, discussing a trivial
+point of domestic business, giving elaborate directions about it, only
+to do it herself in the end. She spent her whole life in trifles of this
+kind, or over social matters. Everything was done cumbrously, with an
+incredible amount of toil and consideration, and without any noticeable
+results. Hadria, fighting against a multitude of harassing little
+difficulties, struggled to turn the long winter months to some use. But
+Mrs. Fullerton broke the good serviceable time into jagged fragments.
+
+"I really can't see," said the mother, when the daughter proposed to set
+apart certain hours for household duties, and to have other portions of
+the day to herself, "I really can't see why a girl's little occupations
+should be treated with so much consideration. However, I have no wish
+for grudging assistance."
+
+Hadria's temper was far indeed from perfect, and painful scenes often
+occurred. But as a rule, she would afterwards be seized with a fit of
+remorse, knowing that her mother was suffering bitterly from her keen
+disappointment about Algitha. The failure of a life-long hope must try
+the endurance of the bravest. Mrs. Fullerton, seeing that Hadria was
+more patient, quickly took advantage of the favourable moment, with a
+rapid instinct that had often done her good service in the management
+of a niggard destiny. The valuable mood must not be allowed to die
+fruitless. The elder girl's defection thus became, to the mother, a sort
+of investment, bearing interest of docility in the younger. Because the
+heartless Algitha had left home, it seemed to Mrs. Fullerton that the
+very least that Hadria could do, was to carry out her mother's lightest
+wish.
+
+And so the weeks went by, in dreary, troublous fashion, cut into a
+hundred little barren segments. The mind had no space, or stretch, or
+solitude. It was incessantly harassed, and its impetus was perpetually
+checked. But Hadria hoped on. This could not last for ever. Some day,
+doubtless, if she sank not in spirit, the stars and the kingdoms would
+come.
+
+Meanwhile, the position of affairs was decidedly ridiculous. She was
+here as the family consolation, and nobody seemed to be consoled! Her
+efforts had been sincere and even enthusiastic, but the boys only
+laughed at her, in this role, and nobody was apparently in the least
+gratified (except those imps of boys!).
+
+For a long time, Mrs. Fullerton seemed to be oblivious of her daughter's
+efforts, but one day, when they had been talking about Algitha, the
+mother said: "Your father and I now look to you, Hadria. I do think that
+you are beginning to feel a little what your duty is. If _you_ also
+were to turn deserter in our old age, I think it would kill us."
+
+Hadria felt a thrill of horror. The network of Fate seemed to be fast
+closing round her. The temporary was to become fixed. She must act all
+her days according to the conviction of others, or her parents would die
+of grief!
+
+When she went to the hills that afternoon, she felt as if she must walk
+on and on into the dreamy distance, away from all these toils and
+claims, away into the unknown world and never return. But, alas! the
+night descended and return she must. These wild impulses could never be
+followed.
+
+The day had been peculiarly harassing and cut up; some neighbours had
+been to afternoon tea and tennis, and the sight of their faces and the
+sound of their talk had caused, in Hadria, an unutterable depression.
+The light, conventional phrases rang in her ears still, the expression
+of the faces haunted her, and into her heart crept a chill that benumbed
+every wish and hope and faith that she had ever cherished.
+
+She sat up late into the night. Since freedom and solitude could not be
+had by day, the nights were often her sole opportunity. At such times
+she would work out her musical ideas, which in the dead silence of the
+house were brought forth plentifully. These, from her point of view,
+were the fruitful hours of the twenty-four. Thoughts would throng the
+darkness like swarms of living things.
+
+Hadria's mood found expression to-night in a singular and most
+melancholy composition. She called it _Futility_.
+
+It was unlike anything that she had ever done before, and she felt that
+it shewed an access of musical power.
+
+She dreamt an absurd dream: That she was herself one of those girls with
+the high pattering accents, playing tennis without ceasing and with
+apparent cheerfulness; talking just as they had talked, and about just
+the same things; and all the time, a vast circle of shadowy forms stood
+watching, beckoning, and exhorting and warning, and turning away, at
+last, in sorrowful contempt, because she preferred to spend her youth
+eternally in futilities. And then they all slowly drifted by with sad
+eyes fixed on her, and she was still left playing, playing. And it
+seemed as if whole weeks passed in that way, and she grew mortally
+tired, but some power prevented her from resting. The evil spell held
+her enthralled. Always cheerful, always polite and agreeable, she
+continued her task, finding herself growing accustomed to it at last,
+and duly resigned to the necessity, wearisome though it was. Then all
+hope that the game would ever cease went away, and she played on,
+mechanically, but always with that same polite cheerfulness, as of
+afternoon calls. She would not for the world admit that she was tired.
+But she was so tired that existence became a torture to her, and her
+heart seemed about to break with the intolerable strain--when she woke
+up with a start, and found herself lying in a constrained attitude,
+half-choked by the bed-clothes.
+
+She did not see the comic side of the dream till next morning, when she
+told it at breakfast for the benefit of the family.
+
+As Hadria was an ardent tennis-player, it struck her brethren as a
+particularly inappropriate form of nightmare.
+
+Hadria, at this time, went frequently with her father on his farming
+walks, as he liked to have one or more of the family with him. She
+enjoyed these walks, for Mr. Fullerton would talk about philosophy and
+science, often of the most abstruse and entrancing kind. His children
+were devoted to him. During these expeditions, they always vied with one
+another to ferret out the most absurd story to tell him, he being held
+as conqueror who made their father laugh most heartily. Sometimes they
+all went in a body, armed with wild stories; and occasionally, across
+the open fields, a row of eccentric-looking figures might be seen,
+struggling in the grip of hilarious paroxysms; Mr. Fullerton doubled up
+in the middle of a turnip-field, perhaps, with his family in contortions
+round him. The air of the hills seemed to run to their heads, like wine.
+Roulades of laughter, hearty guffaws, might have been heard for
+surprising distances, much to the astonishment of the sober labourers
+bending over their toil.
+
+Ernest had to go back to college; Fred and Austin to school. The house
+seemed very quiet and sad after the boys left, and Hadria missed her
+sister more and more, as time went on.
+
+Algitha wrote most happily.
+
+"With all its drawbacks, this existence of hard work (yet not too hard)
+suits me exactly. It uses up my energies; yet, in spite of the really
+busy life I lead, I literally have more leisure than I used to have at
+home, where all through the day, there was some little detail to be
+attended to, some call to make, some convention to offer incense to,
+some prejudice to respect. Here, once my day's work is over, it _is_
+over, and I have good solid hours of leisure. I feel that I have earned
+those hours when they come; also that I have earned a right to my keep,
+as Wilfrid Burton, the socialist, puts it somewhat crudely. When I go to
+bed at night, I can say: 'Because of me, this day, heavy hearts have
+been made a little lighter.' I hear all sorts of opinions, and see all
+sorts of people. I never was so happy in my life."
+
+It was Hadria's habit still to take solitary rambles over the country.
+A passionate lover of Nature, she found endless pleasure in its
+ever-changing aspects. Yet of late, a new feeling had begun to mutter
+angrily within her: a resentment against these familiar sights and
+sounds, because they were the boundaries of her horizon. She hated the
+line of the round breezy hills where the row of fir-trees stood against
+the sky, because that was the edge of her world, and she wanted to see
+what was beyond. She must and would see what was beyond, some day. Her
+hope was always vague; for if she dared to wonder how the curtain of
+life was to be lifted, she had to face the fact that there was no
+reasonable prospect of such a lifting. Still, the utter horror of living
+on always, in this fashion, seemed to prove it impossible.
+
+On one dim afternoon, when the sun was descending, Hadria's solitary
+figure was noticed by a white-haired lady, presumably a tourist, who had
+stopped to ask a question of some farm labourers, working in a field.
+She ceased to listen to the information, on the subject of Dunaghee,
+that was given to her in a broad Scottish dialect. The whole scene,
+which an instant before had impressed her as one of beauty and peace,
+suddenly focussed itself round the dark figure, and grew sinister in its
+aspect. At that moment, nothing would have persuaded the onlooker that
+the hastening figure was not hastening towards misfortune.
+
+A woman of impulse, she set off in purposeless pursuit. Hadria's pace
+was very rapid; she was trying to outrun thought. It was impossible to
+live without hope, yet hope, in this forlorn land, was growing faint
+and tired.
+
+Her pursuer was a remarkable-looking woman, no longer young, with her
+prematurely white hair drawn up from her brow with a proud sweep that
+suited well her sharply defined features and her air of defiance. She
+was carelessly dressed after the prevailing fashion, and gave the
+impression of not having her life successfully in hand, but rather of
+being driven by it, as by a blustering wind, against her inclination.
+
+The impression which had seized her, a moment ago, deepened as she went.
+Something in the scene and the hastening figure roused a sense of dread.
+With her, an impression was like a spark to gunpowder. Her imagination
+blazed up. Life, in its most tragic aspect, seemed before her in the
+lonely scene, with the lonely figure, moving, as if in pursuit of a lost
+hope, towards the setting sun.
+
+If Hadria had not paused on the brow of the hill, it is unlikely that
+she would have been overtaken, but that pause decided the matter. The
+stranger seemed suddenly to hesitate, wondering, apparently, what she
+had done this eccentric thing for.
+
+Hadria, feeling a presence behind her, turned nervously round and gave
+a slight start.
+
+It was so rare to meet anybody on these lonely hills, that the
+apparition of a striking-looking woman with white hair, dark eyes, and
+a strange exalted sort of expression, gave a shock of surprise.
+
+As the lady had stopped short, Hadria supposed that she had lost her
+way, and wished to make some enquiries.
+
+"Can I direct you, or give you any assistance?" she asked, after a
+second's pause.
+
+"Oh, thank you, you are very kind. I have come over from Ballochcoil to
+explore the country. I have been trying to find out the history of the
+old houses of the district. Could you tell me, by the way, anything
+about that house with the square tower at the end; I have been loitering
+round it half the afternoon. And I would have given anything to know its
+history, and what it is like inside."
+
+"Well, I can help you there, for that old house is my home. If you have
+time to come with me now, I will show you all over it," said Hadria,
+impulsively.
+
+"That is too tempting an offer. And yet I really don't like to intrude
+in this way. I am a perfect stranger to you and--your parents I
+suppose?"
+
+"They will be delighted," Hadria assured her new acquaintance, somewhat
+imprudently.
+
+"Well, I can't resist the temptation," said the latter, and they walked
+on together.
+
+Hadria related what she knew about the history of the house. Very scanty
+records had survived. It had obviously been one of the old Scottish
+strongholds, built in the lawless days when the country was plunged in
+feuds and chieftains lived on plunder. A few traditions lingered about
+it: among them that of a chief who had carried off, by force, the
+daughter of his bitterest enemy, in revenge for some deed of treachery.
+He had tortured her with insolent courtship, and then starved her to
+death in a garret in the tower, while her father and his followers
+assaulted its thick walls in vain.
+
+"The tradition is, that on stormy nights one can still hear the sound of
+the attack, the shouts of the men and the father's imprecations."
+
+"A horrible story!"
+
+"When people say the world has not progressed, I always think of that
+story, and remember that such crimes were common in those days," Hadria
+remarked.
+
+"I doubt if we are really less ferocious to-day," the other said; "our
+ferocity is directed against the weakest, now as then, but there are
+happily not so many weak, so we get the credit of being juster, without
+expense. As a matter of fact, our opportunities are less, and so we make
+a virtue of necessity--with a vengeance!"
+
+Hadria looked at her companion with startled interest. "Will you tell me
+to whom I have the pleasure of speaking?" the lady asked.
+
+"My name is Fullerton--Hadria Fullerton."
+
+"Thank you. And here is my card, at least I think it is. Oh, no, that is
+a friend's card! How very tiresome! I am reduced to pronouncing my own
+name--Miss Du Prel, Valeria Du Prel; you may know it."
+
+Hadria came to a sudden standstill. She might know it! she might indeed.
+Valeria Du Prel had long been to her a name to swear by.
+
+"Miss Du Prel! Is that--are you--may I ask, are you the writer of those
+wonderful books?"
+
+Miss Du Prel gave a gratified smile. "I am glad they please you."
+
+"Ah! if you could guess how I have longed to know you. I simply can't
+believe it."
+
+"And so my work has really given you pleasure?"
+
+"Pleasure! It has given me hope, it has given me courage, it has given
+me faith in all that is worth living for. It was an epoch in my life
+when I first read your _Parthenia_."
+
+Miss Du Prel seemed so genuinely pleased by this enthusiasm that Hadria
+was surprised.
+
+"I have plenty of compliments, but very seldom a word that makes me
+feel that I have spoken to the heart. I feel as if I had called in the
+darkness and had no response, or like one who has cried from the
+house-tops to a city of the dead."
+
+"And I so often thought of writing to you, but did not like to intrude,"
+cried Hadria.
+
+"Ah! if you only _had_ written to me!" Miss Du Prel exclaimed.
+
+Hadria gazed incredulously at the familiar scene, as they approached the
+back of the house, with its round tower and its confusion of picturesque,
+lichen-covered roofs. An irregular circle of stately trees stood as
+sentinels round the stronghold.
+
+After all, something did happen, once in a while, in this remote corner
+of the universe, whose name, Hadria used to think, had been erased from
+the book of Destiny. She was perhaps vaguely disappointed to find that
+the author of _Parthenia_ wore ordinary human serge, and a cape cut
+after the fashion of any other person's cape. Still, she had no idea
+what supersensuous material she could reasonably have demanded of her
+heroine (unless it were the mythic "bombazine" that Ernest used to talk
+about, in his ignorant efforts to describe female apparel), or what
+transcendental form of cape would have satisfied her imagination.
+
+"You have a lovely home," said Valeria Du Prel, "you must be very happy
+here."
+
+"Would you be happy here?"
+
+"Well, of course that would depend. I am, I fear, too roving by nature
+to care to stay long in one place. Still I envy girls their home-life in
+the country; it is so healthy and free."
+
+Hadria, without answering, led her companion round the flank of the
+tower, and up to the front door. It was situated in the angle of the
+wings, a sheltered nook, hospitably careful of the guest, whom the winds
+of the uplands were disposed to treat but roughly.
+
+Hadria and her companion entered a little panelled hall, whence a flight
+of broad stairs with stout wooden balusters, of quaint design, led to
+the first floor.
+
+The visitor was charmed with the quiet old rooms, especially with
+Hadria's bedroom in the tower, whose windows were so deep-set that they
+had to be approached through a little tunnel cut out of the thickness of
+the wall. The windows looked on to the orchard at the back, and in
+front over the hills. Miss Du Prel was taken to see the scene of the
+tragedy, and the meeting-room of the Preposterous Society.
+
+"You must see the drawing-room," said Hadria.
+
+She opened a door as she spoke, and ushered her visitor into a large,
+finely-proportioned room with three tall windows of stately form,
+divided into oblong panes, against which vagrant sprays of ivy were
+gently tapping.
+
+This room was also panelled with painted wood; its character was quiet
+and stately and reposeful. Yet one felt that many human lives had been
+lived in it. It was full of the sentiment of the past, from the old
+prints and portraits on the walls, to the delicate outlines of the
+wooden mantel-piece, with its finely wrought urns and garlands.
+
+Before this mantel-piece, with the firelight flickering in her face, sat
+Mrs. Fullerton, working at a large piece of embroidery.
+
+For the first time, Hadria hesitated. "Mother," she said, "this is Miss
+Du Prel. We met out on the hills this afternoon, and I have brought her
+home to see the house, which she admires very much."
+
+Mrs. Fullerton had looked up in astonishment, at this incursion into her
+very sanctuary, of a stranger met at haphazard on the hills. Hadria
+wheeled up an easy-chair for the visitor.
+
+"I fear Miss Du Prel will not find much to see in the old house," said
+Mrs. Fullerton, whose manner had grown rigid, partly because she was
+shy, partly because she was annoyed with Hadria for her impulsive
+conduct, and largely because she disliked the idea of a literary
+acquaintance for her daughter, who was quite extraordinary enough as it
+was.
+
+"We have been all over the house," said Hadria hastily, with an anxious
+glance at Miss Du Prel, whom she half expected to rise and walk out of
+the room. It must surely be the first time in her life that her presence
+had not been received as an honour!
+
+"It is all very old and shabby," said Mrs. Fullerton. "I hope you will
+take some tea; if you have walked far to-day, you must be cold and in
+need of something to eat."
+
+"Oh no, no, thank you," returned the visitor; "I ought to be getting
+back to Ballochcoil to-night."
+
+"To Ballochcoil!" exclaimed mother and daughter in simultaneous dismay.
+"But it is nearly seven miles off, and the sun is down. You can't get
+back to-night on foot."
+
+"Dear me, can I not? I suppose I forgot all about getting back, in the
+interest of the scenery."
+
+"What an extraordinary person!" thought Mrs. Fullerton.
+
+Miss Du Prel glanced helplessly at Hadria; rising then and looking out
+of the window at the dusk, which had come on so rapidly. "Dear me, how
+dark it has grown! Still I think I can walk it, or perhaps I can get a
+fly at some inn on the way."
+
+"Can we offer you a carriage?" asked Mrs. Fullerton.
+
+"Oh no, thank you; that is quite unnecessary. I have already intruded
+far too long; I shall wend my way back, or what might perhaps be better,
+I could get a lodging at the farmhouse down the road. I am told that
+they put travellers up sometimes."
+
+Miss Du Prel hurried off, evidently chilled by Mrs. Fullerton's freezing
+courtesy. Hadria, disregarding her mother's glance of admonition,
+accompanied the visitor to the farm of Craw Gill, having first given
+directions to old Maggie to put together a few things that Miss Du Prel
+would require for the night. Hadria's popularity at the farm, secured
+her new friend a welcome. Mrs. McEwen was a fine example of the best
+type of Scottish character; warm of heart, honest of purpose, and full
+of a certain unconscious poetry, and a dignity that lingers still in
+districts where the railway whistle is not too often heard. Miss Du Prel
+seemed to nestle up to the good woman, as a child to its mother after
+some scaring adventure. Mrs. McEwen was recommending a hot water-bottle
+and gruel in case of a chill, when Hadria wended her way homeward to
+brave her mother's wrath.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+"I cannot make you realize that you are an ignorant girl who knows
+nothing of the world, and that it is necessary you should accept my
+experience, and condescend to be guided by my wishes. You put me in a
+most unpleasant position this afternoon, forcing me to receive a person
+whom I have never been introduced to, or heard of----"
+
+"Valeria Du Prel has been heard of throughout the English-speaking
+world," said Hadria rhetorically.
+
+"So much the worse," retorted Mrs. Fullerton. "No nicely brought up
+woman is ever heard of outside her own circle."
+
+Hadria recalled a similar sentiment among the ancient Greeks, and
+thought how hard an old idea dies.
+
+"She might have been some awful person, some unprincipled adventuress,
+and that I believe is what she is. What was she prowling about the back
+of our house for, I should like to know?"
+
+"I suspect she wanted to steal chickens or something," Hadria was goaded
+into suggesting, and the interview ended painfully.
+
+When Hadria went to Craw Gill, next morning, to enquire for Miss Du
+Prel, Mrs. McEwen said that the visitor had breakfasted in bed. The
+farmer's wife also informed Miss Fullerton that the lady had decided to
+stay on at Craw Gill, for some time. She had been looking out for a
+retreat of the kind.
+
+"She seems a nice-like body," said Mrs. McEwen, "and I see no objection
+to the arrangement."
+
+Hadria's heart beat faster. Could it be possible that Valeria du Prel
+was to be a near neighbour? It seemed too good to be true!
+
+When Miss Du Prel came down in her walking garments, she greeted Hadria
+with a certain absence of mind, which smote chill upon the girl's
+eagerness.
+
+"I wanted to know if you were comfortable, if I could do anything for
+you." Miss Du Prel woke up.
+
+"Oh no, thank you; you are very kind. I am most comfortable--at
+least--it is very strange, but I have lost my keys and my umbrella and
+my handbag--I can't think what I can have done with them. Oh, and my
+purse is gone too!"
+
+Whereupon Mrs. McEwen in dismay, Mr. McEwen (who then appeared), the
+maid, and Hadria, hunted high and low for the missing properties, which
+were brought to light, one by one, in places where their owner had
+already "thoroughly searched," and about which she had long since
+abandoned hope.
+
+She received them with mingled joy and amazement, and having responded
+to Mrs. McEwen's questions as to what she would like for dinner, she
+proposed to Hadria that they should take a walk together.
+
+Hadria beamed. Miss Du Prel seemed both amused and gratified by her
+companion's worship, and the talk ran on, in a light and pleasant vein,
+differing from the talk of the ordinary mortal, Hadria considered, as
+champagne differs from ditch-water.
+
+In recording it for Algitha's benefit that evening, Hadria found that
+she could not reproduce the exhilarating quality, or describe the
+influence of Miss Du Prel's personality. It was as if, literally, a
+private and particular atmosphere had encompassed her. She was "alive
+all round," as her disciple asserted.
+
+Her love of Nature was intense. Hadria had never before realized that
+she had been without full sympathy in this direction. She awoke to a
+strange retrospective sense of solitude, feeling a new pity for the
+eager little child of years ago, who had wandered up to the garret, late
+at night, to watch the moonlight spread its white shroud over the hills.
+
+With every moment spent in the society of Valeria Du Prel, new and
+clearer light seemed to Hadria, to be thrown upon all the problems of
+existence; not by any means only through what Miss Du Prel directly
+said, but by what she implied, by what she took for granted, by what she
+omitted to say.
+
+"It seems like a home-coming from long exile," Hadria wrote to her
+sister. "I have been looking through a sort of mist, or as one looks at
+one's surroundings before quite waking. Now everything stands out sharp
+and cut, as objects do in the clear air of the South. Ah me, the South!
+Miss Du Prel has spent much of her life there, and my inborn smouldering
+passion for it, is set flaming by her descriptions! You remember that
+brief little fortnight that we spent with mother and father in Italy? I
+seem now to be again under the spell of the languorous airs, the
+cloudless blue, the white palaces, the grey olive groves, and the art,
+the art! Oh, Algitha, I must go to the South soon, soon, or I shall die
+of home sickness! Miss Du Prel says that this is only one side of me
+breaking out: that I am northern at heart. I think it is true, but
+meanwhile the thought of the South possesses me. I confess I think
+mother had some cause to be alarmed when she saw Miss Du Prel, if she
+wants to keep us in a chastened mood, at home. It seems as if all of me
+were in high carnival. Life is raised to a higher power. I feel nearly
+omnipotent. Epics and operas are child's play to me! It is true I have
+produced comparatively few; but, oh, those that are to come! I feel fit
+for anything, from pitch-and-toss to manslaughter. I think of the two, I
+rather lean to the manslaughter. Oh, I don't mean it in the facetious
+sense! that would be a terrible downfall from my present altitudes. To
+such devices the usual wretched girl, who has never drawn rebellious
+breath, or listened to the discourses of Valeria Du Prel, has to turn
+for a living, or to keep _ennui_ at bay. But _I_, no, the inimical
+sex may possess their souls in peace, as far as I am concerned. They might
+retort that they never _had_ felt nervous, but a letter has the same
+advantage as the pulpit: the adversary can never get up and contradict.
+
+"That ridiculous adversary, Harold Wilkins, is staying again at
+Drumgarren, and I hear from Mrs. Gordon that he thinks it very strange
+that I should see so much of so extraordinary a person as Miss Du Prel!
+Opinions differ of course; _I_ think it very strange that the Gordons
+should see so much of so ordinary a person as Mr. Wilkins. Everybody
+makes much of him here, and, alas! all the girls run after him, and even
+fall in love with him; why, I can't conceive. For if driven by dire
+compulsion of fate, to bend one's thoughts upon _some_ prosaic example
+of that prosaic sex, why not choose one of the many far more attractive
+candidates available--the Gordons, the McKenzies, and so forth? When I
+go to tennis parties with mother--they are still playing upon the
+asphalte courts--and see the little dramas that go on, the jealousies
+and excitements, and general much-ado-about-nothing, I can scarcely
+believe that Miss Du Prel really belongs to the same planet as ours. But
+I don't feel so contemptuous as I did; it is so pitiful. Out of my great
+wealth I can afford to be more generous.
+
+"And when I see those wretched girls fluttering round Mr. Wilkins, I no
+longer turn up my 'aughty nose' (as old Mrs. Brooks used to say). I only
+think to myself, 'Heavens and earth! what an aching, empty life those
+young women must lead, if they are actually reduced for interest and
+amusement to the utterances of Mr. Wilkins!' They would have the pull of
+one though, if the utterances of Mr. Wilkins were the only utterances to
+be heard! Perish the thought of such beggary!"
+
+The talks with Valeria Du Prel grew more intimate, and more deeply
+interesting to Hadria, every day.
+
+Miss Du Prel used often to look at her companion in amazement. "Where
+_did_ you come from?" she exclaimed on one occasion. "One would suppose
+you had lived several lives; you seem to _know_ things in such a subtle,
+intimate fashion!"
+
+She used to ponder over the problem, wondering what Professor Fortescue
+would say to it. There appeared to be more here than mere heredity could
+account for. But science had never solved this problem; originality
+seemed always to enter upon its career, uncaused and unaccountable. It
+was ever a miraculous phenomenon. The Professor had always said so.
+Still the heritage was rich enough, in this case. Heredity might have
+some discoverable part in the apparent marvel. Each member of the
+Fullerton family had unusual ability of some kind. Their knowledge of
+science, and their familiarity with the problems of philosophy, had
+often astonished Miss Du Prel. Hadria's accounts of the Preposterous
+Society made her laugh and exclaim at the same moment. She gave an
+envious sigh at the picture of the eager little group, with their warmth
+of affection for one another, and their vivid interests. Miss Du Prel,
+with all her sadness, was youthful in spirit. Hadria found her far
+younger than many girls of her own age. This set her thinking. She
+observed how rigid most people become in a few years, and how the
+personality grows wooden, in the daily repetition of the same actions
+and the same ideas. This stiffening process had been attributed to the
+malice of Time; but now Hadria began to believe that narrow and
+ungenerous thought lay at the root of the calamity. The entire life of
+the little world in which she had grown up, on all its sides, in all its
+ideals and sentiments, stood before her, as if some great painter had
+made a picture of it. She had never before been able to stand so
+completely apart from the surroundings of her childhood. And she was
+able to do so now, not because Miss Du Prel discoursed about it, but
+because Hadria's point of view had shifted sympathetically to the point
+of view of her companion, through the instinctive desire to see how
+these familiar things would look to alien eyes. That which had seemed
+merely prosaic and dreary, became characteristic; the very things which
+she had taken most for granted were exactly those which turned out to be
+the significant and idiomatic facts.
+
+These had made permanent inroads into the mind and character. It was
+with these that Hadria would have to reckon all her days, under whatever
+conditions she might hereafter be placed. Daily surroundings were not
+merely pleasant or unpleasant facts, otherwise of no importance; they
+were the very material and substance of character; the push and impetus,
+or the let and hindrance; the guardians or the assassins of the soul.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+Miss Du Prel had promised to allow Hadria to drive her to Darachanarvan,
+a little town on the banks of the river, about seven miles across
+country.
+
+Hadria was in high spirits, as they trundled along the white roads with
+the wind in their faces, the hills and the blue sky spread out before
+them, the pleasant sound of the wheels and the trotting of the pony
+setting their thoughts to rhythm.
+
+The trees were all shedding their last yellow leaves, and the air was
+full of those faded memories of better days, whirling in wild companies
+across the road, rushing upward on the breast of some vagabond gust,
+drifting, spinning, shuddering along the roadside, to lie there at last,
+quiet, among a host of brothers, with little passing tremors, as if
+(said Valeria) they were silently sobbing because of their banishment
+from their kingdom of the air.
+
+Miss Du Prel, though she enjoyed the beauty of the day and the scenery,
+seemed sad of mood. "This weather recalls so many autumns," she said.
+"It reminds me too vividly of wonderful days, whose like I shall never
+see again, and friends, many of whom are dead, and many lost sight of in
+this inexorable coming and going of people and things, this inexorable
+change that goes on for ever. I feel as if I should go mad at times,
+because it will not stop, either in myself or others."
+
+"Ah, that is a dreadful thought!"
+
+"It comes to me so insistently, perhaps, because of my roving life," she
+said.
+
+She paused for a moment, and then she fell into one of her exalted
+moods, when she seemed to lose consciousness of the ordinary conditions
+around her, or rather to pierce deeper into their significance and
+beauty. Her speech would, at such times, become rhythmic and
+picturesque; she evidently saw vivid images before her, in which her
+ideas embodied themselves.
+
+"Most people who live always in one place see the changes creeping on so
+gradually that they scarcely feel them, but with me this universal flux
+displays itself pitilessly, I cannot escape. Go where I will, there is
+something to measure the changes by. A shoal of yellow leaves whispers
+to me of seasons long ago, and the old past days, with their own
+intimate character that nothing ever repeats, flash before me again with
+the vividness of yesterday; and a flight of birds--ah! if I could
+express what they recall! The dead years pass again in a great
+procession, a motley company--some like emperors, crowned and richly
+dowered, with the sound of trumpets and the tramping of many obsequious
+feet; and others like beggars, despoiled and hungry, trudging along a
+dusty high road, or like grey pilgrims bound, with bleeding feet, for a
+far-off shrine."
+
+They entered a little beech-wood, whose leaves made a light of their
+own, strange and mystical.
+
+"Yours must have been a wonderful life!" said Hadria.
+
+"Yes, I have seen and felt many things," answered Miss Du Prel, stirred
+by the intoxication of the motion and the wind and the sunlight, "life
+has been to me a series of intense emotions, as it will be to you, I
+fear----"
+
+"You fear?" said Hadria.
+
+"Yes; for that means suffering. If you feel, you are at the mercy of all
+things. Every wind that blows uses you as an AEolian harp."
+
+"That must be charming, at least for those who live in your
+neighbourhood," said Hadria.
+
+"No; for often the harp rings false. Its strings get loosened; one hangs
+slack and jars, and where then is your harmony?"
+
+"One would run the risk of many things rather than let one's strings lie
+dumb," said Hadria.
+
+"What a dangerous temperament you have!" cried Valeria, looking round at
+the glowing face beside her.
+
+"I must take my risks," said Hadria.
+
+"I doubt if you know what risks there are."
+
+"Then I must find out," she answered.
+
+"One plays with fire so recklessly before one has been burnt."
+
+Hadria was silent. The words sounded ominous.
+
+"Will can do so much," she said at length. "Do you believe in the power
+of the human will to break the back of circumstance?"
+
+"Oh, yes; but the effort expended in breaking its back sometimes leaves
+one prone, with a victory that arrives ironically too late. However I
+don't wish to discourage you. There is no doubt that human will has
+triumphed over everything--but death."
+
+Again the sound of the pony's hoofs sounded through the silence, in a
+cheerful trot upon the white roads. They were traversing an open, breezy
+country, chequered with wooded hollows, where generally a village sought
+shelter from the winds. And these patches of foliage were golden and red
+in the meditative autumn sunshine, which seemed as if it were a little
+sad at the thought of parting with the old earth for the coming winter.
+
+"I think the impossible lesson to learn would be renouncement," said
+Hadria. "I cannot conceive how anyone could say to himself, while he had
+longings and life still in him, 'I will give up this that I might have
+learnt; I will stop short here where I might press forward; I will allow
+this or that to curtail me and rob me of my possible experience.'"
+
+"Well, I confess that has been my feeling too, though I admire the
+spirit that can renounce."
+
+"Admire? Oh, yes, perhaps; though I am not so sure that the submissive
+nature has not been too much glorified--in theory. Nobody pays much
+attention to it in practice, by the way."
+
+Miss Du Prel laughed. "What an observant young woman you are."
+
+"Renunciation is always preached to girls, you know," said
+Hadria--"preached to them when as yet they have nothing more than a
+rattle and a rag-doll to renounce. And later, when they set about the
+business of their life, and resign their liberty, their talents, their
+health, their opportunity, their beauty (if they have it), then people
+gradually fall away from the despoiled and obedient being, and flock
+round the still unchastened creature who retains what the gods have
+given her, and asks for more."
+
+"I fear you are indeed a still unchastened creature!"
+
+"Certainly; there is no encouragement to chasten oneself. People don't
+stand by the docile members of Society. They commend their saints, but
+they drink to their sinners."
+
+Miss Du Prel smiled.
+
+"It is true," she admitted. "A woman must not renounce too much if she
+desires to retain her influence."
+
+"_Pas trop de zele_," Hadria quoted.
+
+"There is something truly unmanageable about you, my dear!" cried
+Valeria, much amused. "Well, I too have had just that sort of instinct,
+just that imperious demand, just that impatience of restraint. I too
+regarded myself and my powers as mine to use as I would, responsible
+only to my own conscience. I decided to have freedom though the heavens
+should fall. I was unfitted by temperament to face the world, but I was
+equally unfitted to pay the price for protection--the blackmail that
+society levies on a woman: surrender of body and of soul. What could one
+expect, in such a case, but disaster? I often envy now the simple-minded
+woman who pays her price and has her reward--such as it is."
+
+"Ah! such as it is!" echoed Hadria.
+
+"Who was it said, the other day, that she thought a wise woman always
+took things as they were, and made the best of them?"
+
+"Some dull spirit."
+
+"And yet a practical spirit."
+
+"I am quite sure," said Hadria, "that the stokers of hell are practical
+spirits."
+
+"Your mother must have had her work cut out for her when she undertook
+to bring you up," exclaimed Miss Du Prel.
+
+"So she always insinuates," replied Hadria demurely.
+
+They were spinning down hill now, into a warm bit of country watered by
+the river, and Hadria drew rein. The spot was so pleasant that they
+alighted, tied the pony to a tree, and wandered over the grass to the
+river's edge. Hadria picked her way from stone to slippery stone, into
+the middle of the river, where there was comparatively safe standing
+room. Here she was suddenly inspired to execute the steps of a reel,
+while Valeria stood dismayed on the bank, expecting every moment, to see
+the dance end in the realms of the trout.
+
+But Hadria kept her footing, and continued to step it with much
+solemnity. Meanwhile, two young men on horseback were coming down the
+road; but as a group of trees hid it from the river at this point, they
+were not noticed. The horsemen stopped suddenly when they cleared the
+group of trees. The figure of a young woman in mid-stream, dancing a
+reel with extreme energy and correctness, and without a smile, was
+sufficiently surprising to arrest them.
+
+"As I thought," exclaimed Hadria, "it is Harold Wilkins!"
+
+"I shall be glad to see this conquering hero," said Valeria.
+
+Hadria, who had known the young man since her childhood, waited calmly
+as he turned his horse's head towards the river, and advanced across the
+grass, raising his hat. "Good morning, Miss Fullerton."
+
+"Good morning," Hadria returned, from her rock.
+
+"You seem to be having rather an agreeable time of it."
+
+"Very. Are you fond of dancing?"
+
+Mr. Wilkins was noted, far and wide, for his dancing, and the question
+was wounding.
+
+He was tall and loosely built, with brown expressionless eyes, dark
+hair, a pink complexion, shelving forehead, and a weak yet obstinate
+mouth. His companion also was tall and dark, but his face was pale, his
+forehead broad and high, and a black moustache covered his upper lip. He
+had raised his hat gracefully on finding that the dancer in mid-stream
+was an acquaintance of his companion, and he shewed great
+self-possession in appearing to regard the dancing of reels in these
+circumstances, as an incident that might naturally be expected. Not a
+sign of surprise betrayed itself in the face, not even a glimmer of
+curiosity. Hadria was so tickled by this finished behaviour under
+difficulties, that she took her cue from it, and decided to treat the
+matter in the same polished spirit. She too would take it all decorously
+for granted.
+
+Mr. Wilkins introduced his friend: Mr. Hubert Temperley. Hadria bowed
+gracefully in reply to Mr. Temperley's salute.
+
+"Don't you feel a little cramped out there?" asked Mr. Wilkins.
+
+"Dear me, no," cried Hadria in mock surprise. "What could induce you to
+suppose I would come out here if I felt cramped?"
+
+"Are you--are you thinking of coming on shore? Can I help you?"
+
+"Thank you," replied Hadria. "This is a merely temporary resting-place.
+We ought to be getting on; we have some miles yet to drive," and she
+hurried her friend away. They were conducted to the pony-cart by the
+cavaliers, who raised their hats, as the ladies drove off at a merry
+pace, bowing their farewells.
+
+"The eternal riddle!" Temperley exclaimed, as they turned the corner of
+the road.
+
+"What is the eternal riddle?" Harold Wilkins enquired.
+
+"Woman, woman!" Temperley replied, a little impatiently. He had not
+found young Wilkins quick to catch his meaning during the two hours'
+ride, and it occurred to him that Miss Fullerton would have been a more
+interesting companion.
+
+He made a good many enquiries about her and her family, on the way back
+to Drumgarren.
+
+"We are invited to tennis at their house, for next Tuesday," said Harold,
+"so you will have a chance of pursuing the acquaintance. For my part, I
+don't admire that sort of girl."
+
+"Don't you? I am attracted by originality. I like a woman to have
+something in her."
+
+"Depends on what it is. I hate a girl to have a lot of silly ideas."
+
+"Perhaps you prefer her to have but one," said Temperley, "that one
+being that Mr. Harold Wilkins is a charming fellow."
+
+"Nothing of the kind," cried Harold. "I can't help it if girls run after
+me; it's a great bore."
+
+Temperley laughed. "You, like Achilles, are pursued by ten thousand
+girls. I deeply sympathize, though it is not an inconvenience that has
+troubled me, even in my palmiest days."
+
+"Why, how old are you? Surely you are not going to talk as if those days
+were over?"
+
+"Oh, I am moderately palmy still!" Temperley admitted. "Still, the hour
+approaches when the assaults of time will become more disastrous."
+
+"You and Hadria Fullerton ought to get on well together, for she is very
+musical," said Harold Wilkins.
+
+"Ah!" cried Temperley with new interest. "I could have almost told that
+from her face. Does she play well?"
+
+"Well, I suppose so. She plays things without any tune that bore one to
+death, but I daresay you would admire it. She composes too, I am told."
+
+"Really? Dear me, I must make a point of having a talk with her, on the
+earliest opportunity."
+
+Meanwhile, the occupants of the pony-cart had arrived at Darachanarvan,
+where they were to put up the pony and have luncheon. It was a prosaic
+little Scottish town, with only a beautiful survival, here and there,
+from the past.
+
+After luncheon, they wandered down to the banks of the river, and
+watched the trout and the running water. Hadria had long been wishing
+to find out what her oracle thought about certain burning questions on
+which the sisters held such strong, and such unpopular sentiments, but
+just because the feeling was so keen, it was difficult to broach the
+subject.
+
+An opportunity came when Miss Du Prel spoke of her past. Hadria was able
+to read between the lines. When a mere girl, Miss Du Prel had been
+thrown on the world--brilliant, handsome, impulsive, generous--to pass
+through a fiery ordeal, and to emerge with aspirations as high as ever,
+but with her radiant hopes burnt out. But she did not dwell on this side
+of the picture; she emphasized rather, the possibility of holding on
+through storm and stress to the truth that is born in one; to belief in
+"the noblest and wildest hopes (if you like to call them so) that ever
+thrilled generous hearts."
+
+But she gave no encouragement to certain of her companion's most
+vehement sentiments. She seemed to yearn for exactly that side of life
+from which the younger shrank with so much horror. She saw it under an
+entirely different aspect. Hadria felt thrown back on herself, lonely
+once more.
+
+"You have seen Mrs. Gordon," she said at length, "what do you think of
+her?"
+
+"Nothing; she does not inspire thought."
+
+"Yet once she was a person, not a thing."
+
+"If a woman can't keep her head above water in Mrs. Gordon's position,
+she must be a feeble sort of person."
+
+"I should not dare to say that, until I had been put through the mill
+myself, and come out unpulverised."
+
+Miss Du Prel failed to see what there was so very dreadful in Mrs.
+Gordon's lot. She had, perhaps, rather more children than was necessary,
+but otherwise----
+
+"Oh, Miss Du Prel," cried Hadria, "you might be a mere man! That is just
+what my brothers say."
+
+"I don't understand what you mean," said Miss Du Prel. "Do explain."
+
+"Do you actually--_you_ of all people--not recognize and hate the idea
+that lies so obviously at the root of all the life that is swarming
+round us----?"
+
+Valeria studied her companion's excited face.
+
+"Are you in revolt against the very basis of existence?" she asked
+curiously.
+
+"No: at least ... but this is not what I am driving at exactly," replied
+Hadria, turning uneasily away from the close scrutiny. "Don't you
+know--oh, don't you see--how many women secretly hate, and shrink from
+this brutal domestic idea that fashions their fate for them?"
+
+Miss Du Prel's interest quickened.
+
+"Nothing strikes me so much as the tamely acquiescent spirit of the
+average woman, and I doubt if you would find another woman in England
+to describe the domestic existence as you do."
+
+"Perhaps not; tradition prevents them from using bad language, but they
+_feel_, they _feel_."
+
+"Young girls perhaps, brought up very ignorantly, find life a little
+scaring at first, but they soon settle down into happy wives and
+mothers."
+
+"As the fibre grows coarser," assented Hadria.
+
+"No; as the affections awaken, and the instincts that hold society
+together, come into play. I have revolted myself from the conditions of
+life, but it is a hopeless business--beating one's wings against the
+bars."
+
+"The bars are, half of them, of human construction," said Hadria, "and
+against _those_ one may surely be allowed to beat."
+
+"Of human construction?"
+
+"I mean that prejudice, rather than instinct, has built up the system
+that Mrs. Gordon so amiably represents."
+
+"Prejudice has perhaps taken advantage of instinct to establish a
+somewhat tyrannical tradition," Miss Du Prel admitted, "but instinct is
+at the bottom of it. There is, of course, in our society, no latitude
+for variety of type; that is the fault of so many institutions."
+
+"The ordinary domestic idea may have been suitable when women were
+emerging from the condition of simple animals," said Hadria, "but now it
+seems to me to be out of date."
+
+"It can never be entirely out of date, dear Hadria. Nature has asked of
+women a great and hard service, but she has given them the maternal
+instinct and its joys, in compensation for the burden of this task,
+which would otherwise be intolerable and impossible. It can only be
+undertaken at the instigation of some stupendous impetus, that blinds
+the victim to the nature of her mission. It must be a sort of obsession;
+an intense personal instinct, amounting to madness. Nature, being
+determined to be well served in this direction, has supplied the
+necessary monomania, and the domestic idea, as you call it, grows up
+round this central fact."
+
+Hadria moved restlessly to and fro by the river bank. "One presumes to
+look upon oneself, at first--in one's earliest youth," she said, "as
+undoubtedly human, with human needs and rights and dignities. But this
+turns out to be an illusion. It is as an _animal_ that one has to play
+the really important part in life; it is by submitting to the demands of
+society, in this respect, that one wins rewards and commendation. Of
+course, if one likes to throw in a few ornamental extras, so much the
+better; it keeps up appearances and the aspect of refined sentiment--but
+the main point----"
+
+"You _are_ extravagant!" cried Miss Du Prel. "That is not the right way
+to look at it."
+
+"It is certainly not the convenient way to look at it. It is doubtless
+wise to weave as many garlands as you can, to deck yourself for the
+sacrifice. By that means, you don't quite see which way you are going,
+because of the masses of elegant vegetation."
+
+"Ah! Hadria, you exaggerate, you distort; you forget so many
+things--the sentiments, the affections, the thousand details that hallow
+that crude foundation which you see only bare and unsoftened."
+
+"A repulsive object tastefully decorated, is to me only the more
+repulsive," returned Hadria, with suppressed passion.
+
+"There will come a day when you will feel very differently," prophesied
+Miss Du Prel.
+
+"Perhaps. Why should I, more than the others, remain uninfluenced by the
+usual processes of blunting, and grinding down, and stupefying, till one
+grows accustomed to one's function, one's _intolerable_ function?"
+
+"My dear, my dear!"
+
+"I am sorry if I shock you, but that is how I feel. I have seen this
+sort of traditional existence and nothing else, all my life, and I have
+been brought up to it, with the rest--prepared and decked out like some
+animal for market--all in the most refined and graceful manner possible;
+but how can one help seeing through the disguise; how can one be blind
+to the real nature of the transaction, and to the fate that awaits
+one--awaits one as inexorably as death, unless by some force of one's
+own, with all the world--friends and enemies--in opposition, one can
+avert it?"
+
+Miss Du Prel remained silent.
+
+"You _can_ avert it," she said at last; "but at what cost?"
+
+"Miss Du Prel, I would rather sweep a crossing, I would rather beg in
+the streets, than submit to the indignity of such a life!"
+
+"Then what do you intend to do instead?"
+
+"Ah! there's the difficulty. What _can_ one do instead, without breaking
+somebody's heart? Nothing, except breaking one's own. And even putting
+that difficulty aside, it seems as if everyone's hand were against a
+woman who refuses the path that has been marked out for her."
+
+"No, no, it is not so bad as that. There are many openings now for
+women."
+
+"But," said Hadria, "as far as I can gather, ordinary ability is not
+sufficient to enable them to make a scanty living. The talent that would
+take a man to the top of the tree is required to keep a woman in a
+meagre supply of bread and butter."
+
+"Allowing for exaggeration, that is more or less the case," Miss Du Prel
+admitted.
+
+"I have revolted against the common lot," she went on after a pause,
+"and you see what comes of it; I am alone in the world. One does not
+think of that when one is quite young."
+
+"Would you rather be in Mrs. Gordon's position than in your own?"
+
+"I doubt not that she is happier."
+
+"But would you change with her, surrendering all that she has
+surrendered?"
+
+"Yes, if I were of her temperament."
+
+"Ah! you always evade the question. Remaining yourself, would you change
+with her?"
+
+"I would never have allowed my life to grow like hers."
+
+"No," said Hadria, laughing, "you would probably have run away or killed
+yourself or somebody, long before this."
+
+Miss Du Prel could not honestly deny this possibility. After a pause she
+said:
+
+"A woman cannot afford to despise the dictates of Nature. She may escape
+certain troubles in that way; but Nature is not to be cheated, she makes
+her victim pay her debt in another fashion. There is no escape. The
+centuries are behind one, with all their weight of heredity and habit;
+the order of society adds its pressure--one's own emotional needs. Ah,
+no! it does not answer to pit oneself against one's race, to bid
+defiance to the fundamental laws of life."
+
+"Such then are the alternatives," said Hadria, moving close to the
+river's brink, and casting two big stones into the current. "There stand
+the devil and the deep sea."
+
+"You are too young to have come to that sad conclusion," said Miss Du
+Prel.
+
+"But I haven't," cried Hadria. "I still believe in revolt."
+
+The other shook her head.
+
+"And what about love? Are you going through life without the one thing
+that makes it bearable?"
+
+"I would not purchase it at such a cost. If I can't have it without
+despoiling myself of everything that is worth possessing, I prefer to go
+without."
+
+"You don't know what you say!" exclaimed Miss Du Prel.
+
+"But why? Love would be ruined and desecrated. I understand by it a
+sympathy so perfect, and a reverence so complete, that the conditions of
+ordinary domestic existence would be impossible, unthinkable, in
+connection with it."
+
+"So do I understand love. But it comes, perhaps, once in a century, and
+if one is too fastidious, it passes by and leaves one forlorn; at best,
+it comes only to open the gates of Paradise, for a moment, and to close
+them again, and leave one in outer darkness."
+
+"Always?"
+
+"I believe always," answered Miss Du Prel.
+
+The running of the river sounded peacefully in the pause that followed.
+
+"Well," cried Hadria at length, raising her head with a long sigh, "one
+cannot do better than follow one's own instinct and thought of the
+moment. Regret may come, do what one may. One cannot escape from one's
+own temperament."
+
+"One can modify it."
+
+"I cannot even wish to modify mine, so that I should become amenable to
+these social demands. I stand in hopeless opposition to the scheme of
+life that I have grown up amongst, to the universal scheme of life
+indeed, as understood by the world up to this day. Audacious, is it
+not?"
+
+"I like audacity," returned Miss Du Prel. "As I understand you, you
+require an altogether new dispensation!"
+
+Hadria gave a half smile, conscious of her stupendous demand. Then she
+said, with a peculiar movement of the head, as if throwing off a heavy
+weight, and looking before her steadily: "Yes, I require a new
+dispensation."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+Hubert Temperley made a point of going to the tennis-party, on Tuesday,
+at Dunaghee, in order to talk to Miss Fullerton. He had not expected to
+find original musical talent in this out-of-the-way place.
+
+Hadria was in a happy mood, for her mother had so far overcome her
+prejudice against Miss Du Prel, as to ask her to join the party.
+
+The festivity had, therefore, lost its usual quality of melancholy.
+
+It was a warm afternoon, and every one seemed cheerful "and almost
+intelligent," Hadria commented. The first words that Mr. Temperley
+uttered, made her turn to him, in surprise. She was so unaccustomed to
+be interested in what the people about here had to say. Even intelligent
+visitors usually adopted the tone of the inhabitants. Hubert Temperley's
+manner was very polished. His accent denoted mental cultivation. He
+spoke with eloquence of literature, and praised enthusiastically most
+great names dating securely from the hallowed past. Of modern literature
+he was a stern critic; of music he spoke with ardour.
+
+"I hear that you not only perform but compose, Miss Fullerton," he said.
+"As soon as I heard that, I felt that I must make your acquaintance. My
+friends, the Gordons, are very charming, but they don't understand a
+note of music, and I am badly off for a kindred spirit."
+
+"My composing is a very mild affair," Hadria answered. "I suppose you
+are more fortunate."
+
+"Not much. I am pretty busy you see. I have my profession. I play a
+good deal--the piano and the _'cello_ are my instruments. But my
+difficulty is to find someone to accompany me. My sister does when she
+can, but of course with a house and family to look after----I am
+sometimes selfish enough to wish she had not married. We used to be such
+good friends."
+
+"Is that all over?"
+
+"It is different. She always manages to be busy now," said Temperley in
+a slightly ironical tone.
+
+He plunged once more, into a musical discussion.
+
+Hadria had reluctantly to cut it short, in order to arrange
+tennis-matches. This task was performed as usual, somewhat recklessly.
+Polite and amiable in indiscriminate fashion, Hadria ignored the secret
+jealousies and heart-burnings of the neighbourhood, only to recognise
+and repent her mistakes when too late. To-day she was even more
+unchastened than usual in her dealings with inflammable social material.
+
+"Hadria!" cried Mrs. Fullerton, taking her aside, "How _could_ you ask
+Cecilia Gordon to play with young McKenzie? You _know_ their families
+are not on speaking terms!"
+
+Everyone, except the culprit, had remarked the haughty manner in which
+Cecilia wielded her racket, and the gloomy silence in which the set was
+played.
+
+Hadria, though not impenitent, laughed. "How does Miss Gordon manage to
+be energetic and chilling at the same time!" she exclaimed.
+
+The Gordons and the McKenzies, like hostile armies, looked on grimly.
+Everyone felt awkward, and to feel awkward was nothing less than tragic,
+in the eyes of the assembly.
+
+"Oh, Hadria, how _could_ you?" cried Mrs. Gordon, coming up in her
+elaborate toilette, which expressed almost as much of the character of
+its wearer as was indicated by her thin, chattering tones, and
+unreposeful manner. Her mode of dress was rich and florid--very obvious
+in its effects, very _naif_. She was built on a large scale, and might
+have been graceful, had not her mental constitution refused to permit,
+or to inspire, that which physical construction seemed to intend. She
+distributed smiles on all hands, of no particular meaning. Though still
+a young woman, she looked worn and wearied. However, her _role_ was
+cheerfulness, and she smiled on industriously.
+
+"I am so sorry," said Hadria, "the quarrel went clean out of my head.
+They are so well matched. But your sister-in-law will never forgive me."
+
+"Oh, well, never mind, my dear; it is your way, I know. Only of course
+it is awkward."
+
+"What can be done? Shall I run in and separate them?"
+
+"Oh, Hadria, you _are_ ridiculous!"
+
+"I was not meant for society," she said, in a depressed tone.
+
+"Oh, you will soon get into the way of it," cried Mrs. Gordon
+encouragingly.
+
+"I am afraid I shall."
+
+Mrs. Gordon stared. "Mr. Temperley, I can never make out what Miss
+Fullerton really means. Do see if you can."
+
+"How could I expect to succeed where you have failed?"
+
+"Oh, you men are so much cleverer than we poor women," cried the lady
+archly. Temperley was obviously of the same opinion. But he found some
+appropriate Chesterfieldian reply, while Hadria, to his annoyance,
+hurried off to her duties, full of good resolutions.
+
+Having introduced a couple of sisters to their brother, she grew
+desperate. A set had just ended, and the sisters were asked to play.
+This time, no mistake had been made in the selection of partners, so far
+as the question of sentiment was concerned, but they were fatally
+ill-assorted as to strength. However, Hadria said with a sigh, if their
+emotions were satisfied, it was really all they could expect.
+Considering the number of family feuds, she did not see her way to
+arranging both points, to everyone's satisfaction.
+
+Hadria was surrounded by a small group, among whom were Temperley,
+Harold Wilkins, and Mr. Hawkesley, the brother who had been introduced
+to his sisters.
+
+"How very handsome Hadria is looking this afternoon," said Mrs. Gordon,
+"and how becoming that dark green gown is."
+
+Mrs. Fullerton smiled. "Yes, she does look her best to-day. I think she
+has been improving, of late, in her looks."
+
+"That's just what we have all noticed. There is so much animation in her
+face; she is such a sweet girl."
+
+Miss Du Prel, who was not of the stuff that martyrs are made of,
+muttered something incoherent and deserted her neighbour. She came up to
+the group that had gathered round Hadria.
+
+"Ah, Miss Du Prel," cried the latter, "I am so glad to see you at large
+again. I was afraid you were getting bored."
+
+"I was," said Miss Du Prel frankly, "so I came away."
+
+The young men laughed. "If only everybody could go away when he was
+bored," cried Hadria, "how peaceful it would be, and what small
+tennis-parties one would have!"
+
+"Always excepting tennis-parties at _this_ house," said Hubert
+Temperley.
+
+"I don't think any house would survive," said Miss Du Prel. "If people
+do not meet to exchange ideas, I can't see the object of their meeting
+at all."
+
+"What a revolutionary sentiment!" cried Temperley, laughing. "Where
+would society be, on that principle?"
+
+Hadria was called away, at that moment, and the group politely wavered
+between duty and inclination. Temperley and Miss Du Prel strolled off
+together, his vast height bent deferentially towards her. This air of
+deference proved somewhat superficial. Miss Du Prel found that his
+opinions were of an immovable order, with very defined edges. In some
+indescribable fashion, those opinions partook of the general elegance of
+his being. Not for worlds would he have harboured an exaggerated or
+immoderate idea. In politics he was conservative, but he did not abuse
+his opponents. He smiled at them; he saw no reason for supposing that
+they did not mean quite as well as he did, possibly better. What he
+_did_ see reason to doubt, was their judgment. His tolerance was urbane
+and superior. On all questions, however, whether he knew much about them
+or little, his judgment was final and absolute. He swept away whole
+systems of thought that had shaken the world, with a confident phrase.
+Miss Du Prel looked at him with increasing amazement. He seemed
+unaccustomed to opposition.
+
+"A vast deal of nonsense is talked in the name of philosophy," he
+observed, in a tone of gay self-confidence peculiar to him, and more
+indicative of character than even what he said. "People seem to think
+that they have only to quote Spencer or Huxley, or take an interest in
+heredity, to justify themselves in throwing off all the trammels, as
+they would regard them, of duty and common sense."
+
+"I have not observed that tendency," said Miss Du Prel.
+
+"Really. I regret to say that I notice everywhere a disposition to evade
+responsibilities which, in former days, would have been honestly and
+contentedly accepted."
+
+"Our standards are all changing," said Miss Du Prel. "It does not follow
+that they are changing for the worse."
+
+"It seems to me that they are not so much changing, as disappearing
+altogether," said Temperley cheerfully, "especially among women. We hear
+a great deal about rights, but we hear nothing about duties."
+
+"We are perhaps, a little tired of hearing about duties," said Miss Du
+Prel.
+
+"You admit then what I say," he returned placidly. "Every woman wants to
+be Mary, and no one will be Martha."
+
+"I make just the opposite complaint," cried Miss Du Prel.
+
+"Dear me, quite a different way of looking at it. I confess I have scant
+patience with these interfering women, who want to turn everything
+upside down, instead of quietly minding their duties at home."
+
+"I know it is difficult to make people understand," said Miss Du Prel,
+with malice.
+
+"I should esteem it a favour to be enlightened," returned Temperley.
+
+"You were just now condemning socialism, Mr. Temperley, because you say
+that it attempts to ignore the principle of the division of labour. Now,
+when you lose patience with the few women who are refusing to be
+Marthas, you ignore that principle yourself. You want all women to do
+exactly the same sort of work, irrespective of their ability or their
+bent of mind. May I ask why?"
+
+"Because I consider that is the kind of work for which they are best
+fitted," replied Temperley serenely.
+
+"Then _you_ are to be judge and jury in the case; _your_ opinion,
+not theirs, is to decide the matter. Supposing _I_ were to take upon
+myself to judge what _you_ were best fitted for, and were to claim,
+therefore, to decide for you what sort of life you should live, and what
+sort of work you should undertake----?"
+
+"I should feel every confidence in resigning myself to your able judgment,"
+said Temperley, with a low bow. Miss Du Prel laughed.
+
+"Ah," she said, "you are at present, on the conquering side, and can afford
+to jest on the subject."
+
+"It is no joke to jest with an able woman," he returned. "Seriously, I
+have considerable sympathy with your view, and no wish to treat it
+flippantly. But if I am to treat it seriously, I must admit frankly that
+I think you forget that, after all, _Nature_ has something to say in
+this matter."
+
+Engrossed in their conversation, they had, without thinking what they
+were doing, passed through the open gate at the end of the avenue, and
+walked on along the high road.
+
+Swarms of small birds flew out of the hedges, with a whirring sound, to
+settle further on, while an incessant chatter was kept up on each side.
+
+"I often think that modern women might take example from these little
+creatures," said Temperley, who, in common with many self-sufficient
+persons, was fond of recommending humility to others. "_They_ never
+attempt to shirk their lowly tasks on the plea of higher vocations. Not
+one turns from the path marked out by our great Mother, who also teaches
+her human children the same lesson of patient duty; but, alas! by them
+is less faithfully obeyed."
+
+"If our great Mother wanted instinct she should not have bestowed
+reason," said Miss Du Prel impatiently.
+
+Temperley had fallen into the dulcet strains of one who feels, not only
+that he stands as the champion of true wisdom and virtue, but that he is
+sure of support from the vast majority of his fellows. Miss Du Prel's
+brusqueness seemed to suit her less admirable _role_.
+
+Temperley was tolerant and regretful. If Miss Du Prel would think for a
+moment, she could not fail to see that Nature ... and so forth, in the
+same strain of "pious devotion to other people's duties" as his
+companion afterwards described it. She chafed at the exhortation to
+"think for a moment."
+
+At that instant, the solitude was broken by the apparition of a dusty
+wayfarer in knickerbockers and soft felt hat, coming towards them up the
+road. He was a man of middle height and rather slim. He appeared about
+five-and-thirty years of age. He had fair hair, and a strange, whimsical
+face, irregular of feature, with a small moustache covering the upper
+lip.
+
+Miss Du Prel looked startled, as she caught sight of the travel-stained
+figure. She flushed deeply, and her expression changed to one of
+bewilderment and uncertainty, then to one of incredulous joy. She
+hastened forward, at length, and arrested the wayfarer.
+
+"Professor Fortescue, don't you remember me?" she cried excitedly.
+
+He gazed at her for a second, and then a look of amazement came into his
+kind eyes, as he held out his hand.
+
+"Miss Du Prel! This is incredible!"
+
+They stood, with hand locked in hand, staring at one another. "By what
+happy misunderstanding am I thus favoured by the gods?" exclaimed the
+Professor.
+
+Miss Du Prel explained her presence.
+
+"Prodigious!" cried Professor Fortescue. "Fate must have some strange
+plots in the making, unless indeed we fall to the discouraging
+supposition that she deigns to jest."
+
+He said that he was on a walking tour, studying the geology of the
+district, and that he had written to announce his coming to his old
+friends, Mr. and Mrs. Fullerton, and to ask them to put him up. He
+supposed that they were expecting him.
+
+Miss Du Prel was greatly excited. It was so long since they had met, and
+it was so delightful to meet again. She had a hundred enquiries to make
+about common friends, and about the Professor's own doings.
+
+She forgot Temperley's name, and her introduction was vague. The
+Professor held out his hand cordially. Temperley was not allowed to feel
+an intrusive third. This was in consequence of the new-comer's
+kindliness of manner, and not at all because of Miss Du Prel, who had
+forgotten Temperley's elegant existence. She had a look of surprise when
+he joined in the conversation.
+
+"I can scarcely believe that it is ten years since I was here," cried
+the Professor, pausing to look over a gate at the stretch of country.
+
+"I used to visit my friends at Dunaghee every autumn, and now if some
+one were to assure me that I had been to sleep and dreamt a ten years'
+dream, I should be disposed to credit it. Every detail the same; the
+very cattle, the very birds--surely just those identical sparrows used
+to fly before me along the hedgerows, in the good old times, ten years
+ago! Ah! yes, it is only the human element that changes."
+
+"One is often so thankful for a change in that," Temperley remarked,
+with an urbane sort of cynicism.
+
+"True," said Miss Du Prel; "but what is so discouraging is that so often
+the charm goes, like the bloom of a peach, and only the qualities that
+one regrets remain and prosper."
+
+"I think people improve with time, as often as they fall off," said the
+Professor.
+
+The others shook their heads.
+
+"To him that hath shall be given, but to him that hath not----" The
+Professor smiled a little sadly, in quoting the significant words.
+"Well, well," he said, turning to Miss Du Prel, "I can't say how happy I
+am to see you again. I have not yet got over my surprise. And so you
+have made the acquaintance of the family at Dunaghee. I have the warmest
+respect and affection for those dear folks. Mrs. Fullerton has the
+qualities of a heroine, kind hostess as she is! And of what fine
+Scottish stuff the old man is made--and a mind like crystal! What
+arguments we used to have in that old study of his! I can see him now.
+And how genial! A man could never forget it, who had once received his
+welcome."
+
+Such was Miss Du Prel's impression, when ten minutes later the meeting
+took place between the Professor and his old friend.
+
+It would indeed have been hard to be anything but genial to the
+Professor. Hadria remembered him and his kindness to her and the rest of
+the children, in the old days; the stories he used to tell when he took
+them for walks, stories full of natural lore more marvellous than any
+fairy tale, though he could tell fairy tales too, by the dozen. He had
+seemed to them like some wonderful and benevolent magician, and they
+adored him, one and all. And what friends he used to be with Ruffian,
+the brown retriever, and with every living creature on the place!
+
+The tennis-party began to break up, shortly after the Professor's
+arrival. Temperley lingered to the last.
+
+"Is that a son of the celebrated Judge Temperley?" asked one of the
+bystanders.
+
+"His eldest son," answered Mr. Gordon; "a man who ought to make his
+mark, for he has splendid chances and good ability."
+
+"I have scarcely had a word with you, the whole afternoon," Temperley
+said to Hadria, who had sunk upon a seat, tired with making herself
+agreeable, as she observed.
+
+"That is very sad; but when one has social gatherings, one never does
+have a word with anybody. I think that must be the object of them--to
+accustom people to do without human sympathy."
+
+Temperley tried to start a conversation, taking a place beside her, on
+the seat, and setting himself to draw her out. It was obvious that he
+found her interesting, either as a study or in a less impersonal sense.
+Hadria, feeling that her character was being analysed, did what many
+people do without realizing it: she instinctively arranged its lights
+and shades with a view to artistic effect. It was not till late that
+night, when the events of the day passed before her in procession, that
+she recognized what she had done, and laughed at herself. She had not
+attempted to appear in a better light than she deserved; quite as often
+as not, she submitted to appear in a worse light; her effort had been to
+satisfy some innate sense of proportion or form. The instinct puzzled
+her.
+
+Also she became aware that she was interested in Hubert Temperley. Or
+was it that she was interested in his interest in her? She could not be
+certain. She thought it was direct interest. She felt eager to know more
+of him; above all, to hear him play.
+
+On returning to the house, after Temperley had, at last, felt compelled
+to depart, Hadria found her father and mother and their guest, gathered
+together before the cheery fire in the study. Hearing his daughter's
+step, her father opened the door and called her in. Till now, the
+Professor had not seen her, having been hurried into the house, to
+change his clothes and have something to eat.
+
+As she entered, rather shyly, he rose and gave a gasp of astonishment.
+
+"You mean to tell me that this is the little girl who used to take me
+for walks, and who had such an inordinate appetite for stories! Good
+heavens, it is incredible!"
+
+He held out a thin, finely-formed hand, with a kind smile.
+
+"They change so much at that age, in a short time," said Mrs. Fullerton,
+with a glance of pride; for her daughter was looking brilliantly
+handsome, as she stood before them, with flushed cheeks and a soft
+expression, which the mere tones of the Professor's voice had power to
+summon in most human faces. He looked at her thoughtfully, and then
+rousing himself, he brought up a chair for her, and the group settled
+again before the fire.
+
+"Do you know," said the Professor, "I was turning into a French
+sweet-shop the other day, to buy my usual tribute for the children, when
+I suddenly remembered that they would no longer be children, and had to
+march out again, crestfallen, musing on the march of time and the
+mutability of things human--especially children."
+
+"It's ridiculous," cried Mr. Fullerton. "I am always lecturing them
+about it, but they go on growing just the same."
+
+"And how they make you feel an old fogey before you know where you are!
+And I thought I was quite a gay young fellow, upon my word!"
+
+"You, my dear Chantrey! why you'd be a gay young fellow at ninety!" said
+Mr. Fullerton.
+
+The Professor laughed and shook his head.
+
+"And so this is really my little playfellow!" he exclaimed, nodding
+meditatively. "I remember her so well; a queer, fantastic little being
+in those days, with hair like a black cloud, and eyes that seemed to
+peer out of the cloud, with a perfect passion of enquiry. She used to
+bewilder me, I remember, with her strange, wise little sayings! I always
+prophesied great things from her! Ernest, too, I remember: a fine little
+chap with curly, dark hair--rather like a young Italian, but with
+features less broadly cast; drawn together and calmed by his northern
+blood. Yes, yes; it seems but yesterday," he said, with a smile and a
+sigh; "and now my little Italian is at college, with a bored manner and
+a high collar."
+
+"Oh, no; Ernest's a dear boy still," cried Hadria. "Oxford hasn't spoilt
+him a bit. I do wish he was at home for you to see him."
+
+"Ah! you mustn't hint at anything against Ernest in Hadria's presence!"
+cried Mr. Fullerton, with an approving laugh.
+
+"Not for the world!" rejoined the Professor. "I was only recalling one
+or two of my young Oxford acquaintances. I might have known that a
+Fullerton had too much stuff in him to make an idiot of himself in that
+way."
+
+"The boy has distinguished himself too," said Mr. Fullerton.
+
+"Everyone says he will do splendidly," added the mother; "and you can't
+think how modest he is about himself, and how anxious to do well, and to
+please us by his success."
+
+"Ah! that's good."
+
+The Professor was full of sympathy. Hadria was astonished to see how
+animated her mother had become under his influence.
+
+They fell again to recalling old times; little trivial incidents which
+had seemed so unimportant at the moment, but now carried a whole epoch
+with them, bringing back, with a rush, the genial memories. Hadria
+remembered that soon after his last visit, the Professor had married a
+beautiful wife, and that about a year or so later, the wife had died. It
+was said that she had killed herself. This set Hadria speculating.
+
+The visitor reminded his companions of various absurd incidents of the
+past, sending Mr. Fullerton into paroxysms of laughter that made the
+whole party laugh in sympathy. Mrs. Fullerton too was already wiping her
+streaming eyes as the Professor talked on in his old vein, with just
+that particular little humourous manner of his that won its way so
+surely to the hearts of his listeners. For a moment, in the midst of the
+bright talk and the mirth that he had created, the Professor lost the
+thread, and his face, as he stared into the glowing centre of the fire,
+had a desolate look; but it was so quick to pass away that one might
+have thought oneself the victim of a fancy. His was the next chuckle,
+and "Do you remember that day when----?" and so forth, Mr. Fullerton's
+healthy roar following, avalanche-like, upon the reminiscence.
+
+"We thought him a good and kind magician when we were children," was
+Hadria's thought, "and now one is grown up, there is no disillusion. He
+is a good and kind magician still."
+
+He seemed indeed to have the power to conjure forth from their
+hiding-places, the finer qualities of mind and temperament, which had
+lain dormant, perhaps for years, buried beneath daily accumulations of
+little cares and little habits. The creature that had once looked forth
+on the world, fresh and vital, was summoned again, to his own surprise,
+with all his ancient laughter and his tears.
+
+"This man," Hadria said to herself, drawing a long, relieved breath, "is
+the best and the most generous human being I have ever met."
+
+She went to sleep, that night, with a sweet sense of rest and security,
+and an undefined new hope. If such natures were in existence, then there
+must be a great source of goodness and tenderness somewhere in heaven or
+earth, and the battle of life must be worth the fighting.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+The Professor's presence in the house had a profound influence on the
+inmates, one and all. The effect upon his hostess was startling. He drew
+forth her intellect, her sense of humour, her starved poetic sense; he
+probed down among the dust and rust of years, and rescued triumphantly
+the real woman, who was being stifled to death, with her own connivance.
+
+Hadria was amazed to see how the new-comer might express any idea he
+pleased, however heterodox, and her mother only applauded.
+
+His manner to her was exquisitely courteous. He seemed to understand all
+that she had lost in her life, all its disappointments and sacrifices.
+
+On hearing that Miss Du Prel was among the Professor's oldest friends,
+Mrs. Fullerton became suddenly cordial to that lady, and could not show
+her enough attention. The evenings were often spent in music, Temperley
+being sometimes of the party. He was the only person not obviously among
+the Professor's admirers.
+
+"However cultivated or charming a person may be," Temperley said to
+Hadria, "I never feel that I have found a kindred spirit, unless the
+musical instinct is strong."
+
+"Nor I."
+
+"Professor Fortescue has just that one weak point."
+
+"Oh, but he is musical, though his technical knowledge is small."
+
+But Temperley smiled dubiously.
+
+The Professor, freed from his customary hard work, was like a schoolboy.
+His delight in the open air, in the freshness of the hills, in the
+peace of the mellow autumn, was never-ending.
+
+He loved to take a walk before breakfast, so as to enjoy the first
+sweetness of the morning; to bathe in some clear pool of the river; to
+come into healthy contact with Nature. Never was there a brighter or a
+wholesomer spirit. Yet the more Hadria studied this clear, and vigorous,
+and tender nature, the more she felt, in him, the absence of that
+particular personal hold on life which so few human beings are without,
+a grip usually so hard to loosen, that only the severest experience, and
+the deepest sorrow have power to destroy it.
+
+Hadria's letters to her sister, at this time, were full of enthusiasm.
+"You cannot imagine what it is, or perhaps you _can_ imagine what it
+is to have the society of three such people as I now see almost every day.
+
+"You say I represent them as impossible angels, such as earth never
+beheld, but you are wrong. I represent them as they are. I suppose the
+Professor has faults--though he does not show them to us--they must be
+of the generous kind, at any rate. Father says that he never could keep
+a farthing; he would always give it away to undeserving people. Miss Du
+Prel, I find on closer acquaintance, is not without certain jealousies
+and weaknesses, but these things just seem to float about as gossamer on
+a mountain-side, and one counts them in relation to herself, in about
+the same proportion. Mr. Temperley--I don't know quite what to say about
+him. He is a tiny bit too precise and finished perhaps--a little wanting
+in _elan_--but he seems very enlightened and full of polite information;
+and ah, his music! When he is playing I am completely carried away. If
+he said then, 'Miss Fullerton, may I have the pleasure of your society
+in the infernal regions?' I should arise and take his arm and reply,
+'Delighted,' and off we would march. But what am I saying? Mr. Temperley
+would never ask anything so absurd.
+
+"You would have thought that when Miss Du Prel and Professor Fortescue
+arrived on the scene, I had about enough privileges; but no, Destiny,
+waking up at last to her duties, remembers that I have a maniacal
+passion for music, and that this has been starved. So she hastens to
+provide for me a fellow maniac, a brother in Beethoven, who comes and
+fills my world with music and my soul with----But I must not rave. The
+music is still in my veins; I am not in a fit state to write reasonable
+letters. Here comes Mr. Temperley for our practice. No more for the
+present."
+
+Temperley would often talk to Hadria of his early life, and about his
+mother and sister. Of his mother he spoke with great respect and
+affection, the respect perhaps somewhat conventional, and allowing one
+to see, through its meshes, the simple fact that she was looked up to as
+a good and dutiful parent, who had worshipped her son from his birth,
+and perfectly fulfilled his ideas of feminine excellency. From her he
+had learnt the lesser Catechism and the Lord's Prayer, since discarded,
+but useful in their proper season. Although he had ceased to be an
+orthodox Christian, he felt that he was the better for having been
+trained in that creed. He had a perfect faith in the system which had
+produced himself.
+
+"I think you would like my mother," said Temperley.
+
+Hadria could scarcely dispute this.
+
+"And I am sure she would like you."
+
+"On that point I cannot offer an opinion."
+
+"Don't you ever come to town?" he asked.
+
+"We go to Edinburgh occasionally," she replied with malice, knowing that
+he meant London.
+
+He set her right.
+
+"No; my father hates London, and mother never goes away without him."
+
+"What a pity! But do you never visit friends in town?"
+
+"Yes; my sister and I have spent one or two seasons in Park Lane, with
+some cousins."
+
+"Why don't you come this next season? You ought to hear some good
+music."
+
+The _tete-a-tete_ was interrupted by the Professor. Temperley looked
+annoyed. It struck Hadria that Professor Fortescue had a very sad
+expression when he was not speaking. He seemed to her lonely, and in
+need of the sort of comfort that he brought so liberally to others.
+
+Although he had talked to Hadria about a thousand topics in which they
+were both interested, there had been nothing personal in their
+conversation. He was disposed, at times, to treat her in a spirit of
+affectionate banter.
+
+"To think that I should ever have dared to offer this young lady
+acidulated drops!" he exclaimed on one occasion, when Hadria was looking
+flushed and perturbed.
+
+"Ah! shall I ever forget those acidulated drops!" she cried,
+brightening.
+
+"You don't mean to say that you would stoop to them now?"
+
+"It is not one's oldest friends who always know one best," she replied
+demurely.
+
+"I shall test you," he said.
+
+And on that same day, he walked into Ballochcoil, and when he returned,
+he offered her, with a solemn twinkle in his eye, a good-sized paper bag
+of the seductive sweetmeat; taking up his position on the top of a low
+dyke, and watching her, while she proceeded to make of that plump white
+bag, a lank and emaciated bag, surprising to behold. He sat and looked
+on, enjoying his idleness with the zest of a hard worker. The twinkle of
+amusement faded gradually from his face, and the sadness that Hadria had
+noticed the day before, returned to his eyes. She was leaning against
+the dyke, pensively enjoying her festive meal. The dark fresh blue of
+her gown, and the unwonted tinge of colour in her cheeks, gave a
+vigorous and healthful impression, in harmony with the weather-beaten
+stones and the windy breadth of the northern landscape.
+
+The Professor studied the face with a puzzled frown. He flattered
+himself that he was a subtle physiognomist, but in this case, he would
+not have dared to pronounce judgment. Danger and difficulty might have
+been predicted, for it was a moving face, one that could not be looked
+upon quite coldly. And the Professor had come to the conclusion, from
+his experience of life, that the instinct of the average human being
+whom another has stirred to strong emotion, is to fasten upon and
+overwhelm that luckless person, to burden him with responsibilities, to
+claim as much of time, and energy, and existence, as can in any way be
+wrung from him, careless of the cost to the giver.
+
+Professor Fortescue noticed, as Hadria looked down, a peculiar
+dreaminess of expression, and something indefinable, which suggested a
+profoundly emotional nature. At present, the expression was softened.
+That this softness was not altogether trustworthy, however, the
+Professor felt sure, for he had seen, at moments, when something had
+deeply stirred her, expressions anything but soft come into her face.
+He thought her capable of many things of which the well-brought-up young
+Englishwoman is not supposed to dream. It seemed to him, that she had at
+least two distinct natures that were at war with one another: the one
+greedy and pleasure-loving, careless and even reckless; the other
+deep-seeing and aspiring. But which of these two tendencies would
+experience probably foster?
+
+"I wonder what you like best, next to acidulated drops," he said at
+length, with one of his half-bantering smiles.
+
+"There are few things in this wide world that can be mentioned in the
+same breath with them, but toffy also has its potency upon the spirit."
+
+"I like not this mocking tone."
+
+"Then I will not mock," she said.
+
+"Yes, Hadria," he went on meditatively, "you have grown up, if an old
+friend may make such remarks, very much as I expected, from the promise
+of your childhood. You used to puzzle me even then."
+
+"Do I puzzle you now?" she asked.
+
+"Inexpressibly!"
+
+"How amusing! But how?"
+
+"One can generally see at a glance, or pretty soon, the general trend of
+a character. But not with you. Nothing that I might hear of you in the
+future, would very much surprise me. I should say to myself, 'Yes, the
+germ was there.'"
+
+Hadria paled a little. "Either good or bad you mean?"
+
+"Well----"
+
+"Yes, I understand." She drew herself together, crossing her arms, and
+looking over the hills, with eyes that burned with a sort of fear and
+defiance mingled. It was a singular expression, which the Professor
+noted with a sense of discomfort.
+
+Hadria slowly withdrew her eyes from the horizon, and bent them on the
+ground.
+
+"You must have read some of my thoughts," she said. "I often wonder how
+it is, that the world can drill women into goodness at all." She raised
+her head, and went on in a low, bitter tone: "I often wonder why it is,
+that they don't, one and all, fling up their _roles_ and revenge
+themselves to the best of their ability--intentionally, I mean--upon the
+world that makes them live under a permanent insult. I think, at times,
+that I should thoroughly enjoy spending my life in sheer, unmitigated
+vengeance, and if I did"--she clenched her hands, and her eyes
+blazed--"if I did, I would not do my work by halves!"
+
+"I am sure you would not," said the Professor dryly.
+
+"But I shall not do anything of the kind," she added in a different
+tone; "women don't. They always try to be good, always, _always_--the
+more fools they! And the more they are good, the worse things get."
+
+"Ah! I thought there was some heterodox sentiment lurking here at high
+pressure!" exclaimed the Professor.
+
+Hadria sighed. "I have just been receiving good advice from Mrs.
+Gordon," she said, flushing at the remembrance, "and I think if you knew
+the sort of counsel it was, that you would understand one's feeling a
+little fierce and bitter. Oh, not with her, poor woman! She meant it in
+kindness. But the most cutting thing of all is, that what she said is
+_true!_"
+
+"That _is_ exactly the worst thing," said the Professor, who seemed to
+have divined the nature of Mrs. Gordon's advice.
+
+Hadria coloured. It hurt as well as astonished her, that he should guess
+what had been said.
+
+"Ah! a woman ought to be born without pride, or not at all! I wish to
+heaven that our fatal sex could be utterly stamped out!"
+
+The Professor smiled, a little sadly, at her vehemence.
+
+"We are accused of being at the bottom of every evil under heaven," she
+added, "and I think it is true. _That_ is some consolation, at any
+rate!"
+
+In spite of her immense reverence for the Professor, she seemed to have
+grown reckless as to his opinion.
+
+The next few days went strangely, and not altogether comprehensibly.
+There was a silent warfare between Professor Fortescue and Hubert
+Temperley.
+
+"I have never in my life before ventured to interfere in such matters,"
+the Professor said to Miss Du Prel; "but if that fellow marries Hadria,
+one or both will live to rue it."
+
+"I think it's the best thing that could happen to her," Miss Du Prel
+declared.
+
+"But they are not suited to one another," said the Professor.
+
+"Men and women seldom are!"
+
+"Then why----?" the Professor began.
+
+"He is about as near as she will get," Valeria interrupted. "I will
+never stand in the way of a girl's marrying a good, honest man. There is
+not one chance in ten thousand that Hadria will happen to meet exactly
+the right person. I have made a mistake in my life. I shall do all in my
+power to urge her to avoid following in my footsteps."
+
+It was useless for the Professor to remonstrate.
+
+"I pity Mr. Temperley, though I am so fond of Hadria," said Miss Du
+Prel. "If he shatters _her_ illusions, she will certainly shatter
+_his_."
+
+The event that they had been expecting, took place. During one of the
+afternoon practices, when, for a few minutes, Mrs. Fullerton had left
+the room, Temperley startled Hadria by an extremely elegant proposal of
+marriage. He did not seem surprised at her refusal, though he pleaded
+his cause with no little eloquence. Hadria found it a painful ordeal.
+She shrank from the ungracious necessity to disappoint what appeared to
+be a very ardent hope. Happily, the interview was cut short by the
+entrance of Mr. Fullerton. The old man was not remarkable for _finesse_.
+He gave a dismayed "Oh!" He coughed, suppressed a smile, and murmuring
+some lame enquiry as to the progress of the music, turned and marched
+out of the room. The sound of laughter was presently heard from the
+dining-room below.
+
+"Father is really too absurd!" cried Hadria, "there is _no_ tragedy that
+he is incapable of roaring at!"
+
+"I fear his daughter takes after him," said Temperley with a tragi-comic
+smile.
+
+When Hadria next met her father, he asked, with perfect but suspicious
+gravity, about the music that they had been practising that afternoon.
+He could not speak too highly of music as a pastime. He regretted having
+rushed in as he did--it must have been so disturbing to the music. Why
+not have a notice put up outside the door on these occasions: "Engaged"?
+Then the meanest intelligence would understand, and the meanest
+intelligence was really a thing one had to count with, in this
+blundering world!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+Hubert Temperley left Drumgarren suddenly. He said that he had business
+to attend to in town.
+
+"That foolish girl has refused him!" exclaimed Valeria, when she heard
+of it.
+
+"Thank heaven!" ejaculated Professor Fortescue.
+
+Valeria's brow clouded. "Why are you so anxious about the matter?"
+
+"Because I know that a marriage between those two would end in misery."
+
+Valeria spoke very seriously to Hadria on the subject of marriage,
+urging the importance of it, and the wretchedness of growing old in
+solitude.
+
+"Better even that, than to grow old in uncongenial company," said
+Hadria.
+
+Valeria shrugged her shoulders. "One could go away when it became
+oppressive," she suggested, at which Hadria laughed.
+
+"What an ideal existence!"
+
+"Are you still dreaming of an ideal existence?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Well, dream while you may," said Miss Du Prel. "My time of dreaming was
+the happiest of all."
+
+On one occasion, when Hadria and the Professor went to call at Craw
+Gill, they found Miss Du Prel in the gloomiest of moods. Affection,
+love?--the very blood and bones of tragedy. Solitude, indifference?--its
+heart. And if for men the world was a delusion, for women it was a
+torture-chamber. Nature was dead against them.
+
+"Why do you say that?" asked Hadria.
+
+"Because of the blundering, merciless way she has made us; because of
+the needs that she has put into our hearts, and the preposterous payment
+that she demands for their fulfilment; because of the equally
+preposterous payment she exacts, if we elect to do without that which
+she teaches us to yearn for."
+
+Professor Fortescue, admitting the dilemma, laid the blame on the
+stupidity of mankind.
+
+The discussion was excited, for Valeria would not allow the guilt to be
+thus shifted. In vain the Professor urged that Nature offers a large
+choice to humanity, for the developing, balancing, annulling of its
+various forces of good and evil, and that it is only when the choice is
+made that heredity steps in and fixes it. This process simulates
+Necessity, or what we call Nature. "Heredity may be a powerful friend,
+or a bitter enemy, according as we treat her," he said.
+
+"Then our sex must have treated her very badly!" cried Miss Du Prel.
+
+"Or _our_ sex must have obliged yours to treat her badly, which comes
+to the same thing," said the Professor.
+
+They had agreed to take a walk by the river, towards Ballochcoil. It was
+hoped that the fresh air and sunshine would cheer Miss Du Prel. The
+Professor led the conversation to her favourite topic: ancient Greek
+literature, but this only inspired her to quote the discouraging opinion
+of the _Medea_ of Euripedes.
+
+The Professor laughed. "I see it is a really bad attack," he said. "I
+sympathize. I have these inconsolable moods myself, sometimes."
+
+They came upon the Greek temple on the cliff-side, and paused there to
+rest, for a few minutes. It was too cold to linger long under the
+slender columns. They walked on, till they came in sight of the bare
+little church of Ballochcoil.
+
+The Professor instinctively turned to compare the two buildings. "The
+contrast between them is so extraordinary!" he exclaimed.
+
+Nothing could have been more eloquent of the difference in the modes of
+thought which they respectively represented.
+
+"If only they had not made such fools of their women, I should like to
+have lived at Athens in the time of Pericles!" exclaimed Hadria.
+
+"I," said Valeria, "would choose rather the Middle Ages, with their
+mysticism and their romance."
+
+The discussion on this point continued till the church was reached. A
+psalm was being sung, in a harsh but devout fashion, by the
+congregation. The sound managed to find its way to the sweet outer air,
+though the ugly rectangular windows were all jealously closed against
+its beneficence.
+
+The sky had become overcast, and a few drops of rain having given
+warning of a shower, it was thought advisable to take shelter in the
+porch, till it was over. The psalm was ground out slowly, and with
+apparent fervour, to the end.
+
+Then the voice of the minister was heard wrestling in prayer.
+
+The Professor looked grave and sad, as he stood listening. It was
+possible to hear almost all the prayer through the red baize door, and
+the words, hackneyed though they were, and almost absurd in their pious
+sing-song, had a naif impressiveness and, to the listener, an intense
+pathos.
+
+The minister prayed for help and comfort for his congregation. There had
+been much sickness in the village during the summer, and many were in
+trouble. The good man put forth his petition to the merciful and mighty
+Father, that strength might be given to the sufferers to bear all that
+was sent in chastisement, for they knew that nothing would be given
+beyond their ability to endure. He assured the great and mighty Lord
+that He had power to succour, and that His love was without end; he
+prayed that as His might and His glory were limitless, so might His
+mercy be to the miserable sinners who had offended Him.
+
+Age after age, this same prayer, in different forms, had besieged the
+throne of heaven. Age after age, the spirit of man had sought for help,
+and mercy, and inspiration, in the Power that was felt, or imagined,
+behind the veil of mystery.
+
+From the village at the foot of the hill, vague sounds floated up, and
+presently, among them and above them, could be heard the yelping and
+howling of a dog.
+
+The minister, at the moment, was glorifying his Creator and his race at
+the same time, by addressing Him as "Thou who hast given unto us, Thy
+servants, dominion over the beasts of the field and over every living
+thing, that they may serve us and minister unto us----"
+
+Again, and more loudly, came the cry of distress.
+
+"I must go and see what is the matter," exclaimed the Professor. At the
+moment, the howling suddenly ceased, and he paused. The minister was
+still appealing to his God for mercy. "Out of the deep have I cried unto
+Thee, O Lord----," and then there was a general prayer, in which the
+voices of the congregation joined. Some more singing and praying took
+place, before the sound of a sudden rush and movement announced the
+conclusion of the service.
+
+"We had better go," said Miss Du Prel.
+
+They had no more than time to leave the porch, before the doors burst
+open, and the people streamed forth. A whiff of evil-smelling air issued
+from the building, at the same time. The dog was howling more piteously
+than ever. Someone complained of the disturbance that had been caused by
+the creature's cries, during worship. The congregation continued to pour
+out, dividing into little groups to discuss the sermon or something of
+more mundane interest. An appearance of superhuman respectability
+pervaded the whole body. The important people, some of whom had their
+carriages waiting to drive them home, lingered a few moments, to
+exchange greetings, and to discuss sporting prospects or achievements.
+Meanwhile, one of the creatures over whom God had given them dominion,
+was wailing in vain appeal.
+
+"I can't stand this," cried the Professor, and he started off.
