The sound of music stole over the gardens of the Priory, at sunset. It
was the close of one of the most exquisite days of Spring. A calm had
settled over the country with the passing away of the sun-god. His
attendant winds and voices had been sacrificed on his funeral pyre.
Two figures sat on the terrace by the open window of the drawing-room,
listening to the utterance, in music, of a tumultuous, insurgent spirit.
In Professor Fortescue, the musical passion was deeply rooted, as it is
in most profoundly sympathetic and tender natures. Algitha anxiously
watched the effect of her sister's playing on her companion.
The wild power of the composer was not merely obvious, it was
overwhelming. It was like "a sudden storm among mountains," "the
wind-swept heavens at midnight," "the lonely sea": he struggled for the
exactly-fitting simile. There was none, because of its many-sidedness.
Loneliness remained as an ever-abiding quality. There were moon-glimpses
and sun-bursts over the scenery of the music; there was sweetness, and a
vernal touch that thrilled the listeners as with the breath of flowers
and the fragrance of earth after rain, but always, behind all fancy and
grace and tenderness, and even passion, lurked that spectral loneliness.
The performer would cease for some minutes, and presently begin again in
a new mood. The music was always characteristic, often wild and strange,
yet essentially sane.
"There is a strong Celtic element in it," said the Professor. "This is a
very wonderful gift. I suppose one never does really know one's fellows:
her music to-night reveals to me new sides of Hadria's character."
"I confess they alarm me," said Algitha.
"Truly, this is not the sort of power that can be safely shut up and
stifled. It is the sort of power for which everything ought to be set
aside. That is my impression of it."
"I am worried about Hadria," Algitha said. "I know her better than most
people, and I know how hard she takes things and what explosive force
that musical instinct of hers has. Yet, it is impossible, as things are,
for her to give it real utterance. She can only open the furnace door
now and then."
The Professor shook his head gravely. "It won't do: it isn't safe. And
why should such a gift be lost?"
"That's what I say! Yet what is to be done? There is no one really to
blame. As for Hubert, I am sorry for him. He had not the faintest idea
of Hadria's character, though she did her best to enlighten him. It is
hard for him (since he feels it so) and it is desperate for her. You are
such an old friend, that I feel I may speak to you about it. You see
what is going on, and I know it is troubling you as it does me."
"It is indeed. If I am not very greatly mistaken, here is real musical
genius of the first order, going to waste: strong forces being turned in
upon the nature, to its own destruction; and, as you say, it seems as if
nothing could be done. It is the more ironically cruel, since Hubert is
himself musical."
"Oh, yes, but in quite a different way. His fetish is good taste, or
what he thinks such. Hadria's compositions set his teeth on edge. His
nature is conventional through and through. He fears adverse comment
more than any earthly thing. And yet the individual opinions that
compose the general 'talk' that he so dreads, are nothing to him. He
despises them heartily. But he would give his soul (and particularly
Hadria's) rather than incur a whisper from people collectively."
"That is a very common trait. If we feared only the opinions that we
respect, our fear would cover but a small area."
The music stole out again through the window. The thoughts of the
listeners were busy. It was not until quite lately that Professor
Fortescue had fully realised the nature of Hadria's present
surroundings. It had taken all his acuteness and his sympathy to enable
him to perceive the number and strength of the little threads that
hampered her spontaneity. As she said, they were made of heart-strings.
A vast spider's web seemed to spread its tender cordage round each
household, for the crippling of every winged creature within its radius.
Fragments of torn wings attested the struggles that had taken place
among the treacherous gossamer.
"And the maddening thing is," cried Algitha, "that there is nobody to
swear at. Swearing at systems and ideas, as Hadria says, is a Barmecide
feast to one's vindictiveness."
"It is the tyranny of affection that has done so much to ruin the lives
of women," the Professor observed, in a musing tone.
Then after a pause: "I fear your poor mother has never got over _your_
little revolt, Algitha."
"Never, I am sorry to say. If I had married and settled in Hongkong, she
would scarcely have minded, but as it is, she feels deserted. Of course
the boys are away from home more than I am, yet she is not grieved at
that. You see how vast these claims are. Nothing less than one's entire
life and personality will suffice."
