Part II.

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--bésique 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 rôle, 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 Æolian 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 zèle_," 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 _naïf_. 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 _rôle_ 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 _rôle_.

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 _élan_--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 _tête-a-tête_ 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 _rôles_ 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 naïf 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 animalculæ 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.