+
+"I will come too," Hadria announced. Miss Du Prel said that she could
+not endure the sight of suffering, and would await their return.
+
+And then occurred the incident that made this afternoon memorable to
+Hadria. In her last letter to her sister, she had said that she could
+not imagine the Professor contemptuous or angry. She had reason now to
+change her mind. His face was at once scornful and sad. For a moment,
+Hadria thought that he was displeased with her.
+
+"I sometimes feel," he said, with a scornful bitterness that she had not
+suspected in him, "I sometimes feel that this precious humanity of ours
+that we are eternally worshipping and exalting, is but a mean, miserable
+thing, after all, not worth a moment's care or effort. One's sympathy is
+wasted. Look at these good people whining to their heavenly Father about
+their own hurts, craving for a pity of which they have not a spark
+themselves!--puffed up with their little lordship over the poor beasts
+that they do not hesitate to tear, and hurt, and torture, for their own
+pleasure, or their own benefit,--to whom they, in their turn, love to
+play the God. Cowards! And having used their Godhead for purposes of
+cruelty, they fling themselves howling on their knees before their
+Almighty Deity and beg for mercy, which He too knows how to refuse!"
+
+"Thank heaven!" exclaimed Hadria. She drew a deep sigh of relief.
+Without precisely realizing the fact, she had been gradually sinking
+into an unformulated conviction that human beings are, at heart,
+ruthless and hard, as soon as they are brought beyond the range of
+familiar moral claims, which have to be respected on pain of popular
+censure. Self-initiated pity was nowhere to be found. The merciless
+coldness of many excellent people (kind and tender, perhaps, within
+these accepted limits) had often chilled her to the heart, and prompted
+a miserable doubt of the eventual victory of good over evil in the
+world, which her father always insisted was ruled by mere brute force,
+and would be so ruled to the end of time. She had tried to find a wider,
+more generous, and less conventional standard in her oracle, Miss Du
+Prel, but to her bitter disappointment, that lady had shrugged her
+shoulders a little callously, as soon as she was asked to extend her
+sympathy outside the circle of chartered candidates for her merciful
+consideration. Hadria's hero-worship had suffered a severe rebuff. Now,
+as the Professor spoke, it was as if a voice from heaven had bidden her
+believe and hope fearlessly in her race, and in its destiny.
+
+"I had almost come to shrink a little from people," she said, "as from
+something cruel and savage, at heart, without a grain of real, untaught
+pity."
+
+"There is only just enough to swear by," said the Professor sadly. "We
+are a lot of half-tamed savages, after all, but we may be thankful that
+a capacity for almost infinite development is within us."
+
+"I wish to heaven we could get on a little faster," exclaimed Hadria.
+
+The incident proved, in the end, a fortunate one for the homeless, and
+almost starving terrier, of plebeian lineage, whose wail of distress had
+summoned two friends to the rescue. The creature had been ill-treated by
+some boys, who found Sunday afternoon hang heavy on their hands. The
+Professor carried the injured animal across the fields and through the
+woods, to Dunaghee.
+
+Here the wounds were dressed, and here the grateful creature found a new
+and blissful home. His devotion to the Professor was unbounded; he
+followed him everywhere.
+
+Hadria's reverence and admiration rose to the highest pitch of
+enthusiasm. Her father laughed at her. "Just as if any decent fellow
+would not have done as much for a wounded brute!"
+
+"There must have been a strange dearth of decent fellows in church that
+morning then."
+
+It was not merely the action, but the feeling revealed by the
+Professor's words on that occasion, that had turned Hadria's sentiment
+towards him, into one of worship.
+
+Algitha warned her that even the Professor was human.
+
+Hadria said she did not believe it, or rather she believed that he was
+inordinately, tenderly, superlatively human, and that he had gone many
+steps farther in that direction than the rest of his generation. He was
+dowered with instincts and perceptions belonging to some kinder, nobler
+race than ours.
+
+Miss Du Prel looked grave. She took occasion to mention that the
+Professor had never ceased to grieve for his wife, to whom he had been
+passionately attached, and that he, almost alone among men, would never
+love any other woman.
+
+"I admire him only the more for that," said Hadria.
+
+"Don't let yourself care too much for him."
+
+"Too much!"
+
+"Don't fall in love with him, if I must be frank."
+
+Hadria was silent. "If one _were_ to fall in love at all, I don't see
+how it would be possible to avoid his being the man," she pronounced at
+last. "I defy any creature with the least vestige of a heart to remain
+indifferent to him." (Valeria coloured.) "Why there isn't a man, woman,
+child, or animal about the place who doesn't adore him; and what can _I_
+do?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+The autumn was now on the wane; the robins sang clear, wild little songs
+in the shrubberies, the sunshine fell slanting across the grass. And at
+night, the stars twinkled with a frosty brilliancy, and the flowers were
+cut down by cruel invisible hands. The long dark evenings and the
+shrieking winds of winter were before them.
+
+With the shortening of the days, and the sweeping away of great shoals
+of leaves, in the frequent gales, Miss Du Prel's mood grew more and more
+sombre. At last she announced that she could stand the gloom of this
+wild North no longer. She had made arrangements to return to London, on
+the morrow. As suddenly as she had appeared on the scene, she vanished,
+leaving but one day to grieve at the prospect of parting.
+
+It was through an accidental turn in the conversation, on this last day,
+that the difference between her creed and the Professor's was brought to
+light, accounting to Hadria for many things, and increasing, if
+possible, her admiration for the unconscious Professor.
+
+As for her own private and personal justification for hope, Valeria
+asserted that she had none. Not even the thought of her work--usually a
+talisman against depression--had any power to comfort. Who cared for her
+work, unless she perjured herself, and told the lies that the public
+loved to hear?
+
+"What should we all do," asked Hadria, "if there were not a few people
+like you and Professor Fortescue, in the world, to keep us true to our
+best selves, and to point to something infinitely better than that
+best?"
+
+Miss Du Prel brightened for a moment.
+
+"What does it matter if you do not provide mental food for the crowd,
+seeking nourishment for their vulgarity? Let them go starve."
+
+"But they don't; they go and gorge elsewhere. Besides, the question of
+starvation faces _me_ rather than them."
+
+Miss Du Prel was still disposed to find fault with the general scheme of
+things, which she regarded as responsible for her own woes, great and
+little. Survival of the fittest! What was that but another name for the
+torture and massacre of the unfit? Nature's favourite instruments were
+war, slaughter, famine, misery (mental and physical), sacrifice and
+brutality in every form, with a special malignity in her treatment of
+the most highly developed and the noblest of the race.
+
+The Professor in vain pointed out that Valeria's own revolt against the
+brutality of Nature, was proof of some higher law in Nature, now in
+course of development.
+
+"The horror that is inspired in human beings by that brutality is just
+as much a part of Nature as the brutality itself," he said, and he
+insisted that the supreme business of man, was to evolve a scheme of
+life on a higher plane, wherein the weak shall not be forced to agonize
+for the strong, so far as mankind can intervene to prevent it. Let man
+follow the dictates of pity and generosity in his own soul. They would
+never lead him astray. While Miss Du Prel laid the whole blame upon
+natural law, the Professor impeached humanity. Men, he declared, cry out
+against the order of things, which they, in a large measure, have
+themselves created.
+
+"But, good heavens! the whole plan of life is one of rapine. _We_ did
+not fashion the spider to prey upon the fly, or the cat to play with the
+wounded mouse. _We_ did not ordain that the strong should fall upon the
+weak, and tear and torture them for their own benefit. Surely we are not
+responsible for the brutalities of the animal creation."
+
+"No, but we are responsible when we _imitate them_," said the Professor.
+
+Miss Du Prel somewhat inconsequently attempted to defend such imitation,
+on the ground that sacrifice is a law of life, a law of which she had
+just been bitterly complaining. But at this, the Professor would only
+laugh. His opponent indignantly cited scientific authority of the most
+solemn and weighty kind; the Professor shook his head. Familiarity with
+weighty scientific authorities had bred contempt.
+
+"Vicarious sacrifice!" he exclaimed, with a sudden outbreak of the scorn
+and impatience that Hadria had seen in him on one other occasion, "I
+never heard a doctrine more insane, more immoral, or more suicidal!"
+
+Miss Du Prel hugged herself in the thought of her long list of scouted
+authorities. They had assured her that our care of the weak, by
+interfering with the survival of the fittest, is injuring the race.
+
+"Go down into the slums of our great cities, or to the pestilential
+East, and there observe the survival of the fittest, undisturbed by
+human knowledge or human pity," recommended the Professor.
+
+Miss Du Prel failed to see how this proved anything more than bad
+general conditions.
+
+"It proves that however bad general conditions may be, _some_ wretches
+will always survive; the 'fittest,' of course, to endure filth and
+misery. Selection goes on without ceasing; but if the conditions are
+bad, the surviving type will be miserable. Mere unaided natural
+selection obviously cannot be trusted to produce a fine race."
+
+Nothing would convince Miss Du Prel that the preservation of weakly
+persons was not injurious to the community. To this the Professor
+replied, that what is lost by their salvation is more than paid back by
+the better conditions that secured it. The strong, he said, were
+strengthened and enabled to retain their strength by that which saves
+the lives of the weak.
+
+"Besides, do you suppose a race could gain, in the long run, by defiance
+of its best instincts? Never! If the laws of health in body and in mind
+were at variance, leaving us a hard choice between physical and moral
+disease, then indeed no despair could be too black. But all experience
+and all insight testify to the exact opposite. Heavens, how
+short-sighted people are! It is not the protection of the weak, but the
+evil and stupid deeds that have made them so, that we have to thank for
+the miseries of disease. And for our redemption--powers of the universe!
+it is not to the cowardly sacrifice of the unfortunate that we must
+trust, but to a more brotherly spirit of loyalty, a more generous
+treatment of all who are defenceless, a more faithful holding together
+among ourselves--weak and strong, favoured and luckless."
+
+Miss Du Prel was silent for a moment. Her sympathy but not her hope had
+been roused.
+
+"I wish I could believe in your scheme of redemption," she said; "but,
+alas! sacrifice has been the means of progress from the beginning of all
+things, and so I fear it will be to the end."
+
+"I don't know what it will be at the end," said the Professor, dryly;
+"for the present, I oppose with the whole strength of my belief and my
+conscience, the cowardly idea of surrendering individuals to the
+ferocity of a jealous and angry power, in the hope of currying favour
+for the rest. We might just as well set up national altars and sacrifice
+victims, after the franker fashion of the ancients. Morally, the
+principles are precisely the same."
+
+"Scarcely; for _our_ object is to benefit humanity."
+
+"And theirs. Poor humanity!" cried the Professor. "What crimes are we
+not ready to commit in thy name!"
+
+"That cannot be a crime which benefits mankind," argued Miss Du Prel.
+
+"It is very certain that it cannot eventually benefit mankind, if it
+_be_ a crime," he retorted.
+
+"This sequence of ideas makes one dizzy!" exclaimed Hadria.
+
+The Professor smiled. "Moreover," he added, "we know that society has
+formed the conditions of existence for each of her members; the whole
+material of his misfortune, if he be ill-born and ill-conditioned. Is
+society then to turn and rend her unlucky child whose misery was her
+own birthday gift? Shall we, who are only too ready, as it is, to
+trample upon others, in our haste and greed--shall we be encouraged in
+this savage selfishness by what dares to call itself science, to play
+one another false, instead of standing, with united front, to the powers
+of darkness, and scorning to betray our fellows, human or animal, in the
+contemptible hope of gaining by the treachery? Ah! you may quote
+authorities, wise and good, till you are hoarse!" cried the Professor,
+with a burst of energy; "but they will not convince me that black is
+white. I care not who may uphold the doctrine of vicarious sacrifice; it
+is monstrous, it is dastardly, it is _damnable!_"
+
+There are some sentences and some incidents that fix themselves, once
+for all, in the memory, often without apparent reason, to remain as an
+influence throughout life. In this fashion, the afternoon's discussion
+registered itself in the memory of the silent member of the trio.
+
+In her dreams that night, those three concluding and energetic
+adjectives played strange pranks, as, in dreams, words and phrases often
+will. Her deep regret at Miss Du Prel's departure, her dread of her own
+future, her growing sense of the torment, and horror, and sacrifice that
+form so large a part of the order of the world, all appeared to be
+united fantastically in malignant and threatening form, in the final
+words of the Professor: "It is monstrous, it is dastardly, it is
+damnable!" The agony of the whole earth seemed to hang over the sleeper,
+hovering and black and intolerable, crushing her with a sense of
+hopeless pity and fatigue.
+
+And on waking, though the absurd masquerading of words and thoughts had
+ceased, she was still weighed down with the horror of the dream, which
+she knew had a corresponding reality still more awful. And there was no
+adversary to all this anguish; everybody acquiesced, nay, everybody
+threw on yet another log to the martyr's pile, and coolly watched the
+hungry flames at their work, for "Nature," they all agreed, demanded
+sacrifice.
+
+It was in vain to turn for relief to the wise and good; the "wise"
+insisted on keeping up the altar fires that they might appease the
+blood-thirsty goddess by a continuous supply of victims (for the noble
+purpose of saving the others); the "good" trusted to the decision of the
+wise; they were humbly content to allow others to judge for them; for by
+this means would they not secure some of the spoils?
+
+No, no; there was no help anywhere on earth, no help, no help. So ran
+Hadria's thoughts, in the moments of vivid sensation, between sleeping
+and waking. "Suffering, sacrifice, oppression: there is nothing else
+under the sun, under the sun."
+
+Perhaps a brilliant beam that had found its way, like a message of
+mercy, through the blind, and shone straight on to the pillow, had
+suggested the form of the last thought.
+
+Hadria moved her hand into the ray, that she might feel the warmth and
+"the illusion of kindness."
+
+There was one person, and at the moment, only one, whose existence was
+comforting to remember. The hundreds of kind and good people, who were
+merely kind and good where popular sentiment expected or commended such
+conduct, gave no re-assurance; on the contrary, they proved the
+desperation of our plight, since wisdom and goodness themselves were
+busy at the savage work.
+
+When the party met at breakfast, an hour later, the Professor caused
+universal consternation, by announcing that he would be obliged to
+return to London on that very day, having received a letter, by the
+morning's post, which left him no choice. The very butler paused, for a
+perceptible period, while handing ham and eggs to the guest. Forks and
+knives were laid down; letters remained unopened.
+
+"It's no use your attempting to go, my dear Chantrey," said Mr.
+Fullerton, "we have grown accustomed to the luxury of your society, and
+we can't get on without it."
+
+But the Professor explained that his departure was inevitable, and that
+he must go by the morning train.
+
+He and Hadria had time for a short walk to the river, by the pathway of
+the tunnels.
+
+"What are your plans for the winter?" the Professor asked. "I hope that
+you will find time to develop your musical gift. It ought to be used and
+not wasted, or worse than wasted, as all forces are, unless they find
+their legitimate outlet. Don't be persuaded to do fancy embroidery, as a
+better mode of employing energy. You have peculiar advantages of a
+hereditary kind, if only you can get a reasonable chance to use them. I
+have unbounded faith in the Fullerton stock. It has all the elements
+that ought to produce powers of the highest order. You know I have
+always cherished a warm affection for your parents, but ten years more
+of experience have taught me better how to value that sterling sincerity
+and honour in your father, united with so much kindliness, not to
+mention his qualities of brain; and then your mother's strong sense of
+duty, her ability, her native love of art, and her wonderful devotion.
+These are qualities that one does not meet with every day, and the
+children of such parents start in life with splendid material to fashion
+into character and power."
+
+"Algitha will be worthy of our parents, I think," said Hadria, "though
+she has commenced her career by disobeying them."
+
+"And you too must turn your power to account."
+
+"You can't conceive how difficult it is."
+
+"I can very easily. I see that the sacrifice of her own development,
+which your mother has made for your sakes, is taking its inevitable
+revenge upon her, and upon you all. One can't doom one's best powers to
+decay, however excellent the motive, without bringing punishment upon
+oneself and one's children, in some form or other. You will have to
+fight against that penalty. I know you will not have a smooth time of
+it; but who has, except cowards and weaklings? Your safeguard will be in
+your work."
+
+"And my difficulty," said Hadria. "In the world that I was born into
+(for my sins), when one tries to do something that other people don't
+do, it is like trying to get up early in a house where the
+breakfast-hour is late. Nothing fits in with one's eccentric custom;
+everything conspires to discourage it."
+
+"I wish I could give you a helping hand," said the Professor wistfully;
+"but one is so powerless. Each of us has to fight the real battle of
+life alone. Nobody can see with our eyes, or feel with our nerves. The
+crux of the difficulty each bears for himself. But friendship can help
+us to believe the struggle worth while; it can sustain our courage and
+it can offer sympathy in victory,--but still more faithfully in
+defeat."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+Hadria had determined upon making a strong and patient effort to pursue
+her work during the winter, while doing her best, at the same time, to
+please her mother, and to make up to her, as well as she could, for
+Algitha's departure. She would not be dismayed by difficulties: as the
+Professor said, only cowards and weaklings escaped these. She treated
+herself austerely, and found her power of concentration increasing, and
+her hold on herself greater. But, as usual, her greatest effort had to
+be given, not to the work itself, but to win opportunity to pursue it.
+Mrs. Fullerton opposed her daughter's endeavours as firmly as ever. It
+was not good for a girl to be selfishly pre-occupied. She ought to think
+of others.
+
+If Hadria yielded the point on any particular occasion, her mood and
+her work were destroyed: if she resisted, they were equally destroyed,
+through the nervous disturbance and the intense depression which
+followed the winning of a liberty too dearly bought. The incessant
+rising and quelling of her impulse and her courage--like the ebb and
+flow of tides--represented a vast amount of force not merely wasted, but
+expended in producing a dangerous wear and tear upon the system. The
+process told upon her health, and was the beginning of the weakening and
+unbalancing of the splendid constitution which Hadria, in common with
+every member of the family, enjoyed as a birthright. The injury was
+insidious but serious. Hadria, unable to command any certain part of the
+day, began to sit up at night. This led to a direct clash of wills. Mr.
+Fullerton said that the girl was doing her best to ruin her health for
+life; Mrs. Fullerton wished to know why Hadria, who had all the day at
+her disposal, could not spend the night rationally.
+
+"But I haven't all the day, or any part of it, for certain," said
+Hadria.
+
+"If you grudge the little services you do for me, pray abandon them,"
+said the mother, genuinely hurt.
+
+Hadria entered her room, one evening, tired out and profoundly
+depressed. A table, covered with books, stood beside the fire. She gave
+the top-heavy pile an impatient thrust and the mass fell, with a great
+crash, to the floor. A heap of manuscript--her musical achievement for
+the past year--was involved in the fall. She contemplated the wreck
+gravely.
+
+"Yes, it is I who am weak, not circumstance that is strong. If I could
+keep my mind unmoved by the irritations; if I could quarrel with mother,
+and displease father, and offend all the world without a qualm, or
+without losing the delicate balance of thought and mood necessary for
+composition, then I should, to some extent, triumph over my circumstances;
+I should not lose so much time in this wretched unstringing. Only were I
+so immovably constituted, is it probable that I should be able to compose
+at all?"
+
+She drew the score towards her. "People are surprised that women have
+never done anything noteworthy in music. People are so intelligent!" She
+turned over the pages critically. If only this instinct were not so
+overwhelmingly strong! Hadria wondered how many other women, from the
+beginning of history, had cursed the impulse to create! Fortunately, it
+was sometimes extinguished altogether, as to-night, for instance, when
+every impression, every desire was swept clean out of her, and her mind
+presented a creditable blank, such as really ought to satisfy the most
+exacting social mentor. In such a state, a woman might be induced to
+accept anything!
+
+Hadria brought out two letters from her pocket; one from the Professor,
+the other from Miss Du Prel. The latter had been writing frequently of
+late, pointing out the danger of Hadria's exaggerated ideas, and the
+probability of their ruining her happiness in life. Valeria had suffered
+herself from "ideas," and knew how fatal they were. Life _could_ not
+be exactly as one would have it, and it was absolutely necessary, in order
+to avoid misery for oneself and others, to consent to take things more
+or less as they were; to make up one's mind to bend a little, rather
+than have to break, in the end. Things were never quite so shocking as
+they seemed to one's youthful imagination. The world was made up of
+compromises. Good was mixed with evil everywhere. The domestic idea, as
+Hadria called it, might be, in its present phase, somewhat offensive,
+but it could be redeemed in its application, in the details and
+"extenuating circumstances." Valeria could not warn Hadria too earnestly
+against falling into the mistake that Valeria herself had made. She had
+repudiated the notion of anything short of an ideal union; a perfect
+comradeship, without the shadow of restraint or bondage in the
+relationship; and not having found it, she had refused the tie
+altogether. She could not bring herself to accept the lesser thing,
+having conceived the possibility of the greater. She now saw her error,
+and repented it. She was reaping the penalty in a lonely and unsatisfied
+life. For a long time her work had seemed to suffice, but she felt now
+that she had been trusting to a broken reed. She was terrified at her
+solitude. She could not face the thought of old age, without a single
+close tie, without a home, without a hold upon her race.
+
+She ended by entreating Hadria not to refuse marriage merely because she
+could not find a man to agree with her in everything, or capable of
+entering into the spirit of the relationship that perhaps would unite
+the men and women of the future. It was a pity that Hadria had not been
+born a generation later, but since she had come into the world at this
+time of transition, she must try to avoid the tragedy that threatens all
+spirits who are pointing towards the new order, while the old is still
+working out its unexhausted impetus.
+
+This reiterated advice had begun to trouble Hadria. It did not convince
+her, but Valeria's words were incessantly repeating themselves in her
+mind; working as a ferment among her thoughts.
+
+The letters from Miss Du Prel and the Professor were to her, a source of
+great pleasure and of great pain. In her depressed moods, they would
+often rather increase her despondency, because the writers used to take
+for granted so many achievements that she had not been able to accomplish.
+
+"They think I am living and progressing as they are; they do not know
+that the riot and stir of intellectual life has ceased. I am like a
+creature struggling in a quicksand."
+
+On the Professor's letter, the comments were of a different character.
+
+He had recommended her to read certain books, and reminded her that no
+possessor of good books could lack the privilege of spiritual sanctuary.
+
+"Ah! yes, I know few pleasures so great as that of finding one's own
+idea, or hope, or longing, finely expressed, half-born thoughts alive
+and of stately stature; and then the exquisite touches of art upon quick
+nerves, the enlarging of the realms of imagination, knowledge, the
+heightening of perceptions, intuitions; finally the blessed power of
+escaping from oneself, with the paradoxical reward of greater
+self-realization! But, ah, Professor, to me there is a 'but' even here.
+I am oppressed by a sense of the discrepancy between the world that
+books disclose to me, and the world that I myself inhabit. In books, the
+_impossibilities_ are all left out. They give you no sense of the sordid
+Inevitable that looms so large on the grey horizon. Another more
+personal quarrel that I have with books is on account of their attacking
+all my pet prejudices, and sneering at the type of woman that I have the
+misfortune to belong to. I am always exhorted to cure myself of being
+myself. Nothing less would suffice. Now this is wounding. All my
+particular feelings, my strongest beliefs, are condemned, directly or by
+inference. I could almost believe that there is a literary conspiracy to
+reform me. The "true women" of literature infallibly think and feel
+precisely as I do _not_ think and feel, while the sentiments that I
+detest--woe is me--are lauded to the skies. Truly, if we women don't
+know exactly what we ought to think and feel, it is not for want of
+telling. Yet you say, Professor, in this very letter, that the sense of
+having a peculiar experience is always an illusion, that every feeling
+of ours has been felt before, if not in our own day, then in the crowded
+past, with its throngs of forgotten lives and unrecorded experiences. I
+wish to heaven I could meet those who have had exactly mine!"
+
+Hadria did not keep up an active correspondence with Miss Du Prel or
+with the Professor. She had no idea of adding to the burden of their
+busy lives, by wails for sympathy. It seemed to her feeble, and
+contemptible, to ask to be dragged up by their strength, instead of
+exerting her own. If that were insufficient, why then let her go down,
+as thousands had gone down before her. As a miser telling his gold, she
+would read and re-read those occasional letters, written amidst the
+stress of life at high pressure, and bearing evidence of that life of
+thought and work, in their tense, full-packed phrases. With what a throb
+of longing and envy Hadria used to feel the vibration through her own
+nerves! It was only when completely exhausted and harassed that the
+response was lacking. To-night everything seemed to be obliterated. Her
+hope, her interest were, for the moment, tired out. Her friends would be
+disappointed in her, but there was no help for it.
+
+She picked up the score of her music, and stood, with a handful of the
+once precious offspring of her brain held out towards the flames. Then
+she drew it back, and half closed her eyes in self-scrutinizing thought.
+"Come now," she said to herself, "are you sincere in your intention of
+giving up? Are you not doing this in a fit of spite against destiny? as
+if destiny cared two straws. Heavens! what a poor little piece of
+melodrama. And to think that you should have actually taken yourself in
+it by it. One acts so badly with only oneself for audience. You know
+perfectly well that you are _not_ going to give in, you are _not_ going
+to attempt to stifle that which is the centre of your life; you have not
+courage for such slow suicide. Don't add insincerity to the other faults
+that are laid to your account----" She mused over the little
+self-administered lecture. And probing down into her consciousness, she
+realized that she could not face the thought of surrender. She meant to
+fight on. The notion of giving in had been seized instinctively, for a
+moment of rest. Nothing should really make her cease the struggle, until
+the power itself had been destroyed. She was sure of it, in her heart,
+in spite of failures and miserably inadequate expressions of it.
+Suddenly, as a shaft of light through parting clouds, came bursting
+forth, radiant, rejoicing, that sense of power, large, resistless,
+genial as morning sunshine. Yes, yes, let them say what they might,
+discourage, smile, or frown as they would, the faculty was given to her,
+and she would fight for opportunity to use it while she had breath.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+As if it had all been ingeniously planned, the minutest incidents and
+conditions of Hadria's life conspired towards the event that was to
+decide its drift for ever.
+
+Often, in the dim afternoon, she would sit by the window and watch the
+rain sweeping across the country, longing then for Temperley's music,
+which used to make the wild scene so unspeakably beautiful. Now there
+was no music, no music anywhere, only this fierce and mournful rush of
+the wind, which seemed as if it were trying to utter some universal
+grief. At sunset, braving the cold, she would mount the creaking
+staircase, pass along the silent upper corridors, and on through the
+empty rooms to the garret in the tower. The solitude was a relief; the
+strangeness of the scene appealed to some wild instinct, and to the
+intense melancholy that lurks in the Celtic nature.
+
+Even at night, she did not shrink from braving the glooms and silences
+of the deserted upper floor, nor the solitude of the garret, which
+appeared the deeper, from the many memories of happy evenings that it
+evoked. She wished Ernest would come home. It was so long since she had
+seen her favourite brother. She could not bear the thought of his
+drifting away from her. What talks they had had in this old garret!
+
+These nights in the tower, among the winds, soothed the trouble of her
+spirit as nothing else had power to do. The mystery of life, the thrill
+of existence, touched her with a strange joy that ran perilously near to
+pain. What vast dim possibilities lurked out there, in the hollows of
+the hills! What inspiration thundered in the voice of the prophet wind!
+
+Once, she had gone downstairs and out, alone, in a tearing storm, to
+wander across the bleak pastures, wrapt round by the wind as by a flame;
+at one with the desperate elemental thing.
+
+The wanderer felt herself caught into the heart of some vast unknown
+power, of which the wind was but a thrall, until she became, for a
+moment, consciously part of that which was universal. Her personality
+grew dim; she stood, as it seemed, face to face with Nature, divided
+from the ultimate truth by only a thin veil, to temper the splendour and
+the terror. Then the tension of personal feeling was loosened. She saw
+how entirely vain and futile were the things of life that we grieve and
+struggle over.
+
+It was not a side, an aspect of existence, but the whole of it that
+seemed to storm round her, in the darkness. No wonder, when the wind was
+let loose among the mountains, that the old Highland people thought that
+their dead were about them. All night long, after Hadria returned to her
+room in the keep, the wind kept up its cannonade against the walls,
+hooting in the chimneys with derisive voices, and flinging itself, in
+mad revolt, against the old-established hills and the stable earth,
+which changed its forms only in slow obedience to the persuadings of the
+elements, in the passing of centuries. It cared nothing for the passion
+of a single storm.
+
+And then came reaction, doubt. After all, humanity was a puny production
+of the Ages. Men and women were like the struggling animalculae that her
+father had so often shewn the boys, in a drop of magnified ditch-water;
+yet not quite like those microscopic insects, for the stupendous
+processes of life had at last created a widening consciousness, a mind
+which could perceive the bewildering vastness of Nature and its own
+smallness, which could, in some measure, get outside its own particular
+ditch, and the strife and struggle of it, groping upwards for larger
+realities--
+
+          "Over us stars and under us graves."
+
+To go down next morning to breakfast; to meet the usual homely events,
+was bewildering after such a night. Which was dream: this or that? So
+solid and convincing seemed, at times, the interests and objects of
+every day, that Hadria would veer round to a sudden conviction that
+these things, or what they symbolized, were indeed the solid facts of
+human life, and that all other impressions arose from the disorderly
+working of overcharged brain-cells. It was a little ailment of youth
+and would pass off. Had it been possible to describe to her father the
+impressions made upon her by the world and Nature, as they had presented
+themselves to her imagination from her childhood, he would have
+prescribed change of air and gymnastics. Perhaps that was the really
+rational view of the matter. But what if these hygienic measures cured
+her of the haunting consciousness of mystery and vastness; what if she
+became convinced of the essential importance of the Gordon pedigree, or
+of the amount of social consideration due to the family who had taken
+Clarenoc? Would that alter the bewildering truths of which she would
+have ceased to think?
+
+No; it would only mean that the animalcule had returned to the
+occupations of its ditch, while the worlds and the peoples went spinning
+to their destiny.
+
+"Do the duty that lies nearest thee," counselled everybody: people of
+all kinds, books of all kinds. "Cheap, well-sounding advice," thought
+Hadria, "sure of popularity! Continue to wriggle industriously, O
+animalcule, in that particular ditch wherein it has pleased heaven to
+place thee; seek not the flowing stream and the salt ocean; and if, some
+clear night, a star finds room to mirror itself in thy little stagnant
+world, shining through the fat weeds and slime that almost shut out the
+heavens, pray be careful not to pay too much heed to the high-born
+luminary. Look to your wriggling; that is your proper business. An
+animalcule that does not wriggle must be morbid or peculiar. All will
+tender, in different forms of varying elegance, the safe and simple
+admonition: 'Wriggle and be damned to you!'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was at this somewhat fevered moment, that Hubert Temperley appeared,
+once more, upon the scene. Hadria was with her mother, taking tea at
+Drumgarren, when Mrs. Gordon, catching the sounds of carriage wheels,
+announced that she was expecting Hubert and his sister for a visit. In
+another second, the travellers were in the drawing-room.
+
+Hubert's self-possession was equal to the occasion. He introduced his
+sister to Mrs. Fullerton and Hadria. Miss Temperley was his junior by a
+year; a slight, neatly-built young woman, with a sort of tact that went
+on brilliantly up to a certain point, and then suddenly collapsed
+altogether. She had her brother's self-complacency, and an air of
+encouragement which Mrs. Gordon seemed to find most gratifying.
+
+She dressed perfectly, in quiet Parisian fashion. Hadria saw that her
+brother had taken her into his confidence, or she concluded so from
+something in Miss Temperley's manner. The latter treated Hadria with a
+certain familiarity, as if she had known her for some time, and she had
+a way of seeming to take her apart, when addressing her, as if there
+were a sort of understanding between them. It was here that her instinct
+failed her; for she seemed unaware that this assumption of an intimacy
+that did not exist was liable to be resented, and that it might be
+unpleasant to be expected to catch special remarks sent over the heads
+of the others, although ostensibly for the common weal.
+
+Hadria thought that she had never seen so strange a contrast as this
+young woman's behaviour, within and without the circle of her
+perceptions. It was the more remarkable, since her mind was bent upon
+the details and niceties of conduct, and the _nuances_ of existence.
+
+"I shall come and see you as soon as I can," she promised, when Mrs.
+Fullerton rose to leave.
+
+Miss Temperley kept her word. She was charmed with the old house,
+praising authoritatively.
+
+"This is an excellent piece of carving; far superior to the one in the
+dining-room. Ah, yes, that is charming; so well arranged. You ought to
+have a touch of blue there to make it perfect."
+
+Hubert shewed good taste in keeping away from Dunaghee, except to pay
+his call on Mr. and Mrs. Fullerton.
+
+"Hadria," said his sister, "I am going to call you by your pretty
+Christian name, and I want you to call me Henriette. I feel I have known
+you much longer than ten days, because Hubert has told me so much about
+you, and your music. You play charmingly. So much native talent. You
+want good training, of course; but you really might become a brilliant
+performer. Hubert is quite distressed that you should not enjoy more
+advantages. I should like so much if you could come and stay with us in
+town, and have some good lessons. Do think of it."
+
+Hadria flushed. "Oh, thank you, I could not do that--I----"
+
+"I understand you, dear Hadria," said Henriette, drawing her chair
+closer to the fire. "You know, Hubert can never keep anything of great
+importance from me." She looked arch.
+
+Hadria muttered something that might have discouraged a less persistent
+spirit, but Miss Temperley paid no attention.
+
+"Poor Hubert! I have had to be a ministering angel to him during these
+last months."
+
+"Why do you open up this subject, Miss Temperley?"
+
+"_Henriette_, if you please," cried that young woman, with the air of
+a playful potentate who has requested a favoured courtier to drop the
+ceremonious "Your Majesty" in private conversation.
+
+"It was I who made him accept Mrs. Gordon's invitation. He very nearly
+refused it. He feared that it would be unpleasant for you. But I
+insisted on his coming. Why should he not? He would like so much to come
+here more often, but again he fears to displease you. He is not a
+Temperley for nothing. They are not of the race of fools who rush in
+where angels fear to tread."
+
+"Are they not?" asked Hadria absently.
+
+"We both see your difficulty," Miss Temperley went on. "Hubert would not
+so misunderstand you--the dear fellow is full of delicacy--and I should
+dearly love to hear him play to your accompaniment; he used to enjoy
+those practices so much. Would you think him intrusive if he brought his
+_'cello_ some afternoon?"
+
+Hadria, not without an uneasy qualm, agreed to the suggestion, though by
+no means cordially.
+
+Accordingly brother and sister arrived, one afternoon, for the practice.
+Henriette took the leadership, visibly employed tact and judgment,
+talked a great deal, and was surprisingly delicate, as beseemed a
+Temperley. Hadria found the occasion somewhat trying nevertheless, and
+Hubert stumbled, at first, in his playing. In a few minutes, however,
+both musicians became possessed by the music, and then all went well.
+Henriette sat in an easy chair and listened critically. Now and then she
+would call out "bravo," or "admirable," and when the performance was
+over, she was warm in her congratulations.
+
+Hadria was flushed with the effort and pleasure of the performance.
+
+"I never heard Hubert's playing to such advantage," said his sister. "I
+seem to hear it for the first time. You really ought to practise
+together often." Another afternoon was appointed; Henriette left Hadria
+almost no choice.
+
+After the next meeting, the constraint had a little worn off, and the
+temptation to continue the practising was very strong. Henriette's
+presence was reassuring. And then Hubert seemed so reasonable, and had
+apparently put the past out of his mind altogether.
+
+After the practice, brother and sister would linger a little in the
+drawing-room, chatting. Hubert appeared to advantage in his sister's
+society. She had a way of striking his best vein. Her own talent ran
+with his, appealed to it, and created the conditions for its display.
+Her presence and inspiration seemed to produce, on his ability, a sort
+of cumulative effect. Henriette set all the familiar machinery in
+motion; pressed the right button, and her brother became brilliant.
+
+A slight touch of diffidence in his manner softened the effect of his
+usual complacency. Hadria liked him better than she had liked him on his
+previous visit. His innate refinement appealed to her powerfully.
+Moreover, he was cultivated and well-read, and his society was
+agreeable. Oh, why did this everlasting matrimonial idea come in and
+spoil everything? Why could not men and women have interests in common,
+without wishing instantly to plunge into a condition of things which
+hampered and crippled them so miserably?
+
+Hadria was disposed to underrate all defects, and to make the most of
+all virtues in Hubert, at the present moment. He had come at just the
+right time to make a favourable impression upon her; for the loneliness
+of her life had begun to leave its mark, and to render her extremely
+sensitive to influence.
+
+She was an alien among the people of her circle; and she felt vaguely
+guilty in failing to share their ideas and ambitions. Their glances,
+their silences, conveyed a world of cold surprise and condemnation.
+
+Hubert was tolerance itself compared with the majority of her
+associates. She felt almost as if he had done her a personal kindness
+when he omitted to look astonished at her remarks, or to ignore them as
+"awkward."
+
+Yet she felt uneasy about this renewal of the practices, and tried to
+avoid them as often as possible, though sorely against her inclination.
+They were so great a relief and enjoyment. Her inexperience, and her
+carelessness of conventional standards, put her somewhat off her guard.
+Hubert showed no signs of even remembering the interview of last year,
+that had been cut short by her father's entrance. Why should _she_
+insist on keeping it in mind? It was foolish. Moreover she had been
+expressly given to understand, in a most pointed manner, that her
+conduct would not be misinterpreted if she allowed him to come
+occasionally.
+
+From several remarks that Temperley made, she saw that he too regarded
+the ordinary domestic existence with distaste. It offended his
+fastidiousness. He was fastidious to his finger-tips. It amused Hadria
+to note the contrast between him and Mr. Gordon, who was a typical
+father of a family; limited in his interests to that circle; an amiable
+ruler of a tiny, somewhat absurd little world, pompous and important and
+inconceivably dull.
+
+The _bourgeois_ side of this life was evidently displeasing to Hubert.
+Good taste was his fetish. From his remarks about women, Hadria was led
+to observe how subtly critical he was with regard to feminine qualities,
+and wondered if his preference for herself ought to be regarded as a
+great compliment.
+
+Henriette congratulated her on having been admired by the fastidious
+Hubert.
+
+"Let us hope it speaks well for me," Hadria replied with a cynical
+smile, "but I have so often noticed that men who are very difficult to
+please, choose for the domestic hearth the most dreary and unattractive
+woman of their acquaintance! I sometimes doubt if men ever do marry the
+women they most admire."
+
+"They do, when they can win them," said Henriette.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+During Henriette's visit, one of the meetings of the Preposterous
+Society fell due, and she expressed a strong wish to be present. She
+also craved the privilege of choosing the subject of discussion.
+Finally, she received a formal request from the members to give the
+lecture herself. She was full of enthusiasm about the Society (such an
+educating influence!), and prepared her paper with great care. There had
+been a tendency among the circle, to politely disagree with Henriette.
+Her ideas respecting various burning topics were at variance with the
+trend of opinion at Dunaghee, and Miss Temperley was expected to take
+this opportunity of enlightening the family. The family was equally
+resolved not to be enlightened.
+
+"I have chosen for my subject to-night," said the lecturer, "one that is
+beginning to occupy public attention very largely: I mean the sphere of
+woman in society."
+
+The audience, among whom Hubert had been admitted at his sister's
+earnest request, drew themselves together, and a little murmur of battle
+ran along the line. Henriette's figure, in her well-fitting Parisian
+gown, looked singularly out of place in the garret, with the crazy old
+candle-holder beside her, the yellow flame of the candle flinging
+fantastic shadows on the vaulted roof, preposterously distorting her
+neat form, as if in wicked mockery. The moonlight streamed in, as usual
+on the nights chosen by the Society for their meetings.
+
+Henriette's paper was neatly expressed, and its sentiments were
+admirable. She maintained a perfect balance between the bigotry of the
+past and the violence of the present. Her phrases seemed to rock, like
+a pair of scales, from excess to excess, on either side. She came to
+rest in the exact middle. This led to the Johnsonian structure, or, as
+Hadria afterwards said, to the style of a _Times_ leading article:
+"While we remember on the one hand, we must not forget on the other----"
+
+At the end of the lecture, the audience found themselves invited to
+sympathize cautiously and circumspectly with the advancement of women,
+but led, at the same time, to conclude that good taste and good feeling
+forbade any really nice woman from moving a little finger to attain, or
+to help others to attain, the smallest fraction more of freedom, or an
+inch more of spiritual territory, than was now enjoyed by her sex. When,
+at some future time, wider privileges should have been conquered by the
+exertions of someone else, then the really nice woman could saunter in
+and enjoy the booty. But till then, let her leave boisterous agitation
+to others, and endear herself to all around her by her patience and her
+loving self-sacrifice.
+
+"That pays better for the present," Hadria was heard to mutter to an
+adjacent member.
+
+The lecturer, in her concluding remarks, gave a smile of ineffable
+sweetness, sadly marred, however, by the grotesque effect of the
+flickering shadows that were cast on her face by the candle. After all,
+_duty_ not _right_ was the really important matter, and the lecturer
+thought that it would be better if one heard the former word rather
+oftener in connection with the woman's question, and the latter word
+rather more seldom. Then, with new sweetness, and in a tone not to be
+described, she went on to speak of the natural responsibilities and joys
+of her sex, drawing a moving, if somewhat familiar picture of those
+avocations, than which she was sure there could be nothing higher or
+holier.
+
+For some not easily explained cause, the construction of this sentence
+gave it a peculiar unctuous force: "than which," as Fred afterwards
+remarked, "would have bowled over any but the most hardened sinner."
+
+For weeks after this memorable lecture, if any very lofty altitude had
+to be ascended in conversational excursions, the aspirant invariably
+smiled with ineffable tenderness and lightly scaled the height,
+murmuring "than which" to a vanquished audience.
+
+The lecture was followed by a discussion that rather took the stiffness
+out of Miss Temperley's phrases. The whole party was roused. Algitha had
+to whisper a remonstrance to the boys, for their solemn questions were
+becoming too preposterous. The lecture was discussed with much warmth.
+There was a tendency to adopt the form "than which" with some frequency.
+Bursts of laughter startled a company of rats in the wainscoting, and
+there was a lively scamper behind the walls. No obvious opposition was
+offered. Miss Temperley's views were examined with gravity, and indeed
+in a manner almost pompous. But by the end of that trying process, they
+had a sadly bedraggled and plucked appearance, much to their parent's
+bewilderment. She endeavoured to explain further, and was met by
+guilelessly intelligent questions, which had the effect of depriving the
+luckless objects of their solitary remaining feather. The members of the
+society continued to pine for information, and Miss Temperley
+endeavoured to provide it, till late into the night. The discussion
+finally drifted on to dangerous ground. Algitha declared that she
+considered that no man had any just right to ask a woman to pledge
+herself to love him and live with him for the rest of her life. How
+_could_ she? Hubert suggested that the woman made the same claim on the
+man.
+
+"Which is equally absurd," said Algitha. "Just as if any two people,
+when they are beginning to form their characters, could possibly be sure
+of their sentiments for the rest of their days. They have no business to
+marry at such an age. They are bound to alter."
+
+"But they must regard it as their duty not to alter with regard to one
+another," said Henriette.
+
+"Quite so; just as they ought to regard it as their duty among other
+things, not to grow old," suggested Fred.
+
+"Then, Algitha, do you mean that they may fall in love elsewhere?"
+Ernest inquired.
+
+"They very likely _will_ do so, if they make such an absurd start,"
+Algitha declared.
+
+"And if they do?"
+
+"Then, if the sentiment stands test and trial, and proves genuine, and
+not a silly freak, the fact ought to be frankly faced. Husband and wife
+have no business to go on keeping up a bond that has become false and
+irksome."
+
+Miss Temperley broke into protest. "But surely you don't mean to defend
+such faithlessness."
+
+Algitha would not admit that it _was_ faithlessness. She said it was
+mere honesty. She could see nothing inherently wrong in falling in love
+genuinely after one arrived at years of discretion. She thought it
+inherently idiotic, and worse, to make a choice that ought to be for
+life, at years of _in_discretion. Still, people _were_ idiotic, and
+that must be considered, as well as all the other facts, such as the
+difficulty of really knowing each other before marriage, owing to social
+arrangements, and also owing to the training, which made men and women
+always pose so ridiculously towards one another, pretending to be
+something that they were not.
+
+"Well done, Algitha," cried Ernest, laughing; "I like to hear you speak
+out. Now tell me frankly: supposing you married quite young, before you
+had had much experience; supposing you afterwards found that you and
+your husband had both been deceiving yourselves and each other,
+unconsciously perhaps; and suppose, when more fully awakened and
+developed, you met another fellow and fell in love with him genuinely,
+what would you do?"
+
+"Oh, she would just mention it to her husband casually," Fred interposed
+with a chuckle, "and disappear."
+
+"I should certainly not go through terrific emotions and
+self-accusations, and think the end of the world had come," said Algitha
+serenely. "I should calmly face the situation."
+
+"Calmly! She by supposition being madly in love!" ejaculated Fred, with
+a chuckle.
+
+"Calmly," repeated Algitha. "And I should consider carefully what would
+be best for all concerned. If I decided, after mature consideration and
+self-testing, that I ought to leave my husband, I should leave him, as I
+should hope he would leave me, in similar circumstances. That is my idea
+of right."
+
+"And is this also your idea of right, Miss Fullerton?" asked Temperley,
+turning, in some trepidation, to Hadria.
+
+"That seems to me right in the abstract. One can't pronounce for
+particular cases where circumstances are entangled."
+
+Hubert sank back in his chair, and ran his hand over his brow. He seemed
+about to speak, but he checked himself.
+
+"Where did you get such extraordinary ideas from?" cried Miss Temperley.
+
+"They were like Topsy; they growed," said Fred.
+
+"We have been in the habit of speculating freely on all subjects," said
+Ernest, "ever since we could talk. This is the blessed result!"
+
+"I am not quite so sure now, that the Preposterous Society meets with my
+approval," observed Miss Temperley.
+
+"If you had been brought up in the bosom of this Society, Miss
+Temperley, you too, perhaps, would have come to this. Think of it!"
+
+"Does your mother know what sort of subjects you discuss?"
+
+There was a shout of laughter. "Mother used often to come into the
+nursery and surprise us in hot discussion on the origin of evil," said
+Hadria.
+
+"Don't you believe what she says, Miss Temperley," cried Fred; "mother
+never could teach Hadria the most rudimentary notions of accuracy."
+
+"Her failure with my brothers, was in the department of manners," Hadria
+observed.
+
+"Then she does _not_ know what you talk about?" persisted Henriette.
+
+"You ask her," prompted Fred, with undisguised glee.
+
+"She never attends our meetings," said Algitha.
+
+"Well, well, I cannot understand it!" cried Miss Temperley. "However,
+you don't quite know what you are talking about, and one mustn't blame
+you."
+
+"No, don't," urged Fred; "we are a sensitive family."
+
+"Shut up!" cried Ernest with a warning frown.
+
+"Oh, you are a coarse-grained exception; I speak of the family average,"
+Fred answered with serenity.
+
+Henriette felt that nothing more could be done with this strange
+audience. Her business was really with the President of the Society. The
+girl was bent on ruining her life with these wild notions. Miss Temperley
+decided that it would be better to talk to Hadria quietly in her own room,
+away from the influence of these eccentric brothers and that extraordinary
+sister. After all, it was Algitha who had originated the shocking view,
+not Hadria, who had merely agreed, doubtless out of a desire to support
+her sister.
+
+"I have not known you for seven years, but I am going to poke your
+fire," said Henriette, when they were established in Hadria's room.
+
+"I never thought you would wait so long as that," was Hadria's ambiguous
+reply.
+
+Then Henriette opened her batteries. She talked without interruption,
+her companion listening, agreeing occasionally with her adversary, in a
+disconcerting manner; then falling into silence.
+
+"It seems to me that you are making a very terrible mistake in your
+life, Hadria. You have taken up a fixed idea about domestic duties and
+all that, and are going to throw away your chances of forming a happy
+home of your own, out of a mere prejudice. You may not admire Mrs.
+Gordon's existence; for my part I think she leads a very good, useful
+life, but there is no reason why all married lives should be like hers."
+
+"Why are they, then?"
+
+"I don't see that they are."
+
+"It is the prevailing type. It shows the way the domestic wind blows.
+Fancy having to be always resisting such a wind. What an oblique,
+shorn-looking object one would be after a few years!"
+
+Henriette grew eloquent. She recalled instances of women who had
+fulfilled all their home duties, and been successful in other walks as
+well; she drew pictures in attractive colours of Hadria in a home of her
+own, with far more liberty than was possible under her parents' roof;
+and then she drew another picture of Hadria fifteen years hence at
+Dunaghee.
+
+Hadria covered her face with her hands. "You who uphold all these social
+arrangements, how do you feel when you find yourself obliged to urge me
+to marry, not for the sake of the positive joys of domestic existence,
+but for the merely negative advantage of avoiding a hapless and forlorn
+state? You propose it as a _pis-aller_. Does _that_ argue that all is
+sound in the state of Denmark?"
+
+"If you had not this unreasonable objection to what is really a woman's
+natural destiny, the difficulty would not exist."
+
+"Have women no pride?"
+
+Henriette did not answer.
+
+"Have they no sense of dignity? If one marries (accepting things on the
+usual basis, of course) one gives to another person rights and powers
+over one's life that are practically boundless. To retain one's
+self-direction in case of dispute would be possible only on pain of
+social ruin. I have little enough freedom now, heaven knows; but if I
+married, why my very thoughts would become the property of another.
+Thought, emotion, love itself, must pass under the yoke! There would be
+no nook or corner entirely and indisputably my own."
+
+"I should not regard that as a hardship," said Henriette, "if I loved my
+husband."
+
+"I should consider it not only a hardship, but beyond endurance."
+
+"But, my dear, you are impracticable."
+
+"That is what I think domestic life is!" Hadria's quiet tone was
+suddenly changed to one of scorn. "You talk of love; what has love
+worthy of the name to do with this preposterous interference with the
+freedom of another person? If _that_ is what love means--the craving
+to possess and restrain and demand and hamper and absorb, and generally
+make mincemeat of the beloved object, then preserve me from the
+master-passion."
+
+Henriette was baffled. "I don't know how to make you see this in a truer
+light," she said. "There is something to my mind so beautiful in the
+close union of two human beings, who pledge themselves to love and
+honour one another, to face life hand in hand, to share every thought,
+every hope, to renounce each his own wishes for the sake of the other."
+
+"That sounds very elevating; in practice it breeds Mr. and Mrs. Gordon."
+
+"Do you mean to tell me you will never marry on this account?"
+
+"I would never marry anyone who would exact the usual submissions and
+renunciations, or even desire them, which I suppose amounts almost to
+saying that I shall never marry at all. What man would endure a wife who
+demanded to retain her absolute freedom, as in the case of a close
+friendship? The man is not born!"
+
+"You seem to forget, dear Hadria, in objecting to place yourself under
+the yoke, as you call it, that your husband would also be obliged to
+resign part of _his_ independence to you. The prospect of loss of
+liberty in marriage often prevents a man from marrying ("Wise man!"
+ejaculated Hadria), so you see the disadvantage is not all on one side,
+if so you choose to consider it."
+
+"Good heavens! do you think that the opportunity to interfere with
+another person would console me for being interfered with myself? I
+don't want my share of the constraining power. I would as soon accept
+the lash of a slave-driver. This moral lash is almost more odious than
+the other, for its thongs are made of the affections and the domestic
+'virtues,' than which there can be nothing sneakier or more detestable!"
+
+Henriette heaved a discouraged sigh. "You are wrong, my dear Hadria,"
+she said emphatically; "you are wrong, wrong, wrong."
+
+"How? why?"
+
+"One can't have everything in this life. You must be willing to resign
+part of your privileges for the sake of the far greater privileges that
+you acquire."
+
+"I can imagine nothing that would compensate for the loss of freedom,
+the right to oneself."
+
+"What about love?" murmured Henriette.
+
+"Love!" echoed Hadria scornfully. "Do you suppose I could ever love a
+man who had the paltry, ungenerous instinct to enchain me?"
+
+"Why use such extreme terms? Love does not enchain."
+
+"Exactly what I contend," interrupted Hadria.
+
+"But naturally husband and wife have claims."
+
+"Naturally. I have just been objecting to them in what you describe as
+extreme terms."
+
+"But I mean, when people care for one another, it is a joy to them to
+acknowledge ties and obligations of affection."
+
+"Ah! one knows what _that_ euphemism means!"
+
+"Pray what does it mean?"
+
+"That the one serious endeavour in the life of married people is to be
+able to call each other's souls their own."
+
+Henriette stared.
+
+"My language may not be limpid."
+
+"Oh, I see what you mean. I was only wondering who can have taught you
+all these strange ideas."
+
+Hadria at length gave way to a laugh that had been threatening for some
+time.
+
+"My mother," she observed simply.
+
+Henriette gave it up.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+The family had reassembled for the New Year's festivities. The change in
+Algitha since her departure from home was striking. She was gentler,
+more affectionate to her parents, than of yore. The tendency to grow
+hard and fretful had entirely disappeared. The sense of self was
+obviously lessened with the need for self-defence. Hadria discovered
+that an attachment was springing up between her sister and Wilfrid
+Burton, about whom she wrote so frequently, and that this development of
+her emotional nature, united with her work, had given a glowing centre
+to her life which showed itself in a thousand little changes of manner
+and thought. Hadria told her sister that she felt herself unreal and
+fanciful in her presence. "I go twirling things round and round in my
+head till I grow dizzy. But you compare ideas with fact; you even turn
+ideas into fact; while I can get no hold on fact at all. Thoughts rise
+as mists rise from the river, but nothing happens. I feel them begin to
+prey upon me, working inwards."
+
+Algitha shook her head. "It is a mad world," she said. "Week after week
+goes by, and there seems no lifting of the awful darkness in which the
+lives of these millions are passed. We want workers by the thousand.
+Yet, as if in mockery, the Devil keeps these well-fed thousands eating
+their hearts out in idleness or artificial occupations till they become
+diseased merely for want of something to do. Then," added Algitha, "His
+Majesty marries them, and sets them to work to create another houseful
+of idle creatures, who have to be supported by the deathly toil of those
+who labour too much."
+
+"The devil is full of resources!" said Hadria.
+
+Miss Temperley had been asked to stay at Dunaghee for the New Year.
+Algitha conceived for her a sentiment almost vindictive. Hadria and the
+boys enjoyed nothing better than to watch Miss Temperley giving forth
+her opinions, while Algitha's figure gradually stiffened and her neck
+drew out, as Fred said, in truly telescopic fashion, like that of Alice
+in Wonderland. The boys constructed a figure of cushions, stuffed into
+one of Algitha's old gowns, the neck being a padded broom-handle, made
+to work up and down at pleasure; and with this counterfeit presentment
+of their sister, they used to act the scene amidst shouts of applause,
+Miss Temperley entering, on one occasion, when the improvised cocoa-nut
+head had reached its culminating point of high disdain, somewhere about
+the level of the curtain-poles.
+
+On New-Year's-eve, Dunaghee was full of guests. There was to be a
+children's party, to which however most of the grown-up neighbours were
+also invited.
+
+"What a charming sight!" cried Henriette, standing with her neat foot on
+the fender in the hall, where the children were playing blind man's
+buff.
+
+Mrs. Fullerton sat watching them with a dreamy smile. The scene recalled
+many an old memory. Mr. Fullerton was playing with the children.
+
+Everyone remarked how well the two girls looked in their new evening
+gowns. They had made them themselves, in consequence of a wager with
+Fred, who had challenged them to combine pink and green satisfactorily.
+
+"The gowns are perfect!" Temperley ventured to remark. "So much
+distinction!"
+
+"All my doing," cried Fred. "I chose the colours."
+
+"Distinction comes from within," said Temperley. "I should like to see
+what sort of gown in pink and green Mrs. ----." He stopped short
+abruptly.
+
+Fred gave a chuckle. Indiscreet eyes wandered towards Mrs. Gordon's
+brocade and silver.
+
+Later in the evening, that lady played dance music in a florid manner,
+resembling her taste in dress. The younger children had gone home, and
+the hall was filled with spinning couples.
+
+"I hope we are to have some national dances," said Miss Temperley. "My
+brother and I are both looking forward to seeing a true reel danced by
+natives of the country."
+
+"Oh, certainly!" said Mr. Fullerton. "My daughters are rather celebrated
+for their reels, especially Hadria." Mr. Fullerton executed a step or
+two with great agility.
+
+"The girl gets quite out of herself when she is dancing," said Mrs.
+Fullerton. "She won't be scolded about it, for she says she takes after
+her father!"
+
+"That's the time to get round her," observed Fred. "If we want to set
+her up to some real fun, we always play a reel and wait till she's well
+into the spirit of the thing, and then, I'll wager, she would stick at
+nothing."
+
+"It's a fact," added Ernest. "It really seems to half mesmerise her."
+
+"How very curious!" cried Miss Temperley.
+
+She and her brother found themselves watching the dancing a little apart
+from the others.
+
+"I would try again to-night, Hubert," she said in a low voice.
+
+He was silent for a moment, twirling the tassel of the curtain.
+
+"There is nothing to be really alarmed at in her ideas, regrettable as
+they are. She is young. That sort of thing will soon wear off after she
+is married."
+
+Temperley flung away the tassel.
+
+"She doesn't know what she is talking about. These high-flown lectures
+and discussions have filled all their heads with nonsense. It will have
+to be rooted out when they come to face the world. No use to oppose her
+now. Nothing but experience will teach her. She must just be humoured
+for the present. They have all run a little wild in their notions. Time
+will cure that."
+
+"I am sure of it," said Hubert tolerantly. "They don't know the real
+import of what they say." He hugged this sentence with satisfaction.
+
+"They are like the young Russians one reads about in Turgenieff's
+novels," said Henriette--"all ideas, no common-sense."
+
+"And you really believe----?"
+
+Henriette's hand was laid comfortingly on her brother's arm.
+
+"Dear Hubert, I know something of my sex. After a year of married life,
+a woman has too many cares and responsibilities to trouble about ideas
+of this kind, or of any other."
+
+"She strikes me as being somewhat persistent by nature," said Hubert,
+choosing a gentler word than _obstinate_ to describe the quality in the
+lady of his affections.
+
+"Let her be as persistent as she may, it is not possible for any woman
+to resist the laws and beliefs of Society. What can she do against all
+the world? She can't escape from the conditions of her epoch. Oh! she
+may talk boldly now, for she does not understand; she is a mere infant
+as regards knowledge of the world, but once a wife----"
+
+Henriette smiled and shook her head, by way of finish to her sentence.
+Hubert mused silently for some minutes.
+
+"I could not endure that there should be any disturbance--any
+eccentricity--in our life----"
+
+"My dear boy, if you don't trust to the teaching of experience to cure
+Hadria of these fantastic notions, rely upon the resistless persuasions
+of our social facts and laws. Nothing can stand against them--certainly
+not the fretful heresies of an inexperienced girl, who, remember, is
+really good and kind at heart."
+
+"Ah! yes," cried Hubert; "a fine nature, full of good instincts, and
+womanly to her finger-tips."
+
+"Oh! if she were not that, _I_ would never encourage you to think of
+her," cried Henriette with a shudder. "It is on this essential goodness
+of heart that I rely. She would never be able, try as she might, to act
+in a manner that would really distress those who were dear to her. You
+may count upon that securely."
+
+"Yes; I am sure of it," said Hubert, "but unluckily" (he shook his head
+and sighed) "I am not among those who are dear to her."
+
+He rose abruptly, and Henriette followed him.
+
+"Try to win her to-night," she murmured, "and be sure to express no
+opposition to her ideas, however wild they may be. Ignore them, humour
+her, plead your cause once more on this auspicious day--the last of the
+old year. Something tells me that the new year will begin joyously for
+you. Go now, and good luck to you."
+
+"Ah! here you are," cried Mr. Fullerton, "we were wondering what had
+become of you. You said you wished to see a reel. Mrs. McPherson is so
+good as to play for us."
+
+The kindly old Scottish dame had come, with two nieces, from a distance
+of ten miles.
+
+A thrill ran through the company when the strange old tune began.
+Everyone rushed for a partner, and two long rows of figures stood facing
+one another, eager to start. Temperley asked Hadria to dance with him.
+Algitha had Harold Wilkins for a partner. The two long rows were soon
+stepping and twirling with zest and agility. A new and wilder spirit
+began to possess the whole party. The northern blood took fire and
+transfigured the dancers. The Temperleys seemed to be fashioned of
+different clay; they were able to keep their heads. Several elderly
+people had joined in the dance, performing their steps with a
+conscientious dexterity that put some of their juniors to shame. Mr.
+Fullerton stood by, looking on and applauding.
+
+"How your father seems to enjoy the sight!" said Temperley, as he met
+his partner for a moment.
+
+"He likes nothing so well, and his daughters take after him."
+
+Hadria's reels were celebrated, not without reason. Some mad spirit
+seemed to possess her. It would appear almost as if she had passed into
+a different phase of character. She lost caution and care and the sense
+of external events.
+
+When the dance was ended, Hubert led her from the hall. She went as if
+in a dream. She would not allow herself to be taken beyond the sound of
+the grotesque old dance music that was still going on, but otherwise she
+was unresisting.
+
+He sat down beside her in a corner of the dining-room. Now and then he
+glanced at his companion, and seemed about to speak. "You seem fond of
+your national music," he at last remarked.
+
+"It fills me with bewildering memories," she said in a dreamy tone. "It
+seems to recall--it eludes description--some wild, primitive
+experiences--mountains, mists--I can't express what northern mysteries.
+It seems almost as if I had lived before, among some ancient Celtic
+people, and now, when I hear their music--or sometimes when I hear the
+sound of wind among the pines--whiffs and gusts of something intensely
+familiar return to me, and I cannot grasp it. It is very bewildering."
+
+"The only thing that happens to me of the kind is that curious sense of
+having done a thing before. Strange to say, I feel it now. This moment
+is not new to me."
+
+Hadria gave a startled glance at her companion, and shuddered.
+
+"I suppose it is all pre-ordained," she said. He was puzzled, but more
+hopeful than usual. Hadria might almost have accepted him in sheer
+absence of mind. He put the thought in different terms. He began to
+speak more boldly. He gave his view of life and happiness, his
+philosophy and religion. Hadria lazily agreed. She lay under a singular
+spell. The bizarre old music smote still upon the ear. She felt as if
+she were in the thrall of some dream whose events followed one another,
+as the scenes of a moving panorama unfold themselves before the
+spectators. Temperley began to plead his cause. Hadria, with a startled
+look in her eyes, tried to check him. But her will refused to issue a
+vigorous command. Even had he been hateful to her, which he certainly
+was not, she felt that she would have been unable to wake out of the
+nightmare, and resume the conduct of affairs. The sense of the
+importance of personal events had entirely disappeared. What did it all
+matter? "Over us stars and under us graves." The graves would put it all
+right some day. As for attempting to direct one's fate, and struggle out
+of the highways of the world--midsummer madness! It was not only the
+Mrs. Gordons, but the Valeria Du Prels who told one so. Everybody said
+(but in discreeter terms), "Disguise from yourself the solitude by
+setting up little screens of affections, and little pompous affairs
+about which you must go busily, and with all the solemnity that you can
+muster."
+
+The savage builds his mud hut to shelter him from the wind and the rain
+and the terror of the beyond. Outside is the wilderness ready to engulf
+him. Rather than be left alone at the mercy of elemental things, with no
+little hut, warm and dark and stuffy, to shelter one, a woman will
+sacrifice everything--liberty, ambition, health, power, her very
+dignity. There was a letter in Hadria's pocket at this moment,
+eloquently protesting in favour of the mud hut.
+
+Hadria must have been appearing to listen favourably to Temperley's
+pleading, for he said eagerly, "Then I have not spoken this time quite
+in vain. I may hope that perhaps some day----"
+
+"Some day," repeated Hadria, passing her hand across her eyes. "It
+doesn't really matter. I mean we make too much fuss about these trifles;
+don't you think so?" She spoke dreamily. The music was jigging on with
+strange merriment.
+
+"To me it matters very much indeed. I don't consider it a trifle," said
+Temperley, in some bewilderment.
+
+"Oh, not to ourselves. But of what importance are we?"
+
+"None at all, in a certain sense," Temperley admitted; "but in another
+sense we are all important. I cannot help being intensely personal at
+this moment. I can't help grasping at the hope of happiness. Hadria, it
+lies in your hand. Won't you be generous?"
+
+She gave a distressed gesture, and seemed to make some vain effort, as
+when the victim of a nightmare struggles to overcome the paralysis that
+holds him.
+
+"Then I may hope a little, Hadria--I _must_ hope."
+
+Still the trance seemed to hold her enthralled. The music was
+diabolically merry. She could fancy evil spirits tripping to it in
+swarms around her. They seemed to point at her, and wave their arms
+around her, and from them came an influence, magnetic in its quality,
+that forbade her to resist. All had been pre-arranged. Nothing could
+avert it. She seemed to be waiting rather than acting. Against her inner
+judgment, she had allowed those accursed practices to go on. Against her
+instinct, she had permitted Henriette to become intimate at Dunaghee;
+indeed it would have been hard to avoid it, for Miss Temperley was not
+easy to discourage. Why had she assured Hadria so pointedly that Hubert
+would not misinterpret her consent to renew the practices? Was it not a
+sort of treachery? Had not Henriette, with her larger knowledge of the
+world, been perfectly well aware that whatever might be said, the
+renewal of the meetings would be regarded as encouragement? Did she not
+know that Hadria herself would feel implicated by the concession?
+
+Temperley's long silence had been misleading. The danger had crept up
+insidiously. And had she not been treacherous to herself? She had longed
+for companionship, for music, for something to break the strain of her
+wild, lonely life. Knowing, or rather half-divining the risk, she had
+allowed herself to accept the chance of relief when it came. Lack of
+experience had played a large part in the making of to-night's dilemma.
+Hadria's own strange mood was another ally to her lover, and for that,
+old Mrs. McPherson and her reels were chiefly responsible. Of such
+flimsy trifles is the human fate often woven.
+
+"Tell me, did you ask your sister to----?"
+
+"No, no," Hubert interposed. "My sister knows of my hopes, and is
+anxious that I should succeed."
+
+"I thought that she was helping you."
+
+"She would take any legitimate means to help me," said Hubert. "You
+cannot resent that. Ah, Hadria, why will you not listen to me?" He bent
+forward, covering his face with his hands in deep dejection. His hope
+had begun to wane.
+
+"You know what I think," said Hadria. "You know how I should act if I
+married. Surely that ought to cure you of all----."
+
+He seized her hand.
+
+"No, no, nothing that you may think could cure me of the hope of making
+you my wife. I care for what you _are_, not for what you _think_. You
+know how little I cling to the popular version of the domestic story. I
+have told you over and over again that it offends me in a thousand ways.
+I hate the _bourgeois_ element in it. What have we really to disagree
+about?"
+
+He managed to be very convincing. He shewed that for a woman, life in
+her father's house is far less free than in her own home; that existence
+could be moulded to any shape she pleased. If Hadria hesitated only on
+this account her last reason was gone. It was not fair to him. He had
+been patient. He had kept silence for many months. But he could endure
+the suspense no longer. He took her hand. Then suddenly she rose.
+
+"No, no. I can't, I can't," she cried desperately.
+
+"I will not listen to denial," he said following her. "I cannot stand a
+second disappointment. You have allowed me to hope."
+
+"How? When? Never!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Ah, yes, Hadria. I am older than you and I have more experience. Do you
+think a man will cease to hope while he continues to see the woman he
+loves?"
+
+Hadria turned very pale.
+
+"You seemed to have forgotten--your sister assured me--Ah, it was
+treacherous, it was cruel. She took advantage of my ignorance, my
+craving for companionship."
+
+"No, it is you who are cruel, Hadria, to make such accusations. I do not
+claim the slightest consideration because you permitted those practices.
+But you cannot suppose that my feeling has not been confirmed and
+strengthened since I have seen you again. Why should you turn from me?
+Why may I not hope to win you? If you have no repugnance to me, why
+should not I have a chance? Hadria, Hadria, answer me, for heaven's
+sake. Oh, if I could only understand what is in your mind!"
+
+She would have found it a hard task to enlighten him. He had succeeded,
+to some extent, in lulling her fears, not in banishing them, for a
+sinister dread still muttered its warning beneath the surface thoughts.
+
+The strength of Temperley's emotion had stirred her. The magic of
+personal influence had begun to tell upon her. It was so hard not to
+believe when someone insisted with such certainty, with such obvious
+sincerity, that everything would be right. He seemed so confident that
+she could make him happy, strange as it appeared. Perhaps after all----?
+And what a release from the present difficulties. But could one trust? A
+confused mass of feeling struggled together. A temptation to give the
+answer that would cause pleasure was very strong, and beneath all lurked
+a trembling hope that perhaps this was the way of escape. In apparent
+contradiction to this, or to any other hope, lay a sense of fatality, a
+sad indifference, interrupted at moments by flashes of very desperate
+caring, when suddenly the love of life, the desire for happiness and
+experience, for the exercise of her power, for its use in the service of
+her generation, became intense, and then faded away again, as obstacles
+presented their formidable array before the mind. In the midst of the
+confusion the thought of the Professor hovered vaguely, with a dim
+distressing sense of something wrong, of something within her lost and
+wretched and forlorn.
+
+Mrs. Fullerton passed through the room on the arm of Mr. Gordon. How
+delighted her mother would be if she were to give up this desperate
+attempt to hold out against her appointed fate. What if her mother and
+Mrs. Gordon and all the world were perfectly right and far-seeing and
+wise? Did it not seem more likely, on the face of it, that they _should_
+be right, considering the enormous majority of those who would agree
+with them, than that she, Hadria, a solitary girl, unsupported by
+knowledge of life or by fellow-believers, should have chanced upon the
+truth? Had only Valeria been on her side, she would have felt secure,
+but Valeria was dead against her.
+
+"We are not really at variance, believe me," Temperley pleaded. "You
+state things rather more strongly than I do--a man used to knocking
+about the world--but I don't believe there is any radical difference
+between us." He worked himself up into the belief that there never were
+two human beings so essentially at one, on all points, as he and Hadria.
+
+"Do you remember the debate that evening in the garret? Do you remember
+the sentiments that scared your sister so much?" she asked.
+
+Temperley remembered.
+
+"Well, I don't hold those sentiments merely for amusement and
+recreation. I mean them. I should not hesitate a moment to act upon
+them. If things grew intolerable, according to my view of things, I
+should simply go away, though twenty marriage-services had been read
+over my head. Neither Algitha nor I have any of the notions that
+restrain women in these matters. We would brook no such bonds. The usual
+claims and demands we would neither make nor submit to. You heard
+Algitha speak very plainly on the matter. So you see, we are entirely
+unsuitable as wives, except to the impossible men who might share our
+rebellion. Please let us go back to the hall. They are just beginning to
+dance another reel."
+
+"I cannot let you go back. Oh, Hadria, you can't be so unjust as to
+force me to break off in this state of uncertainty. Just give me a word
+of hope, however slight, and I will be satisfied."
+
+Hadria looked astonished. "Have you really taken in what I have just
+said?"
+
+"Every word of it."
+
+"And you realise that I mean it, _mean_ it, with every fibre of me."
+
+"I understand; and I repeat that I shall not be happy until you are my
+wife. Have what ideas you please, only be my wife."
+
+She gazed at him in puzzled scrutiny. "You don't think I am really in
+earnest. Let us go."
+
+"I know you are in earnest," he cried, eagerly following her, "and still
+I----"
+
+At that moment Harold Wilkins came up to claim Hadria for a promised
+dance. Temperley gave a gesture of impatience. But Harold insisted, and
+Hadria walked with her partner into the hall where Mrs. Gordon was now
+playing a sentimental waltz, with considerable poetic license as to
+time. As everyone said: Mrs. Gordon played with so much expression.
+
+Temperley stood about in corners watching Hadria. She was flushed and
+silent, dancing with a still gliding movement under the skilful guidance
+of her partner.
+
+Temperley tried to win a glance as she passed round, but her eyes were
+resolutely fixed on the floor.
+
+Algitha followed her sister's movements uneasily. She had noticed her
+absence during the last reel, and observed that Temperley also was not
+to be seen. She felt anxious. She knew Hadria's emotional
+susceptibility. She knew Temperley's convincing faculty, and also
+Hadria's uneasy feeling that she had done wrong in allowing the
+practices to be resumed.
+
+Henriette had not failed to notice the signs of the times, and she
+annoyed Algitha beyond endurance by her obviously sisterly manner of
+addressing the family. She had taken to calling the boys by their first
+names.
+
+Fred shared his sister's dislike to Henriette. "Tact!" he cried with a
+snort, "why a Temperley rushes in where a bull in a china-shop would
+fear to tread!"
+
+Algitha saw that Hubert was again by Hadria's side before the evening
+was out. The latter looked white, and she avoided her sister's glance.
+This last symptom seemed to Algitha the worst.
+
+"What's the matter with Hadria?" asked Fred, "she will scarcely speak to
+me. I was just telling her the best joke I've heard this year, and, will
+you believe me, she didn't see the point! Yes, you may well stare! I
+tried again and she gave a nervous giggle; I am relating to you the
+exact truth. Do any of the epidemics come on like that?"
+
+"Yes, one of the worst," said Algitha gloomily. Fred glared enquiry.
+
+"I am afraid she has been led into accepting Hubert Temperley."
+
+Fred opened his mouth and breathed deep. "Stuff! Hadria would as soon
+think of selling her soul to the devil."
+
+"Oh, she is quite capable of that too," said Algitha, shaking her head.
+
+"Well, I'm blowed," cried Fred.
+
+Not long after this, the guests began to disperse. Mrs. Gordon and her
+party were among the last to leave, having a shorter distance to go.
+
+Hubert Temperley was quiet and self-possessed, but Algitha felt sure
+that she detected a look of suppressed exultation in his demeanour, and
+something odiously brotherly in his mode of bidding them all good-night.
+
+When everyone had left, and the family were alone, they gathered round
+the hall fire for a final chat, before dispersing for the night.
+
+"What a delightful evening we have had, Mrs. Fullerton," said Miss
+Temperley. "It was most picturesque and characteristic. I shall always
+remember the charm and kindliness of Scottish hospitality."
+
+"And I," said Ernest, _sotto voce_ to Algitha, "shall always remember
+the calm and thoroughness of English cheek!"
+
+"Why, we had almost forgotten that the New Year is just upon us,"
+exclaimed Mr. Fullerton. The first stroke of twelve began to sound
+almost as he spoke. He threw up the window and disclosed a night
+brilliant with stars. ("And under us graves," said Hadria to herself.)
+
+They all crowded up, keeping silence as the slow strokes of the clock
+told the hour.
+
+"A Happy New Year to all!" cried Mr. Fullerton heartily.
+
+
+
+
+Part II.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+                                     "... when the steam
+           Floats up from those dim fields about the homes
+           Of happy men that have the power to die."
+                                    _Tithonius_, TENNYSON.
+
+
+A countryman with stooping gait touched his cap and bid good-day to a
+young woman who walked rapidly along the crisp high road, smiling a
+response as she passed.
+
+The road led gradually upward through a country blazing with red and
+orange for rolling miles, till the horizon closed in with the far-off
+blue of English hills.
+
+The old man slowly turned to watch the wayfarer, whose quick step and
+the look in her eyes of being fixed on objects beyond their owner's
+immediate ken, might have suggested to the observant, inward
+perturbation. The lissom, swiftly moving figure was almost out of sight
+before the old man slowly wheeled round and continued on his way towards
+the hamlet of Craddock Dene, that lay in the valley about a mile further
+on. Meanwhile the young woman was speeding towards the village of
+Craddock on the summit of the gentle slope before her. A row of
+broad-tiled cottages came in sight, and on the hill-side the Vicarage
+among trees, and a grey stone church which had seen many changes since
+its tower first looked out from the hill-top over the southern counties.
+
+The little village seemed as if it had forgotten to change with the rest
+of the country, for at least a hundred years. The spirit of the last
+century lingered in its quiet cottages, in the little ale-house with
+half-obliterated sign, in its air of absolute repose and leisure. There
+was no evidence of contest anywhere--except perhaps in a few mouldy
+advertisements of a circus and of a remarkable kind of soap, that were
+half peeling off a moss-covered wall. There were not even many
+indications of life in the place. The sunshine seemed to have the
+village street to itself. A couple of women stood gossiping over the
+gate of one of the cottages. They paused in their talk as a quick step
+sounded on the road.
+
+"There be Mrs. Temperley again!" one matron exclaimed. "Why this is the
+second time this week, as she's come and sat in the churchyard along o'
+the dead. Don't seem nat'ral to my thinking."
+
+Mrs. Dodge and Mrs. Gullick continued to discuss this gloomy habit with
+exhaustive minuteness, involving themselves in side issues regarding the
+general conduct of life on the part of Mrs. Temperley, that promised
+solid material for conversation for the next week. It appeared from the
+observations of Mrs. Gullick, whose husband worked on Lord Engleton's
+model farm, that about five years ago Mr. Temperley had rented the Red
+House at Craddock Dene, and had brought his new wife to live there. The
+Red House belonged to Professor Fortescue, who also owned the Priory,
+which had stood empty, said Mrs. Gullick, since that poor Mrs. Fortescue
+killed herself in the old drawing-room. Mr. Temperley went every day to
+town to attend to his legal business, and returned by the evening train
+to the bosom of his family. That family now consisted in his wife and
+two small boys; pretty little fellows, added Mrs. Dodge, the pride of
+their parents' hearts; at least, so she had heard Mr. Joseph Fleming
+say, and he was intimate at the Red House. Mrs. Gullick did not exactly
+approve of Mrs. Temperley. The Red House was not, it would seem, an
+ever-flowing fount of sustaining port wine and spiritually nourishing
+literature. The moral evolution of the village had proceeded on those
+lines. The prevailing feeling was vaguely hostile; neither Mrs. Gullick
+nor Mrs. Dodge exactly knew why. Mrs. Dodge said that her husband (who
+was the sexton and gravedigger) had found Mrs. Temperley always ready
+for a chat. He spoke well of her. But Dodge was not one of many. Mrs.
+Temperley was perhaps too sensitively respectful of the feelings of her
+poorer neighbours to be very popular among them. At any rate, her habits
+of seclusion did not seem to village philosophy to be justifiable in the
+eyes of God or man. Her apparent fondness for the society of the dead
+also caused displeasure. Why she went to the churchyard could not be
+imagined: one would think she had a family buried there, she who was,
+"as one might say, a stranger to the place," and could not be supposed
+to have any interest in the graves, which held for her nor kith nor kin!
+
+Mrs. Temperley, however, appeared to be able to dispense with this
+element of attraction in the "grassy barrows." She and a company of
+youthful Cochin-China fowls remained for hours among them, on this
+cheerful morning, and no observer could have determined whether it was
+the graves or the fowls that riveted her attention. She had perched
+herself on the stile that led from the churchyard to the fields: a
+slender figure in serviceable russet and irresponsible-looking hat,
+autumn-tinted too, in sympathy with the splendid season. In her ungloved
+left hand, which was at once sensitive and firm, she carried a book,
+keeping a forefinger between the pages to mark a passage.
+
+Her face bore signs of suffering, and at this moment, a look of baffled
+and restless longing, as if life had been for her a festival whose
+sounds came from a hopeless distance. Yet there was something in the
+expression of the mouth, that suggested a consistent standing aloof from
+herself and her desires. The lines of the face could never have been
+drawn by mere diffusive, emotional habits. Thought had left as many
+traces as feeling in the firm drawing. The quality of the face was of
+that indefinable kind that gives to all characteristic things their
+peculiar power over the imagination. The more powerful the quality, the
+less can it be rendered into terms. It is the one marvellous, remaining,
+musical fact not to be defined that makes the Parthenon, or some other
+masterpiece of art, translate us to a new plane of existence, and
+inspire, for the time being, the pessimist with hope and the sceptic
+with religion.
+
+The Cochin-Chinas pecked about with a contented mien among the long
+grass, finding odds and ends of nourishment, and here and there eking
+out their livelihood with a dart at a passing fly. Their long, comic,
+tufted legs, which seemed to form a sort of monumental pedestal whereon
+the bird itself was elevated, stalked and scratched about with an air of
+industrious serenity.
+
+There were few mornings in the year which left unstirred the grass which
+grew long over the graves, but this was one of the few. Each blade stood
+up still and straight, bearing its string of dewdrops. There were one or
+two village sounds that came subdued through the sunshine. The winds
+that usually haunted the high spot had fallen asleep, or were lying
+somewhere in ambush among the woodlands beyond.
+
+The look of strain had faded from the face of Mrs. Temperley, leaving
+only an expression of sadness. The removal of all necessity for
+concealing thought allowed her story to write itself on her face. The
+speculative would have felt some curiosity as to the cause of a sadness
+in one seemingly so well treated by destiny. Neither poverty nor the
+cares of great wealth could have weighed upon her spirit; she had
+beauty, and a quality more attractive than beauty, which must have
+placed many things at her command; she had evident talent--her very
+attitude proclaimed it--and the power over Fortune that talent ought to
+give. Possibly, the observer might reflect, the gift was of that kind
+which lays the possessor peculiarly open to her outrageous slings and
+arrows. Had Mrs. Temperley shown any morbid signs of self-indulgent
+emotionalism the problem would have been simple enough; but this was
+not the case.
+
+The solitude was presently broken by the approach of an old man laden
+with pickaxe and shovel. He remarked upon the fineness of the day, and
+took up his position at a short distance from the stile, where the turf
+had been cleared away in a long-shaped patch. Here, with great
+deliberation he began his task. The sound of his steady strokes fell on
+the stillness. Presently, the clock from the grey tower gave forth its
+announcement--eleven. One by one, the slow hammer sent the waves of air
+rolling away, almost visibly, through the sunshine, their sound
+alternating with the thud of the pickaxe, so as to produce an effect of
+intentional rhythm. One might have fancied that clock and pickaxe
+iterated in turn, "Time, Death! Time, Death! Time, Death!" till the
+clock had come to the end of its tale, and then the pickaxe went on
+alone in the stillness--"Death! Death! Death! Death!"
+
+A smile, not easy to be accounted for, flitted across the face of Mrs.
+Temperley.
+
+The old gravedigger paused at last in his toil, leaning on his pickaxe,
+and bringing a red cotton handkerchief out of his hat to wipe his brow.
+
+"That seems rather hard work, Dodge," remarked the onlooker, leaning her
+book upright on her knee and her chin on her hand.
+
+"Ay, that it be, mum; this clay's that stiff! Lord! folks is almost as
+much trouble to them as buries as to them as bears 'em; it's all trouble
+together, to my thinkin'."
+
+She assented with a musing nod.
+
+"And when a man's not a troublin' o' some other body, he's a troublin'
+of hisself," added the philosopher.
+
+"You are cursed with a clear-sightedness that must make life a burden to
+you," said Mrs. Temperley.
+
+"Well, mum, I do sort o' see the bearin's o' things better nor most,"
+Dodge modestly admitted. The lady knew, and liked to gratify, the
+gravedigger's love of long-worded discourse.
+
+"Some people," she said, "are born contemplative, while others never
+reflect at all, whatever the provocation."
+
+"Yes'm, that's just it; folks goes on as if they was to live for ever,
+without no thought o' dyin'. As you was a sayin' jus' now, mum, there's
+them as contemflecs natural like, and there's them as is born without
+provocation----"
+
+"Everlastingly!" assented Mrs. Temperley with a sudden laugh. "You
+evidently, Dodge, are one of those who strive to read the riddle of this
+painful earth. Tell me what you think it is all about."
+
+Gratified by this appeal to his judgment, Dodge scratched his head, and
+leant both brawny arms upon his pickaxe.
+
+"Well, mum," he said, "I s'pose it's the will o' th' Almighty as we is
+brought into the world, and I don't say nothin' agin it--'tisn't my
+place--but it do come over me powerful at times, wen I sees all the
+vexin' as folks has to go through, as God A'mighty might 'a found
+somethin' better to do with His time; not as I wants to find no fault
+with His ways, which is past finding out," added the gravedigger,
+falling to work again.
+
+A silence of some minutes was broken by Mrs. Temperley's enquiry as to
+how long Dodge had followed this profession.
+
+"Nigh on twenty year, mum, come Michaelmas," replied Dodge. "I've lain
+my couple o' hundred under the sod, easy; and a fine lot o' corpses they
+was too, take 'em one with another." Dodge was evidently prepared to
+stand up for the average corpse of the Craddock district against all
+competitors.
+
+"This is a very healthy neighbourhood, I suppose," observed Mrs.
+Temperley, seemingly by way of supplying an explanation of the proud
+fact.
+
+"Lord bless you, as healthy as any place in the kingdom. There wasn't
+one in ten as was ill when he died, as one may say."
+
+"But that scarcely seems an unmixed blessing," commented the lady
+musingly, "to go off suddenly in the full flush of health and spirits;
+it would be so discouraging."
+
+"Most was chills, took sudden," Dodge explained; "chills is wot chokes
+up yer churchyards for yer. If we has another hard winter this year, we
+shall have a job to find room in here. There's one or two in the village
+already, as I has my eye on, wot----"
+
+"Was this one a chill?" interrupted Mrs. Temperley, with a nod towards
+the new grave.
+
+"Wot, this here? Lord bless you, no, mum. This here's our schoolmarm.
+Didn't you never hear tell about _her_?" This damning proof of his
+companion's aloofness from village gossip seemed to paralyse the
+gravedigger.
+
+"Why everybody's been a talkin' about it. Over varty, she war, and ought
+to 'a knowed better."
+
+"But, with advancing years, it is rare that people _do_ get to know
+better--about dying," Mrs. Temperley suggested, in defence of the
+deceased schoolmistress.
+
+"I means about her conduc'," Dodge explained; "scand'lous thing. Why,
+she's been in Craddock school since she war a little chit o' sixteen."
+
+"That seems to me a trifle dull, but scarcely scandalous," Mrs.
+Temperley murmured.
+
+"... And as steady and respectable a young woman as you'd wish to see
+... pupil teacher she was, and she rose to be schoolmarm," Dodge went
+on.
+
+"It strikes me as a most blameless career," said his companion.
+"Perhaps, as you say, considering her years, she ought to have known
+better, but----"
+
+"She sort o' belongs to the place, as one may say," Dodge proceeded,
+evidently quite unaware that he had omitted to give the clue to the
+situation. "She's lived here all her life."
+
+"Then much may be forgiven her," muttered Mrs. Temperley.
+
+"And everybody respected of her, and the parson he thought a deal o'
+her, he did, and used to hold her up as a sample to the other young
+women, and nobody dreamt as she'd go and bring this here scandal on the
+place; nobody knows who the man was, but it _is_ said as there's someone
+_not_ twenty miles from here as knows more about it nor he didn't ought
+to," Dodge added with sinister meaning. This dark hint conveyed
+absolutely no enlightenment to the mind of Mrs. Temperley, from sheer
+lack of familiarity, on her part, with the rumours of the district.
+Dodge applied himself with a spurt to his work.
+
+"When she had her baby, she was like one out of her mind," he continued;
+"she couldn't stand the disgrace and the neighbours talkin', and that.
+Mrs. Walker she went and saw her, and brought her nourishin' things, and
+kep' on a-telling her how she must try and make up for what she had
+done, and repent and all that; but she never got up her heart again
+like, and the poor soul took fever from grievin', the doctor says, and
+raved on dreadful, accusin' of somebody, and sayin' he'd sent her to
+hell; and then Wensday morning, ten o'clock, she died. Didn't you hear
+the passing bell a-tolling, mum?"
+
+"Yes, the wind brought it down the valley; but I did not know whom it
+was tolling for."
+
+"That's who it was," said Dodge.
+
+"This is an awfully sad story," cried Mrs. Temperley.
+
+Dodge ran his fingers through his hair judicially. "I don't hold with
+them sort o' goings on for young women," he observed.
+
+"Do you hold with them for young men?"
+
+Dodge puckered up his face into an odd expression of mingled reflection
+and worldly wisdom. "You can't prevent young fellers bein' young
+fellers," he at length observed.
+
+"It seems almost a pity that being young fellows should also mean being
+blackguards," observed Mrs. Temperley calmly.
+
+"Well, there's somethin' to be said for that way o' lookin' at it,"
+Dodge was startled into agreeing.