"Your mother feels that you are throwing your life away, remember. But
truly it seems, sometimes, as if people were determined to turn
affection into a curse instead of a blessing!"
"I never think of it in any other light," Algitha announced serenely.
The Professor laughed. "Oh, there are exceptions, I hope," he said.
"Love, like everything else that is great, is very, very rare. We call
the disposition to usurp and absorb another person by that name, but woe
betide him or her who is the object of such a sentiment. Yet happily,
the real thing _is_ to be found now and again. And from that arises
freedom."
Hadria was playing some joyous impromptu, which seemed to express the
very spirit of Freedom herself.
"I think Hadria has something of the gipsy in her," said Algitha. "She
is so utterly and hopelessly unfitted to be the wife of a prim,
measured, elegant creature like Hubert--good fellow though he is--and to
settle down for life at Craddock Dene."
"Yes," returned the Professor, "it has occurred to me, more than once,
that there must be a drop of nomad blood somewhere among the ancestry."
"Hadria always says herself, that she is a vagabond in disguise."
He laughed. Then, as he drew out a tobacco-pouch from his pocket and
proceeded to light his pipe, he went on, in quiet meditative fashion, as
if thinking aloud: "The fact of the matter is, that in this world, the
dead weight of the mass bears heavily upon the exceptional natures. It
comes home to one vividly, in cases like this. The stupidity and
blindness of each individual goes to build up the dead wall, the
impassable obstacle, for some other spirit. The burden that we have cast
upon the world has to be borne by our fellow man or woman, and perhaps
is doomed to crush a human soul."
"It seems to me that most people are engaged in that crushing industry,"
said Algitha with a shrug. "Don't I know their bonnets, and their
frock-coats and their sneers!"
The Professor smiled. He thought that most of us were apt to take that
attitude at times. The same spirit assumed different forms. "While we
are sneering at our fellow mortal, and assuring him loftily that he can
certainly prevail, if only he is strong enough, it may be _our_
particular dulness or _our_ hardness that is dragging him down to a
tragic failure, before our eyes."
The sun was low when the player came out to the terrace and took her
favourite seat on the parapet. The gardens were steeped in profound
peace. One could hear no sound for miles round. The broad country made
itself closely felt by its stirring silence. The stretches of fields
beyond fields, the woodlands in their tender green, the long, long sweep
of the quiet land, formed a benign circle round the garden, and led the
sense of peace out and out to the horizon, where the liquid light of the
sky touched the hills.
The face of the Professor had a transparent look and a singular beauty
of expression, such as is seen on the faces of the dead, or on the faces
of those who are carried beyond themselves by some generous enthusiasm.
They watched, in silence, the changes creeping over the heavens, the
subtle transmutations of tint; the fairylands of cloud, growing like
dreams, and melting in golden annihilation; the more delicate and
exquisite, the sooner the end.
The first pale hints of splendour had spread, till the whole West was
throbbing with the radiance. But it was short-lived. The soul of the
light, with its vital vibrating quality, seemed to die, and then slowly
the glow faded, till every sparkle was gone, and the amphitheatre of the
sky lay cold, and dusk, and empty. It was not till the last gleam had
melted away that a word was spoken.
"It is like a prophecy," said Hadria.
"To-morrow the dawn, remember."
Hadria's thoughts ran on in the silence.
The dawn? Yes; but all that lost splendour, those winged islands, those
wild ranges of mountain where the dreams dwell; to-morrow's dawn brings
no resurrection for them. Other pageants there will be, other
cloud-castles, but never again just those.
Had the Professor been following her thoughts?
"Life," he said, "offers her gifts as the Sibyl her books; they grow
fewer as we refuse them."
"Ah! that is the truth that clamours in my brain, warning and pointing
to an empty temple, like the deserted sky, a little while ahead."
"Be warned then."
"Ah! but what to do? I am out of myself now with the spring; there are
so many benign influences. I too have winged islands, and wild ranges
where the dreams dwell; life is a fairy-tale; but there is always that
terror of the departure of the sun."
"_Carpe diem._"
Hadria turned a startled and eager face towards the Professor, who was
leaning back in his chair, thoughtfully smoking. The smoke curled away
serenely through the calm air of the evening.
"You have a great gift," he said.
"One is afraid of taking a thing too seriously because it is one's own."
The Professor turned almost angrily.
"Good heavens, what does it matter whose it is? There may be a sort of
inverted vanity in refusing fair play to a power, on that ground. Alas!
here is one of the first morbid signs of the evil at work upon you. If
you had been wholesomely moving and striving in the right direction, do
you think you would have been guilty of that piece of egotism?"
"Vanity pursues one into hidden corners of the mind. I am so used to
that sort of spirit among women. Apparently I have caught the
infection."
"I would not let it go farther," advised the Professor.
"To do myself justice, I think it is superficial," said Hadria with a
laugh. "I would dare anything, _any_thing for a chance of freedom,
for----," she broke off, hesitating. "I remember once--years ago, when I
was quite a girl--seeing a young ash-tree that had got jammed into a
chink so that it couldn't grow straight, or spread, as its inner soul,
poor stripling, evidently inspired it to grow. Outside, there were
hundreds of upright, vigorous, healthful young trees, fulfilling that
innate idea in apparent gladness, and with obvious general advantage,
since they were growing into sound, valuable trees, straight of trunk,
nobly developed. I felt like the poor sapling in the cranny, that had
just the same natural impetus of healthy growth as all the others, but
was forced to become twisted, and crooked, and stunted and wretched. I
think most women have to grow in a cranny. It is generally known as
their Sphere." Algitha gave an approving chuckle. "I noticed," Hadria
added, "that the desperate struggle to grow of that young tree had begun
to loosen the masonry of the edifice that cramped it. There was a great
dangerous-looking crack right across the building. The tree was not
saved from deformity, _but_ it had its revenge! Some day that noble
institution would come down by the run."
"Yes. Well, the thing to do is to get out of it," said the Professor.
"You really advise that?"
"Advise? One dare not advise. It is too perilous. No general theories
will hold in all instances."
"Tell me," said Hadria, "what are the qualities in a human being that
make him most serviceable, or least harmful?"
"What qualities?" Professor Fortescue watched the smoke of his pipe
curling away, as if he expected to find the answer in its coils. He
answered slowly, and with an air of reflection.
"Mental integrity, and mercy. A resolute following of reason (in which I
should include insight) to its conclusion, though the heavens fall, and
an unfailing fellow-feeling for the pain and struggle and heart-ache and
sin that life is so full of. But one must add the quality of
imagination. Without imagination and its fruits, the world would be a
howling wilderness."
"I wish you would come down with me, some day, to the East End and hold
out the hand of fellowship to some of the sufferers there," cried
Algitha. "I am, at times, almost in despair at the mass of evil to be
fought against, but somehow you always make me feel, Professor, that the
race has all the qualities necessary for redemption enfolded within
itself."
"But assuredly it has!" cried the Professor. "And assuredly those
redeeming qualities will germinate. Otherwise the race would extinguish
itself in cruelty and corruption. Let people talk as they please about
the struggle for existence, it is through the development of the human
mind and the widening of human mercy that better things will come."
"One sees, now and then, in a flash, what the world may some day be,"
said Hadria. "The vision comes, perhaps, with the splendour of a spring
morning, or opens, scroll-like, in a flood of noble music. It sounds
unreal, yet it brings a sense of conviction that is irresistible."
"I think it was Pythagoras who declared that the woes of men are the
work of their own hands," said the Professor. "So are their joys.
Nothing ever shakes my belief that what the mind of man can imagine,
that it can achieve."
"But there are so many pulling the wrong way," said Algitha sadly.
"Ah, one man may be miserable through the deeds of others; the race can
only be miserable through its own."
After a pause, Algitha put a question: How far was it justifiable to
give pain to others in following one's own idea of right and reasonable?
How far might one attempt to live a life of intellectual integrity and
of the widest mercy that one's nature would stretch to?
Professor Fortescue saw no limits but those of one's own courage and
ability. Algitha pointed out that in most lives the limit occurred much
sooner. If "others"--those tyrannical and absorbent "others"--had
intricately bound up their notions of happiness with the prevention of
any such endeavour, and if those notions were of the usual negative,
home-comfort-and-affection order, narrowly personal, fruitful in nothing
except a sort of sentimental egotism that spread over a whole
family--what Hadria called an _egotism à douze_--how far ought these
ideas to be respected, and at what cost?