+
+"I suppose _she_ gets all the blame of the thing," the lady went on,
+with quiet exasperation. Dodge seemed thrown off his bearings.
+
+"Everybody in Craddock was a-talking about it, as was only to be
+expected," said the gravedigger. "Well, well, we're all sinners. Don't
+do to be too hard on folks. 'Pears sad like after keepin' 'spectable for
+all them years too--sort o' waste."
+
+Mrs. Temperley gave a little laugh, which seemed to Dodge rather
+eccentric.
+
+"Who is looking after the baby?" she asked.
+
+"One of the neighbours, name o' Gullick, as her husband works for Lord
+Engleton, which she takes in washing," Dodge comprehensively explained.
+
+"Had its mother no relatives?"
+
+"Well, she had an aunt down at Southampton, I've heard tell, but she
+didn't take much notice of her, not _she_ didn't. Her mother only died
+last year, took off sudden before her daughter could get to her."
+
+"Your schoolmistress has known trouble," observed Mrs. Temperley. "Had
+she no one, no sister, no friend, during all this time that she could
+turn to for help or counsel?"
+
+"Not as I knows of," Dodge replied.
+
+There was a long pause, during which the stillness seemed to weigh upon
+the air, as if the pressure of Fate were hanging there with ruthless
+immobility.
+
+"She ain't got no more to suffer now," Dodge remarked, nodding with an
+aspect of half apology towards the grave. "They sleeps soft as sleeps
+here."
+
+"Good heavens, I hope so!" Mrs. Temperley exclaimed.
+
+The grave had made considerable progress before she descended from the
+stile and prepared to take her homeward way. On leaving, she made Dodge
+come with her to the gate, and point out the red-roofed cottage covered
+with monthly roses and flaming creeper, where the schoolmistress had
+passed so many years, and where she now lay with her work and her days
+all over, in the tiny upper room, at whose latticed window the sun used
+to wake her on summer mornings, or the winter rain pattered dreary
+prophecies of the tears that she would one day shed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+"If you please, ma'am, the cook says as the meat hasn't come for lunch,
+and what is she to do?"
+
+"Without," replied Mrs. Temperley automatically.
+
+The maid waited for more discreet directions. She had given a month's
+notice that very morning, because she found Craddock Dene too dull.
+
+"Thank goodness, that barbarian is going!" Hubert had exclaimed.
+
+"We shall but exchange a Goth for a Vandal," his wife replied.
+
+Mrs. Temperley gazed intently at her maid, the light of intelligence
+gradually dawning in her countenance. "Is there anything else in the
+house, Sapph--Sophia?"
+
+"No, ma'am," replied Sophia.
+
+"Oh, tell the cook to make it into a fricassee, and be sure it is well
+flavoured." The maid hesitated, but seeing from the wandering expression
+of her employer's eye that her intellect was again clouded over, she
+retired to give the message to the cook--with comments.
+
+The library at the Red House was the only room that had been radically
+altered since the days of the former tenants, whose taste had leant
+towards the florid rather than the classic. The general effect had been
+toned down, but it was impossible to disguise the leading motive; or
+what Mrs. Temperley passionately described as its brutal vulgarity. The
+library alone had been subjected to _peine forte et dure_. Mrs.
+Temperley said that it had been purified by suffering. By dint of
+tearing down and dragging out offending objects ("such a pity!" cried
+the neighbours) its prosperous and complacent absurdity had been
+humbled. Mrs. Temperley retired to this refuge after her encounter with
+Sophia. That perennially aggrieved young person entered almost
+immediately afterwards and announced a visitor, with an air that
+implied--"She'll stay to lunch; see if she don't, and what'll you do
+then? Yah!"
+
+The pronunciation of the visitor's name was such, that, for the moment,
+Mrs. Temperley did not recognize it as that of Miss Valeria Du Prel.
+
+She jumped up joyfully. "Ah, Valeria, this _is_ delightful!"
+
+The visit was explained after a characteristic fashion. Miss Du Prel
+realized that over two years had passed since she had seen Hadria, and
+moreover she had been seized with an overwhelming longing for a sight of
+country fields and a whiff of country air, so she had put a few things
+together in a handbag, which she had left at Craddock station by
+accident, and come down. Was there anyone who could go and fetch her
+handbag? It was such a nuisance; she laid it down for a moment to get at
+her ticket--she never could find her pocket, dressmakers always hid them
+in such an absurd way; could Hadria recommend any dressmaker who did not
+hide pockets? Wasn't it tiresome? She had no time-table, and so she had
+gone to the station that morning and waited till a Craddock train
+started, and by this arrangement it had come to pass that she had spent
+an hour and a half on the platform: she did not think she ever had such
+an unpleasant time; why didn't they have trains oftener? They did to
+Putney.
+
+Mrs. Temperley sat down and laughed. Whereupon the other's face
+lightened and she joined in the laugh at her own expense, settling into
+the easy chair that her hostess had prepared for her, with a gesture of
+helplessness and comfort.
+
+"Well, in spite of that time at the station, I'm glad I came. It seems
+so long since I have seen you, dear Hadria, and the last time you know
+you were very unhappy, almost mad----"
+
+"Yes, yes; never mind about that," interposed Mrs. Temperley hastily,
+setting her teeth together.
+
+"You take things too hard, too hard," said Miss Du Prel. "I used to
+think _I_ was bad in that way, but I am phlegmatic compared with you.
+One would suppose that----"
+
+"Valeria, don't, don't, don't," cried Mrs. Temperley. "I can't stand
+it." Her teeth were still set tight and hard, her hands were clenched.
+
+"Very well, very well. Tell me what you have been making of this
+ridiculous old world, where everything goes wrong and everybody is
+stupid or wicked, or both."
+
+Mrs. Temperley's face relaxed a little, though the signs of some strong
+emotion were still visible.
+
+"Well, to answer the general by the particular, I have spent the
+morning, accompanied by a nice young brood of Cochin-China fowls, in
+Craddock churchyard."
+
+"Oh, I hate a churchyard," exclaimed Miss Du Prel, with a shudder. "It
+makes one think of the hideous mockery of life, and the more one would
+like to die, the worse seems the brutality of death and his hideous
+accompaniments. It is such a savage denial of all human aspirations and
+affections and hopes. Ah, it is horrible!" The sharply-outlined face
+grew haggard and white, as its owner crouched over the fire.
+
+"Heaven knows! but it was very serene and very lovely up there this
+morning."
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed Valeria with a burst of strange enthusiasm and sadness,
+that revealed all the fire and yearning and power that had raised her
+above her fellows in the scale of consciousness, with the penalty of a
+life of solitude and of sorrow.
+
+"Surely it is not without meaning that the places of the dead are the
+serenest spots on earth," said Mrs. Temperley. "If I could keep myself
+in the mood that the place induces, I think I should not mind anything
+very much any more. The sunshine seems to rest more tenderly there than
+elsewhere, and the winds have a reverence for the graves, as if they
+felt it time that the dead were left in peace--the 'happier dead,' as
+poor immortal Tithonius calls them, who has not the gift of death. And
+the grey old tower and the weather stains on the stones; there is a
+conspiracy of beauty in the place, that holds one as one is held by
+music."
+
+"Ah! I know the magic of these things; it tempts one to believe at times
+that Nature is _not_ all blind and unpitying. But that is a delusion: if
+there were any pity in Nature, the human spirit would not be dowered
+with such infinite and terrible longings and such capacities and dreams
+and prayers and then--then insulted with the mockery of death and
+annihilation."
+
+"If there should be no Beyond," muttered Mrs. Temperley.
+
+"That to me is inconceivable. When we die we fall into an eternal sleep.
+Moreover, I can see no creed that does not add the fear of future
+torments to the certainties of these."
+
+Mrs. Temperley was seized with a bitter mood. "You should cultivate
+faith," she said; "it acts the part of the heading 'Sundries omitted' in
+one's weekly accounts; one can put down under it everything that can't
+be understood--but you don't keep weekly accounts, so it's no use
+pointing out to you the peace that comes of that device."
+
+The entrance of Sophia with firewood turned the current of conversation.
+"Good heavens! I don't think we have anything for lunch!" Mrs. Temperley
+exclaimed. "Are you very hungry? What is to be done? It was the
+faithlessness of our butcher that disturbed the serenity of my mood this
+morning. Perhaps the poor beast whose carcase we were intending to
+devour will feel serene instead of me: but, alas! I fear he has been
+slaughtered _quand meme_. That is one of the unsatisfactory things about
+life: that all its worst miseries bring good to no one. One may deny
+oneself, but not a living thing is necessarily the better for
+it--generally many are the worse. The wheels of pain go turning day by
+day, and the gods stand aloof--they will not help us, nor will they stay
+the 'wild world' in its course. No, no," added Mrs. Temperley with a
+laugh, "I am not tired of life, but I am tired _with_ it; it won't give
+me what I want. That is perhaps because I want so much."
+
+The sound of male footsteps in the hall broke up the colloquy.
+
+"Good heavens! Hubert has brought home a crowd of people to lunch,"
+exclaimed Hadria, "a thing he scarcely ever does. What fatality can have
+induced him to choose to-day of all others for this orgy of
+hospitality?"
+
+"Does the day matter?" enquired Valeria, astonished at so much emotion.
+
+"_Does the day matter!_ Oh irresponsible question of the unwedded! When
+I tell you the butcher has not sent the meat."
+
+"Oh ... can't one eat fish?" suggested Miss Du Prel.
+
+Hadria laughed and opened the door.
+
+"My dear, I have brought Fleming home to lunch."
+
+"Thank heaven, _only one!_"
+
+Temperley stared.
+
+"I could not conveniently have brought home several," he said.
+
+"I thought you would be at least seven," cried the mistress of the
+house, "and with all the pertinacity of Wordsworth's little girl."
+
+"What _do_ you mean, if one may ask for simple English?"
+
+"Merely that that intolerable Sanders has broken his word--_hinc illae
+lacrimae_."
+
+Hubert Temperley turned away in annoyance. He used to be amused by his
+wife's flippancy before her marriage, but he had long since grown to
+dislike it. He retired to get out some wine, while Hadria went forward
+to welcome the guest, who now came in from the garden, where he had
+lingered to talk to the children.
+
+"I am delighted to see you, Mr. Fleming; but I am grieved to say that we
+have unluckily only a wretched luncheon to give you, and after your long
+walk over the fields too! I am _so_ sorry. The fact is we are left, this
+morning, with a gaping larder, at the mercy of a haughty and inconstant
+butcher, who grinds down his helpless dependents without mercy,
+overbearing creature that he is! We must ask you to be very tolerant."
+
+"Oh! please don't trouble about that; it doesn't matter in the least,"
+cried Mr. Fleming, pulling at his yellowish whiskers. He was a man of
+about five-and-thirty, of medium height, dressed in knickerbockers and
+Norfolk jacket that had seen some service.
+
+"What is the difficulty?" asked Hubert.
+
+"I was explaining to Mr. Fleming how inhospitably we are forced to treat
+him, on account of that traitor Sanders."
+
+Hubert gave a gesture of annoyance.
+
+"I suppose there is something cold in the house."
+
+"Pudding, perhaps," said his wife hopelessly. "It is most unlucky."
+
+"My dear, surely there must be something cold that isn't pudding."
+
+"I fear, very little; but I will go and see the cook, though, alas! she
+is not easy to inspire as regards her particular business. She is
+extremely entertaining as a conversationalist, but I think she was meant
+for society rather than the kitchen. I am sure society would be more
+diverting if she were in it."
+
+Hadria was just turning to seek this misplaced genius, when she paused
+in the doorway.
+
+"By the way, I suppose Sapphira has----"
+
+"Do try and cure yourself of the habit of calling the girl by that
+absurd name, Hadria."
+
+"Oh, yes; but the name is so descriptive. She has told you of Miss Du
+Prel's arrival?"
+
+"She has told me nothing of the sort."
+
+Temperley did not look overjoyed. There had never been much cordiality
+between him and Valeria since the afternoon when they had met at
+Dunaghee, and found their sentiments in hopeless opposition.
+
+Miss Du Prel took no interest in Hubert, though she admired his
+character. She had every wish to make herself agreeable to him, but her
+efforts in that direction were somewhat neutralized by an incurable
+absence of mind. If she was not interested, as Hadria said, she was
+seldom affable.
+
+Possibly Hubert's request to her, years ago at Dunaghee, to "think for a
+moment" had not been forgiven.
+
+"Where is she? Oh!----"
+
+The exclamation was in consequence of Miss Du Prel's appearing at the
+door of the library, whence she surveyed the group with absent-minded
+intentness.
+
+Valeria woke up with a start, and responded to Hubert's greeting in an
+erratic fashion, replying tragically, to a casual enquiry as to her
+health, that she had been _frightfully_ ill.
+
+"I thought I was dying. But one never dies," she added in a disgusted
+tone, whereat Hadria heartlessly laughed, and hurried the visitor
+upstairs to help her to unpack.
+
+"Valeria," said Mrs. Temperley, while that lady was confusedly trying to
+disentangle hat and hair, hat-pin and head, without involving the entire
+system in a common ruin--"Valeria, we are not a remarkable people at
+Craddock Dene. We may be worthy, we may have our good points, but we are
+not brilliant (except the cook). Should Mr. Fleming fail to impress you
+as a person of striking personality, I ask you, as a favour, _not_ to
+emblazon that impression on every feature: should he address to you a
+remark that you do not find interesting, and it is quite conceivable
+that he may--do not glare at him scornfully for a moment, and----"
+
+Hadria was not allowed to finish the sentence.
+
+"As if I ever did any such thing--and people are so dull," said Miss Du
+Prel.
+
+A few "curried details," as the hostess dejectedly described the fare,
+had been supplemented with vegetables, fruit, and impromptu preparations
+of eggs, and the luncheon was pronounced excellent and ample.
+
+Miss Du Prel said that she hoped the butcher would always forget to send
+the meat. She liked these imaginative meals.
+
+Temperley purposely misunderstood her to say "imaginary meals," and
+hoped that next time she came, Hadria would not have an oratorio in
+course of composition. Miss Du Prel expressed a fiery interest in the
+oratorio.
+
+"I judge the presence of oratorio by the absence of food," Temperley
+explained suavely.
+
+Hadria watched the encounter with a mingled sense of amusement and
+discomfort.
+
+Valeria was in no danger. To be morally crushed by an adversary, it is
+necessary that one should be at least aware that the adversary is
+engaged in crushing one: a consciousness that was plainly denied to Miss
+Du Prel. Many a man far less able than Hubert had power to interest her,
+while he could not even hold her attention. She used to complain to
+Professor Fortescue that Temperley's ideas never seemed to have
+originated in his own brain: they had been imported ready-made. Hubert
+was among the many who shrink and harden into mental furrows as time
+passes. What he had thought at twenty, at thirty-five had acquired
+sanctity and certainty, from having been the opinion of Hubert Temperley
+for all those favoured years. He had no suspicion that the views which
+he cherished in so dainty and scholarly a fashion were simply an
+_edition de luxe_ of the views of everybody else. But his wife had made
+that discovery long ago. He smiled at the views of everybody else: his
+own were put forth as something choice and superior. He had the happy
+knack of being _bourgeois_ with the air of an artist. If one could
+picture one's grocer weighing out sugar in a Spanish cloak and brigand's
+hat, it would afford an excellent symbol of his spiritual estate. To be
+perfectly commonplace in a brilliantly original way, is to be notable
+after all.
+
+Mr. Fleming seemed puzzled by Miss Du Prel, at whom he glanced uneasily
+from time to time, wondering what she would say next. At Craddock Dene,
+ladies usually listened with a more or less breathless deference when
+Temperley spoke. This new-comer seemed recklessly independent.
+
+Mrs. Temperley endeavoured to lead the conversation in ways of peace,
+but Valeria was evidently on the war-path. Temperley was polite and
+ironical, with under-meanings for Hadria's benefit.
+
+"If one asks impossible things of life, one is apt to be disappointed, I
+fear," he said serenely. "Ask for the possible and natural harvest of a
+woman's career, and see if you don't get it."
+
+"Let a canary plead for its cage, in short, and its commendable prayer
+will be answered!"
+
+"If you like to put it thus ungraciously. I should say that one who
+makes the most of his opportunities, as they stand, fares better than he
+who sighs for other worlds to conquer."
+
+"I suppose that is what his relatives said to Columbus," observed Miss
+Du Prel.
+
+"And how do you know they were not right?" he retorted.
+
+Mrs. Temperley gave the signal to rise. "Let's go for a walk," she
+suggested, "the afternoon invites us. Look at it."
+
+The brilliant sunshine and the exercise brought about a more genial
+mood. Only once was there anything approaching friction, and then it was
+Hadria herself who caused it.
+
+"Yes, we all flatter ourselves that we are observing life, when we are
+merely noting the occasions when some musty old notion of ours happens,
+by chance, to get fulfilled."
+
+Hubert Temperley at once roused Miss Du Prel's interest by the large
+stores of information that he had to pour forth on the history of the
+district, from its earliest times to the present. He recalled the days
+when these lands that looked so smooth and tended had been mere wastes
+of marsh and forest.
+
+How quickly these great changes were accomplished! Valeria stood on the
+brow of a wide corn-field, looking out over the sleeping country. A
+century, after all, was not much more than one person's lifetime, yet in
+scarcely nine of these--nine little troubled lifetimes--what incredible
+things had occurred in this island of ours! How did it all come about?
+"Not assuredly," Valeria remarked with sudden malice, "by taking things
+as they stood, and making the best of them with imbecile impatience. If
+everyone had done that, what sort of an England should I have had
+stretching before my eyes at this moment?"
+
+"You would not have been here to see," said Hadria, lazily rolling
+stones down the hill with her foot. "We should all of us have been
+dancing round some huge log-fire on the borders of a primeval forest,
+and instead of browsing on salads, as we did to-day, we should be
+sustaining ourselves on the unholy nourishment of boiled parent or
+grilled aunt."
+
+Mr. Temperley's refined appearance and manner seemed to raise an
+incarnate protest against this revolting picture. For some occult
+reason, the imagination of all was at work especially and exclusively on
+the figure of that polished gentleman in war-paint and feathers,
+sporting round the cauldron that contained the boiled earthly remains of
+his relations.
+
+Mr. Fleming betrayed the common thought by remarking that it would be
+very becoming to him.
+
+"Ah! I wish we _were_ all savages in feathers and war-paint, dancing on
+the edge of some wild forest, with nothing but the sea and the sky for
+limits!"
+
+Miss Du Prel surprised her audience by this earnest aspiration.
+
+"Do you feel inclined to revert?" Hadria enquired. "Because if so, I
+shall be glad to join you."
+
+"I think there _is_ a slight touch of the savage about Mrs. Temperley,"
+observed Fleming pensively. "I mean, don't you know--of course----."
+
+"You are quite right!" cried Valeria. "I have often noticed a sort of
+wildness that crops up now and then through a very smooth surface.
+Hadria may sigh for the woodlands, yet----!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+
+The first break in the unity of the Fullerton family had occurred on the
+occasion of Hadria's marriage. The short period that elapsed between
+that memorable New-Year's-Eve and the wedding had been a painful
+experience for Dunaghee. Hadria's conduct had shaken her brothers' faith
+in her and in all womankind. Ernest especially had suffered disillusion.
+He had supposed her above the ordinary, pettier weaknesses of humanity.
+Other fellows' sisters had seemed to him miserable travesties of their
+sex compared with her. (There was one exception only, to this rule.) But
+now, what was he to think? She had shattered his faith. If she hadn't
+been "so cocksure of herself," he wouldn't have minded so much; but
+after all she had professed, to go and marry, and marry a starched
+specimen like that!
+
+Fred was equally emphatic. For a long time he had regarded it all as a
+joke. He shook his head knowingly, and said that sort of thing wouldn't
+go down. When he was at length convinced, he danced with rage. He became
+cynical. He had no patience with girls. They talked for talking's sake.
+It meant nothing.
+
+Algitha understood, better than her brothers could understand, how
+Hadria's emotional nature had been caught in some strange mood, how the
+eloquent assurances of her lover might have half convinced her.
+Algitha's own experience of proposals set her on the track of the
+mystery.
+
+"It is most misleading," she pointed out, to her scoffing brothers. "One
+would suppose that marrying was the simplest thing in the world--nothing
+perilous, nothing to object to about it. A man proposes to you as if he
+were asking you for the sixth waltz, only his manner is perfervid. And
+my belief is that half the girls who accept don't realize that they are
+agreeing to anything much more serious."
+
+"The more fools they!"
+
+"True; but it really is most bewildering. Claims, obligations, all the
+ugly sides of the affair are hidden away; the man is at his best, full
+of refinement and courtesy and unselfishness. And if he persuades the
+girl that he really does care for her, how can she suppose that she
+cannot trust her future to him--if he loves her? And yet she can't!"
+
+"How can a man suppose that one girl is going to be different from every
+other girl?" asked Fred.
+
+"Different, you mean, from what he _supposes_ every other girl to be,"
+Algitha corrected. "It's his own look-out if he's such a fool."
+
+"I believe Hadria married because she was sick of being the family
+consolation," said Ernest.
+
+"Well, of course, the hope of escape was very tempting. You boys don't
+know what she went through. We all regret her marriage to Hubert
+Temperley--though between ourselves, not more than _he_ regrets it, if I
+am not much mistaken--but it is very certain that she could not have
+gone on living at home much longer, as things were."
+
+Fred said that she ought to have broken out after Algitha's fashion, if
+it was so bad as all that.
+
+"I think mother would have died if she had," said the sister.
+
+"Hadria _was_ awkwardly placed," Fred admitted.
+
+"Do you remember that evening in the garret when we all told her what we
+thought?" asked Ernest.
+
+Nobody had forgotten that painful occasion.
+
+"She said then that if the worst came to the worst, she would simply run
+away. What could prevent her?"
+
+"That wretched sister of his!" cried Algitha. "If it hadn't been for
+her, the marriage would never have taken place. She got the ear of
+mother after the engagement, and I am certain it was through her
+influence that mother hurried the wedding on so. If only there had been
+a little more time, it could have been prevented. And Henriette knew
+that. She is as _knowing_----!"
+
+"I wish we had strangled her."
+
+"I shall never forget," Algitha went on, "that night when Hadria was
+taken with a fit of terror--it was nothing less--and wrote to break off
+the engagement, and that woman undertook to deliver the letter and lost
+it, _on purpose_ I am always convinced, and then the favourable moment
+was over."
+
+"What made her so anxious for the marriage beats me," cried Ernest. "It
+was not a particularly good match from a mercenary point of view."
+
+"She thought us an interesting family to marry into," suggested Fred,
+"which is undeniable."
+
+"Then she must be greatly disappointed at seeing so little of us!" cried
+Ernest.
+
+In the early days, Miss Temperley had stayed frequently at the Red
+House, and Hadria had been cut off from her own family, who detested
+Henriette.
+
+For a year or more, there had been a fair promise of a successful
+adjustment of the two incongruous natures in the new conditions. They
+both tried to keep off dangerous ground and to avoid collisions of will.
+They made the most of their one common interest, although even here they
+soon found themselves out of sympathy. Hubert's instincts were
+scholastic and lawful, Hadria was disposed to daring innovation. Her
+bizarre compositions shocked him painfully. The two jarred on one
+another, in great things and in small. The halcyon period was
+short-lived. The dream, such as it was, came to an end. Hubert turned
+to his sister, in his bewilderment and disappointment. They had both
+counted so securely on the effect of experience and the pressure of
+events to teach Hadria the desirable lesson, and they were dismayed to
+find that, unlike other women, she had failed to learn it. Henriette was
+in despair. It was she who had brought about the ill-starred union. How
+could she ever forgive herself? How repair the error she had made? Only
+by devoting herself to her brother, and trying patiently to bring his
+wife to a wiser frame of mind.
+
+A considerable time had elapsed, during which Hadria saw her brothers
+and sister only at long intervals. Ernest had become estranged from her,
+to her great grief. He was as courteous and tender in his manner to her
+as of yore, but there was a change, not to be mistaken. She had lost the
+brother of her girlhood for ever. While it bitterly grieved, it did not
+surprise her. She acknowledged in dismay the inconsistency of her
+conduct. She must have been mad! The universal similarity in the
+behaviour of girls, herself included, alarmed her. Was there some
+external will that drove them all, in hordes, to their fate? Were all
+the intricacies of event and circumstance, of their very emotion, merely
+the workings of that ruthless cosmic will by which the individual was
+hypnotised and ruled?
+
+As usual at critical moments, Hadria had been solitary in her encounter
+with the elements of Fate. There were conflicts that even her sister
+knew nothing about, the bewilderments and temptations of a nature
+hampered in its action by its own voluminous qualities and its caprice.
+
+Her brothers supposed that in a short time Hadria would be "wearing
+bonnets and a card-case, and going the rounds with an elegant expression
+like the rest of them."
+
+How different were the little local facts of life--the little chopped-up
+life that accumulates in odds and ends from moment to moment--from the
+sun-and-smoke vision of early irresponsible days!
+
+Mrs. Fullerton was pleased with the marriage, not merely because
+Hubert's father, Judge Temperley, could secure for his son a prosperous
+career, but because she was so thankful to see a strange, unaccountable
+girl like Hadria settling quietly down, with a couple of children to
+keep her out of mischief.
+
+That was what it had come to! Perhaps they calculated a little too
+surely. Possibly even two children might not keep her entirely out of
+mischief. Out of what impulse of malice had Fate pitched upon the most
+essentially mutinous and erratic of the whole brood, for the sedatest
+_role_? But perhaps Fate, too, had calculated unscientifically. Mischief
+was always possible, if one gave one's mind to it. Or was she growing
+too old to have the spirit for thorough-going devilry? Youth seemed
+rather an affair of mental outlook than of years. She felt twenty years
+older since her marriage. She wondered why it was that marriage did not
+make all women wicked,--openly and actively so. If ever there was an
+arrangement by which every evil instinct and every spark of the devil
+was likely to be aroused and infuriated, surely the customs and
+traditions that clustered round this estate constituted that dangerous
+combination! Hardship, difficulty, tragedy could be faced, but not the
+humiliating, the degrading, the contemptible. Hadria had her own
+particular ideas as to what ought to be set down under these headings.
+Most women, she found, ranked certain elements very differently, with
+lavish use of halos and gilding in their honour, feeling perhaps, she
+hinted, the dire need of such external decoration.
+
+Good heavens! Did no other woman realize the insult of it all? Hadria
+knew so few women intimately; none intimately enough to be convinced
+that no such revolt lay smouldering beneath their smiles. She had a
+lonely assurance that she had never met the sister-soul (for such there
+must be by the score, as silent as she), who shared her rage and her
+detestations. Valeria, with all her native pride, regarded these as
+proof of a big flaw in an otherwise sound nature. Yet how deep, how
+passionately strong, these feelings were, how gigantic the flaw!
+
+What possessed people that they did not see what was so brutally clear?
+As young girls led forth unconscious into the battle, with a bandage
+over their eyes, and cotton-wool in their ears--yes, then it was
+inevitable that they should see and hear nothing. Had they been newly
+imported from the moon they could scarcely have less acquaintance with
+terrestrial conditions; but afterwards, when ruthlessly, with the
+grinning assistance of the onlookers, the facts of the social scheme
+were cynically revealed, and the _role_ imperiously allotted--with much
+admonition and moving appeals to conscience and religion, and all the
+other aides-de-camp at command--after all that, how in the name of
+heaven could they continue to "babble of green fields"? Was it
+conceivable that among the thousands of women to whom year after year
+the facts were disclosed, not one understood and not one--_hated_?
+
+A flame sprang up in Hadria's eyes. There _must_ be other women
+somewhere at this very moment, whose whole being was burning up with
+this bitter, this sickening and futile hatred! But how few, how few! How
+vast was the meek majority, fattening on indignity, proud of their
+humiliation! Yet how wise they were after all. It hurt so to hate--to
+hate like this. Submission was an affair of temperament, a gift of
+birth. Nature endowed with a serviceable meekness those whom she
+designed for insult. Yet it might not be meekness so much as mere brutal
+necessity that held them all in thrall--the inexorable logic of
+conditions. Fate knew better than to assail the victim point blank, and
+so put her on her guard. No; she lured her on gently, cunningly, closing
+behind her, one by one, the doors of escape, persuading her, forcing her
+to fasten on her own tethers, appealing to a thousand qualities, good
+and bad; now to a moment's weakness or pity, now to her eternal fear of
+grieving others (_that_ was a well-worked vein!), now to her instinct of
+self-sacrifice, now to grim necessity itself, profiting too by the
+increasing discouragements, the vain efforts, the physical pain and
+horrible weariness, the crowding of little difficulties, harassments,
+the troubles of others--ah! how infinite were these! so that there was
+no interval for breathing, and scarcely time or space to cope with the
+legions of the moment; the horizon was black with their advancing hosts!
+
+And this assuredly was no unique experience. Hadria remembered how she
+had once said that if the worst came to the worst, it would be easy to
+run away. To her inexperience desperate remedies had seemed so simple,
+so feasible--the factors of life so few and unentwined. She had not
+understood how prolific are our deeds, how an act brings with it a large
+and unexpected progeny, which surround us with new influences and force
+upon us unforeseen conditions. Yet frequent had been the impulse to
+adopt that girlish solution of the difficulty. She had no picturesque
+grievances of the kind that would excite sympathy. On the contrary,
+popular feeling would set dead against her; she would be acting on an
+idea that nobody shared, not even her most intimate friend.
+
+Miss Du Prel had arrived at the conclusion that she did not understand
+Hadria. She had attributed many of her peculiarities to her unique
+education and her inexperience. Hadria had indeed changed greatly since
+her marriage, but not in the manner that might have been expected. On
+the contrary, a closer intimacy with popular social ideals had fired her
+with a more angry spirit of rebellion. Miss Du Prel had met examples of
+every kind of eccentricity, but she had never before come upon so marked
+an instance of this particular type. Hadria's attitude towards life had
+suggested to Miss Du Prel the idea of her heroine, _Caterina_. She
+remonstrated with Hadria, assuring her that no insult towards women was
+intended in the general scheme of society, and that it was a mistake to
+regard it in so resentful a spirit.
+
+"But that is just the most insulting thing about it," Hadria exclaimed.
+"Insult is so much a matter of course that people are surprised if one
+takes umbrage at it. Read this passage from Aristotle that I came upon
+the other day. He is perfectly calm and amiable, entirely unconscious of
+offence, when he says that 'a wife ought to shew herself even more
+obedient to the rein than if she entered the house as a purchased slave.
+For she has been bought at a high price, for the sake of sharing life
+and bearing children, than which no higher or holier tie can possibly
+exist.' (Henriette to the very life!)"
+
+Miss Du Prel laughed, and re-read the passage from the _Politics_, in
+some surprise.
+
+"Do you suppose insult is deliberately intended in that graceful
+sentiment?" asked Hadria. "Obviously not. If any woman of that time had
+blazed up in anger at the well-meant speech, she would have astonished
+and grieved her contemporaries. Aristotle doubtless professed a high
+respect for women who followed his precepts--as men do now when we are
+obedient."
+
+"Of course, our society in this particular has not wandered far from the
+Greek idea," Miss Du Prel observed pensively.
+
+Hadria pronounced the paradox, "The sharpness of the insult lies in its
+not being intended."
+
+Miss Du Prel could not prevail upon her to modify the assertion. Hadria
+pointed out that the Greeks also meant no offence in regarding their
+respectable women as simple reproductive agents of inferior human
+quality.
+
+"And though our well-brought-up girls shrink from the frank speech, they
+do not appear to shrink from the ideas of the old Greeks. They don't
+mind playing the part of cows so long as one doesn't mention it."
+
+About eighteen months ago, the village had been full of talk and
+excitement in consequence of the birth of an heir to the house of
+Engleton, Lady Engleton's mission in life being frankly regarded as
+unfulfilled during the previous three or four years, when she had
+disappointed the hopes of the family. Hadria listened scornfully. In her
+eyes, the crowning indignity of the whole affair was Lady Engleton's own
+smiling acceptance of the position, and her complacent eagerness to
+produce the tardy inheritor of the property and honours. This expression
+of sentiment had, by some means, reached the Vicarage and created much
+consternation.
+
+Mrs. Walker asserted that it was right and Christian of the lady to
+desire that which gave every one so much pleasure. "A climax of feminine
+abjectness!" Hadria had exclaimed in Henriette's presence.
+
+Miss Temperley, after endeavouring to goad her sister-in-law into the
+expression of jubilant congratulations, was met by the passionate
+declaration that she felt more disposed to weep than to rejoice, and
+more disposed to curse than to weep.
+
+Obviously, Miss Temperley had reason to be uneasy about her part in
+bringing about her brother's marriage.
+
+These sudden overflows of exasperated feeling had become less frequent
+as time went on, but the neighbours looked askance at Mrs. Temperley.
+Though a powder-magazine may not always blow up, one passes it with a
+grave consciousness of vast stores of inflammable material lying
+somewhere within, and who knows what spark might set the thing spouting
+to the skies?
+
+When the occasional visitors had left, life in the village settled down
+to its normal level, or more accurately, to its normal flatness as
+regarded general contours, and its petty inequalities in respect to
+local detail. It reminded Hadria of the landscape which stretched in
+quiet long lines to the low horizon, while close at hand, the ground
+fussed and fretted itself into minor ups and downs of no character, but
+with all the trouble of a mountain district in its complexities of slope
+and hollow. Hadria suffered from a gnawing home-sickness; a longing for
+the rougher, bleaker scenery of the North.
+
+The tired spirit translated the homely English country, so deeply
+reposeful in its spirit, into an image of dull unrest. If only those
+broken, stupid lines could have been smoothed out into the grandeur of a
+plain, Hadria thought that it would have comforted her, as if a song had
+moved across it with the long-stretching winds. As it was, to look from
+her window only meant to find repeated the trivialities of life, more
+picturesque indeed, but still trivialities. It was the estimable and
+domestic qualities of Nature that presented themselves: Nature in her
+most maternal and uninspired mood--Mother earth submissive to the
+dictatorship of man, permitting herself to be torn, and wounded, and
+furrowed, and harrowed at his pleasure, yielding her substance and her
+life to sustain the produce of his choosing, her body and her soul
+abandoned supine to his caprice. The sight had an exasperating effect
+upon Hadria. Its symbolism haunted her. The calm, sweet English
+landscape affected her at times with a sort of disgust. It was, perhaps,
+the same in kind as the far stronger sensation of disgust that she felt
+when she first saw Lady Engleton with her new-born child, full of pride
+and exultation. It was as much as she could do to shake hands with the
+happy mother.
+
+When Valeria expressed dismay at so strange a feeling Hadria had refused
+to be treated as a solitary sinner. There were plenty of
+fellow-culprits, she said, only they did not dare to speak out. Let
+Valeria study girls and judge for herself.
+
+Hadria was challenged to name a girl.
+
+Well, Algitha for one. Hadria also suspected Marion Jordan, well-drilled
+though she was by her dragoon of a mother.
+
+Valeria would not hear of it. Marion Jordan! the gentlest, timidest,
+most typical of young English girls! Impossible!
+
+"I am almost sure of it, nevertheless," said Hadria. "Oh, believe me, it
+is common enough! Few grasp it intellectually perhaps, but thousands
+feel the insult; of that I am morally certain."
+
+"What leads you to think so in Marion's case?"
+
+"Some look, or tone, or word; something slight, but to my mind
+conclusive. Fellow-sinners detect one another, you know."
+
+"Well, I don't understand what the world is coming to!" exclaimed Miss
+Du Prel. "Where are the natural instincts?"
+
+"Sprouting up for the first time perhaps," Hadria suggested.
+
+"They seem to be disappearing, if what you say has the slightest
+foundation."
+
+"Oh, you are speaking of only _one_ kind of instinct. The others have
+all been suppressed. Perhaps women are not altogether animals after all.
+The thought is startling, I know. Try to face it."
+
+"I never supposed they were," cried Valeria, a little annoyed.
+
+"But you never made allowance for the suppressed instincts," said
+Hadria.
+
+"I don't believe they _can_ be suppressed."
+
+"I believe they can be not merely suppressed, but killed past hope of
+recovery. And I also believe that there may be, that there _must_ be,
+ideas and emotions fermenting in people's brains, quite different from
+those that they are supposed and ordered to cherish, and that these
+heresies go on working in secret for years before they become even
+suspected, and then suddenly the population exchange confessions."
+
+"After that the Deluge!" exclaimed Miss Du Prel. "You describe the
+features of a great revolution."
+
+"So much the better," said Hadria; "and when the waters sink again, a
+nice fresh clean world!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+
+On the lawn of the Red House, a little group was collected under the big
+walnut tree. The sunlight fell through the leaves on the singing
+tea-kettle and the cups and saucers, and made bright patches on the
+figures and the faces assembled round the tea-table.
+
+Hubert Temperley had again brought his friend Joseph Fleming, in the
+forlorn hope, he said, of being able to give him something to eat and
+drink. Ernest and Algitha and Fred were of the party. They had come down
+from Saturday till Monday. Ernest was studying for the Bar. Fred had
+entered a merchant's office in the city, and hated his work cordially.
+Miss Du Prel was still at the Red House.
+
+Lady Engleton had called by chance this afternoon, and Mrs. Walker, the
+vicar's wife, with two of her countless daughters, had come by
+invitation. Mrs. Walker was a middle-aged, careworn, rather prim-looking
+woman. Lady Engleton was handsome. Bright auburn hair waved back in
+picturesque fashion from a piquant face, and constituted more than half
+her claim to beauty. The brown eyes were bright and vivacious. The mouth
+was seldom quite shut. It scarcely seemed worth while, the loquacious
+lady had confessed. She showed a delicate taste in dress. Shades of
+brown and russet made a fine harmony with her auburn hair, and the ivory
+white and fresh red of her skin.
+
+She and Temperley always enjoyed a sprightly interchange of epigrams.
+Lady Engleton had the qualities that Hubert had admired in Hadria before
+their marriage, and she was entirely free from the other
+characteristics that had exasperated him so desperately since that
+hideous mistake that he had made. Lady Engleton had originality and
+brilliancy, but she knew how to combine these qualities with perfect
+obedience to the necessary conventions of life. She had the sparkle of
+champagne, without the troublesome tendency of that delicate beverage to
+break bounds, and brim over in iridescent, swelling, joyous foam, the
+discreet edges of such goblets as custom might decree for the sunny
+vintage. Lady Engleton sparkled, glowed, nipped even at times, was of
+excellent dry quality, but she never frothed over. She always knew where
+to stop; she had the genius of moderation. She stood to Hadria as a
+correct rendering of a cherished idea stands to a faulty one. She made
+Hubert acutely feel his misfortune, and shewed him his lost hope, his
+shattered ideal.
+
+"Is the picture finished?" he enquired, as he handed Lady Engleton her
+tea.
+
+"What, the view from your field? Not quite. I was working at it when
+Claude Moreton and Mrs. Jordan and Marion arrived, and I have been
+rather interrupted. That's the worst of visitors. One's little immortal
+works do get put aside, poor things."
+
+Lady Engleton broke into the light laugh that had become almost
+mechanical with her.
+
+"Your friends grudge the hours you spend in your studio," said
+Temperley.
+
+"Oh, they don't mind, so long as I give them as much time as they want,"
+she said. "I have to apologise and compromise, don't you know, but, with
+a little management, one can get on. Of course, society does ask a good
+deal of attention, doesn't it? and one has to be so careful."
+
+"Just a little tact and thought," said Temperley with a sigh.
+
+Lady Engleton admired Algitha, who was standing with Ernest a little
+apart from the group.
+
+"She is like your wife, and yet there is a singular difference in the
+expression."
+
+Lady Engleton was too discreet to say that Mrs. Temperley lacked the
+look of contentment and serenity that was so marked in her sister's
+face.
+
+"Algitha is a thoroughly sensible girl," said the brother-in-law.
+
+"I hear you have not long returned from a visit to Mr. Fullerton's place
+in Scotland, Mr. Temperley," observed the vicar's wife when her host
+turned to address her.
+
+"Yes," he said, "we have been there half the summer. The boys thoroughly
+enjoyed the freedom and the novelty. The river, of course, was a source
+of great joy to them, and of hideous anxiety to the rest of us."
+
+"Of course, of course," assented Mrs. Walker. "Ah, there are the dear
+little boys. Won't you come and give me a kiss, darling?"
+
+"Darling" did what was required in a business-like manner, and stood by,
+while the lady discovered in him a speaking likeness to his parents, to
+his Aunt Algitha and his Uncle Fred, not to mention the portrait of his
+great-grandfather, the Solicitor-General, that hung in the dining-room.
+The child seemed thoroughly accustomed to be thought the living image of
+various relations, and he waited indifferently till the list was ended.
+
+"Do you know, we are half hoping that Professor Fortescue may be able to
+come to us for a week or ten days?" said Lady Engleton. "We are so
+looking forward to it."
+
+"Professor Fortescue is always a favourite," remarked Mrs. Walker. "It
+is such a pity he does not return to the Priory, is it not?--a great
+house like that standing empty. Of course it is very natural after the
+dreadful event that happened there"--Mrs. Walker lowered her voice
+discreetly--"but it seems a sin to leave the place untenanted."
+
+Lady Engleton explained that there was some prospect of the house being
+let at last to a friend and colleague of the Professor. Mrs. Walker
+doubtless would remember Professor Theobald, who used to come and stay
+at Craddock Place rather frequently some years ago, a big man with beard
+and moustache, very learned and very amusing.
+
+Mrs. Walker remembered him perfectly. Her husband had been so much
+interested in his descriptions of a tour in Palestine, all through the
+scenes of the New Testament. He was a great archaeologist. Was he really
+coming to the Priory? How very delightful. John would be so glad to hear
+it.
+
+"Oh, it is not settled yet, but the two Professors are coming to us some
+time soon, I believe, and Professor Theobald will look over the house
+and see if he thinks it would be too unmanageably big for himself and
+his old mother and sister. I hope he will take the place. He would bring
+a new and interesting element into the village. What do you think of it,
+Mrs. Temperley?"
+
+"Oh, I hope the learned and amusing Professor will come," she said. "The
+worst of it is, from my point of view, that I shall have to give up my
+practices there. Professor Fortescue allows me to wake the old piano
+from its long slumbers in the drawing-room."
+
+"Oh, of course. Marion Jordan was telling me that she was quite startled
+the other day, in crossing the Priory garden, to hear music stealing out
+of the apparently deserted house. She had heard the country people say
+that the ghost of poor Mrs. Fortescue walks along the terrace in the
+twilight, and Marion looked quite scared when she came in, for the music
+seemed to come from the drawing-room, where its mistress used to play so
+much after she was first married. I almost wonder you can sit alone
+there in the dusk, considering the dreadful associations of the place."
+
+"I am used to it now," Mrs. Temperley replied, "and it is so nice and
+quiet in the empty house. One knows one can't be interrupted--unless by
+ghosts."
+
+"Well, that is certainly a blessing," cried Lady Engleton. "I think I
+shall ask Professor Fortescue to allow me also to go to the Priory to
+pursue my art in peace and quietness; a truly hyperborean state, beyond
+the region of visitors!"
+
+"There would be plenty of room for a dozen unsociable monomaniacs like
+ourselves," said Mrs. Temperley.
+
+"I imagine you are a God-send to poor Mrs. Williams, the caretaker,"
+said Joseph Fleming. "She is my gamekeeper's sister, and I hear that she
+finds the solitude in that vast house almost more than she can stand."
+
+"Poor woman!" said Lady Engleton. "Well, Mr. Fleming, what are the
+sporting prospects this autumn?"
+
+He pulled himself together, and his face lighted up. On that subject he
+could speak for hours.
+
+Of Joseph Fleming his friends all said: The best fellow in the world. A
+kinder heart had no man. He lived on his little property from year's end
+to year's end, for the sole and single end of depriving the pheasants
+and partridges which he bred upon the estate, of their existence. He was
+a confirmed bachelor, living quietly, and taking the world as he found
+it (seeing that there was a sufficiency of partridges in good seasons);
+trusting that there was a God above who would not let the supply run
+short, if one honestly tried to do one's duty and lived an upright life,
+harming no man, and women only so much as was strictly honourable and
+necessary. He spoke ill of no one. He was diffident of his own powers,
+except about sport, wherein he knew himself princely, and cherished that
+sort of respect for woman, thoroughly sincere, which assigns to her a
+pedestal in a sheltered niche, and offers her homage on condition of her
+staying where she is put, even though she starve there, solitary and
+esteemed.
+
+"Do tell me, Mr. Fleming, if you know, who is that very handsome woman
+with the white hair?" said Lady Engleton. "She is talking to Mrs.
+Walker. I seem to know the face."
+
+"Oh, that is Miss Valeria Du Prel, the authoress of those books that
+Mrs. Walker is so shocked at."
+
+"Oh, of course; how stupid of me. I should like to have some
+conversation with her."
+
+"That's easily managed. I don't think she and Mrs. Walker quite
+appreciate each other."
+
+Lady Engleton laughed.
+
+Mrs. Walker was anxiously watching her daughters, and endeavouring to
+keep them at a distance from Miss Du Prel, who looked tragically bored.
+
+Joseph Fleming found means to release her, and Lady Engleton's desire
+was gratified. "I admire your books so much, Miss Du Prel, and I have so
+often wished to see more of you; but you have been abroad for the last
+two years, I hear."
+
+Lady Engleton, after asking the authoress to explain exactly what she
+meant by her last book, enquired if she had the latest news of Professor
+Fortescue. Lady Engleton had heard, with regret, that he had been
+greatly worried about that troublesome nephew whom he had educated and
+sent to Oxford.
+
+"The young fellow had been behaving very badly," Miss Du Prel said.
+
+"Ungrateful creature," cried Lady Engleton. "Running into debt I
+suppose."
+
+Miss Du Prel feared that the Professor was suffering in health. He had
+been working very hard.
+
+"Oh, yes; what was that about some method of killing animals
+instantaneously to avoid the horrors of the slaughter-house? Professor
+Theobald has been saying what a pity it is that a man so able should
+waste his time over these fads. It would never bring him fame or profit,
+only ridicule. Every man had his little weakness, but this idea of
+saving pain to animals, Professor Theobald said, was becoming a sort of
+mania with poor Fortescue, and one feared that it might injure his
+career. He was greatly looked up to in the scientific world, but this
+sort of thing of course----
+
+"Though it is nice of him in a way," added Lady Engleton.
+
+"His weaknesses are nobler than most people's virtues," said Miss Du
+Prel.
+
+"Then you number this among his weaknesses?"
+
+Algitha, who had joined the group, put this question.
+
+"I would rather see him working in the cause of humanity," Miss Du Prel
+answered.
+
+Ernest surprised everyone by suggesting that possibly humanity was well
+served, in the long run, by reminding it of the responsibility that goes
+with power, and by giving it an object lesson in the decent treatment of
+those who can't defend themselves.
+
+"You must have sat at the Professor's feet," cried Miss Du Prel, raising
+her eyebrows.
+
+"I have," said Ernest, with a little gesture of pride.
+
+Lady Engleton shook her head. "I fear he flies too high for ordinary
+mortals," she said; "and I doubt if even he can be quite consistent at
+that altitude."
+
+"Better perhaps fly fairly high, and come down now and again to rest, if
+one must, than grovel consistently and always," observed Ernest.
+
+Lady Engleton gave a little scream. "Mrs. Temperley, come to the rescue.
+Your brother is calling us names. He says we grovel consistently and
+always."
+
+Ernest laughed, and protested. Lady Engleton pretended to be mortally
+offended. Mrs. Temperley was sorry she could give no redress. She had
+suffered from Ernest's painful frankness from her youth upwards.
+
+The conversation grew discursive. Lady Engleton enjoyed the pastime of
+lightly touching the edges of what she called "advanced" thought. She
+sought the society of people like the two Professors and Miss Du Prel in
+order to hear what dreadful and delightful things they really would say.
+She read all the new books, and went to the courageous plays that Mrs.
+Walker wouldn't mention.
+
+"Your last book, _Caterina_, is a mine of suggestion, Miss Du Prel," she
+said. "It raises one most interesting point that has puzzled me
+greatly. I don't know if you have all read the book? The heroine finds
+herself differing in her view of life from everyone round her. She is
+married, but she has made no secret of her scorn for the old ideals, and
+has announced that she has no intention of being bound by them."
+
+Mrs. Temperley glanced uneasily at Miss Du Prel.
+
+"Accordingly she does even as she had said," continued Lady Engleton.
+"She will not brook that interference with her liberty which marriage
+among us old-fashioned people generally implies. She refuses to submit
+to the attempt that is of course made (in spite of a pre-nuptial
+understanding) to bring her under the yoke, and so off she goes and
+lives independently, leaving husband and relatives lamenting."
+
+The vicar's wife said she thought she must be going home. Her husband
+would be expecting her.
+
+"Oh, won't you wait a little, Mrs. Walker? Your daughters would perhaps
+like a game of tennis with my brothers presently."
+
+Mrs. Walker yielded uneasily.
+
+"But before _Caterina_ takes the law into her own hands, in this way,"
+Lady Engleton continued, "she is troubled with doubts. She sometimes
+wonders whether she ought not, after all, to respect the popular
+standards (notwithstanding the compact), instead of disturbing everybody
+by clinging to her own. Now was it strength of character or obstinate
+egotism that induced her to stick to her original colours, come what
+might? That is the question which the book has stated but left
+unanswered."
+
+Miss Du Prel said that the book showed, if it showed anything, that one
+must be true to one's own standard, and not attempt to respect an ideal
+in practice that one despises in theory. We are bound, she asserted, to
+produce that which is most individual within us; to be ourselves, and
+not a poor imitation of someone else; to dare even apparent wrong-doing,
+rather than submit to live a life of devotion to that which we cannot
+believe.
+
+Mrs. Walker suggested to her daughters that they might go and have a
+look at the rose-garden, but the daughters preferred to listen to the
+conversation.
+
+"In real life," said the practical Algitha, "_Caterina_ would not have
+been able to follow her idea so simply. Supposing she had had children
+and complicated circumstances, what could she have done?"
+
+Miss Du Prel thought that a compromise might have been made.
+
+"A compromise by which she could act according to two opposite
+standards?"
+
+Valeria was impatient of difficulties. It was not necessary that a woman
+should leave her home in order to be true to her conscience. It was the
+best method in _Caterina's_ case, but not in all.
+
+Miss Du Prel did not explain very clearly what she meant. Women made too
+much of difficulties, she thought. Somehow people _had_ managed to
+overcome obstacles. Look at--and then followed a list of shining
+examples.
+
+"I believe you would blame a modern woman who imitated them," said Mrs.
+Temperley. "These women have the inestimable advantage of being dead."
+
+"Ah, yes," Lady Engleton agreed, with a laugh, "we women may be anything
+we like--in the last century."
+
+"The tides of a hundred years or so sweeping over one's audacious deed,
+soften the raw edges. Then it is tolerated in the landscape; indeed, it
+grows mossy and picturesque." Mrs. Temperley made this comparison.
+
+"And then think how useful it becomes to prove that a daring deed _can_
+be done, given only the necessary stuff in brain and heart."
+
+Mrs. Walker looked at Algitha in dismay.
+
+"One can throw it in the teeth of one's contemporaries," added Algitha,
+"if they fail to produce a dramatic climax of the same kind."
+
+"Only," said Mrs. Temperley, "if they _do_ venture upon their own
+dreadful deed--the deed demanded by their particular modern
+predicament--then we all shriek vigorously."
+
+"Oh, we shriek less than we used to," said Lady Engleton. "It is quite a
+relief to be able to retain one's respectability on easier terms."
+
+"In such a case as Miss Du Prel depicts? I doubt it. _Caterina_, in real
+life, would have a lively story to tell. How selfish we should think
+her! How we should point to the festoons of bleeding hearts that she had
+wounded--a dripping cordon round the deserted home! No; I believe Miss
+Du Prel herself would be horrified at her own _Caterina_ if she came
+upon her unexpectedly in somebody's drawing-room."
+
+There was a laugh.
+
+"Of course, a great deal is to be said for the popular way of looking at
+the matter," Lady Engleton observed. "This fascinating heroine must have
+caused a great deal of real sorrow, or at least she _would_ have caused
+it, were it not that her creator had considerably removed all relatives,
+except a devoted couple of unorthodox parents, who are charmed at her
+decision to scandalize society, and wonder why she doesn't do it sooner.
+Parents like that don't grow on every bush."
+
+Mrs. Walker glanced nervously at her astonished girls.
+
+Lady Engleton pointed out that had _Caterina_ been situated in a more
+ordinary manner, she would have certainly broken her parents' hearts and
+embittered their last years, to say nothing of the husband and perhaps
+the children, who would have suffered for want of a mother's care.
+
+"But why should the husband suffer?" asked Algitha. "_Caterina's_
+husband cordially detested her."
+
+"It is customary to regard the occasion as one proper for suffering,"
+said Mrs. Temperley, "and every well-regulated husband would suffer
+accordingly."
+
+"Clearly," assented Lady Engleton. "When the world congratulates us we
+rejoice, when it condoles with us we weep."
+
+"That at least, would not affect the children," said Algitha. "I don't
+see why of necessity _they_ should suffer."
+
+"Their share of the woe would be least of all, I think," Mrs. Temperley
+observed. "What ogre is going to ill-treat them? And since few of us
+know how to bring up so much as an earth-worm reasonably, I can't see
+that it matters so very much which particular woman looks after the
+children. Any average fool would do."
+
+Mrs. Walker was stiffening in every limb.
+
+"The children would have the usual chances of their class; neither more
+nor less, as it seems to me, for lack of a maternal burnt-offering."
+
+Mrs. Walker rose, gathered her daughters about her, and came forward to
+say good-bye. She was sure her husband would be annoyed if she did not
+return. She retired with nervous precipitation.
+
+"Really you will depopulate this village, Mrs. Temperley," cried Lady
+Engleton with a laugh; "it is quite dangerous to bring up a family
+within your reach. There will be a general exodus. I must be going
+myself, or I shan't have an orthodox sentiment left."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+
+Henriette had secured Mrs. Fullerton for an ally, from the beginning.
+When Hadria's parents visited the Red House, Miss Temperley was asked to
+meet them, by special request. Henriette employed tact on a grand scale,
+and achieved results in proportion. She was sorry that dear Hadria did
+not more quickly recover her strength. Her health was not what it ought
+to be. Mrs. Fullerton sighed. She was ready to play into Miss
+Temperley's hands on every occasion.
+
+The latter had less success in her dealings with Miss Du Prel. She tried
+to discover Hadria's more intimate feelings by talking her over with
+Valeria, ignoring the snubs that were copiously administered by that
+indignant lady. Valeria spoke with sublime scorn of this attempt.
+
+"To try and pump information out of a friend! Why not listen at the
+key-hole, and be done with it!"
+
+Henriette's neat hair would have stood on end, had she heard Miss Du
+Prel fit adjectives to her conduct.
+
+"I have learnt not to expect a nice sense of honour from superior
+persons with unimpeachable sentiments," said Hadria.
+
+"You are certainly a good hater!" cried Valeria, with a laugh.
+
+"Oh, I don't hate Henriette; I only hate unimpeachable sentiments."
+
+The sentiments that Henriette represented had become, to Hadria, as the
+walls of a prison from which she could see no means of escape.
+
+She had found that life took no heed either of her ambitions or of her
+revolts. "And so I growl," she said. She might hate and chafe in secret
+to her heart's content; external conformity was the one thing needful.
+
+"Hadria will be so different when she has children," everyone had said.
+And so she was; but the difference was alarmingly in the wrong
+direction. Throughout history, she reflected, children had been the
+unfailing means of bringing women into line with tradition. Who could
+stand against them? They had been able to force the most rebellious to
+their knees. An appeal to the maternal instinct had quenched the
+hardiest spirit of revolt. No wonder the instinct had been so trumpeted
+and exalted! Women might harbour dreams and plan insurrections; but
+their children--little ambassadors of the established and expected--were
+argument enough to convince the most hardened sceptics. Their
+helplessness was more powerful to suppress revolt than regiments of
+armed soldiers.
+
+Such were the thoughts that wandered through Hadria's mind as she bent
+her steps towards the cottage near Craddock Church, where, according to
+the gravedigger's account, the baby of the unhappy schoolmistress was
+being looked after by Mrs. Gullick.
+
+It would have puzzled the keenest observer to detect the unorthodox
+nature of Mrs. Temperley's reflections, as she leant over the child, and
+made enquiries as to its health and temperament.
+
+Mrs. Gullick seemed more disposed to indulge in remarks on its mother's
+conduct than to give the desired information; but she finally admitted
+that Ellen Jervis had an aunt at Southampton who was sending a little
+money for the support of the child. Ellen Jervis had stayed with the
+aunt during the summer holidays. Mrs. Gullick did not know what was to
+be done. She had a large family of her own, and the cottage was small.
+
+Mrs. Temperley asked for the address of the aunt.
+
+"I suppose no one knows who the father is? He has not acknowledged the
+child!"
+
+No; that was a mystery still.
+
+About a week later, Craddock Dene was amazed by the news that Mrs.
+Temperley had taken the child of Ellen Jervis under her protection. A
+cottage had been secured on the road to Craddock, a trustworthy nurse
+engaged, and here the babe was established, with the consent and
+blessing of the aunt.
+
+"You are the most inconsistent woman I ever met!" exclaimed Miss Du
+Prel.
+
+"Why inconsistent?"
+
+"You say that children have been the means, from time immemorial, of
+enslaving women, and here you go and adopt one of your enslavers!"
+
+"But this child is not legitimate."
+
+Valeria stared.
+
+"Whatever the wrongs of Ellen Jervis, at least there were no laws
+written, and unwritten, which demanded of her as a duty that she should
+become the mother of this child. In that respect she escapes the
+ignominy reserved for the married mother who produces children that are
+not even hers."
+
+"You do manage to ferret out the unpleasant aspects of our position!"
+Miss Du Prel exclaimed. "But I want to know why you do this, Hadria. It
+is good of you, but totally unlike you."
+
+"You are very polite!" cried Hadria. "Why should I not lay up store for
+myself in heaven, as well as Mrs. Walker and the rest?"
+
+"You were not thinking of heaven when you did this deed, Hadria."
+
+"No; I was thinking of the other place."
+
+"And do you hope to get any satisfaction out of your _protegee_?"
+
+Hadria shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"I don't know. The child is the result of great sorrow and suffering; it
+is the price of a woman's life; a woman who offended the world, having
+lived for nearly forty weary obedient years, in circumstances dreary
+enough to have turned twenty saints into as many sinners. No; I am no
+Lady Bountiful. I feel in defending this child--a sorry defence I
+know--that I am, in so far, opposing the world and the system of things
+that I hate----. Ah! _how_ I hate it!"
+
+"Is it then hatred that prompts the deed?"
+
+Hadria looked thoughtfully towards the church tower, in whose shadow the
+mother of the babe lay sleeping.
+
+"Can you ever quite unravel your own motives, Valeria? Hatred? Yes;
+there is a large ingredient of hatred. Without it, probably this poor
+infant would have been left to struggle through life alone, with a
+mill-stone round its neck, and a miserable constitution into the
+bargain. I hope to rescue its constitution. But that poor woman's story
+touched me closely. It is so hard, so outrageous! The emptiness of her
+existence; the lack of outlet for her affections; the endless monotony;
+and then the sudden new interest and food for the starved emotions; the
+hero-worship that is latent in us all; and then--good heavens!--for a
+touch of poetry, of romance in her life, she would have been ready to
+believe in the professions of the devil himself--and this man was a very
+good understudy for the devil! Ah! If ever I should meet him!"
+
+"What would you do?" Valeria asked curiously.
+
+"Avenge her," said Hadria with set lips.
+
+"Easier said than done, my dear!"
+
+Gossip asserted that the father of the child was a man of some standing,
+the bolder spirits even accusing Lord Engleton himself. But this was
+conjecture run wild, and nobody seriously listened to it.
+
+Mrs. Walker was particularly scandalized with Mrs. Temperley's
+ill-advised charity. Hadria had the habit of regarding the clergyman's
+wife as another of society's victims. She placed side by side the
+schoolmistress in her sorrow and disgrace, and the careworn woman at the
+Vicarage, with her eleven children, and her shrivelled nature, poor and
+dead as an autumn leaf that shivers before the wind. They had both
+suffered--so Mrs. Temperley dared to assert--in the same cause. They
+were both victims of the same creed. It was a terrible cultus, a savage
+idol that had devoured them both, as cruel and insatiable as the brazen
+god of old, with his internal fires, which the faithful fed devoutly,
+with shrinking girls and screaming children.
+
+"I still fail to understand why you adopt this child," said Valeria. "My
+_Caterina_ would never have done it."
+
+"The little creature interests me," said Hadria. "It is a tiny field for
+the exercise of the creative forces. Every one has some form of active
+amusement. Some like golf, others flirtation. I prefer this sort of
+diversion."
+
+"But you have your own children to interest you, surely far more than
+this one."
+
+Hadria's face grew set and defiant.
+
+"They represent to me the insult of society--my own private and
+particular insult, the tribute exacted of my womanhood. It is through
+them that I am to be subdued and humbled. Just once in a way, however,
+the thing does not quite 'come off.'"
+
+"What has set you on edge so, I wonder."
+
+"People, traditions, unimpeachable sentiments."
+
+"_Yours_ are not unimpeachable at any rate!" Valeria cried laughing.
+"_Caterina_ is an angel compared with you, and yet my publisher has his
+doubts about her."
+
+"_Caterina_ would do as I do, I know," said Hadria. "Those who are
+looked at askance by the world appeal to my instincts. I shall be able
+to teach this child, perhaps, to strike a blow at the system which sent
+her mother to a dishonoured grave, while it leaves the man for whose
+sake she risked all this, in peace and the odour of sanctity."
+
+Time seemed to be marked, in the sleepy village, by the baby's growth.
+Valeria, who thought she was fond of babies, used to accompany Hadria on
+her visits to the cottage, but she treated the infant so much as if it
+had been a guinea-pig or a rabbit that the nurse was indignant.
+
+The weeks passed in rapid monotony, filled with detail and leaving no
+mark behind them, no sign of movement or progress. The cares of the
+house, the children, left only limited time for walking, reading,
+correspondence, and such music as could be wrung out of a crowded day.
+An effort on Hadria's part, to make serious use of her musical talent
+had been frustrated. But a pathetic, unquenchable hope always survived
+that presently, when this or that corner had been turned, this or that
+difficulty overcome, conditions would be conquered and opportunity
+arrive. Not yet had she resigned her belief that the most harassing and
+wearying and unceasing business that a human being can undertake, is
+compatible with the stupendous labour and the unbounded claims of an
+artist's career. The details of practical life and petty duties sprouted
+up at every step. If they were put aside, even for a moment, the wheels
+of daily existence became clogged and then all opportunity was over.
+Hope had begun to alternate with a fear lest that evasive corner should
+never be turned, that little crop of interruptions never cease to turn
+up. And yet it was so foolish. Each obstacle in itself was paltry. It
+was their number that overcame one, as the tiny arrows of the Lilliputs
+overcame Gulliver.
+
+One of Hadria's best friends in Craddock Dene was Joseph Fleming, who
+had become very intimate at the Red House during the last year or two.
+Hadria used to tire of the necessity to be apparently rational (such was
+her own version), and found it a relief to talk nonsense, just as she
+pleased, to Joseph Fleming, who never objected or took offence, if he
+occasionally looked surprised. Other men might have thought she was
+laughing at them, but Joseph made no such mistake when Mrs. Temperley
+broke out, as she did now and then, in fantastic fashion.
+
+She was standing, one morning, on the little bridge over the stream that
+ran at a distance of a few hundred yards from the Red House. The two
+boys were bespattering themselves in the meadow below, by the water's
+verge. They called up at intervals to their mother the announcement of
+some new discovery of flower or insect.
+
+Watching the stream sweeping through the bridge, she seemed the centre
+of a charming domestic scene to Joseph Fleming, who chanced to pass by
+with his dogs. He addressed himself to her maternal feelings by
+remarking what handsome and clever boys they were.
+
+"Handsome and clever?" she repeated. "Is _that_ all you can say, Mr.
+Fleming? When you set about it, I think you might provide a little
+better food for one's parental sentiment. I suppose you will go and tell
+Mrs. Walker that _her_ dozen and a half are all handsome and clever
+too!"
+
+"Not so handsome and clever as yours," replied Mr. Fleming, a little
+aghast at this ravenous maternal vanity.
+
+"What wretched poverty of expression!" Hadria complained. "I ask for
+bread, and truly you give me a stone."
+
+Joseph Fleming eyed his companion askance. "I--I admire your boys
+immensely, as you know," he said.
+
+"Not enough, not enough."
+
+"What can I say more?"
+
+"A mother has to find in her children all that she can hope to find in
+life, and she naturally desires to make the most of them, don't you
+see?"
+
+"Ah! yes, quite so," said Joseph dubiously.
+
+"Nobody, I suppose, likes to be commonplace all round; one must have
+some poetry somewhere--so most women idealize their children, and if
+other people won't help them in the effort, don't you see? it is most
+discouraging."
+
+"Are you chaffing, or what?" Joseph enquired.
+
+"No, indeed; I am perilously serious."
+
+"I can well understand how a mother must get absorbed in her children,"
+said Joseph. "I suppose it's a sort of natural provision."
+
+"Think of Mrs. Allan with her outrageous eight--all making mud-pies!"
+cried Hadria; "a magnificent 'natural provision!' A small income, a
+small house, with those pervasive eight. You know the stampede when one
+goes to call; the aroma of bread and butter (there are few things more
+inspiring); the cook always about to leave; Mrs. Allan with a racking
+headache. It is indeed not difficult to understand how a mother would
+get absorbed in her children. Why, their pinafores alone would become
+absorbing."
+
+"Quite so," said Mr. Fleming. Then a little anxious to change the
+subject: "Oh, by the way, have you heard that the Priory is really to
+be inhabited at last? Professor Theobald has almost decided to take it."
+
+"Really? that will be exciting for Craddock Dene. We shall have another
+household to dissect and denounce. Providence watches over us all, I
+verily believe."
+
+"I hope so," Joseph replied gravely.
+
+"Truly I hope so too," Hadria said, no less seriously, "for indeed we
+need it."
+
+Joseph was too simple to be greatly surprised at anything that Mrs.
+Temperley might say. He had decided that she was a little eccentric, and
+that explained everything; just as he explained instances of
+extraordinary reasoning power in a dog by calling it "instinct."
+Whatever Mrs. Temperley might do was slightly eccentric, and had she
+suddenly taken it into her head to dance a fandango on the public road,
+it would have merely put a little extra strain on that word.
+
+By dint of not understanding her, Joseph Fleming had grown to feel
+towards Mrs. Temperley a genuine liking, conscious, in his vague way,
+that she was kind at heart, however bitter or strange she might
+sometimes be in her speech. Moreover, she was not always eccentric or
+unexpected. There would come periods when she would say and do very much
+as her neighbours said and did; looking then pale and lifeless, but
+absolutely beyond the reach of hostile criticism, as her champion would
+suggest to carping neighbours.
+
+Not the most respected of the ladies who turned up their disapproving
+noses, was more dull or more depressing than Hadria could be, on
+occasion, as she had herself pointed out; and would not _this_ soften
+stony hearts?
+
+When she discovered that her kindly neighbour had been fighting her
+battles for her, she was touched; but she asked him not to expend his
+strength on her behalf. She tried in vain to convince him that she did
+not care to be invited too often to submit to the devitalizing processes
+of social intercourse, to which the families of the district shrank not
+from subjecting themselves. If Joseph Fleming chanced to call at the Red
+House after her return from one of these entertainments, he was sure to
+find Mrs. Temperley in one of her least comprehensible moods. But
+whatever she might say, he stood up for her among the neighbours with
+persistent loyalty. He decked her with virtues that she did not possess,
+and represented her to the sceptical district, radiant in domestic
+glory. Hadria thus found herself in an awkwardly uncertain position;
+either she was looked at askance, as eccentric, or she found herself
+called upon to make good expectations of saintliness, such as never were
+on land or sea.
+
+Saintly? Hadria shook her head. She could imagine no one further from
+such a condition than she was at present, and she felt it in her, to
+swing down and down to the very opposite pole from that serene altitude.
+She admitted that, from a utilitarian point of view, she was making a
+vast mistake. As things were, Mrs. Walker and Mrs. Allan, laboriously
+spinning their ponderous families on their own axes, in a reverent
+spirit, had chosen the better part. But Hadria did not care. She would
+_not_ settle down to make the best of things, as even Algitha now
+recommended, "since there she was, and there was no helping it."
+
+"I will _never_ make the best of things," she said. "I know nothing that
+gives such opportunities to the Devil."
+
+Hadria had characteristically left the paradox unjustified.
+
+"What do you mean?" asked Algitha. "Surely the enemy of good has most
+hold over the discontented spirit."
+
+Hadria likened the contented to stagnant pools, wherein corruptions grow
+apace. "It is only the discontented ocean that remains, for all its
+storms, fresh and sane to the end."
+
+But though she said this, for opposition's sake perhaps, she had her
+doubts about her own theory. Discontent was certainly the initiator of
+all movement; but there was a kind of sullen discontent that stagnated
+and ate inwards, like a disease. Better a cheerful sin or two than allow
+_that_ to take hold!
+
+"But then there is this sickly feminine conscience to deal with!" she
+exclaimed. "It clings to the worst of us still, and prevents the
+wholesome big catastrophes that might bring salvation."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+
+Another year had blundered itself away, leaving little trace behind it,
+in Craddock Dene. The schoolmistress's grave was greener and her child
+rosier than of yore. Little Martha had now begun to talk, and promised
+to be pretty and fair-haired like her mother.
+
+The boys and Algitha had come to spend Saturday and Sunday at the Red
+House. Hadria hunted out a stupendous card-case (a wedding gift from
+Mrs. Gordon), erected on her head a majestic bonnet, and announced to
+the company that she was going for a round of visits.
+
+There was a yell of laughter. Hadria advanced across the lawn with quiet
+dignity, bearing her card-case as one who takes part in a solemn
+ceremony.
+
+"Where did you fall in with that casket?" enquired Fred.
+
+"And who was the architect of the cathedral?" asked Ernest.
+
+"This casket, as you call it, was presented to me by Mrs. Gordon. The
+cathedral I designed myself."
+
+They all crowded round to examine the structure. There were many
+derisive comments.
+
+"Gothic," said Ernest, "pure Gothic."
+
+"I should have described it as 'Early Perpendicular,'" objected Fred.
+
+"Don't display your neglected education; it's beyond all question
+Gothic. Look at the steeple and the gargoyles and the handsome
+vegetation. Ruskin would revel in it!"
+
+"Are you really going about in that thing?" asked Algitha.
+
+Hadria wished to know what was the use of designing a Gothic cathedral
+if one couldn't go about in it.
+
+The bonnet was, in truth, a daring caricature of the prevailing fashion,
+just sufficiently serious in expression to be wearable.
+
+"Well, I never before met a woman who would deliberately flout her
+neighbours by wearing preposterous millinery!" Ernest exclaimed.
+
+Hadria went her round of calls, and all eyes fixed themselves on her
+bonnet. Mrs. Allan, who had small opportunity of seeing the fashions,
+seemed impressed if slightly puzzled by it. Mrs. Jordan evidently
+thought it "loud." Mrs. Walker supposed it fashionable, but regretted
+that this sort of thing was going to be worn this season. She hoped the
+girls would modify the style in adopting it.
+
+Mrs. Walker had heard that the two Professors had arrived at Craddock
+Place yesterday afternoon, and the Engletons expected them to make a
+visit of some weeks. Hadria's face brightened.
+
+"And so at last we may hope that the Priory will be inhabited," said the
+vicar's wife.
+
+"Of course you know," she added in the pained voice that she always
+reserved for anecdotes of local ill-doing, "that Mrs. Fortescue
+committed suicide there."
+
+Madame Bertaux, the English wife of a French official, had chanced to
+call, and Mrs. Walker gave the details of the story for the benefit of
+the new-comer.
+
+Madame Bertaux was a brisk, clever, good-looking woman, with a profound
+knowledge of the world and a corresponding contempt for it.
+
+It appeared that the Professor's wife, whom Madame Bertaux had happened
+to meet in Paris, was a young, beautiful, and self-willed girl,
+passionately devoted to her husband. She was piqued at his lack of
+jealousy, and doubted or pretended to doubt his love for her. In order
+to put him to the test, she determined to rouse his jealousy by violent
+and systematic flirtation. This led to an entanglement, and finally, in
+a fit of reckless anger, to an elopement with a Captain Bolton who was
+staying at the Priory at the time. Seized with remorse, she had returned
+home to kill herself. This was the tragedy that had kept the old house
+for so many years tenantless. Hadria's music was the only sound that had
+disturbed its silence, since the day when the dead body of its mistress
+was found in the drawing-room, which she was supposed to have entered
+unknown to anyone, by the window that gave on to the terrace.
+
+Valeria Du Prel was able to throw more light on the strange story. She
+had difficulty in speaking without rancour of the woman who had thrown
+away the love of such a man. She admitted that the girl was extremely
+fascinating, and had seemed to Valeria to have the faults of an
+impetuous rather than of a bad nature. She cherished that singular
+desire of many strong-willed women, to be ruled and mastered by the man
+she loved, and she had entirely failed to understand her husband's
+attitude towards her. She resented it as a sign of indifference. She was
+like the Chinese wives, who complain bitterly of a husband's neglect
+when he omits to beat them. She taunted the Professor for failing to
+assert his "rights."
+
+"Morally, I have no rights, except such as you choose to give me of your
+own free will," he replied. "I am not your gaoler."
+
+"And even that did not penetrate to her better nature till it was too
+late," Valeria continued. "But after the mischief was done, that phrase
+seems to have stung her to torment. Her training had blinded her, as one
+is blinded in coming out of darkness into a bright light. She was used
+to narrower hearts and smaller brains. Her last letter--a terrible
+record of the miseries of remorse--shews that she recognized at last
+what sort of a man he was whose heart she had broken. But even in her
+repentance, she was unable to conquer her egotism. She could not face
+the horrors of self-accusation; she preferred to kill herself."
+
+"What a shocking story!" cried Hadria.
+
+"And all the more so because the Professor clings to her memory so
+faithfully. He blames himself for everything. He ought, he says, to have
+realized better the influence of her training; he ought to have made her
+understand that he could not assert what she called his 'rights' without
+insulting her and himself."
+
+"Whenever one hears anything new about the Professor, it is always
+something that makes one admire and love him more than ever!" cried
+Hadria.
+
+Her first meeting with him was in the old Yew Avenue in the Priory
+garden. He was on his way to call at the Red House. She stood on a patch
+of grass by a rustic seat commanding the vista of yews, and above them,
+a wilderness of lilacs and laburnums, in full flower. It looked to her
+like a pathway that led to some exquisite fairy palace of one's
+childhood.
+
+Almost with the first word that the Professor uttered, Hadria felt a
+sense of relief and hope. The very air seemed to grow lighter, the scent
+of the swaying flowers sweeter. She always afterwards associated this
+moment of meeting with the image of that avenue of mourning yews,
+crowned with the sunlit magnificence of an upper world of blossom.
+
+What had she been thinking of to run so close to despair during these
+years? A word, a smile, and the dead weight swerved, swung into balance,
+and life lifted up its head once more. She remembered now, not her
+limitations, but the good things of her lot; the cruelties that Fate had
+spared her, the miseries that the ruthless goddess had apportioned to
+others. But the Professor's presence did not banish, but rather
+emphasized, the craving to take part in the enriching of that general
+life which was so poor and sad. He strengthened her disposition to
+revolt against the further impoverishment of it, through the starving of
+her own nature. He would not blame her simply on account of difference
+from others. She felt sure of that. He would not be shocked if she had
+not answered to the stimulus of surroundings as faithfully as most
+women seemed to answer to them. Circumstance had done its usual utmost
+to excite her instinct to beat down the claims of her other self, but
+for once, circumstance had failed. It was a solitary failure among a
+creditable multitude of victories. But if instinct had not responded to
+the imperious summons, the other self had been suffering the terrors of
+a siege, and the garrison had grown starved and weakly. What would be
+the end of it? And the little cynical imp that peeped among her
+thoughts, as a monkey among forest boughs, gibbered his customary "What
+matters it? One woman's destiny is but a small affair. If I were you I
+would make less fuss about it." The Professor would understand that she
+did not wish to make a fuss. He would not be hard upon any human being.
+He knew that existence was not such an easy affair to manage. She wished
+that she could tell him everything in her life--its struggle, its
+desperate longing and ambition, its hatred, its love: only _he_ would
+understand all the contradictions and all the pain. She would not mind
+his blame, because he would understand, and the blame would be just.
+
+They walked together down the avenue towards the beautiful old Tudor
+house, which stood on the further side of a broad lawn.
+
+The Professor looked worn and thin. He owned to being very tired of the
+hurry and struggle of town. He was sick of the conflict of jealousies
+and ambitions. It seemed so little worth while, this din of voices that
+would so soon be silenced.
+
+"I starve for the sight of a true and simple face, for the grasp of a
+brotherly hand."
+
+"_You?_" exclaimed Hadria.
+
+"There are so few, so very few, where the throng is thick and the battle
+fierce. It saddens me to see good fellows trampling one another down,
+growing hard and ungenerous. And then the vulgarity, the irreverence:
+they are almost identical, I think. One grows very sick and sorry at
+times amidst the cruelty and the baseness that threaten to destroy
+one's courage and one's hope. I know that human nature has in it a germ
+of nobility that will save it, in the long run, but meanwhile things
+seem sadly out of joint."
+
+"Is that the order of the universe?" asked Hadria.
+
+"No, I think it is rather the disorder of man's nature," he replied.
+
+Hadria asked if he would return to tea at the Red House. The Professor
+said he would like to call and see Hubert, but proposed a rest on the
+terrace, as it was still early in the afternoon.
+
+"I used to avoid the place," he said, "but I made a mistake. I have
+resolved to face the memories: it is better."
+
+It was the first time that he had ever referred, in Hadria's presence,
+to the tragedy of the Priory.
+
+"I have often wished to speak to you about my wife," he said slowly, as
+they sat down on the old seat, on the terrace. "I have felt that you
+would understand the whole sad story, and I hoped that some day you
+would know it." He paused and then added, "It has often been a comfort
+to me to remember that you were in the world, for it made me feel less
+lonely. I felt in you some new--what can I call it? instinct, impulse,
+inspiration, which ran you straight against all the hardest stone walls
+that intersect the pathways of this ridiculous old world. And, strange
+to say, it is the very element in you that sets you at loggerheads with
+others, that enabled me to understand you."
+
+Hadria looked bewildered.
+
+"To tell you the truth, I have always wondered why women have never felt
+as I am sure you feel towards life. You remember that day at Dunaghee
+when you were so annoyed at my guessing your thoughts. They were
+unmistakeable to one who shared them. Your sex has always been a riddle
+to me; there seemed to be something abject in their nature, even among
+the noblest of them. But you are no riddle. While I think you are the
+least simple woman I ever met, you are to me the easiest to
+understand."
+
+"And yet I remember your telling me the exact contrary," said Hadria.
+
+"That was before I had caught the connecting thread. Had I been a woman,
+I believe that life and my place in it would have affected me exactly as
+it affects you."
+
+Hadria coloured over cheek and brow. It was so strange, so startling, so
+delicious to find, for the first time in her life, this intimate
+sympathy.
+
+"I wish my wife had possessed your friendship," he said. "I believe you
+would have saved us." He passed his hands over his brow, looking round
+at the closed windows of the drawing-room. "I almost feel as if she were
+near us now on this old terrace that she loved so. She planted these
+roses herself--how they have grown!" They were white cluster roses and
+yellow banksias, which had strayed far along the balustrade, clambering
+among the stone pillars.
+
+"You doubtless know the bare facts of her life, but nothing is so
+misleading as bare fact. My wife was one of the positive natures,
+capable of great nobility, but liable to glaring error and sin! She held
+ideas passionately. She had the old barbaric notion that a husband was a
+sort of master, and must assert his authority and rights. It was the
+result of her training. I saw that a great development was before her. I
+pleased myself with the thought of watching and helping it. She was
+built on a grand scale. To set her free from prejudice, from her
+injustice to herself, from her dependence on me; to teach her to breathe
+deep with those big lungs of hers and think bravely with that capacious
+brain: that was my dream. I hoped to hear her say to me some day, what I
+fear no woman has yet been able to say to her husband, 'The day of our
+marriage was the birthday of my freedom.'"
+
+Hadria drew a long breath. It seemed to overwhelm her that a man, even
+the Professor, could utter such a sentiment. All the old hereditary
+instincts of conquest and ownership appeared to be utterly dead in him.
+
+No wonder he had found life a lonely pilgrimage! He lived before his
+time. His wife had taunted him because he would not treat her as his
+legal property, or rule her through the claims and opportunities that
+popular sentiment assigned to him.
+
+When a woman as generous as himself, as just, as gentle-hearted, had
+appeared on the horizon of the world, the advent of a nobler social
+order might be hoped for. The two were necessary for the new era.
+
+Then, not only imagination, but cold reason herself grew eloquent with
+promises.
+
+"It was in there, in the old drawing-room, where we had sat together
+evening after evening, that they found her dead, the very type of all
+that is brilliant and exquisite and living. To me she was everything.
+All my personal happiness was centred in her. I cared for nothing so
+long as she was in the same world as myself, and I might love her. In
+the darkness that followed, I was brought face to face with the most
+terrible problems of human fate. I had troubled myself but little about
+the question of the survival of the personality after death; I had been
+pre-occupied with life. Now I realized out of what human longings and
+what human desperation our religions are built. For one gleam of hope
+that we should meet again--what would I not have given? But it never
+came. The trend of my thought made all such hopes impossible. I have
+grown charier of the word 'impossible' now. We know so infinitesimally
+little. I had to learn to live on comfortless. All that was strongly
+personal in me died. All care about myself went out suddenly, as in
+other cases I think it goes out slowly, beaten down by the continued
+buffetings of life. I gave myself to my work, and then a curious
+decentralizing process took place. I ceased to be the point round which
+the world revolved, in my own consciousness. We all start our career as
+pivots, if I am not mistaken. The world span, and I, in my capacity of
+atomic part, span with it. I mean that this was a continuous, not an
+occasional state of consciousness. After that came an unexpected
+peace."
+
+"You have travelled a long and hard road to find it!" cried Hadria.
+
+"Not a unique fate," he said with a smile.
+
+"It must be a terrible process that quite kills the personal in one, it
+is so strong. With me the element is clamorous."
+
+"It has its part to play."
+
+"Surely the gods must be jealous of human beings. Why did they destroy
+the germ of such happiness as you might have had?"
+
+"The stern old law holds for ever; wrong and error have to be expiated."
+
+The Professor traced the history of his wife's family, shewing the
+gradual gathering of Fate to its culmination in the tragedy of her short
+life. Her father and grandfather had both been men of violent and
+tyrannical temper, and tradition gave the same character to their
+forefathers. Eleanor's mother was one of the meek and saintly women who
+almost invariably fall to the lot of overbearing men. She had made a
+virtue of submitting to tyranny, and even to downright cruelty, thus
+almost repeating the story of her equally meek predecessor, of whose
+ill-treatment stories were still current in the district.
+
+"When death put an end to their wretchedness, one would suppose that the
+evil of their lives was worked out and over, but it was not so. The
+Erinnys were still unsatisfied. My poor wife became the victim of their
+fury. And every new light that science throws upon human life shews that
+this _must_ be so. The old Greeks saw that unconscious evil-doing is
+punished as well as that which is conscious. These poor unselfish women,
+piling up their own supposed merit, at the expense of the character of
+their tyrants, laid up a store of misery for their descendant, my
+unhappy wife. Imagine the sort of training and tradition that she had to
+contend with; her mother ignorant and supine, her father violent,
+bigoted, almost brutal. Eleanor's nature was obscured and distorted by
+it. Having inherited the finer and stronger qualities of her father's
+race, with much of its violence, she was going through a struggle at the
+time of our marriage: training, native vigour and nobility all embroiled
+in a desperate civil war. It was too much. There is no doubt as to the
+ultimate issue, but the struggle killed her. It is a common story: a
+character militant which meets destruction in the struggle for life. The
+past evil pursues and throttles the present good."
+
+"This takes away the last consolation from women who have been forced to
+submit to evil conditions," said Hadria.
+
+"It is the truth," said the Professor. "The Erinnys are no mere fancy of
+the Greek mind. They are symbols of an awful fact of life that no one
+can afford to ignore."
+
+"What insensate fools we all are!" Hadria exclaimed. "I mean women."
+
+The Professor made no polite objection to the statement.
+
+As they were wending their way towards the Red House, the Professor
+reminded his companion of the old friendship that had existed between
+them, ever since Hadria was a little girl. He had always cherished
+towards her that sentiment of affectionate good-fellowship. She must
+check him if he seemed to presume upon it, in seeking sympathy or
+offering it. He watched her career with the deepest interest and
+anxiety. He always believed that she would give some good gift to the
+world. And he still believed it. Like the rest of us, she needed
+sympathy at the right moment.
+
+"We need to feel that there is someone who believes in us, in our good
+faith, in our good will, one who will not judge according to outward
+success or failure. Remember," he said, "that I have that unbounded
+faith in you. Nothing can move it. Whatever happens and wherever you may
+be led by the strange chances of life, don't forget the existence of one
+old friend, or imagine that anything can shake his friendship or his
+desire to be of service."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+
+"The worst thing about the life of you married people," said Valeria,
+"is its ridiculous rigidity. It takes more energy to get the dinner
+delayed for a quarter of an hour in most well-regulated houses, or some
+slight change in routine, than to alter a frontier, or pass an Act of
+Parliament."
+
+Hadria laughed. "Until you discovered this by personal inconvenience,
+you always scolded me for my disposition to jeer at the domestic
+scheme."
+
+"It _is_ a little geometrical," Valeria admitted.
+
+"Geometrical! It is like a gigantic ordnance map palmed off on one
+instead of a real landscape."
+
+"Come now, to be just, say an Italian garden."
+
+"That flatters it, but the simile will do. The eye sees to the end of
+every path, and knows that it leads to nothing."
+
+"Ah! dear Hadria, but all the pathways of the world have that very same
+goal."
+
+"At least some of them have the good taste to wind a little, and thus
+disguise the fact. And think of the wild flowers one may gather by the
+wayside in some forest track, or among the mountain passes; but in these
+prim alleys what natural thing can one know? Brain and heart grow tame
+and clipped to match the hedges, or take on grotesque shapes----"
+
+"That one must guard against."
+
+"Oh, I am sick of guarding against things. To be always warding off
+evil, is an evil in itself. Better let it come."
+
+Valeria looked at her companion anxiously.
+
+"One knows how twirling round in a circle makes one giddy, or following
+the same path stupefies. How does the polar bear feel, I wonder, after
+he has walked up and down in his cage for years and years?"
+
+"Used to it, I imagine," said Valeria.
+
+"But before he gets used to it, that is the bad time. And then it is all
+so confusing----"
+
+Hadria sat on the low parapet of the terrace at the Priory. Valeria had
+a place on the topmost step, where the sun had been beating all the
+morning. Hadria had taken off her hat to enjoy the warmth. The long
+sprays of the roses were blown across her now and then. Once, a thorn
+had left a mark of blood upon her hand.
+
+Valeria gathered a spray, and nodded slowly.
+
+"I don't want to allow emotion to get the better of me, Valeria. I don't
+want to run rank like some overgrown weed, and so I dread the
+accumulation of emotion--emotion that has never had a good explosive
+utterance. One has to be so discreet in these Italian gardens; no one
+shouts or says 'damn.'"
+
+"Ah! you naturally feel out of your element."
+
+Hadria laughed. "It's all very well to take that superior tone. _You_
+don't reside on an ordnance map."
+
+There was a pause. Miss Du Prel seemed lost in thought.
+
+"It is this dead silence that oppresses one, this hushed endurance of
+the travail of life. How do these women stand it?"
+
+Valeria presently woke up, and admitted that to live in an English
+village would drive her out of her mind in a week. "And yet, Valeria,
+you have often professed to envy me, because I had what you called a
+place in life--as if a place in Craddock Dene were the same thing!"
+
+"It is well that you do not mean all you say."
+
+"Or say all I mean."
+
+Valeria laid her hand on Hadria's with wistful tenderness.
+
+"I don't think anyone will ever quite understand you, Hadria."
+
+"Including perhaps myself. I sometimes fancy that when it became
+necessary to provide me with a disposition, the material had run out,
+for the moment, nothing being left but a few remnants of other people's
+characters; so a living handful of these was taken up, roughly welded
+together, and then the mixture was sent whirling into space, to boil and
+sputter itself out as best it might."
+
+Miss Du Prel turned to her companion.
+
+"I see that you are incongruously situated, but don't you think that you
+may be wrong yourself? Don't you think you may be making a mistake?"
+
+Hadria was emphatic in assent.
+
+"Not only do I think I may be wrong, but I don't see how--unless by pure
+chance--I can be anything else. For I can't discover what is right. I
+see women all round me actuated by this frenzied sense of duty; I see
+them toiling submissively at their eternal treadmill; occupying their
+best years in the business of filling their nurseries; losing their
+youth, narrowing their intelligence, ruining their husbands, and
+clouding their very moral sense at last. Well, I know that such conduct
+is supposed to be right and virtuous. But I can't see it. It impresses
+me simply as stupid and degrading. And from my narrow little point of
+observation, the more I see of life, the more hopelessly involved become
+all questions of right and wrong where our confounded sex is concerned."
+
+"Why? Because the standards are changing," asserted Miss Du Prel.
+
+"Because--look, Valeria, our present relation to life is _in itself_ an
+injury, an insult--you have never seriously denied that--and how can one
+make for oneself a moral code that has to lay its foundation-stone in
+that very injury? And if one lays one's foundation-stone in open ground
+beyond, then one's code is out of touch with present fact, and one's
+morality consists in sheer revolt all along the line. The whole matter
+is in confusion. You have to accept Mrs. Walker's and Mrs. Gordon's view
+of the case, plainly and simply, or you get off into a sort of morass
+and blunder into quicksands."
+
+"Then what happens?"
+
+"That's just what I don't know. That's just why I say that I am probably
+wrong, because, in this transition period, there seems to be no clear
+right."
+
+"To cease to believe in right and wrong would be to founder morally,
+altogether," Valeria warned.
+
+"I know, and yet I begin to realize how true it is that there is no such
+thing as absolute right or wrong. It is related to the case and the
+moment."
+
+"This leads up to some desperate deed or other, Hadria," cried her
+friend, "I have feared it, or hoped it, I scarcely know which, for some
+time. But you alarm me to-day."
+
+"If I believed in the efficacy of a desperate deed, Valeria, I should
+not chafe as I do, against the conditions of the present scheme of
+things. If individuals could find a remedy for themselves, with a little
+courage and will, there would be less occasion to growl."
+
+"But can they not?"
+
+"Can they?" asked Hadria. "A woman without means of livelihood, breaks
+away from her moorings--well, it is as if a child were to fall into the
+midst of some gigantic machinery that is going at full speed. Let her
+try the feat, and the cracking of her bones by the big wheels will
+attest its hopelessness. And yet I long to try!" Hadria added beneath
+her breath.
+
+Miss Du Prel admitted that success was rare in the present delirious
+state of competition. Individuals here and there pulled through.
+
+"I told you years ago that Nature had chosen our sex for ill-usage. Try
+what we may, defeat and suffering await us, in one form or another. You
+are dissatisfied with your form of suffering, I with mine. A creature in
+pain always thinks it would be more bearable if only it were on the
+other side."
+
+"Ah, I know you won't admit it," said Hadria, "but some day we shall all
+see that this is the result of human cruelty and ignorance, and that it
+is no more 'intended' or inherently necessary than that children should
+be born with curvature of the spine, or rickets. Some day it will be as
+clear as noon, that heartless 'some day' which can never help you or me,
+or any of us who live now. It is we, I suppose, who are required to help
+the 'some day.' Only how, when we are ourselves _in extremis_?"
+
+"The poor are helpers of the poor," said Valeria.
+
+"But if they grow too poor, to starvation point, then they can help no
+more; they can only perish slowly."
+
+"I hoped," said Valeria, "that Professor Fortescue would have poured oil
+upon the troubled waters."
+
+"He does in one sense. But in another, he makes me feel more than ever
+what I am missing."
+
+Miss Du Prel's impulsive instincts could be kept at bay no longer.
+
+"There is really nothing for it, but some deed of daring," she cried. "I
+believe, if only your husband could get over his horror of the scandal
+and talk, that a separation would be best for you both. It is not as if
+he cared for you. One can see he does not. You are such a strange,
+inconsequent being, Hadria, that I believe you would feel the parting
+far more than he would (conventions apart)."
+
+"No question of it," said Hadria. "Our disharmony, radical and hopeless
+as it is, does not prevent my having a strong regard for Hubert. I can't
+help seeing the admirable sides of his character. He is too irritated
+and aggrieved to feel anything but rancour against me. It is natural. I
+understand."
+
+"Ah, it will only end in some disaster, if you try to reconcile the
+irreconcilable. Of course I think it is a great pity that you have not
+more of the instincts on which homes are founded, but since you have
+not----"
+
+Hadria turned sharply round. "Do you really regret that just for once
+the old, old game has been played unsuccessfully? Therein I can't agree
+with you, though I am the loser by it." Hadria grasped a swaying spray
+that the wind blew towards her, and clasped it hard in her hand,
+regardless of the thorns. "It gives me a keen, fierce pleasure to know
+that for all their training and constraining and incitement and
+starvation, I have _not_ developed masses of treacly instinct in which
+mind and will and every human faculty struggle, in vain, to move leg or
+wing, like some poor fly doomed to a sweet and sticky death. At least
+the powers of the world shall not prevail with me by _that_ old device.
+Mind and will and every human faculty may die, but they shall not drown,
+in the usual applauded fashion, in seas of tepid, bubbling, up-swelling
+instinct. I will dare anything rather than endure that. They must take
+the trouble to provide instruments of death from without; they must lay
+siege and starve me; they must attack in soldierly fashion; I will not
+save them the exertion by developing the means of destruction from
+within. There I stand at bay. They shall knock down the citadel of my
+mind and will, stone by stone."
+
+"That is a terrible challenge!" exclaimed Miss Du Prel.
+
+A light laugh sounded across the lawn.
+
+The afternoon sunshine threw four long shadows over the grass: of a
+slightly-built woman, of a very tall man, and of two smaller men.
+
+The figures themselves were hidden by a group of shrubs, and only the
+shadows were visible. They paused, for a moment, as if in consultation;
+the lady standing, with her weight half leaning on her parasol. The tall
+man seemed to be talking to her vivaciously. His long, shadow-arms shot
+across the grass, his head wagged.
+
+"The shadows of Fate!" cried Valeria fantastically.
+
+Then they moved into sight, advancing towards the terrace.
+
+"Who are they I wonder? Oh, Professor Fortescue, for one!"
+
+"Lady Engleton and Joseph Fleming. The other I don't know."
+
+He was very broad and tall, having a slight stoop, and a curious way of
+carrying his head, craned forward. The attitude suggested a keen
+observer. He was attired in knickerbockers and rough tweed Norfolk
+jacket, and he looked robust and powerful, almost to excess. The chin
+and mouth were concealed by the thick growth of dark hair, but one
+suspected unpleasant things of the latter. As far as one could judge his
+age, he seemed a man of about five-and-thirty, with vigour enough to
+last for another fifty years.
+
+"That," said Valeria, "must be Professor Theobald. He has probably come
+to see the house."
+
+"I am sure I shall hate that man," exclaimed Hadria. "He is not to be
+trusted; what nonsense he is talking to Lady Engleton!"
+
+"You can't hear, can you?"
+
+"No; I can see. And she laughs and smiles and bandies words with him. He
+is amusing certainly; there is that excuse for her; but I wonder how she
+can do it."
+
+"What an extraordinary creature you are! To take a prejudice against a
+man before you have spoken to him."
+
+"He is cruel, he is cruel!" exclaimed Hadria in a low, excited voice.
+"He is like some cunning wild animal. Look at Professor Fortescue! his
+opposite pole--why it is all clearer, at this distance, than if we were
+under the confusing influence of their speech. See the contrast between
+that quiet, firm walk, and the insinuating, conceited tread of the other
+man. Joseph Fleming comes out well too, honest soul!"
+
+"He is carrying a fishing-rod. They have been fishing," said Valeria.
+
+"Not Professor Fortescue, I am certain. _He_ does not find his pleasure
+in causing pain."
+
+"This hero-worship blinds you. Depend upon it, he is not without the
+primitive instinct to kill."
+
+"There are individual exceptions to all savage instincts, or the world
+would never move."
+
+"Instinct rules the world," said Miss Du Prel. "At least it is obviously
+neither reason nor the moral sense that rules it."
+
+"Then why does it produce a Professor Fortescue now and then?"
+
+"Possibly as a corrective."
+
+"Or perhaps for fun," said Hadria.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+
+"Professor Theobald, if you are able to resist the fascinations of this
+old house you are made of sterner stuff than I thought."
+
+"I can never resist fascinations, Lady Engleton."
+
+"Do you ever try?"
+
+"My life is spent in the endeavour."
+
+"How foolish!" Whether this applied to the endeavour or to the remark,
+did not quite appear. Lady Engleton's graceful figure leant over the
+parapet.
+
+"Do you know, Mrs. Temperley," she said in her incessantly vivacious
+manner, "I have scarcely heard a serious word since our two Professors
+came to us. Isn't it disgraceful? I naturally expected to be improved
+and enlightened, but they are both so frivolous, I can't keep them for a
+moment to any important subject. They refuse to be profound. It is _I_
+who have to be profound."
+
+"While _we_ endeavour to be charming," said Professor Theobald.
+
+"You may think that flattering, but I confess it seems to me a beggarly
+compliment (as men's to women usually are)."
+
+"You expect too much of finite intelligence, Lady Engleton."
+
+"This is how I am always put off! If it were not that you are both such
+old friends--you are a sort of cousin I think, Professor Fortescue--I
+should really feel aggrieved. One has to endure so much more from
+relations. No, but really; I appeal to Mrs. Temperley. When one is
+hungering for erudition, to be offered compliments! Not that I can
+accuse Professor Fortescue of compliments," she added with a laugh;
+"wild horses would not drag one from him. I angle vainly. But he is so
+ridiculously young. He enjoys things as if he were a schoolboy. Does one
+look for that in one's Professors? He talks of the country as if it were
+_Paradise Regained_."
+
+"So it is to me," he said with a smile.
+
+"But that is not your _role_. You have to think, not to enjoy."
+
+"Then you must not invite us to Craddock Place," Professor Theobald
+stipulated.
+
+"As usual, a halting compliment."
+
+"To take you seriously, Lady Engleton," said Professor Fortescue,
+"(though I know it is a dangerous practice) one of the great advantages
+of an occasional think is to enable one to relish the joys of mental
+vacuity, just as the pleasure of idleness is never fully known till one
+has worked."
+
+"Ah," sighed Lady Engleton, "I know I don't extract the full flavour out
+of _that_!"
+
+"It is a neglected art," said the Professor. "After worrying himself
+with the problems of existence, as the human being is prone to do, as
+soon as existence is more or less secure and peaceful, a man can
+experience few things more enjoyable than to leave aside all problems
+and go out into the fields, into the sun, to feel the life in his veins,
+the world at the threshold of his five senses."
+
+"Ah, now you really are profound at last, Professor!"
+
+"I thought it was risky to take you seriously."
+
+"No, no, I am delighted. The world at the threshold of one's five
+senses. One has but to look and to listen and the beauty of things
+displays itself for our benefit. Yes, but that is what the artists say,
+not the Professors."
+
+"Even a Professor is human," pleaded Theobald.
+
+Valeria quoted some lines that she said expressed Professor Fortescue's
+idea.
+
+          "Carry me out into the wind and the sunshine,
+            Into the beautiful world!"
+
+Lady Engleton's artistic instinct seemed to occupy itself less with the
+interpretation of Nature than with the appreciation of the handiwork of
+man. The lines did not stir her. Professor Theobald shared her
+indifference for the poetic expression, but not for the reality
+expressed.
+
+"I quarrel with you about art," said Lady Engleton. "Art is art, and
+nature is nature, both charming in their way, though I prefer art."
+
+"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
+archaeological 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 archaeology, 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 naively lay himself open to
+their smiles?
+
+Hadria was amused at his occasional impulse of egotistic frankness (or
+what appeared to be such), when he would solemnly analyse his own
+character, admitting his instinct to deceive with an engaging and
+scholarly candour.
+
+His penetrating eyes kept a watch upon his audience. His very simplicity
+seemed to be guarded by his keenness.
+
+Hadria chafed under his persistent effort to attract and interest her.
+She gave a little inward shiver on finding that there was a vague,
+unaccountable, and unpleasant fascination in the personality of the man.
+
+It was not charm, it was nothing that inspired admiration; it rather
+inspired curiosity and stirred the spirit of research, a spirit which
+evidently animated himself. She felt that, in order to investigate the
+workings of her mind and her heart, the Professor would have coolly
+pursued the most ruthless psychical experiments, no matter at what cost
+of anguish to herself. In the interests of science and humanity, the
+learned Professor would certainly not hesitate to make one wretched
+individual agonize.
+
+His appeal to the intellect was stimulatingly strong; it was like a
+stinging wind, that made one walk at a reckless pace, and brought the
+blood tingling through every vein. That intellectual force could alone
+explain the fact of his being counted by Professor Fortescue as a
+friend. Even then it was a puzzling friendship. Could it be that to
+Professor Fortescue, he shewed only his best side? His manner was more
+respectful towards his colleague than towards other men, but even with
+him he was irreverent in his heart, as towards mankind in general.
+
+To Hadria he spoke of Professor Fortescue with enthusiasm--praising his
+great power, his generosity, his genial qualities, and his uprightness;
+then he laughed at him as a modern Don Quixote, and sneered at his
+efforts to save animal suffering when he might have made a name that
+would never be forgotten, if he pursued a more fruitful branch of
+research.
+
+Hadria remarked that Professor Theobald's last sentence had added the
+crowning dignity to his eulogium.
+
+He glanced at her, as if taking her measure.
+
+"Fortescue," he called out, "I envy you your champion. You point, Mrs.
+Temperley, to lofty altitudes. I, as a mere man, cannot pretend to scale
+them."
+
+Then he proceeded to bring down feminine loftiness with virile reason.
+
+"In this world, where there are so many other evils to combat, one feels
+that it is more rational to attack the more important first."
+
+"Ah! there is nothing like an evil to bolster up an evil," cried
+Professor Fortescue; "the argument never fails. Every abuse may find
+shelter behind it. The slave trade, for instance; have we not white
+slavery in our midst? How inconsistent to trouble about negroes till our
+own people are truly free! Wife-beating? Sad; but then children are
+often shamefully ill-used. Wait till _they_ are fully protected before
+fussing about wives. Protect children? Foolish knight-errant, when you
+ought to know that drunkenness is at the root of these crimes! Sweep
+away _this_ curse, before thinking of the children. As for animals, how
+can any rational person consider _their_ sufferings, when there are men,
+women, and children with wrongs to be redressed?"
+
+Professor Theobald laughed.
+
+"My dear Fortescue, I knew you would have some ingenious excuse for your
+amiable weaknesses."
+
+"It is easier to find epithets than answers, Theobald," said the
+Professor with a smile. "I confess I wonder at a man of your logical
+power being taken in with this cheap argument, if argument it can be
+called."
+
+"It is my attachment to logic that makes me crave for consistency," said
+Theobald, not over pleased at his friend's attack.
+
+Professor Fortescue stared in surprise.
+
+"But do you really mean to tell me that you think it logical to excuse
+one abuse by pointing to another?"
+
+"I think that while there are ill-used women and children, it is
+certainly inconsistent to consider animals," said Theobald.
+
+"It does not occur to you that the spirit in man that permits abuse of
+power over animals is precisely the same devil-inspired spirit that
+expresses itself in cruelty towards children. Ah," continued Professor
+Fortescue, shaking his head, "then you really are one of the many who
+help wrong to breed wrong, and suffering to foster suffering, all the
+world over. It is you and those who reason as you reason, who give to
+our miseries their terrible vitality. What arguments has evil ever given
+to evil! What shelter and succour cruelty offers eternally to cruelty!"
+
+"I can't attempt to combat this hobby of yours, Fortescue."
+
+"Again a be-littling epithet in place of an argument! But I know of old
+that on this subject your intellectual acumen deserts you, as it deserts
+nearly all men. You sink suddenly to lower spiritual rank, and employ
+reasoning that you would laugh to scorn in connection with every other
+topic."
+
+"You seem bent on crushing me," exclaimed Theobald. "And Mrs. Temperley
+enjoys seeing me mangled. Talk about cruelty to animals! I call this
+cold-blooded devilry! Mrs. Temperley, come to my rescue!"
+
+"So long as other forms of cruelty can be instanced, Professor Theobald,
+I don't see how, on your own shewing, you can expect any consistent
+person to raise a finger to help you," Hadria returned. Theobald
+laughed.
+
+"But I consider myself too important and valuable to be made the subject
+of this harsh treatment."
+
+"That is for others to decide. If it affords us amusement to torment
+you, and amusement benefits our nerves and digestion, how can you justly
+object? We must consider the greatest good of the greatest number; and
+we are twice as numerous as you."
+
+"You are delicious!" he exclaimed. Mrs. Temperley's manner stiffened.
+
+Acute as the Professor was in many directions, he did not appear to
+notice the change.
+
+His own manner was not above criticism.
+
+"It is strange," said Lady Engleton, in speaking of him afterwards to
+Hadria, "it is strange that his cleverness does not come to the rescue;
+but so far from that, I think it leads him a wild dance over boggy
+ground, like some will-o'-the-wisp, but for whose freakish allurements
+the good man might have trodden a quiet and inoffensive way."
+
+The only means of procuring the indispensable afternoon tea was to go on
+to the Red House, which Mrs. Temperley proposed that they should all do.
+
+"And is there no shaking your decision about the Priory, Professor
+Theobald?" Lady Engleton asked as they descended the steps.
+
+The Professor's quick glance sought Mrs. Temperley's before he answered.
+"I confess to feeling less heroic this afternoon."
+
+"Oh, good! We may perhaps have you for a neighbour after all."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+
+Hadria tried to avoid Professor Theobald, but he was not easily avoided.
+She frequently met him in her walks. The return of spring had tempted
+her to resume her old habit of rising with the sun. But she found, what
+she had feared, that her strength had departed, and she was fatigued
+instead of invigorated, as of yore. She did not regard this loss in a
+resigned spirit. Resignation was certainly not her strong point. The
+vicar's wife and the doctor's wife and the rest of the neighbours
+compared their woes and weariness over five o'clock tea, and these
+appeared so many and so severe that Hadria felt half ashamed to count
+hers at all. Yet why lower the altars of the sane goddess because her
+shrine was deserted? Health was health, though all the women of England
+were confirmed invalids. And with nothing less ought reasonable
+creatures to be satisfied. As for taking enfeeblement as a natural
+dispensation, she would as soon regard delirium tremens in that light.
+
+She chafed fiercely against the loss of that blessed sense of well-being
+and overflowing health, that she used to have, in the old days. She
+resented the nerve-weariness, the fatigue that she was now more
+conscious of than ever, with the coming of the spring. The impulse of
+creative energy broke forth in her. The pearly mornings and the birds'
+songs stirred every instinct of expression. The outburst did not receive
+its usual check. The influences of disenchantment were counteracted by
+Professor Fortescue's presence. His sympathy was marvellous in its
+penetration, brimming the cold hollows of her spirit, as a flooded
+river fills the tiniest chinks and corners about its arid banks. He
+called forth all her natural buoyancy and her exulting sense of life,
+which was precisely the element which charged her sadness with such a
+fierce electric quality, when she became possessed by it, as a cloud by
+storm.
+
+Valeria too was roused by the season.
+
+"What a parable it all is, as old as the earth, and as fresh, each new
+year, as if a messenger-angel had come straight from heaven, in his
+home-spun of young green, to tell us that all is well."
+
+If Hadria met Professor Theobald in her rambles, she always cut short
+her intended walk. She and Valeria with Professor Fortescue wandered
+together, far and wide. They watched the daily budding greenery, the
+gleams of daffodils among their sword-blades of leaves, the pushing of
+sheaths and heads through the teeming soil, the bursts of sunshine and
+the absurd childish little gushes of rain, skimming the green country
+like a frown.
+
+"Truly a time for joy and idleness."
+
+"If only," said Hadria, when Professor Theobald thus grew enthusiastic
+on the subject, "if only my cook had not given a month's notice."
+
+She would not second his mood, be it what it might. Each day, as they
+passed along the lanes, the pale green had spread, like fire, on the
+hedges, caught the chestnuts, with their fat buds shining in the sun,
+which already was releasing the close-packed leaflets.
+
+Hadria (apparently out of sheer devilry, said Professor Theobald) kept
+up a running commentary on the season, and on her hapless position,
+bound to be off on the chase for a cook at this moment of festival. Nor
+was this all. Crockery, pots and pans, clothes for the children, clothes
+for herself, were urgently needed, and no experienced person, she
+declared, could afford to regard the matter as simple because it was
+trivial.
+
+"One of the ghastliest mistakes in this trivial and laborious world."
+
+Valeria thought that cooks had simply to be advertised for, and they
+came.
+
+"What _naivete!_" exclaimed Hadria. "Helen was persuaded to cross the
+seas from her Spartan home to set Troy ablaze, and tarnish her fair
+fame, but it would take twenty sons of Priam to induce a damsel to come
+over dry land to Craddock Dene, to cook our dinners and retain her
+character."
+
+"You would almost imply that women don't so very much care about their
+characters," said Valeria.
+
+"Oh, they do! but sometimes the dulness that an intelligent society has
+ordained as the classic accompaniment to social smiles, gets the better
+of a select few--Helen _par exemple_."
+
+It frequently happened that Hadria and Miss Du Prel came across Lady
+Engleton and her guests, in the Priory garden. From being accidental,
+the meetings had become intentional.
+
+"I like to fancy we are fugitives--like Boccaccio's merry company--from
+the plague of our daily prose, to this garden of sweet poetry!" cried
+Miss Du Prel.
+
+They all kindled at the idea. Valeria made some fanciful laws that she
+said were to govern the little realm. Everyone might express himself
+freely, and all that he said would be held as sacred, as if it were in
+confidence. To speak ill or slightingly of anyone, was forbidden. All
+local and practical topics were to be dropped, as soon as the moss-grown
+griffins who guarded the Garden of Forgetfulness were passed.
+
+Hadria was incorrigibly flippant about the banishment of important local
+subjects. She said that the kitchen-boiler was out of order, and yet she
+had to take part in these highly-cultivated conversations and smile, as
+she complained, with that kitchen-boiler gnawing at her vitals. She
+claimed to be set on a level with the Spartan boy, if not above him.
+Valeria might scoff, as those proverbially did who never felt a wound.
+Hadria found a certain lack of tender feeling among the happy few who
+had no such tragic burdens to sustain.
+
+Not only were these prosaic subjects banished from within the cincture
+of the gentle griffins, but also the suspicions, spites, petty
+jealousies, vulgar curiosities, and all the indefinable little darts and
+daggers that fly in the social air, destroying human sympathy and
+good-will. Each mind could expand freely, no longer on the defensive
+against the rain of small stabs. There grew up a delicate, and
+chivalrous code among the little group who met within the griffins'
+territory.
+
+"It is not for us to say that, individually, we transcend the average of
+educated mortals," said Professor Theobald, "but I do assert that
+collectively we soar high above that depressing standard."
+
+Professor Fortescue observed that whatever might be said about their own
+little band, it was a strange fact that bodies of human beings were able
+to produce, by union, a condition far above or far below the average of
+their separate values. "There is something chemical and explosive in
+human relationships," he said.
+
+These meetings stood out as a unique experience in the memory of all who
+took part in them. Chance had brought them to pass, and they refused to
+answer to the call of a less learned magician.
+
+Lady Engleton and Mrs. Temperley alternately sent tea and fruit to the
+terrace, on the days of meeting, and there the little company would
+spend the afternoon serenely, surrounded by the beauties of the garden
+with its enticing avenues, its chaunting birds, its flushes of bloom,
+and its rich delicious scents.
+
+"Why do we, in the nineteenth century, starve ourselves of these
+delicate joys?" cried Valeria. "Why do we so seldom leave our stupid
+pre-occupations and open our souls to the sun, to the spring, to the
+gentle invitations of gardens, to the charm of conversation? We seem to
+know nothing of the serenities, the urbanities of life."
+
+"We live too fast; we are too much troubled about outward things--cooks
+and dressmakers, Mrs. Temperley," said Professor Theobald.
+
+"Poor cooks and dressmakers!" murmured Professor Fortescue, "where are
+_their_ serenities and urbanities?"
+
+"I would not deprive any person of the good things of life," cried
+Valeria; "but at present, it is only a few who can appreciate and
+contribute to the delicate essence that I speak of. I don't think one
+could expect it of one's cook, after all."
+
+"One is mad to expect anything of those who have had no chance," said
+Professor Fortescue. "That nevertheless we consistently do,--or what
+amounts to the same thing: we plume ourselves on what chance has enabled
+us to be and to achieve, as if between us and the less fortunate there
+were some great difference of calibre and merit. Nine times in ten,
+there is nothing between us but luck."
+
+"Oh, dear, you _are_ democratic, Professor!" cried Lady Engleton.
+
+"No; I am merely trying to be just."
+
+"To be just you must apply your theory to men and women, as well as to
+class and class," Valeria suggested.
+
+"_Mon Dieu!_ but so I do; so I always have done, as soon as I was
+intellectually short-coated."
+
+"And would you excuse all our weaknesses on that ground?" asked Lady
+Engleton, with a somewhat ingratiating upward gaze of her blue eyes.
+
+"I would account for them as I would account for the weaknesses of my
+own sex. As for excusing, the question of moral responsibility is too
+involved to be decided off-hand."
+
+The atmosphere of Griffin-land, as Professor Theobald called it, while
+becoming to his character, made him a little recklessly frank at times.
+
+He admitted that throughout his varied experience of life, he had found
+flattery the most powerful weapon in a skilled hand, and that he had
+never known it fail. He related instances of the signal success which
+had followed its application with the trowel. He reminded his listeners
+of Lord Beaconsfield's famous saying, and chuckled over the unfortunate
+woman, "plain as a pike-staff," who had become his benefactress, in
+consequence of a discreet allusion to the "power of beauty" and a
+well-placed sigh.
+
+"The woman must have been a fool!" said Joseph Fleming.
+
+"By no means; she was of brilliant intellect. But praises of that were
+tame to her; she knew her force, and was perhaps tired of the solitude
+it induced." Professor Theobald laughed mightily at his own sarcasm.
+"But when the whisper of 'beauty' came stealing to her ear (which was by
+no means like a shell) it was surpassing sweet to her. I think there is
+no yearning more intense than that of a clever woman for the triumphs of
+mere beauty. She would give all her powers of intellect for the smallest
+tribute to personal and feminine charm. What is your verdict, Mrs.
+Temperley?"
+
+Mrs. Temperley supposed that clever women had something of human nature
+in them, and valued overmuch what they did not possess.
+
+Professor Theobald had perhaps looked for an answer that would have
+betrayed more of the speaker's secret feelings.
+
+"It is the fashion, I know," he said, "to regard woman as an enigma.
+Now, without professing any unusual acuteness, I believe that this is a
+mistake. Woman is an enigma certainly, because she is human, but that
+ends it. Her conditions have tended to cultivate in her the power of
+dissimulation, and the histrionic quality, just as the peaceful ilex
+learns to put forth thorns if you expose it to the attacks of devouring
+cattle. It is this instinct to develop thorns in self-defence, and yet
+to live a little behind the prickly outposts, that leads to our notion
+of mystery in woman's nature. Let a man's subsistence and career be
+subject to the same powers and chances as the success of a woman's life
+now hangs on, and see whether he too does not become a histrionic
+enigma."
+
+Professor Fortescue observed that the clergy, at times, developed
+qualities called feminine, because in some respects their conditions
+resembled those of women.
+
+Theobald assented enthusiastically to this view. He had himself entered
+the church as a young fellow (let not Mrs. Temperley look so
+inconsiderately astonished), and had left it on account of being unable
+to conscientiously subscribe to its tenets.
+
+"But not before I had acquired some severe training in that sort of
+strategy which is incumbent upon women, in the conduct of their lives.
+Whatever I might privately think or feel, my office required that I
+should only express that which would be more or less grateful to my
+hearers. (Is not this the woman's case, in almost every position in
+life?) Even orthodoxy must trip it on tiptoe; there was always some
+prejudice, some susceptibility to consider. What was frankness in others
+was imprudence in me; other men's minds might roam at large; mine was
+tethered, if not in its secret movements, at least in its utterance; and
+it is a curious and somewhat sinister law of Nature, that perpetual
+denial of utterance ends by killing the power or the feeling so held in
+durance."
+
+Hadria coloured.
+
+"That experience and its effect upon my own nature, which has lasted to
+this day," added Theobald, "served to increase my interest in the
+fascinating study of character in its relation to environment."
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed Hadria, "then _you_ don't believe in the independent
+power of the human will?"
+
+"Certainly not. To talk of character overcoming circumstance is to talk
+of an effect without a cause. Yet this phrase is a mere commonplace in
+our speech. A man no more overcomes his circumstance than oxygen
+overcomes nitrogen when it combines with it to form the air we breathe.
+If the nitrogen is present, the combination takes place; but if there is
+no nitrogen to be had, all the oxygen in the world will not produce our
+blessed atmosphere!"
+
+Joseph Fleming caused a sort of anti-climax by mentioning simply that he
+didn't know that any nitrogen was required in the atmosphere. One always
+heard about the oxygen.
+
+Professor Theobald remarked, with a chuckle, that this was one of the
+uses of polite conversation; one picked up information by the wayside.
+Joseph agreed that it was wonderfully instructive, if the speakers were
+intelligent.
+
+"That helps," said the Professor, tapping Joseph familiarly on the
+shoulder.
+
+"When shall we have our next meeting?" enquired Lady Engleton, when the
+moment came for parting.
+
+"The sooner the better," said Valeria. "English skies have Puritan
+moods, and we may as well profit by their present jocund temper. I never
+saw a bluer sky in all Italy."
+
+"I certainly shall not be absent from the next meeting," announced
+Theobald, with a glance at Hadria.
+
+"Nor I," said Lady Engleton. "Such opportunities come none too often."
+
+"I," Hadria observed, "shall be cook-hunting."
+
+Professor Theobald's jaw shut with a snap, and he turned and left the
+group almost rudely.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+
+Hadria thought that Professor Theobald had not spoken at random, when he
+said that the sweetest tribute a woman can receive is that paid to her
+personal charm. This unwilling admission was dragged out of her by the
+sight of Valeria Du Prel, as the central figure of an admiring group, in
+the large drawing-room at Craddock Place.
+
+She was looking handsome and animated, her white hair drawn proudly off
+her brow, and placed as if with intention beside the silken curtains,
+whose tint of misty pale green was so becoming to her beauty.
+
+Valeria was holding her little court, and thoroughly enjoying the
+admiration.
+
+"If we have had to live by our looks for all these centuries, surely the
+instinct that Professor Theobald thinks himself so penetrating to have
+discovered in clever women, is accounted for simply enough by heredity,"
+Hadria said to herself, resentfully.
+
+Professor Theobald was bending over Miss Du Prel with an air of
+devotion. Hadria wished that she would not take his compliments so
+smilingly. Valeria would not be proof against his flattery. She kindled
+with a child's frankness at praise. It stung Hadria to think of her
+friend being carelessly classed by the Professor among women whose
+weakness he understood and could play upon. He would imagine that he had
+discovered the mystery of the sun, because he had observed a spot upon
+it, not understanding the nature of the very spot. Granted that a little
+salve to one's battered and scarified self-love was soft and grateful,
+what did that prove of the woman who welcomed it, beyond a human
+craving to keep the inner picture of herself as bright and fine as might
+be? The man who, out of contempt or irreverence, set a bait for the
+universal appetite proved himself, rather than his intended victim, of
+meagre quality. Valeria complimented him generously by supposing him
+sincere.
+
+Occasional bursts of laughter came from her court. Professor Theobald
+looked furtively round, as if seeking some one, or watching the effect
+of his conduct on Mrs. Temperley.
+
+Could he be trying to make her jealous of Valeria?
+
+Hadria gave a sudden little laugh while Lord Engleton--a shy, rather
+taciturn man--was shewing her his wife's last picture. Hadria had to
+explain the apparent discourtesy as best she could.
+
+The picture was of English meadows at sunset.
+
+"They are the meadows you see from your windows," said Lord Engleton.
+"That village is Masham, with the spire shewing through the trees. I
+daresay you know the view pretty well."
+
+"I doubt," she answered, with the instinct of extravagance that annoyed
+Hubert, "I doubt if I know anything else."
+
+Lord Engleton brought a portfolio full of sketches for her to see.
+
+"Lady Engleton has been busy."
+
+As Hadria laid down the last sketch, her eyes wandered round the
+softly-lighted, dimly beautiful room, and suddenly she was seized with a
+swift, reasonless, overpowering sense of happiness that she felt to be
+atmospheric and parenthetical in character, but all the more keen for
+that reason, while it lasted. The second black inexorable semicircle was
+ready to enclose the little moment, but its contents had the condensed
+character of that which stands within limits, and reminded her, with a
+little sting, as of spur to horse, of her sharp, terrible aptitude for
+delight and her hunger for it. Why not, why not? What pinched,
+ungenerous philosophy was it that insisted on voluntary starvation? One
+saw its offspring in the troops of thin white souls that hurry, like
+ghosts, down the avenues of Life.
+
+Again Professor Theobald's stealthy glance was directed towards Mrs.
+Temperley.
+
+"He is as determined to analyse me as if I were a chemical compound,"
+she said to herself.
+
+"Perhaps we may as well join the group," suggested Lord Engleton.
+
+It opened to admit the new comers, disclosing Miss Du Prel, in a gown of
+pale amber brocade, enthroned upon a straight-backed antique sofa. The
+exquisiteness of the surroundings which Lady Engleton had a peculiar
+gift in arranging, the mellow candle-light, the flowers and colours,
+seem to have satisfied in Valeria an inborn love of splendour that often
+opened hungry and unsatisfied jaws.
+
+She had never looked so brilliant or so handsome.
+
+Professor Theobald's face cleared. He explained to Mrs. Temperley that
+they had been discussing the complexity of human character, and had come
+to the conclusion that it was impossible to really understand even the
+simplest man or woman alive. Professor Theobald said that it was a
+dispensation of Providence which intended the human race for social
+life. Lady Engleton upbraided the author of the cynical utterance.
+
+"Which of us can dare to face his own basest self?" the culprit
+demanded. "If any one is so bold, I fear I must accuse him (or even her)
+of lack of self-knowledge rather than give praise for spotlessness."
+
+"Oh, I don't believe all these dreadful things about my fellows!" cried
+Miss Du Prel, flinging up her fine head defiantly; "one is likely to
+find in them more or less what one expects. It's the same everywhere. If
+you go seeking mole-hills and worms, and put nose to ground on the scent
+for carrion, you will find them all, with the range of snow-capped Alps
+in full view, and the infinite of blue above your blind head!"
+
+Hadria, in justice, could not refuse to acknowledge that Professor
+Theobald was open-minded.
+
+"True," he said, "it is dangerous to seek for evil, unless you naturally
+love it, and then----"
+
+"You are past praying for," said Professor Fortescue.
+
+"Or at least you never pray," added Hadria.
+
+Both Professors looked at her, each with an expression of enquiry. It
+was difficult to understand from exactly what sources of experience or
+intuition the singular remark could have sprung.
+
+The conversation took a slight swerve.
+
+Professor Theobald contended that all our fond distinctions of vice and
+virtue, right and wrong, were mere praise and blame of conditions and
+events.
+
+"We like to fancy the qualities of character inherent, while really they
+are laid on by slow degrees, like paint, and we name our acquaintance by
+the colour of his last coat."
+
+This view offended Miss Du Prel. Joseph Fleming and Lord Engleton
+rallied round her. Hubert Temperley joined them. Man, the sublime, the
+summit of the creation, the end and object of the long and painful
+processes of nature; sin-spotted perhaps, weak and stumbling, but still
+the masterpiece of the centuries--was this great and mysterious creature
+to be thought of irreverently as a mere plain surface for _paint_? Only
+consider it! Professor Theobald's head went down between his shoulders
+as he laughed.
+
+"The sublime creature would not look well _un_painted, believe me."
+
+"He dare not appear in that plight even to himself, if Theobald be right
+in what he stated just now," said Professor Fortescue.
+
+"Life to a character is like varnish to wood," asserted Miss Du Prel;
+"it brings out the grain."
+
+"Ah!" cried Professor Theobald, "Then _you_ insist on varnish, I on
+paint."
+
+"There is a difference."
+
+"And it affects your respective views throughout," added Professor
+Fortescue, "for if the paint theory be correct, then it is true that to
+know one's fellows is impossible, you can only know the upper coat;
+whereas if the truth lies in varnish, the substance of the nature is
+revealed to you frankly, if you have eyes to trace the delicacies of the
+markings, which tell the secrets of sap and fibre, of impetus and check:
+all the inner marvels of life and growth that go forward in that most
+botanic thing, the human soul."
+
+"Professor Fortescue is eloquent, but he makes one feel distressingly
+vegetable," said Temperley.
+
+"Oh! not unless one has a human soul," Lady Engleton reassured him.
+
+"Am I to understand that you would deprive me of mine?" he asked, with a
+courtly bow.
+
+"Not at all; souls are private property, or ought to be."
+
+"I wish one could persuade the majority of that!" cried Professor
+Fortescue.
+
+"Impossible," said Theobald. "The chief interest of man is the condition
+of his neighbour's soul."
+
+"Could he not be induced to look after his own?" Hadria demanded.
+
+"All fun would be over," said Professor Fortescue.
+
+"I wish one could have an Act of Parliament, obliging every man to leave
+his neighbour's soul in peace."
+
+"You would sap the very source of human happiness and enterprise,"
+Professor Fortescue asserted, fantastically.
+
+"I should be glad if I could think the average human being had the
+energy to look after _any_ business; even other people's!" cried Lady
+Engleton.
+
+"I believe that, as a matter of fact, the soul is a hibernating
+creature," said Theobald, with a chuckle.
+
+"It certainly has its drowsy winters," observed Hadria.
+
+"Ah! but its spring awakenings!" cried Miss Du Prel.
+
+The chime of a clock startled them with its accusation of lingering too
+long. The hostess remonstrated at the breaking up the party. Why should
+they hurry away?
+
+"The time when we could lay claim to have 'hurried' has long since
+passed, Lady Engleton," said Hubert, "we can only plead forgiveness by
+blaming you for making us too happy."
+
+Professor Theobald went to the window. "What splendid moonlight! Lady
+Engleton, don't you feel tempted to walk with your guests to the end of
+the avenue?"
+
+The idea was eagerly adopted, and the whole party sallied forth together
+into the brilliant night. Long black shadows of their forms stalked on
+before them, as if, said Valeria, they were messengers from Hades come
+to conduct each his victim to the abode of the shades.
+
+Professor Theobald shuddered.
+
+"I hate that dreadful chill idea of the Greeks. I have much too strong a
+hold on this pleasant earth to relish the notion of that gloomy
+under-world yet a while. What do you say, Mrs. Temperley?"
+
+She made some intentionally trite answer.
+
+Professor Theobald's quick eyes discovered a glow-worm, and he shouted
+to the ladies to come and see the little green lantern of the spring.
+The mysterious light was bright enough to irradiate the blades of grass
+around it, and even to cast a wizard-like gleam on the strange face of
+the Professor as he bent down close to the ground.
+
+"Fancy being a lamp to oneself!" cried Lady Engleton.
+
+"It's as much as most of us can do to be a lamp to others," commented
+Hadria.
+
+"Some one has compared the glow-worm's light to Hero's, when she waited,
+with trimmed lamp, for her Leander," said Professor Theobald. "Look
+here, Mr. Fleming, if you stoop down just here, you will be able to see
+the little animal." The Professor resigned his place to him. When Joseph
+rose from his somewhat indifferent survey of the insect, Professor
+Theobald had established himself at Mrs. Temperley's right hand, and the
+rest of the party were left behind.
+
+"Talking of Greek ideas," said the Professor, "that wonderful people
+perceived more clearly than we Christians have ever done, with all our
+science, the natural forces of Nature. What we call superstitions were
+really great scientific intuitions or prophecies. Of course I should not
+dare to speak in this frank fashion to the good people of Craddock Dene,
+but to _you_ I need not be on my guard."
+
+"I appreciate your confidence."
+
+"Ah, now, Mrs. Temperley, you are unkind. It is of no use for you to try
+to persuade me that you are _of_ as well as in the village of Craddock
+Dene."
+
+"I have never set out upon that task."
+
+"Again I offend!"
+
+Hadria, dropping the subject, enquired whether the Professor was well
+acquainted with this part of the country.
+
+He knew it by heart. A charming country; warm, luxuriant, picturesque,
+the pick of England to his mind. What could beat its woodlands, its
+hills, its relics of the old world, its barns and churches and smiling
+villages?
+
+"Then it is not only Tudor mansions that attract you?" Hadria could not
+resist asking.
+
+Tudor mansions? There was no cottage so humble, provided it were
+picturesque, that did not charm him.
+
+"Really!" exclaimed Hadria, with a faintly emphasized surprise.
+
+"Have I put my luckless foot into it again?"
+
+"May I not be impressed by magnanimity?"
+
+The Professor's mouth shut sharply.
+
+"Mrs. Temperley is pleased to deride me. Craddock Dene must shrivel
+under destroying blasts like these."
+
+"Not so much as one might think."
+
+The sound of their steps on the broad avenue smote sharply on their
+ears. Their absurd-looking shadows stretched always in front of them. "A
+splendid night," Hadria observed, to break the silence.
+
+"Glorious!" returned her companion, as if waking from thought.
+
+"Spring is our best season here, the time of blossoming."
+
+"I am horribly tempted to take root in the lovely district, in the hope
+of also blossoming. Can you imagine me a sort of patriarchal apple-tree
+laden with snowy blooms?"
+
+"You somewhat burden my imagination."
+
+"I have had to work hard all my life, until an unexpected legacy from an
+admirable distant relation put me at the end of a longer tether. I still
+have to work, but less hard. I have always tried not to ossify, keeping
+in view a possible serene time to come, when I might put forth blossoms
+in this vernal fashion that tempts my middle-aged fancy. And where could
+I choose a sweeter spot for these late efforts to be young and green,
+than here in this perfect south of England home?"
+
+"It seems large," said Hadria.
+
+Professor Theobald grinned. "You don't appear to take a keen interest in
+my blossoming."
+
+Why in heaven's name _should_ she?
+
+"I cannot naturally expect it," Professor Theobald continued, reading
+her silence aright, "but I should be really obliged by your counsel on
+this matter. You know the village; you know from your own experience
+whether it is a place to live in always. Advise me, I beg."
+
+"Really, Professor Theobald, it is impossible for me to advise you in a
+matter so entirely depending on your own taste and your own affairs."
+
+"You can at least tell me how you like the district yourself; whether it
+satisfies you as to society, easy access of town, influence on the mind
+and the spirits, and so forth."
+
+"We are considered well off as to society. There are a good many
+neighbours within a radius of five miles; the trains to town are not all
+that could be wished. There are only two in the day worth calling such."
+
+"And as to its effect upon the general aspect of life; is it rousing,
+cheering, inspiring, invigorating?"
+
+Hadria gave a little laugh. "I must refer you to other inhabitants on
+this point. I think Lady Engleton finds it fairly inspiring."
+
+"Lady Engleton is not Mrs. Temperley."
+
+"I doubt not that same speech has already done duty as a compliment to
+Lady Engleton."
+
+"You are incorrigible!"
+
+"I wish you would make it when she is present," said Hadria, "and see us
+both bow!" The Professor laughed delightedly.
+
+"I don't know what social treasures may be buried within your radius of
+five miles, but the mines need not be worked. An inhabitant of the
+Priory would not need them. Mrs. Temperley is a society in herself."
+
+"An inhabitant of the Priory might risk disappointment, in supposing
+that Mrs. Temperley had nothing else to do than to supply her neighbours
+with society."
+
+The big jaw closed, with a snap.
+
+"I don't think, on the whole, that I will take the Priory," he said,
+after a considerable pause; "it is, as you say, large."
+
+Mrs. Temperley made no comment.
+
+"I suppose I should be an unwelcome neighbour," he said, with a sigh.
+
+"I fear any polite assurance, after such a challenge, would be a poor
+compliment. As for entreating you to take the Priory, I really do not
+feel equal to the responsibility."
+
+"I accept in all humility," said the Professor, as he opened the gate of
+the Red House, "a deserved reproof."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+
+"A singular character!" said Professor Theobald.
+
+"There is a lot of good in her," Lady Engleton asserted.
+
+Lord Engleton observed that people were always speaking ill of Mrs.
+Temperley, but he never could see that she was worse than her
+neighbours. She was cleverer; that might be her offence.
+
+Madame Bertaux observed in her short, decisive way that Craddock Dene
+might have settled down with Mrs. Temperley peaceably enough, if it
+hadn't been for her action about the schoolmistress's child.
+
+"Yes; that has offended everybody," said Lady Engleton.
+
+"What action was that?" asked Theobald, turning slowly towards his
+hostess.
+
+"Oh, haven't you heard? That really speaks well for this house. You
+can't accuse us of gossip."
+
+Lady Engleton related the incident. "By the way, you must remember that
+poor woman, Professor. Don't you know you were here at the school-feast
+that we gave one summer in the park, when all the children came and had
+tea and games, and you helped us so amiably to look after them?"
+
+The Professor remembered the occasion perfectly.
+
+"And don't you recollect a very pretty, rather timid, fair-haired woman
+who brought the children? We all used to admire her. She was a
+particularly graceful, refined-looking creature. She had read a great
+deal and was quite cultivated. I often used to think she must feel very
+solitary at Craddock, with not a soul to sympathize with her tastes.
+Mr. and Mrs. Walker used to preach to her, poor soul, reproving her love
+of reading, which took her thoughts away from her duties and her
+sphere."
+
+Madame Bertaux snorted significantly. Lady Engleton had remarked a
+strange, sad look in Ellen Jervis's eyes, and owned to having done her
+best to circumvent the respected pastor and his wife, by lending her
+books occasionally, and encouraging her to think her own thoughts, and
+get what happiness she could out of her communings with larger spirits
+than she was likely to find in Craddock. Of course Mrs. Walker now gave
+Lady Engleton to understand that she was partly responsible for the poor
+woman's misfortune. She attributed it to Ellen's having had "all sorts
+of ideas in her head!"
+
+"I admit that if _not_ having all sorts of ideas in one's head is a
+safeguard, the unimpeachable virtue of a district is amply accounted
+for."
+
+Professor Theobald chuckled. He enquired if Lady Engleton knew Mrs.
+Temperley's motive in adopting the child.
+
+"Oh, partly real kindness; but I think, between ourselves, that Mrs.
+Temperley likes to be a little eccentric. Most people have the instinct
+to go with the crowd. Hadria Temperley has the opposite fault. She loves
+to run counter to it, even when it is pursuing a harmless course."
+
+Some weeks had now passed since the arrival of the two Professors. The
+meetings in the Priory garden had been frequent. They had affected for
+the better Professor Theobald's manner. Valeria's laws had curbed the
+worst side of him, or prevented it from shewing itself so freely. He
+felt the atmosphere of the little society, and acknowledged that it was
+"taming the savage beast." As for his intellect it took to blazing, as
+if, he said, without false modesty, a torch had been placed in pure
+oxygen.
+
+"My brain takes fire here and flames. I should make a very creditable
+beacon if the burning of brains and the burning of faggots were only of
+equal value."
+
+The little feud between him and Mrs. Temperley had been patched up. She
+felt that she had been rude to him, on one occasion at any rate, and
+desired to make amends. He had become more cautious in his conduct
+towards her.
+
+During this period of the Renaissance, as Hadria afterwards called the
+short-lived epoch, little Martha was visited frequently. Her protectress
+had expected to have to do battle with hereditary weakness on account of
+her mother's sufferings, but the child shewed no signs of this. Either
+the common belief that mental trouble in the mother is reflected in the
+child, was unfounded, or the evil could be overcome by the simple
+beneficence of pure air, good food, and warm clothing.
+
+Hadria had begun to feel a more personal interest in her charge. She had
+taken it under her care of her own choice, without the pressure of any
+social law or sentiment, and in these circumstances of freedom, its
+helplessness appealed to her protective instincts. She felt the
+relationship to be a true one, in contradistinction to the more usual
+form of protectorate of woman to child.
+
+"There is nothing in it that gives offence to one's dignity as a human
+being," she asserted, "which is more than can be said of the ordinary
+relation, especially if it be legal."
+
+She was issuing from little Martha's cottage on one splendid morning,
+when she saw Professor Theobald coming up the road from Craddock Dene.
+He caught sight of Hadria, hesitated, coloured, glanced furtively up the
+road, and then, seeing he was observed, came forward, raising his cap.
+
+"You can't imagine what a charming picture you make; the English cottage
+creeper-covered and smiling; the nurse and child at the threshold
+equally smiling, yourself a very emblem of spring in your fresh gown,
+and a domestic tabby to complete the scene."
+
+"I wish I could come and see it," said Hadria. She was waving a twig of
+lavender, and little Martha was making grabs at it, and laughing her
+gurgling laugh of babyish glee. Professor Theobald stood in the road
+facing up hill towards Craddock, whose church tower was visible from
+here, just peeping through the spring foliage of the vicarage garden. He
+only now and again looked round at the picture that he professed to
+admire.
+
+"Do you want to see a really pretty child, Professor Theobald? Because
+if so, come here."
+
+He hesitated, and a wave of dark colour flooded his face up to the roots
+of his close-clipped hair.
+
+He paused a moment, and then bent down to open the little gate. His
+stalwart figure, in the diminutive enclosure, reduced it to the
+appearance of a doll's garden.
+
+"Step carefully or you will crush the young _menage_," Hadria advised.
+The rosy-cheeked nurse looked with proud expectancy at the face of the
+strange gentleman, to note the admiration that he could not but feel.
+
+His lips were set.
+
+The Professor evidently knew his duty and proceeded to admire with due
+energy. Little Martha shrank away a little from the bearded face, and
+her lower lip worked threateningly, but the perilous moment was staved
+over by means of the Professor's watch, hastily claimed by Hannah, who
+dispensed with ceremony in the emergency.
+
+Martha's eyes opened wide, and the little hands came out to grasp the
+treasure. Hadria stood and laughed at the sight of the gigantic
+Professor, helplessly tethered by his own chain to the imperious baby,
+in whose fingers the watch was tightly clasped. The child was in high
+delight at the loquacious new toy--so superior to foolish fluffy rabbits
+that could not tick to save their skins. Martha had no notion of
+relinquishing her hold, so they need not tug in that feeble way; if they
+pulled too hard, she would yell!
+
+She evidently meant business, said her captive. So long as they left her
+the watch, they might do as they pleased; she was perfectly indifferent
+to the accidental human accompaniments of the new treasure, but on that
+one point she was firm. She proceeded to stuff the watch into her mouth
+as far as it would go. The Professor was dismayed.
+
+"It's all right," Hadria reassured him. "You have hold of the chain."
+
+"Did you entice me into this truly ridiculous position in order to laugh
+at me?" enquired the prisoner.
+
+"I would not laugh at you for the world."
+
+"Really this young person has the most astonishing grip! How long does
+her fancy generally remain faithful to a new toy?"
+
+"Well--I hope you are not pressed for time," said Hadria maliciously.
+
+The Professor groaned, and struggled in the toils.
+
+"Come, little one, open the fingers. Oh no, no, we mustn't cry." Martha
+kept her features ready for that purpose at a moment's notice, should
+any nonsense be attempted.
+
+The victim looked round miserably.
+
+"Is there nothing that will set me free from these tender moorings?"
+
+Hadria shook her head and laughed. "You are chained by the most
+inflexible of all chains," she said: "your own compunction."
+
+"Oh, you little tyrant!" exclaimed the Professor, shaking his fist in
+the baby's face, at which she laughed a taunting and triumphant laugh.
+Then, once more, the object of dispute went into her mouth. Martha
+gurgled with joy.
+
+"What _am_ I to do?" cried her victim helplessly.
+
+"Nothing. She has you securely because you fear to hurt her."
+
+"Little imp! Come now, let me go please. Oh, _please_, Miss Baby--your
+Majesty: will nothing soften you? She is beginning early to take
+advantage of the chivalry of the stronger sex, and I doubt not she will
+know how to pursue her opportunity later on."
+
+"Oh! is _that_ your parable? Into my head came quite a different
+one--_a propos_ of what we were talking of yesterday in Griffin-land."
+
+"Ah, the eternal feminine!" cried the Professor. "Yes, you were very
+brilliant, Mrs. Temperley."
+
+"You now stand for an excellent type of woman, Professor: strong, but
+chained."
+
+"Oh, thank you! (Infant, I implore!)"
+
+"The baby ably impersonates Society with all its sentiments and laws,
+written and unwritten."
+
+"Ah!--and my impounded property?"
+
+"Woman's life and freedom."
+
+"Ingenious! And the chain? (Oh, inexorable babe, have mercy on the
+sufferings of imprisoned vigour!)"
+
+"Her affections, her pity, her compunction, which forbid her to wrench
+away her rightful property, because ignorant and tender hands are
+grasping it. The analogy is a little mixed, but no matter."
+
+"I should enjoy the intellectual treat that is spread before me better,
+in happier circumstances, Mrs. Temperley."
+
+"Apply your remark to your prototype--intelligently," she added.
+
+"My intelligence is rapidly waning; I am benumbed. I fail to follow the
+intricacies of analogy, in this constrained position."
+
+"Ah, so does she!"
+
+"Oh, pitiless cherub, my muscles ache with this monotony."
+
+"And hers," said Hadria.
+
+"Come, come, life is passing; I have but one; relax these fetters, or I
+die."
+
+Martha frowned and fretted. She even looked shocked, according to
+Hadria, who stood by laughing. The baby, she pointed out, failed to
+understand how her captive could so far forget himself as to desire to
+regain his liberty.
+
+"She reminds you, sternly, that this is your proper sphere."
+
+"Perdition!" he exclaimed.
+
+"As a general rule," she assented.
+
+The Professor laughed, and said he was tired of being a Type.
+
+At length a little gentle force had to be used, in spite of furious
+resentment on the part of the baby. A more injured and ill-treated
+mortal could not have been imagined. She set up a heaven-piercing wail,
+evidently overcome with indignation and surprise at the cruel treatment
+that she had received. What horrid selfishness to take oneself and one's
+property away, when an engaging innocent enjoys grasping it and stuffing
+it into its mouth!
+
+"Don't you feel a guilty monster?" Hadria enquired, as the lament of the
+offended infant followed them up the road.
+
+"I feel as if I were slinking off after a murder!" he exclaimed
+ruefully. "I wonder if we oughtn't to go back and try again to soothe
+the child." He paused irresolutely.
+
+Hadria laughed. "You _do_ make a lovely allegory!" she exclaimed. "This
+sense of guilt, this disposition to go back--this attitude of
+apology--it is speaking, inimitable!"
+
+"But meanwhile that wretched child is shrieking itself into a fit!"
+cried the allegory, with the air of a repentant criminal.
+
+"Whenever you open your mouth, out falls a symbol," exclaimed Hadria.
+"Be calm; Hannah will soon comfort her, and it is truer kindness not to
+remind her again of her grievance, poor little soul. But we will go back
+if you like (you are indeed a true woman!), and you can say you are
+sorry you made so free with your own possessions, and you wish you had
+done your duty better, and are eager to return and let Her Majesty hold
+you captive. Your prototype always does, you know, and she is nearly
+always pardoned, on condition that she never does anything of that kind
+again."
+
+Professor Theobald seemed too much concerned about the child, who was
+still wailing, to pay much attention to any other topic. He turned to
+retrace his steps.
+
+"I think you make a mistake," said Hadria. "As soon as she sees you she
+will want the watch, and then you will be placed between the awful
+alternatives of voluntarily surrendering your freedom, and heartlessly
+refusing to present yourself to her as a big plaything. In one respect
+you have not yet achieved a thorough fidelity to your model; you don't
+seem to enjoy sacrifice for its own sake. That will come with practice."
+
+"I wish that child would leave off crying."
+
+Hadria stopped in the road to laugh at the perturbed Professor.
+
+"She will presently. That is only a cry of anger, not of distress. I
+would not leave her, if it were. Yes; your vocation is clearly
+allegorical. Feminine to your finger-tips, in this truly feminine
+predicament. We are all--_nous autres femmes_--like the hero of the
+_White Ship_, who is described by some delightful boy in an examination
+paper as being 'melted by the shrieks of a near relation.'"
+
+The Professor stumbled over a stone in the road, and looked back at it
+vindictively.
+
+"The near relation does so want to hold one's watch and to stuff it into
+his mouth, and he shrieks so movingly if one brutally removes one's
+property and person!"
+
+"Alas! I am still a little bewildered by my late captivity. I can't see
+the bearings of things."
+
+"As allegory, you are as perfect as ever."
+
+"I seem to be a sort of involuntary _Pilgrim's Progress_!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Ah, indeed!" cried Hadria, "and how the symbolism of that old allegory
+would fit this subject!"
+
+"With me for wretched hero, I suppose!"
+
+"Your archetype;--with a little adaptation--yes, and wonderfully
+little--the Slough of Despond, Doubting Castle, the Valley of the Shadow
+of Death--they all fall into place. Ah! the modern _Pilgrim's Progress_
+would read strangely and significantly with woman as the pilgrim! But
+the end--that would be a difficulty."
+
+"One for your sex to solve," said the Professor.
+
+When they arrived at the cottage the wails were dying away, and Hadria
+advised that they should leave well alone. So the baby's victim somewhat
+reluctantly retired.
+
+"After all, you see, if one has strength of purpose, one _can_ achieve
+freedom," he observed.
+
+"At the expense of the affections, it would seem," said Hadria.
+
+The walk was pursued towards Craddock. Hadria said she had to ask Dodge,
+the old gravedigger, if he could give a few days' work in the garden at
+the Red House.
+
+The Professor was walking for walking's sake.
+
+"She is a pretty child, isn't she?" said Hadria.
+
+"Very; an attractive mite; but she has a will of her own."
+
+"Yes; I confess I have a moment of exultation when that child sets up
+one of her passionate screams--the thrilling shriek of a near relation!"
+
+"Really, why?"
+
+"She has to make her way in the world. She must not be too meek. Her
+mother was a victim to the general selfishness and stupidity. She was
+too gentle and obedient; too apt to defer to others, to be able to
+protect herself. I want her child to be strengthened for the battle by a
+good long draught of happiness, and to be armed with that stoutest of
+all weapons--perfect health."
+
+"You are very wise, Mrs. Temperley," murmured the Professor.
+
+"_Mon Dieu!_ if one had always to judge for others and never for
+oneself, what Solons we should all be!"
+
+"I hear that you have taken the child under your protection. She may
+think herself fortunate. It is an act of real charity."
+
+Hadria winced. "I fear not. I have grown very much attached to Martha
+now, poor little soul; but when I decided to adopt her, I was in a state
+of red-hot fury."
+
+"Against whom, may I ask?"
+
+"Against the child's father," Hadria replied shortly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+
+"Yes, mum, I see un go up to the churchyard. He's tidyin' up the place a
+bit for the weddin'."
+
+"The wedding?" repeated Hadria vaguely. Mrs. Gullick looked at her as at
+one whose claims to complete possession of the faculties there seems sad
+reason to doubt.
+
+"Oh, Miss Jordan's, yes. When is it?"
+
+"Why, it's this mornin', ma'am!" cried Mrs. Gullick.
+
+"Dear me, of course. I _thought_ the village looked rather excited."
+
+People were all standing at their doors, and the children had gathered
+at the gate of the church, with hands full of flowers. The wedding party
+was, it appeared, to arrive almost immediately. The children set up a
+shout as the first carriage was heard coming up the hill.
+
+The bride appeared to be a popular character in Craddock. "Dear, dear,
+she will be missed, she will, she was a real lady, she was; did her duty
+too to rich _and_ poor."
+
+The Professor asked his companion if she remarked that the amiable lady
+was spoken of universally in the past tense, as some one who had passed
+from the light of day.
+
+Hadria laughed. "Whenever I am in a cynical mood I come to Craddock and
+talk to the villagers."
+
+Dodge was found resting on a broom-handle, with a flower in his
+button-hole. Marion Jordan had supplied him with port wine when he was
+"took bad" in the winter. Dodge found it of excellent quality. He
+approved of the institution of landed property, and had a genuine regard
+for the fair-haired, sweet-voiced girl who used to come in her pony-cart
+to distribute her bounty to the villagers. Her class in the
+Sunday-school, as he remarked, was always the best behaved.
+
+The new schoolmistress, a sour and uncompromising looking person, had
+issued from her cottage in her Sunday best to see the ceremony.
+
+"That's where little Martha's mother used to live," said Hadria, "and
+that is where she died."
+
+"Indeed, yes. I think Mr. Walker pointed it out to me."
+
+"Ah! of course, and then you know the village of old."
+
+"'Ere they comes!" announced a chorus of children's voices, as the first
+carriage drove up. The excitement was breathless. The occupants alighted
+and made their way to the church. After that, the carriages came in
+fairly quick succession. The bridegroom was criticised freely by the
+crowd. They did not think him worthy of his bride. "They du say as it
+was a made up thing," Dodge observed, "and that it wasn't _'im_ as she'd
+like to go up to the altar with."
+
+"Well, _I_ don't sort o' take to 'im neither," Mrs. Gullick observed,
+sympathizing with the bride's feeling. "I do hope he'll be kind to the
+pore young thing; that I do."
+
+"She wouldn't never give it 'im back; she's that good," another woman
+remarked.
+
+"Who's the gentleman as she had set her heart on?" a romantic young
+woman enquired.
+
+"Oh, it's only wot they say," said Dodge judicially; "it's no use a
+listening to all one hears--not by a long way."
+
+"You 'ad it from Lord Engleton's coachman, didn't you?" prompted Mrs.
+Gullick.
+
+"Which he heard it said by the gardener at Mr. Jordan's, as Miss Marion
+was always about with Mr. Fleming."
+
+The murmur of interest at this announcement was drowned by the sound of
+carriage wheels. The bride had come.
+
+"See the ideal and ethereal being whom you have been so faithfully
+impersonating all the afternoon!" exclaimed Hadria.
+
+A fair, faint, admirably gentle creature, floating in a mist of tulle,
+was wafted out of the brougham, the spring sunshine burnishing the pale
+hair, and flashing a dazzling sword-like glance on the string of
+diamonds at her throat.
+
+It seemed too emphatic, too keen a greeting for the faint ambiguous
+being, about to put the teaching of her girlhood, and her pretty hopes
+and faiths, to the test.
+
+She gave a start and shiver as she stepped out into the brilliant day,
+turning with a half-scared look to the crowd of faces. It seemed almost
+as if she were seeking help in a blind, bewildered fashion.
+
+Hadria had an impulse. "What would she think if I were to run down those
+steps and drag her away?" Professor Theobald shook his head.
+
+Within the church, the procession moved up the aisle, to the sound of
+the organ. Hadria compared the whole ceremony to some savage rite of
+sacrifice: priest and people with the victim, chosen for her fairness,
+decked as is meet for victims.
+
+"But she may be happy," Lady Engleton suggested when the ceremony was
+over, and the organ was pealing out the wedding march.
+
+"That does not prevent the analogy. What a magnificent hideous thing the
+marriage-service is! and how exactly it expresses the extraordinary
+mixture of the noble and the brutal that is characteristic of our
+notions about these things!"
+
+"The bride is certainly allowed to remain under no misapprehension as to
+her function," Lady Engleton admitted, with a laugh that grated on
+Hadria. Professor Theobald had fallen behind with Joseph Fleming, who
+had turned up among the crowd.
+
+"But, after all, why mince matters?"
+
+"Why indeed?" said Hadria. Lady Engleton seemed to have expected
+dissent.
+
+"I think," she said, "that we are getting too squeamish nowadays as to
+speech. Women are so frightened to call a spade a spade."
+
+"It is the _spade_ that is ugly, not the name."
+
+"But, my dear?"
+
+"Oh, it is not a question of squeamishness, it is the insult of the
+thing. One insult after another, and everyone stands round, looking
+respectable."
+
+Lady Engleton laughed and said something to lead her companion on.
+
+She liked to listen to Mrs. Temperley when she was thoroughly roused.
+
+"It is the hideous mixture of the delicately civilized with the brutally
+savage that makes one sick. A frankly barbarous ceremony, where there
+was no pretence of refinement and propriety and so forth, would be
+infinitely less revolting."
+
+"Which your language is plain," observed Lady Engleton, much amused.
+
+"I hope so. Didn't you see how it all hurt that poor girl? One of her
+training too--suspended in mid air--not an earthward glance. You know
+Mrs. Jordan's views on the education of girls. Poor girls. They are
+morally skinned, in such a way as to make contact with Fact a veritable
+torture, and then suddenly they are sent forth defenceless into Life to
+be literally curry-combed."
+
+"They adjust themselves," said Lady Engleton.
+
+"Adjust themselves!" Hadria vindictively flicked off the head of a
+dandelion with her parasol. "They awake to find they have been living in
+a Fool's Paradise--a little upholstered corner with stained glass
+windows and rose-coloured light. They find that suddenly they are
+expected to place in the centre of their life everything that up to that
+moment they have scarcely been allowed even to know about; they find
+that they must obediently veer round, with the amiable adaptability of a
+well-oiled weather-cock. Every instinct, every prejudice must be thrown
+over. All the effects of their training must be instantly overcome. And
+all this with perfect subjection and cheerfulness, on pain of moral
+avalanches and deluges, and heaven knows what convulsions of
+conventional nature!"
+
+"There certainly is some curious incongruity in our training," Lady
+Engleton admitted.
+
+"Incongruity! Think what it means for a girl to have been taught to
+connect the idea of something low and evil with that which nevertheless
+is to lie at the foundation of all her after life. That is what it
+amounts to, and people complain that women are not logical."
+
+Lady Engleton laughed. "Fortunately things work better in practice than
+might be expected, judging them in the abstract. How bashful Professor
+Theobald seems suddenly to have become! Why doesn't he join us, I
+wonder? However, so much the better; I do like to hear you talk heresy."
+
+"I do more than talk it, I _mean_ it," said Hadria. "I fail utterly to
+get at the popular point of view."
+
+"But you misrepresent it--there _are_ modifying facts in the case."
+
+"I don't see them. Girls are told: 'So and so is not a nice thing for
+you to talk about. Wait, however, until the proper signal is given, and
+then woe betide you if you don't cheerfully accept it as your bounden
+duty.' If _that_ does not enjoin abject slavishness and deliberate
+immorality of the most cold-blooded kind, I simply don't know what
+does."
+
+Lady Engleton seemed to ponder somewhat seriously, as she stood looking
+down at the grave beside her.
+
+"How we ever came to have tied ourselves into such an extraordinary
+mental knot is what bewilders me," Hadria continued, "and still more,
+why it is that we all, by common consent, go on acting and talking as if
+the tangled skein ran smooth and straight through one's fingers."
+
+"Chiefly, perhaps, because women won't speak out," suggested Lady
+Engleton.
+
+"They have been so drilled," cried Hadria, "so gagged, so deafened, by
+'the shrieks of near relations.'"
+
+Lady Engleton was asking for an explanation, when the wedding-bells
+began to clang out from the belfry, merry and roughly rejoicing.
+"Tom-boy bells," Hadria called them. They seemed to tumble over one
+another and pick themselves up again, and give chase, and roll over in a
+heap, and then peal firmly out once more, laughing at their romping
+digression, joyous and thoughtless and simple-hearted. "Evidently
+without the least notion what they are celebrating," said Hadria.
+
+The bride came out of church on her husband's arm. The children set up a
+shout. Hadria and Lady Engleton, and, farther back, Professor Theobald
+and Joseph Fleming, could see the two figures pass down to the carriage
+and hear the carriage drive away. Hadria drew a long breath.
+
+"I am afraid she was in love with Joseph Fleming," remarked Lady
+Engleton. "I hoped at one time that he cared for her, but that Irish
+friend of Marion's, Katie O'Halloran, came on the scene and spoilt my
+little romance."
+
+"I wonder why she married this man? I wonder why the wind blows?" was
+added in self-derision at the question.
+
+The rest of the party were now departing. "O sleek wedding guests,"
+Hadria apostrophized them, "how solemnly they sat there, like
+all-knowing sphinxes, watching, watching, and that child so
+helpless--handcuffed, manacled! How many prayers will be offered at the
+shrine of the goddess of Duty within the next twelve months!"
+
+Mrs. Jordan, a British matron of solid proportions, passed down the path
+on the arm of a comparatively puny cavalier. The sight seemed to stir up
+some demon in Hadria's bosom. Fantastic, derisive were her comments on
+that excellent lady's most cherished principles, and on her well-known
+and much-vaunted mode of training her large family of daughters.
+
+"Only the traditional ideas carried out by a woman of narrow mind and
+strong will," said Lady Engleton.
+
+"Oh those traditional ideas! They might have issued fresh and hot from
+an asylum for criminal lunatics."
+
+"You are deliciously absurd, Hadria."
+
+"It is the criminal lunatics who are absurd," she retorted. "Do you
+remember how those poor girls used to bewail the restrictions to their
+reading?"
+
+"Yes, it was really a _reductio ad absurdum_ of our system. The girls
+seemed afraid to face anything. They would rather die than think. (I
+wonder why Professor Theobald lingers so up there by the chancel? The
+time must be getting on.)"
+
+Hadria glanced towards him and made no comment. She was thinking of Mrs.
+Jordan's daughters.
+
+"What became of their personality all that time I cannot imagine: their
+woman's nature that one hears so much about, and from which such
+prodigious feats were to be looked for, in the future."
+
+"Yes, _that_ is where the inconsistency of a girl's education strikes me
+most," said Lady Engleton. "If she were intended for the cloister one
+could understand it. But since she is brought up for the express purpose
+of being married, it does seem a little absurd not to prepare her a
+little more for her future life."
+
+"Exactly," cried Hadria, "if the orthodox are really sincere in
+declaring that life to be so sacred and desirable, why on earth don't
+they treat it frankly and reverently and teach their girls to understand
+and respect it, instead of allowing a furtive, sneaky, detestable spirit
+to hover over it?"
+
+"Yes, I agree with you there," said Lady Engleton.
+
+"And if they _don't_ really in their hearts think it sacred and so on
+(and how they _can_, under our present conditions, I fail to see), why
+do they deliberately bring up their girls to be married, as they bring
+up their sons to a profession? It is inconceivable, and yet good people
+do it, without a suspicion of the real nature of their conduct, which it
+wouldn't be polite to describe."
+
+Mrs. Jordan--her face irradiated with satisfaction--was acknowledging
+the plaudits of the villagers, who shouted more or less in proportion
+to the eye-filling properties of the departing guests.
+
+Hadria was seized with a fit of laughter. It was an awkward fact, that
+she never could see Mrs. Jordan's majestic form and noble bonnet without
+feeling the same overwhelming impulse to laugh.
+
+"This is disgraceful conduct!" cried Lady Engleton.
+
+Hadria was clearly in one of her most reckless moods to-day.
+
+"You have led me on, and must take the consequences!" she cried.
+"Imagine," she continued with diabolical deliberation, "if Marion, on
+any day _previous_ to this, had gone to her mother and expressed an
+overpowering maternal instinct--a deep desire to have a child!"
+
+"Good heavens!" exclaimed Lady Engleton.
+
+"Why so shocked, since it is so holy?"
+
+"But that is different."
+
+"Ah! then it is holy only when the social edict goes forth, and
+proclaims the previous evil good and the previous good evil."
+
+"Come, come; the inconsistency is not quite so bad as that. (How that
+man does dawdle!)"
+
+Hadria shrugged her shoulders. "It seems to me so; for now suppose, on
+the other hand, that this same Marion, on any day _subsequent_ to this,
+should go to that same mother, and announce an exactly opposite
+feeling--a profound objection to the maternal function--how would she be
+received? Heavens, with what pained looks, with what platitudes and
+proverbs, with what reproofs and axioms and sentiments! She would issue
+forth from that interview like another St. Sebastian, stuck all over
+with wounds and arrows. 'Sacred mission,' 'tenderest joy,' 'holiest
+mission,' 'highest vocation'--one knows the mellifluous phrases."
+
+"But after all she would be wrong in her objection. The instinct is a
+true one," said Lady Engleton.
+
+"Oh, then why should she be pelted for expressing it previously, if the
+question is not indiscreet?"
+
+"Well, it would seem rather gruesome, if girls were to be overpowered
+with that passion."
+
+"So we are all to be horribly shocked at the presence of an instinct
+to-day, and then equally shocked and indignant at its absence to-morrow;
+our sentiment being determined by the performance or otherwise of the
+ceremony we have just witnessed. It really shows a touching confidence
+in the swift adaptability of the woman's sentimental organization!"
+
+Lady Engleton gave an uneasy laugh, and seemed lost in uncomfortable
+thought. She enjoyed playing with unorthodox speculations, but she
+objected to have her customary feelings interfered with, by a reasoning
+which she did not see her way to reduce to a condition of uncertainty.
+She liked to leave a question delicately balanced, enjoying all the fun
+of "advanced" thought without endangering her favourite sentiments. Like
+many women of talent, she was intensely maternal, in the instinctive
+sense; and for that reason had a vague desire to insist on all other
+women being equally so; but the notion of the instinct becoming
+importunate in a girl revolted her; a state of mind that struggled to
+justify itself without conscious entrenchment behind mere tradition.
+Lady Engleton sincerely tried to shake off prejudice.
+
+"You are in a mixed condition of feeling, I see," Hadria said. "I am not
+surprised. Our whole scheme of things indeed is so mixed, that the
+wonder only is we are not all in a state of chronic lunacy. I believe,
+as a matter of fact, that we _are_; but as we are all lunatics together,
+there is no one left to put us into asylums."
+
+Lady Engleton laughed.
+
+"The present age is truly a strange one," she exclaimed.
+
+"Do you think so? It always seems to me that the present age is finding
+out for the first time how very strange all the _other_ ages have been."
+
+"However that may be, it seems to me, that a sort of shiver is going
+through all Society, as if it had suddenly become very much aware of
+things and couldn't make them out--nor itself."
+
+"Like a creature beginning to struggle through a bad illness. I do think
+it is all extremely remarkable, especially the bad illness."
+
+"You are as strange as your epoch," cried Lady Engleton.
+
+"It is a sorry sign when one remarks health instead of disease."
+
+"Upon my word, you have a wholesome confidence in yourself!"
+
+"I do not, in that respect, differ from my kind," Hadria returned
+calmly.
+
+"It is that which _was_ that seems to you astonishing, not that which is
+to be," Lady Engleton commented, pensively. "For my part I confess I am
+frightened, almost terrified at times, at that which is to be."
+
+"I am frightened, terrified, so that the thought becomes unbearable, at
+that which _is_," said Hadria.
+
+There was a long silence. Lady Engleton appeared to be again plunged in
+thought.
+
+"The maternal instinct--yes; it seems to be round that unacknowledged
+centre that the whole storm is raging."
+
+"A desperate question that Society shrinks from in terror: whether women
+shall be expected to conduct themselves as if the instinct had been
+weighed out accurately, like weekly stores, and given to all alike, or
+whether choice and individual feeling is to be held lawful in this
+matter--_there_ is the red-hot heart of the battle."
+
+"Remember men of science are against freedom in this respect. (I do wish
+_our_ man of science would make haste.)"
+
+"They rush to the rescue when they see the sentimental defences giving
+way," said Hadria. "If the 'sacred privilege' and 'noblest vocation'
+safeguards won't hold, science must throw up entrenchments."
+
+"I prefer the more romantic and sentimental presentment of the matter,"
+said Lady Engleton.
+
+"Naturally. Ah! it is pathetic, the way we have tried to make things
+decorative; but it won't hold out much longer. Women are driving their
+masters to plain speaking--the ornaments are being dragged down. And
+what do we find? Bare and very ugly fact. And if we venture to hint that
+this unsatisfactory skeleton may be modified in form, science becomes
+stern. She wishes things, in this department, left as they are. Women
+are made for purposes of reproduction; let them clearly understand that.
+No picking and choosing."
+
+"Men pick and choose, it is true," observed Lady Engleton in a musing
+tone, as if thinking aloud.
+
+"Ah, but that's different--a real scientific argument, though a
+superficial observer might not credit it. At any rate, it is quite
+sufficiently scientific for this particular subject. Our leaders of
+thought don't bring out their Sunday-best logic on this question. They
+lounge in dressing-gown and slippers. One gets to know the oriental
+pattern of that dressing-gown and the worn-down heels of those old
+slippers."
+
+"They may be right though, notwithstanding their logic," said Lady
+Engleton.
+
+"By good luck, not good guidance. I wonder what her Serene Highness
+Science would say if she heard us?"
+
+"That we two ignorant creatures are very presumptuous."
+
+"Yes, people always fall back on that, when they can't refute you."
+
+Lady Engleton smiled.
+
+"I should like to hear the question discussed by really competent
+persons. (Well, if luncheon is dead cold it will be his own fault.)"
+
+"Oh, really competent persons will tell us all about the possibilities
+of woman: her feelings, desires, capabilities, and limitations, now and
+for all time to come. And the wildly funny thing is that women are
+ready, with open mouths, to reverently swallow this male verdict on
+their inherent nature, as if it were gospel divinely inspired. I may
+appear a little inconsistent," Hadria added with a laugh, "but I do
+think women are fools!"
+
+They had strolled on along the path till they came to the
+schoolmistress's grave, which was green and daisy-covered, as if many
+years had passed since her burial. Hadria stood, for a moment, looking
+down at it.
+
+"Fools, fools, unutterable, irredeemable fools!" she burst out.
+
+"My dear, my dear, we are in a churchyard," remonstrated Lady Engleton,
+half laughing.
+
+"We are at this grave," said Hadria.
+
+"The poor woman would have been among the first to approve of the whole
+scheme, though it places her here beneath the daisies."
+
+"Exactly. Am I not justified then in crying 'fool'? Don't imagine that I
+exclude myself," she added.
+
+"I think you might be less liable to error if you _were_ rather more of
+a fool, if I may say so," observed Lady Engleton.
+
+"Oh error! I daresay. One can guard against that, after a fashion, by
+never making a stretch after truth. And the reward comes, of its kind.
+How green the grave is. The grass grows so fast on graves."
+
+Lady Engleton could not bear a churchyard. It made one think too
+seriously.
+
+"Oh, you needn't unless you like!" said Hadria with a laugh. "Indeed a
+churchyard might rather teach us what nonsense it is to take things
+seriously--our little affairs. This poor woman, a short while ago, was
+dying of grief and shame and agony, and the village was stirred with
+excitement, as if the solar system had come to grief. It all seemed so
+stupendous and important, yet now--look at that tall grass waving in the
+wind!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+
+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 _desagrements_ 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+
+The sound of music stole over the gardens of the Priory, at sunset. It
+was the close of one of the most exquisite days of Spring. A calm had
+settled over the country with the passing away of the sun-god. His
+attendant winds and voices had been sacrificed on his funeral pyre.
+
+Two figures sat on the terrace by the open window of the drawing-room,
+listening to the utterance, in music, of a tumultuous, insurgent spirit.
+In Professor Fortescue, the musical passion was deeply rooted, as it is
+in most profoundly sympathetic and tender natures. Algitha anxiously
+watched the effect of her sister's playing on her companion.
+
+The wild power of the composer was not merely obvious, it was
+overwhelming. It was like "a sudden storm among mountains," "the
+wind-swept heavens at midnight," "the lonely sea": he struggled for the
+exactly-fitting simile. There was none, because of its many-sidedness.
+Loneliness remained as an ever-abiding quality. There were moon-glimpses
+and sun-bursts over the scenery of the music; there was sweetness, and a
+vernal touch that thrilled the listeners as with the breath of flowers
+and the fragrance of earth after rain, but always, behind all fancy and
+grace and tenderness, and even passion, lurked that spectral loneliness.
+The performer would cease for some minutes, and presently begin again in
+a new mood. The music was always characteristic, often wild and strange,
+yet essentially sane.
+
+"There is a strong Celtic element in it," said the Professor. "This is a
+very wonderful gift. I suppose one never does really know one's fellows:
+her music to-night reveals to me new sides of Hadria's character."
+
+"I confess they alarm me," said Algitha.
+
+"Truly, this is not the sort of power that can be safely shut up and
+stifled. It is the sort of power for which everything ought to be set
+aside. That is my impression of it."
+
+"I am worried about Hadria," Algitha said. "I know her better than most
+people, and I know how hard she takes things and what explosive force
+that musical instinct of hers has. Yet, it is impossible, as things are,
+for her to give it real utterance. She can only open the furnace door
+now and then."
+
+The Professor shook his head gravely. "It won't do: it isn't safe. And
+why should such a gift be lost?"
+
+"That's what I say! Yet what is to be done? There is no one really to
+blame. As for Hubert, I am sorry for him. He had not the faintest idea
+of Hadria's character, though she did her best to enlighten him. It is
+hard for him (since he feels it so) and it is desperate for her. You are
+such an old friend, that I feel I may speak to you about it. You see
+what is going on, and I know it is troubling you as it does me."
+
+"It is indeed. If I am not very greatly mistaken, here is real musical
+genius of the first order, going to waste: strong forces being turned in
+upon the nature, to its own destruction; and, as you say, it seems as if
+nothing could be done. It is the more ironically cruel, since Hubert is
+himself musical."
+
+"Oh, yes, but in quite a different way. His fetish is good taste, or
+what he thinks such. Hadria's compositions set his teeth on edge. His
+nature is conventional through and through. He fears adverse comment
+more than any earthly thing. And yet the individual opinions that
+compose the general 'talk' that he so dreads, are nothing to him. He
+despises them heartily. But he would give his soul (and particularly
+Hadria's) rather than incur a whisper from people collectively."
+
+"That is a very common trait. If we feared only the opinions that we
+respect, our fear would cover but a small area."
+
+The music stole out again through the window. The thoughts of the
+listeners were busy. It was not until quite lately that Professor
+Fortescue had fully realised the nature of Hadria's present
+surroundings. It had taken all his acuteness and his sympathy to enable
+him to perceive the number and strength of the little threads that
+hampered her spontaneity. As she said, they were made of heart-strings.
+A vast spider's web seemed to spread its tender cordage round each
+household, for the crippling of every winged creature within its radius.
+Fragments of torn wings attested the struggles that had taken place
+among the treacherous gossamer.
+
+"And the maddening thing is," cried Algitha, "that there is nobody to
+swear at. Swearing at systems and ideas, as Hadria says, is a Barmecide
+feast to one's vindictiveness."
+
+"It is the tyranny of affection that has done so much to ruin the lives
+of women," the Professor observed, in a musing tone.
+
+Then after a pause: "I fear your poor mother has never got over _your_
+little revolt, Algitha."
+
+"Never, I am sorry to say. If I had married and settled in Hongkong, she
+would scarcely have minded, but as it is, she feels deserted. Of course
+the boys are away from home more than I am, yet she is not grieved at
+that. You see how vast these claims are. Nothing less than one's entire
+life and personality will suffice."
+
+"Your mother feels that you are throwing your life away, remember. But
+truly it seems, sometimes, as if people were determined to turn
+affection into a curse instead of a blessing!"
+
+"I never think of it in any other light," Algitha announced serenely.
+
+The Professor laughed. "Oh, there are exceptions, I hope," he said.
+"Love, like everything else that is great, is very, very rare. We call
+the disposition to usurp and absorb another person by that name, but woe
+betide him or her who is the object of such a sentiment. Yet happily,
+the real thing _is_ to be found now and again. And from that arises
+freedom."
+
+Hadria was playing some joyous impromptu, which seemed to express the
+very spirit of Freedom herself.
+
+"I think Hadria has something of the gipsy in her," said Algitha. "She
+is so utterly and hopelessly unfitted to be the wife of a prim,
+measured, elegant creature like Hubert--good fellow though he is--and to
+settle down for life at Craddock Dene."
+
+"Yes," returned the Professor, "it has occurred to me, more than once,
+that there must be a drop of nomad blood somewhere among the ancestry."
+
+"Hadria always says herself, that she is a vagabond in disguise."
+
+He laughed. Then, as he drew out a tobacco-pouch from his pocket and
+proceeded to light his pipe, he went on, in quiet meditative fashion, as
+if thinking aloud: "The fact of the matter is, that in this world, the
+dead weight of the mass bears heavily upon the exceptional natures. It
+comes home to one vividly, in cases like this. The stupidity and
+blindness of each individual goes to build up the dead wall, the
+impassable obstacle, for some other spirit. The burden that we have cast
+upon the world has to be borne by our fellow man or woman, and perhaps
+is doomed to crush a human soul."
+
+"It seems to me that most people are engaged in that crushing industry,"
+said Algitha with a shrug. "Don't I know their bonnets, and their
+frock-coats and their sneers!"
+
+The Professor smiled. He thought that most of us were apt to take that
+attitude at times. The same spirit assumed different forms. "While we
+are sneering at our fellow mortal, and assuring him loftily that he can
+certainly prevail, if only he is strong enough, it may be _our_
+particular dulness or _our_ hardness that is dragging him down to a
+tragic failure, before our eyes."
+
+The sun was low when the player came out to the terrace and took her
+favourite seat on the parapet. The gardens were steeped in profound
+peace. One could hear no sound for miles round. The broad country made
+itself closely felt by its stirring silence. The stretches of fields
+beyond fields, the woodlands in their tender green, the long, long sweep
+of the quiet land, formed a benign circle round the garden, and led the
+sense of peace out and out to the horizon, where the liquid light of the
+sky touched the hills.
+
+The face of the Professor had a transparent look and a singular beauty
+of expression, such as is seen on the faces of the dead, or on the faces
+of those who are carried beyond themselves by some generous enthusiasm.
+
+They watched, in silence, the changes creeping over the heavens, the
+subtle transmutations of tint; the fairylands of cloud, growing like
+dreams, and melting in golden annihilation; the more delicate and
+exquisite, the sooner the end.
+
+The first pale hints of splendour had spread, till the whole West was
+throbbing with the radiance. But it was short-lived. The soul of the
+light, with its vital vibrating quality, seemed to die, and then slowly
+the glow faded, till every sparkle was gone, and the amphitheatre of the
+sky lay cold, and dusk, and empty. It was not till the last gleam had
+melted away that a word was spoken.
+
+"It is like a prophecy," said Hadria.
+
+"To-morrow the dawn, remember."
+
+Hadria's thoughts ran on in the silence.
+
+The dawn? Yes; but all that lost splendour, those winged islands, those
+wild ranges of mountain where the dreams dwell; to-morrow's dawn brings
+no resurrection for them. Other pageants there will be, other
+cloud-castles, but never again just those.
+
+Had the Professor been following her thoughts?
+
+"Life," he said, "offers her gifts as the Sibyl her books; they grow
+fewer as we refuse them."
+
+"Ah! that is the truth that clamours in my brain, warning and pointing
+to an empty temple, like the deserted sky, a little while ahead."
+
+"Be warned then."
+
+"Ah! but what to do? I am out of myself now with the spring; there are
+so many benign influences. I too have winged islands, and wild ranges
+where the dreams dwell; life is a fairy-tale; but there is always that
+terror of the departure of the sun."
+
+"_Carpe diem._"
+
+Hadria turned a startled and eager face towards the Professor, who was
+leaning back in his chair, thoughtfully smoking. The smoke curled away
+serenely through the calm air of the evening.
+
+"You have a great gift," he said.
+
+"One is afraid of taking a thing too seriously because it is one's own."
+
+The Professor turned almost angrily.