Professor Fortescue was unqualified in his condemnation of the sentiment
which erected sacrificial altars in the family circle. He spoke
scornfully of the doctrine of renunciation, so applied, and held the
victims who brought their gifts of power and liberty more culpable than
those who demanded them, since the duty of resistance to recognised
wrong was obvious, while great enlightenment was needed to teach one to
forego an unfair privilege or power that all the world concurred in
pressing upon one.
"Then you think a person--even a feminine person--justified in giving
pain by resisting unjust demands?"
"I certainly think that all attempts to usurp another person's life on
the plea of affection should be stoutly resisted. But I recognise that
cases must often occur when resistance is practically impossible."
"One ought not to be too easily melted by the 'shrieks of a near
relation,'" said Hadria. "Ah, I have a good mind to try. I don't fear
any risk for myself, nor any work; the stake is worth it. I don't want
to grow cramped and crooked, like my poor ash-tree. Perhaps this may be
a form of vanity too; I don't know, I was going to say I don't care."
The scent of young leaves and of flowers came up, soft and rich from the
garden, and as Hadria leant over the parapet, a gust of passionate
conviction of power swept over her; not merely of her own personal
power, but of some vast, flooding, beneficent well-spring from which her
own was fed. And with the inrush, came a glimpse as of heaven itself.
"I wonder," she said after a long silence, "why it is that when we
_know_ for dead certain, we call it faith."
"Because, I suppose, our certainty is certainty only for ourselves. If
you have found some such conviction to guide you in this wild world, you
are very fortunate. We need all our courage and our strength----"
"And just a little more," Hadria added.
"Yes; sometimes just a little more, to save us from its worst pitfalls."
It struck both Hadria and her sister that the Professor was looking very
ill and worn this evening.
"You are always giving help and sympathy to others, and you never get
any yourself!" Hadria exclaimed.
But the Professor laughed, and asserted that he was being spoilt at
Craddock Dene. They had risen, and were strolling down the yew avenue. A
little star had twinkled out.
"I am very glad to have Professor Fortescue's opinion of your
composition, Hadria. I was talking to him about you, and he quite agrees
with me."
"What? that I ought to----?"
"That you ought not to go on as you are going on at present."
"But that is so vague."
"I suppose you have long ago tried all the devices of self-discipline?"
said the Professor. "There are ways, of course, of arming oneself
against minor difficulties, of living within a sort of citadel.
Naturally much force has to go in keeping up the defences, but it is
better than having none to keep up."
Hadria gave a quiet smile. "There is not a method, mental or other, that
I have not tried, and tried hard. If it had not been for the sternest
self-discipline, my mind at this moment, would be so honeycombed with
small pre-occupations (pleasant and otherwise), that it would be
incapable of consecutive ideas of any kind. As it is, I feel a miserable
number of holes here"--she touched her brow--"a loss of absorbing power,
at times, and a mental slackness that is really alarming. What remains
of me has been dragged ashore as from a wreck, amidst a rush of wind and
wave. But just now, thanks greatly to your sympathy and Algitha's, I
seem restored to myself. I can never describe the rapture of that
sensation to one who has never felt himself sinking down and down into
darkness, to a dim hell, where the doom is a slow decay instead of the
fiery pains of burning."
"This is all wrong, wrong!" cried the Professor anxiously.
"Ah! but I feel now, such certainty, such courage. It seems as if Fate
were giving me one more chance. I have often run very close to making a
definite decision--to dare everything rather than await this fool's
disaster. But then comes that everlasting feminine humility, sneaking up
with its simper: 'Is not this presumptuous, selfish, mistaken, wrong?
What business have _you_, one out of so many, to break roughly through
the delicate web that has been spun for your kindly detention?' Of
course my retort is: 'What business have they to spin the web?' But one
can never get up a real sense of injured innocence. It is always the
spiders who seem injured and innocent. However, this time I am going to
try, though the heavens fall!"
A figure appeared, in the dusk, at the further end of the avenue. It
proved to be Miss Du Prel, who had come to find Hadria. Henriette had
arrived unexpectedly by the late afternoon train, and Valeria had
volunteered to announce her arrival to her sister-in-law.
"Ah!" exclaimed Hadria, "heaven helps him who helps himself! This will
fit in neatly with my plans."