+
+"Good heavens, what does it matter whose it is? There may be a sort of
+inverted vanity in refusing fair play to a power, on that ground. Alas!
+here is one of the first morbid signs of the evil at work upon you. If
+you had been wholesomely moving and striving in the right direction, do
+you think you would have been guilty of that piece of egotism?"
+
+"Vanity pursues one into hidden corners of the mind. I am so used to
+that sort of spirit among women. Apparently I have caught the
+infection."
+
+"I would not let it go farther," advised the Professor.
+
+"To do myself justice, I think it is superficial," said Hadria with a
+laugh. "I would dare anything, _any_thing for a chance of freedom,
+for----," she broke off, hesitating. "I remember once--years ago, when I
+was quite a girl--seeing a young ash-tree that had got jammed into a
+chink so that it couldn't grow straight, or spread, as its inner soul,
+poor stripling, evidently inspired it to grow. Outside, there were
+hundreds of upright, vigorous, healthful young trees, fulfilling that
+innate idea in apparent gladness, and with obvious general advantage,
+since they were growing into sound, valuable trees, straight of trunk,
+nobly developed. I felt like the poor sapling in the cranny, that had
+just the same natural impetus of healthy growth as all the others, but
+was forced to become twisted, and crooked, and stunted and wretched. I
+think most women have to grow in a cranny. It is generally known as
+their Sphere." Algitha gave an approving chuckle. "I noticed," Hadria
+added, "that the desperate struggle to grow of that young tree had begun
+to loosen the masonry of the edifice that cramped it. There was a great
+dangerous-looking crack right across the building. The tree was not
+saved from deformity, _but_ it had its revenge! Some day that noble
+institution would come down by the run."
+
+"Yes. Well, the thing to do is to get out of it," said the Professor.
+
+"You really advise that?"
+
+"Advise? One dare not advise. It is too perilous. No general theories
+will hold in all instances."
+
+"Tell me," said Hadria, "what are the qualities in a human being that
+make him most serviceable, or least harmful?"
+
+"What qualities?" Professor Fortescue watched the smoke of his pipe
+curling away, as if he expected to find the answer in its coils. He
+answered slowly, and with an air of reflection.
+
+"Mental integrity, and mercy. A resolute following of reason (in which I
+should include insight) to its conclusion, though the heavens fall, and
+an unfailing fellow-feeling for the pain and struggle and heart-ache and
+sin that life is so full of. But one must add the quality of
+imagination. Without imagination and its fruits, the world would be a
+howling wilderness."
+
+"I wish you would come down with me, some day, to the East End and hold
+out the hand of fellowship to some of the sufferers there," cried
+Algitha. "I am, at times, almost in despair at the mass of evil to be
+fought against, but somehow you always make me feel, Professor, that the
+race has all the qualities necessary for redemption enfolded within
+itself."
+
+"But assuredly it has!" cried the Professor. "And assuredly those
+redeeming qualities will germinate. Otherwise the race would extinguish
+itself in cruelty and corruption. Let people talk as they please about
+the struggle for existence, it is through the development of the human
+mind and the widening of human mercy that better things will come."
+
+"One sees, now and then, in a flash, what the world may some day be,"
+said Hadria. "The vision comes, perhaps, with the splendour of a spring
+morning, or opens, scroll-like, in a flood of noble music. It sounds
+unreal, yet it brings a sense of conviction that is irresistible."
+
+"I think it was Pythagoras who declared that the woes of men are the
+work of their own hands," said the Professor. "So are their joys.
+Nothing ever shakes my belief that what the mind of man can imagine,
+that it can achieve."
+
+"But there are so many pulling the wrong way," said Algitha sadly.
+
+"Ah, one man may be miserable through the deeds of others; the race can
+only be miserable through its own."
+
+After a pause, Algitha put a question: How far was it justifiable to
+give pain to others in following one's own idea of right and reasonable?
+How far might one attempt to live a life of intellectual integrity and
+of the widest mercy that one's nature would stretch to?
+
+Professor Fortescue saw no limits but those of one's own courage and
+ability. Algitha pointed out that in most lives the limit occurred much
+sooner. If "others"--those tyrannical and absorbent "others"--had
+intricately bound up their notions of happiness with the prevention of
+any such endeavour, and if those notions were of the usual negative,
+home-comfort-and-affection order, narrowly personal, fruitful in nothing
+except a sort of sentimental egotism that spread over a whole
+family--what Hadria called an _egotism a douze_--how far ought these
+ideas to be respected, and at what cost?
+
+Professor Fortescue was unqualified in his condemnation of the sentiment
+which erected sacrificial altars in the family circle. He spoke
+scornfully of the doctrine of renunciation, so applied, and held the
+victims who brought their gifts of power and liberty more culpable than
+those who demanded them, since the duty of resistance to recognised
+wrong was obvious, while great enlightenment was needed to teach one to
+forego an unfair privilege or power that all the world concurred in
+pressing upon one.
+
+"Then you think a person--even a feminine person--justified in giving
+pain by resisting unjust demands?"
+
+"I certainly think that all attempts to usurp another person's life on
+the plea of affection should be stoutly resisted. But I recognise that
+cases must often occur when resistance is practically impossible."
+
+"One ought not to be too easily melted by the 'shrieks of a near
+relation,'" said Hadria. "Ah, I have a good mind to try. I don't fear
+any risk for myself, nor any work; the stake is worth it. I don't want
+to grow cramped and crooked, like my poor ash-tree. Perhaps this may be
+a form of vanity too; I don't know, I was going to say I don't care."
+
+The scent of young leaves and of flowers came up, soft and rich from the
+garden, and as Hadria leant over the parapet, a gust of passionate
+conviction of power swept over her; not merely of her own personal
+power, but of some vast, flooding, beneficent well-spring from which her
+own was fed. And with the inrush, came a glimpse as of heaven itself.
+
+"I wonder," she said after a long silence, "why it is that when we
+_know_ for dead certain, we call it faith."
+
+"Because, I suppose, our certainty is certainty only for ourselves. If
+you have found some such conviction to guide you in this wild world, you
+are very fortunate. We need all our courage and our strength----"
+
+"And just a little more," Hadria added.
+
+"Yes; sometimes just a little more, to save us from its worst pitfalls."
+
+It struck both Hadria and her sister that the Professor was looking very
+ill and worn this evening.
+
+"You are always giving help and sympathy to others, and you never get
+any yourself!" Hadria exclaimed.
+
+But the Professor laughed, and asserted that he was being spoilt at
+Craddock Dene. They had risen, and were strolling down the yew avenue. A
+little star had twinkled out.
+
+"I am very glad to have Professor Fortescue's opinion of your
+composition, Hadria. I was talking to him about you, and he quite agrees
+with me."
+
+"What? that I ought to----?"
+
+"That you ought not to go on as you are going on at present."
+
+"But that is so vague."
+
+"I suppose you have long ago tried all the devices of self-discipline?"
+said the Professor. "There are ways, of course, of arming oneself
+against minor difficulties, of living within a sort of citadel.
+Naturally much force has to go in keeping up the defences, but it is
+better than having none to keep up."
+
+Hadria gave a quiet smile. "There is not a method, mental or other, that
+I have not tried, and tried hard. If it had not been for the sternest
+self-discipline, my mind at this moment, would be so honeycombed with
+small pre-occupations (pleasant and otherwise), that it would be
+incapable of consecutive ideas of any kind. As it is, I feel a miserable
+number of holes here"--she touched her brow--"a loss of absorbing power,
+at times, and a mental slackness that is really alarming. What remains
+of me has been dragged ashore as from a wreck, amidst a rush of wind and
+wave. But just now, thanks greatly to your sympathy and Algitha's, I
+seem restored to myself. I can never describe the rapture of that
+sensation to one who has never felt himself sinking down and down into
+darkness, to a dim hell, where the doom is a slow decay instead of the
+fiery pains of burning."
+
+"This is all wrong, wrong!" cried the Professor anxiously.
+
+"Ah! but I feel now, such certainty, such courage. It seems as if Fate
+were giving me one more chance. I have often run very close to making a
+definite decision--to dare everything rather than await this fool's
+disaster. But then comes that everlasting feminine humility, sneaking up
+with its simper: 'Is not this presumptuous, selfish, mistaken, wrong?
+What business have _you_, one out of so many, to break roughly through
+the delicate web that has been spun for your kindly detention?' Of
+course my retort is: 'What business have they to spin the web?' But one
+can never get up a real sense of injured innocence. It is always the
+spiders who seem injured and innocent. However, this time I am going to
+try, though the heavens fall!"
+
+A figure appeared, in the dusk, at the further end of the avenue. It
+proved to be Miss Du Prel, who had come to find Hadria. Henriette had
+arrived unexpectedly by the late afternoon train, and Valeria had
+volunteered to announce her arrival to her sister-in-law.
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed Hadria, "heaven helps him who helps himself! This will
+fit in neatly with my plans."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+
+Valeria Du Prel, finding that Miss Temperley proposed a visit of some
+length, returned to town by the early morning train.
+
+"Valeria, do you know anyone in Paris to whom you could give me a letter
+of introduction?" Hadria asked, at the last moment, when there was just
+time to write the letter, and no more.
+
+"Are you going to Paris?" Valeria asked, startled.
+
+"Please write the letter and I will tell you some day what I want it
+for."
+
+"Nothing very mad, I hope?"
+
+"No, only a little--judiciously mad."
+
+"Well, there is Madame Bertaux, in the Avenue Kleber, but her you know
+already. Let me see. Oh yes, Madame Vauchelet, a charming woman; very
+kind and very fond of young people. She is about sixty; a widow; her
+husband was in the diplomatic service."
+
+Valeria made these hurried comments while writing the letter.
+
+"She is musical too, and will introduce you, perhaps, to the great
+Joubert, and others of that set. You will like her, I am sure. She is
+one of the truly good people of this world. If you really are going to
+Paris, I shall feel happier if I know that Madame Vauchelet is your
+friend."
+
+Sophia's successor announced that the pony-cart was at the door.
+
+Miss Du Prel looked rather anxiously at Hadria and her sister-in-law, as
+they stood on the steps to bid her good-bye. There was a look of elation
+mixed with devilry, in Hadria's face. The two figures turned and
+entered the house together, as the pony-cart passed through the gate.
+
+Hadria always gave Miss Temperley much opportunity for the employment of
+tact, finding this tact more elucidating than otherwise to the designs
+that it was intended to conceal; it affected them in the manner of a
+magnifying-glass. About a couple of years ago, the death of her mother
+had thrown Henriette on her own resources, and set free a large amount
+of energy that craved a legitimate outlet. The family with whom she was
+now living in London, not being related to her, offered but limited
+opportunities.
+
+Henriette's eye was fixed, with increasing fondness, upon the Red House.
+_There_ lay the callow brood marked out by Nature and man, for her
+ministrations. With infinite adroitness, Miss Temperley questioned her
+sister-in-law, by inference and suggestion, about the affairs of the
+household. Hadria evaded the attempt, but rejoiced, for reasons of her
+own, that it was made. She began to find the occupation diverting, and
+characteristically did not hesitate to allow her critic to form most
+alarming conclusions as to the state of matters at the Red House. She
+was pensive, and mild, and a little surprised when Miss Temperley, with
+a suppressed gasp, urged that the question was deeply serious. It amused
+Hadria to reproduce, for Henriette's benefit, the theories regarding the
+treatment and training of children that she had found current among the
+mothers of the district.
+
+Madame Bertaux happened to call during the afternoon, and that outspoken
+lady scoffed openly at these theories, declaring that women made idiots
+of themselves on behalf of their children, whom they preposterously
+ill-used with unflagging devotion.
+
+"The moral training of young minds is such a problem," said Henriette,
+after the visitor had left, "it must cause you many an anxious thought."
+
+Hadria arranged herself comfortably among cushions, and let every muscle
+relax.
+
+"The boys are so young yet," she said drowsily. "I have no doubt that
+will all come, later on."
+
+"But, my dear Hadria, unless they are trained now----"
+
+"Oh, there is plenty of time!"
+
+"Do you mean to say----?"
+
+"Only what other people say. Nothing in the least original, I assure
+you. I see the folly and the inconvenience of that now. I have consulted
+hoary experience. I have sat reverently at the feet of old nurses. I
+have talked with mothers in the spirit of a disciple, and I have learnt,
+oh, so much!"
+
+"Mothers are most anxious about the moral training of their little
+ones," said Henriette, in some bewilderment.
+
+"Of course, but they don't worry about it so early. One can't expect
+accomplished morality from poor little dots of five and six. The charm
+of infancy would be gone."
+
+Miss Temperley explained, remonstrated. Hadria was limp, docile,
+unemphatic. Perhaps Henriette was right, she didn't know. A sense of
+honour? (Hadria suppressed a smile.) Could one, after all, expect of six
+what one did not always get at six and twenty? Morals altogether seemed
+a good deal to ask of irresponsible youth. Henriette could not overrate
+the importance of early familiarity with the difference between right
+and wrong. Certainly it was important, but Hadria shrank from an extreme
+view. One must not rush into it without careful thought.
+
+"But meanwhile the children are growing up!" cried Henriette, in
+despair.
+
+Hadria had not found that experienced mothers laid much stress on that
+fact. Besides, there was considerable difficulty in the matter.
+Henriette did not see it. The difference between right and wrong could
+easily be taught to a child.
+
+Perhaps so, but it seemed to be thought expedient to defer the lesson
+till the distant future; at least, if one might judge from the
+literature especially designed for growing minds, wherein clever
+villainy was exalted, and deeds of ferocious cruelty and revenge
+occurred as a daily commonplace among heroes. The same policy was
+indicated by the practice of allowing children to become familiar with
+the sight of slaughter, and of violence of every kind towards animals,
+from earliest infancy. Hadria concluded from all this, that it was
+thought wise to postpone the moral training of the young till a more
+convenient season.
+
+Henriette looked at her sister-in-law, with a sad and baffled mien.
+Hadria's expression was solemn, and as much like that of Mrs. Walker as
+she could make it, without descending to obvious caricature.
+
+"Do you think it quite wise, Henriette, to run dead against the customs
+of ages? Do you think it safe to ignore the opinion of countless
+generations of those who were older and wiser than ourselves?"
+
+"Dear me, how you _have_ changed!" cried Miss Temperley.
+
+"Advancing years; the sobering effects of experience," Hadria explained.
+She was grieved to find Henriette at variance with those who had
+practical knowledge of education. As the child grew up, one could easily
+explain to him that the ideas and impressions that he might have
+acquired, in early years, were mostly wrong, and had to be reversed.
+That was quite simple. Besides, unless he were a born idiot of criminal
+tendencies, he was bound to find it out for himself.
+
+"But, my dear Hadria, it is just the early years that are the
+impressionable years. Nothing can quite erase those first impressions."
+
+"Oh, do you think so?" said Hadria mildly.
+
+"Yes, indeed, I think so," cried Henriette, losing her temper.
+
+"Oh, well of course you may be right."
+
+Hadria had brought out a piece of embroidery (about ten years old), and
+was working peacefully.
+
+On questions of hygiene, she was equally troublesome. She had taken
+hints, she said, from mothers of large families. Henriette laid stress
+upon fresh air, even in the house. Hadria believed in fresh air; but
+was it not going a little far to have it in the house?
+
+Henriette shook her head.
+
+Fresh air was _always_ necessary. In moderation, perhaps, Hadria
+admitted. But the utmost care was called for, to avoid taking cold. She
+laid great stress upon that. Children were naturally so susceptible. In
+all the nurseries that she had visited, where every possible precaution
+was taken against draughts, the children were incessantly taking cold.
+
+"Perhaps the precautions made them delicate," Henriette suggested. But
+this paradox Hadria could not entertain. "Take care of the colds, and
+the fresh air will take care of itself," was her general maxim.
+
+"But, my dear Hadria, do you mean to tell me that the people about here
+are so benighted as really not to understand the importance to the
+system of a constant supply of pure air?"
+
+Hadria puckered up her brow, as if in thought. "Well," she said,
+"several mothers _have_ mentioned it, but they take more interest in
+fluid magnesia and tonics."
+
+Henriette looked dispirited.
+
+At any rate, there was no reason why Hadria should not be more
+enlightened than her neighbours, on these points. Hadria shook her head
+deprecatingly. She hoped Henriette would not mind if she quoted the
+opinion of old Mr. Jordan, whose language was sometimes a little strong.
+He said that he didn't believe all that "damned nonsense about fresh air
+and drains!" Henriette coughed.
+
+"It is certainly not safe to trust entirely to nurses, however devoted
+and experienced," she insisted. Hadria shrugged her shoulders. If the
+nurse _did_ constitutionally enjoy a certain stuffiness in her
+nurseries--well the children were out half the day, and it couldn't do
+them much harm. (Hadria bent low over her embroidery.)
+
+The night?
+
+"Oh! then one must, of course, expect to be a little stuffy."
+
+"But," cried Miss Temperley, almost hopeless, "impure air breathed,
+night after night, is an incessant drain on the strength, even if each
+time it only does a little harm."
+
+Hadria smiled over her silken arabesques. "Oh, nobody ever objects to
+things that only do a little harm." There was a moment of silence.
+
+Henriette thought that Hadria must indeed have changed very much during
+the last years. Well, of course, when very young, Hadria said, one had
+extravagant notions: one imagined all sorts of wild things about the
+purposes of the human brain: not till later did one realize that the
+average brain was merely an instrument of adjustment, a sort of
+spirit-level which enabled its owner to keep accurately in line with
+other people. Henriette ought to rejoice that Hadria had thus come to
+bow to the superiority of the collective wisdom.
+
+But Henriette had her doubts.
+
+Hadria carefully selected a shade of silk, went to the light to reassure
+herself of its correctness, and returned to her easy chair by the fire.
+Henriette resumed her knitting. She was making stockings for her
+nephews.
+
+"Henriette, don't you think it would be rather a good plan if you were
+to come and live here and manage affairs--morals, manners, hygiene, and
+everything?"
+
+Henriette's needles stopped abruptly, and a wave of colour came into her
+face, and a gleam of sudden joy to her eyes.
+
+"My dear, what do you mean?"
+
+"Hubert, of course, would be only too delighted to have you here, and I
+want to go away."
+
+"For heaven's sake----"
+
+"Not exactly for heaven's sake. For my own sake, I suppose: frankly
+selfish. It is, perhaps, the particular form that my selfishness
+takes--an unfortunately conspicuous form. So many of us can have a nice
+cosy pocket edition that doesn't show. However, that's not the point. I
+know you would be happier doing this than anything else, and that you
+would do it perfectly. You have the kind of talent, if I may say so,
+that makes an admirable ruler. When it has a large political field we
+call it 'administrative ability'; when it has a small domestic one, we
+speak of it as 'good housekeeping.' It is a precious quality, wherever
+it appears. You have no scope for it at present."
+
+Henriette was bewildered, horrified, yet secretly thrilled with joy on
+her own account. Was there a quarrel? Had any cloud come over the
+happiness of the home? Hadria laughed and assured her to the contrary.
+But where was she going, and for how long? What did she intend to do?
+Did Hubert approve? And could she bear to be away from her children?
+Hadria thought this was all beside the point, especially as the boys
+were shortly going to school. The question was, whether Henriette would
+take the charge.
+
+Certainly, if Hadria came to any such mad decision, but that, Henriette
+hoped, might be averted. What _would_ people say? Further discussion was
+checked by a call from Mrs. Walker, whom Hadria had the audacity to
+consult on questions of education and hygiene, leading her, by dexterous
+generalship, almost over the same ground that she had traversed herself,
+inducing the unconscious lady to repeat, with amazing accuracy, Hadria's
+own reproduction of local views.
+
+"Now _am_ I without authority in my ideas?" she asked, after Mrs. Walker
+had departed. Henriette had to admit that she had at least one
+supporter.
+
+"But I believe," she added, "that your practice is better than your
+preaching."
+
+"It seems to be an ordinance of Nature," said Hadria, "that these things
+shall never correspond."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+
+Hadria said nothing more about her project, and when Henriette alluded
+to it, answered that it was still unfurnished with detail. She merely
+wished to know, for certain, Henriette's views. She admitted that there
+had been some conversation on the subject between Hubert and herself,
+but would give no particulars. Henriette had to draw her own conclusions
+from Hadria's haggard looks, and the suppressed excitement of her
+manner.
+
+Henriette always made a point of being present when Professor Fortescue
+called, as she did not approve of his frequent visits. She noticed that
+he gave a slight start when Hadria entered. In a few days, she had grown
+perceptibly thinner. Her manner was restless. A day or two of rain had
+prevented the usual walks. When it cleared up again, the season had
+taken a stride. Still more glorious was the array of tree and flower,
+and their indescribable freshness suggested the idea that they were
+bathed in the mysterious elixir of life, and that if one touched them,
+eternal youth would be the reward. Professor Theobald gazed at Hadria
+with startled and enquiring eyes, when they met again.
+
+"You look tired," he said.
+
+"I am, rather. The spring is always a little trying."
+
+"Especially _this_ spring, I find."
+
+The gardens of the Priory were now at the very perfection of their
+beauty. The supreme moment had come of flowing wealth of foliage and
+delicate splendour of blossom, yet the paleness of green and tenderness
+of texture were still there.
+
+Professor Theobald said suddenly, that Hadria looked as if she were
+turning over some project very anxiously in her mind--a project on which
+much depended.
+
+"You are very penetrating," she replied, after a moment's hesitation,
+"that is exactly what I _am_ doing. When I was a girl, my brothers and
+sisters and I used to discuss the question of the sovereignty of the
+will. Most of us believed in it devoutly. We regarded circumstance as an
+annoying trifle, that no person who respected himself would allow to
+stand in his way. I want to try that theory and see what comes of it."
+
+"You alarm me, Mrs. Temperley."
+
+"Yes, people always do seem to get alarmed when one attempts to put
+their favourite theories in practice."
+
+"But really--for a woman----"
+
+"The sovereignty of the will is a dangerous doctrine?"
+
+"Well, as things are; a young woman, a beautiful woman."
+
+"You recall an interesting memory," she said.
+
+"Ah, that is unkind."
+
+Her smile checked him.
+
+"When you fall into a mocking humour, you are quite impracticable."
+
+"I merely smiled," she said, "sweetly, as I thought."
+
+"It is really cruel; I have not had a word with you for days, and the
+universe has become a wilderness."
+
+"A pleasant wilderness," she observed, looking round.
+
+"Nature is a delightful background, but a poor subject."
+
+"Do you think so? I often fancy one's general outlook would be nicer, if
+one had an indistinct human background and a clear foreground of
+unspoiled Nature. But that may be a jaundiced view."
+
+Hadria went off to meet Lady Engleton, who was coming down the avenue
+with Madame Bertaux. Professor Theobald instinctively began to follow
+and then stopped, reddening, as he met the glance of Miss Temperley. He
+flung himself into conversation with her, and became especially animated
+when he was passing Hadria, who did not appear to notice him. As both
+Professors were to leave Craddock Dene at the end of the week, this was
+the last meeting in the Priory gardens.
+
+Miss Temperley found Professor Theobald entertaining, but at times a
+little incoherent.
+
+"Why, there is Miss Du Prel!" exclaimed Henriette. "What an erratic
+person she is. She went to London the day before yesterday, and now she
+turns up suddenly without a word of warning."
+
+This confirmed Professor Theobald's suspicions that something serious
+was going on at the Red House.
+
+Valeria explained her return to Hadria, by saying that she had felt so
+nervous about what the latter might be going to attempt, that she had
+come back to see if she could be of help, or able to ward off any rash
+adventure.
+
+There was a pleasant open space among the shrubberies, where several
+seats had been placed to command a dainty view of the garden and lawns,
+with the house in the distance, and here the party gradually converged,
+in desultory fashion, coming up and strolling off again, as the fancy
+inspired them.
+
+Cigars were lighted, and a sense of sociability and enjoyment suffused
+itself, like a perfume, among the group.
+
+Lady Engleton was delighted to see Miss Du Prel again. She did so want
+to continue the hot discussion they were having at the Red House that
+afternoon, when Mr. Temperley _would_ be so horridly logical. He smiled
+and twisted his moustache.
+
+"We were interrupted by some caller, and had to leave the argument at a
+most exciting moment."
+
+"An eternally interesting subject!" said Temperley; "what woman is, what
+she is not."
+
+"My dread is that presently, the need for dissimulation being over, all
+the delightful mystery will have vanished," said Professor Theobald. "I
+should tire, in a day, of a woman I could understand."
+
+"You tempt one to enquire the length of the reign of a satisfactory
+enigma," cried Lady Engleton.
+
+"Precisely the length of her ability to mystify me," he replied.
+
+"Your future wife ought to be given a hint."
+
+"Oh! a wife, in no case, could hold me: the mere fact that it was my
+duty to adore her, would be chilling. And when added to that, I knew
+that she had placed it among the list of her obligations to adore
+_me_--well, that would be the climax of disenchantment."
+
+Hubert commended his wisdom in not marrying.
+
+"The only person I could conceivably marry would be my cook; in that
+case there would be no romance to spoil, no vision to destroy."
+
+"I fear this is a cloak for a poor opinion of our sex, Professor."
+
+"On the contrary. I admire your sex too much to think of subjecting them
+to such an ordeal. I could not endure to regard a woman I had once
+admired, as a matter of course, a commonplace in my existence."
+
+Henriette plunged headlong into the fray, in opposition to the
+Professor's heresy. The conversation became general.
+
+Professor Theobald fell out of it. He was furtively watching Hadria,
+whose eyes were strangely bright. She was sitting on the arm of a seat,
+listening to the talk, with a little smile on her lips. Her hand clasped
+the back of the seat rigidly, as if she were holding something down.
+
+The qualities and defects of the female character were frankly
+canvassed, each view being held with fervour, but expressed with
+urbanity. Women were _always_ so and so; women were absolutely _never_
+so and so: women felt, without exception, thus and thus; on the
+contrary, they were entirely devoid of such sentiments. A large
+experience and wide observation always supported each opinion, and
+eminent authorities swarmed to the standard.
+
+"I do think that women want breadth of view," said Lady Engleton.
+
+"They sometimes want accuracy of statement," observed Professor
+Theobald, with a possible second meaning in his words.
+
+"It seems to me they lack concentration. They are too versatile," was
+Hubert's comment.
+
+"They want a sense of honour," was asserted.
+
+"And a sense of humour," some one added.
+
+"They want a feeling of public duty."
+
+"They want a spice of the Devil!" exclaimed Hadria.
+
+There was a laugh.
+
+Hubert thought this was a lack not likely to be felt for very long. It
+was under rapid process of cultivation.
+
+"Why, it is a commonplace, that if a woman _is_ bad, she is always
+_very_ bad," cried Lady Engleton.
+
+"A new and intoxicating experience," said Professor Fortescue. "I
+sympathize."
+
+"New?" his colleague murmured, with a faint chuckle.
+
+"You distress me," said Henriette.
+
+Professor Fortescue held that woman's "goodness" had done as much harm
+in the world as men's badness. The one was merely the obverse of the
+other.
+
+"This is strange teaching!" cried Lady Engleton.
+
+The Professor reminded her that truth was always stranger than fiction.
+
+"To the best men," observed Valeria, "women show all their meanest
+qualities. It is the fatality of their training."
+
+Professor Theobald had noted the same trait in other subject races.
+
+"Pray, don't call us a subject race!" remonstrated Lady Engleton.
+
+"Ah, yes, the truth," cried Hadria, "we starve for the truth."
+
+"You are courageous, Mrs. Temperley."
+
+"Like the Lady of Shallott, I am sick of shadows."
+
+"The bare truth, on this subject, is hard for a woman to face."
+
+"It is harder, in the long run, to waltz eternally round it with averted
+eyes."
+
+"But, dear me, why is the truth about ourselves hard to face?" demanded
+Valeria.
+
+"I am placed between the horns of a dilemma: one lady clamours for the
+bare truth: another forbids me to say anything unpleasing."
+
+"I withdraw my objection," Valeria offered.
+
+"The ungracious task shall not be forced upon unwilling chivalry," said
+Hadria. "If our conditions have been evil, some scars must be left and
+may as well be confessed. Among the faults of women, I should place a
+tendency to trade upon and abuse real chivalry and generosity when they
+meet them: a survival perhaps from the Stone Age, when the fittest to
+bully were the surviving elect of society."
+
+Hadria's eyes sparkled with suppressed excitement.
+
+"Freedom alone teaches us to meet generosity, generously," said
+Professor Fortescue; "you can't get the perpendicular virtues out of any
+but the really free-born."
+
+"Then do you describe women's virtues as horizontal?" enquired Miss Du
+Prel, half resentfully.
+
+"In so far as they follow the prevailing models. Women's love,
+friendship, duty, the conduct of life as a whole, speaking very roughly,
+has been lacking in the quality that I call perpendicular; a quality
+implying something more than _upright_."
+
+"You seem to value but lightly the woman's acknowledged readiness for
+self-sacrifice," said Lady Engleton. "That, I suppose, is only a
+despised horizontal virtue."
+
+"Very frequently."
+
+"Because it is generally more or less abject," Hadria put in. "The
+sacrifice is made because the woman is a woman. It is the obeisance of
+sex; the acknowledgment of servility; not a simple desire of service."
+
+"The adorable creature is not always precisely obeisant," observed
+Theobald.
+
+"No; as I say, she may be capricious and cruel enough to those who treat
+her justly and generously" (Hadria's eyes instinctively turned towards
+the distant Priory, and Valeria's followed them); "but ask her to
+sacrifice herself for nothing; ask her to cherish the selfishness of
+some bully or fool; assure her that it is her duty to waste her youth,
+lose her health, and stultify her mind, for the sake of somebody's whim,
+or somebody's fears, or somebody's absurdity, _then_ she needs no
+persuasion. She goes to the stake smiling. She swears the flames are
+comfortably warm, no more. Are they diminishing her in size? Oh no--not
+at all--besides she _was_ rather large, for a woman. She smiles
+encouragement to the other chained figures, at the other stakes. Her
+reward? The sense of exalted worth, of humility; the belief that she has
+been sublimely virtuous, while the others whom she serves have
+been--well the less said about them the better. She has done her duty,
+and sent half a dozen souls to hell!"
+
+Henriette uttered a little cry.
+
+"Where one expects to meet her!" Hadria added.
+
+Professor Theobald was chuckling gleefully.
+
+Lady Engleton laughed. "Then, Mrs. Temperley, you _do_ feel rather
+wicked yourself, although you don't admire our nice, well-behaved,
+average woman."
+
+"Oh, the mere opposite of an error isn't always truth," said Hadria.
+
+"The weather has run to your head!" cried Henriette.
+
+Hadria's eyes kindled. "Yes, it is like wine; clear, intoxicating
+sparkling wine, and its fumes are mounting! Why does civilisation never
+provide for these moments?"
+
+"What would you have? A modified feast of Dionysius?"
+
+"Why not? The whole earth joins in the festival and sings, except
+mankind. Some frolic of music and a stirring dance!--But ah! I suppose,
+in this tamed England of ours, we should feel it artificial; we should
+fear to let ourselves go. But in Greece--if we could fancy ourselves
+there, shorn of our little local personalities--in some classic grove,
+on sunlit slopes, all bubbling with the re-birth of flowers and alive
+with the light, the broad all-flooding light of Greece that her children
+dreaded to leave more than any other earthly thing, when death
+threatened--could one not imagine the loveliness of some garlanded
+dance, and fancy the naiads, and the dryads, and all the hosts of Pan
+gambolling at one's heels?"
+
+"Really, Mrs. Temperley, you were not born for an English village. I
+should like Mrs. Walker to hear you!"
+
+"Mrs. Walker knows better than to listen to me. She too hides somewhere,
+deep down, a poor fettered thing that would gladly join the revel, if it
+dared. We all do."
+
+Lady Engleton dwelt joyously on the image of Mrs. Walker, cavorting,
+garlanded, on a Greek slope, with the nymphs and water-sprites for
+familiar company.
+
+Lady Engleton had risen laughing, and proposed a stroll to Hadria.
+
+Henriette, who did not like the tone the conversation was taking,
+desired to join them.
+
+"I never quite know how far you are serious, and how far you are just
+amusing yourself, Hadria," said Lady Engleton. "Our talking of Greece
+reminds me of some remark you made the other day, about Helen. You
+seemed to me almost to sympathize with her."
+
+Hadria's eyes seemed to be looking across miles of sea to the sunny
+Grecian land.
+
+"If a slave breaks his chains and runs, I am always glad," she said.
+
+"I was talking about Helen."
+
+"So was I. If a Spartan wife throws off her bondage and defies the laws
+that insult her, I am still more glad."
+
+"But not if she sins?" Henriette coughed, warningly.
+
+"Yes; if she sins."
+
+"Oh, Hadria," remonstrated Henriette, in despair.
+
+"I don't see that it follows that Helen _did_ sin, however; one does not
+know much about her sentiments. She revolted against the tyranny that
+held her shut in, enslaved, body and soul, in that wonderful Greek world
+of hers. I am charmed to think that she gave her countrymen so much
+trouble to assert her husband's right of ownership. It was at _his_
+door that the siege of Troy ought to be laid. I only wish elopements
+always caused as much commotion!" Lady Engleton laughed, and Miss
+Temperley tried to catch Hadria's eye.
+
+"Well, that _is_ a strange idea! And do you really think Helen did not
+sin? Seriously now."
+
+"I don't know. There is no evidence on that point." Lady Engleton
+laughed again.
+
+"You do amuse me. Assuming that Helen did not sin, I suppose you would
+(if only for the sake of paradox) accuse the virtuous Greek matrons--who
+sat at home, and wove, and span, and bore children--of sinning against
+the State!"
+
+"Certainly," said Hadria, undismayed. "It was they who insidiously
+prepared the doom for their country, as they wove and span and bore
+children, with stupid docility. As surely as an enemy might undermine
+the foundations of a city till it fell in with a crash, so surely they
+brought ruin upon Greece."
+
+"Oh, Hadria, you are quite beside yourself to-day!" cried Henriette.
+
+"A love of paradox will lead you far!" said Lady Engleton. "We have
+always been taught to think a nation sound and safe whose women were
+docile and domestic."
+
+"What nation, under those conditions, has ever failed to fall in with a
+mighty crash, like my undermined city? Greece herself could not hold
+out. Ah, yes; we have our revenge! a sweet, sweet revenge!"
+
+Lady Engleton was looking much amused and a little dismayed, when she
+and her companions rejoined the party.
+
+"I never heard anyone say so many dreadful things in so short a space of
+time," she cried. "You are distinctly shocking."
+
+"I am frank," said Hadria. "I fancy we should all go about with our hair
+permanently on end, if we spoke out in chorus."
+
+"I don't quite like to hear you say that, Hadria."
+
+"I mean no harm--merely that every one thinks thoughts and feels
+impulses that would be startling if expressed in speech. Don't we all
+know how terrifying a thing speech is, and thought? a chartered
+libertine."
+
+"Why, you are saying almost exactly what Professor Theobald said the
+other day, and we were so shocked."
+
+"And yet my meaning has scarcely any relation to his," Hadria hastened
+to say. "He meant to drag down all belief in goodness by reminding us of
+dark moments and hours; by placarding the whole soul with the name of
+some shadow that moves across it, I sometimes think from another world,
+some deep under-world that yawns beneath us and sends up blackness and
+fumes and strange cries." Hadria's eyes had wandered far away. "Are you
+never tormented by an idea, an impression that you know does not belong
+to you?"
+
+Lady Engleton gave a startled negative. "Professor Fortescue, come and
+tell me what you think of this strange doctrine?"
+
+"If we had to be judged by our freedom from rushes of evil impulse,
+rather than by our general balance of good and evil wishing, I think
+those would come out best, who had fewest thoughts and feelings of any
+kind to record." The subject attracted a small group.
+
+"Unless goodness is only a negative quality," Valeria pointed out, "a
+mere _absence_, it must imply a soul that lives and struggles, and if it
+lives and struggles, it is open to the assaults of the devil."
+
+"Yes, and it is liable to go under too sometimes, one must not forget,"
+said Hadria, "although most people profess to believe so firmly in the
+triumph of the best--how I can't conceive, since the common life of
+every day is an incessant harping on the moral: the smallest, meanest,
+poorest, thinnest, vulgarest qualities in man and woman are those
+selected for survival, in the struggle for existence."
+
+There was a cry of remonstrance from idealists.
+
+"But what else do we mean when we talk by common consent of the world's
+baseness, harshness, vulgarity, injustice? It means surely--and think of
+it!--that it is composed of men and women with the best of them killed
+out, as a nerve burnt away by acid; a heart won over to meaner things
+than it set out beating for; a mind persuaded to nibble at edges of dry
+crust that might have grown stout and serviceable on generous diet, and
+mellow and inspired with noble vintage."
+
+"You really are shockingly Bacchanalian to-day," cried Lady Engleton.
+
+Hadria laughed. "Metaphorically, I am a toper. The wonderful clear
+sparkle, the subtle flavour, the brilliancy of wine, has for me a
+strange fascination; it seems to signify so much in life that women
+lose."
+
+"True. What beverage should one take as a type of what they gain by the
+surrender?" asked Lady Engleton, who was disposed to hang back towards
+orthodoxy, in the presence of her uncompromising neighbour.
+
+"Oh, toast and water!" replied Hadria.
+
+
+
+
+Part III.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+
+The speed was glorious. Back flashed field and hill and copse, and the
+dear "companionable hedgeways." Back flew iterative telegraph posts with
+Herculean swing, into the Past, looped together in rhythmic movement,
+marking the pulses of old Time. On, with rack and roar, into the
+mysterious Future. One could sit at the window and watch the machinery
+of Time's foundry at work; the hammers of his forge beating, beating,
+the wild sparks flying, the din and chaos whirling round one's
+bewildered brain;--Past becoming Present, Present melting into Future,
+before one's eyes. To sit and watch the whirring wheels; to think "Now
+it is thus and thus; presently, another slice of earth and sky awaits
+me"--ye Gods, it is not to be realized!
+
+The wonder of the flying land--England, England with her gentle
+homesteads, her people of the gentle voices; and the unknown wonder of
+that other land, soon to change its exquisite dream-features for the
+still more thrilling, appealing marvel of reality--could it all be true?
+Was this the response of the genius of the ring, the magic ring that we
+call _will_? And would the complaisant genius always appear and obey
+one's behests, in this strange fashion?
+
+Thoughts ran on rhythmically, in the steady, flashing movement through
+verdant England. The Real! _that_ was the truly exquisite, the truly
+great, the true realm of the imagination! What imagination was ever born
+to conceive or compass it?
+
+A rattle under a bridge, a roar through a tunnel, and on again, through
+Kentish orchards. A time of blossoming. Disjointed, delicious
+impressions followed one another in swift succession, often
+superficially incoherent, but threaded deep, in the stirred
+consciousness, on a silver cord:--the unity of the creation was as
+obvious as its multiplicity.
+
+Images of the Past joined hands with visions of the Future. In these
+sweet green meadows, men had toiled, as thralls, but a few lifetimes
+ago, and they had gathered together, as Englishmen do, first to protest
+and reasonably demand, and then to buy their freedom with their lives.
+Their countrywoman sent a message of thanksgiving, backward through the
+centuries, to these stout champions of the land's best heritage, and
+breathed an aspiration to be worthy of the kinship that she claimed.
+
+The rattle and roar grew into a symphony--full, rich, magnificent, and
+then, with a rush, came a stirring musical conception: it seized the
+imagination.
+
+Oh, why were they stopping? It was a little country station, but many
+passengers were on the platform. A careworn looking woman and a little
+girl entered the carriage, and the little girl fixed her eyes on her
+fellow-traveller with singular persistence. Then the more practical
+features of the occasion came into view, and all had an enthralling
+quality of reality--poetry. The sound of the waiting engine breathing
+out its white smoke into the brilliant air, the powerful creature
+quiescent but ready, with the turn of a handle, to put forth its
+slumbering might; the crunching of footsteps on the gravel, the
+wallflowers and lilacs in the little station garden, the blue of the
+sky, and ah! the sweetness of the air when one leant out to look along
+the interminable straight line of rails, leading--whither? Even the very
+details of one's travelling gear: the tweed gown meet for service, the
+rug and friendly umbrella, added to the feeling of overflowing
+satisfaction. The little girl stared more fixedly than ever. A smile and
+the offer of a flower made her look down, for a minute, but the gaze was
+resumed. Wherefore? Was the inward tumult too evident in the face?
+Well, no matter. The world was beautiful and wide!
+
+The patient monster began to move again, with a gay whistle, as if he
+enjoyed this chase across country, on the track of Time. He was soon at
+full speed again, on his futile race: a hapless idealist in pursuit of
+lost dreams. The little girl watched the dawn of a smile on the face of
+the kind, pretty lady who had given her the flower. A locomotive
+figuring as an idealist! Where would one's fancy lead one to next?
+
+Ah the sea! heaving busily, and flashing under the morning radiance.
+Would they have a good crossing? The wind was fresh. How dreamy and
+bright and windy the country looked, and how salt was the sea-breeze!
+Very soon they would arrive at Folkestone. Rugs and umbrellas and
+handbags must be collected. The simple, solid commonplace of it all,
+touched some wholesome spring of delight. What a speed the train was
+going at! One could scarcely stand in the jolting carriage. Old Time
+must not make too sure of his victory. One felt a wistful partisanship
+for his snorting rival, striving for ever to accomplish the impossible.
+The labouring visionary was not without significance to aspiring
+mortals.
+
+The outskirts of the town were coming in sight; grey houses bleakly
+climbing chalky heights. It would be well to put on a thick overcoat at
+once. It was certain to be cold in the Channel.
+
+Luckily Hannah had a head on her shoulders, and could be trusted to
+follow the directions that had been given her.
+
+The last five minutes seemed interminable, but they did come to an end.
+There was an impression of sweet salt air, of wind and voices, of a
+hurrying crowd; occasionally a French sentence pronounced by one of the
+officials, reminiscent of a thousand dreams and sights of foreign lands;
+and then the breezy quay and waiting steamboat.
+
+The sound of that quiet, purposeful hiss of the steam sent a thrill
+along the nerves. Hannah and her charge were safely on board; the small
+luggage followed, and lastly Hadria traversed the narrow bridge,
+wondering when the moment would arrive for waking up and finding herself
+in her little bedroom at Craddock Dene? What was she thinking of? Dream?
+_This_ was no dream, this bold, blue, dancing water, this living
+sunshine, this salt and savour and movement and brilliancy!
+
+The _other_ was the dream; it seemed to be drifting away already. The
+picture of the village and the house and the meadows, and the low line
+of the hills was recalled as through a veil; it would not stand up and
+face the emphatic present. At the end of a few months, would there be
+anything left of her connexion with the place where she had passed
+six--seven years of her life? and such years! They had put scars on her
+soul, as deep and ghastly as ever red-hot irons had marked on tortured
+flesh. Perhaps it was because of this rabid agony undergone, that now
+she seemed to have scarcely any clinging to her home,--for the present
+at any rate. And she knew that she left only sorrow for conventional
+disasters behind her. The joy of freedom and its intoxication drowned
+every other feeling. It was sheer relief to be away, to stretch oneself
+in mental liberty and leisure, to look round at earth and sky and the
+hurrying crowds, in quiet enjoyment; to possess one's days, one's
+existence for the first time, in all these long years! It was as the
+home-coming of a dispossessed heir. This freedom did not strike her as
+strange, but as obvious, as familiar. It was the first condition of a
+life that was worth living. And yet never before had she known it.
+Ernest and Fred and even Austin had enjoyed it from boyhood, and in far
+greater completeness than she could ever hope to possess it, even now.
+
+Yet even this limited, this comparative freedom, which a man could
+afford to smile at, was intoxicating. Heavens! under what a leaden cloud
+of little obligations and restraints, and loneliness and pain, she had
+been living! And for what purpose? To make obeisance to a phantom
+public, not because she cared one iota for the phantom or its opinions,
+but because husband and parents and relations were terrified at the
+prospect of a few critical and disapproving remarks, that they would not
+even hear! How mad it all was! It was not true feeling, not affection,
+that prompted Hubert's opposition; it was not care for his real
+happiness that inspired Henriette with such ardour in this cause; they
+would both be infinitely happier and more harmonious in Hadria's
+absence. The whole source of their distress was the fear of what people
+would say when the separation became known to the world. That was the
+beginning and the end of the matter. Why could not the stupid old world
+mind its own business, in heaven's name? Good people, especially good
+women of the old type, would all counsel the imbecile sacrifice. They
+would all condemn this step. Indeed, the sacrifice that Hadria had
+refused to make, was so common, so much a matter of course, that her
+refusal appeared startling and preposterous: scarcely less astonishing
+than if a neighbour at dinner, requesting one to pass the salt, had been
+met with a rude "I shan't."
+
+"A useful phrase at times, of the nature of a tonic, amidst our
+enervating civilisation," she reflected.
+
+There was a tramping of passengers up and down the deck. People walked
+obliquely, with head to windward. Draperies fluttered; complexions
+verged towards blue. Only two ladies who had abandoned hope from the
+beginning, suffered from the crossing. The kindly sailors occupied their
+leisure in bringing tarpaulins to the distressed.
+
+"Well, Hannah, how are you getting on?"
+
+Hannah looked forward ardently to the end of the journey, but her charge
+seemed delighted with the new scene.
+
+"Have you ever been to France before, ma'am?" Hannah asked, perhaps
+noticing the sparkle of her employer's eye and the ring in her voice.
+
+"Yes, once; I spent a week in Paris with Mr. Temperley, and we went on
+afterwards to the Pyrenees. That was just before we took the Red House."
+
+"It must have been beautiful," said Hannah. "And did you take the
+babies, ma'am?"
+
+"They were neither of them in existence then," replied Mrs. Temperley. A
+strange fierce light passed through her eyes for a second, but Hannah
+did not notice it. Martha's shawl was blowing straight into her eyes,
+and the nurse was engaged in arranging it more comfortably.
+
+The coast of France had become clear, some time ago; they were making
+the passage very quickly to-day. Soon the red roofs of Boulogne were to
+be distinguished, with the grey dome of the cathedral on the hill-top.
+Presently, the boat had arrived in the bright old town, and every detail
+of outline and colour was standing forth brilliantly, as if the whole
+scene had been just washed over with clear water and all the tints were
+wet.
+
+The first impression was keen. The innumerable differences from English
+forms and English tones sprang to the eye. A whiff of foreign smell and
+a sound of foreign speech reached the passengers at about the same
+moment. The very houses looked unfamiliarly built, and even the letters
+of printed names of hotels and shops had a frivolous, spindly
+appearance--elegant but frail. The air was different from English air.
+Some _bouillon_ and a slice of fowl were very acceptable at the
+restaurant at the station, after the business of examining the luggage
+was over. Hannah, evidently nourishing a sense of injury against the
+natives for their eccentric jargon, and against the universe for the
+rush and discomfort of the last quarter of an hour, was disposed to
+express her feelings by a marked lack of relish for her food. She
+regarded Hadria's hearty appetite with a disdainful expression. Martha
+ate bread and butter and fruit. She was to have some milk that had been
+brought for her, when they were _en route_ again.
+
+"_Tout le monde en voiture!_" Within five minutes, the train was
+puffing across the wastes of blowing sand that ran along the coast,
+beyond the town. The child, who had become accustomed to the noise and
+movement, behaved better than had been expected. She seemed to take
+pleasure in looking out of the window at the passing trees. Hannah was
+much struck with this sign of awakening intelligence. It was more than
+the good nurse showed herself. She scarcely condescended to glance at
+the panorama of French fields, French hills and streams that were
+rushing by. How pale and ethereal they were, these Gallic coppices and
+woodlands! And with what a dainty lightness the foliage spread itself to
+the sun, French to its graceful finger-tips! That grey old house, with
+high lichen-stained roof and narrow windows--where but in sunny France
+could one see its like?--and the little farmsteads and villages, full of
+indescribable charm. One felt oneself in a land of artists. There was no
+inharmonious, no unfitting thing anywhere. Man had wedded himself to
+Nature, and his works seemed to receive her seal and benediction.
+English landscape was beautiful, and it had a particular charm to be
+found nowhere else in the world; but in revenge, there was something
+here that England could not boast. Was it fanciful to see in the
+characteristics of vegetation and scenery, the origin or expression of
+the difference of the two races at their greatest?
+
+"Ah, if I were only a painter!"
+
+They were passing some fields where, in the slanting rays of the sun,
+peasants in blue blouses and several women were bending over their toil.
+It was a subject often chosen by French artists. Hadria understood why.
+One of the labourers stood watching the train, and she let her eyes rest
+on the patient figure till she was carried beyond his little world. If
+she could have painted that scene just as she saw it, all the sadness
+and mystery of the human lot would have stood forth eloquently in form
+and colour; these a magic harmony, not without some inner kinship with
+the spirit of man at its noblest.
+
+What was he thinking, that toil-bent peasant, as the train flashed by?
+What tragedy or comedy was he playing on his rural stage? Hadria sat
+down and shut her eyes, dazzled by the complex mystery and miracle of
+life, and almost horrified at the overwhelming thought of the millions
+of these obscure human lives burning themselves out, everywhere, at
+every instant, like so many altar-candles to the unknown God!
+
+"And each one of them takes himself as seriously as I take myself:
+perhaps more seriously. Ah, if one could but pause to smile at one's
+tragic moments, or still better, at one's sublime ones. But it can't be
+done. A remembrancer would have to be engaged, to prevent lapses into
+the sublime,--and how furious one would be when he nudged one, with his
+eternal: 'Beware!'"
+
+It was nearly eight o'clock when the train plunged among the myriad
+lights of the great city. The brilliant beacon of the Eiffel Tower sat
+high up in the sky, like an exile star.
+
+Gaunt and grim was the vast station, with its freezing purplish electric
+light. Yet even here, to Hadria's stirred imagination, there was a
+certain quality in the Titanic building, which removed it from the
+vulgarity of English utilitarian efforts of the same order.
+
+In a fanciful mood, one might imagine a tenth circle of the Inferno,
+wherein those stern grey arches should loftily rise, in blind and
+endless sequence, limbing an abode of horror, a place of punishment for
+those, empty-hearted, who had lived without colour and sunshine, in
+voluntary abnegation, caring only for gain and success.
+
+The long delay in the examination of the luggage, the fatigue of the
+journey, tended to increase the disposition to regard the echoing
+edifice, with its cold hollow reverberations, as a Circle of the Doomed.
+It was as if they passed from the realm of the Shades through the Gates
+of Life, when at length the cab rattled out of the courtyard of the
+station, and turned leftwards into the brilliant streets of Paris. It
+was hard to realize that all this stir and light and life had been going
+on night after night, for all these years, during which one had sat in
+the quiet drawing-room at Craddock Dene, trying wistfully, hopelessly,
+to grasp the solid fact of an unknown vast reality, through a record
+here and there. The journey was a long one to the Rue Boissy d'Anglas,
+but tired as she was, Hadria did not wish it shorter. Even Hannah was
+interested in the brilliantly lighted shops and _cafes_ and the
+splendour of the boulevards. Now and again, the dark deserted form of a
+church loomed out, lonely, amidst the gaiety of Parisian street-life.
+Some electric lamp threw a distant gleam upon calm classic pillars,
+which seemed to hold aloof, with a quality of reserve rarely to be
+noticed in things Parisian. Hadria greeted it with a feeling of
+gratitude.
+
+The great Boulevard was ablaze and swarming with life. The _cafes_ were
+full; the gilt and mirrors and the crowds of _consommateurs_ within, all
+visible as one passed along the street, while, under the awning outside,
+crowds were sitting smoking, drinking, reading the papers.
+
+Was it really possible that only this morning, those quiet English
+fields had been dozing round one, those sleepy villagers spreading their
+slow words out, in expressing an absence of idea, over the space of time
+in which a Parisian conveyed a pocket philosophy?
+
+The cabman directed his vehicle down the Rue Royale, passing the stately
+Madeleine, with its guardian sycamores, and out into the windy
+spaciousness of the Place de la Concorde.
+
+A wondrous city! Hannah pointed out the electric light of the Eiffel
+Tower to her charge, and Martha put out her small hands, demanding the
+toy on the spot.
+
+The festooned lights of the Champs Elysees swung themselves up, in
+narrowing line, till they reached the pompous arch at the summit, and
+among the rich trees of those Elysian fields gleamed the festive lamps
+of _cafes chantants_.
+
+"_Si Madame desire encore quelque chose?_" The neat maid, in picturesque
+white cap and apron, stood with her hand on the door of the little
+bedroom, on one of the highest storeys of the _pension_. Half of one of
+the long windows had been set open, and the sounds of the rolling of
+vehicles over the smooth asphalte, mingled with those of voices, were
+coming up, straight and importunate, into the dainty bedroom. The very
+sounds seemed nearer and clearer in this keen-edged land. The bed stood
+in one corner, canopied with white and blue; a thick carpet gave a sense
+of luxury and deadened the tramp of footsteps; a marble mantel-piece was
+surmounted by a mirror, and supported a handsome bronze clock and two
+bronze ornaments. The furniture was of solid mahogany. A nameless French
+odour pervaded the atmosphere, delicate, subtle, but unmistakeable. And
+out of the open window, one could see a series of other lighted windows,
+all of exactly the same tall graceful design, opening in the middle by
+the same device and the same metal handle that had to be turned in order
+to open or close the window. Within, the rooms obviously modelled
+themselves on the one unvarying ideal. A few figures could be seen
+coming and going, busy at work or play. Above the steep roofs, a
+blue-black sky was alive with brilliant stars.
+
+"_Merci;_" Madame required nothing more.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+            "... Rushes life on a race
+             As the clouds the clouds chase;
+                   And we go,
+          And we drop like the fruits of the tree,
+                   Even we,
+                   Even so."
+
+
+Just at first, it was a sheer impossibility to do anything but bask and
+bathe in the sunny present, to spend the days in wandering incredulously
+through vernal Paris, over whose bursting freshness and brilliancy the
+white clouds seemed to be driven, with the same joy of life. The city
+was crammed; the inhabitants poured forth in swarms to enjoy, in true
+French fashion, the genial warmth and the universal awakening after the
+long capricious winter. It was actually hot in the sun, and fresh light
+clothing became a luxury, like a bath after a journey. The year had
+raised its siege, and there was sudden amity between man and Nature.
+Shrivelled man could relax the tension of resistance to cold and damp
+and change, and go forth into the sun with cordial _insouciance_. In
+many of the faces might be read this kindly amnesty, although there were
+some so set and fixed with past cares that not even the soft hand of a
+Parisian spring could smooth away the lines, or even touch the spirit.
+
+These Hadria passed with an aching pity. Circumstance had been to them a
+relentless taskmaster. Perhaps they had not rubbed the magic ring of
+will, and summoned the obedient genius. Perhaps circumstance had
+forbidden them even the rag wherewith to rub--or the impulse.
+
+Sallying forth from the _pension_, Hadria would sometimes pause, for a
+moment, at the corner of the street, where it opened into the Place de
+la Concorde, irresolute, because of the endless variety of possible ways
+to turn, and places to visit. She seldom made definite plans the day
+before, unless it were for the pleasure of changing them. The letter of
+introduction to Madame Vauchelet had remained unpresented. The sense of
+solitude, combined for the first time with that of freedom, was too
+delightful to forego. One must have time to realize and appreciate the
+sudden calm and serenity; the sudden absence of claims and obstructions
+and harassing criticisms. Heavens, what a price people consented to pay
+for the privilege of human ties! what hard bargains were driven in the
+kingdom of the affections! Thieves, extortionists, usurers--and in the
+name of all the virtues!
+
+"Yes, solitude has charms!" Hadria inwardly exclaimed, as she stood
+watching the coming and going of people, the spouting of fountains, the
+fluttering of big sycamore leaves in the Champs Elysees.
+
+Unhappily, the solitude made difficulties. But meanwhile there was a
+large field to be explored, where these difficulties did not arise, or
+could be guarded against. Her sex was a troublesome obstruction. "One
+does not come of centuries of chattel-women for nothing!" she wrote to
+Algitha. Society bristled with insults, conscious and unconscious. Nor
+had one lived the brightest, sweetest years of one's life tethered and
+impounded, without feeling the consequences when the tether was cut.
+There were dreads, shrinkings, bewilderments, confusions to encounter;
+the difficulties of pilotage in unknown seas, of self-knowledge, and
+guidance suddenly needed in new ranges of the soul; fresh temptations,
+fresh possibilities to deal with; everything untested, the alphabet of
+worldly experience yet to learn.
+
+But all this was felt with infinitely greater force a little later, when
+the period of solitude was over, and Hadria found herself in the midst
+of a little society whose real codes and ideas she had gropingly to
+learn. Unfamiliar (in any practical sense) with life, even in her own
+country, she had no landmarks or finger-posts, of any kind, in this new
+land. Her sentiment had never been narrowly British, but now she
+realized her nationality over-keenly; she felt herself almost
+grotesquely English, and had a sense of insular clumsiness amidst a
+uprightly, dexterous people. Conscious of a thousand illusive, but very
+real differences in point of view, and in nature, between the two
+nations, she had a baffled impression of walking among mysteries and
+novelties that she could not grasp. She began to be painfully conscious
+of the effects of the narrow life that she had led, and of the
+limitations that had crippled her in a thousand ways hitherto scarcely
+realized.
+
+"One begins to learn everything too late," she wrote to Algitha. "This
+ought all to have been familiar long ago. I don't know anything about
+the world in which I live. I have never before caught so much as a
+distant glimpse of it. And even now there are strange thick wrappings
+from the past that cling tight round and hold me aloof, strive as I may
+to strip off that past-made personality, and to understand, by touch,
+what things are made of. I feel as if I would risk anything in order to
+really know that. Why should a woman treat herself as if she were
+Dresden china? She is more or less insulted and degraded whatever
+happens, especially if she obeys what our generation is pleased to call
+the moral law. The more I see of life, the more hideous seems the
+position that women hold in relation to the social structure, and the
+more sickening the current nonsense that is talked about us and our
+'missions' and 'spheres.' It is so feeble, so futile, to try to ornament
+an essentially degrading fact. It is such insolence to talk to us--good
+heavens, to _us!_--about holiness and sacredness, when men (to whom
+surely a sense of humour has been denied) divide their women into two
+great classes, both of whom they insult and enslave, insisting
+peremptorily on the existence of each division, but treating one class
+as private and the other as public property. One might as well talk to
+driven cattle in the shambles about their 'sacred mission' as to women.
+It is an added mockery, a gratuitous piece of insolence."
+
+Having been, from childhood, more or less at issue with her
+surroundings, Hadria had never fully realized their power upon her
+personality. But now daily a fresh recognition of her continued
+imprisonment, baffled her attempt to look at things with clear eyes. She
+struggled to get round and beyond that past-fashioned self, not merely
+in order to see truly, but in order to see at all. And in doing so, she
+ran the risk of letting go what she might have done better to hold. She
+felt painfully different from these people among whom she found herself.
+Her very trick of pondering over things sent her spinning to hopeless
+distances. They seemed to ponder so wholesomely little. Their
+intelligence was devoted to matters of the moment; they were keen and
+well-finished and accomplished. Hadria used to look at them in
+astonishment. How did these quick-witted people manage to escape the
+importunate inquisitive demon, the familiar spirit, who pursued her
+incessantly with his queries and suggestions? He would stare up from
+river and street and merry gardens; his haunting eyes looked mockingly
+out of green realms of stirring foliage, and his voice was like a
+sardonic echo to the happy voices of the children, laughing at their
+play under the flickering shadows, of mothers discussing their cares and
+interests, of men in blouses, at work by the water-side, or solemn, in
+frock-coats, with pre-occupations of business and bread-winning. The
+demon had his own reflections on all these seemingly ordinary matters,
+and so bizarre were they at times, so startling and often so terrible,
+that one found oneself shivering in full noontide, or smiling, or
+thrilled with passionate pity at "the sad, strange ways of men."
+
+It was sweet to stretch one's cramped wings to the sun, to ruffle and
+spread them, as a released bird will, but it was startling to find
+already little stiff habits arisen, little creaks and hindrances never
+suspected, that made flight in the high air not quite effortless and
+serene.
+
+The Past is never past; immortal as the Gods, it lives enthroned in the
+Present, and sets its limits and lays its commands.
+
+Cases have been known of a man blind from birth being restored to sight,
+at mature age. For a time, the appearance of objects was strange and
+incomprehensible. Their full meaning was not conveyed to him; they
+remained riddles. He could not judge the difference between near and
+far, between solid and liquid; he had no experience, dating from
+childhood, of the apparent smallness of distant things, of the connexion
+between the impression given to the touch by solids and their effect on
+the eye. He had all these things to learn. A thousand trifling
+associations, of which those with normal senses are scarcely conscious,
+had to be stumblingly acquired, as a child learns to connect sound and
+sight, in learning to read.
+
+Such were the changes of consciousness that Hadria found herself going
+through; only realising each phase of the process after it was over, and
+the previous confusion of vision had been itself revealed, by the newly
+and often painfully acquired co-ordinating skill.
+
+But, as generally happens, in the course of passing from ignorance to
+knowledge, the intermediate stage was chaotic. Objects loomed up large
+and indistinct, as through a mist; vague forms drifted by, half
+revealed, to melt away again; here and there were clear outlines and
+solid impressions, to be deemed trustworthy and given a place of honour;
+thence a disproportion in the general conception; it being almost beyond
+human power to allow sufficiently for that which is unknown.
+
+For some time, however, the dominant impression on Hadria's mind was of
+her own gigantic ignorance. This ignorance was far more confusing and
+even misleading than it had been when its proportions were less defined.
+The faint twinkle of light revealed the dusky outline, bewildering and
+discouraging the imagination. Intuitive knowledge was disturbed by the
+incursion of scraps of disconnected experience. This condition of mind
+made her an almost insoluble psychological problem. Since she was
+evidently a woman of pronounced character, her bewilderment and
+tentative attitude were not allowed for. Her actions were regarded as
+deliberate and cool-headed, when often they would be the outcome of
+sheer confusion, or chance, or perhaps of a groping experimental effort.
+
+The first three weeks in Paris had been given up to enjoying the new
+conditions of existence. But now practical matters claimed consideration.
+The _pension_ in the Rue Boissy d'Anglas was not suitable as a permanent
+abode. Rooms must be looked for, combining cheapness with a good situation,
+within easy distance of the scene of Hadria's future musical studies, and
+also within reach of some park or gardens for Martha's benefit.
+
+This ideal place of abode was at last found. It cost rather more than
+Hadria had wished to spend on mere lodging, but otherwise it seemed
+perfect. It was in a quiet street between the Champs Elysees and the
+river. Two great thoroughfares ran, at a respectful distance, on either
+side, with omnibuses always passing. Hadria could be set down within a
+few minutes' walk of the School of Music, or, if she liked to give the
+time, could walk the whole way to her morning's work, through some of
+the most charming parts of Paris. As for Martha, she was richly provided
+with playgrounds. The Bois could be quickly reached, and there were
+always the Champs Elysees or the walk beneath the chestnuts by the
+river, along the Cours de la Reine and the length of the quays. Even
+Hannah thought the situation might do. Hadria had begun her studies at
+the School of Music, and found the steady work not only a profound,
+though somewhat stern enjoyment, but a solid backbone to her new
+existence, giving it cohesion and form. Recreation deserved its name,
+after work of this kind. Any lurking danger of too great speculative
+restlessness disappeared. There had been a moment when the luxurious joy
+of mere wandering observation and absorption, threatened to become
+overwhelming, and to loosen some of the rivets of the character.
+
+But work was to the sum-total of impulse what the central weight was to
+one of Martha's toys: a leaden ballast that always brought the balance
+right again, however wildly the little tyrant might swing the creature
+off the perpendicular. When Hadria used to come in, pleasantly tired
+with her morning's occupation, and the wholesome heat of the sun, to
+take her simple _dejeuner_ in the little apartment with Martha, a
+frivolous five minutes would often be spent by the two in endeavouring
+to overcome the rigid principles of that well-balanced plaything. But
+always the dead weight at its heart frustrated their attempts. Martha
+played the most inconsiderate pranks with its centre of gravity, but
+quite in vain. When a little French boy from the _etage_ above was
+allowed to come and play with Martha, she proceeded to experiment upon
+_his_ centre of gravity in the same way, and seemed much surprised when
+Jean Paul Auguste not only howled indignantly, but didn't swing up again
+after he was overturned. He remained supine, and had to be reinstated by
+Hadria and Hannah, and comforted with sweetmeats. Martha's logic
+received one of its first checks. She evidently made up her mind that
+logic was a fallacious mode of inference, and determined to abandon it
+for the future. These rebuffs in infancy, Hadria conjectured, might
+account for much!
+
+About three weeks passed in almost pure enjoyment and peace; and then it
+was discovered that the cost of living, in spite of an extremely simple
+diet, was such as might have provided epicurean luxuries for a family of
+ten. Hadria's enquiries among her acquaintances elicited cries of
+consternation. Obviously the landlady, who did the marketing, must be
+cheating on a royal scale, and there was nothing for it but to move.
+Hadria suggested to Madame Vauchelet, whose advice she always sought in
+practical matters, that perhaps the landlady might be induced to pursue
+her lucrative art in moderation; could she not put it honestly down in
+the bill "Peculation--so much per week?"
+
+Madame Vauchelet was horrified. "Impossible!" she cried; one must seek
+another apartment. If only Hannah understood French and could do the
+marketing herself. But Hannah scorned the outlandish lingo, and had a
+poor opinion of the nation as a whole.
+
+It was fatiguing and somewhat discouraging work to begin, all over
+again, the quest of rooms, especially with the difficulty about the
+landlady always in view, and no means of ascertaining her scale of
+absorption. It really seemed a pity that it could not be mentioned as
+an extra, like coal and lights. Then one would know what one was about.
+This uncertain liability, with an extremely limited income, which was
+likely to prove insufficient unless some addition could be made to it,
+was trying to the nerves.
+
+In order to avoid too great anxiety, Hadria had to make up her mind to a
+less attractive suite of rooms, farther out of town, and she found it
+desirable to order many of the comestibles herself. Madame Vauchelet was
+untiring in her efforts to help and advise. She initiated Hadria into
+the picturesque mysteries of Parisian housekeeping. It was amusing to go
+to the shops and markets with this shrewd Frenchwoman, and very
+enlightening as to the method of living cheaply and well. Hadria began
+to think wistfully of a more permanent _menage_ in this entrancing
+capital, where there were still worlds within worlds to explore. She
+questioned Madame Vauchelet as to the probable cost of a _femme de
+menage_. Madame quickly ran through some calculations and pronounced a
+sum alluringly small. Since the landlady difficulty was so serious, and
+made personal superintendence necessary, it seemed as if one might as
+well have the greater comfort and independence of this more home-like
+arrangement.
+
+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 _menage_ went well. Therese 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.
+
+He said he would like to interest the great Jouffroy in this work. It
+had so distinct and remarkable an individuality that M. Thillard was
+sure Jouffroy would be enchanted with it. For himself, he held that it
+shewed a development of musical form and expression extremely
+remarkable. He could not quite understand it. There was, he knew not
+what, in it, of strange and powerful; a music of the North; something of
+bizarre, something of mysterious, even of terrible, "_une emotion
+epouvantable_," cried M. Thillard, working himself to a climax as the
+theme inspired him, "There is genius in that work, but certainly
+genius." Madame Vauchelet nodded gravely at this pronouncement. It ought
+to be published, she said. But this supreme recompense of genius was
+apparently hard to achieve. The score was sent from publisher to
+publisher: "from pillar to post," said Hadria, "if one might venture on
+a phrase liable to misconstruction on the lips of disappointed
+ambition."
+
+But at the end of a long and wearisome delay, the little packet was
+returned in a tattered condition to its discouraged author. M. Thillard
+made light of this. It was always thus at first. One must have patience.
+
+"One must live," said Hadria, "or at least such is the prejudice under
+which one has been brought up."
+
+"All will come," said M. Thillard. "You will see."
+
+On one sunny afternoon, when Hadria had returned, thrilled and inspired
+by a magnificent orchestral performance at the Chatelet, she found
+Madame Vauchelet, M. Thillard, and the great Jouffroy waiting in her
+_salon_. Jouffroy was small, eccentric, fiery, with keen eager eyes,
+thick black hair, and overhanging brows. M. Thillard reminded Madame
+Temperley of her kind permission to present to her M. Jouffroy. Madame
+Temperley was charmed and flattered by Monsieur's visit.
+
+It was an exciting afternoon. Madame Vauchelet was eager to hear the
+opinion of the great man, and anxious for Hadria to make a good
+impression.
+
+The warm-hearted Frenchwoman, who had lost a daughter, of whom Hadria
+reminded her, had been untiring in her kindness, from the first. Madame
+Vauchelet, in her young days, had cherished a similar musical ambition,
+and Jouffroy always asserted that she might have done great things, as a
+performer, had not the cares of a family put an end to all hope of
+bringing her gifts to fruition.
+
+The piano was opened. Jouffroy played. Madame Vauchelet, with her large
+veil thrown back, her black cashmere folds falling around her, sat in
+the large arm-chair, a dignified and graceful figure, listening gravely.
+The kindly, refined face of M. Thillard beamed with enjoyment; an
+occasional cry of admiration escaping his lips, at some exquisite touch
+from the master.
+
+The time slipped by, with bewildering rapidity.
+
+Monsieur Thillard asked if they might be allowed to hear some of
+Madame's compositions--those which she had already been so amiable as to
+play to him.
+
+Jouffroy settled himself to listen; his shaggy eyebrows lowering over
+his eyes, not in severity but in fixity of attention. Hadria trembled
+for a moment, as her hands touched the keys. Jouffroy gave a nod of
+satisfaction. If there had been no such quiver of nerves he would have
+doubted. So he said afterwards to M. Thillard and Madame Vauchelet.
+
+After listening, for a time, without moving a muscle, he suddenly sat
+bolt upright and looked round at the player. The character of the music,
+always individual, had grown more marked, and at this point an effect
+was produced which appeared to startle the musician. He withdrew his
+gaze, after a moment, muttering something to himself, and resumed his
+former attitude, slowly and gravely nodding his head. There was a long
+silence after the last of the lingering, questioning notes had died
+away.
+
+"Is Madame prepared for work, for hard, faithful work?"
+
+The answer was affirmative. She was only too glad to have the chance to
+work.
+
+"Has Madame inexhaustible patience?"
+
+"In this cause--yes."
+
+"And can she bear to be misunderstood; to be derided for departure from
+old rules and conventions; to have her work despised and refused, and
+again refused, till at last the dull ears shall be opened and all the
+stupid world shall run shouting to her feet?"
+
+The colour rushed into Hadria's cheeks. "_Voila!_" exclaimed Madame
+Vauchelet. M. Thillard beamed with satisfaction. "Did I not tell you?"
+
+Jouffroy clapped his friend on the back with enthusiasm. "_Il faut
+travailler_," he said, "_mais travailler!_" He questioned Hadria
+minutely as to her course of study, approved it on the whole, suggesting
+alterations and additions. He asked to look through some more of her
+work.
+
+"_Mon Dieu_," he ejaculated, as his quick eye ran over page after page.
+
+"If Madame has a character as strong as her genius, her name will one
+day be on the lips of all the world." He looked at her searchingly.
+
+"I knew it!" exclaimed M. Thillard. "_Madame, je vous felicite._"
+
+"Ah!" cried Jouffroy, with a shake of his black shaggy head, "this is
+not a fate to be envied. _C'est dur!_"
+
+"I am bewildered!" cried Hadria at last, in a voice that seemed to her
+to come from somewhere a long way off. The whole scene had acquired the
+character of a dream. The figures moved through miles of clear distance.
+Her impressions were chaotic. While a strange, deep confirmation of the
+musician's words, seemed to stir within her as if they had long been
+familiar, her mind entirely refused credence.
+
+He had gone too far. Had he said a remarkable talent, but----
+
+Yet was it not, after all, possible? Nature scattered her gifts wildly
+and cruelly: cruelly, because she cared not into what cramped nooks and
+crannies she poured her maddening explosive: cruelly, because she hurled
+this fire from heaven with indiscriminate hand, to set alight one dared
+not guess how many chained martyrs at their stakes. Nature did not pick
+and choose the subjects of her wilful ministrations. She seemed to
+scatter at random, out of sheer _gaiete de coeur_, as Jouffroy had said,
+and if some golden grain chanced to be gleaming in this soul or that,
+what cause for astonishment? The rest might be the worst of dross. As
+well might the chance occur to one of Nature's children as to another.
+She did not bestow even one golden grain for nothing, _bien sur_; she
+meant to be paid back with interest. Just one bright bead of the whole
+vast circlet of the truth: perhaps it was hers, but more likely that
+these kind friends had been misled by their sympathy.
+
+M. Jouffroy came next day to have a long talk with Hadria about her work
+and her methods. He was absolutely confident of what he had said, but he
+was emphatic regarding the necessity for work; steady, uninterrupted
+work. Everything must be subservient to the one aim. If she contemplated
+anything short of complete dedication to her art--well (he shrugged his
+shoulders), it would be better to amuse herself. There could be no
+half-measures with art. True, there were thousands of people who
+practised a little of this and a little of that, but Art would endure no
+such disrespect. It was the affair of a lifetime. He had known many
+women with great talent, but, alas! they had not persistence. Only last
+year a charming, beautiful young woman, with--_mon Dieu!_--a talent that
+might have placed her on the topmost rank of singers, had married
+against the fervent entreaties of Jouffroy, and now--he shrugged his
+shoulders with a gesture of pitying contempt--"_elle est mere tout
+simplement_." Her force had gone from herself into the plump infant,
+whose "_cris dechirants_" were all that now remained to the world of his
+mother's once magnificent voice. _Helas!_ how many brilliant careers had
+he not seen ruined by this fatal instinct! Jouffroy's passion for his
+art had overcome the usual sentiment of the Frenchman, and even the
+strain of Jewish blood. He did not think a woman of genius well lost for
+a child. He grudged her to the fetish _la famille_. He went so far as to
+say that, even without the claims of genius, a woman ought to be
+permitted to please herself in the matter. When he heard that Madame had
+two children, and yet had not abandoned her ambition, he nodded gravely
+and significantly.
+
+"But Madame has courage," he commented. "She must have braved much
+censure."
+
+It was the first case of the kind that had come under his notice. He
+hoped much from it. His opinion of the sex would depend on Hadria's
+power of persistence. In consequence of numberless pupils who had shewn
+great promise, and then had satisfied themselves with "a stupid
+maternity," Jouffroy was inclined to regard women with contempt, not as
+regards their talent, which he declared was often astonishing, but as
+regards their persistency of character and purpose.
+
+One could not rely on them. They had enthusiasm--Oh, but enthusiasm _a
+faire peur_, but presently "_un monsieur avec des moustaches
+seduisantes_" approaches, and then "_Phui, c'est tout fini!_" There was
+something of fatality in the affair. The instinct was terrible; a
+demoniacal possession. It was for women a veritable curse, a disease. M.
+Jouffroy had pronounced views on the subject. He regarded the maternal
+instinct as the scourge of genius. It was, for women, the devil's
+truncheon, his rod of empire. This "reproductive rage" held them--in
+spite of all their fine intuitions and astonishing ability--after all on
+the animal plane; cut them off from the little band of those who could
+break up new ground in human knowledge, and explore new heights of Art
+and Nature.
+
+"I speak to you thus, Madame, not because I think little of your sex,
+but because I grudge them to the monster who will not spare us even
+one!"
+
+Hadria worked with sufficient energy to please even Jouffroy. Her heart
+was in it, and her progress rapid. Everything was organized, in her
+life, for the one object. At the School of Music, she was in an
+atmosphere of work, everyone being bent on the same goal, each detail
+arranged to further the students in their efforts. It was like walking
+on a pavement after struggling uphill on loose sand; like breathing
+sea-breezes after inhaling a polluted atmosphere.
+
+In old days, Hadria used to be haunted by a singular recurrent
+nightmare: that she was toiling up a steep mountain made of hard
+slippery rock, the summit always receding as she advanced. Behind her
+was a vast precipice down which she must fall if she lost her footing;
+and always, she saw hands without bodies attached to them placing stones
+in the path, so that they rolled down and had to be evaded at the peril
+of her life. And each time, after one set of stones was evaded, and she
+thought there would be a time of respite, another batch was set rolling,
+amid thin, scarcely audible laughter, which came on the storm-wind that
+blew precipice-wards across the mountain; and invariably she awoke just
+as a final avalanche of cruel stones had sent her reeling over the
+hideous verge.
+
+One is disposed to make light of the sufferings gone through in a dream,
+though it would trouble most of us to explain why, since the agony of
+mind is often as extreme as possibly could be endured in actual life.
+From the day of her arrival in Paris, Hadria was never again tormented
+with this nightmare.
+
+Composition went on rapidly now. Soon there was a little pile of new
+work for M. Jouffroy's inspection. He was delighted, criticizing
+severely, but always encouraging to fresh efforts. As for the
+publishing, that was a different matter. In spite of M. Jouffroy's
+recommendation, publishers could not venture on anything of a character
+so unpopular. The music had merit, but it was eccentric. M. Jouffroy was
+angry. He declared that he would play something of Madame's at the next
+Chatelet concert. There would be opposition, but he would carry his
+point. And he did. But the audience received it very coldly. Although
+Hadria had expected such a reception, she felt a chill run through her,
+and a sinking of the heart. It was like a cold word that rebuffs an
+offer of sympathy, or an appeal for it. It sent her back into depths of
+loneliness, and reminded her how cut off she was from the great majority
+of her fellows, after all. And then Guy de Maupassant's dreadful
+"Solitude" came to her memory. There is no way (the hero of the sketch
+asserts) by which a man can break the eternal loneliness to which he is
+foredoomed. He cannot convey to others his real impressions or emotion,
+try as he may. By a series of assertions, hard to deny, the hero arrives
+at a terrible conclusion amounting to this: Art, affection, are in
+vain; we know not what we say, nor whom we love.
+
+Jouffroy came out of the theatre, snorting and ruffled.
+
+"But they are imbeciles, all!"
+
+Hadria thought that perhaps _she_ was the "imbecile"; it was a
+possibility to be counted with, but she dared not say so to the irate
+Jouffroy.
+
+He was particularly angry, because the audience had confirmed his own
+fear that only very slowly would the quality of the music be recognized
+by even the more cultivated public. It had invaded fresh territory, he
+said, added to the range of expression, and was meanwhile a new language
+to casual listeners. It was rebel music, offensive to the orthodox.
+Hubert had always said that "it was out of the question," and he
+appeared to have been right.
+
+"_Bah, ce ne sont que des moutons!_" exclaimed Jouffroy. If the work had
+been poorer, less original, there would not have been this trouble. Was
+there not some other method by which Madame could earn what was
+necessary, _en attendent_?
+
+In one of Professor Fortescue's letters, he had reminded Hadria of his
+eagerness to help her. Yet, what could he do? He had influence in the
+world of science, but Hadria could not produce anything scientific! She
+bethought her of trying to write light descriptive articles, of a kind
+depending not so much on literary skill as on subject and epistolary
+freshness of touch. These she sent to the Professor, not without
+reluctance, knowing how overburdened he already was with work and with
+applications for help and advice. He approved of her idea, and advised
+the articles being sent the round of the magazines and papers.
+
+Through his influence, one of the shorter articles was accepted, and
+Hadria felt encouraged. Her day was now very full. The new art was
+laborious, severely simple in character, though she studiously made her
+articles. Her acquaintances had multiplied very rapidly of late, and
+although this brought into her experience much that was pleasant and
+interesting, the demands of an enlarging circle swallowed an
+astonishing number of hours. An element of trouble had begun to come
+into the life that had been so full of serenity, as well as of regular
+and strenuous work. Hadria was already feeling the effects of anxiety
+and hurry. She had not come with untried powers to the fray. The reserve
+forces had long ago been sapped, in the early struggles, beginning in
+her girlhood and continuing at increasing pressure ever since. There was
+only enough nerve-force to enable one to live from hand to mouth.
+Expenditure of this force having been so often in excess of income,
+economy had become imperative. Yet, economy was difficult. M. Jouffroy
+was always spurring her to work, to throw over everything for this
+object; letters from England incessantly urged a very different course;
+friends in Paris pressed her to visit them, to accompany them hither and
+thither, to join musical parties, to compose little songs (some
+bagatelle in celebration of a birthday or wedding), to drive to the
+further end of the town to play to this person or that who had heard of
+Madame's great talent. Hadria was glad to do anything she could to
+express her gratitude for the kindness she had received on all hands,
+but, alas! there were only a certain number of hours in the day, and
+only a certain number of years in one's life, and art was long.
+Moreover, nerves were awkward things to play with.
+
+Insidiously, treacherously, difficulties crept up. Even here, where she
+seemed so free, the peculiar claims that are made, by common consent, on
+a woman's time and strength began to weave their tiny cords around her.
+She took warning, and put an end to any voluntary increase of her
+circle, but the step had been taken a little too late. The mischief was
+done. To give pain or offence for the sake of an hour or two, more or
+less, seemed cruel and selfish, yet Hadria often longed for the
+privilege that every man enjoys, of quietly pursuing his work without
+giving either.
+
+A disastrous sense of hurry and fatigue began to oppress her. This was
+becoming serious. She must make a stand. Yet her attempts at
+explanation were generally taken as polite excuses for neglecting those
+who had been kind and cordial.
+
+Jouffroy taxed her with looking tired. One must not be tired. One must
+arrange the time so as to secure ample rest and recreation after the
+real work was over. Women were so foolish in that way. They did
+everything feverishly. They imagined themselves to have inexhaustible
+nerves.
+
+Hadria hinted that it was perhaps others who demanded of them what was
+possible only to inexhaustible nerves.
+
+True; towards women, people behaved as idiots. How was it possible to
+produce one's best, if repose were lacking? Serenity was necessary for
+all production.
+
+As well expect water perpetually agitated to freeze, as expect the
+crystals of the mind to produce themselves under the influence of
+incessant disturbance.
+
+Work? Yes. Work never harmed any man or woman. It was harassment that
+killed. Work of the mind, of the artistic powers, that was a tonic to
+the whole being. But little distractions, irregular duties, worries,
+uncertainties--Jouffroy shook his head ominously. And not only to the
+artist were they fatal. It was these that drew such deep lines on the
+faces of women still young. It was these that destroyed ability and
+hope, and killed God only knew how many of His good gifts! Poverty: that
+could be endured with all its difficulties, if that were the one
+anxiety. It was never the _one_ but the multitude of troubles that
+destroyed. Serenity there must be. A man knew that, and insisted on
+having it. Friends were no true friends if they robbed one of it. For
+him, he had a poor opinion of that which people called affection,
+regard. As for _l'amour_, that was the supreme egotism. The affections
+were simply a means to "make oneself paid." Affection! Bah! One did not
+offer it for nothing, _bien sur_! It was through this insufferable
+pretext that one arrived at governing others. "_Comment?_ Your presence
+can give me happiness, and you will not remain always beside me? It is
+nothing to you how I suffer? To me whom you love you refuse this small
+demand?" Jouffroy opened his eyes, with a scornful glare. "It is in
+_that_ fashion, I promise you, that one can rule!"
+
+"Ah, monsieur," said Hadria, "you are a keen observer. How I wish you
+could live a woman's life for a short time. You are wise now, but after
+_that_----"
+
+"Madame, I have sinned in my day, perhaps to merit purgatorial fires;
+but, without false modesty, I do not think that I have justly incurred
+the penalty you propose to me."
+
+Hadria laughed. "It would be a strange piece of poetic justice," she
+said, "if all the men who have sinned beyond forgiveness in this
+incarnation, should be doomed to appear in the next, as well-brought-up
+women."
+
+Jouffroy smiled.
+
+"Fancy some conquering hero reappearing in ringlets and mittens, as
+one's maiden aunt."
+
+Jouffroy grinned. "_Ce serait dur!_"
+
+"_Ah, mon Dieu!_" cried Madame Vauchelet, "if men had to endure in the
+next world that which they have made women suffer in this--that would be
+an atrocious justice!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+
+Stubbornly Hadria sent her packets to the publishers; the publishers as
+firmly returned them. She had two sets flying now, like tennis balls,
+she wrote to Miss Du Prel: one set across the Channel. The publishers,
+she feared, played the best game, but she had the English quality of not
+knowing when she was beaten. Valeria had succeeded in finding a place
+for two of the articles. This was encouraging, but funds were running
+alarmingly low.
+
+The _apartement_ would have either to be given up, or to be taken on for
+another term, at the end of the week. A decision must be made. Hadria
+was dismayed to find her strength beginning to fail. That made the
+thought of the future alarming. With health and vigour nothing seemed
+impossible, but without that----
+
+It seemed absurd that there should be so much difficulty about earning a
+living. Other women had done it. Valeria had always made light of the
+matter--when she had the theory of the sovereignty of the will to
+support.
+
+Another couple of articles which seemed to their creator to possess
+popular qualities were sent off.
+
+But after a weary delay, they shared the fate of their predecessors.
+Hadria now moved into a smaller suite of rooms, parting regretfully with
+Therese, and flinging herself once more on the mercy of a landlady. This
+time M. Thillard had discovered the lodging for her; a shabby, but sunny
+little house, kept by a motherly woman with a reputation for perfect
+honesty. Expenses were thus kept down, but unhappily very little was
+coming in to meet them. It was impossible to pull through the year at
+this rate. But, of course, there was daily hope of something turning up.
+The arrival of the post was always an exciting moment. At last Hadria
+wrote to ask Algitha to try and sell for her a spray of diamonds, worth
+about eighty pounds.
+
+Time must be gained, at all hazards. Algitha tried everywhere, and
+enquired in all directions, but could not get more than five-and-twenty
+pounds for it. She felt anxious about her sister, and thought of coming
+over to Paris to see her, in order to talk over some matters that could
+no longer be kept out of sight.
+
+Algitha had wished to give Hadria an opportunity for work and rest, and
+to avoid recurrence of worry; but it was no longer possible or fair to
+conceal the fact that there were troubles looming ahead, at Dunaghee.
+Their father had suffered several severe losses through some bank
+failures; and now that wretched company in which he had always had such
+faith appeared to be shaky, and if that were also to smash, the state of
+affairs would be desperate. Their father, in his optimistic fashion,
+still believed that the company would pull through. Of course all this
+anxiety was telling seriously on their mother. And, alas! she had been
+fretting very much about Hadria. After Algitha's misdeed, this second
+blow struck hard.
+
+One must act on one's own convictions and not on those of somebody else,
+however beloved that other person might be, but truly the penalty of
+daring to take an independent line of action was almost unbearably
+severe. It really seemed, at times, as if there were nothing for it but
+to fold one's hands and do exactly as one was bid. Algitha was beginning
+to wonder whether her own revolt was about to be expiated by a life-long
+remorse!
+
+"Ah, if mother had only not sacrificed herself for us, how infinitely
+grateful I should feel to her now! What sympathy there might have been
+between us all! If she had but given herself a chance, how she might
+have helped us, and what a friend she might have been to us, and we to
+her! But she would not."
+
+Algitha said that her mother evidently felt Hadria's departure as a
+disgrace to the family. It was pathetic to hear her trying to answer
+people's casual questions about her, so as to conceal the facts without
+telling an untruth. Hadria was overwhelmed by this letter. Her first
+impulse was to pack up and go straight to Dunaghee. But as Algitha was
+there now, this seemed useless, at any rate for the present. And ought
+she after all to abandon her project, for which so much had been risked,
+so much pain inflicted? The question that she and Algitha thought they
+had decided long ago, began to beat again at the door of her conscience
+and her pity. Her reason still asserted that the suffering which people
+entail upon themselves, through a frustrated desire to force their own
+law of conduct on others, must be borne by themselves, as the penalty of
+their own tyrannous instinct and of their own narrow thought. It was
+utterly unfair to thrust that natural penalty of prejudice and of
+self-neglect on to the shoulders of others. Why should they be protected
+from the appointed punishment, by the offering of another life on the
+altar of their prejudice? Why should such a sacrifice be made in order
+to gratify their tyrannical desire to dictate? It was not fair, it was
+not reasonable.
+
+Yet this conclusion of the intellect did not prevent the pain of pity
+and compunction, nor an inconsequent sense of guilt.
+
+Meanwhile it would be best, perhaps, to await Algitha's arrival, when
+affairs might be in a less uncertain state. All decision must be
+postponed till then. "Try and come soon," she wrote to her sister.
+
+To add to the anxieties of the moment, little Martha seemed to lose in
+energy since coming to the new abode, and Hadria began to fear that the
+house was not quite healthy. It was very cheap, and the landlady was
+honest, but if it had this serious drawback, another move, with probably
+another drawback, seemed to threaten. This was particularly troublesome,
+for who could tell how long it would be possible to remain in Paris?
+Hadria thought of the doctrine of the sovereignty of the will, and of
+all the grand and noble things that the Preposterous Society had said
+about it, not to mention Emerson and others--and she smiled.
+
+However, she worked on, putting aside her anxieties, as far as was
+possible. She would not fail for lack of will, at any rate. But it was a
+hard struggle. Martha had to be very carefully watched just now.
+
+Happily, after a few anxious days, she began to recover her fresh colour
+and her high spirits. The move would not be necessary, after all. Hadria
+had become more and more attached to the child, whose lovable qualities
+developed with her growth. She was becoming singularly like her unhappy
+mother, in feature and in colouring. Her eyes were large and blue and
+sweet, with a little touch of pathos in them that Hadria could not bear
+to see. It seemed almost like the after-glow of the mother's suffering.
+
+Although adding to Hadria's anxieties, the child gave a sense of
+freshness and youth to the little _menage_. She made the anxieties
+easier to bear.
+
+Hadria came in, one morning, from her work, tired and full of
+foreboding. Hat and cloak were laid aside, and she sank into an
+arm-chair, lying back to lazily watch the efforts of the child to
+overturn the obstinate blue man, who was still the favourite plaything,
+perhaps because he was less amenable than the rest.
+
+Martha looked up for sympathy. She wished to be helped in her persistent
+efforts to get the better of this upstart blue man with the red cap, who
+serenely resumed his erect position just as often as he was forced to
+the ground. He was a stout, healthy-looking person, inclining to
+_embonpoint_; bound to succeed, if only from sheer solidity of person.
+Hadria was drawn into the game, and the two spent a good half hour on
+the rug together, playing with that and other toys which Martha toddled
+off to the cupboard to collect. The child was in great delight. Hadria
+was playing with her; she liked that better than having Jean Paul
+Auguste to play with. He took her toys away and always wanted to play a
+different game.
+
+The clock struck two. Hadria felt that she ought to go and see Madame
+Vauchelet; it was more than a week since she had called, and the kind
+old friend was always gently pained at an absence of that length.
+
+Then there was an article to finish, and she ought really to write to
+Dunaghee and Henriette and--well the rest must wait. Several other calls
+were also more than due, but it was useless even to consider those
+to-day. In spite of an oppressive sense of having much to do--perhaps
+_because_ of it--Hadria felt as if it were a sheer impossibility to rise
+from that hearthrug. Besides, Martha would not hear of it. A desire to
+rest, to idle, to float down the stream, instead of trying always to
+swim against it, became overpowering. The minutes passed away.
+
+"The question is, Martha," Hadria said gravely, as she proceeded to pile
+up a towering edifice of bricks, at the child's command, "the question
+is: Are we going to stick to our plan, or are we going to be beaten? Oh,
+take care, don't pull down the fairy palace! That is a bad trick that
+little fingers have. No, no, I must have my fairy palace; I won't have
+it pulled down. It is getting so fine, too; minarets and towers, and
+domes and pinnacles, all mixed beautifully. Such an architecture as you
+never saw! But some day perhaps you will see it. Those blue eyes look as
+if they were made for seeing it, in the time to come."
+
+"Pretty eyes!" said Martha with frank vanity, and then: "Pretty house!"
+
+"It is indeed a pretty house; they all are. But they are so horribly
+shaky. The minarets are top-heavy, I fear. That's the fault of the
+makers of these bricks. They ought to make the solid ones in proper
+proportion. But they can't be persuaded."
+
+"Knock it down," said Martha, thrusting forth a mischievous hand, which
+was caught in time to prevent entire destruction of the precious
+edifice. Half the minarets had fallen.
+
+"They must go up again," said Hadria. "How cruel to spoil all the work
+and all the beauty." But Martha laughed with the delight of easy
+conquest.
+
+She watched with great interest the reconstruction, and seemed anxious
+that every detail should be finished and worthy her iconoclasm. Having
+satisfied herself that her strength would not be wasted on an incomplete
+object, she made a second attempt to lay the palace low. Again she was
+frustrated. The building had soared, by this time, to an ambitious
+height, and its splendour had reached the limits of the materials at
+command. The final pinnacle which was required to cope the structure had
+been mislaid. Hadria was searching for it, when Martha, seizing her
+chance, struck the palace a blow in its very heart, and in an instant,
+the whole was a wreck.
+
+"Oh, if that is to be the way of it, why should I build?" asked Hadria.
+
+Martha gave the command for another ornamental object which she might
+destroy.
+
+"One would suppose you were a County-Council," Hadria exclaimed, "or the
+practical man. No, you shall have no more beauty to annihilate, little
+Vandal."
+
+Martha, however, was now engaged in dissecting a doll, and presently a
+stream of sawdust from its chest announced that she had accomplished her
+dearest desire. She had found out what was inside that human effigy.
+
+"I wish I could get at the sawdust that _I_ am stuffed with," Hadria
+thought dreamily, as she watched the doll grow flabbier. "It is
+wonderful how little one does know one's own sawdust. It would be
+convenient to feel a little surer just now, for evidently I shall need
+it all very soon. And I feel somewhat like that doll, with the stream
+pouring out and the body getting limp."
+
+She rose at last, and went to the window. The radiance of sun and green
+trees and the stir of human life; the rumble of omnibuses and the sound
+of wheels; the suggestion to the imagination of the river just a little
+way off, and the merry little _bateaux-mouches_--it was too much. Hadria
+rang for Hannah; asked her to take the child for a walk in the Bois,
+stooped down to kiss the little upturned face, and went off.
+
+In another ten minutes she was on board one of the steamboats, on her
+way up the river.
+
+She had no idea whither she was going; she would leave that to chance.
+She only desired to feel the air and the sun and have an opportunity to
+think. She soothed her uneasiness at the thought of Madame Vauchelet's
+disappointment by promising herself to call to-morrow. She sat watching
+the boats and the water and the gay banks of the river with a sense of
+relief, and a curious sort of fatalism, partly suggested perhaps, by the
+persistent movement of the boat, and the interminable succession of new
+scenes, all bubbling with human life, full of the traces of past events.
+One layer of consciousness was busily engaged in thinking out the
+practical considerations of the moment, another was equally busy with
+the objective and picturesque world of the river side. If the two or
+more threads of thought were not actually followed at the same instant,
+the alternation was so rapid as not to be perceived. What was to be
+done? How was the situation to be met, if the worst came to the worst?
+Ah! what far harder contests had gone on in these dwellings that one
+passed by the hundred. What lives of sordid toil had been struggled
+through, in the effort to earn the privilege of continuing to toil!
+
+Hadria was inspired by keen curiosity concerning these homes and
+gardens, and the whole panorama that opened before her, as the little
+steamer puffed up the river. She longed to penetrate below the surface
+and decipher the strange palimpsest of human life. What scenes, what
+tragedies, what comedies, those bright houses and demure little villas
+concealed. It was not exactly consoling to remember how small her own
+immediate difficulties were in comparison to those of others, but it
+seemed to help her to face them. She would not be discouraged. She had
+her liberty, and that had to be paid for. Surely patience would prevail
+in the end. She had learnt so much since she left home; among other
+things, the habit of facing practical difficulties without that dismay
+which carefully-nurtured women inevitably feel on their first movement
+out of shelter. Yes, she had learnt much, surprisingly much, in the
+short time. Her new knowledge contained perhaps rather dangerous
+elements, for she had begun to realize her own power, not only as an
+artist, but as a woman. In this direction, had she so chosen.... Her
+thoughts were arrested at this point, with a wrench. She felt the
+temptation assail her, as of late it had been assailing her faintly, to
+explore this territory.
+
+But no, that was preposterous.
+
+It was certainly not that she regarded herself as accountable, in this
+matter, to any one but herself; it was not that she acknowledged the
+suzerainty of her husband. A mere legal claim meant nothing to her, and
+he knew it. But there were moral perils of no light kind to be guarded
+against; the danger such as a gambler runs, of being drawn away from the
+real objects of life, of losing hold of one's main purpose, to say
+nothing of the probable moral degeneration that would result from such
+experiment. Yet there was no blinking the fact that the desire had been
+growing in Hadria to test her powers of attraction to the utmost, so as
+to discover exactly their range and calibre. She felt rather as a boy
+might feel who had come upon a cask of gunpowder, and longed to set a
+match to it, just to see exactly how high it would blow off the roof.
+She had kept the growing instincts at bay, being determined that nothing
+avoidable should come between her and her purpose. And then--well
+considering in what light most men, in their hearts, regarded women--if
+one might judge from their laws and their conduct and their literature,
+and the society that they had organized--admiration from this sex was a
+thing scarcely to be endured. Yet superficially, it was gratifying.
+
+Why it should be so, was difficult to say, since it scarcely imposed
+upon one's very vanity. Yet it was easy enough to understand how women
+who had no very dominant interest in life, might come to have a thirst
+for masculine homage and for power over men till it became like the
+gambler's passion for play; and surely it had something in it of the
+same character.
+
+The steamer was stopping now at St. Cloud. Yielding to an impulse,
+Hadria alighted at the landing-stage and walked on through the little
+town towards the palace.
+
+The sun was deliciously hot; its rays struck through to the skin, and
+seemed to pour in life and well-being. The wayfarer stood looking up the
+steep green avenue, resting for a moment, before she began the ascent.
+At the top of the hill she paused again to look out over Paris, which
+lay spread far and wide beneath her, glittering and brilliant; the
+Eiffel Tower rising above domes and spires, in solitary inconsequence.
+It seemed to her as if she were looking upon the world and upon life,
+for the last time. A few weeks hence, would she be able to stand there
+and see the gay city at her feet? She plunged back along one of the
+converging avenues, yielding to the fascination of green alleys leading
+one knows not whither. Wandering on for some time, she finally drifted
+down hill again, towards the stately little garden near the palace. She
+was surprised by a hurrying step behind her, and Jouffroy's voice in her
+ear. She was about to greet him in her usual fashion, when he stopped
+her by plunging head foremost into a startling tirade--about her art,
+and her country, and her genius, and his despair; and finally his
+resolve that she should not belong to the accursed list of women who
+gave up their art for "_la famille_."
+
+The more Hadria tried to discover what had happened and what he meant,
+the faster he spoke and the more wildly he gesticulated.
+
+He had seen how she was drifting away from her work and becoming
+entangled in little affairs of no importance, and he would not permit
+it. He cared not what her circumstances might be; she had a great talent
+that she had no right to sacrifice to any circumstances whatever. He
+had come to save her. Not finding her at her _apartement_, he had
+concluded that she had taken refuge at her beloved St. Cloud. _Mon
+Dieu!_ was he to allow her to be taken away from her work, dragged back
+to a narrow circle, crushed, broken, ruined--she who could give such a
+sublime gift to her century--but it was impossible! It would tear his
+heart. He would not permit it; she must promise him not to allow herself
+to be persuaded to abandon her purpose, no matter on what pretext they
+tried to lure her. Hadria, in vain, enquired the cause of this sudden
+excitement. Jouffroy only repeated his exhortations. Why did she not cut
+herself entirely adrift from her country, her ties?
+
+"They are to you, Madame, an oppression, a weariness, a----"
+
+"M. Jouffroy, I have never spoken to you about these things. I cannot
+see how you are in a position to judge."
+
+"Ah, but I know. Have I not heard _cette chere Madame Bertaux_ describe
+the life of an English village? And have I not seen----?"
+
+"Seen what?"
+
+"_Cette dame._ I have seen her at your apartment this afternoon. Do not
+annihilate me, Madame; I mean not to offend you. The lady has come from
+England on purpose to entrap you; she came last night, and she stays at
+the Hotel du Louvre. She spoke to me of you." Jouffroy raised his hands
+to heaven. "Ha! then I understood, and I fled hither to save you."
+
+"Tell me, tell me quickly, Monsieur, has she fair hair and large grey
+eyes. Is she tall?"
+
+No, the lady was small, with dark hair, and brown, clever eyes.
+
+"A lady, elegant, well-dressed, but, ah! a woman to destroy the soul of
+an artist merely by her presence. I told her that you had decided to
+remain in France, to adopt it as your country, for it was the country of
+your soul!"
+
+"Good heavens!" exclaimed Hadria, unable to repress a little burst of
+laughter, in spite of her disappointment and foreboding.
+
+"I told her that your friends would not let you go back to England, to
+the land of fogs, the land of the _bourgeois_. The lady seemed
+astonished, even indignant," continued Jouffroy, waving his hands
+excitedly, "and she endeavoured to make me silent, but she did not have
+success, I promise you. I appealed to her. I pointed out to her your
+unique power. I reminded her that such power is a gift supreme to the
+world, which the world must not lose. For the making of little ones and
+the care of the _menage_, there were other women, but you--you were a
+priestess in the temple of art, you were without prejudice, without the
+_bourgeois_ conscience, _grace au ciel!_ you had the religion of the
+artist, and your worship was paid at the shrine of Apollo. _Enfin_, I
+counselled this elegant lady to return to England and to leave you in
+peace. Always with a perfect politeness," added Jouffroy, panting from
+excess of emotion. Hadria tried in vain to gather the object of this
+sudden visit on the part of Henriette (for Henriette the elegant lady
+must certainly be).
+
+"I must return at once," she said. "I fear something must have gone
+wrong at home." Jouffroy danced with fury.
+
+"But I tell you, Madame, that she will drag you back to your fogs; she
+will tell you some foolish story, she will address herself to your pity.
+Your family has doubtless become ill. Families have that habit when they
+desire to achieve something. Bah, it is easy to become ill when one is
+angry, and so to make oneself pitied and obeyed. It is a common usage.
+Madame, beware; it is for you the critical moment. One must choose."
+
+"It is not always a matter of choice, M. Jouffroy."
+
+"Always," he insisted. He endeavoured to induce her to linger, to make a
+decision on the spot. But Hadria hastened on towards the river. Jouffroy
+followed in despair. He ceased not to urge upon her the peril of the
+moment and the need for resolute action. He promised to help her by
+every means in his power, to watch over her career, to assist her in
+bringing her gift to maturity. Never before had he felt a faith so
+profound, or an interest so fervid in the genius of any woman. One had,
+after all, regarded them ("les femmes") as accomplished animals.
+
+"But of whom one demands the duties of human beings and the courage of
+heroes," added Hadria.
+
+"_Justement_," cried Jouffroy. But Madame had taught him a superb truth.
+For her, he felt a sentiment of admiration and reverence the most
+profound. She had been to him a revelation. He entreated her to bestow
+upon him the privilege of watching over her career. Let her only make
+the wise decision now, everything would arrange itself. It needed only
+courage.
+
+"This is the moment for decision. Remain now among us, and pursue your
+studies with a calm mind, and I promise you--I, Jouffroy, who have the
+right to speak on this matter--I promise you shall have a success beyond
+the wildest dreams of your ambition. Madame, you do not guess your own
+power. I know how your genius can be saved to the world; I know the
+artist's nature. Have I not had the experience of twenty years? I know
+what feeds and rouses it, and I know what kills it. And this I tell you,
+Madame, that if you stay here, you have a stupendous future before you;
+if you return to your fogs and your tea-parties--ah, then, Madame, your
+genius will die and your heart will be broken."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+
+It was with great reluctance that Jouffroy acceded to Hadria's wish to
+return home alone. She watched the river banks, and the boats coming and
+passing, with a look of farewell in her eyes. She meant to hold out to
+the utmost limits of the possible, but she knew that the possible _had_
+limits, and she awaited judgment at the bar of destiny.
+
+She hurried home on arriving at the quay, and found Henriette waiting
+for her.
+
+"What is it? Tell me at once, if anything is wrong."
+
+"Then you knew I was here!" exclaimed Miss Temperley.
+
+"Yes; M. Jouffroy told me. He found me at St. Cloud. Quick, Henriette,
+don't keep me in suspense."
+
+"There is nothing of immediate seriousness," Henriette replied, and her
+sister-in-law drew a breath of relief. Tea was brought in by Hannah, and
+a few questions were asked and answered. Miss Temperley having been
+installed in an easy chair, and her cloak and hat removed, said that her
+stay in Paris was uncertain as to length. It would depend on many
+things. Hadria rang for the tray to be taken away, after tea was over,
+and as Hannah closed the door, a sensation of sick apprehension overcame
+her, for a moment. Henriette had obviously come to Paris in order to
+recapture the fugitive, and meant to employ all her tact in the delicate
+mission. She was devoted to Hubert and the children, heart and soul, and
+would face anything on their behalf, including the present disagreeable
+task. Hadria looked at her sister-in-law with admiration. She offered
+homage to the prowess of the enemy.
+
+Miss Temperley held a commanding position, fortified by ideas and
+customs centuries old, and supported by allies on every side.
+
+It ran through Hadria's mind that it was possible to refuse to allow the
+subject to be broached, and thus escape the encounter altogether. It
+would save many words on both sides. But Henriette had always been in
+Hubert's confidence, and it occurred to Hadria that it might be well to
+define her own position once more, since it was thus about to be
+directly and frankly attacked. Moreover, Hadria began to be fired with
+the spirit of battle. It was not merely for herself, but on behalf of
+her sex, that she longed to repudiate the insult that seemed to her, to
+be involved in Henriette's whole philosophy.
+
+However, if the enemy shewed no signs of hostility, Hadria resolved that
+she also would keep the truce.
+
+Miss Temperley had already mentioned that Mrs. Fullerton was now staying
+at the Red House, for change of air. She had been far from well, and of
+course was worrying very much over these money troubles and perils
+ahead, as well as about Hadria's present action. Mrs. Fullerton had
+herself suggested that Henriette should go over to Paris to see what
+could be done to patch up the quarrel.
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed Hadria, and a cloud settled on her brow. Henriette had
+indeed come armed _cap a pie!_
+
+There was a significant pause. "And your mission," said Hadria at
+length, "is to recapture the lost bird."
+
+"We are considering your own good," murmured Miss Temperley.
+
+"If I have not always done what I ought to have done in my life, it is
+not for want of guidance and advice from others," said Hadria with a
+smile and a sigh.
+
+"You are giving everyone so much pain, Hadria. Do you never think of
+that?"
+
+There was another long pause. The two women sat opposite one another.
+Miss Temperley's eyes were bent on the carpet; Hadria's on a patch of
+blue sky that could be seen through a side street, opposite.
+
+"If you would use your ability on behalf of your sex instead of against
+it, Henriette, women would have cause to bless you, for all time!"
+
+"Ah! if you did but know it, I _am_ using what ability I have on their
+behalf," Miss Temperley replied. "I am trying to keep them true to their
+noble mission. But I did not come to discuss general questions. I came
+to appeal to your best self, Hadria."
+
+"I am ready," said Hadria. "Only, before you start, I want you to
+remember clearly what took place at Dunaghee before my marriage; for I
+foresee that our disagreement will chiefly hang upon your lapse of
+memory on that point, and upon my perhaps inconveniently distinct
+recollection of those events."
+
+"I wish to lay before you certain facts and certain results of your
+present conduct," said Henriette.
+
+"Very good. I wish to lay before you certain facts and certain results
+of your past conduct."
+
+"Ah! do not let us wrangle, Hadria."
+
+"I don't wish to wrangle, but I must keep hold of these threads that you
+seem always to drop. And then there is another point: when I talked of
+leaving home, it was not _I_ who suggested that it should be for ever."
+
+"I know, I know," cried Henriette hastily. "I have again and again
+pointed out to Hubert how wrong he was in that, and how he gave you a
+pretext for what you have done. I admit it and regret it deeply. Hubert
+lost his temper; that is the fact of the matter. He thought himself
+bitterly wronged by you."
+
+"Quite so; he felt it a bitter wrong that I should claim that liberty of
+action which I warned him before our marriage that I _should_ claim. He
+made no objection _then_: on the contrary, he professed to agree with
+me; and declared that he did not care what I might think; but now he
+says that in acting as I have acted, I have forfeited my position, and
+need not return to the Red House."
+
+"I know. But he spoke in great haste and anger. He has made me his
+_confidante_."
+
+"And his ambassador?"
+
+Henriette shook her head. No; she had acted entirely on her own
+responsibility. She could not bear to see her brother suffering. He had
+felt the quarrel deeply.
+
+"On account of the stupid talk," said Hadria. "_That_ will soon blow
+over."
+
+"On account of the talk partly. You know his sensitiveness about
+anything that concerns his domestic life. He acutely feels your leaving
+the children, Hadria. Try to put yourself in his place. Would _you_ not
+feel it?"
+
+"If I were a man with two children of whom I was extremely fond, I have
+no doubt that I should feel it very much indeed if I lost an intelligent
+and trustworthy superintendent, whose services assured the children's
+welfare, and relieved me of all anxiety on their account."
+
+"If you are going to take this hard tone, Hadria, I fear you will never
+listen to reason."
+
+"Henriette, when people look popular sentiments squarely in the face,
+they are always called hard, or worse. You have kept yourself thoroughly
+informed of our affairs. Whose parental sentiments were gratified by the
+advent of those children--Hubert's or mine?"
+
+"But you are a mother."
+
+Hadria laughed. "You play into my hands, Henriette. You tacitly
+acknowledge that it was not for _my_ gratification that those children
+were brought into the world (a common story, let me observe), and then
+you remind me that I am a mother! Your mentor must indeed be slumbering.
+You are simply scathing--on my behalf! Have you come all the way from
+England for this?"
+
+"You _won't_ understand. I mean that motherhood has duties. You can't
+deny that."
+
+"I can and I do."
+
+Miss Temperley stared. "You will find no human being to agree with you,"
+she said at length.
+
+"That does not alter my opinion."
+
+"Oh, Hadria, explain yourself! You utter paradoxes. I want to understand
+your point of view."
+
+"It is simple enough. I deny that motherhood has duties except when it
+is absolutely free, absolutely uninfluenced by the pressure of opinion,
+or by any of the innumerable tyrannies that most children have now to
+thank for their existence."
+
+Miss Temperley shook her head. "I don't see that any 'tyranny,' as you
+call it, exonerates a mother from her duty to her child."
+
+"There we differ. Motherhood, in our present social state, is the sign
+and seal as well as the means and method of a woman's bondage. It forges
+chains of her own flesh and blood; it weaves cords of her own love and
+instinct. She agonizes, and the fruit of her agony is not even legally
+hers. Name me a position more abject! A woman with a child in her arms
+is, to me, the symbol of an abasement, an indignity, more complete, more
+disfiguring and terrible, than any form of humiliation that the world
+has ever seen."
+
+"You must be mad!" exclaimed Miss Temperley. "That symbol has stood to
+the world for all that is sweetest and holiest."
+
+"I know it has! So profound has been our humiliation!"
+
+"I don't know what to say to anyone so wrong-headed and so twisted in
+sentiment."
+
+Hadria smiled thoughtfully.
+
+"While I am about it, I may as well finish this disclosure of feeling,
+which, again I warn you, is _not_ peculiar to myself, however you may
+lay that flattering unction to your soul. I have seen and heard of many
+a saddening evidence of our sex's slavery since I came to this terrible
+and wonderful city: the crude, obvious buying and selling that we all
+shudder at; but hideous as it is, to me it is far less awful than this
+other respectable form of degradation that everyone glows and smirks
+over."
+
+Miss Temperley clasped her hands in despair.
+
+"I simply can't understand you. What you say is rank heresy against all
+that is most beautiful in human nature."
+
+"Surely the rank heresy is to be laid at the door of those who degrade
+and enslave that which they assert to be most beautiful in human nature.
+But I am not speaking to convince; merely to shew where you cannot count
+upon me for a point of attack. Try something else."
+
+"But it is so strange, so insane, as it seems to me. Do you mean to
+throw contempt on motherhood _per se_?"
+
+"I am not discussing motherhood _per se_; no woman has yet been in a
+position to know what it is _per se_, strange as it may appear. No woman
+has yet experienced it apart from the enormous pressure of law and
+opinion that has, always, formed part of its inevitable conditions. The
+illegal mother is hounded by her fellows in one direction; the legal
+mother is urged and incited in another: free motherhood is unknown
+amongst us. I speak of it as it is. To speak of it _per se_, for the
+present, is to discuss the transcendental."
+
+There was a moment's excited pause, and Hadria then went on more
+rapidly. "You know well enough, Henriette, what thousands of women there
+are to whom the birth of their children is an intolerable burden, and a
+fierce misery from which many would gladly seek escape by death. And
+indeed many _do_ seek escape by death. What is the use of this eternal
+conspiracy of silence about that which every woman out of her teens
+knows as well as she knows her own name?"
+
+But Henriette preferred to ignore that side of her experience. She
+murmured something about the maternal instinct, and its potency.
+
+"I don't deny the potency of the instinct," said Hadria, "but I do say
+that it is shamefully presumed upon. Strong it obviously must be, if
+industrious cultivation and encouragements and threats and exhortations
+can make it so! All the Past as well as all the weight of opinion and
+training in the Present has been at work on it, thrusting and alluring
+and coercing the woman to her man-allotted fate."
+
+"_Nature_-allotted, if you please," said Henriette. "There is no need
+for alluring or coercing."
+
+"Why do it then? Now, be frank, Henriette, and try not to be offended.
+Would _you_ feel no sense of indignity in performing a function of this
+sort (however noble and so on you might think it _per se_), if you knew
+that it would be demanded of you as a duty, if you did not welcome it as
+a joy?"
+
+"I should acknowledge it as a duty, if I did not welcome it as a joy."
+
+"In other words, you would accept the position of a slave."
+
+"How so?"
+
+"By bartering your womanhood, by using these powers of body, in return
+for food and shelter and social favour, or for the sake of so-called
+'duty' irrespective of--perhaps in direct opposition to your feelings.
+How then do you differ from the slave woman who produces a progeny of
+young slaves, to be disposed of as shall seem good to her perhaps
+indulgent master? I see no essential difference."
+
+"I see the difference between honour and ignominy," said Henriette.
+Hadria shook her head, sadly.
+
+"The differences are all in detail and in circumstance. I am sorry if I
+offend your taste. The facts are offensive. The bewildering thing is
+that the facts themselves never seem to offend you; only the mention of
+them."
+
+"It would take too long to go into this subject," said Henriette. "I can
+only repeat that I fail to understand your extraordinary views of the
+holiest of human instincts."
+
+"_That_ catch-word! And you use it rashly, Henriette, for do you not
+know that the deepest of all degradation comes of misusing that which is
+most holy?"
+
+"A woman who does her duty is not to be accused of misusing anything,"
+cried Miss Temperley hotly.
+
+"Is there then no sin, no misuse of power in sending into the world
+swarms of fortuitous, poverty-stricken human souls, as those souls must
+be who are born in bondage, with the blended instincts of the slave and
+the master for a proud inheritance? It sounds awful I know, but truth is
+apt to sound awful. Motherhood, as our wisdom has appointed it, among
+civilized people, represents a prostitution of the reproductive powers,
+which precisely corresponds to that other abuse, which seems to most of
+us so infinitely more shocking."
+
+Miss Temperley preferred not to reply to such a remark, and the entrance
+of little Martha relieved the tension of the moment. Henriette, though
+she bore the child a grudge, could not resist her when she came forward
+and put up her face to be kissed.
+
+"She is really growing very pretty," said Henriette, in a tone which
+betrayed the agitation which she had been struggling to hide.
+
+Martha ran for her doll and her blue man, and was soon busy at play, in
+a corner of the room, building Eiffel Towers out of stone bricks, and
+knocking them down again.
+
+"I don't yet quite understand, Henriette, your object in coming to
+Paris." Hadria's voice had grown calmer.
+
+"I came to make an appeal to your sense of duty and your generosity."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"I came," Henriette went on, bracing herself as if for a great effort,
+"to remind you that when you married, you entered into a contract which
+you now repudiate."
+
+Hadria started up, reddening with anger.
+
+"I did no such thing, and you know it, Henriette. How do you _dare_ to
+sit there and tell me that?"
+
+"I tell you nothing but the truth. Every woman who marries enters, by
+that fact, into a contract."
+
+Miss Temperley had evidently regarded this as a strong card and played
+it hopefully.
+
+Hadria was trembling with anger. She steadied her voice. "Then you
+actually intended to _entrap_ me into this so-called contract, by
+leading me to suppose that it would mean nothing more between Hubert and
+myself than an unavoidable formality! You tell me this to my face, and
+don't appear to see that you are confessing an act of deliberate
+treachery."
+
+"Nonsense," cried Henriette. "There was nothing that any sane person
+would have objected to, in our conduct."
+
+Hadria stood looking down scornfully on her sister-in-law. She shrugged
+her shoulders, as if in bewilderment.
+
+"And yet you would have felt yourselves stained with dishonour for the
+rest of your lives had you procured anything _else_ on false pretences!
+But a woman--that is a different affair. The code of honour does not
+here apply, it would seem. _Any_ fraud may be honourably practised on
+_her_, and wild is the surprise and indignation if she objects when she
+finds it out."
+
+"You are perfectly mad," cried Henriette, tapping angrily with her
+fingers on the arm of her chair.
+
+"What I say is true, whether I be mad or sane. What you call the
+'contract' is simply a cunning contrivance for making a woman and her
+possible children the legal property of a man, and for enlisting her own
+honour and conscience to safeguard the disgraceful transaction."
+
+"Ah," said Henriette, on the watch for her opportunity, "then you admit
+that her honour and conscience _are_ enlisted?"
+
+"Certainly, in the case of most women. That enlistment is a masterpiece
+of policy. To make a prisoner his own warder is surely no light stroke
+of genius. But that is exactly what I refused to be from the first, and
+no one could have spoken more plainly. And now you are shocked and
+pained and aggrieved because I won't eat my words. Yet we have talked
+over all this, in my room at Dunaghee, by the hour. Oh! Henriette, why
+did you not listen to your conscience and be honest with me?"
+
+"Hadria, you insult me."
+
+"Why could not Hubert choose one among the hundreds and thousands of
+women who would have passed under the yoke without a question, and have
+gladly harnessed herself to his chariot by the reins of her own
+conscience?"
+
+"I would to heaven he _had_!" Henriette was goaded into replying.
+
+Hadria laughed. Then her brow clouded with pain. "Ah, why did he not
+meet my frankness with an equal frankness, at the time? All this trouble
+would have been saved us both if _only_ he had been honest."
+
+"My dear, he was in love with you."
+
+"And so he thought himself justified in deceiving me. There is _indeed_
+war to the knife between the sexes!" Hadria stood with her elbows on
+the back of a high arm-chair, her chin resting on her hands.
+
+"It is not fair to use that word. I tell you that we both confidently
+expected that when you had more experience you would be like other women
+and adjust yourself sensibly to your conditions."
+
+"I see," said Hadria, "and so it was decided that Hubert was to pretend
+to have no objections to my wild ideas, so as to obtain my consent,
+trusting to the ponderous bulk of circumstance to hold me flat and
+subservient when I no longer had a remedy in my power. You neither of
+you lack brains, at any rate." Henriette clenched her hands in the
+effort of self-control.
+
+"In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, our forecasts would have come
+true," she said. "I mean----"
+
+"That is refreshingly frank," cried Hadria.
+
+"We thought we acted for the best."
+
+"Oh, if it comes to that, the Spanish Inquisitors doubtless thought that
+they were acting for the best, when they made bonfires of heretics in
+the market-places." Henriette bent her head and clasped the arms of the
+chair, tightly.
+
+"Well, if there be any one at fault in the matter, _I_ am the culprit,"
+she said in a voice that trembled. "It was _I_ who assured Hubert that
+experience would alter you. It was I who represented to him that though
+you might be impulsive, even hard at times, you could not persist in a
+course that would give pain, and that if you saw that any act of yours
+caused him to suffer, you would give it up. I was convinced that your
+character was good and noble _au fond_, Hadria, and I have believed it
+up to this moment."
+
+Hadria drew herself together with a start, and her face darkened. "You
+make me regret that I ever had a good or a pitiful impulse!" she cried
+with passion.
+
+She went to the window and stood leaning against the casement, with
+crossed arms.
+
+Henriette turned round in her chair.
+
+"Why do you always resist your better nature, Hadria?"
+
+"You use it against me. It is the same with all women. Let them beware
+of their 'better natures,' poor hunted fools! for that 'better nature'
+will be used as a dog-chain, by which they can be led, like
+toy-terriers, from beginning to end of what they are pleased to call
+their lives!"
+
+"Oh, Hadria, Hadria!" cried Miss Temperley with deep regret in her tone.
+
+But Hadria was only roused by the remonstrance.
+
+"It is cunning, shallow, heartless women, who really fare best in our
+society; its conditions suit them. _They_ have no pity, no sympathy to
+make a chain of; _they_ don't mind stooping to conquer; _they_ don't
+mind playing upon the weaker, baser sides of men's natures; _they_ don't
+mind appealing, for their own ends, to the pity and generosity of
+others; _they_ don't mind swallowing indignity and smiling abjectly,
+like any woman of the harem at her lord, so that they gain their object.
+_That_ is the sort of 'woman's nature' that our conditions are busy
+selecting. Let us cultivate it. We live in a scientific age; the fittest
+survive. Let us be 'fit.'"
+
+"Let us be womanly, let us do our duty, let us hearken to our
+conscience!" cried Henriette.
+
+"Thank you! If my conscience is going to be made into a helm by which
+others may guide me according to their good pleasure, the sooner that
+helm is destroyed the better. That is the conclusion to which you drive
+me and the rest of us, Henriette."
+
+"Charity demands that I do not believe what you say," said Miss
+Temperley.
+
+"Oh, don't trouble to be charitable!"
+
+Henriette heaved a deep sigh. "Hadria," she said, "are you going to
+allow your petty rancour about this--well, I will call it error of ours,
+if you like to be severe--are you going to bear malice and ruin your own
+life and Hubert's and the children's? Are you so unforgiving, so lacking
+in generosity?"
+
+"_You_ call it an error. _I_ call it a treachery," returned Hadria. "Why
+should the results of that treachery be thrust on to _my_ shoulders to
+bear? Why should _my_ generosity be summoned to your rescue? But I
+suppose you calculated on that sub-consciously, at the time."
+
+"_Hadria!_"
+
+"This is a moment for plain speaking, if ever there was one. You must
+have reckoned on an appeal to my generosity, and on the utter
+helplessness of my position when once I was safely entrapped. It was
+extremely clever and well thought out. Do you suppose that you would
+have dared to act as you did, if there had been means of redress in my
+hands, after marriage?"
+
+"If I _did_ rely on your generosity, I admit my mistake," said Henriette
+bitterly.
+
+"And now when your deed brings its natural harvest of disaster, you and
+Hubert come howling, like frightened children, to have the mischief set
+straight again, the consequences of your treachery averted, by _me_, of
+all people on this earth!"
+
+"You are his wife, the mother of his children."
+
+"In heaven's name, Henriette, why do you always run into my very jaws?"
+
+"I don't know what you mean."
+
+"Why do you catalogue my injuries when your point is to deny them?"
+
+Henriette rose with a vivid flush.
+
+"Hadria, Hubert is one of the best men in England. I----"
+
+"When have I disputed that?"
+
+Hadria advanced towards Miss Temperley, and stood looking her full in
+the face.
+
+"I believe that Hubert has acted conscientiously, according to his
+standard. But I detest his standard. He did not think it wrong or
+treacherous to behave as he did towards me. But it is _that very fact_
+that I so bitterly resent. I could have forgiven him a sin against
+myself alone, which he acknowledged to be a sin. But this is a sin
+against my entire sex, which he does _not_ acknowledge to be a sin. It
+is the insolence that is implied in supposing it allowable for a man to
+trick a woman in that way, without the smallest damage to his
+self-respect, that sticks so in my throat. What does it imply as regards
+his attitude towards all women? Ah! it is _that_ which makes me feel so
+rancorous. And I resent Hubert's calm assumption that he had a right to
+judge what was best for me, and even to force me, by fraud, into
+following his view, leaving me afterwards to adjust myself with
+circumstance as best I might: to make my bitter choice between
+unconditional surrender, and the infliction of pain and distress, on
+him, on my parents, on everybody. Ah, you calculated cunningly,
+Henriette! I _am_ a coward about giving pain, little as you may now be
+disposed to credit it. You have tight hold of the end of my chain."
+
+Hadria was pacing restlessly up and down the room. Little Martha ran out
+with her doll, and offered it, as if with a view to chase away the
+perturbed look from Hadria's face. The latter stooped mechanically and
+took the doll, smiling her thanks, and stroking the child's fair curls
+tenderly. Then she recommenced her walk up and down the room, carrying
+the doll carefully on her arm.
+
+"Take care of dolly," Martha recommended, and went back to her other
+toys.
+
+"Yes, Henriette, you and Hubert have made your calculations cleverly.
+You have advocates only too eloquent in my woman's temperament. You have
+succeeded only too well by your fraud, through which I now stand here,
+with a life in fragments, bound, chafe as I may, to choose between
+alternative disasters for myself and for all of us. Had you two only
+acted straightly with me, and kindly allowed me to judge for myself,
+instead of treacherously insisting on judging for me, this knot of your
+tying which you naively bring me to unravel, would never have wrung the
+life out of me as it is doing now--nor would it have caused you and
+Hubert so much virtuous distress."
+
+Hadria recommenced her restless pacing to and fro.
+
+"But, Hadria, _do_ be calm, _do_ look at the matter from our point of
+view. I have owned my indiscretion." (Hadria gave a little scornful
+cry.) "Surely you are not going to throw over all allegiance to your
+husband on _that_ account, even granting he was to blame." Hadria
+stopped abruptly.
+
+"I deny that I owe allegiance to a man who so treated me. I don't deny
+that he had excuses. The common standards exonerate him; but, good
+heavens, a sense of humour, if nothing else, ought to save him from
+making this grotesque claim on his victim! To preach the duties of wife
+and mother to _me!_" Hadria broke into a laugh. "It is inconceivably
+comic."
+
+Henriette shrugged her shoulders. "I fear my sense of humour is
+defective. I can't see the justice of repudiating the duty of one's
+position, since there the position _is_, an accomplished fact not to be
+denied. Why not make the best of it?"
+
+"Henriette, you are amazing! Supposing a wicked bigamist had persuaded a
+woman to go through a false marriage ceremony, and when she became aware
+of her real position, imagine him saying to her, with grave and virtuous
+mien, 'My dear, why repudiate the duties of your position, since there
+your position _is_, an accomplished fact not to be denied?'"
+
+"Oh, that's preposterous," cried Henriette.
+
+"It's preposterous and it's parallel."
+
+"Hubert did not try to entrap you into doing what was wrong."
+
+"We need not discuss that, for it is not the point. The point is that
+the position (be that right or wrong) was forced on the woman in both
+cases by fraud, and is then used as a pretext to exact from her the
+desired conduct; what the author of the fraud euphoniously calls
+'duty.'"
+
+"You are positively insulting!" cried Henriette, rising.
+
+By this time, Hadria had allowed the doll to slip back, and its limp
+body was hanging down disconsolately from her elbow, although she was
+clutching it, with absent-minded anxiety, to her side, in the hope of
+arresting its threatened fall.
+
+"Oh, look at dolly, look, look!" cried Martha reproachfully. Hadria
+seized its legs and pulled it back again, murmuring some consolatory
+promise to its mistress.
+
+"It is strange how you succeed in putting me on the defensive,
+Henriette--I who have been wronged. A horrible wrong it is too. It has
+ruined my life. You will never know all that it implies, never, never,
+though I talk till Doomsday. Nobody will--except Professor Fortescue."
+
+Henriette gave a horrified gesture. "I believe you are in love with that
+man. _That_ is the cause of all this wild conduct."
+
+Miss Temperley had lost self-control for a moment.
+
+Hadria looked at her steadily.
+
+"I beg your pardon. I spoke in haste, Hadria. You have your faults, but
+Hubert has nothing to fear from you in that respect, I am sure."
+
+"Really?" Hadria had come forward and was standing with her left elbow
+on the mantel-piece, the doll still tucked under her right arm. "And you
+think that I would, at all hazards, respect a legal tie which no feeling
+consecrates?"
+
+"I do you that justice," murmured Henriette, turning very white.
+
+"You think that I should regard myself as so completely the property of
+a man whom I do not love, and who actively dislikes me, as to hold my
+very feelings in trust for him. Disabuse yourself of that idea,
+Henriette. I claim rights over myself, and I will hold myself in pawn
+for no man. This is no news either to you or to Hubert. Why pretend that
+it is?"
+
+Henriette covered her face with her hands.
+
+"I can but hope," she said at length, "that even now you are saying
+these horrible things out of mere opposition. I cannot, I simply
+_cannot_ believe, that you would bring disgrace upon us all."
+
+"If you chose to regard it as a disgrace that I should make so bold as
+to lay claim to myself, that, it seems to me, would be your own fault."
+Henriette sprang forward white and trembling, and clutched Hadria's arm
+excitedly.
+
+"Ah! you _could_ not! you _could_ not! Think of your mother and father,
+if you will not think of your husband and children. You terrify me!"
+
+Hadria was moved with pity at Henriette's white quivering face.
+
+"Don't trouble," she said, more gently. "There is no thunderbolt about
+to fall in our discreet circle." (A hideous crash from the overturning
+of one of Martha's Eiffel Towers seemed to belie the words.)
+
+Miss Temperley's clutch relaxed, and she gave a gasp of relief.
+
+"Tell me, Hadria, that you did not mean what you said."
+
+"I can't do that, for I meant it, every syllable."
+
+"Promise me then at least, that before you do anything to bring misery
+and disgrace on us all, you will tell us of your intention, and give us
+a chance of putting our side of the matter before you."
+
+"Of protecting your vested interests," said Hadria; "your right of way
+through my flesh and spirit."
+
+"Of course you put it unkindly."
+
+"I will not make promises for the future. The future is quite enough
+hampered with the past, without setting anticipatory traps and springes
+for unwary feet. But I refuse this promise merely on general principles.
+I am not about to distress you in that particular way, though I think
+you would only have yourselves to blame if I _were_."
+
+Miss Temperley drew another deep breath, and the colour began to return
+to her face.
+
+"So far, so good," she said. "Now tell me--Is there nothing that would
+make you accept your duties?"
+
+"Even if I were to accept what you call my duties, it would not be in
+the spirit that you would desire to see. It would be in cold
+acknowledgment of the force of existing facts--facts which I regard as
+preposterous, but admit to be coercive." Henriette sank wearily into her
+chair.
+
+"Do you then hold it justifiable for a woman to inflict pain on those
+near to her, by a conduct that she may think justifiable in itself?"
+
+Hadria hesitated for a moment.
+
+"A woman is so desperately entangled, and restricted, and betrayed, by
+common consent, in our society, that I hold her justified in using
+desperate means, as one who fights for dear life. She may harden her
+heart--if she can."
+
+"I am thankful to think that she very seldom _can_!" cried Henriette.
+
+"Ah! that is our weak point! For a long time to come, we shall be
+overpowered by our own cage-born instincts, by our feminine conscience
+that has been trained so cleverly to dog the woman's footsteps, in man's
+interest--his detective in plain clothes!"
+
+"Of course, if you repudiate all moral claim----" began Henriette,
+weakly.
+
+"I will not insult your intelligence by considering that remark."
+
+"Are you determined to harden yourself against every appeal?" Hadria
+looked at her sister-in-law, in silence.
+
+"Why don't you answer me, Hadria?"
+
+"Because I have just been endeavouring, evidently in vain, to explain in
+what light I regard appeals on this point."
+
+"Then Hubert and the children are to be punished for what you are
+pleased to call his fraud--the fraud of a man in love with you, anxious
+to please you, to agree with you, and believing you too good and noble
+to allow his life to be spoilt by this girl's craze for freedom. It is
+inconceivable!"
+
+"I fear that Hubert must be prepared to endure the consequences of his
+actions, like the rest of us. It is the custom, I know, for the sex that
+men call weaker, to saddle themselves with the consequences of men's
+deeds, but I think we should have a saner, and a juster world if the
+custom were discontinued."
+
+"You have missed one of the noblest lessons of life, Hadria," cried Miss
+Temperley, rising to leave. "You do not understand the meaning of
+self-sacrifice."
+
+"A principle that, in woman, has been desecrated by misuse," said
+Hadria. "There is no power, no quality, no gift or virtue, physical or
+moral, that we have _not_ been trained to misuse. Self-sacrifice stands
+high on the list."
+
+Miss Temperley shrugged her shoulders, sadly and hopelessly.
+
+"You have fortified yourself on every side. My words only prompt you to
+throw up another earthwork at the point attacked. I do harm instead of
+good. I will leave you to think the matter over alone." Miss Temperley
+moved towards the door.
+
+"Ah, you are clever, Henriette! You know well that I am far better
+acquainted with the weak points of my own fortifications than you can
+be, who did not build them, and that when I have done with the defence
+against you, I shall commence the attack myself. You have all the
+advantages on your side. Mine is a forlorn hope:--a handful of Greeks at
+Thermopylae against all the host of the Great King. We are foredoomed;
+the little band must fall, but some day, Henriette, when you and I shall
+be no more troubled with these turbulent questions--some day, these
+great blundering hosts of barbarians will be driven back, and the Greek
+will conquer. Then the realm of liberty will grow wide!"
+
+"I begin to hate the very name!" exclaimed Henriette.
+
+Hadria's eyes flashed, and she stood drawn up, straight and defiant,
+before the mantel-piece.
+
+"Ah! there is a fiercer Salamis and a crueller Marathon yet to be
+fought, before the world will so much as guess what freedom means. I
+have no illusions now, regarding my own chances, but I should hold it as
+an honour to stand and fall at Thermopylae, with Leonidas and his
+Spartans."
+
+"I believe that some day you will see things with different eyes," said
+Henriette.
+
+The doll fell with a great crash, into the fender among the fire-irons,
+and there was a little burst of laughter. Miss Temperley passed through
+the door, at the same instant, with great dignity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+
+As Hadria had foretold, she commenced the attack on herself as soon as
+Henriette had departed, and all night long, the stormy inner debate was
+kept up. Her mind never wavered, but her heart was rebellious. Hubert
+deserved to pay for his conduct; but if we all had to pay for our
+conduct to the uttermost farthing, that would be hard, if just. If
+Hadria assumed the burden of Hubert's debt, it would mean what M.
+Jouffroy had pointed out. Hubert's suffering would be only on account of
+offended public opinion; hers--but then her parents would suffer as well
+as Hubert. Round and round went the thoughts, like vast wheels, and when
+towards morning, she dozed off a little, the wheels were still turning
+in a vague, weary way, and as they turned, the life seemed to be crushed
+gradually out of the sleeper.
+
+Jouffroy came to enquire whether the decision had been made. He was in a
+state of great excitement. He gave fervent thanks that Hadria had stood
+firm.
+
+"You do not forget my words, Madame?"
+
+"I shall never forget them, Monsieur."
+
+Henriette discreetly forbore to say anything further on the subject of
+dispute. She waited, hopefully.
+
+"Hubert has been troubled about the money that your father set apart, on
+your marriage, as a contribution to the household expenses," she said,
+one morning. "Your father did not place it all in your name."
+
+"I know," said Hadria. "It is tied up, in some way, for the use of the
+family. I have a small sum only in my own control."
+
+"Hubert is now leaving half of it to accumulate. The other half has
+still to go towards the expenses at the Red House. I suppose you
+approve?"
+
+"Certainly," said Hadria. "My father designed it for that purpose."
+
+"But Hubert feared you might be running short of money, and wished to
+send you some; but the trustees say it is against the conditions of the
+trust."
+
+"So I suppose."
+
+"I wanted you to know about it, that is all," said Henriette. "Also, I
+should like to say that though Hubert does not feel that he can ask you
+to return to the Red House, after what has happened--he cannot risk your
+refusing--yet I take it on myself to tell you, that he would only be too
+glad if you would go back."
+
+"Thank you, I understand."
+
+Next morning, Henriette came with a letter in her hand.
+
+"Bad news!" Hadria exclaimed.
+
+The letter announced the failure of the Company. It was the final blow.
+Dunaghee would have to be given up. Mrs. Fullerton's settlement was all
+that she and her husband would now have to live upon.
+
+Hadria sat gazing at the letter, with a dazed expression. Almost before
+the full significance of the calamity had been realized, a telegram
+arrived, announcing that Mrs. Fullerton had fallen dangerously ill.
+
+The rest of that day was spent in packing, writing notes, settling
+accounts, and preparing for departure.
+
+"When--how are you going?" cried Madame Vauchelet, in dismay.
+
+"By the night boat, by the night boat," Hadria replied hurriedly, as if
+the hurry of her speech would quicken her arrival in England.
+
+The great arches of the station which had appealed to her imagination,
+at the moment of arrival, swept upward, hard and grey, in the callous
+blue light. Hadria breathed deep. Was she the same person who had
+arrived that night, with every nerve thrilled with hope and resolve? Ah!
+there had been so much to learn, and the time had been so short.
+Starting with her present additional experience, she could have managed
+so much better. But of what use to think of that? How different the
+homeward journey from the intoxicating outward flight, in the heyday of
+the spring!
+
+What did that telegram mean? _Ill; dangerously, dangerously._ The words
+seemed to be repeated cruelly, insistently, by the jogging of the train
+and the rumble of the wheels. The anxiety gnawed on, rising at times
+into terror, dulling again to a steady ache. And then remorse began to
+fit a long-pointed fang into a sensitive spot in her heart. In vain to
+resist. It was securely placed. Let reason hold her peace.
+
+A thousand fears, regrets, self-accusations, revolts, swarmed
+insect-like in Hadria's brain, as the train thundered through the
+darkness, every tumultuous sound and motion exaggerated to the
+consciousness, by the fact that there was no distraction of the
+attention by outside objects. Nothing offered itself to the sight except
+the strange lights and shadows of the lamp thrown on the cushions of the
+carriage; Henriette's figure in one corner, Hannah, with the child, in
+another, and the various rugs and trappings of wandering Britons.
+Everything was contracted, narrow. The sea-passage had the same sinister
+character. Hadria compared it to the crossing of the Styx in Charon's
+gloomy ferry-boat.
+
+She felt a patriotic thrill on hearing the first mellow English voice
+pronouncing the first kindly English sentence. The simple, slow, honest
+quality of the English nature gave one a sense of safety. What splendid
+raw material to make a nation out of! But, ah, it was sometimes dull to
+live with! These impressions, floating vaguely in the upper currents of
+the mind, were simultaneous with a thousand thoughts and anxieties, and
+gusts of bitter fear and grief.
+
+What would be the end of it all? This uprooting from the old home--it
+wrung one's heart to think of it. Scarcely could the thought be faced.
+Her father, an exile from his beloved fields and hills; her mother
+banished from her domain of so many years, and after all these
+disappointments and mortifications and sorrows! It was piteous. Where
+would they live? What would they do?
+
+Hadria fought with her tears. Ah! it was hard for old people to have to
+start life anew, bitterly hard. This was the moment for their children
+to flock to their rescue, to surround them with care, with affection,
+with devotion; to make them feel that at least _some_thing that could be
+trusted, was left to them from the wreck.
+
+"Ah! poor mother, poor kind father, you were very good to us all, very,
+very good!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+
+Mrs. Fullerton's illness proved even more serious than the doctor had
+expected. She asked so incessantly for her daughters, especially Hadria,
+that all question of difference between her and Hubert was laid aside,
+by tacit consent, and the sisters took their place at their mother's
+bedside. The doctor said that the patient must have been suffering, for
+many years, from an exhausted state of the nerves and from some kind of
+trouble. Had she had any great disappointment or anxiety?
+
+Hadria and Algitha glanced at one another. "Yes," said Algitha, "my
+mother has had a lot of troublesome children to worry and disappoint
+her."
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed the doctor, nodding his head. "Well, now has come a
+crisis in Mrs. Fullerton's condition. This illness has been incubating
+for years. She must have undergone mental misery of a very acute kind,
+whether or not the cause may have been adequate. If her children desire
+to keep her among them, it will be necessary to treat her with the
+utmost care, and to oppose her in _nothing_. Further disappointment or
+chagrin, she has no longer the power to stand. There are complications.
+Her heart will give trouble, and all your vigilance and forbearance are
+called for, to avoid serious consequences. I think it right to speak
+frankly, for everything depends--and always hereafter will depend--on
+the patient's being saved as much as possible from the repetition of any
+former annoyance or sorrow. At best, there will be much for her to
+endure; I dread an uprooting of long familiar habits for any one of her
+age. Her life, if not her reason, are in her children's hands."
+
+A time of terrible anxiety followed, for the inmates of the Red House.
+The doctor insisted on a trained nurse. Algitha and Hadria felt uneasy
+when they were away, even for a moment, from the sick-room, but the
+doctor reminded them of the necessity, for the patient's sake as well as
+their own, of keeping up their strength. He warned them that there would
+be a long strain upon them, and that any lack of common sense, as
+regards their own health, would certainly diminish the patient's chances
+of recovery. Nobody had his clearest judgment and his quickest
+observation at command, when nervously exhausted. Everything might
+depend on a moment's decision, a moment's swiftness of insight. The
+warning was not thrown away, but both sisters found the incessant
+precautions trying.
+
+Every thought, every emotion was swallowed up in the one awful anxiety.
+
+"Oh, Hadria, I feel as if this were my fault," cried Algitha, on one
+still, ominous night, after she had resigned her post at the bedside to
+the nurse, who was to fill it for a couple of hours, after which Hadria
+took her turn of watching.
+
+"You? It was I," said Hadria, with trembling lips.
+
+"Mother has never been strong," Algitha went on. "And my leaving home
+was the beginning of all this trouble."
+
+"And _my_ leaving home the end of it," her sister added.
+
+Algitha was walking restlessly to and fro.
+
+"And I went to Dunaghee so often, so often," she cried tearfully, "so
+that mother should not feel deserted, and you too came, and the boys
+when they could. But she never got over my leaving; she seemed to resent
+my independence, my habit of judging for myself; she hated every detail
+in which I differed from the girls she knew. If I had married and gone
+to the Antipodes, she would have been quite satisfied, but----"
+
+"Ah, why do people need human souls for their daily food?" cried Hadria
+mournfully. She flung open the window of the bedroom, and looked out
+over the deadly stillness of the fields and the heavy darkness. "But
+they do need them," she said, in the same quiet, hopeless tone, "and
+the souls have got to be provided."
+
+"What is the time?" asked Algitha. A clock had struck, outside. "Could
+it be the clock of Craddock church? The sound must have stolen down
+hill, through the still air."
+
+"It struck three."
+
+"You ought to get some sleep," cried Algitha. "Remember what the doctor
+said."
+
+"I feel so nervous, so anxious. I could not sleep."
+
+"Just for a few minutes," Algitha urged. Hadria consented at last, to go
+into her room, which adjoined her sister's, and lie down on the bed. The
+door was open between the rooms. "You must do the same," she stipulated.
+
+There was silence for some minutes, but the silence swarmed with the
+ghosts of voices. The air seemed thick with shapes, and terrors, and
+strange warnings.
+
+The doctor had not disguised the fact that the patient was fighting hard
+for life, and that it was impossible to predict the result. Everything
+depended on whether her strength would hold out. The weakness of the
+heart was an unfortunate element in the case. To save strength and give
+plentiful nourishment, without heightening the fever, must be the
+constant effort. Algitha's experience stood her in good stead. Her
+practical ability had been quickened and disciplined by her work. She
+had trained herself in nursing, among other things.
+
+Hadria's experience was small. She had to summon her intelligence to the
+rescue. The Fullerton stock had never been deficient in this particular.
+In difficult moments, when rule and tradition had done their utmost,
+Hadria had often some original device to suggest, to fit the individual
+case, which tided them over a crisis, or avoided some threatening
+predicament.
+
+"Are you sleeping?" asked Algitha, very softly.
+
+"No," said Hadria; "I feel very uneasy to-night. I think I will go
+down."
+
+"Do try to get a little rest first, Hadria; your watch is next, and you
+must not go to it fagged out."
+
+"I know, but I feel full of dread. I _must_ just go and see that all is
+right."
+
+"Then I will come too," said Algitha.
+
+They stole down stairs together, in the dim light of the oil lamps that
+were kept burning all night. The clock struck the half-hour as they
+passed along the landing. A strange fancy came to Hadria, that a dusky
+figure drifted away before her, as she advanced. It seemed as though
+death had receded at her approach. The old childish love for her mother
+had revived in all its force, during this long fight with the reaper of
+souls. She felt all her energies strung with the tension of battle. She
+fought against a dark horror that she could not face. Knowing, and
+realising vividly, that if her mother lived, her own dreams were ended
+for ever, she wrestled with desperate strength for the life that was at
+stake. Her father's silent wretchedness was terrible to see. He would
+not hear a word of doubt as to the patient's recovery. He grew angry if
+anyone hinted at danger. He insisted that his wife was better each day.
+She would soon be up and well again.
+
+"Never well again," the doctor had confided to Hubert, "though she may
+possibly pull through."
+
+Mr. Fullerton's extravagant hopefulness sent a thrill along the nerves.
+It was as if he had uttered the blackest forebodings. The present crisis
+had stirred a thousand feelings and associations, in Hadria, which had
+long been slumbering. She seemed to be sent back again, to the days of
+her childhood. The intervening years were blotted out. She realized now,
+with agonising vividness, the sadness of her mother's life, the long
+stagnation, the slow decay of disused faculties, and the ache that
+accompanies all processes of decay, physical or moral. Not only the
+strong appeal of old affection, entwined with the earliest associations,
+was at work, but the appeal of womanhood itself:--the grey sad story of
+a woman's life, bare and dumb and pathetic in its irony and pain: the
+injury from without, and then the self-injury, its direct offspring;
+unnecessary, yet inevitable; the unconscious thirst for the sacrifice of
+others, the hungry claims of a nature unfulfilled, the groping instinct
+to bring the balance of renunciation to the level, and indemnify oneself
+for the loss suffered and the spirit offered up. And that propitiation
+had to be made. It was as inevitable as that the doom of Orestes should
+follow the original crime of the house of Atreus. Hadria's whole thought
+and strength were now centred on the effort to bring about that
+propitiation, in her own person. She prepared the altar and sharpened
+the knife. In that subtle and ironical fashion, her fate was steadily at
+work.
+
+The sick-room was very still when the sisters entered. It was both warm
+and fresh. A night-light burnt on the table, where cups and bottles were
+ranged, a spirit-lamp and kettle, and other necessaries. The night-light
+threw long, stealthy shadows over the room. The fire burnt with a red
+glow. The bed lay against the long wall. As the two figures entered,
+there was a faint sound of quick panting, and a moan. Hadria rushed to
+the bedside.
+
+"Quick, quick, some brandy," she called. Algitha flew to the table for
+the brandy, noticing with horror, as she passed, that the nurse had
+fallen asleep at her post. Algitha shook her hastily.
+
+"Go and call Mr. Fullerton," she said sharply, "and quick, quick." The
+patient was sinking. The nurse vanished. Algitha had handed the cup of
+brandy to Hadria. The sisters stood by the bedside, scarcely daring to
+breathe. Mr. Fullerton entered hurriedly, with face pallid and drawn.
+
+"What is it? Is she----?"
+
+"No, no; I hope not. Another moment it would have been too late, but I
+think we were in time."
+
+Hadria had administered the brandy, and stood watching breathlessly, for
+signs of revival. She gave one questioning glance at Algitha. Her trust
+in the nurse was gone. Algitha signed hope. The patient's breathing was
+easier.
+
+"I wonder if we ought to give a little more?" Hadria whispered.
+
+"Wait a minute. Ah! don't speak to her, father; she needs all her
+strength."
+
+The ticking of the clock could be heard, in the dim light.
+
+Algitha was holding her mother's wrist. "Stronger," she said. Hadria
+drew a deep sigh. "We must give food presently. No more brandy."
+
+"She's all right again, all right again!" cried Mr. Fullerton, eagerly.
+
+The nurse went to prepare the extract which the doctor had ordered for
+the patient, when quickly-digested nourishment was required. It gave
+immediate strength. The brandy had stimulated the sinking organs to a
+saving effort; the food sustained the system at the level thus achieved.
+The perilous moment was over.
+
+"Thank heaven!" cried Algitha, when the patient's safety was assured,
+and she sank back on the pillow, with a look of relief on her worn face.
+
+"If it had not been for you, Hadria----. What's the matter? Are you
+ill?"
+
+Algitha rushed forward, and the nurse dragged up a chair.
+
+Hadria had turned deadly white, and her hand groped for support.
+
+She drew herself together with a desperate effort, and sat down
+breathing quickly. "I am not going to faint," she said, reassuringly.
+"It was only for a moment." She gave a shudder. "What a fight it was! We
+were only just in time----"
+
+A low voice came from the bed. The patient was talking in her sleep.
+"Tell Hadria to come home if she does not want to kill me. Tell her to
+come home; it is her duty. I want her."
+
+Then, after a pause, "I have always done _my_ duty,--I have sacrificed
+myself for the children. Why do they desert me, why do they desert me?"
+And then came a low moaning cry, terrible to hear. The sisters were by
+the bedside, in a moment. Their father stood behind them.
+
+"We are here, mother dear; we are here watching by you," Hadria
+murmured, with trembling voice.
+
+Algitha touched the thin hand, quietly. "We are with you, mother," she
+repeated. "Don't you know that we have been with you for a long time?"
+
+The sick woman seemed to be soothed by the words.
+
+"Both here, both?" she muttered vaguely. And then a smile spread over
+the sharpened features; she opened her eyes and looked wistfully at the
+two faces bending over her.
+
+A look of happiness came into her dimmed eyes.
+
+"My girls," she said in a dreamy voice, "my girls have come back to
+me--I knew they were good girls----"
+
+Then her eyes closed, and she fell into a profound and peaceful
+slumber.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+
+"But, Doctor, is there no hope that with care and time, she will be able
+to walk again?"
+
+"I am sorry to say, none whatever. I am only thankful that my patient
+has survived at all. It was little short of a miracle, and you must be
+thankful for that."
+
+Mrs. Fullerton had always been an active woman, in spite of not being
+very robust, and a life passed on a couch had peculiar terrors for her.
+The nervous system had been wrecked, not by any one shock or event, but
+by the accumulated strains of a lifetime. The constitution was broken
+up, once and for all.
+
+A cottage had been taken, as near as possible to the Red House, where
+the old couple were to settle for the rest of their days, within reach
+of their children and grandchildren. Every wish of the invalid must be
+respected, just or unjust. Absolute repose of mind and body was
+imperatively necessary, and this could only be attained for her by a
+complete surrender, on the part of her children, of any course of action
+that she seriously disapproved. The income was too limited to allow of
+Algitha's returning to her parents; otherwise Mrs. Fullerton would have
+wished it. Algitha had now to provide for herself, as the allowance that
+her father had given her could not be continued. She had previously done
+her work for nothing, but now Mrs. Trevelyan, under whose care she had
+been living, offered her a paid post in a Convalescent Home in which she
+was interested.
+
+"I am exceptionally fortunate," said Algitha, "for Mrs. Trevelyan has
+arranged most kindly, so that I can get away to see mother and father at
+the end of every week."
+
+Both Mr. and Mrs. Fullerton had taken it for granted that Hadria would
+remain at the Red House, and that Hubert would "forgive" her, as they
+put it.
+
+Circumstances seemed to take it equally for granted. Mrs. Fullerton
+would now depend entirely on her children for every solace and pleasure.
+She would require cheering, amusing, helping, in a thousand ways.
+Algitha was to come down each week from Saturday till Monday, and the
+brothers when they could. During the rest of the week, the invalid would
+depend on her younger daughter. Hadria's leaving home, and the rumour of
+a quarrel between her and Hubert, had conduced to her mother's illness,
+perhaps had even caused it. Mrs. Fullerton had taken it bitterly to
+heart. It had become obvious that Hadria would have now to remain at the
+Red House, for her mother's sake, and that being so, she and Hubert
+agreed that it was useless to discuss any other reasons for and against
+it. Hubert was only too glad of her return, for appearance' sake.
+Neither of them thought, for a moment, of what Henriette called a
+"reconciliation." What had passed before Hadria's departure had revealed
+finally, the hopelessness of such an attempt. Matters settled down
+heavily and with an air of finality.
+
+If only her mother's declining years were happy and peaceful, that would
+be something of importance gained, but, alas! Mrs. Fullerton seemed
+anything but happy. Her helplessness was hard to bear, and she felt the
+worldly downfall, severely. All this, and the shattered state of her
+nerves tended to make her exacting and irritable; and as she had felt
+seriously aggrieved for so many years of her life, she now regarded the
+devotion of her children as a debt tardily paid, and the habit grew
+insensibly upon her of increasing her demands, as she found everyone so
+ready to submit to them. The possession of power had its usual effect.
+She knew no mercy in its use. Her daughters were made to feel that if
+they had been less headstrong and selfish in the past, she would have
+been a vigorous and active woman to this day. Obviously, the very least
+they could do, was to try by all means in their power, to lighten the
+burden they had laid upon her. Yet Mrs. Fullerton was, by nature,
+unselfish. She would have gladly sacrificed herself for her children's
+good, as indeed she had persistently and doggedly sacrificed herself for
+them, during their childhood, but naturally she had her own view of what
+constituted their "good." It did not consist in wasting one's youth and
+looks among the slums of the East End, or in deserting one's home to
+study music and mix in a set of second-rate people, in an out-of-the-way
+district of Paris. As for Hadria's conduct about little Martha, Mrs.
+Fullerton could scarcely bring herself to speak about it. It terrified
+her. She thought it indicated some taint of madness in her daughter's
+mind. Two charming children of her own and--but Mrs. Fullerton, with a
+painful flush, would turn her mind from the subject. She had to believe
+her daughter either mad or bad, and that was terrible to her maternal
+pride. She could indeed scarcely believe that it had not all been a
+painful dream, for Hadria was now so good and dutiful, so tender and
+watchful; how _could_ she have behaved so abominably, so crazily? Every
+day Hadria came to the cottage, generally with a bunch of fresh flowers
+to place by her mother's couch, and then all the affairs of the
+household were talked over and arranged, the daughter doing what was
+needed in the way of ordering provisions or writing notes, for the
+invalid could now write only with the greatest difficulty. Then Mrs.
+Fullerton liked to have a chat, to hear what was in the papers, what was
+going on in the neighbourhood, and to discuss all sorts of dreary
+details, over and over again. Books that Hadria would sometimes bring
+were generally left unread, unless they were light novels of a rigidly
+conventional character. Mrs. Fullerton grew so excited in her
+condemnation of any other kind, that it was dangerous to put them before
+her. In the evenings, the old couple liked to have a rubber, and often
+Hubert and Hadria would make up the necessary quartett; four silent
+human beings, who sat like solemn children at their portentous play,
+while the clock on the mantel-piece recorded the moments of their lives
+that they dedicated to the mimic battle. Hours and hours were spent in
+this way. But Hadria found that she could not endure it every night,
+much to the surprise of her parents. The monotony, the incessant
+recurrence, had a disastrous effect on her nerves, suggesting wild and
+desperate impulses.
+
+"I should go out of my mind, if I had no breaks," she said at last,
+after trying it for some months. "In the interests of future rubbers, I
+_must_ leave off, now and then. He that plays and runs away, will live
+to play another day."
+
+Mrs. Fullerton thought it strange that Hadria could not do even this
+little thing for her parents, without grumbling, but she did not wish to
+make a martyr of her. They must try and find some one else to take her
+place occasionally.
+
+Sometimes Joseph Fleming would accept the post, sometimes Lord Engleton,
+and often Ernest or Fred, whose comparatively well-ordered minds were
+not sent off their balance so easily as Hadria's. In this fashion, the
+time went by, and the new state of affairs already seemed a hundred
+years old. Paris was a clear, but far-off dream. An occasional letter
+from Madame Vauchelet or Jouffroy, who mourned and wailed over Hadria's
+surrender of her work, served to remind her that it had once been actual
+and living. There still existed a Paris far away beyond the hills,
+brilliant, vivid, exquisite, inspiring, and at this very moment the
+people were coming and going, the river was flowing, the little steamers
+plying,--but how hard it was to realise!
+
+The family was charmed with the position of affairs.
+
+"It is such a mercy things have happened as they have!" was the verdict,
+delivered with much wise shaking of heads. "There can be no more mad or
+disgraceful behaviour on the part of Hubert's wife, that is one comfort.
+She can't murder her mother outright, though she has not been far off
+it!"
+
+From the first, Hadria had understood what the future must be. These
+circumstances could not be overcome by any deed that she could bring
+herself to do. Even Valeria was baffled. Her theories would not quite
+work. Hadria looked things straight in the face. That which was
+strongest and most essential in her must starve; there was no help for
+it, and no one was directly to blame, not even herself. Fate, chance,
+Providence, the devil, or whatever it was, had determined against her
+particular impulses and her particular view of things. After all, it
+would have been rather strange if these powers had happened exactly to
+agree with her. She was not so ridiculous (she told herself) as to feel
+personally aggrieved, but so long as fate, chance, Providence, or the
+devil, gave her emotions and desires and talent and will, it was
+impossible not to suffer. She might fully recognise that the suffering
+was of absolutely no importance in the great scheme of things, but that
+did not make the suffering less. If it must be, it must be, and there
+was an end to it. Should someone gain by it, that was highly
+satisfactory, and more than could be said of most suffering, which
+exists, it would seem, only to increase and multiply after the manner of
+some dire disease. This was what Hadria dreaded in her own case: that
+the loss would not end with her. The children, Martha, everyone who came
+under her influence, must share in it.
+
+Henriette irritated her by an approving sweetness of demeanour,
+carefully avoiding any look of triumph, or rather triumphing by that air
+which said: "I wouldn't crow over you for the world!"
+
+She was evidently brimming over with satisfaction. A great peril, she
+felt, had been averted. The family and its reputation were saved.
+
+"You appear to think that the eyes of Europe are riveted on the
+Temperley family," said Hadria; "an august race, I know, but there _are_
+one or two other branches of the human stock in existence."
+
+"One _must_ consider what people say," said Henriette.
+
+Hadria's time now was filled more and more with detail, since there were
+two households instead of one to manage. The new charge was
+particularly difficult, because she had not a free hand.
+
+Without entirely abandoning her music, it had, perforce, to fall into
+abeyance. Progress was scarcely possible. But as Henriette pointed
+out--it gave so much pleasure to others--when Hadria avoided music that
+was too severely classical.
+
+At Craddock Place, one evening, she was taken in to dinner by a callow
+youth, who found a fertile subject for his wit, in the follies and
+excesses of what he called the "new womanhood." It was so delightful, he
+said, to come to the country, where women were still charming in the
+good old way. He knew that this new womanhood business was only a phase,
+don't you know, but upon his word, he was getting tired of it. Not that
+he had any objection to women being well educated (Hadria was glad of
+that), but he could _not_ stand it when they went out of their sphere,
+and put themselves forward and tried to be emancipated, and all that
+sort of nonsense.
+
+Hadria was not surprised that he could not stand it.
+
+There had been a scathing article, the youth said, in one of the evening
+papers. He wondered how the "New Woman" felt after reading it! It simply
+made mincemeat of her.
+
+"Wretched creature!" Hadria exclaimed.
+
+The youth wished that women would really _do_ something, instead of
+making all this fuss.
+
+Hadria agreed that it _was_ a pity they were so inactive. Could not one
+or two of the more favoured sex manage to inspire them with a little
+initiative?
+
+The youth considered that women were, by nature, passive and reflective,
+not original.
+
+Hadria thought the novelty of that idea not the least of its charms.
+
+The youth allowed that, in her own way, and in her own sphere, woman was
+charming and singularly intelligent. He had no objection to her
+developing as much as she pleased, in proper directions. (Hadria felt
+really encouraged.) But it was so absurd to pretend that women could do
+work that was peculiar to men. (Hadria agreed, with a chuckle.) When had
+they written one of Shakespeare's dramas? (When indeed? History was
+ominously silent on that point.)
+
+"Hadria, what is amusing you?" enquired her hostess, across the table.
+
+"Oh, well--only the discouraging fact that no woman, as Mr. St. George
+convincingly points out, has ever written one of Shakespeare's dramas!"
+
+"Oh," said Lady Engleton with a broad smile, "but you know, Mr. St.
+George, we really haven't had quite the same chances, have we?"
+
+Perhaps not quite, as far as literature went, the youth admitted
+tolerantly, but there was failure in original work in every direction.
+This was no blame to women; they were not made that way, but facts _had_
+to be recognised. Women's strength lay in a different domain--in the
+home. It was of no use to try to fight against Nature. Look at music for
+instance; one required no particular liberty to pursue _that_ art, yet
+where were the women-composers? If there was so much buried talent among
+women, why didn't they arise and bring out operas and oratorios?
+
+Hadria couldn't understand it; especially as the domestic life was
+arranged, one might almost say, with a special view to promoting musical
+talent in the mistress of the household. Yet where were those oratorios?
+She shook her head. Mr. St. George, she thought, had clearly proved that
+the inherent nature of women was passive and imitative, while that of
+man, even in the least remarkable examples of the sex, was always
+powerful and original to the verge of the perilous!
+
+"I think we had better go to the drawing-room," said Lady Engleton,
+discreetly. The youth twirled his moustaches thoughtfully, as the ladies
+filed out.
+
+Hadria's happiest hours were now those that she spent with little
+Martha, who was growing rapidly in stature and intelligence. The
+child's lovable nature blossomed sweetly under the influence of Hadria's
+tenderness. When wearied, and sad at heart, an hour in the Priory
+garden, or a saunter along the roadside with little Martha, was like the
+touch of a fresh breeze after the oppression of a heated room. Hadria's
+attachment to the child had grown and grown, until it had become almost
+a passion. How was the child to be saved from the usual fate of
+womanhood? Hadria often felt a thrill of terror, when the beautiful blue
+eyes looked out, large and fearless, into the world that was just
+unfolding before them, in its mysterious loveliness.
+
+The little girl gave promise of beauty. Even now there were elements
+that suggested a moving, attracting nature. "At her peril," thought
+Hadria, "a woman moves and attracts. If I can only save her!"
+
+Hadria had not seen Professor Fortescue since her return from Paris. She
+felt that he, and he alone, could give her courage, that he and he alone
+could save her from utter despondency. If only he would come! For the
+first time in her life, she thought of writing to ask him for personal
+help and advice. Before she had carried out this idea, the news came
+that he was ill, that the doctor wished him to go abroad, but that he
+was forced to remain in England, for another three months, to complete
+some work, and to set some of his affairs in order. Hadria, in
+desperation, was thinking of throwing minor considerations to the winds,
+and going to see for herself the state of affairs (it could be managed
+without her mother's knowledge, and so would not endanger her health or
+life), when the two boys were sent back hastily from school, where
+scarlet fever had broken out. They must have caught the infection before
+leaving, for they were both taken ill.
+
+Valeria came down to Craddock Dene, for the day. She seemed almost
+distraught. Hadria could see her only at intervals. The sick children
+required all her attention. Valeria wished to visit them. She had
+brought the poor boys each a little gift.
+
+"But you may take the fever," Hadria remonstrated.
+
+Valeria gave a scornful snort.
+
+"Are you tired of life?"
+
+"I? Yes. It is absurd. I have no place in it, no tie, nothing to bind me
+to my fellows or my race. What do they care for a faded, fretful woman?"
+
+"You know how your friends care for you, Valeria. You know, for
+instance, what you have been in my life."
+
+"Ah, my dear, I _don't_ know! I have a wretched longing for some strong,
+absorbing affection, something paramount, satisfying. I envy you your
+devotion to that poor little child; you can shew it, you can express it,
+and you have the child's love in return. But I, who want much more than
+that, shall never get even that. I threw away the chance when I had it,
+and now I shall end my days, starving."
+
+Hadria was silent. She felt that these words covered something more than
+their ostensible meaning.
+
+"I fear Professor Fortescue is very ill," said Valeria restlessly.
+
+Her face was flushed, and her eyes burnt.
+
+"I fear he is," said Hadria sadly.
+
+"If--if he were to die----" Hadria gave a low, horrified exclamation.
+
+"Surely there is no danger of that!"
+
+"Of course there is: he told me that he did not expect to recover."
+
+Valeria was crouching before the fire, with a look of blank despair.
+Hadria, pale to the lips, took her hand gently and held it between her
+own. Valeria's eyes suddenly filled with tears. "Ah, Hadria, you will
+understand, you will not despise me--you will only be sorry for me--why
+should I not tell you? It is eating my heart out--have you never
+suspected, never guessed----?"
+
+Hadria, with a startled look, paused to consider, and then, stroking
+back the beautiful white hair with light touch, she said, "I think I
+have known without knowing that I knew. It wanted just these words of
+yours to light up the knowledge. Oh, Valeria, have you carried this
+burden for all these years?"
+
+"Ever since I first met him, which was just before he met his wife. I
+knew, from the first, that it was hopeless. He introduced her to me
+shortly after his engagement. He was wrapped up in her. With him, it was
+once and for all. He is not the man to fall in love and out of it, over
+and over again. We were alike in that. With me, too, it was once for
+all. Oh, the irony of life!" Valeria went on with an outburst of energy,
+"I was doomed to doom others to similar loss; others have felt for me,
+in vain, what I, in vain, felt for him! I sent them all away, because I
+could not bring myself to endure the thought of marrying any other man,
+and so I pass my days alone--a waif and stray, without anything or
+anyone to live for."
+
+"At least you have your work to live for, which is to live for many,
+instead of for one or two."
+
+"Ah, that does not satisfy the heart."
+
+"What _does_?" Hadria exclaimed.
+
+Anxiety about Professor Fortescue now made a gloomy background to the
+responsibilities of Hadria's present life. Valeria's occasional visits
+were its bright spots. She looked forward to them, with pathetic
+eagerness. The friendship became closer than it had ever been before,
+since Valeria had confided her sad secret.
+
+"Yet, Valeria, I envy you."
+
+"Envy me?" she repeated blankly.
+
+"I have never known what a great passion like that means; I have never
+felt what you feel, and surely to live one's life with all its pettiness
+and pain, yet never to know its extreme experiences, is sadder than to
+have those experiences and suffer through them."
+
+"Ah, yes, you are right," Valeria admitted. "I would not be without it
+if I could."
+
+The thought of what she had missed was beginning to take a hold upon
+Hadria. Her life was passing, passing, and the supreme gifts would never
+be hers. She must for ever stand outside, and be satisfied with shadows
+and echoes.
+
+"Are you very miserable, Hadria?" Valeria asked, one day.
+
+"I am benumbed a little now," Hadria replied. "That must be, if one is
+to go on at all. It is a provision of nature, I suppose. All that was
+threatening before I went to Paris, is now being fulfilled. I can
+scarcely realize how I could ever have had the hopefulness to make that
+attempt. I might have known I could not succeed, as things are. How
+_could_ I? But I am glad of the memory. It pains me sometimes, when all
+the acute delight and charm return, at the call of some sound or scent,
+some vivid word; but I would not be without the memory and the dream--my
+little illusion."
+
+"Supposing," said Valeria after a long pause, "that you could live your
+life over again, what would you do?"
+
+"I don't know. It is my impression that in my life, as in the lives of
+most women, all roads lead to Rome. Whether one does this or that, one
+finds oneself in pretty much the same position at the end. It doesn't
+answer to rebel against the recognized condition of things, and it
+doesn't answer to submit. Only generally one _must_, as in my case. A
+choice of calamities is not always permitted."
+
+"It is so difficult to know which is the least," said Valeria.
+
+"I don't believe there _is_ a 'least.' They are both unbearable. It is a
+question which best fits one's temperament, which leads soonest to
+resignation."
+
+"Oh, Hadria, you would never achieve resignation!" cried Valeria.
+
+"Oh, some day, perhaps!"
+
+Valeria shook her head. She had no belief in Hadria's powers in that
+direction. Hopelessness was her nearest approach to that condition of
+cheerful acquiescence which, Hadria had herself said, profound faith or
+profound stupidity can perhaps equally inspire.
+
+"At least," said Valeria, "you know that you are useful and helpful to
+those around you. You make your mother happy."
+
+"No, my mother is not happy. My work is negative. I just manage to
+prevent her dying of grief. One must not be too ambitious in this stern
+world. One can't make people happy merely by reducing oneself, morally,
+to a jelly. Sometimes, by that means, one can dodge battle and murder
+and sudden death."
+
+"It is terrible!" cried Valeria.
+
+"But meanwhile one lays the seed of future calamities, to avoid which
+some other future woman will have to become jelly. The process always
+reminds me of the old practice of the Anglo-Saxon kings, who used to buy
+off the Danes when they threatened invasion, and so pampered the enemy
+whom their successors would afterwards have to buy off at a still more
+ruinous cost. I am buying off the Danes, Valeria."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+
+
+"Do you know it is a year to-day, since we came to this cottage?"
+exclaimed Mrs. Fullerton. "How the time flies!"
+
+The remark was made before the party settled to the evening's whist.
+
+"You are looking very much better than you did a month after your
+illness, Mrs. Fullerton," said Joseph Fleming, who was to take a hand,
+while Hadria played Grieg or Chopin, or Scottish melodies to please the
+old people. The whist-players enjoyed music during the game.
+
+"Ah, I shall never be well," said Mrs. Fullerton. "One can't recover
+from long worry, Mr. Fleming. Shall we cut for partners?"
+
+It was a quaint, low-pitched little room, filled with familiar furniture
+from Dunaghee, which recalled the old place at every turn. The game went
+on in silence. The cards were dealt, taken up, shuffled, sorted, played,
+massed together, cut, dealt, sorted, and so on, round and round; four
+grave faces deeply engrossed in the process, while the little room was
+filled with music.
+
+Mrs. Fullerton had begun to feel slightly uneasy about her daughter. "So
+much nursing has told upon her," said everyone. The illness of the two
+boys had come at an unfortunate moment. She looked worn and white, and
+dreadfully thin. She seemed cheerful, and at times her mood was even
+merry, but she could not recover strength. At the end of the day, she
+would be completely exhausted. This had not been surprising at first,
+after the long strain of nursing, but Mrs. Fullerton thought it was
+time that she began to mend. She feared that Hadria spent too many hours
+over her composing; she sat up at night, perhaps. What good did all this
+composing do? Nobody ever heard of it. Such a sad pity that she could
+not see the folly of persevering in the fruitless effort.
+
+Lady Engleton was sure that Hadria saw too few people, lived too
+monotonous a life. Craddock Place was filled with guests just now, and
+Lady Engleton used her utmost persuasion to induce Hubert and Hadria to
+come to dinner, or to join the party, in the evening, whenever they
+could.
+
+Hadria shrank from the idea. It was adding another burden to her already
+failing strength. To talk coherently, to be lively and make oneself
+agreeable, to have to think about one's dress,--it all seemed
+inexpressibly wearisome. But Lady Engleton was so genuinely eager to
+administer her cure that Hadria yielded, half in gratitude, half in
+order to save the effort of further resistance.
+
+She dragged herself upstairs to dress, wishing to heaven she had
+refused, after all. The thought of the lights, the sound of voices, the
+complexity of elements and of life that she had to encounter, made her
+shrink into herself. She had only one evening gown suitable for the
+occasion. It was of some white silken stuff, with dull rich surface. A
+bunch of yellow roses and green leaves formed the decoration. Hubert
+approved of her appearance. To her own surprise she felt some new
+feeling creep into her, under the influence of the exquisite attire. It
+put her a little more in tune. At least there were beautiful and dainty
+things in the world. The fresh green of the rose leaves, and the full
+yet delicate yellow of the fragrant roses on the creamy lace, evoked a
+feeling akin to the emotion stirred by certain kinds of music; or, in
+other words, the artistic sensibility had been appealed to through
+colour and texture, instead of through harmony.
+
+The drawing-room at Craddock Place was glowing with subdued
+candle-light. Lady Engleton's rooms carried one back to a past epoch,
+among the dainty fancies and art of a more leisurely and less vulgar
+century. Lady Engleton admitted nothing that had not the quality of
+distinction, let it have what other quality it might. Hadria's mood,
+initiated at home, received impetus at Craddock Place. It was a
+luxurious mood. She desired to receive rather than to give: to be
+delicately ministered to; to claim the services of generations of
+artists, who had toiled with fervour to attain that grand ease and
+simplicity, through faithful labour and the benison of heaven.
+
+Hadria had attracted many eyes as she entered the room. Unquestionably
+she was looking her best to-night, in spite of her extreme pallor. She
+was worthy to take her place among the beautiful objects of art that
+Lady Engleton had collected round her. She had the same quality. Hubert
+vaguely perceived this. He heard the idea expressed in so many words by
+a voice that he knew. He looked round, and saw Professor Theobald
+bending confidentially towards Joseph Fleming.
+
+"Oh, Professor, I did not know you were to be here to-night!"
+
+"What has your guardian spirit been about, not to forewarn you?" asked
+the Professor.
+
+"I am thinking of giving my guardian spirit a month's warning," returned
+Hubert; "he has been extremely neglectful of late. And how have you been
+getting on all this time, Professor?"
+
+Theobald gave some fantastic answer, and crossed the room to Mrs.
+Temperley, who was by this time surrounded by a group of acquaintances,
+among them Madame Bertaux, who had just come from Paris, and had news of
+all Hadria's friends there.
+
+"Mrs. Temperley, may I also ask for one passing glance of recognition?"
+
+Hadria turned round with a little start, and a sudden unaccountable
+sense of disaster.
+
+"Professor Theobald!"
+
+She did not look pleased to see him, and as they shook hands, his mouth
+shut sharply, as it always did when his self-love was wounded. Then, a
+gleam of resolve or cunning came into his face, and the next instant he
+was at his suavest.
+
+"Do you know, Mrs. Temperley, I scarcely recognized you when you first
+came in. 'Who can this beautiful, distinguished-looking woman be?' I
+said to myself."
+
+Hadria smiled maliciously.
+
+"You think I am so much changed?"
+
+Professor Theobald began to chuckle.
+
+"The trowel, I see, is still your weapon," she added, "but I am
+surprised that you have not learnt to wield the implement of sway with
+more dexterity, Professor."
+
+"I am not accustomed to deal with such quick-witted ladies, Mrs.
+Temperley."
+
+"You shew your hand most frankly," she answered; "it almost disarms
+one."
+
+A few introductory chords sounded through the room. Hadria was sitting
+in front of the window, across which the pale green curtains had been
+drawn. Many eyes wandered towards her.
+
+"I should like to paint you just like that," murmured Lady Engleton;
+"you can't imagine what a perfect bit of harmony you make, with my
+brocade." A cousin of Lord Engleton was at the piano. He played an old
+French gavotte.
+
+"That is the finishing touch," added Lady Engleton, below her breath. "I
+should like to paint you and the curtains and Claude Moreton's gavotte
+all together."
+
+The performance was received with enthusiasm. It deepened Hadria's mood,
+set her pulses dancing. She assented readily to the request of her
+hostess that she should play. She chose something fantastic and dainty.
+It had a certain remoteness from life.
+
+"Like one of Watteau's pictures," said Claude Moreton, who was hanging
+over the piano. He was tall and dark, with an expression that betrayed
+his enthusiastic temperament. A group had collected, among them
+Professor Theobald. Beside him stood Marion Fenwick, the bride whose
+wedding had taken place at Craddock Church about eighteen months
+before.
+
+It seemed as if Hadria were exercising some influence of a magnetic
+quality. She was always the point of attraction, whether she created a
+spell with her music, or her speech, or her mere personality. In her
+present mood, this was peculiarly gratifying. The long divorce from
+initiative work which events had compelled, the loss of nervous vigour,
+the destruction of dream and hope, had all tended to throw her back on
+more accessible forms of art and expression, and suggested passive
+rather than active dealings with life. She was wearied with petty
+responsibilities, and what she called semi-detached duties. It was a
+relief to sit down in white silk and lace, and draw people to her simply
+by the cheap spell of good looks and personal magnetism. That she
+possessed these advantages, her life in Paris had made obvious. It was
+the first time that she had been in contact with a large number of
+widely differing types, and she had found that she could appeal to them
+all, if she would. Since her return to England, anxieties and influences
+extremely depressing had accustomed her to a somewhat gloomy atmosphere.
+To-night the atmosphere was light and soft, brilliant and enervating.
+
+"This is my Capua," she said laughingly, to her hostess.
+
+It invited every luxurious instinct to come forth and sun itself. Marion
+Fenwick's soft, sweet voice, singing Italian songs to the accompaniment
+of the guitar, repeated the invitation.
+
+It was like a fairy gift. Energy would be required to refuse it. And
+why, in heaven's name, if she might not have what she really wanted, was
+she to be denied even the poor little triumphs of ornamental womanhood?
+Was the social order which had frustrated her own ambitions to dominate
+her conscience, and persuade her voluntarily to resign that _one_
+kingdom which cannot be taken from a woman, so long as her beauty lasts?
+
+Why should she abdicate? The human being was obviously susceptible to
+personality beyond all other things. And beauty moved that absurd
+creature preposterously. _There_, at least, the woman who chanced to be
+born with these superficial attractions, had a royal territory, so long
+as she could prevent her clamorous fellows from harassing and wearing
+those attractions away. By no direct attack could the jealous powers
+dethrone her. They could only do it indirectly, by appealing to the
+conscience which they had trained; to the principles that they had
+instilled; by convincing the woman that she owed herself, as a debt, to
+her legal owner, to be paid in coined fragments of her being, till she
+should end in inevitable bankruptcy, and the legal owner himself found
+her a poor investment!
+
+It would have startled that roomful of people, who expressed everything
+circuitously, pleasantly, without rough edges, had they read beneath
+Mrs. Temperley's spoken words, these unspoken thoughts.
+
+Marion Fenwick's songs and the alluring softness of her guitar, seemed
+the most fitting accompaniment to the warm summer night, whose breath
+stirred gently the curtains by the open window, at the far end of the
+room.
+
+Lady Engleton was delighted with the success of her efforts. Mrs.
+Temperley had not looked so brilliant, so full of life, since her
+mother's illness. Only yesterday, when she met her returning from the
+Cottage, her eyes were like those of a dying woman, and now----!
+
+"People say ill-natured things about Mrs. Temperley," she confided to an
+intimate friend, "but that is because they don't understand her."
+
+People might have been forgiven for not understanding her, as perhaps
+her hostess felt, noticing Hadria's animation, and the extraordinary
+power that she was wielding over everyone in the room, young and old.
+That power seemed to burn in the deep eyes, whose expression changed
+from moment to moment. Hadria's cheeks, for once, had a faint tinge of
+colour. The mysterious character of her beauty became more marked.
+Professor Theobald followed her, with admiring and studious gaze.
+Whether she had felt remorseful for her somewhat unfriendly greeting at
+the beginning of the evening, or from some other cause, her manner to
+him had changed. It was softer, less mocking. He perceived it instantly,
+and pursued his advantage. The party still centred eagerly round the
+piano. Hadria was under the influence of music; therefore less careful
+and guarded than usual, more ready to sway on the waves of emotion. And
+beyond all these influences, tending in the same direction, was the
+underlying spirit of rebellion against the everlasting "Thou shalt not"
+that met a woman at every point, and turned her back from all paths save
+one. And following that one (so ran Hadria's insurrectionary thoughts),
+the obedient creature had to give up every weapon of her womanhood;
+every grace, every power; tramping along that crowded highway, whereon
+wayworn sisters toil forward, with bandaged eyes, and bleeding feet; and
+as their charm fades, in the pursuing of their dusty pilgrimage, the
+shouts, and taunts, and insults, and laughter of their taskmasters
+follow them, while still they stumble on to the darkening land that
+awaits them, at the journey's end: Old Age, the vestibule of Death.
+
+Hadria's eyes gleamed strangely.
+
+"They shall not have their way with me too easily. I can at least give
+my pastors and masters a little trouble. I can at least fight for it,
+losing battle though it be."
+
+The only person who seemed to resist Hadria's influence to-night, was
+Mrs. Jordan, the mother of Marion Fenwick.
+
+"My dear madam," said Professor Theobald, bending over the portly form
+of Mrs. Jordan, "a woman's first duty is to be charming."
+
+"Oh, that comes naturally, Professor," said Hadria, "though it is rather
+for _you_ than for _me_ to say that. You are always missing
+opportunities."
+
+"Believe me, I will miss them no more," he said emphatically.
+
+"Tell us _your_ idea of a woman's duty, Mrs. Jordan," prompted Madame
+Bertaux maliciously. Mrs. Jordan delivered herself of various immemorial
+sentiments which met the usual applause. But Madame Bertaux said
+brusquely that she thought if that sort of thing were preached at women
+much longer, they would end by throwing over duty altogether, in sheer
+disgust at the whole one-sided business. Mrs. Jordan bristled, and
+launched herself upon a long and virtuous sentence. Her daughter Marion
+looked up sharply when Madame Bertaux spoke. Then a timid, cautious
+glance fell on her mother. Marion had lost her freshness and her
+exquisite aetherial quality; otherwise there was little change in her
+appearance. Hadria was struck by the way in which she had looked at
+Madame Bertaux, and it occurred to her that Marion Fenwick was probably
+not quite so acquiescent and satisfied as her friends supposed. But she
+would not speak out. Early training had been too strong for her.
+
+Professor Theobald was unusually serious to-night. He did not respond to
+Hadria's flippancy. He looked at her with grave, sympathetic eyes. He
+seemed to intimate that he understood all that was passing in her mind,
+and was not balked by sprightly appearances. There was no sign of
+cynicism now, no bandying of compliments. His voice had a new ring of
+sincerity. It was a mood that Hadria had noticed in him once or twice
+before, and when it occurred, her sympathy was aroused; she felt that
+she had done him injustice. _This_ was evidently the real man; his
+ordinary manner must be merely the cloak that the civilized being
+acquires the habit of wrapping round him, as a protection against the
+curiosity of his fellows. The Professor himself expressed it almost in
+those words: "It is because of the infinite variety of type and the
+complexity of modern life which the individual is called upon to
+encounter, that a sort of fancy dress has to be worn by all of us, as a
+necessary shield to our individuality and our privacy. We cannot go
+through the complex process of adjustment to each new type that we come
+across, so by common consent, we wear our domino, and respect the
+unwritten laws of the great _bal masque_ that we call society."
+
+The conversation took more and more intimate and serious turns. Mrs.
+Jordan was the only check upon it. Madame Bertaux followed up her first
+heresy by others even more bold.
+
+"Whenever one wants very particularly to have one's way about a matter,"
+she said, "one sneaks off and gets somebody else persuaded that it is
+his duty to sacrifice himself for us--_c'est tout simple_--and the
+chances are that he meekly does it. If he doesn't, at least one has the
+satisfaction of making him feel a guilty wretch, and setting oneself up
+with a profitable grievance for life."
+
+"To the true woman," said Mrs. Jordan, who had ruled her family with a
+rod of iron for thirty stern years, "there is no joy to equal that of
+self-sacrifice."
+
+"Except that of exacting it," added Hadria.
+
+"I advise everyone desirous of dominion to preach that duty, in and out
+of season," said Madame Bertaux. "It is seldom that the victims even
+howl, so well have we trained them."
+
+"Truly I hope so!" cried Professor Theobald. "It must be most galling
+when their lamentations prevent one from committing one's justifiable
+homicide in peace and quietness. Imagine the discomfort of having a
+half-educated victim to deal with, who can't hold his tongue and let one
+perform the operation quietly and comfortably. It is enough to embitter
+any Christian!"
+
+The party broke up, with many cordial expressions of pleasure, and
+several plans were made for immediately meeting again. Lady Engleton was
+delighted to see that Mrs. Temperley entered with animation, into some
+projects for picnics and excursions in the neighbourhood.
+
+"Did I not tell you that all you wanted was a little lively society?"
+she said, with genuine warmth, as the two women stood in the hall, a
+little apart from the others.
+
+Hadria's eye-lids suddenly fell and reddened slightly.
+
+"Oh, you are so kind!" she exclaimed, in a voice whose tones betrayed
+the presence of suppressed tears.
+
+Lady Engleton, in astonishment, stretched out a sisterly hand, but
+Hadria had vanished through the open hall door into the darkness
+without.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+
+
+Mrs. Temperley was much discussed at Craddock Place. Professor Theobald
+preserved the same grave mood whenever she was present. He only returned
+to his usual manner, in her absence. "Theobald has on his Mrs. Temperley
+manner," Claude Moreton used to say. The latter was himself among her
+admirers.
+
+"I begin to be afraid that Claude is taking her too seriously," Lady
+Engleton remarked to her husband. He had fired up on one occasion when
+Professor Theobald said something flippant about Mrs. Temperley. Claude
+Moreton's usual calmness had caused the sudden outburst to be noticed
+with surprise. He hated Professor Theobald.
+
+"What possesses you both to let that fellow come here so much?"
+
+"The Professor? Oh, he is a very old friend, you know, and extremely
+clever. One has to put up with his manner."
+
+Claude Moreton grunted. "These, at any rate, are no reasons why Mrs.
+Temperley should put up with his manner!"
+
+"But, my dear Claude, as you are always pointing out, the Professor has
+a special manner which he keeps exclusively for her."
+
+The special manner had already worked wonders. The Professor was to
+Hadria by far the most entertaining person of the party. He had always
+amused her, and even the first time she saw him, he had exercised a
+strange, unpleasant fascination over her, which had put her on the
+defensive, for she had disliked and distrusted him. The meetings in the
+Priory gardens had softened her hostility, and now she began to feel
+more and more that she had judged him unfairly. In those days she had a
+strong pre-occupying interest. He had arrived on the scene at an
+exciting moment, just when she was planning out her flight to Paris.
+She had not considered the Professor's character very deeply. There were
+far too many other things to think of. It was simpler to avoid him. But
+now everything had changed. The present moment was not exciting; she had
+no plans and projects in her head; she was not about to court the fate
+of Icarus. That fate had already overtaken her. The waves were closing
+over-head; her wings were wet and crippled, in the blue depths. Why not
+take what the gods had sent and make the most of it?
+
+The Professor had all sorts of strange lore, which he used, in his
+conversations with Hadria, almost as a fisherman uses his bait. If she
+shewed an inclination to re-join the rest of the party, he always
+brought out some fresh titbit of curious learning, and Hadria was seldom
+able to resist the lure.
+
+They met often, almost of necessity. It was impossible to feel a
+stranger to the Professor, in these circumstances of frequent and
+informal meeting. Often when Hadria happened to be alone with him, she
+would become suddenly silent, as if she no longer felt the necessity to
+talk or to conceal her weariness. The Professor knew it too well; he saw
+how heavily the burden of life weighed upon her, and how it was often
+almost more than she could do, to drag through the day. She craved for
+excitement, no matter of what kind, in order to help her to forget her
+weariness. Her anxiety about Professor Fortescue preyed upon her. She
+was restless, over-wrought, with every nerve on edge, unable now for
+consecutive work, even had events permitted it. She followed the advice
+and took the medicines of a London doctor, whom Mrs. Fullerton had
+entreated her to consult, but she gained no ground.
+
+"I begin to understand how it is that people take to drinking," she said
+to Algitha, who used to bemoan this vice, with its terrible results, of
+which she had seen so much.
+
+"Ah! don't talk of it in that light way!" cried Algitha. "It is the
+fashion to treat it airily, but if people only knew what an awful curse
+it is, I think they would feel ashamed to be 'moderate' and indifferent
+about it."
+
+"I don't mean to treat it or anything that brings harm and suffering
+'moderately,'" returned Hadria. "I mean only that I can see why the vice
+is so common. It causes forgetfulness, and I suppose most people crave
+for that."
+
+"I think, Hadria, if I may be allowed to say so, that you are finding
+your excitement in another direction."
+
+"You mean that I am trying to find a substitute for the pleasures of
+drunkenness in those of flirtation."
+
+"I should not like to think that you had descended to _conscious_
+flirtation."
+
+Hadria looked steadily into the flames. They were in the morning-room,
+where towards night-fall, even in summer, a small fire usually burnt in
+the grate.
+
+"When I remember what you used to think and what you used to be to us
+all, in the old days at Dunaghee, I feel bitterly pained at what you are
+doing, Hadria. You don't know where it may lead to, and besides it seems
+so beneath you in every way."
+
+"Appeals to the conscience!" cried Hadria, "I knew they would begin!"
+
+"You knew _what_ would begin?"
+
+"Appeals, exhortations to forego the sole remaining interest,
+opportunity, or amusement that is left one! Ah, dear Algitha, I know you
+mean it kindly and I admire you for speaking out, but I am not going to
+be cajoled in that way! I am not going to be turned back and set
+tramping along the stony old road, so long as I can find a pleasanter
+by-way to loiter in. It sounds bad I know. Our drill affects us to the
+last, through every fibre. My duty! By what authority do people choose
+for me my duty? If I can be forced to abide by their decision in the
+matter, let them be satisfied with their power to coerce me, but let
+them leave my conscience alone. It does not dance to their piping."
+
+"But you cannot care for this sort of excitement, Hadria."
+
+"If I can get nothing else----?"
+
+"Even then, I can't see what you can find in it to make you willing to
+sink from your old ideals."
+
+"Ideals! A woman with ideals is like a drowning creature with a
+mill-stone round its neck! I have had enough of ideals!"
+
+"It is a sad day to me when I hear you say so, Hadria!" the sister
+exclaimed.
+
+"Algitha, there is just one solitary weapon that _can't_ be taken from a
+woman--and so it is considerately left to her. Ah, it is a dangerous toy
+when brandished dexterously! Sometimes it sends a man or two away
+howling. Our pastors and masters have a wholesome dread of the murderous
+thing--and what wails, and satires, and lamentations it inspires!
+Consult the literature of all lands and ages! Heaven-piercing! The only
+way of dealing with the awkward dilemma is to get the woman persuaded to
+be 'good,' and to lay down her weapon of her own accord, and let it
+rust. How many women have been so persuaded! Not I!"
+
+"I know, and I understand how you feel; but oh, Hadria, _this_ is not
+the way to fight, _this_ will bring no good to anyone. And as for
+admiration, the admiration of men--why, you know it is not worth
+having--of this sort."
+
+"Oh, do I not know it! It is less than worthless. But I am not seeking
+anything of permanent value; I am seeking excitement, and the
+superficial satisfaction of brandishing the weapon that everyone would
+be charmed to see me lay in the dust. I _won't_ lay it down to please
+anybody. Dear me, it will soon rust of its own accord. You might as well
+ask some luckless warrior who stands at bay, facing overwhelming odds,
+to yield up his sword and leave himself defenceless. It is an insult to
+one's common sense."
+
+Algitha's remonstrance seemed only to inflame her sister's mood, so she
+said no more. But she watched Hadria's increasingly reckless conduct,
+with great uneasiness.
+
+"It really _is_ exciting!" exclaimed Hadria, with a strange smile. The
+whole party had migrated for the day, to the hills at a distance of
+about ten miles from Craddock Dene. A high spot had been chosen, on the
+edge of woodland shade, looking out over a wide distance of plain and
+far-off ranges. Here, as Claude Moreton remarked, they were to spoil the
+landscape, by taking their luncheon.
+
+"Or what is worse, by giving ourselves rheumatism," added Lord
+Engleton.
+
+"What grumbling creatures men are!" exclaimed his wife, "and what
+pleasures they lose for themselves and make impossible for others, by
+this stupid habit of dwelling upon the disadvantages of a situation,
+instead of on its charms."
+
+"We ought to dwell upon the fowl and the magnificent prospect, and
+ignore the avenging rheumatism," said Claude Moreton.
+
+"Oh no, guard against it," advised Algitha, with characteristic common
+sense. "Sit on this waterproof, for instance."
+
+"Ah, there you have the true philosophy!" cried Professor Theobald.
+"Contentment and forethought. Observe the symbol of forethought." He
+spread the waterproof to the wind.
+
+"There is nothing like a contented spirit!" cried Lady Engleton.
+
+"Who is it that says you knock a man into a ditch, and then you tell him
+to remain content in the position in which Providence has placed him?"
+asked Hadria.
+
+"Even contentment has its dangers," said Claude Moreton, dreamily.
+
+At the end of the meal, Hadria rose from the rug where she had been
+reclining, with the final assertion, that she thought the man who was
+knocked into the ditch and told to do his duty there, would do the best
+service to mankind, as well as to himself, by making a horrid clamour
+and trying to get out again. A group collected round her, almost
+immediately.
+
+"Mrs. Fenwick, won't you give us a song!" cried Madame Bertaux. "I see
+you have been kind enough to bring your guitar."
+
+Marion was enthroned upon the picnic-basket, with much pomp, and her
+guitar placed in her hand by Claude Moreton. Her figure, in her white
+gown and large straw hat, had for background the shadows of thick woods.
+
+Professor Theobald sank down on the grass at Hadria's side. She felt
+that his mood was agitated. She could not be in much doubt as to its
+cause. The reckless _role_ that she had been playing was bringing its
+result. Hadria was half alarmed, half exultant. She had a strange, vague
+notion of selling her life dearly, to the enemy. Only, of late, this
+feeling had been mixed with another, of which she was scarcely
+conscious. The subtle fascination which the Professor exercised over her
+had taken a stronger hold, far stronger than she knew.
+
+She was sitting on a little knoll, her arm resting on her knee, and her
+cheek in her hand. In the exquisitely graceful attitude, was an element
+of self-abandonment. It seemed as if she had grown tired of guiding and
+directing herself, and were now commending herself to fate or fortune,
+to do with her as they would, or must.
+
+Marion struck a quiet chord. Her voice was sweet and tender and full,
+admirably suited to the song. Every nerve in Hadria answered to her
+tones.
+
+          "Oh, gather me the rose, the rose
+           While yet in flower we find it;
+           For summer smiles, but summer goes,
+           And winter waits behind it.
+
+          "For with the dream foregone, foregone,
+           The deed foreborne for ever,
+           The worm regret will canker on,
+           And time will turn him never."
+
+Professor Theobald shifted his position slightly.
+
+          "Ah, well it were to love, my love,
+           And cheat of any laughter
+           The fate beneath us and above,
+           The dark before and after.
+
+          "The myrtle and the rose, the rose,
+           The sunlight and the swallow,
+           The dream that comes, the dream that goes,
+           The memories that follow."
+
+The song was greeted with a vague stir among the silent audience. A
+little breeze gave a deep satisfied sigh, among the trees.
+
+Several other songs followed, and then the party broke up. They were to
+amuse themselves as they pleased during the afternoon, and to meet on
+the same spot for five o'clock tea.
+
+"I _wish_ Hadria would not be so reckless!" cried Algitha anxiously.
+"Have you seen her lately?"
+
+"When last I saw her," said Valeria, "she had strolled off with the
+Professor and Mr. Moreton. Mr. Fleming and Lord Engleton were following
+with Mrs. Fenwick."
+
+"There is safety in numbers, at any rate, but I am distressed about her.
+It is all very well what she says, about not allowing her woman's sole
+weapon to be wrenched from her, but she can't use it in this way,
+safely. One can't play with human emotions without coming to grief."
+
+"A man, at any rate, has no idea of being led an emotional dance," said
+Miss Du Prel.
+
+"Hadria has, I believe, at the bottom of her heart, a lurking desire to
+hurt men, because they have hurt women so terribly," said Algitha.
+
+"One can understand the impulse, but the worst of it is, that one is
+certain to pay back the score on the good man, and let the other go
+free."
+
+Algitha shook her head, regretfully.
+
+"Did Hadria never show this impulse before?"
+
+"Never in my life have I seen her exercise her power so ruthlessly."
+
+"I rather think she is wise after all," said Miss Du Prel reflectively.
+"She might be sorry some day never to have tasted what she is tasting
+now."
+
+"But it seems to me dreadful. There is not a man who is not influenced
+by her in the strangest manner; even poor Joseph Fleming, who used to
+look up to her so. In my opinion, she is acting very wrongly."
+
+"'He that has eaten his fill does not pity the hungry,' as the Eastern
+proverb puts it. Come now, Algitha, imagine yourself to be cut off from
+the work that supremely interests you, and thrown upon Craddock Dene
+without hope of respite, for the rest of your days. Don't you think you
+too might be tempted to try experiments with a power whose strength you
+had found to be almost irresistible?"
+
+"Perhaps I should," Algitha admitted.
+
+"I don't say she is doing right, but you must remember that you have
+not the temperament that prompts to these outbursts. I suppose that is
+only to say that you are better than Hadria, by nature. I think perhaps
+you are, but remember you have had the life and the work that you chose
+above all others--she has not."
+
+"Heaven knows I don't set myself above Hadria," cried Algitha. "I have
+always looked up to her. Don't you know how painful it is when people
+you respect do things beneath them?"
+
+"Hadria will disappoint us all in some particular," said Miss Du Prel.
+"She will not correspond exactly to anybody's theory or standard, not
+even her own. It is a defect which gives her character a quality of the
+unexpected, that has for me, infinite attraction."
+
+Miss Du Prel had never shewn so much disposition to support Hadria's
+conduct as now, when disapproval was general. She had a strong
+fellow-feeling for a woman who desired to use her power, and she was
+half disposed to regard her conduct as legitimate. At any rate, it was a
+temptation almost beyond one's powers of resistance. If a woman might
+not do this, what, in heaven's name, _might_ she do? Was she not
+eternally referred to her woman's influence, her woman's kingdom? Surely
+a day's somewhat murderous sport was allowable in _that_ realm! After
+all, energy, ambition, nervous force, _must_ have an outlet somewhere.
+Men could look after themselves. They had no mercy on women when they
+lay in their power. Why should a woman be so punctilious?
+
+"Only the man is sure to get the best of it," she added, bitterly. "He
+loses so little. It is a game where the odds are all on one side, and
+the conclusion foregone."
+
+Unexpectedly, the underwood behind the speakers was brushed aside and
+Hadria appeared before them. She looked perturbed.
+
+"What is it? Why are you by yourself?"
+
+"Oh, our party split up, long ago, into cliques, and we all became so
+select, that, at last, we reduced each clique to one member. Behold the
+very acme of selectness!" Hadria stood before them, in an attitude of
+hauteur.
+
+"This sounds like evasion," said Algitha.
+
+"And if it were, what right have you to try to force me to tell what I
+do not volunteer?"
+
+"True," said her sister; "I beg your pardon."
+
+Miss Du Prel rose. "I will leave you to yourselves," she said, walking
+away.
+
+Hadria sat down and rested one elbow on the grass, looking over the
+sweep of the hill towards the distance. "That is almost like our old
+vision in the caves, Algitha; mist and distant lands--it was a false
+prophecy. You were talking about me when I came up, were you not?"
+
+"Did you hear?"
+
+"No, but I feel sure of it."
+
+"Well, I confess it," said Algitha. "We are both very uneasy about you."
+
+"If one never did anything all one's life to make one's friends uneasy,
+I wonder if one would have any fun."
+
+Algitha shook her head anxiously.
+
+"'Choose what you want and pay for it,' is the advice of some accredited
+sage," Hadria observed.
+
+"Women have to pay so high," said Algitha.
+
+"So much the worse, but there is such a thing as false economy."
+
+"But seriously, Hadria, if one may speak frankly, I can't see that the
+game is worth the candle. You have tested your power sufficiently. What
+more do you want? Claude Moreton is too nice and too good a man to
+trifle with. And poor Joseph Fleming! That is to me beyond everything."
+
+Hadria flushed deeply.
+
+"I never dreamt that he--I--I never tried, never thought for a
+moment----"
+
+"Ah! that is just the danger, Hadria. Your actions entail unintended
+consequences. As Miss Du Prel says, 'It is always the good men whom one
+wounds; the others wound us.'" Hadria was silent. "And Claude Moreton,"
+continued Algitha presently. "He is far too deeply interested in you,
+far too absorbed in what you say and do. I have watched him. It is
+cruel."
+
+Hadria grew fierce. "Has _he_ never cruelly injured a woman? Has _he_
+not at least given moral support to the hideous indignities that all
+womanhood has to endure at men's hands? At best one can make a man
+suffer. But men also humiliate us, degrade us, jeer at, ridicule the
+miseries that they and their society entail upon us. Yet for sooth, they
+must be spared the discomfort of becoming a little infatuated with a
+woman for a time--a short time, at worst! Their feelings must be
+considered so tenderly!"
+
+"But what good do you do by your present conduct?" asked Algitha,
+sticking persistently to the practical side of the matter.
+
+"I am not trying to do good. I am merely refusing to obey these rules
+for our guidance, which are obviously drawn up to safeguard man's
+property and privilege. Whenever I can find a man-made precept, that
+will I carefully disobey; whenever the ruling powers seek to guide me
+through my conscience, there shall they fail!"
+
+"You forget that in playing with the feelings of others you are placing
+yourself in danger, Hadria. How can you be sure that you won't yourself
+fall desperately in love with one of your intended victims?" Hadria's
+eyes sparkled.
+
+"I wish to heaven I only could!" she exclaimed. "I would give my right
+hand to be in the sway of a complete undoubting, unquestioning passion
+that would make all suffering and all life seem worth while; some
+emotion to take the place of my lost art, some full and satisfying sense
+of union with a human soul to rescue one from the ghastly solitude of
+life. But I am raving like a girl. I am crying for the moon."
+
+"Ah, take care, take care, Hadria; that is a mood in which one may
+mistake any twopenny-halfpenny little luminary for the impossible moon."
+
+"I think I should be almost ready to bless the beautiful illusion,"
+cried Hadria passionately.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+
+
+In the conversation with her sister, the name which Hadria had dreaded
+to hear had not been mentioned. She felt as if she could not have met
+her sister's eyes, at that moment, had she alluded to Professor
+Theobald; for only five minutes before, in the wood, he had spoken to
+her in a way that was scarcely possible to misunderstand, though his
+wording was so cautious that she could not have taken offence, had she
+been so minded, without drawing upon herself the possible retort. "My
+dear lady, you have completely misunderstood me." The thought made her
+flush painfully. But suppose he really _had_ meant what his words seemed
+to imply? He could intend no insult, because he despised, and knew that
+she despised, popular social creeds. Into what new realms was she
+drifting? There was something attractive to Hadria, in the idea of
+defying the world's laws. It was not as the dutiful property of another,
+but as herself, a separate and responsible individual, that she would
+act and feel, rightly or wrongly, as the case might be. That was a
+matter between herself and her conscience, not between herself and the
+world or her legal owner.
+
+The Professor's ambiguous and yet startling speech had forced her to
+consider her position. She remembered how her instinct had always been
+to hold him aloof from her life, just because, as she now began to
+believe, there was something in him that powerfully attracted her. She
+had feared an attraction that appeared unjustified by the man's
+character. But now the fascination had begun to take a stronger grip, as
+the pre-occupying ideas of her life had been chased from their places.
+It had insensibly crept in to fill the empty throne. So long as she had
+cherished hope, so long as she was still struggling, this insidious
+half-magnetic influence had been easily resisted. Now, she was set
+adrift; her anchor was raised; she lay at the wind's mercy,
+half-conscious of the peril and not caring.
+
+Professor Theobald had an acute perception of the strange and confused
+struggle that was going on in her mind. But he had no notion of the
+peculiar reasons, in her case, for an effect that he knew to be far from
+rare among women; he did not understand the angry, corroding action of a
+strong artistic impulse that was incessantly baulked in full tide. The
+sinister, menacing voices of that tide had no meaning for him, except as
+expressing a _malaise_ which he had met with a hundred times before. He
+put it down to an excess of emotional or nervous energy, in a nature
+whose opportunities did not offer full scope to its powers. He had
+grasped the general conditions, but he had not perceived the particular
+fact that added tenfold to the evil which exists in the more usual, and
+less complicated case.
+
+He thought but little of a musical gift, having no sympathy with music;
+and since he had never known what it was to receive anything but help
+and encouragement in the exercise of his own talents, the effect upon
+the mind and character of such an experience as Hadria's, was beyond the
+range of his conceptions. He understood subtly, and misunderstood
+completely, at one and the same time. But to Hadria, every syllable
+which revealed how much he did understand, seemed to prove, by
+implication, that he understood the whole. It never occurred to her that
+he was blinder than Henriette herself, to the real centre and heart of
+the difficulty.
+
+It has been said that what the human being longs for above all things,
+is to be understood: that he prefers it infinitely to being over-rated.
+Professor Theobald gave Hadria this desired sensation. His attraction
+for her was composed of many elements, and it was enhanced by the fact
+that she had now grown so used to his presence, as to cease to notice
+many little traits that had repelled her, at the beginning. Her critical
+instincts were lulled. Thus had come to pass that which is by no means
+an uncommon incident in human history: a toleration for and finally a
+strong attraction towards a nature that began by creating distrust, and
+even dislike.
+
+Hadria's instinct now was to hunt up reasons for desiring the society of
+Professor Theobald, for the gladness that she felt at the prospect of
+seeing him. She wished to explain to herself how it was that he had
+become so prominent a figure in her life. It was surprising how rapidly
+and how completely he had taken a central position. Her feeling towards
+him, and her admiring affection for Professor Fortescue, were as
+different as night from day. She shrank from comparing the two emotions,
+because at the bottom of her heart, she felt how infinitely less fine
+and sound was this latter attachment, how infinitely less to be
+welcomed. If any one spoke disparagingly of Professor Theobald, Hadria's
+instinct was to stand up for him, to find ingenious reasons for his
+words or his conduct that threw upon him the most favourable light, and
+her object was as much to persuade herself as to convince her
+interlocutor. What the Professor had said this afternoon, had brought
+her to a point whence she had to review all these changes and
+developments of her feeling. She puzzled herself profoundly. In
+remembering those few words, she was conscious of a little thrill
+of--not joy (the word was too strong), but of something akin to it. She
+thought--and then laughed at herself--that it had a resemblance to the
+sensation that is caused to the mind by the suggestion of some new and
+entrancingly interesting idea--say about astronomy! And if she consulted
+her mere wishes in the matter, apart from all other considerations, she
+would explore farther in this direction. Whether curiosity or sentiment
+actuated her, she could not detect. It would certainly be deeply
+exciting to find out what her own nature really was, and still more so
+to gain greater insight into his. Was this heartless, cold-blooded? Or
+was it that she felt a lurking capacity for a feeling stronger than--or
+at any rate different from--any that she had hitherto felt? This was a
+secret that she could not discover. Hadria gave a frightened start. Was
+she finding herself to be bad in a way that she had never suspected? If
+she could but fully and completely escape from tradition, so that her
+judgment might be quite unhampered. Tradition seemed either to make
+human beings blindly submissive, or to tempt them to act out of an
+equally blind opposition to its canons. One could never be entirely
+independent. In her confusion, she longed to turn to some clear mind and
+sound conscience, not so much for advice, as in order to test the effect
+upon such a mind and conscience of the whole situation.
+
+Professor Fortescue was the only person upon whose judgment and feeling
+she could absolutely rely. What would he think of her? His impression
+would be the best possible guide, for no one opposed more strongly than
+he did the vulgar notion of proprietary rights between husband and wife,
+no one asserted more absolutely the independence of the individual. Yet
+Hadria could not imagine that he would be anything but profoundly sorry,
+if he knew the recklessness of her feeling, and the nature of her
+sentiment for Professor Theobald. But then he did not know how she
+stood; he did not know that the blue hopeful distance of life had
+disappeared; that even the middle-distance had been cut off, and that
+the sticks and stones and details of a very speckly foreground now
+confronted her immovably. She would like to learn how many women of her
+temperament, placed in her position, would stop to enquire very closely
+into the right and wrong of the matter, when for a moment, a little
+avenue seemed on the point of opening, misty and blue, leading the eye
+to hidden perilous distances.
+
+And then Professor Theobald had, after all, many fine qualities. He was
+complex, and he had faults like the rest of us; but the more one knew
+him, the more one felt his kindness of heart (how good he was to little
+Martha), his readiness to help others, his breadth of view and his
+sympathy. These were not common qualities. He was a man whom one could
+admire, despite certain traits that made one shrink a little, at times.
+These moreover had disappeared of late. They were accidental rather than
+intrinsic. It was a matter of daily observation that people catch
+superficial modes of thought and speech, just as they catch accent, or
+as women who have given no thought to the art of dress, sometimes
+misrepresent themselves, by adopting, unmodified, whatever happens to be
+in the fashion. Hadria had a wistful desire to be able to respect
+Professor Theobald without reserve, to believe in him thoroughly, to
+think him noble in calibre and fine in fibre. She had a vague idea that
+emphatic statement would conduce to making all this true.
+
+She had never met him alone since that day of the picnic, except for a
+few chance minutes, when he had expressed over again, rather in tone
+than in words, the sentiment before implied.
+
+Algitha and Miss Du Prel were relieved to see that Hadria had, after
+all, taken their advice. Without making any violent or obvious change in
+her conduct, she had ceased to cause her friends anxiety. Something in
+her manner had changed. Claude Moreton felt it instantly. He spoke of
+leaving Craddock Place, but he lingered on. The house had begun to
+empty. Lady Engleton wished to have some time to herself. She was
+painting a new picture. But Professor Theobald remained. Joseph Fleming
+went away to stay with his married sister. About this time Hubert had to
+go abroad to attend to some business matters of a serious and tedious
+character, connected with a law-suit in which he was professionally
+interested.
+
+From some instinct which Hadria found difficult to account for, she
+avoided meeting the Professor alone. Yet the whole interest of the day
+centred in the prospect of seeing him. If by chance, she missed him, she
+felt flat and dull, and found herself going over in her mind every
+detail of their last meeting. He had the art of making his most
+trifling remark interesting. Even his comments on the weather had a
+colour and quality of their own. Lady Engleton admired his lightness of
+touch.
+
+"Did you know that our amiable Professor shews his devotion to you, by
+devotion to your _protegee_?" she asked one day, when she met Hadria
+returning from the Priory with the two boys, whose holidays were not yet
+over. "I saw him coming out of the child's cottage this morning, and she
+shewed me the toy he had given her."
+
+"He is very fond of her, I know," said Hadria.
+
+"He gives her lots of things!" cried Jack, opening round and envious
+eyes.
+
+"How do _you_ know, sir?" enquired Lady Engleton.
+
+"Because Mary says so," Jack returned.
+
+Hadria was pleased at the kindness which the act seemed to indicate.
+
+The doctor had ordered her to be in the open air as much as possible,
+and to take a walk every day. Sometimes she would walk with the boys,
+sometimes alone. In either case, the thought of Professor Theobald
+pursued her. She often grew wearied with it, but it could not be
+banished. If she saw a distant figure on the road, a little sick,
+excited stir of the heart, betrayed her suspicion that it might be he.
+She could not sincerely wish herself free from the strange infatuation,
+for the thought of life without it, troublesome and fatiguing though it
+was, seemed inexpressibly dull. It had taken the colour out of
+everything. It had altered the very face of nature, in her eyes. Her
+hope had been to escape loneliness, but with this preposterous secret,
+she was lonelier than she had ever been before. She could no longer make
+a confidante of herself. She was afraid of her own ridicule, her own
+blame, above all of finding herself confronted with some accusation
+against the Professor, some overpowering reason for thinking poorly of
+him. Whenever they met, she was in terror lest he should leave her no
+alternative. She often opened conversational channels by which he could
+escape his unknown peril, and she would hold her breath till it was
+over. She dreaded the cool-headed, ruthless critic, lurking within her
+own consciousness, who would hear of no ingenious explanations of words
+or conduct. But she would not admit to this dread--that would have been
+to admit everything. She had not the satisfaction of openly thinking the
+matter out, for the suspicion that so profoundly saddened her, must be
+kept scrupulously hidden. Hadria was filled with dismay when she dared
+to glance at the future. No wonder Valeria had warned her against
+playing with fire! Was it always like this when people fell in love?
+What a ridiculous, uncomfortable, outrageous thing it was! How
+destructive to common sense and sanity and everything that kept life
+running on reasonable lines. A poor joke at best, and oh, how stale!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Shall I tell you your ruling passion, Mrs. Temperley?"
+
+"If you can, Professor Theobald."
+
+Before them stretched a woodland glade. The broad fronds of the bracken
+made bright patches of light where the sun caught them, and tall plants,
+such as hemlock and wild parsley, stood out, almost white against the
+shade; the flies and midges moving round them in the warmth. At some
+distance behind, the sound of voices could be heard through the windings
+of the wood. There were snatches of song and laughter.
+
+"Your ruling passion is power over others."
+
+"It has been sadly thwarted then," she answered, with a nervous laugh.
+
+"Thwarted? Surely not. What more can you want than to touch the emotions
+of every one who comes across your path? It is a splendid power, and
+ought to be more satisfying to the possessor than a gift of any other
+kind."
+
+Professor Theobald waited for her reply, but she made none.
+
+He looked at her fixedly, eagerly. She could do nothing but walk on in
+silence.
+
+"Even an actor does not impress himself so directly upon his fellows as
+a woman of--well, a woman like yourself. A painter, a writer, a
+musician, never comes in touch at all with his public. We hear his name,
+we admire or we decry his works, but the man or the woman who has
+toiled, and felt, and lived, is unknown to us. He is lost in his work."
+
+Hadria gave a murmur of assent.
+
+"But you, Mrs. Temperley, have a very different story to tell. It is
+_you_, yourself, your personality, in all its many-sided charm that we
+all bow to; it is _you_, not your achievements that--that we love."
+
+Hadria cleared her throat; the words would not come. A rebellious little
+nerve was twitching at her eye-lid. After all, what in heaven's name was
+she to say? It was too foolish to pretend to misunderstand; for tone,
+look, manner all told the same story; yet even now there was nothing
+absolutely definite to reply to, and her cleverness of retort had
+deserted her.
+
+"Ah! Mrs. Temperley--Hadria----" Professor Theobald had stopped short in
+the path, and then Hadria made some drowning effort to resist the force
+that she still feared. But it was in vain. She stood before him, paler
+even than usual, with her head held high, but eye-lids that drooped and
+lips that trembled. The movement of the leaves made faint quivering
+little shadows on her white gown, and stirred delicately over the lace
+at her throat. The emotion that possessed her, the mixture of joy and
+dismay and even terror, passed across her face, in the moment's silence.
+The two figures stood opposite to one another; Hadria drawing a little
+away, swayed slightly backward, the Professor eagerly bending forward.
+He was on the point of speaking, when there came floating through the
+wood, the sound of a woman's voice singing. The voice was swiftly
+recognised by them both, and the song.
+
+Hadria's eye-lids lifted for a second, and her breathing quickened.
+
+          "Oh, gather me the rose, the rose,
+            While yet in flower we find it;
+          For summer smiles, but summer goes,
+            And winter waits behind it.
+
+          "For with the dream foregone, foregone,
+            The deed foreborne for ever,
+          The worm regret will canker on,
+            And time will turn him never."
+
+Professor Theobald advanced a step. Hadria drew back.
+
+          "So well it were to love, my love,
+             And cheat of any laughter
+           The fate beneath us and above,
+             The dark before and after.
+
+          "The myrtle and the rose, the rose,
+             The sunshine and the swallow,
+           The dream that comes, the dream that goes,
+             The memories that follow!"
+
+The sweet cadence died away. A bird's note took up the dropped thread of
+music. The Professor broke into passionate speech.
+
+"My cause is pleaded in your own language, Hadria, Hadria; listen to it,
+listen. You know what is in my heart; I can't apologize for feeling it,
+for I have no choice; no man has where you are concerned, as you must
+have discovered long ago. And I do not apologize for telling you the
+truth, you know it does you no wrong. This is no news to you; you must
+have guessed it from the first. Your coldness, your rebuffs, betrayed
+that you did. But, ah! I have struggled long enough. I can keep silence
+no longer. I have thought of late that your feeling for me had changed;
+a thousand things have made me hope--good heavens, if you knew what that
+means to a man who had lost it! Ah! speak--don't look like that,
+Hadria,--what is there in me that you always turn from? Speak, speak!"
+
+"Ah! life is horribly difficult!" she exclaimed. "I wish to heaven I
+had never budged from the traditions in which I was educated--either
+that, or that everybody had discarded them. I feel one way and think
+another."
+
+"Then you do love me, Hadria," he cried.
+
+Her instinct was to deny the truth, but there seemed to her something
+mean in concealment, especially if she were to blame, especially if
+those who respected tradition, and made it their guide and rule through
+thick and thin, in the very teeth of reason, were right after all, as it
+seemed to her, at this moment, that they were. If there were evil in
+this strange passion, let her at least acknowledge her share in it. Let
+her not "assume a virtue though she had it not."
+
+Professor Theobald was watching her face, as for a verdict of life and
+death.
+
+"Oh, answer me, answer me--Yes or no, yes or no?" She had raised her
+eyes for a moment, about to speak; the words were stifled at their
+birth, for the next instant she was in his arms. Again came the voice of
+the singer, nearer this time. The song was hummed softly.
+
+          "Oh, gather me the rose, the rose,
+             While yet in flower we find it,
+           For summer smiles, but summer goes,
+             And winter waits behind it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII.
+
+
+The need for vigilance over that hidden distrust was more peremptory now
+than ever. The confession once made, the die once cast, anything but
+complete faith and respect became intolerable. Outwardly, affairs seemed
+to run on very much as before. But Hadria could scarcely believe that
+she was living in the same world. The new fact walked before her,
+everywhere. She did not dare to examine it closely. She told herself
+that a great joy had come to her, or rather that she had taken the joy
+in spite of everything and everybody. She would order her affections
+exactly as she chose. If only she could leave Craddock Dene! Hubert and
+her parents considered the opinion of the public as of more importance
+than anything else in life; for her mother's sake she was forced to
+acquiesce; otherwise there was absolutely no reason why she and Hubert
+should live under the same roof. It was a mere ceremony kept up on
+account of others. That had been acknowledged by him in so many words.
+And a wretched, ridiculous, irksome ceremony it was for them both.
+
+Hadria refused now to meet Professor Theobald at the Cottage. His visits
+there, which had been timed to meet her, must be paid at a different
+hour. He remonstrated in vain. She shewed various other inconsistencies,
+as he called them. He used to laugh affectionately at her "glimpses of
+conscience," but said he cared nothing for these trifles, since he had
+her assurance that she loved him. How he had waited and longed for that!
+How hopeless, how impossible it had seemed. He professed to have fallen
+in love at first sight. He even declared that Hadria had done the same,
+though in a different way, without knowing it. Her mind had resisted
+and, for the time, kept her feelings in abeyance. He had watched the
+struggle. Her heart, he rejoiced to believe, had responded to him from
+the beginning. By dint of repeating this very often, he had half
+convinced Hadria that it was so. She preferred to think that her feeling
+was of the long-standing and resistless kind.
+
+Sometimes she had intervals of reckless happiness, when all doubts were
+kept at bay, and the condition of belief that she assiduously
+cultivated, remained with her freely. She felt no secret tug at the
+tether. Professor Theobald would then be at his best; grave, thoughtful,
+gentle, considerate, responsive to every mood.
+
+When they met at Craddock Place and elsewhere, Hadria suffered miseries
+of anxiety. She was terrified lest he should do or say something in bad
+taste, and that she would see her own impression confirmed on the faces
+of others. She put it to herself that she was afraid people would not
+understand him as she did. The history of his past life, as he had
+related it to her, appealed overpoweringly to all that was womanly and
+protective in her nature. He was emotional by temperament, but
+circumstance had doomed him to repression and solitude. This call on her
+sympathy did more than anything to set Hadria's mind at rest. She gave a
+vast sigh when that feeling of confidence became confirmed. Life, then,
+need no longer be ridiculous! Hard and cruel it might be, full of lost
+dreams, but at least there would be something in it that was perfect.
+This new emotional centre offered the human _summum bonum_: release from
+oneself.
+
+Hadria and the Professor met, one morning, in the gardens of the Priory.
+Hadria had been strolling down the yew avenue, her thoughts full of him,
+as usual. She reached the seat at the end where once Professor Fortescue
+had found her--centuries ago, it seemed to her now. How different was
+_this_ meeting! Professor Theobald came by the path through the thick
+shrubberies, behind the seat. There was a small space of grass at the
+back. Here he stood, bending over the seat, and though he was usually
+prudent, he did not even assure himself that no one was in sight, before
+drawing Hadria's head gently back, and stooping to kiss her on the
+cheek, while he imprisoned a hand in each of his. She flushed, and
+looked hastily down the avenue.
+
+"I wonder what our fate would be, if anyone had been there?" she said,
+with a little shudder.
+
+"No one was there, darling." He stood leaning over the high back of the
+seat, looking down at his companion, with a smile.
+
+"Do you know," he said, "I fear I shall have to go up to town to-morrow,
+for the day."
+
+Hadria's face fell. She hated him to go away, even for a short time; she
+could not endure her own thoughts when his influence was withdrawn. His
+presence wrapped her in a state of dream, a false peace which she
+courted.
+
+"Oh no, no," she cried, with a childish eagerness that was entirely
+unlike her, "don't go."
+
+"Do you really care so very much?" he asked, with a deep flush of
+pleasure.
+
+"Of course I do, of course." Her thoughts wandered off through strange
+by-ways. At times, they would pass some black cavernous entrance to
+unknown labyrinths, and the frightened thoughts would hurry by.
+Sometimes they would be led decorously along a smooth highway, pacing
+quietly; sometimes they would rise to the sunlight and spread their
+wings, and then perhaps take sudden flight, like a flock of startled
+birds.
+
+Yes, he needed sympathy, and faith, and love. He had never had anyone to
+believe in him before. He had met with hardness and distrust all his
+life. She would trust him. He had conquered, step by step, his inimical
+conditions. He was lonely, unused to real affection. Let her try to make
+up for what he had lost. Let her forget herself and her own little woes,
+in the effort to fill his life with all that he had been forced to
+forego. (An impish thought danced before her for a second--"Fine talk,
+but you know you love to be loved.") If her love were worth anything,
+that must be her impulse. Let her beware of considering her own
+feelings, her own wishes and fears. If she loved, let it be fully and
+freely, generously and without reserve. That or nothing. ("Probably it
+will be nothing," jeered the imp.) "Then what, in heaven's name, _is_ it
+that I feel?" the other self seemed to cry in desperation.
+
+"An idea has struck me," said the Professor, taking her hand and holding
+it closely in his, "Why should you not come up to town, say on
+Friday--don't start, dearest--it would be quite simple, and then for
+once in our lives we should stand, as it were, alone in the world, you
+and I, without this everlasting dread of curious eyes upon us. Alone
+among strangers--what bliss! We could have a day on the river, or I
+could take you to see--well, anything you liked--we should be free and
+happy. Think of it, Hadria! to be rid of this incessant need for
+caution, for hypocrisy. We have but one life to live; why not live it?"
+
+"Why not live it, why not live it?" The words danced in her head, like
+circles of little sprites carrying alluring wreaths of roses.
+
+"Ah, we must be careful; there is much at stake," she said.
+
+He began to plead, eloquently and skilfully. He knew exactly what
+arguments would tell best with her. The imps and the other selves
+engaged in a free fight.
+
+"No; I must not listen; it is too dangerous. If it were not for my
+mother, I should not care for anything, but as it is, I must risk
+nothing. I have already risked too much."
+
+"There would be no danger," he argued. "Trust to me. I have something to
+lose too. It is of no use to bring the whole dead stupid weight of the
+world on our heads. There is no sense in lying down under a heap of
+rubbish, to be crushed. Let us go our way and leave other people to go
+theirs."
+
+"Easier said than done."
+
+"Oh no; the world must be treated as one would treat a maniac who
+brandished a razor in one's face. Direct defiance argues folly worse
+than his."
+
+"Of course, but all this subterfuge and deceit is hateful."
+
+"Not if one considers the facts of the case. The maniac-world insists
+upon uniformity and obedience, especially in that department of life
+where uniformity is impossible. You don't suppose that it is ever
+_really_ attained by any human being who deserves the name? Never! We
+all wear the livery of our master and live our own lives not the less."
+
+"Ah, I doubt that," said Hadria. "I think the livery affects us all,
+right through to the bones and marrow. What young clergyman was it who
+told me that as soon as he put on his canonicals, he felt a different
+man, mind, heart, and personality?"
+
+"Well, _your_ livery has never made you, Hadria, and that is all I care
+for."
+
+"Indeed, I am not so sure."
+
+"It has not turned you out a Mrs. Jordan or a Mrs. Walker, for
+instance."
+
+"To the great regret of my well-wishers."
+
+"To the great regret of your inferiors. There is nothing that people
+regret so bitterly as superiority to themselves." Hadria laughed.
+
+"I am always afraid of the gratifying argument based on the assumption
+of superiority; one is apt to be brought down a peg, if ever one
+indulges in it."
+
+"I can't see that much vanity is implied in claiming superiority to the
+common idiot of commerce," said the Professor, with a shrug.
+
+"He is in the family," Hadria reminded him.
+
+"The human family; yes, confound him!" They laughed, and the Professor,
+after a pause, continued his pleading.
+
+"It only needs a little courage, Hadria. My love, my dear one, don't
+shake your head."
+
+He came forward and sat down on the seat beside her, bending towards her
+persuasively.
+
+"Promise me to come to town on Friday, Hadria--promise me, dearest."
+
+"But if--oh, how I hate all the duplicity that this involves! It creates
+wretched situations, whichever way one turns. I never realized into what
+a labyrinth it would lead one. I should like to speak out and be honest
+about it."
+
+"And your mother?"
+
+"Oh, I know of course----" Hadria set her teeth. "It drives me mad, all
+this!"
+
+"Oh, Hadria! And you don't count _me_ then?"
+
+"Obviously I count you. But one's whole life becomes a lie."
+
+"That is surely schoolgirl's reasoning. Strange that you should be
+guilty of it! Is one's life a lie because one makes so bold as to keep
+one's own counsel? Must one take the world into one's confidence, or
+stand condemned as a liar? Oh, Hadria, this is childish!"
+
+"Yes, I am getting weak-minded, I know," she said feverishly. "I resent
+being forced to resort to this sort of thing when I am doing nothing
+wrong, according to my own belief. Why should I be forced to behave as
+if I _were_ sinning against my conscience?"
+
+"So you may say; that is your grievance, not your fault. But, after all,
+compromise is necessary in _everything_, and the best way is to make the
+compromise lightly and with a shrug of the shoulders, and then you find
+that life becomes fairly manageable and often extremely pleasant."
+
+"Yes, I suppose you are right." Hadria was picking the petals off a
+buttercup one by one, and when she had destroyed one golden corolla, she
+attacked another.
+
+"Fate _is_ ironical!" she exclaimed. "Never in my life did I feel more
+essentially frank and open-hearted than I feel now."
+
+The Professor laughed.
+
+"My impulse is to indulge in that sort of bluff, boisterous honesty
+which forms so charming a feature of our national character. Is it not
+disastrous?"
+
+"It _is_ a little inopportune," Theobald admitted with a chuckle.
+
+"Oh, it is no laughing matter! It amounts to a monomania. I long to take
+Mrs. Walker aside and say 'Hi! look here, Mrs. Walker, I just want to
+mention to you----' and so on; and Mrs. Jordan inspires me with a still
+more fatal impulse of frankness. If only for the fun of the thing, I
+long to do it."
+
+"You are quite mad, Hadria!" exclaimed the Professor, laughing.
+
+"Oh, no," she said, "only bewildered. I want desperately to be bluff and
+outspoken, but I suppose I must dissemble. I long painfully to be like
+'truthful James,' but I must follow in the footsteps of the sneaky
+little boy who came to a bad end because he told a lie. The question is:
+Shall my mother be sacrificed to this passionate love of truth?"
+
+"Or shall I?" asked the Professor. "You seem to forget me. You frighten
+me, Hadria. To indulge in frankness just now, means to throw me over,
+and if you did that, I don't know how I should be able to stand it. I
+should cut my throat."
+
+Hadria buried her face in her hands, as if to shut out distracting
+sights and sounds, so that she might think more clearly.
+
+It seemed, at that moment, as if cutting one's throat would be the only
+way out of the growing difficulty.
+
+How _could_ it go on? And yet, how could she give him up? (The imp gave
+a fiendish chuckle.) It would be so unfair, so cruel, and what would
+life be without him? ("Moral development impossible!" cried the imp,
+with a yell of laughter.) It would be so mean to go back
+now--("Shocking!" exclaimed the imp.) Assuming that she ought never to
+have allowed this thing to happen ("Oh, fie!") because she bore another
+man's name (not being permitted to retain her own), ought she to throw
+this man over, on second and (per assumption) better thoughts, or did
+the false step oblige her to continue in the path she had entered?
+
+"I seem to have got myself into one of those situations where there is
+_no_ right," she exclaimed.
+
+"You forget your own words: A woman in relation to society is in the
+position of a captive; she may justly evade the prison rules, if she
+can."
+
+"So she may; only I want so desperately to wrench away the bars instead
+of evading the rules."
+
+"Try to remember that you----" The Professor stopped abruptly and stood
+listening. They looked at one another. Hadria was deadly white. A step
+was advancing along the winding path through the bushes behind them: a
+half overgrown path, that led from a small door in the wall that ran
+round the park. It was the nearest route from the station to the house,
+and a short cut could be taken this way through the garden, to Craddock
+Place.
+
+"It's all right," the Professor said in a low voice; "we were saying
+nothing compromising."
+
+The step drew nearer.
+
+"Some visitor to Craddock Place probably, who has come down by the 4.20
+from town."
+
+"Professor Fortescue!"
+
+Hadria had sprung up, and was standing, with flushed cheeks, beside her
+calmer companion.
+
+Professor Fortescue's voice broke the momentary silence. He gave a warm
+smile of pleasure and came forward with out-stretched hand.
+
+"The hoped-for instant has come sooner than I thought," he cried
+genially.
+
+Hadria was shocked to see him looking very ill. He said that his doctor
+had bullied him, at last, into deciding to go south. His arrangements
+for departure had been rather hastily made, and he had telegraphed this
+morning, to Craddock Place, to announce his coming. His luggage was
+following in a hand-cart, and he was taking the short cut through the
+Priory gardens. He had come to say good-bye to them all. Miss Du Prel,
+he added, had already made up her mind to go abroad, and he hoped to
+come across her somewhere in Italy. She had given him all news. He
+looked anxiously at Hadria. The flush had left her face now, and the
+altered lines were but too obvious.
+
+"You ought to have change too," he said, "you are not looking well."
+
+She laughed nervously. "Oh, I am all right."
+
+"Let's sit down a moment, if you were not discussing anything very
+important----"
+
+"Indeed, we were, my dear Fortescue," said Professor Theobald, drawing
+his colleague on to the seat, "and your clear head would throw much
+light on the philosophy of the question."
+
+"Oh, a question of abstract philosophy," said Professor Fortescue. "Are
+you disagreeing?"
+
+"Not exactly. The question that turned up, in the course of discussion,
+was this: If a man stands in a position which is itself the result of an
+aggression upon his liberty and his human rights, is he in honour bound
+to abide by the laws which are laid down to coerce him?"
+
+"Obviously not," replied Professor Fortescue.
+
+"Is he morally justified in using every means he can lay hold of to
+overcome the peculiar difficulties under which he has been tyrannously
+placed?"
+
+"Not merely justified, but I should say he was a poor fool if he
+refrained from doing so."
+
+"That is exactly what _I_ say."
+
+"Surely Mrs. Temperley does not demur?"
+
+"No; I quite agree as to the _right_. I only say that the means which
+the situation may make necessary are sometimes very hateful."
+
+"Ah, that is among the cruelest of the victim's wrongs," said Professor
+Fortescue. "He is reduced to employ artifices that he would despise,
+were he a free agent. Take a crude instance: a man is overpowered by a
+band of brigands. Surely he is justified in deceiving those gentlemen of
+the road, and in telling and acting lies without scruple."
+
+"The parallel is exact," said Theobald, with a triumphant glance at
+Hadria.
+
+"Honour departs where force comes in. No man is bound in honour to his
+captor, though his captor will naturally try to persuade his prisoner to
+regard himself as so bound. And few would be our oppressions, if that
+persuasion did not generally succeed!"
+
+"The relations of women to society for instance----" began Theobald.
+
+"Ah, exactly. The success of that device may be said to constitute the
+history of womanhood. Take my brigand instance and write it large, and
+you have the whole case in a nutshell."
+
+"Then you would recommend rank rebellion, either by force or artifice,
+according as circumstances might require?" asked Hadria.
+
+Professor Fortescue looked round at her, half anxiously, half
+enquiringly.
+
+"There are perils, remember," he warned. "The woman is, by our
+assumption, the brigand's captive. If she offends her brigand, he has
+hideous punishments to inflict. He can subject her to pain and indignity
+at his good pleasure. Torture and mutilation, metaphorically speaking,
+are possible to him. How could one deliberately counsel her to risk all
+that?"
+
+There was a long silence.
+
+Hadria had been growing more and more restless since the arrival of the
+new-comer. She took no further part in the conversation. She was
+struggling to avoid making comparisons between her two companions. The
+contrast was startling. Every cadence of their voices, every gesture,
+proclaimed the radical difference of nature and calibre.
+
+Hadria rose abruptly. She looked pale and perturbed.
+
+"Don't you think we have sat here long enough?" she asked.
+
+They both looked a little surprised, but they acquiesced at once. The
+three walked together down the yew avenue, and out across the lawn.
+Professor Fortescue recalled their past meetings among these serene
+retreats, and wished they could come over again.
+
+"Nothing ever does come over again," said Hadria.
+
+Theobald glanced at her, meaningfully.
+
+"Look here, my dear fellow," he said, grasping Professor Fortescue by
+the arm, and bending confidentially towards him, "I should like those
+meetings to repeat themselves _ad infinitum_. I have made up my mind at
+last. I want to take the Priory."
+
+Hadria turned deadly pale, and stumbled slightly.
+
+"Well, take it by all means. I should be only too glad to let it to a
+tenant who would look after the old place."
+
+"We must talk it over," said Theobald.
+
+"That won't take long, I fancy. We talked it over once before, you
+remember, and then you suddenly changed your mind."
+
+"Yes; but my mind is steady now. The Priory is the place of all others
+that I should like to pass my days in."
+
+"Well, I think you are wise, Theobald. The place has great charm, and
+you have friends here."
+
+"Yes, indeed!" exclaimed Theobald.
+
+Professor Fortescue looked vaguely round, as if expecting Hadria to
+express some neighbourly sentiment, but she said nothing. He noticed how
+very ill she was looking.
+
+"Are you feeling the heat too severe?" he asked in concern. "Shall we
+take a rest under these trees?"
+
+But Hadria preferred to go on and rest at home. She asked when Professor
+Fortescue was coming to see them at the Red House, but her tone was less
+open and warm than usual, in addressing him. He said that to-morrow he
+would walk over in the afternoon, if he might. Hadria would not allow
+her companions to come out of their way to accompany her home. At the
+Priory gate--where the griffins were grinning as derisively as ever at
+the ridiculous ways of men--they took their respective roads.
+
+Some domestic catastrophe had happened at the Red House. The cook had
+called Mary "names," and Mary declared she must leave. Hadria shrugged
+her shoulders.
+
+"Oh, well then, I suppose you must," she said wearily, and retired to
+her room, in a mood to be cynically amused at the tragedies that the
+human being manufactures for himself, lest he should not find the
+tragedies of birth and death and parting, and the solitude of the
+spirit, sufficient to occupy him during his little pilgrimage. She sat
+by the open window that looked out over the familiar fields, and the
+garden that was gay with summer flowers. The red roof of the Priory
+could just be caught through the trees of the park. She wished the
+little pilgrimage were over. A common enough wish, she commented, but
+surely not unreasonable.
+
+The picture of those two men came back to her, in spite of every effort
+to banish it. Professor Fortescue had affected her as if he had brought
+with him a new atmosphere, and disastrous was the result. It seemed as
+if Professor Theobald had suddenly become a stranger to her, whom she
+criticised, whose commonness of fibre, ah me! whose coarseness, she saw
+as she might have seen it in some casual acquaintance. And yet she had
+loved this man, she had allowed him to passionately profess love for
+her. His companionship, in the deepest sense, had been chosen by her for
+life. To sit by and listen to that conversation, feeling every moment
+how utterly he and she were, after all, strangers to one another, how
+completely unbroken was the solitude that she had craved to dispel--that
+had been horrible. What had lain at the root of her conduct? How had she
+deceived herself? Was it not for the sake of mere excitement,
+distraction? Was it not the sensuous side of her nature that had been
+touched, while the rest had been posing in the foreground? But no, that
+was only partly true. There had been more in it than that; very much
+more, or she could not have deceived herself so completely. It was this
+craving to fill the place of her lost art,--but oh, what morbid nonsense
+it had all been! Why, for the first time in her life, did she feel
+ashamed to meet Professor Fortescue? Obviously, it was not because she
+thought he would disapprove of her breaking the social law. It was
+because she had fallen below her own standard, because she had been
+hypocritical with herself, played herself false, and acted contemptibly,
+hatefully! Professor Fortescue's mere presence had hunted out the truth
+from its hiding-place. He had made further self-sophistication
+impossible. She buried her face in her hands, in an agony of shame. She
+had known all along, that this had not been a profound and whole-hearted
+sentiment. She had known all along, of what a poor feverish nature it
+was; yet she had chosen to persuade herself that it was all, or nearly
+all, that she had dreamed of a perfect human relationship. She had tried
+to arrange facts in such a light as to simulate that idea. It was so
+paltry, so contemptible. Why could she not at least have been honest
+with herself, and owned to the nature of the infatuation? That, at any
+rate, would have been straightforward. Her self-scorn made the colour
+surge into her cheeks and burn painfully over neck and brow. "How little
+one knows oneself. Here am I, who rebel against the beliefs of others,
+sinning against my own. Here am I, who turn up my nose at the popular
+gods, deriding my own private and particular gods in their very temples!
+That I have done, and heaven alone knows where I should have stopped in
+the wild work, if this had not happened. Professor Fortescue has no need
+to speak. His gentleness, his charity, are as rods to scourge one!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV.
+
+
+When Professor Fortescue called at the Red House, he found that the
+blinds, in the drawing-room, were all half down. Hadria held the
+conversation to the subject of his plans. He knew her well enough to
+read the meaning of that quiet tone, with a subtle cadence in it, just
+at the end of a phrase, that went to his heart. To him it testified to
+an unspeakable regret.
+
+It was difficult to define the change in her manner, but it conveyed to
+the visitor the impression that she had lost belief in herself, or in
+some one; that she had received a severe shock, and knew no longer what
+to trust or how to steer. She seemed to speak across some vast spiritual
+distance, an effect not produced by reserve or coldness, but by a
+wistful, acquiescent, subdued quality, expressive of uncertainty, of
+disorder in her conceptions of things.
+
+"How tempting those two easy-chairs look, under the old tree on your
+lawn," said the Professor. "Wouldn't it be pleasant to go out?"
+
+Hadria hesitated for a second, and then rose. "Certainly; we will have
+tea there."
+
+When they were seated under the shade taking their tea, with the canopy
+of walnut leaves above their heads, the Professor saw that Hadria shewed
+signs of serious trouble. The haggard lines, the marks of suffering,
+were not to be hidden in the clear light of the summer afternoon. He
+insensibly shifted his chair so as not to have to gaze at her when he
+spoke. That seemed to be a relief to her.
+
+"Valeria is here till the day after to-morrow," she said. "She has gone
+for a walk, and has probably forgotten the tea-hour but I hope you will
+see her."
+
+"I want to find out what her plans are. It would be pleasant to come
+across one another abroad. I wish you were coming too."
+
+"Ah, so do I."
+
+"I suppose it's impossible."
+
+"Absolutely."
+
+"For the mind, there is no tonic like travel," he said.
+
+"It must be a sovereign cure for egoism."
+
+"If anything will cure that disease." Her face saddened.
+
+"You believe it is quite incurable?"
+
+"If it is constitutional."
+
+"Don't you think that sometimes people grow egoistic through having to
+fight incessantly for existence--I mean for individual existence?"
+
+"It certainly is the instinct of moral self-preservation. It corresponds
+to the raised arm when a blow threatens."
+
+"One has the choice between egoism and extinction."
+
+"It almost amounts to that. Perhaps, after long experience and much
+suffering, the individuality may become secure, and the armour no longer
+necessary, but this is a bitter process. Most people become extinct, and
+then congratulate themselves on self-conquest."
+
+"Yes, I suppose so," said Hadria musingly. "How dangerous it is to
+congratulate oneself on anything! One never is so near to folly as
+then."
+
+The Professor threw some crumbs to a chaffinch, which had flown down
+within a few yards of the tea-table.
+
+"I think you are disposed, at present, to criticise yourself too
+mercilessly," he said in a tone that had drawn forth many a confidence.
+It was not to be resisted.
+
+"No; that would be difficult."
+
+"Your conscience may accuse you severely, but who of us escapes such
+accusations? Be a little charitable with yourself, as you would with
+others. Life, you know, is not such an easy game to play. Beginners
+must make wrong moves now and then."
+
+There was a long pause.
+
+"It sounds so mild when you put it like that. But I am not a beginner. I
+am quite a veteran, yet I am not seasoned. My impulses are more
+imperious, more blinding than I had the least idea of." (The words
+hastened on.) "Life comes and pulls one by the sleeve; stirs, prompts,
+bewilders, tempts in a thousand ways; emotion rises in whirlwinds--and
+one is confused, and reels and gropes and stumbles, and then some cruel,
+clear day one awakes to find the print of intoxicated footsteps in the
+precincts of the sanctuary, and recognises oneself as desecrator."
+
+The Professor leant forward in his low chair. The chaffinch gave a light
+chirp, as if to recall him to his duty. Hadria performed it for him. The
+chaffinch flew off with the booty.
+
+"There is no suffering so horrible as that which involves remorse or
+self-contempt," he said, and his voice trembled. "To have to settle down
+to look upon some part of one's action, of one's moral self, with shame
+or scorn, is almost intolerable."
+
+"Quite intolerable!"
+
+"We will not extend to ourselves the forbearance due to erring humanity.
+This puts us too much on a level with the rest--is that not often the
+reason of our harsh self-judgments?"
+
+"Oh, I have no doubt there is something mean and conceited at the bottom
+of it!" exclaimed Hadria.
+
+There was a step on the lawn behind them.
+
+The Professor sprang up. He went to meet Valeria and they came to the
+table together, talking. Valeria's eyes were bright and her manner
+animated. Yes, she was going abroad. It would be delightful to meet
+somewhere, if chance favoured them. She thought of Italy. And at that
+magic name, they fell into reminiscences of former journeyings; they
+talked of towns and temples and palaces, of art, of sunshine; and Hadria
+listened silently.
+
+Once, in her girlhood, when she was scarcely sixteen, she had gone with
+her parents and Algitha for a tour in Italy. It was a short but vivid
+experience which had tinged her life, leaving a memory and a longing
+that never died. The movement of travel, the sense of change and
+richness offered to eye and mind, remained with her always; the vision
+of a strange, tumultuous, beautiful world; of exquisite Italian cities,
+of forests and seas; of classic plains and snow-capped mountains; of
+treasures of art--the eternal evidence of man's aloofness, on one side
+of him, from the savage element in nature--and glimpses of cathedral
+domes and palace walls; and villages clinging like living things to the
+hill-sides, or dreaming away their drowsy days in some sunny valley. And
+then the mystery that every work of man enshrines; the life, the
+thought, the need that it embodies, and the passionate histories that it
+hides! It was as if the sum and circumstance of life had mirrored itself
+in the memory, once and for all. The South lured her with its languor,
+its colour, its hot sun, and its splendid memories. It was exquisite
+pleasure and exquisite pain to listen to the anticipations of these two,
+who were able to wander as they would.
+
+"Siena?" said Valeria with a sigh, "I used to know Siena when I was
+young and happy. That was where I made the fatal mistake in my life. It
+is all a thing of the past now. I might have married a good and
+brilliantly intellectual man, whom I could respect and warmly admire;
+for whom I had every feeling but the one that we romantic women think so
+essential, and that people assure us is the first to depart."
+
+"You regret that you held fast to your own standard?" said Hadria.
+
+"I regret that I could not see the wisdom of taking the good that was
+offered to me, since I could not have that which I wished. Now I have
+neither."
+
+"How do you know you would have found the other good really
+satisfactory!"
+
+"I believe in the normal," said Valeria, "having devoted my existence to
+an experiment of the abnormal."
+
+"I don't think what we call the normal is, by any means, so safe as it
+sounds, for civilized women at any rate," observed the Professor.
+
+Valeria shook her head, and remained silent. But her face expressed the
+sad thoughts left unsaid. In youth, it was all very well. One had the
+whole world before one, life to explore, one's powers to test. But later
+on, when all that seemed to promise fades away, when the dreams drift
+out of sight, and strenuous efforts repeated and repeated, are beaten
+down by the eternal obstacles; when the heart is wearied by delay,
+disappointment, infruition, vain toil, then this once intoxicating world
+becomes a place of desolation to the woman who has rebelled against the
+common lot. And all the old instincts awake, to haunt and torment; to
+demand that which reason has learnt to deny or to scorn; to burden their
+victims with the cruel heritage of the past; to whisper regrets and
+longings, and sometimes to stir to a conflict and desperation that end
+in madness.
+
+"I believe I should have been happier, if I had married some commonplace
+worthy in early life, and been the mother of ten children," Valeria
+observed, aloud.
+
+Hadria laughed. "By this time, you or the ten children would have come
+to some tragic end. I don't know which I would pity most."
+
+"I don't see why I shouldn't be able to do what other women have done,"
+cried Valeria.
+
+"A good deal more. But think, Valeria, of ten particular constitutions
+to grapple with, ten sets of garments to provide, ten series of ailments
+to combat, ten--no, let me see, two hundred and forty teeth to take to
+the dentist, not to mention characters and consciences in all their
+developments and phases, rising, on this appalling decimal system of
+yours, to regions of arithmetic far beyond my range."
+
+"You exaggerate preposterously!" cried Valeria, half annoyed, although
+she laughed. She had the instinctive human desire to assert her ability
+in the direction where of all others it was lacking.
+
+"And think of the uprush of impulse, good and evil; the stirring of the
+thought, the movements of longing and wonder, and then all the greedy
+selfishness of youth, with its untamed vigours and its superb hopes.
+What help does a child get from its parents, in the midst of this
+tumult, out of which silently, the future man or woman emerges--and
+grows, remember, according to the manner in which the world meets these
+generous or these baser movements of the soul?"
+
+"You would frighten anyone from parenthood!" cried Valeria,
+discontentedly.
+
+"Admit at least, that eight, or even seven, would have satisfied you."
+
+"Well, I don't mind foregoing the last three or four," said Valeria.
+"But seriously, I think that a home and so forth, is the best that life
+has to offer to us women. It is, perhaps, not asking much, but I believe
+if one goes further, one fares worse."
+
+"We all think the toothache would be so much more bearable, if it were
+only in the other tooth," said the Professor.
+
+A silence fell upon the three. Their thoughts were evidently busy.
+
+"I feel sorry," the Professor said at last, "that this should be your
+testimony. It has always seemed to me ridiculous that a woman could not
+gratify her domestic sentiments, without being claimed by them, body and
+soul. But I hoped that our more developed women would show us that they
+could make a full and useful and interesting life for themselves, even
+if that particular side of existence were denied them. I thought they
+might forego it for the sake of other things."
+
+"Not without regretting it."
+
+"Yet I have met women who held different opinions."
+
+"Probably rather inexperienced women," said Valeria.
+
+"Young women, but----"
+
+"Ah, young women. What do _they_ know? The element of real horror in a
+woman's life does not betray itself, until the moment when the sense of
+age approaches. Then, and not till then, she knows how much mere
+superficial and transitory attractions have had to do with making her
+life liveable and interesting. Then, and not till then, she realizes
+that she has unconsciously held the position of adventuress in society,
+getting what she could out of it, by means of personal charm; never
+resting on established right, for she has none. As a wife, she acquires
+a sort of reflected right. One must respect her over whom Mr. So-and-So
+has rights of property. Well, is it not wise to take what one can
+get--the little glory of being the property of Mr. So-and-So? I have
+scorned this opportunism all my life, and now I regret having scorned
+it. And I think, if you could get women to be sincere, they would tell
+you the same tale."
+
+"And what do you think of the scheme of life, which almost forces upon
+our finest women, or tempts them to practise, this sort of opportunism?"
+
+"I think it is simply savage," answered Valeria.
+
+Again a silence fell on the little group. The spoken words seemed to
+call up a host of words unspoken. There was to Hadria, a personal as
+well as a general significance in each sentence, that made her listen
+breathlessly for the next.
+
+"How would you define a good woman?" she asked.
+
+"Precisely as I would define a good man," replied the Professor.
+
+"Oh, I think we ask more of the woman," said Valeria.
+
+"We do indeed!" cried Hadria, with a laugh.
+
+"One may find people with a fussy conscience, a nervous fear of
+wrong-doing, who are without intelligence and imagination, but you never
+meet the noblest, and serenest, and largest examples of goodness without
+these attributes," said the Professor.
+
+"This is not the current view of goodness in women," said Hadria.
+
+"Naturally. The less intelligence and imagination the better, if our
+current morality is to hold its own. We want our women to accept its
+dogmas without question. We tell them how to be good, and if they don't
+choose to be good in that way, we call them bad. Nothing could be
+simpler."
+
+"I believe," said Hadria, "that the women who are called good have much
+to do with the making of those that are called bad. The two kinds are
+substance and shadow. We shall never get out of the difficulty till they
+frankly shake hands, and admit that they are all playing the same game."
+
+"Oh, they will never do that," exclaimed Valeria, laughing and shaking
+her head. "What madness!"
+
+"Why not? The thing is so obvious. They are like the two sides of a
+piece of embroidery: one all smooth and fair, the other rough and ugly,
+showing the tag ends and the fastenings. But since the embroidery is
+insisted on, I can't see that it is of any moral consequence on which
+side of the canvas one happens to be."
+
+"It is chiefly a matter of luck," said the Professor.
+
+A long shadow fell across Hadria as she spoke, blotting out the little
+flicker of the sunlight that shone through the stirring leaves.
+Professor Theobald had crept up softly across the lawn, and as the
+chairs were turned towards the flower-borders, he had approached
+unobserved.
+
+Hadria gave so violent a start when she heard his voice, that Professor
+Fortescue looked at her anxiously. He thought her nerves must be
+seriously out of order. The feverish manner of her greeting to the
+new-comer, confirmed his fear. Professor Theobald apologized for
+intruding. He had given up his intention of going up to town to-day. He
+meant to put it off till next week. He could not miss Fortescue's visit.
+One could not tell when one might see him again.
+
+And Professor Theobald led the conversation airily on; talking fluently,
+and at times brilliantly, but always with that indefinable touch of
+something ignoble, something coarse, that now filled Hadria with
+unspeakable dismay. She was terrified lest the other two should go, and
+he should remain. And yet she ought to speak frankly to him. His
+conversation was full of little under-meanings, intended for her only to
+understand; his look, his manner to her made her actually hate him. Yet
+she felt the utter inconsequence and injustice of her attitude. _He_
+had not changed. There was nothing new in him. The change was in
+herself. Professor Fortescue had awakened her. But, of course, he was
+one in ten thousand. It was not fair to make the comparison by which
+Professor Theobald suffered so pitiably. At that moment, as if Fate had
+intended to prove to her how badly Professor Theobald really stood
+comparison with any thoroughly well-bred man, even if infinitely beneath
+him intellectually, Joseph Fleming happened to call. He was his old self
+again, simple, friendly, contented. Theobald was in one of his
+self-satisfied moods. Perhaps he enjoyed the triumph of his position in
+regard to Hadria. At any rate, he seemed to pounce on the new-comer as a
+foil to his own brilliancy. Joseph had no talent to oppose to it, but he
+had a simple dignity, the offspring of a kind and generous nature, which
+made Professor Theobald's conduct towards him appear contemptible.
+Professor Fortescue shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Hadria tried to
+change the topic; the flush deepening in her cheeks. Professor Fortescue
+attempted to come to her aid. Joseph Fleming laughed good-naturedly.
+
+They sat late into the evening. Theobald could not find an excuse to
+outstay his colleague, since they were both guests at the same house.
+
+"I must see you alone some time to-morrow," he managed to whisper. There
+was no time for a reply.
+
+"I shall go and rest before dinner," said Valeria.
+
+Hadria went into the house by the open window of the drawing-room. She
+sank back on the sofa; a blackness came before her eyes.
+
+"No, no, I won't, I _won't_. Let me learn not to let things overpower
+me, in future."
+
+When Valeria entered, dressed for dinner, she found Hadria, deadly pale,
+standing against the sofa, whose arm she was grasping with both hands,
+as if for dear life. Valeria rushed forward.
+
+"Good heavens, Hadria! are you going to faint?"
+
+"No," said Hadria, "I am not going to faint, if there is such a thing as
+human will."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV.
+
+
+The morning had passed as usual, but household arrangements at the
+Cottage had required much adjustment, one of the maids being ill. She
+had been sent away for a rest, and the difficulty was to find another.
+Mary went from the Red House as substitute, in the mean time, and the
+Red House became disorganised.
+
+"You look distracted with these little worries, Hadria. I should have
+said that some desperate crisis was hanging over you, instead of merely
+a domestic disturbance." Valeria was established on the lawn, with a
+book.
+
+"I am going to seek serenity in the churchyard," explained Hadria.
+
+"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.
+
+"I knew it would be a shock to you. I did not dare to tell you before.
+Think what depended on it for me. Had I told you at that moment, I knew
+all hope for me would be at an end. But now, it seems to me my duty to
+tell you. If you wish for vengeance still, here I am at your mercy--take
+it." He stretched out his arms and stood waiting before her. But she was
+silent. He was not surprised. Such a revelation, at such a moment, must,
+of necessity, stun her.
+
+"Hadria, pronounce my fate. Do you wish for vengeance still? You have
+only to take it, if you do. Only for heaven's sake, don't keep me in
+suspense. Tell me your decision."
+
+Still silence.
+
+"Do you want to take revenge on me now?" he repeated.
+
+"No;" she said abruptly, "of what use would it be? No, no, wait, wait a
+moment. I want no vengeance. It is useless for women to try to fight
+against men; they can only _hate_ them!"
+
+The Professor started, as if he had been struck.
+
+They stood looking at one another.
+
+"In heaven's name, what is the meaning of this? Am I to be hated for a
+sin committed years ago, and long since repented? Have you no breadth of
+sympathy, no tolerance for erring humanity? Am I never to be forgiven?
+Oh, Hadria, Hadria, this is more than I can bear!"
+
+She was standing very still and very calm. Her tones were clear and
+deliberate.
+
+"If vengeance is futile, so is forgiveness. It undoes no wrong. It is
+not a question of forgiveness or of vengeance. I think, after all, if I
+were to attempt the impossible by trying to avenge women whom men have
+injured, I should begin with the wives. In this case" (she turned to the
+grave), "the tragedy is more obvious, but I believe the everyday tragedy
+of the docile wife and mother is even more profound."
+
+"You speak as coldly, as bitterly, as if you regarded me as your worst
+enemy--I who love you." He came forward a step, and she drew back
+hurriedly.
+
+"All that is over. I too have a confession to make."
+
+"Good heavens, what is it? Are you not what I thought you? Have you some
+history, some stain--? Don't for pity's sake tell me that!"
+
+Hadria looked at him, with a cold miserable smile. "That is really
+amusing!" she cried; "I should not hold myself responsible to you, for
+my past, in any case. My confession relates to the present. I came up
+here with this pencil and paper, half resolved to write to you--I wanted
+to tell you that--that I find--I find my feelings towards you have
+changed----"
+
+He gave a hoarse, inarticulate cry, and turned sharply round. His hands
+went up to his head. Then he veered suddenly, and went fiercely up to
+her.
+
+"Then you _are_ in earnest? You _do_ hate me! for a sin dead and buried?
+Good God! could one have believed it? Because I was honest with you,
+where another man would have kept the matter dark, I am to be thrown
+over without a word, without a chance. Lord, and this is what a woman
+calls love!"
+
+He broke into a laugh that sounded ghastly and cruel, in the serene calm
+of the churchyard. The laugh seemed to get the better of him. He had
+lost self-control. He put his hands on his hips and went on laughing
+harshly, yet sometimes with a real mirth, as if by that means only could
+he express the fierce emotions that had been roused in him. Mortified
+and furious as he was, he derived genuine and cynical amusement from the
+incident.
+
+"And the devotion that we have professed--think of it! and the union of
+souls--ha, ha, ha! and the common interests and the deep sympathy--it is
+screaming! Almost worth the price I pay, for the sake of the rattling
+good joke! And by this grave! Great heavens, how humourous is destiny!"
+He leant his arms on the tomb-stone and laughed on softly, his big form
+shaking, his strange sinister face appearing over the stone, irradiated
+with merriment. In the dusk, among the graves, the grinning face looked
+like that of some mocking demon, some gargoyle come to life, to cast a
+spell of evil over the place.
+
+"Ah, me, life has its comic moments!" His eyes were streaming. "I fear I
+must seem to you flippant, but you will admit the ludicrous side of the
+situation. I am none the less ready to cut my throat--ha, ha, ha! Admit,
+my dear Hadria--Mrs. Temperley--that it appeals also to _your_ sense of
+humour. A common sense of humour, you know, was one of our bonds of
+union. What more appropriate than that we should part with shaking
+sides? Oh, Lord! oh, Lord! what am I to do? One can't live on a good
+joke for ever."
+
+He grasped his head in his hands; then suddenly, he broke out into
+another paroxysm. "The feminine nature always the same, always, always;
+infinitely charming and infinitely volatile. Delicious, and oh how
+instructive!"
+
+He slowly recovered calmness, and remained leaning on the gravestone.
+
+"May I ask when this little change began to occur!" he asked presently.
+
+"If you will ask in a less insolent fashion."
+
+He drew himself up from his leaning attitude, and repeated the question,
+in different words.
+
+Hadria answered it, briefly.
+
+"Oh, I see," he said, the savage gleam coming back to his eyes. "The
+change in your feelings began when Fortescue appeared?"
+
+Hadria flushed.
+
+"It was when he appeared that I became definitely aware of that which I
+had been struggling with all my might and main to hide from myself, for
+a long time."
+
+"And that was----?"
+
+"That there was something in you that made me--well, why should I not
+say it?--that made me shrink."
+
+He set his lips.
+
+"You have not mentioned the mysterious something."
+
+"An element that I have been conscious of from the first day I saw you."
+
+"Something that _I_ had, and Fortescue had _not_, it would seem."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And so, on account of this diaphanous, indescribable, exquisite
+something, I am to be calmly thrown over; calmly told to go about my
+business!" He began to walk up and down the pathway, with feverish
+steps, talking rapidly, and representing Hadria's conduct in different
+lights, each one making it appear more absurd and more unjust than the
+last.
+
+"I have no defence to make," she said, "I know I have behaved
+contemptibly; self-deception is no excuse. I can explain but not justify
+myself. I wanted to escape from my eternal self; I was tired of fighting
+and always in vain. I wanted to throw myself into the life and hopes of
+somebody else, somebody who _had_ some chance of a real and effective
+existence. Then other elements of attraction and temptation came; your
+own memory will tell how many there were. You knew so well how to
+surround me with these. Everything conspired to tempt me. It seemed as
+if, in you, I had found a refuge from myself. You have no little power
+over the emotions, as you are aware. My feeling has been genuine, heaven
+knows! but, always, always, through it all, I have been aware of this
+element that repels me; and I have distrusted you."
+
+"I knew you distrusted me," he said gloomily.
+
+"It is useless to say I bitterly regret it all. Naturally, I regret it
+far more bitterly than you can do. And if my conduct towards you rankles
+in your heart, you can remember that I have to contend with what is far
+worse than any sense of being badly treated: the sense of having treated
+someone badly."
+
+He walked up and down, with bent head and furrowed brows. He looked like
+some restless wild animal pacing its cage. Intense mortification gave
+him a strange, malicious expression. He seemed to be casting about for a
+means of returning the stunning blow that he had received, just at the
+moment of expected triumph.
+
+"Damn!" he exclaimed with sudden vehemence, and stood still, looking
+down into Hadria's face, with cruel, glittering eyes.
+
+He glanced furtively around. There was no one in sight. Even little
+Martha was making mud-pies by the church door. The thick yew trees shut
+in the churchyard from the village. There was not a sound, far or near,
+to break the sense of seclusion.
+
+"And you mean to tell me we are to part? You mean to tell me that this
+is your final decision?"
+
+She bowed her head. With a sudden strong movement, he flung his arms
+round her and clasped her in an embrace, as fierce and revengeful as the
+sweep of the wind which sends great trees crashing to the ground, and
+ships to the bottom of the sea.
+
+"You don't love me?" he enquired.
+
+"Let me go, let me go--coward--madman!"
+
+"You don't love me?" he repeated.
+
+"I _hate_ you--let me go!"
+
+"If this is the last time----"
+
+"I wish I could _kill_ you!"
+
+"Ah, that is the sort of woman I like!"
+
+"You make me know what it is to feel like a murderess!"
+
+"And to look like one, by heaven!"
+
+She wrenched herself away, with a furious effort.
+
+"Coward!" she cried. "I did right to mistrust you!"
+
+Little Martha ran up and offered her a wild heartsease which she had
+found on one of the graves. Hadria, trembling and white, stooped
+instinctively to take the flower, and as she did so, the whole
+significance of the afternoon's revelation broke over her, with fresh
+intensity. His child!
+
+He stood watching her, with malice in his eyes.
+
+"Come, come, Martha, let us go, let us go," she cried, feverishly.
+
+He moved backwards along the path, as they advanced.
+
+"I have to thank you for bestowing a mother's care on my poor child. You
+can suppose what a joy the thought has been to me all along."
+
+Hadria flushed.
+
+"You need not thank me," she answered. "As you know, I did it first for
+her mother's sake, and out of hatred to you, unknown as you then were to
+me. Now I will do it for her own sake, and out of hatred to you,
+bitterer than ever."
+
+She stooped to take the child's hand.
+
+"You are most kind, but I could not think of troubling you any longer. I
+think of taking the little one myself. She will be a comfort to me, and
+will cheer my lonely home. And besides you see, duty, Mrs. Temperley,
+duty----"
+
+Hadria caught her breath, and stopped short.
+
+"You are going to take her away from me? You are going to revenge
+yourself like that?"
+
+"You have made me feel my responsibilities towards my child, as I fear I
+did not feel them before. I am powerless, of course, to make up for the
+evil I have done her, but I can make some reparation. I can take her to
+live with me; I can give her care and attention, I can give her a good
+education. I have made up my mind."
+
+Hadria stood before him, white as the gravestone.
+
+"You said that vengeance was futile. So it is. Leave the child to me.
+She shall--she shall want for nothing. Only leave her to me."
+
+"Duty must be our first consideration," he answered suavely.
+
+"I can give her all she needs. Leave her to me."
+
+But the Professor shook his head.
+
+"How do I know you have told me the truth?" Hadria exclaimed, with a
+flash of fury.
+
+"Do you mean to dispute it?" he asked.
+
+She was silent.
+
+"I think you would find that a mistaken policy," he said, watching her
+face.
+
+"I don't believe you can take her away!" cried Hadria. "I am acting for
+her mother, and her mother, not having made herself into your legal
+property, _has_ some legal right to her own child. I don't believe you
+can make me give her up."
+
+The Professor looked at her calmly.
+
+"I think you will find that the law has infinite respect for a father's
+holiest feelings. Would you have it interfere with his awakening
+aspirations to do his duty towards his child? What a dreadful thought!
+And then, I think you have some special views on the education of the
+little one which I cannot entirely approve. After all, a woman has
+probably to be a wife and mother, on the good old terms that have served
+the world for a fair number of centuries, when one comes to consider it:
+it is a pity to allow her to grow up without those dogmas and sentiments
+that may help to make the position tolerable, if not always
+satisfactory, to her. Though, as a philosopher, one may see the
+absurdity of popular prejudices, yet as a practical man, one feels the
+inexpediency of disturbing the ideas upon which the system depends, and
+thus adding to the number of malcontents. All very well for those who
+think things out for themselves; but the education of a girl should be
+on the old lines, believe me. You will not believe me, I know, so I
+think it better, for this as well as for other reasons, to take my
+daughter under my own care. I am extremely sorry that you should have
+had all this trouble and responsibility for nothing. And I am grieved
+that your educational idea should be so frustrated, but what am I to do?
+My duty is obvious!"
+
+"I regret that you did not become a devotee to duty, either a little
+sooner or a little later," Hadria returned. "For the present, I suppose
+Martha will remain with Hannah, until your conscience decides what
+course you will take, and until I see whether you can carry out your
+threat."
+
+"Certainly, certainly! I don't wish to give you any unnecessary pain."
+
+"You are consideration itself." Hadria stooped to take the child's hand.
+The little fingers nestled confidingly in her palm.
+
+"Will you say good-bye, Martha?" asked the Professor, stooping to kiss
+her. Martha drew away, and struck her father a sturdy blow on the face.
+She had apparently a vague idea that he had been unkind to her
+protectress, and that he was an enemy.
+
+"Oh, cruel, cruel! What if I don't bring her any more toys?" Martha
+threatened tears.
+
+"Will you allow us to pass?" said Hadria. The Professor stood aside, and
+the two went, hand in hand, down the narrow path, and through the wicket
+gate out of the churchyard. Hadria carried still the drooping yellow
+heartsease that the little girl had given her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI.
+
+
+Professor Theobald made his confession to Lady Engleton on that same
+night, when he also announced that he found it suddenly necessary to
+return to town.
+
+It was some time before she recovered from her astonishment and horror.
+He told his story quietly, and without an effort to excuse himself.
+
+"Of course, though I can't exonerate you, Professor, I blame her more
+than you," she said finally, "for her standard in the matter was so
+different from your's--you being a man."
+
+The Professor suppressed a smile. It always seemed strange to him that a
+woman should be harder on her own sex than on his, but he had no
+intention of discouraging this lack of _esprit de corps_; it had its
+obvious conveniences.
+
+"Did she confess everything to her aunt after her return from
+Portsmouth?" asked Lady Engleton.
+
+"Yes; I have that letter now."
+
+"In which your name is mentioned?"
+
+"In which my name is mentioned. I sent money to the girl, but she
+returned it. She said that she hated me, and would not touch it. So I
+gave the money to the aunt, and told her to send it on, in her own name,
+to Ellen, for the child's support. Of course I made secrecy a condition.
+So as a matter of fact, I have acknowledged the child, though not
+publicly, and I have contributed to its support from its birth."
+
+"But I thought Mrs. Temperley had been supporting it!" cried Lady
+Engleton.
+
+"Nevertheless I have continued to send the money to the aunt. If Mrs.
+Temperley chose to take charge of the child, I certainly had nothing to
+complain of. And I could not openly contribute without declaring
+myself."
+
+"Dear me, it is all very strange! What would Hadria say if she knew?"
+
+"She does know."
+
+"What, all along?"
+
+"No, since yesterday."
+
+"And how does she take it?"
+
+"She is bitter against me. It is only natural, especially as I told her
+that I wanted to have the child under my own care."
+
+"Ah, that will be a blow to her. She was wrapped up in the little girl."
+
+Professor Theobald pointed out the difficulties that must begin to crop
+up, as she grew older. The child could not have the same advantages, in
+her present circumstances, as the Professor would be able to give her.
+Lady Engleton admitted that this was true.
+
+"Then may I count on you to plead my cause with Mrs. Temperley?"
+
+"If Hadria believes that it is for the child's good, she will not stand
+in the way."
+
+"Unless----. You remember that idea of vengeance that she used to have?"
+
+"Oh, she would not let vengeance interfere with the child's welfare!"
+
+"I hope not. You see I don't want to adopt strong measures. The law is
+always odious."
+
+"The law!" Lady Engleton looked startled. "Are you sure that the law
+would give you the custody of the child?"
+
+"Sure of the law? My dear lady, one might as well be sure of a
+woman--pardon me; you know that I regard this quality of infinite
+flexibility as one of the supreme charms of your sex. I can't say that I
+feel it to be the supreme charm of the law. Mrs. Temperley claims to
+have her authority through the mother, because she has the written
+consent of the aunt to the adoption, but I think this is rather
+stretching a point."
+
+"I fear it is, since the poor mother was dead at the time."
+
+"I can prove everything I have said to the satisfaction of anybody,"
+continued Theobald, "I think my claim to take charge of my child is well
+established, and you will admit the wish is not unreasonable."
+
+"It does you great credit, but, oh dear, it will be hard for Mrs.
+Temperley."
+
+"I fear it will. I am most grieved, but what am I to do? I must consider
+the best interests of the child."
+
+"Doubtless, but you are a trifle late, Professor, in thinking of that."
+
+"Would you prefer it to be never than late?"
+
+"Heaven forbid!"
+
+"Then I may rely on you to explain the position of affairs to Mrs.
+Temperley? You will understand that it is a painful subject between us."
+
+Lady Engleton readily promised. She called at the Red House immediately
+after Professor Theobald's departure. The interview was long.
+
+"Then I have not spoken in vain, dear Hadria?" said Lady Engleton, in
+her most sympathetic tone. Hadria was very pale.
+
+"On the contrary, you have spoken to convince."
+
+"I knew that you would do nothing to stand in the way of the child."
+
+Hadria was silent.
+
+"I am very sorry about it. You were so devoted to the little girl, and
+it does seem terribly hard that she should be taken away from you."
+
+"It was my last chance," Hadria muttered, half audibly.
+
+"Then I suppose you will not attempt to resist?"
+
+"No," said Hadria.
+
+"He thinks of leaving Martha with you for another month."
+
+"Really? It has not struck him that perhaps I may not keep her for
+another month. Now that it is once established that Martha is to be
+regarded as under _his_ guardianship and authority, and that my
+jurisdiction ceases, he must take her at once. I will certainly not act
+for _him_ in that matter. Since you are in his confidence, would you
+kindly tell him that?"
+
+Lady Engleton looked surprised. "Certainly; I suppose he and his sister
+will look after the child."
+
+"I shall send Martha up with Hannah."
+
+"It will astonish him."
+
+"Does he really think I am going to act as his deputy?"
+
+"He thought you would be glad to have Martha as long as possible."
+
+"As the child of Ellen Jervis, yes--not as his child."
+
+"I don't see that it matters much, myself," said Lady Engleton,
+"however, I will let him know."
+
+"By telegram, please, because Martha will be sent to-morrow."
+
+"What breathless haste!"
+
+"Why delay? Hannah will be there--she knows everything about her charge;
+and if she is only allowed to stay----"
+
+"He told me he meant to keep her."
+
+"I am thankful for that!"
+
+By this time, the story had flown through the village; nothing else was
+talked of. The excitement was intense. Gossip ran high in hall and
+cottage. Professor Fortescue alone could not be drawn into the
+discussion. Lady Engleton took him aside and asked what he really
+thought about it. All he would say was that the whole affair was deeply
+tragic. He had no knowledge of the circumstances and feelings involved,
+and his judgment must therefore be useless. It seemed more practical to
+try to help one's fellows to resist sin, than to shriek at convicted
+sinners.
+
+His departure had been fixed for the following morning.
+
+"So you and poor little Martha will go up together by the afternoon
+train, I suppose," said Lady Engleton.
+
+Hadria spent the rest of the day at Martha's cottage. There were many
+preparations to make. Hannah was bustling about, her eyes red with
+weeping. She was heart-broken. She declared that she could never live
+with "that bad man." But Hadria persuaded her, for Martha's sake, to
+remain. And Hannah, with another burst of tears, gave an assurance which
+amounted to a pledge, that she would take a situation with the Father of
+Evil himself, rather than desert the blessed child.
+
+"I wonder if Martha realizes at all what is going to happen," said
+Hadria sadly, as she stood watching the little girl playing with her
+toys. Martha was talking volubly to the blue man. He still clung to a
+precarious existence (though he was seriously chipped and faded since
+the Paris days), and had as determined a centre of gravity as ever.
+
+"I don't think she understands, ma'am," said Hannah. "I kep' on tellin'
+her, and once she cried and said she did not want to go, but she soon
+forgot it."
+
+Hadria remained till it was time to dress for dinner. Professor
+Fortescue had promised to dine with her and Valeria on this last
+evening. Little Martha had been put early to bed, in order that she
+might have a long rest before the morrow's journey. The golden curls lay
+like strands of silk on the pillow, the bright eyes were closed in
+healthful slumber. The child lay, the very image of fresh and pure and
+sweet human life, with no thought and no dread of the uncertain future
+that loomed before her. Hannah had gone upstairs to pack her own
+belongings. The little window was open, as usual, letting the caressing
+air wander in, as sweet and fresh as the little body and soul to which
+it had ministered from the beginning.
+
+The busy, loud-ticking clock was working on with cheerful unconcern, as
+if this were just like every other day whose passing moments it had
+registered. The hands were pointing towards seven, and the dinner hour
+was half-past seven. Hadria stood looking down at the sleeping child,
+her hands resting on the low rail of the cot. There was a desolate look
+in her eyes, and something more terrible still, almost beyond
+definition. It was like the last white glow of some vast fire that has
+been extinguished.
+
+Suddenly--as something that gives way by the run, after a long
+resistance--she dropped upon her knees beside the cot with a slight cry,
+and broke into a silent storm of sobs, deep and suppressed. The
+stillness of the room was unbroken, and one could hear the loud
+tick-tack of the little clock telling off the seconds with business-like
+exactness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVII.
+
+
+The evening was sultry. Although the windows of the dining-room were
+wide open, not a breath of air came in from the garden. A dull, muggy
+atmosphere brooded sullenly among the masses of the evergreens, and in
+the thick summer foliage of the old walnut tree on the lawn.
+
+"How oppressive it is!" Valeria exclaimed.
+
+She had been asked to allow a niece of Madame Bertaux, who was to join
+some friends in Italy, to make the journey under her escort, and the
+date of her departure was therefore fixed. She had decided to return to
+town on the morrow, to make her preparations.
+
+Valeria declared impulsively that she would stay at home, after all. She
+could not bear to leave Hadria for so many lonely months.
+
+"Oh, no, no," cried Hadria in dismay, "don't let me begin _already_ to
+impoverish other lives!"
+
+Valeria remonstrated but Hadria persisted.
+
+"At least I have learnt _that_ lesson," she said. "I should have been a
+fool if I hadn't, for my life has been a sermon on the text."
+
+Professor Fortescue gave a little frown, as he often did when some
+painful idea passed through his mind.
+
+"It is happening everywhere," said Hadria, "the poor, sterile lives
+exhaust the strong and full ones. I will not be one of those vampire
+souls, at least not while I have my senses about me."
+
+Again, the little frown of pain contracted the Professor's brow.
+
+The dusk had invaded the dinner table, but they had not thought of
+candles. They went straight out to the still garden. Valeria had a fan,
+with which she vainly tried to overcome the expression of the
+atmosphere. She was very low-spirited. Hadria looked ill and exhausted.
+Little Martha's name was not mentioned. It was too sore a subject.
+
+"I can't bear the idea of leaving you, Hadria, especially when you talk
+like that. I wish, _how_ I wish, that some way could be found out of
+this labyrinth. Is this sort of thing to be the end of all the grand new
+hopes and efforts of women? Is all our force to be killed and
+overwhelmed in this absurd way?"
+
+"Ah, no, not all, in heaven's name!"
+
+"But if women won't repudiate, in practice, the claims that they hold to
+be unjust, in theory, how can they hope to escape? We may talk to all
+eternity, if we don't act."
+
+Hadria shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"Your reasoning is indisputable, but what can one do? There _are_
+cases----in short, some things are impossible!"
+
+Valeria was silent. "I have thought, at times, that you might make a
+better stand," she said at last, clinging still to her theory of the
+sovereignty of the will.
+
+Hadria did not reply.
+
+The Professor shook his head.
+
+"You know my present conditions," said Hadria, after a silence. "I can't
+overcome them. But perhaps some one else in my place might overcome
+them. I confess I don't see how. Do you?"
+
+Valeria hesitated. She made some vague statement about strength of
+character, and holding on through storm and stress to one's purpose; had
+not this been the history of all lives worth living?
+
+Hadria agreed, but pressed the practical question. And that Valeria
+could not answer. She could not bring herself to say that the doctor's
+warnings ought to be disregarded by Hadria, at the risk of her mother's
+life. It was not merely a risk, but a practical certainty that any
+further shock or trouble would be fatal. Valeria was tongue-tied.
+
+"Now do you see why I feel so terrified when anyone proposes to narrow
+down his existence, even in the smallest particular, for my sake?" asked
+Hadria. "It is because I see what awful power a human being may acquire
+of ravaging and of ruling other lives, and I don't want to acquire that
+power. I see that the tyranny may be perfectly well-intentioned, and
+indeed scarcely to be called tyranny, for it is but half conscious, yet
+only the more irresistible for that."
+
+"It is one's own fault if one submits to _conscious_ tyranny," the
+Professor put in, "and I think tyrant and victim are then much on a
+par."
+
+"A mere _demand_ can be resisted," Hadria added; "it is _grief_, real
+grief, however unreasonable, that brings people to their knees. But, oh,
+may the day hasten, when people shall cease to grieve when others claim
+their freedom!"
+
+Valeria smiled. "I don't think you are in much danger of grudging
+liberty to your neighbours, Hadria; so you need not be so frightened of
+becoming a vampire, as I think you call it."
+
+"Not _now_, but how can one tell what the result of years and years of
+monotonous existence may be, or the effect of example? How did it happen
+that my mother came to feel aggrieved if her daughters claimed some
+right of choice in the ordering of their lives? I suppose it is because
+_her_ mother felt aggrieved if _she_ ventured to call her soul her own."
+
+Valeria laughed.
+
+"But it is true," said Hadria. "Very few of us, if any, are in the least
+original as regards our sorrowing. We follow the fashion. We are not so
+presumptuous as to decide for ourselves what shall afflict us."
+
+"Or what shall transport us with joy," added Valeria, with a shrug.
+
+"Still less perhaps. Tradition says 'Weep, this is the moment,' or
+'Rejoice, the hour has come,' and we chant our dirge or kindle our
+bonfires accordingly. Why, it means a little martyrdom to the occasional
+sinner who selects his own occasion for sorrow or for joy."
+
+Valeria laughed at the notion of Hadria's being under the dictatorship
+of tradition, or of anything else, as to her emotions.
+
+But Hadria held that everybody was more or less subject to the thraldom.
+And the thraldom increased as the mind and the experience narrowed. And
+as the narrowing process progressed, she said, the exhausting or vampire
+quality grew and grew.
+
+"I have seen it, I have seen it! Those who have been starved in life,
+levy a sort of tax on the plenty of others, in the instinctive effort to
+replenish their own empty treasure-house. Only that is impossible. One
+can gain no riches in that fashion. One can only reduce one's victim to
+a beggary like one's own."
+
+Valeria was perturbed.
+
+"The more I see of life, the more bitter a thing it seems to be a woman!
+And one of the discouraging features of it is, that women are so ready
+to oppress each other!"
+
+"Because they have themselves suffered oppression," said the Professor.
+"It is a law that we cannot evade; if we are injured, we pay back the
+injury, whether we will or not, upon our neighbours. If we are blessed,
+we bless, but if we are cursed, we curse."
+
+"These moral laws, or laws of nature, or whatever one likes to call
+them, seem to be stern as death!" exclaimed Valeria. "I suppose we are
+all inheriting the curse that has been laid upon our mothers through so
+many ages."
+
+"We are not free from the shades of our grandmothers," said Hadria,
+"only I hope a little (when I have not been to the Vicarage for some
+time) that we may be less of a hindrance and an obsession to our
+granddaughters than our grandmothers have been to us."
+
+"Ah! that way lies hope!" cried the Professor.
+
+"I wish, I _wish_ I could believe!" Valeria exclaimed. "But I was born
+ten years too early for the faith of this generation."
+
+"It is you who have helped to give this generation its faith," said
+Hadria.
+
+"But have you real hope and real faith, in your heart of hearts? Tell
+me, Hadria."
+
+Hadria looked startled.
+
+"Ah! I knew it. Women _don't_ really believe that the cloud will lift.
+If they really believed what they profess, they would prove it. They
+would not submit and resign themselves. Oh, why don't you shew what a
+woman can do, Hadria?"
+
+Hadria gave a faint smile.
+
+She did not speak for some time, and when she did, her words seemed to
+have no direct reference to Valeria's question.
+
+"I believe that there are thousands and thousands of women whose lives
+have run on parallel lines with mine."
+
+She recalled a strange and grotesque vision, or waking-dream, that she
+had dreamt a few nights before: of a vast abyss, black and silent, which
+had to be filled up to the top with the bodies of women, hurled down to
+the depths of the pit of darkness, in order that the survivors might, at
+last, walk over in safety. Human bodies take but little room, and the
+abyss seemed to swallow them, as some greedy animal its prey. But Hadria
+knew, in her dream, that some day it would have claimed its last victim,
+and the surface would be level and solid, so that people would come and
+go, scarcely remembering that beneath their feet was once a chasm into
+which throbbing lives had to descend, to darkness and a living death.
+
+Valeria looked anxious and ill at ease. She watched Hadria's face.
+
+She was longing to urge her to leave Craddock Dene, but was deterred by
+the knowledge of the uselessness of such advice. Hadria could not take
+it.
+
+"I chafe against these situations!" cried Valeria. "I am so unused, in
+my own life, to such tethers and limitations. They would drive me
+crazy!"
+
+"Oh," Hadria exclaimed, with an amused smile, "this is a new cry!"
+
+"I don't care," said Valeria discontentedly. "I never supposed that one
+_could_ be tied hand and foot, in this way. I should never stand it. It
+is intolerable!"
+
+"These are what you have frequently commended to me as 'home ties,'"
+said Hadria.
+
+"Oh, but it is impossible!"
+
+"You attack the family!" cried the Professor.
+
+"If the family makes itself ridiculous----?"
+
+The Professor and Hadria laughed. Valeria was growing excited.
+
+"The natural instinct of man to get his fun at his neighbour's expense
+meets with wholesome rebuffs in the outer world," said the Professor,
+"but in the family it has its chance. That's why the family is so
+popular."
+
+Valeria, with her wonted capriciousness, veered round in defence of the
+institution that she had been just jeering at.
+
+"Well, after all, it is the order of Nature to have one's fun at the
+expense of someone, and I don't believe we shall ever be able to
+practise any other principle, I mean on a national scale, however much
+we may progress."
+
+"Oh, but we shan't progress unless we _do_," said the Professor.
+
+"You are always paradoxical."
+
+"There is no paradox here. I am just as certain as I am of my own
+existence, that real, solid, permanent progress is impossible to any
+people until they recognise, as a mere truism, that whatever is gained
+by cruelty, be it towards the humblest thing alive, is not gain, but the
+worst of loss."
+
+"Oh, you always go too far!" cried Valeria.
+
+"I don't admit that in a horror of cruelty, it is possible to go too
+far," the Professor replied. "Cruelty is the one unpardonable sin." He
+passed his hand across his brow, with a weary gesture, as if the
+pressure of misery and tumult and anguish in the world, were more than
+he could bear.
+
+"You won't give up your music, Hadria," Valeria said, at the end of a
+long cogitation.
+
+"It is a forlorn sort of pursuit," Hadria answered, with a whimsical
+smile, "but I will do all I can." Valeria seemed relieved.
+
+"And you will not give up hope?"
+
+"Hope? Of what?"
+
+"Oh, of--of----. What an absurd question!"
+
+Hadria smiled. "It is better to face facts, I think, than to shroud them
+away. After all, it is only by the rarest chance that character and
+conditions happen to suit each other so well that the powers can be
+developed. They are generally crushed. One more or less----." Hadria
+gave a shrug.
+
+The Professor broke in, abruptly.
+
+"It is exactly the one more or less that sends the balance up or down,
+that decides the fate of men and nations. An individual often counts
+more than a generation. If that were not so, nothing would be possible,
+and hope would be insane."
+
+"Perhaps it is!" said Hadria beneath her breath.
+
+The Professor had risen. He heard the last words, but made no
+remonstrance. Yet there was a something in his expression that gave
+comfort.
+
+"I fear I shall have to be going back," he said, looking at his watch.
+As he spoke, the first notes of a nightingale stole out of the
+shrubbery. Voices were hushed, and the three stood listening spellbound,
+to the wonderful impassioned song. Hadria marvelled at its strange
+serenity, despite the passion, and speculated vaguely as to the
+possibility of a paradox of the same kind in the soul of a human being.
+Passion and serenity? Had not the Professor combined these apparent
+contradictions?
+
+There was ecstasy so supreme in the bird's note that it had become calm
+again, like great heat that affects the senses, as with frost, or a
+flooded river that runs swift and smooth for very fulness.
+
+Presently, a second nightingale began to answer from a distant tree, and
+the garden was filled with the wild music. One or two stars had already
+twinkled out.
+
+"I ought really to be going," said the Professor.
+
+But he lingered still. His eyes wandered anxiously to Hadria's white
+face. He said good-night to Valeria, and then he and Hadria walked to
+the gate together.
+
+"You will come back and see us at Craddock Dene soon after you return,
+won't you?" she said wistfully.
+
+"Of course I will. And I hope that meanwhile, you will set to work to
+get strong and well. All your leisure ought to be devoted to that
+object, for the present. I should be so delighted to hear from you now
+and again, when you have a spare moment and the spirit moves you. I will
+write and tell you how I fare, if I may. If, at any time, I can be of
+service to you, don't forget how great a pleasure it would be to me to
+render it. I hope if ever I come back to England----"
+
+"When you come back," Hadria corrected, hastily.
+
+----"that we may meet oftener."
+
+"Indeed, that will be something to look forward to!"
+
+They exchanged the hearty, lingering handshake of trusty friendship and
+deep affection. The last words, the last good wishes, were spoken, the
+last wistful effort was made of two human souls to bid each other be of
+good cheer, and to bring to one another comfort and hope. Hadria leant
+on the gate, a lonely figure in the dim star-light, watching the form
+that had already become shadowy, retreating along the road and gradually
+losing itself in the darkness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII.
+
+
+Autumn had come round again. Craddock Dene had calmed down after the
+exciting event of the summer. Martha's little cottage was now standing
+empty, the virginia creeper trailing wildly, in thick festoons and
+dangling sprays over the porch and creeping up round the windows, even
+threatening to cover them with a ruddy screen, since now the bright
+little face no longer looked out of the latticed panes, and the cottage
+was given over to dust and spiders.
+
+Mrs. Temperley was often seen by the villagers passing along the road
+towards Craddock. She would sometimes pause at the cottage, to gather a
+few of the flowers that still came up in the tiny garden. It was said
+that she gathered them to lay on Ellen Jervis's grave.
+
+"Dear, dear, she do take on about that child!" Dodge used to say, as she
+passed up the street of Craddock. And Mrs. Gullick, good soul, would
+shake her head and express her sympathy, in spite of not "holding" with
+Mrs. Temperley's "ways."
+
+Her poorer neighbours understood far more than the others could
+understand, how sorely she was grieving about the child. Because she
+said nothing on the subject, it was generally supposed that she had
+ceased to care. After all, it was an act of charity that she had
+undertaken, on an impulse, and it was quite as well that she should be
+relieved of the responsibility.
+
+Hannah used to write regularly, to let her know how Martha was.
+Professor Theobald had directed Hannah to do this. The nurse had to
+admit that he was very good and very devoted to the child. She throve in
+her new home, and seemed perfectly happy.
+
+Hadria was now delivered over to the tender mercies of her own thoughts.
+Her memories burnt, as corrosive acids, in her brain. She could find no
+shadow of protection from her own contempt. There was not one nook or
+cranny into which that ruthless self-knowledge could not throw its cruel
+glare. In the hours of darkness, in the haunted hours of the early
+morning, she and her memories played horrible games with one another.
+She was hunted, they the hunters. There was no thought on which she
+could rest, no consoling remembrance. She often wished that she had
+followed her frequent impulse to tell Miss Du Prel the whole wretched
+story. But she could not force herself to touch the subject through the
+painful medium of speech. Valeria knew that Hadria was capable of any
+outward law-breaking, but she would never be prepared for the breaking
+of her own inner law, the real canon on which she had always laid so
+much stress. And then she had shrunk from the idea of betraying a secret
+not solely her own. If she told the story, Valeria would certainly guess
+the name. She felt a still greater longing that Professor Fortescue
+should know the facts; he would be able to help her to face it all, and
+to take the memory into her life and let its pain eat out what was base
+and evil in her soul. He would give her hope; his experience, his
+extraordinary sympathy, would enable him to understand it all, better
+than she did herself. If he would look at this miserable episode
+unflinchingly, and still hold out his hand to her, as she knew he would,
+and still believe in her, then she might believe still in herself, in
+her power of rising after this lost illusion, this shock of
+self-detection, and of going on again, sadder, and perhaps stronger; but
+if he thought that since she was capable of a real treason against her
+gods, that she was radically unsound at heart, and a mass of
+sophistication, then--Hadria buried her face in the pillow. She went
+through so often now, these paroxysms of agony. Do what she would, look
+where she might, she saw no relief. She was afraid to trust herself. She
+was afraid to accept her own suggestions of comfort, if ever a ray of it
+came to her, lest it should be but another form of self-deception,
+another proof of moral instability. In her eternal tossing to and fro,
+in mental anguish, the despairing idea often assailed her: that after
+all, it did not matter what she did or thought. She was but an atom of
+the vast whole, a drop in the ocean of human life.
+
+She had no end or motive in anything. She could go on doing what had to
+be done to the last, glad if she might bring a little pleasure in so
+acting, but beyond that, what was there to consider? The wounds to her
+vanity and her pride ached a little, at times, but the infinitely deeper
+hurt of disillusion overwhelmed the lesser feeling. She was too
+profoundly sad to care for that trivial mortification.
+
+Sometimes, Professor Fortescue used to write to Hadria, and she looked
+forward to these letters as to nothing else. She heard from Valeria
+also, who had met the Professor at Siena. She said he did not look as
+well as she had hoped to find him. She could not see that he had gained
+at all, since leaving England. He was cheerful, and enjoying sunny Italy
+as much as his strength would allow. Valeria was shocked to notice how
+very weak he was. He had a look in his face that she could not bear to
+see. If he did not improve soon, she thought of trying to persuade him
+to return home to see his doctor again. When one was ill, home was the
+best place after all.
+
+"You and Professor Fortescue," she said, in closing her letter, "are the
+two people I love in the world. You are all that I have in life to cling
+to. Write to me, dearest Hadria, for I am very anxious and wretched."
+
+The affairs of life and death mix themselves incongruously enough, in
+this confused world. The next news that stirred the repose of Craddock
+Dene, was that of Algitha's engagement to Wilfrid Burton. In spite of
+his socialistic views, Mrs. Fullerton was satisfied with the marriage,
+because Wilfrid Burton was well-connected and had good expectations. The
+mother had feared that Algitha would never marry at all, and she not
+only raised no objection, but seemed relieved. Wilfrid Burton had come
+down to stay at the Red House, during one of Algitha's holidays, and it
+was then that the betrothal had taken place. The marriage promised to be
+happy, for the couple were deeply attached and had interests in common.
+They intended to continue to work on the same lines after they were
+married. Both parents were favourably impressed by the son-in-law elect,
+and the Cottage became the scene of exciting arguments on the subject of
+socialism. Mr. Fullerton insisted on holding Wilfrid Burton responsible
+for every sort of theory that had ever been attributed not merely to
+socialists, but to communists, anarchists, collectivists, nihilists, and
+the rest; and nothing would persuade him that the young man was not
+guilty of all these contradictory enormities of thought. Wilfrid's
+personality, however, overcame every prejudice against him, on this
+account, after the first meeting.
+
+Joseph Fleming, among others, congratulated Algitha heartily on her
+engagement.
+
+"I can see you are very happy," he said naively. She laughed and
+coloured.
+
+"Indeed I ought to be. Life is gloriously worth living, when it is lived
+in the presence of good and generous souls."
+
+"I wish _I_ had married," said Joseph pensively.
+
+"It is not too late to mend," suggested Algitha.
+
+"How reckless you are!" exclaimed her sister. "How can you recommend
+marriage in the abstract? You happen to have met just the right person,
+but Mr. Fleming hasn't, it would seem."
+
+"If one person can be so fortunate, so can another," said Algitha.
+
+"Why tempt Providence? Rather bear the ills you have----"
+
+"I am surprised to hear you take a gloomy view of anything, Mrs.
+Temperley," said Joseph; "I always thought you so cheerful. You say
+funnier things than any lady I have ever met, except an Irish girl who
+used to sing comic songs."
+
+Both sisters laughed.
+
+"How do you know that, in the intervals of her comic songs, that girl
+has not a gloomy disposition?" asked Hadria.
+
+"Oh no, you can see that she is without a care in the world; she is like
+Miss Fullerton, always full of good cheer and kindness."
+
+"Had she also slums to cheer her up?" asked Hadria.
+
+"No, not at all. She never does anything in particular."
+
+"I am surprised that she is cheerful then," said Algitha. "It won't
+last."
+
+"It is her slums that keep my sister in such good spirits," said Hadria.
+
+"Really! Well, if you are fond of that sort of thing, Mrs. Temperley,
+there are some nasty enough places at the lower end of Craddock----"
+
+"Oh, it isn't that one clings to slums for slums' sake," cried Hadria
+laughing.
+
+"I am afraid they are already overrun with visitors," Joseph added.
+"There are so many Miss Walkers."
+
+It was not long after this conversation, that Craddock Dene was thrilled
+by another piece of matrimonial news. Joseph Fleming was announced to be
+engaged to the Irish girl who sang comic songs. She was staying with
+Mrs. Jordan at the time. And the Irish girl, whose name was Kathleen
+O'Halloran, came and sang her comic songs to Craddock Dene, while Joseph
+sat and beamed in pride and happiness, and the audience rippled with
+laughter.
+
+Kathleen was very pretty and very fascinating, with her merry,
+kind-hearted ways, and she became extremely popular with her future
+neighbours.
+
+Little changes had taken place in the village, through death or marriage
+or departure. Dodge had laid to rest many victims of influenza, which
+visited the neighbourhood with great severity. Among the slain, poor
+Dodge had to number his own wife. The old man was broken down with his
+loss. He loved to talk over her illness and death with Hadria, whose
+presence seemed to comfort him more than anything else, as he assured
+her, in his quaint dialect.
+
+Sometimes, returning through the Craddock Woods, Hadria would pass
+through the churchyard on her way home, after her walk, and there she
+would come upon Dodge patiently at work upon some new grave, the sound
+of his pickaxe breaking the autumn silence, ominously. His head was more
+bent than of yore, and his hair was whiter. His old face would brighten
+up when he heard Hadria's footstep, and he would pause, a moment or two,
+for a gossip. The conversation generally turned upon his old "missus,"
+who was buried under a yew tree, near the wicket gate. Then he would ask
+after Hadria's belongings; about her father and mother, about Hubert,
+and the boys. Mr. Fullerton had made the gravedigger's acquaintance, and
+won his hearty regard by many a chat and many a little kindness. Dodge
+had never ceased to regret that Martha had been taken away from
+Craddock. The place seemed as if it had gone to sleep, he said. Things
+weren't as they used to be.
+
+Hadria would often go to see the old man, trying to cheer him and
+minister to his growing ailments. His shrewdness was remarkable. Mr.
+Fullerton quoted Dodge as an authority on matters of practical
+philosophy, and the old gravedigger became a sort of oracle at the
+Cottage. Wilfrid Burton complained that he was incessantly confronted
+with some saying of Dodge, and from this there was no appeal.
+
+The news from Italy was still far from reassuring. Valeria was terribly
+anxious. But she felt thankful, she said, to be with the invalid and
+able to look after him. The doctors would not hear of his returning to
+England at the approach of winter. It would be sheer suicide. He must go
+further south. Valeria had met some old friends, among them Madame
+Bertaux, and they had decided to go on together, perhaps to Naples or
+Sorrento. Her friends had all fallen in love with the Professor, as
+every one did. They were a great help and comfort to her. If it were not
+for the terrible foreboding, Valeria said she would be perfectly happy.
+The Professor's presence seemed to change the very atmosphere. He spoke
+often about Hadria, and over and over again asked Valeria to watch over
+her and help her. And he spoke often about his wife. Valeria confessed
+that, at one time, she used to be horribly and shamefully jealous of
+this wife, whom he worshipped so faithfully, but now that feeling had
+left her. She was thankful for the great privilege of his friendship. A
+new tone had come over Valeria's letters, of late; the desperate, almost
+bitter element had passed away, and something approaching serenity had
+taken its place.
+
+No one, she said, could be in the Professor's presence every day, and
+remain exactly the same as before. She saw his potent, silent influence
+upon every creature who crossed his path. He came and went among his
+fellows, quietly, beneficently, and each was the better for having met
+him, more or less, according to the fineness and sensitiveness of the
+nature.
+
+"My love for him," said Valeria, "used at one time to be a great trouble
+to me. It made me restless and unhappy. Now I am glad of it, and though
+there must be an element of pain in a hopeless love, yet I hold myself
+fortunate to have cherished it."
+
+Hadria received this letter from the postman when she was coming out of
+Dodge's cottage.
+
+It threw her into a conflict of strong and painful feeling: foreboding,
+heart-sickness, a longing so strong to see her friends that it seemed as
+if she must pack up instantly and go to them, and through it all, a
+sense of loneliness that was almost unbearable. How she envied Valeria!
+To love with her whole heart, without a shadow of doubt; to have that
+element of warmth in her life which could never fail her, like sunshine
+to the earth. Among the cruelest elements of Hadria's experience had
+been that emptying of her heart; the rebuff to the need for love, the
+conviction that she was to go through life without its supreme emotion.
+Professor Theobald had thrown away what might have been a
+master-passion. The outlook was so blank and cold, so unutterably
+lonely! She looked back to the days at Dunaghee, as if several lifetimes
+had passed between her and them. What illusions they had all harboured
+in those strange old days!
+
+"Do you remember our famous discussion on Emerson in the garret?" she
+said to Algitha.
+
+"Do I? It is one of the episodes of our youth that stands out most
+distinctly."
+
+"And how about Emerson's doctrine? _Are_ we the makers of our
+circumstances? _Does_ our fate 'fit us like a glove?'"
+
+Algitha looked thoughtful. "I doubt it," she said.
+
+"Yet you have brilliantly done what you meant to do."
+
+"My own experience does not overshadow my judgment entirely, I hope,"
+said Algitha. "I have seen too much of a certain tragic side of life to
+be able to lay down a law of that sort. I can't believe, for instance,
+that among all those millions in the East End, not _one_ man or woman,
+for all these ages, was born with great capacities, which better
+conditions might have allowed to come to fruition. I think you were
+right, after all. It is a matter of relation."
+
+The autumn was unusually fine, and the colours sumptuous beyond
+description. The vast old trees that grew so tall and strong, in the
+genial English soil, burnt away their summer life in a grand
+conflagration.
+
+Hubert had successfully carried the day with regard to the important
+case which had taken him abroad, and had now returned to Craddock Dene.
+Henriette came to stay at the Red House.
+
+She followed her brother, one day, into the smoking-room, and there,
+with much tact and circumlocution, gave him to understand that she
+thought Hadria was becoming more sensible; that she was growing more
+like other people, less opinionated, wiser, and better in every way.
+
+"Hadria was always very sweet, of course," said Henriette, "but she had
+the faults of her qualities, as we all have. You have had your trials,
+dear Hubert, but I rejoice to believe that Hadria will give you little
+further cause for pain or regret." Hubert made no reply. He placed the
+tips of his fingers together and looked into the fire.
+
+"I think that the companionship of Lady Engleton has been of great
+service to Hadria," he observed, after a long pause.
+
+"Unquestionably," assented Henriette. "She has had an enormous influence
+upon her. She has taught Hadria to see that one may hold one's own ideas
+quietly, without flying in everybody's face. Lady Engleton is a
+pronounced agnostic, yet she never misses a Sunday at Craddock Church,
+and I am glad to see that Hadria is following her example. It must be a
+great satisfaction to you, Hubert. People used to talk unpleasantly
+about Hadria's extremely irregular attendance. It is such a mistake to
+offend people's ideas, in a small place like this."
+
+"That is what I told Hadria," said Hubert, "and her mother has been
+speaking seriously to her on the subject. Hadria made no opposition,
+rather to my surprise. She said that she would go as regularly as our
+dining-room clock, if it gave us all so much satisfaction."
+
+"How charming!" cried Henriette benevolently, "and how characteristic!"
+
+As Hadria sank in faith and hope, she rose in the opinion of her
+neighbours. She was never nearer to universal unbelief than now, when
+the orthodox began to smile upon her.
+
+Life presented itself to her as a mere welter of confused forces. If
+goodness, or aspiration, or any godlike thing arose, for a moment--like
+some shipwrecked soul with hands out-stretched above the waves--swiftly
+it sank again submerged, leaving only a faint ripple on the surface,
+soon overswept and obliterated.
+
+She could detect no light on the face of the troubled waters. Looking
+around her at other lives, she saw the story written in different
+characters, but always the same; hope, struggle, failure. The pathos of
+old age wrung her heart; the sorrows of the poor, the lonely, the
+illusions of the seeker after wealth, the utter vanity of the objects of
+men's pursuit, and the end of it all!
+
+"I wonder what is the secret of success, Hadria?"
+
+"Speaking generally, I should say to have a petty aim."
+
+"Then if one succeeds after a long struggle," said Algitha pensively.
+
+"One finds it, I doubt not, the dismalest of failures."
+
+A great cloud of darkness seemed to have descended over the earth.
+Hadria felt cut off even from Nature. The splendours of the autumn
+appeared at a vast distance from her. They belonged to another world.
+She could not get near them. Mother earth had deserted her child.
+
+A superficial apathy was creeping over her, below which burnt a slow
+fire of pain. But the greater the apathy, which expressed itself
+outwardly in a sort of cheerful readiness to take things as they came,
+the more delighted everybody appeared to be with the repentant sinner.
+Her associates seemed to desire earnestly that she should go to church,
+as they did, in her best bonnet----and why not? She would get a best
+bonnet, as ridiculous as they pleased, and let Mr. Walker do his worst.
+What did it matter? Who was the better or the worse for what she thought
+or how she acted? What mattered it, whether she were consistent or not?
+What mattered it if she seemed, by her actions, to proclaim her belief
+in dogmas that meant nothing to her, except as interesting products of
+the human mind? She had not enough faith to make it worth while to stand
+alone.
+
+Lord Engleton said he thought it right to go to church regularly, for
+the sake of setting an example to the masses, a sentiment which always
+used to afford Hadria more amusement than many intentional witticisms.
+
+She went often to the later service, when the autumn twilight lay heavy
+and sad upon the churchyard, and the peace of evening stole in through
+the windows of the church. Then, as the sublime poetry of psalmist or
+prophet rolled through the Norman arches, or the notes of the organ
+stole out of the shadowed chancel, a spirit of repose would creep into
+the heart of the listener, and the tired thoughts would take a more
+rhythmic march. She felt nearer to her fellows, at such moments, than at
+any other. Her heart went out to them, in wistful sympathy. They seemed
+to be standing together then, one and all, at the threshold of the great
+Mystery, and though they might be parted ever so widely by circumstance,
+temperament, mental endowment, manner of thought, yet after all, they
+were brethren and fellow sufferers; they shared the weakness, the
+longing, the struggle of life; they all had affections, ambitions,
+heart-breakings, sins, and victories; the differences were slight and
+transient, in the presence of the vast unknown, the Ultimate Reality for
+which they were all groping in the darkness. This sense of brotherhood
+was strongest with regard to the poorer members of the congregation: the
+labourers with their toil-stained hands and bent heads, the wives, the
+weary mothers, their faces seamed with the ceaseless strain of
+child-bearing, and hard work, and care and worry. In their prematurely
+ageing faces, in their furrowed brows, Hadria could trace the marks of
+Life's bare and ruthless hand, which had pressed so heavily on those
+whose task it had been to bestow the terrible gift. Here the burden had
+crushed soul and flesh; here that insensate spirit of Life had worked
+its will, gratified its rage to produce and reproduce, it mattered not
+what in the semblance of the human, so long only as that wretched
+semblance repeated itself, and repeated itself again, _ad nauseam_,
+while it destroyed the creatures which it used for its wild purpose----
+
+And the same savage story was written, once more, on the faces of the
+better dressed women: worry, weariness, apathy, strain; these were
+marked unmistakeably, after the first freshness of youth had been driven
+away, and the features began to take the mould of the habitual thoughts
+and the habitual impressions.
+
+And on these faces, there was a certain pettiness and coldness not
+observable on those of the poorer women.
+
+Often, when one of the neighbours called and found Hadria alone, some
+chance word of womanly sympathy would touch a spring, and then a sad,
+narrow little story of trouble and difficulty would be poured out; a
+revelation of the bewildered, toiling, futile existences that were being
+passed beneath a smooth appearance; of the heart-ache and heroism and
+misplaced sacrifice, of the ruined lives that a little common sense and
+common kindness might have saved; the unending pain and trouble about
+matters entirely trivial, entirely absurd; the ceaseless travail to
+bring forth new elements of trouble for those who must inherit the deeds
+of to-day; the burdened existences agonizing to give birth to new
+existences, equally burdened, which in their turn, were to repeat the
+ceaseless oblation to the gods of Life.
+
+"Futile?" said Lady Engleton. "I think women are generally fools, _entre
+nous_; that is why they so often fill their lives with sound and fury,
+accomplishing nothing."
+
+Hadria felt that this was a description of her own life, as well as that
+of most of her neighbours.
+
+"I can understand so well how it is that women become conventional," she
+said, apparently without direct reference to the last remark, "it is so
+useless to take the trouble to act on one's own initiative. It annoys
+everybody frightfully, and it accomplishes nothing, as you say."
+
+"My dear Hadria, you alarm me!" cried Lady Engleton, laughing. "You must
+really be very ill indeed, if you have come to this conclusion!"
+
+In looking over some old papers and books, one afternoon, Hadria came
+upon the little composition called _Futility_, which a mood had called
+forth at Dunaghee, years ago. She had almost forgotten about it, and in
+trying it over, she found that it was like trying over the work of some
+other person.
+
+It expressed with great exactness the feelings that overwhelmed her now,
+whenever she let her imagination dwell upon the lives of women, of
+whatever class and whatever kind. Futility! The mournful composition,
+with its strange modern character, its suggestion of striving and
+confusion and pain, expressed as only music could express, the yearning
+and the sadness that burden so many a woman's heart to-day.
+
+She knew that the music was good, and that now she could compose music
+infinitely better. The sharpness of longing for her lost art cut through
+her. She half turned from the piano and then went back, as a moth to the
+flame.
+
+How was this eternal tumult to be stilled? Facts were definite and
+clear, there was no room for doubt or for hope. These facts then had to
+be dealt with. How did other women deal with them? Not so much better
+than she did, after all, as it appeared when one was allowed to see
+beneath the amiable surface of their lives. They were all spinning round
+and round, in a dizzy little circle, all whirling and toiling and
+troubling, to no purpose.
+
+Even Lady Engleton, who appeared so bright and satisfied, had her secret
+misery which spoilt her life. She had beauty, talent, wealth, everything
+to make existence pleasant and satisfactory, but she had allowed
+externals and unessentials to encroach upon it, to govern her actions,
+to usurp the place of her best powers, to creep into her motives, till
+there was little germ and heart of reality left, and she was beginning
+to feel starved and aimless in the midst of what might have been plenty.
+Lady Engleton had turned to her neighbour at the Red House in an
+instinctive search for sympathy, as the more genuine side of her nature
+began to cry out against the emptiness of her graceful and ornate
+existence. Hadria was startled by the revelation. Hubert had always held
+up Lady Engleton as a model of virtue and wisdom, and perfect
+contentment. Yet she too, it turned out, for all her smiles and her
+cheerfulness, was busy and weary with futilities. She too, like the
+fifty daughters of Danaus, was condemned to the idiot's labour of
+eternally drawing water in sieves from fathomless wells.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX.
+
+
+Algitha's marriage took place almost immediately. There was no reason
+for delay. She stayed at the Cottage, and was married at Craddock
+Church, on one of the loveliest mornings of the year, as the villagers
+noticed with satisfaction. Both sisters had become favourites in the
+neighbourhood among the poorer people, and the inhabitants mustered to
+see the wedding.
+
+It was only for her mother's sake that Algitha had consented to a
+conventional ceremony. She said that she and Wilfrid both hated the
+whole barbaric show. They submitted only because there was no help for
+it. Algitha's mother would have broken her heart if they had been bound
+merely by the legal tie, as she and Wilfrid desired.
+
+"Indeed, the only tie that we respect is that of our love and faith. If
+that failed, we should scorn to hold one another in unwilling bondage.
+We are not entirely without self-respect."
+
+The couple were to take a tour in Italy, where they hoped to meet
+Valeria and Professor Fortescue. Joseph Fleming was married, almost at
+the same time, to his merry Irish girl.
+
+The winter came suddenly. Some terrific gales had robbed the trees of
+their lingering yellow leaves, and the bare branches already shewed
+their exquisite tracery against the sky. Heavy rain followed, and the
+river was swollen, and there were floods that made the whole country
+damp, and rank, and terribly depressing. Mrs. Fullerton felt the
+influence of the weather, and complained of neuralgia and other
+ailments. She needed watching very carefully, and plenty of cheerful
+companionship. This was hard to supply. In struggling to belie her
+feelings, day after day, Hadria feared, at times, that she would break
+down disastrously. She was frightened at the strange haunting ideas that
+came to her, the dread and nameless horror that began to prey upon her,
+try as she would to protect herself from these nerve-torments, which she
+could trace so clearly to their causes. If only, instead of making one
+half insane and stupid, the strain of grief would but kill one outright,
+and be done with it!
+
+Old Dodge was a good friend to Hadria, at this time. He saw that
+something was seriously wrong, and he managed to convey his affectionate
+concern in a thousand little kindly ways that brought comfort to her
+loneliness, and often filled her eyes with sudden tears. Nor was he the
+only friend she had in the village, whose sympathy was given in generous
+measure. Hadria had been able to be of use, at the time of the
+disastrous epidemic which had carried off so many of the population, and
+since then had been admitted to more intimate relationship with the
+people; learning their troubles and their joys, their anxieties, and the
+strange pathos of their lives. She learnt, at this time, the quality of
+English kindness and English sympathy, which Valeria used to say was
+equalled nowhere in the world.
+
+Before the end of the winter, Algitha and her husband returned.
+
+"I'm real glad, mum, that I be," said Dodge, "to think as you has your
+sister with you again. There ain't nobody like one's kith and kin, wen
+things isn't quite as they should be, as one may say. Miss
+Fullerton--which I means Mrs. Burton--is sure to do you a sight o' good,
+bless 'er."
+
+Dodge was right. Algitha's healthy nature, strengthened by happiness and
+success, was of infinite help to Hadria, in her efforts to shake off the
+symptoms that had made her frightened of herself. She did not know what
+tricks exhausted nerves might play upon her, or what tortures they had
+in store for her.
+
+Algitha's judgments were inclined to be definite and clear-cut to the
+point of hardness. She did not know the meaning of over-wrought nerves,
+nor the difficulties of a nature more imaginative than her own. She had
+found her will-power sufficient to meet all the emergencies of her life,
+and she was disposed to feel a little contemptuous, especially of late,
+at a persistent condition of difficulty and confusion. Her impulse was
+to attack such a condition and bring it to order, by force of will. The
+active temperament is almost bound to misunderstand the imaginative or
+artistic spirit and its difficulties. A real _cul de sac_ was to Algitha
+almost unthinkable. There _must_ be some means of finding one's way out.
+
+Hadria's present attitude amazed and irritated her. She objected to her
+regular church-going, as dishonest. Was she not, for the sake of peace
+and quietness, professing that which she did not believe? And how was it
+that she was growing more into favour with the Jordans and Walkers and
+all the narrow, wooden-headed people? Surely an ominous sign.
+
+After the long self-suppression, the long playing of a fatiguing role,
+Hadria felt an unspeakable relief in Algitha's presence. To her, at
+least, she need not assume a false cheerfulness.
+
+Algitha noticed, with anxiety, the change that was coming over her
+sister, the spirit of tired acquiescence, the insidious creeping in of a
+slightly cynical view of things, in place of the brave, believing,
+imaginative outlook that she had once held towards life. This cynicism
+was more or less superficial however, as Algitha found when they had a
+long and intimate conversation, one evening in Hadria's room, by her
+fire; but it was painful to Algitha to hear the hopeless tones of her
+sister's voice, now that she was speaking simply and sincerely, without
+bitterness, but without what is usually called resignation.
+
+"No; I don't think it is all for the best," said Hadria. "I think, as
+far as my influence goes, it is all for the worst. What fatal argument
+my life will give to those who are seeking reasons to hold our sex in
+the old bondage! My struggles, my failure, will add to the staggering
+weight that we all stumble under. I have hindered more--that is the
+bitter thing--by having tried and failed, than if I had never tried at
+all. Mrs. Walker, Mrs. Gordon herself, has given less arguments to the
+oppressors than I."
+
+"But why? But how?" cried Algitha incredulously.
+
+"Because no one can point to _them_, as they will to me, and say, 'See,
+what a ghastly failure! See how feeble after all, are these pretentious
+women of the new order, who begin by denying the sufficiency of the life
+assigned them, by common consent, and end by failing in that and in the
+other which they aspire to. What has become of all the talent and all
+the theories and resolves?' And so the next girl who dares to have
+ambitions, and dares to scorn the _role_ of adventuress that society
+allots to her, will have the harder fate because of my attempt. Now
+nothing in the whole world," cried Hadria, her voice losing the even
+tones in which she had been speaking, "nothing in the whole world will
+ever persuade me that _that_ is all for the best!"
+
+"I never said it was, but when a thing has to be, why not make the best
+of it?"
+
+"And so persuade people that all is well, when all is not well! That's
+exactly what women always do and always have done, and plume themselves
+upon it. And so this ridiculous farce is kept up, because these wretched
+women go smiling about the world, hugging their stupid resignation to
+their hearts, and pampering up their sickly virtue, at the expense of
+their sex. Hang their virtue!"
+
+Algitha laughed.
+
+"It _is_ somewhat self-regarding certainly, in spite of the incessant
+renunciation and sacrifice."
+
+"Oh, self-sacrifice in a woman, is always her easiest course. It is the
+nearest approach to luxury that society allows her," cried Hadria,
+irascibly.
+
+"It is most refreshing to hear you exaggerate, once more, with the old
+vigour," her sister cried.
+
+"If I have a foible, it is under-statement," returned Hadria, with a
+half-smile.
+
+"Then I think you haven't a foible," said Algitha.
+
+"That I am ready to admit; but seriously, women seem bent on proving
+that you may treat them as you like, but they will 'never desert Mr.
+Micawber.'"
+
+Algitha smiled.
+
+"They are so mortally afraid of getting off the line and doing what
+might not be quite right. They take such a morbid interest in their own
+characters. They are so particular about their souls. The female soul is
+such a delicate creation--like a bonnet. Look at a woman trimming and
+poking at her bonnet--that's exactly how she goes on with her soul."
+
+Algitha laughed and shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"It has trained her in a sort of heroism, at any rate," she said.
+
+"Heroism! talk of Spartan boys, they are not in it! A woman will endure
+martyrdom with the expression of a seraph,--an extremely aggravating
+seraph. She looks after her soul as if it were the ultimate fact of the
+universe. She will trim and preen that ridiculous soul, though the
+heavens fall and the rest of her sex perish."
+
+"Come now, I think there are exceptions."
+
+"A few, but very few. It is a point of honour, a sacred canon. Women
+will go on patiently drawing water in sieves, and pretend they are
+usefully employed because it tires them!"
+
+"They believe it," said Algitha.
+
+"Perhaps so. But it's very silly."
+
+"It is really well meant. It is a submission to the supposed will of
+heaven."
+
+"A poor compliment to Heaven!" Hadria exclaimed.
+
+"Well, it is not, of course, your conception nor mine of the will of
+heaven, but it is their's."
+
+Hadria shrugged her shoulders. "I wish women would think a little less
+of Heaven in the abstract, and a little more of one another, in the
+concrete."
+
+"Nobody has ever taught them to think of one another; on the contrary,
+they have always been trained to think of men, and of Heaven, and their
+souls. That training accounts for their attitude towards their own sex."
+
+"I suppose so. A spirit of sisterhood among women would have sadly upset
+the social scheme, as it has been hitherto conceived. Indeed the social
+scheme has made such a spirit well-nigh impossible."
+
+"A conquering race, if it is wise, governs its subjects largely through
+their internecine squabbles and jealousies. _But what if they
+combine----?_"
+
+"Ah!" Hadria drew a deep sigh. "I wish the moment of sisterhood were a
+little nearer."
+
+"Heaven hasten it!" cried Algitha.
+
+"Perhaps it is nearer than we imagine. Women are quick learners, when
+they begin. But, oh, it is hard sometimes to make them begin. They are
+so annoyingly abject; so painfully diffident. It is their pride to be
+humble. The virtuous worm won't even turn!"
+
+"Poor worm! It sometimes permits itself the relief of verbal
+expression!" observed Algitha.
+
+Hadria laughed. "There are smiling, villainous worms, who deny
+themselves even _that!_"
+
+After a long silence, Algitha taking the poker in her hand and altering
+the position of some of the coals, asked what Hadria meant to do in the
+future; how she was going to "turn," if that was her intention.
+
+"Oh, I cannot even turn!" replied Hadria. "Necessity knows no law. The
+one thing I won't do, is to be virtuously resigned. And I won't 'make
+the best of it.'"
+
+Algitha laughed. "I am relieved to hear so wrong-headed a sentiment from
+you. It sounds more like your old self."
+
+"I won't be called wrong-headed on this account," said Hadria. "If my
+life is to bear testimony to the truth, its refrain ought to be, 'This
+is wrong, this is futile, this is cruel, this is damnable.' I shall warn
+every young woman I come across, to beware, as she grows older, and has
+people in her clutches, not to express her affection by making
+unlimited demands on the beloved objects, nor by turning the world into
+a prison-house for those whom she honours with her devotion. The hope of
+the future lies in the rising generation. You can't alter those who have
+matured in the old ideas. It is for us to warn. I _won't_ pretend to
+think that things are all right, when I know they are not all right.
+That would be mean. What is called making the best of it, would testify
+all the wrong way. My life, instead of being a warning, would be a sort
+of a trap. Let me at least play the humble role of scarecrow. I am in
+excellent condition for it," she added, grasping her thin wrist.
+
+Algitha shook her head anxiously.
+
+"I fear," she said, "that the moral that most people will draw will be:
+'Follow in the path of Mrs. Gordon, however distasteful it may seem to
+you, and whatever temptations you feel towards a more independent life.
+If you don't, you will come to grief.'"
+
+"Then you think it would be better to be 'resigned,' and look after
+one's own soul?"
+
+"Heaven knows what would be better!" Algitha exclaimed. "But one thing
+is certain, you ought to look after your body, for the present at any
+rate."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L.
+
+
+Hadria had found the autumn saddening, and the winter tempt her to
+morbid thoughts, but the coming of spring made her desperate. It would
+not allow her to be passive, it would not permit her emotions to lie
+prone and exhausted. Everything was waking, and she must wake too, to
+the bitterest regret and the keenest longings of which she was capable.
+
+She had tried to avoid everything that would arouse these futile
+emotions; she had attempted to organise her life on new lines,
+persisting in her attitude of non-surrender, but winning, as far as she
+was able, the rest that, at present, could only be achieved by means of
+a sort of inward apathy. It was an instinctive effort of
+self-preservation. She was like a fierce fire, over which ashes have
+been heaped to keep down the flames, and check its ardour. She had to
+eat her heart out in dullness, to avoid its flaming out in madness. But
+the spring came and carried her away on its torrent. She might as well
+have tried to resist an avalanche. She thought that she had given up all
+serious thought of music; the surrender was necessary, and she had
+judged it folly to tempt herself by further dallying with it. It was too
+strong for her. And the despair that it awoke seemed to break up her
+whole existence, and render her unfit for her daily task. But now she
+found that, once more, she had underrated the strength of her own
+impulses. For some time she resisted, but one day, the sun shone out
+strong and genial, the budding trees spread their branches to the warm
+air, a blackbird warbled ecstatically from among the Priory shrubberies,
+and Hadria passed into the garden of the Griffins.
+
+The caretaker smiled, when she saw who stood on the doorstep.
+
+"Why ma'am, I thought you was never coming again to play on the piano; I
+_have_ missed it, that I have. It makes the old place seem that
+cheerful--I can almost fancy it's my poor young mistress come back
+again. She used to sit and play on that piano, by the hour together."
+
+"I am glad you have enjoyed it," said Hadria gently. The blinds were
+pulled up in the drawing-room, the piano was uncovered, the windows
+thrown open to the terrace.
+
+"You haven't had much time for playing since your mamma has been ill,"
+the woman continued, dusting the keys and setting up the music-rest.
+
+"To-day my mother has a visitor; Mrs. Joseph Fleming is spending the
+afternoon with her," said Hadria.
+
+"To be sure, ma'am, to be sure, a nice young lady, and so cheerful,"
+said the good woman, bustling off to wind up the tall old clock with the
+wise-looking face, that had been allowed to run down since Hadria's last
+visit. "Seems more cheerful like," observed the caretaker, as the steady
+tick-tack began to sound through the quiet room.
+
+"And have you fed my birds regularly, Mrs. Williams?" asked Hadria,
+taking off her hat and standing at the open window looking out to the
+terrace.
+
+"Yes indeed, ma'am, every day, just as you used to do when you came
+yourself. And they has got so tame; they almost eats out of my hand."
+
+"And my robin? I hope he has not deserted us."
+
+"Oh, no, he comes right into the room sometimes and hops about, just as
+he did that afternoon, the last time you was here! I think it's the same
+bird, for he likes to perch on that table and pick up the crumbs."
+
+"Poor little soul! If you will give me a scrap of bread, Mrs.
+Williams----"
+
+The caretaker left the room, and returned with a thick slice, which
+Hadria crumbled and scattered on the window-sill, as she stepped out to
+the terrace.
+
+The calm old mansion with its delicate outlines, its dreamy exquisite
+stateliness, spoke of rest and sweet serenity. The place had the
+melancholy but also the repose of greatness. It was rich in all that
+lies nearest to the heart of that mysterious, dual-faced divinity that
+we call beauty, compounded of sorrow and delight.
+
+Ah! if only its owner could come and take up his abode here. If only he
+would get well! Hadria's thoughts wandered backwards to that wonderful
+evening, when she had played to him and Algitha, and they had all
+watched the sunset afterwards, from the terrace. How long was it since
+she had touched the piano in this old drawing-room? Never since she
+returned from Paris. Even her own piano at home had been almost equally
+silent. She believed that she had not only quite abandoned hope with
+regard to music, but that she had prepared herself to face the
+inevitable decay of power, the inevitable proofs of her loss, as time
+went on. But so far, she had only had proofs that she could do
+astonishingly much if she had the chance.
+
+To-day, for the first time, the final ordeal had to be gone through. And
+her imagination had never conceived its horror. She was to be taken at
+her word. The neglected gift was beginning to show signs of decay and
+enfeeblement. It had given fair warning for many a year, by the
+persistent appeal that it made, the persistent pain that it caused; but
+the famine had told upon it at last. It was dying. As this fact
+insinuated itself into the consciousness, in the teeth of a wild effort
+to deny it, despair flamed up, fierce and violent. She regretted that
+she had not thrown up everything long ago, rather than endure this
+lingering death; she cursed her hesitation, she cursed her fate, her
+training, her circumstances, she cursed herself. Whatever there was to
+curse, she cursed. What hideous nonsense to imagine herself ready to
+face this last insult of fate! She was like a martyr, who invites the
+stake and the faggot, and knows what he has undertaken only when the
+flames begin to curl about his feet. She had offered up her power, her
+imperious creative instinct, to the Lares and Penates; those greedy
+little godlets whom there was no appeasing while an inch of one remained
+that they could tear to pieces. She clenched her hands, in agony. The
+whole being recoiled now, at the eleventh hour, as a fierce wild
+creature that one tries to bury alive. She looked back along the line of
+the past and saw, with too clear eyes, the whole insidious process, so
+stealthy that she had hardly detected it, at the time. She remembered
+those afternoons at the Priory, when the restless, ill-trained power
+would assert itself, free for the moment, from the fetters and the
+dismemberment that awaited it in ordinary life. But like a creature
+accustomed to the yoke, she had found it increasingly difficult to use
+the moments of opportunity when they came. The force of daily usage, the
+necessary bending of thoughts in certain habitual directions, had
+assisted the crippling process, and though the power still lay there,
+stiffer than of yore, yet the preliminary movements and readjustments
+used up time and strength, and then gradually, with the perpetual
+repetition of adverse habits, the whole process became slower, harder,
+crueler.
+
+"Good heavens! are _all_ doors going to be shut against me?"
+
+It was more than she could bear! And yet it must be borne--unless--no,
+there was no "unless." It was of no use to coquet with thoughts of
+suicide. She had thought all that out long ago, and had sought, at more
+than one crisis of desperate misery, for refuge from the horror and the
+insults of life. But there were always others to be considered. She
+could not strike them so terrible a blow. Retreat was ruthlessly cut
+off. Nothing remained but the endurance of a conscious slow decay;
+nothing but increasing loss and feebleness, as the surly years went by.
+They were going, going, these years of life, slipping away with their
+spoils. Youth was departing, everything was vanishing; her very self,
+bit by bit, slowly but surely, till the House of Life would grow narrow
+and shrunken to the sight, the roof descend. The gruesome old story of
+the imprisoned prince flashed into her mind; the wretched captive, young
+and life-loving, who used to wake up, each morning, to find that of the
+original seven windows of his dungeon, one had disappeared, while the
+walls had advanced a foot, and to-morrow yet another foot, till at
+length the last window had closed up, and the walls shrank together and
+crushed him to death.
+
+"I can't, I _can't_ endure it!"
+
+Hadria had leaned forward against the key-board, which gave forth a loud
+crash of discordant notes, strangely expressive of the fall and failure
+of her spirit.
+
+She remained thus motionless, while the airs wandered in from the
+garden, and a broad ray of sunlight showed the strange incessant
+gyrations of the dust atoms, that happened to lie within the revealing
+brightness. The silence was perfect.
+
+Hadria raised her head at last, and her eyes wandered out to the sweet
+old garden, decked in the miraculous hues of spring. The unutterable
+loveliness brought, for a second, a strange, inconsequent sense of
+peace; it seemed like a promise and a message from an unknown god.
+
+But after that momentary and inexplicable experience, the babble of
+thought went on as before. The old dream mounted again heavenwards, like
+a cloud at sunset; wild fancies fashioned themselves in the brain. And
+then, in fantastic images, Hadria seemed to see a panorama of her own
+life and the general life pass before her, in all their incongruity and
+confusion. The great mass of that life showed itself as prose, because
+the significance of things had not been grasped or suspected; but here
+and there, the veil was pierced--by some suffering soul, by some poet's
+vision--and the darkness of our daily, pompous, careworn, ridiculous
+little existence made painfully visible.
+
+"It is all absurd, all futile!" (so moved the procession of the
+thoughts); "and meanwhile the steady pulse of life beats on, not
+pausing while we battle out our days, not waiting while we decide how we
+shall live. We are possessed by a sentiment, an ideal, a religion; old
+Time makes no comment, but moves quietly on; we fling the thing aside as
+tawdry, insufficient; the ideal is tarnished, experience of the world
+converts us--and still unmoved, he paces on. We are off on another
+chase; another conception of things possesses us; and still the beat of
+his footstep sounds in our ears, above the tumult. We think and aspire
+and dream, and meanwhile the fires grow cold upon the hearth, the daily
+cares and common needs plead eloquently for our undivided service; the
+stupendous movement of Existence goes on unceasingly, at our doors;
+thousands struggling for gold and fame and mere bread, and resorting to
+infamous devices to obtain them; the great commercial currents flow and
+flow, according to their mystic laws; the price of stocks goes up, goes
+down, and with them, the life and fate of thousands; the inconsequent
+bells ring out from Craddock Church, and the people congregate; the
+grave of the schoolmistress sleeps in the sunshine, and the sound of the
+bells streams over it--meaning no irony--to lose itself in the quiet of
+the hills; rust and dust collect in one's house, in one's soul; and this
+and that, and that and this,--like the pendulum of the old time-piece,
+with its solemn tick--dock the moments of one's life, with each its dull
+little claim and its tough little tether, and lead one decorously to the
+gateway of Eternity."
+
+There was a flutter of wings, in the room. A robin hopped in at the
+window and perched daintily on the table-ledge, its delicate claws
+outlined against the whiteness of the dust-sheet, its head inquisitively
+on one side, as if it were asking the reason of the musician's unusual
+silence. Suddenly, the little creature fluffed out its feathers, drew
+itself together, and warbled forth a rich ecstatic song, that seemed to
+be deliberately addressed to its human companion. Hadria raised her
+bowed head. Up welled the swift unaccustomed tears, while the robin,
+with increasing enthusiasm, continued his song. His theme, doubtless,
+was of the flicker of sunlit shrubberies, the warmth of summer, the
+glory of spring, the sweetness of the revolving seasons. For cure of
+heart-ache, he suggested the pleasantness of garden nooks, and the
+repose that lingers about a dew-sprinkled lawn. All these things were
+warmly commended to the human being whose song of life had ceased.
+
+"But they break my heart, little singer, they break my heart!"
+
+The robin lifted up its head and warbled more rapturously than ever.
+
+The tears were falling fast now, and silently. The thoughts ran on and
+on. "I know it all, I know it all, and my heart is broken--and it is my
+own fault--and it does not matter--the world is full of broken
+hearts--and it does not matter, it does not matter. But, oh, if the pain
+might stop, if the pain might stop! The robin sings now, because the
+spring is here; but it is not always spring. And some day--perhaps not
+this winter, but some day--the dear little brown body will agonize--it
+will die alone, in the horrible great universe; one thinks little of a
+robin, but it agonizes all the same when its time comes; it agonizes all
+the same."
+
+The thoughts were drowned, for a moment, in a flood of terrible,
+unbearable pity for all the sorrow of the world.
+
+The robin seemed to think that he had a mission to cheer his companion,
+for he warbled merrily on. And beside him, the dust-motes danced the
+wildest of dances, in the shaft of sunshine.
+
+"It is very lovely, it is very lovely--the world is a miracle, but it is
+all like a taunt, it is like an insult, this glory of the world. I am
+born a woman, and to be born a woman is to be exquisitely sensitive to
+insult and to live under it always, always. I wish that I were as marble
+to the magic of Life, I wish that I cared for nothing and felt nothing.
+I pray only that the dream and the longing may be killed, and killed
+quickly!"
+
+In the silence, the bird's note sounded clear and tender. The dance of
+the dust-motes, like the great dance of Life itself, went on without
+ceasing.
+
+The robin seemed to insist on a brighter view of things. He urged his
+companion to take comfort. Had the spring not come?
+
+"But you do not understand, you do not understand, little soul that
+sings--the spring is torturing me and taunting me. If only it would kill
+me!"
+
+The robin fluffed out his feathers, and began again to impart his sweet
+philosophy. Hadria was shedding the first unchecked tears that she had
+shed since her earliest childhood. And then, for the second time to-day,
+that strange unexplained peace stole into her heart. Reason came quickly
+and drove it away with a sneer, and the horror and the darkness closed
+round again.
+
+"If I might only die, if I might only die!"
+
+But the little bird sang on.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI.
+
+
+"Quite hopeless!"
+
+Joseph Fleming repeated the words incredulously.
+
+"Yes," said Lady Engleton, "it is the terrible truth."
+
+The Professor had been growing worse, and at length, his state became so
+alarming that he decided to return to England. Miss Du Prel and an old
+friend whom she had met abroad, accompanied him.
+
+"I understand they are all at the Priory," said Joseph.
+
+"Yes; Miss Du Prel telegraphed to Mrs. Temperley, and Mrs. Temperley and
+I put our heads together and arranged matters as well as we could in the
+emergency, so that the Professor's wish might be gratified. He desired
+to return to the Priory, where his boyhood was spent."
+
+"And is there really no hope?"
+
+"None at all, the doctor says."
+
+"Dear me, dear me!" cried Joseph. "And is he not expected to live
+through the summer?"
+
+"The summer! ah no, Mr. Fleming, he is not expected to live many days."
+
+"Dear me, dear me!" was all that Joseph could say. Then after a pause,
+he added, "I fear Mrs. Temperley will feel it very much. They were such
+old friends."
+
+"Oh! poor woman, she is heart-broken."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Professor lingered longer than the doctor had expected. He was very
+weak, and could not bear the fatigue of seeing many people. But he was
+perfectly cheerful, and when feeling a little better at times, he would
+laugh and joke in his old kindly way, and seemed to enjoy the fragment
+of life that still remained to him.
+
+"I am so glad I have seen the spring again," he said, "and that I am
+here, in the old home."
+
+He liked to have the window thrown wide open, when the day was warm.
+Then his bed would be wheeled closer to it, so that the sunshine often
+lay across it, and the scent of the flowering shrubs and the odour of
+growth, as he called it, floated in upon him. He looked out into a world
+of exquisite greenery and of serene sky. The room was above the
+drawing-room, and if the drawing-room windows were open, he could hear
+Hadria playing. He often used to ask for music.
+
+The request would come generally after an exhausting turn of pain, when
+he could not bear the fatigue of seeing people.
+
+"I can't tell you what pleasure and comfort your music is to me," he
+used to say, again and again. "It has been so ever since I knew you.
+When I think of the thousands of poor devils who have to end their lives
+in some wretched, lonely, sordid fashion, after hardships and struggles
+and very little hope, I can't help feeling that I am fortunate indeed,
+now and all through my life. I have grumbled at times, and there have
+been sharp experiences--few escape those--but take it all round, I have
+had my share of good things."
+
+He had one great satisfaction: that he had discovered, before the end of
+his days, the means which he had so long been seeking, of saving the
+death-agony of animals that are killed for food. Some day perhaps, he
+said, men might cease to be numbered among the beasts of prey, but till
+then, at least their victims might be spared as much pain as possible.
+He had overcome the difficulty of expense, which had always been the
+main obstacle to a practical solution of the problem. Henceforth there
+was no need for any creature to suffer, in dying for man's use. If
+people only knew and realized how much needless agony is inflicted on
+these helpless creatures, in order to supply the daily demands of a vast
+flesh-eating population, they would feel that, as a matter of fact, he
+had been doing the human race a good turn as well as their more
+friendless fellow-beings. It was impossible to imagine that men and
+women would not suffer at the thought of causing suffering to the
+helpless, if once they realized that suffering clearly. Men and women
+were not devils! Theobald had always laughed at him for this part of his
+work, but he felt now, at the close of his life, that he could dwell
+upon that effort with more pleasure than on any other, although others
+had won him far more applause, and this had often brought him contempt.
+If only he could be sure that the discovery would not be wasted.
+
+"It shall be our business to see that it is not," said Valeria, in a
+voice tremulous with unshed tears.
+
+The Professor heaved a sigh of relief, at this assurance.
+
+"My earlier work is safe; what I have done in other directions, is
+already a part of human knowledge and resource, but this is just the
+sort of thing that might be so easily lost and forgotten. These
+sufferings are hidden, and when people do not see a wrong, they do not
+think of it; make them think, make them think!"
+
+A week had gone by since the Professor's arrival at the Priory. He was
+in great pain, but had intervals of respite. He liked, in those
+intervals, to see his friends. They could scarcely believe that he was
+dying, for he still seemed so full of interest in the affairs of life,
+and spoke of the future as if he would be there to see it. One of the
+most distressing interviews was with Mr. Fullerton, who could not be
+persuaded that the invalid had but a short time to live. The old man
+believed that death meant, beyond all question, annihilation of the
+personality, and had absolutely no hope of meeting again.
+
+"Don't be too sure, old friend," said the Professor; "don't be too sure
+of anything, in this mysterious universe."
+
+The weather kept warm and genial, and this was favourable to his
+lingering among them a little longer. But his suffering, at times, was
+so great that they could scarcely wish for this delay. Hadria used
+always to play to him during some part of the afternoon. The robin had
+become a constant visitor, and had found its way to the window of the
+sick-room, where crumbs had been scattered on the sill. The Professor
+took great pleasure in watching the little creature. Sometimes it would
+come into the room and hop on to a chair or table, coquetting from perch
+to perch, and looking at the invalid, with bright inquisitive eyes. The
+crumbs were put out at a certain hour each morning, and the bird had
+acquired the habit of arriving almost to the moment. If, by chance, the
+crumbs had been forgotten, the robin would flutter ostentatiously before
+the window, to remind his friends of their neglected duty.
+
+During the last few days, Hadria had fancied that the Professor had
+divined Valeria's secret, or that she had betrayed it.
+
+There was a peculiar, reverent tenderness in his manner towards her,
+that was even more marked than usual.
+
+"Can't we save him? can't we save him, Hadria?" she used to cry
+piteously, when they were alone. "Surely, surely there is some hope.
+Science makes such professions; why doesn't it do something?"
+
+"Ah, don't torture yourself with false hope, dear Valeria."
+
+"The world is monstrous, life is unbearable," exclaimed Valeria, with a
+despairing break in her voice.
+
+But one afternoon, she came out of the sick-room with a less distraught
+expression on her worn face, though her eyes shewed traces of tears.
+
+The dying man used to speak often about his wife to Hadria. This had
+been her room, and he almost fancied her presence about him.
+
+"Do you know," he said, "I have found, of late, that many of my old
+fixed ideas have been insidiously modifying. So many things that I used
+to regard as preposterous have been borne in upon me, in a singular
+fashion, as by no means so out of the question. I have had one or two
+strange experiences and now a hope--I might say a faith--has settled
+upon me of an undying element in our personality. I feel that we shall
+meet again those we have loved here--some time or another."
+
+"What a sting that would take from the agony of parting," cried Hadria.
+
+"And, after all, is it less rational to suppose that there is some
+survival of the Self, and that the wild, confused earthly experience is
+an element of a spiritual evolutionary process, than to suppose that the
+whole universe is chaotic and meaningless? For what we call mind exists,
+and it must be contained in the sum-total of existence, or how could it
+arise out of it? Therefore, some reasonable scheme appears more likely
+than a reasonless one. And then there is that other big fact that stares
+us in the face and puts one's fears to shame: human goodness."
+
+Hadria's rebellious memory recalled the fact of human cruelty and
+wickedness to set against the goodness, but she was silent.
+
+"What earthly business has such a thing as goodness or pity to appear in
+a fortuitous, mindless, soulless universe? Where does it come from? What
+is its origin? Whence sprang the laws that gave it birth?"
+
+"It gives more argument to faith than any thing I know," she said, "even
+if there had been but one good man or woman since the world began."
+
+"Ah, yes; the pity and tenderness that lie in the heart of man, even of
+the worst, if only they can be appealed to before they die, may teach us
+to hope all things."
+
+There was a long silence. Through the open window, they could hear the
+soft cooing of the wood-pigeons. Among the big trees behind the house,
+there was a populous rookery, noisy now with the squeaky voices of the
+young birds, and the deeper cawing of the parent rooks.
+
+"I have been for many years without one gleam of hope," said the
+Professor slowly. "It is only lately that some of my obstinate
+preconceptions have begun to yield to other suggestions and other
+thoughts, which have opened up a thousand possibilities and a thousand
+hopes. And I have not been false to my reason in this change; I have but
+followed it more fearlessly and more faithfully."
+
+"I have sometimes thought," said Hadria, "that when we seem to cling
+most desperately to our reason, we are really refusing to accept its
+guidance into unfamiliar regions. We confuse the familiar with the
+reasonable."
+
+"Exactly. And I want you to be on your guard against that intellectual
+foible, which I believe has held me back in a region of sadness and
+solitude that I need not have lingered in, but for that."
+
+There was a great commotion in the rookery, and presently a flock of
+rooks swept across the window, in loud controversy, and away over the
+garden in a circle, and then up and up till they were a grey little
+patch of changing shape, in the blue of the sky.
+
+The dying man followed them with his eyes. He had watched such streaming
+companies start forth from the old rookery, ever since his boyhood. The
+memories of that time, and of the importunate thoughts that had haunted
+him then, at the opening of life, returned to him now.
+
+He had accomplished a fraction of what he had set out to attempt, with
+such high hopes. His dream of personal happiness had failed; many an
+illusion had been lost, many a bitterly-regretted deed had saddened him,
+many an error had revenged itself upon him. He drew a deep sigh.
+
+"And if the scheme of the universe be a reasonable one," he said half
+dreamily, "then one can account better for the lives that never fulfil
+themselves; the apparent failure that saddens one, in such numberless
+instances, especially among women. For in that case, the failure is only
+apparent, however cruel and however great. If the effort has been
+sincere, and the thought bent upon the best that could be conceived by
+the particular soul, then that effort and that thought must play their
+part in the upward movement of the race. I cannot believe otherwise."
+
+Hadria's head was bent. Her lips moved, as if in an effort to speak, but
+no sound came.
+
+"To believe that all the better and more generous hopes of our kind are
+to be lost and ineffectual, that genius is finally wasted, and goodness
+an exotic to be trampled under foot in the blind movements of
+Nature--that requires more power of faith than I can muster. Once
+believe that thought is the main factor, the motive force of the
+universe, then everything settles into its place, and we have room for
+hope; indeed it insists upon admission; it falls into the shadow of our
+life like that blessed ray of sunlight."
+
+It lay across the bed, in a bright streak.
+
+"The hope leads me far. My training has been all against it, but it
+comes to me with greater and greater force. It makes me feel that
+presently, when we have bid one another farewell, it will not be for
+ever. We shall meet again, dear Hadria, believe me." She was struggling
+with her tears, and could answer nothing.
+
+"I wish so much that I could leave this hope, as a legacy to you. I wish
+I could leave it to Valeria. Take care of her, won't you? She is very
+solitary and very sad."
+
+"I will, I will," Hadria murmured.
+
+"Do not turn away from the light of rational hope, if any path should
+open up that leads that way. And help her to do the same. When you think
+of me, let it be happily and with comfort."
+
+Hadria was silently weeping.
+
+"And hold fast to your own colours. Don't take sides, above all, with
+the powers that have oppressed you. They are terrible powers, and yet
+people won't admit their strength, and so they are left unopposed. It is
+worse than folly to underrate the forces of the enemy. It is always
+worse than folly to deny facts in order to support a theory. Exhort
+people to face and conquer them. You can help more than you dream, even
+as things stand. I cannot tell you what you have done for me, dear
+Hadria." (He held out his hand to her.) "And the helpless, human and
+animal--how they wring one's heart! Do not forget them; be to them a
+knight-errant. You have suffered enough yourself, to know well how to
+bind their wounds." The speaker paused, for a moment, to battle with a
+paroxysm of pain.
+
+"There is so much anguish," he said presently, "so much intolerable
+anguish, even when things seem smoothest. The human spirit craves for so
+much, and generally it gets so little. The world is full of tragedy; and
+sympathy, a little common sympathy, can do so much to soften the worst
+of grief. It is for the lack of that, that people despair and go down. I
+commend them to you."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The figure lay motionless, as if asleep. The expression was one of utter
+peace. It seemed as if all the love and tenderness, all the breadth and
+beauty of the soul that had passed away, were shining out of the quieted
+face, from which all trace of suffering had vanished. The look of
+desolation that used, at times, to come into it, had entirely gone.
+
+Hadria and Valeria stood together, by the bedside. At the foot of the
+bed was a glass vase, holding a spray of wild cherry blossom; Hadria had
+brought it, to the invalid's delight, the day before. There were other
+offerings of fresh flowers; a mass of azaleas from Lady Engleton;
+bunches of daffodils that Valeria had gathered in the meadows; and old
+Dodge had sent a handful of brown and yellow wallflower, from his
+garden. The blind had been raised a few inches, so as to let in the
+sunlight and the sweet air. It was a glorious morning. The few last hot
+days had brought everything out, with a rush. The boughs of the trees,
+that the Professor had loved so to watch during his illness, were
+swaying gently in the breeze, just as they had done when his eyes had
+been open to see them. The wood-pigeons were cooing, the young rooks
+cawing shrilly in the rookery. Valeria seemed to be stunned. She stood
+gazing at the peaceful face, with a look of stony grief.
+
+"I _can't_ understand it!" she exclaimed at last, with a wild gesture,
+"I _can't_ believe he will never speak to me again! It's a horrible
+dream--oh, but too horrible--ah, why can't I die as well as he?" She
+threw herself on her knees, shaken with sobs, silent and passionate.
+Hadria did not attempt to remonstrate or soothe her. She turned away, as
+a flood of bitter grief swept over her, so that she felt as one
+drowning.
+
+Some minutes passed before Valeria rose from her knees, looking haggard
+and desolate. Hadria went towards her hastily.
+
+"What's that?" cried Valeria with a nervous start and a scared glance
+towards the window.
+
+"The robin!" said Hadria, and the tears started to her eyes.
+
+The bird had hopped in at his usual hour, in a friendly fashion. He
+picked up a few stray crumbs that had been left on the sill from
+yesterday, and then, in little capricious flights from stage to stage,
+finally arrived at the rail of the bed, and stood looking from side to
+side, with black, bright eyes, at the motionless figure. Hitherto it had
+been accustomed to a welcome. Why this strange silence? The robin hopped
+round on the rail, polished his beak meditatively, fluffed out his
+feathers, and then, raising his head, sang a tender requiem.
+
+
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+APPENDIX
+
+"Does Marriage Hinder a Woman's Self-development?"
+
+_In 1899,_ The Ladies' Realm _asked several well-known women to write on
+the set topic, "Does Marriage Hinder a Woman's Self-development?" We
+reprint Mona Caird's ingenious response._
+
+
+Perhaps it might throw some light on the question whether marriage
+interferes with a woman's self-development and career, if we were to ask
+ourselves honestly how a man would fare in the position, say, of his own
+wife.
+
+We will take a mild case, so as to avoid all risk of exaggeration.
+
+Our hero's wife is very kind to him. Many of his friends have far sadder
+tales to tell. Mrs. Brown is fond of her home and family. She pats the
+children on the head when they come down to dessert, and plies them with
+chocolate creams, much to the detriment of their health; but it amuses
+Mrs. Brown. Mr. Brown superintends the bilious attacks, which the lady
+attributes to other causes. As she never finds fault with the children,
+and generally remonstrates with their father, in a good-natured way,
+when _he_ does so, they are devoted to the indulgent parent, and are
+inclined to regard the other as second-rate.
+
+Meal-times are often trying in this household, for Sophia is very
+particular about her food; sometimes she sends it out with a rude
+message to the cook. Not that John objects to this. He wishes she would
+do it oftener, for the cook gets used to Mr. Brown's second-hand
+version of his wife's language. He simply cannot bring himself to hint
+at Mrs. Brown's robust objurgations. She _can_ express herself when it
+comes to a question of her creature comforts!
+
+John's faded cheeks, the hollow lines under the eyes, and hair out of
+curl, speak of the struggle for existence as it penetrates to the
+fireside. If Sophia but knew what it meant to keep going the
+multitudinous details and departments of a household! Her idea of adding
+housemaids and pageboys whenever there is a jolt in the machinery has
+landed them in expensive disasters, time out of mind. And then, it
+hopelessly cuts off all margin of income for every other purpose. It is
+all rather discouraging for the hero of this petty, yet gigantic tussle,
+for he works, so to speak, in a hostile camp, with no sympathy from his
+entirely unconscious spouse, whom popular sentiment nevertheless regards
+as the gallant protector of his manly weakness.
+
+If incessant vigilance, tact, firmness, foresight, initiative, courage
+and judgment--in short, all the qualities required for governing a
+kingdom, and more--have made things go smoothly, the wife takes it as a
+matter of course; if they go wrong, she naturally lays the blame on the
+husband. In the same way, if the children are a credit to their parents,
+that is only as it should be. But if they are naughty, and fretful, and
+stupid, and untidy, is it not clear that there must be some serious flaw
+in the system which could produce such results in the offspring of Mrs.
+Brown? What word in the English language is too severe to describe the
+man who neglects to watch with sufficient vigilance over his children's
+health and moral training, who fails to see that his little boys'
+sailor-suits and knickerbockers are in good repair, that their boot-lace
+ends do not fly out from their ankles at every step, that their hair is
+not like a hearth-brush, that they do not come down to dinner every day
+with dirty hands?
+
+To every true man, the cares of fatherhood and home are sacred and
+all-sufficing. He realises, as he looks around at his little ones, that
+they are his crown and recompense.
+
+John often finds that _his_ crown-and-recompense gives him a racking
+headache by war-whoops and stampedes of infinite variety, and there are
+moments when he wonders in dismay if he is really a true man! He has had
+the privilege of rearing and training five small crowns and recompenses,
+and he feels that he could face the future if further privilege, of this
+sort, were denied him. Not but that he is devoted to his family. Nobody
+who understands the sacrifices he has made for them could doubt that.
+Only, he feels that those parts of his nature which are said to
+distinguish the human from the animal kingdom, are getting rather
+effaced.
+
+He remembers the days before his marriage, when he was so bold, in his
+ignorant youth, as to cherish a passion for scientific research. He even
+went so far as to make a chemical laboratory of the family box-room,
+till attention was drawn to the circumstance by a series of terrific
+explosions, which shaved off his eyebrows, blackened his scientific
+countenance, and caused him to be turned out, neck and crop, with his
+crucibles, and a sermon on the duty that lay nearest him,--which
+resolved itself into that of paying innumerable afternoon calls with his
+father and brothers, on acquaintances selected--as he declared in his
+haste--for their phenomenal stupidity. His father pointed out how
+selfish it was for a young fellow to indulge his own little fads and
+fancies, when he might make himself useful in a nice manly way, at home.
+
+When, a year later, the scapegrace Josephine, who had caused infinite
+trouble and expense to all belonging to her, showed a languid interest
+in chemistry, a spare room was at once fitted up for her, and an
+extraordinary wealth of crucibles provided by her delighted parents; and
+when explosions and smells pervaded the house, her father, with a proud
+smile, would exclaim: "What genius and enthusiasm that dear girl does
+display!" Josephine afterwards became a distinguished professor, with an
+awestruck family, and a husband who made it his chief duty and privilege
+to save her from all worry and interruption in her valuable work.
+
+John, who knows in his heart of hearts that he could have walked round
+Josephine, in the old days, now speaks with manly pride of his sister,
+the Professor. His own bent, however, has always been so painfully
+strong that he even yet tries to snatch spare moments for his
+researches; but the strain in so many directions has broken down his
+health. People always told him that a man's constitution was not fitted
+for severe brain-work. He supposes it is true.
+
+During those odd moments, he made a discovery that seemed to him of
+value, and he told Sophia about it, in a mood of scientific enthusiasm.
+But she burst out laughing, and said he would really be setting the
+Thames on fire if he didn't take care.
+
+"Perhaps you will excuse my remarking, my dear, that I think you might
+be more usefully, not to say becomingly employed, in attending to your
+children and your household duties, than in dealing with explosive
+substances in the back dining-room."
+
+And Sophia tossed off her glass of port in such an unanswerable manner,
+that John felt as if a defensive reply would be almost of the nature of
+a sacrilege. So he remained silent, feeling vaguely guilty. And as
+Johnny took measles just then, and it ran through the house, there was
+no chance of completing his work, or of making it of public value.
+
+Curiously enough, a little later, Josephine made the very same
+discovery--only rather less perfect--and every one said, with
+acclamation, that science had been revolutionised by a discovery before
+which that of gravitation paled.
+
+John still hoped, after twenty years of experience, that presently, by
+some different arrangement, some better management on his part, he would
+achieve leisure and mental repose to do the work that his heart was in;
+but that time never came.
+
+No doubt John was not infallible, and made mistakes in dealing with his
+various problems: do the best of us achieve consummate wisdom? No doubt,
+if he had followed the advice that we could all have supplied him with,
+in such large quantities, he might have done rather more than he did.
+But the question is: Did his marriage interfere with his
+self-development and career, and would many other Johns, in his
+circumstances, have succeeded much better?
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Daughters of Danaus, by Mona Caird
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