And the same savage story was written, once more, on the faces of the better dressed women: worry, weariness, apathy, strain; these were marked unmistakeably, after the first freshness of youth had been driven away, and the features began to take the mould of the habitual thoughts and the habitual impressions.
And on these faces, there was a certain pettiness and coldness not observable on those of the poorer women.
Often, when one of the neighbours called and found Hadria alone, some chance word of womanly sympathy would touch a spring, and then a sad, narrow little story of trouble and difficulty would be poured out; a revelation of the bewildered, toiling, futile existences that were being passed beneath a smooth appearance; of the heart-ache and heroism and misplaced sacrifice, of the ruined lives that a little common sense and common kindness might have saved; the unending pain and trouble about matters entirely trivial, entirely absurd; the ceaseless travail to bring forth new elements of trouble for those who must inherit the deeds of to-day; the burdened existences agonizing to give birth to new existences, equally burdened, which in their turn, were to repeat the ceaseless oblation to the gods of Life.
“Futile?” said Lady Engleton. “I think women are generally fools,entre nous; that is why they so often fill their lives with sound and fury, accomplishing nothing.”
Hadria felt that this was a description of her own life, as well as that of most of her neighbours.
“I can understand so well how it is that women become conventional,” she said, apparently without direct reference to the last remark, “it is so useless to take the trouble to act on one’s own initiative. It annoys everybody frightfully, and it accomplishes nothing, as you say.”
“My dear Hadria, you alarm me!” cried Lady Engleton, laughing. “You must really be very ill indeed, if you have come to this conclusion!”
In looking over some old papers and books, one afternoon, Hadria came upon the little composition calledFutility, which a mood had called forth at Dunaghee, years ago. She had almost forgotten about it, and in trying it over, she found that it was like trying over the work of some other person.
It expressed with great exactness the feelings that overwhelmed her now, whenever she let her imagination dwell upon the lives of women, of whatever class and whatever kind. Futility! The mournful composition, with its strange modern character, its suggestion of striving and confusion and pain, expressed as only music could express, the yearning and the sadness that burden so many a woman’s heart to-day.
She knew that the music was good, and that now she could compose music infinitely better. The sharpness of longing for her lost art cut through her. She half turned from the piano and then went back, as a moth to the flame.
How was this eternal tumult to be stilled? Facts were definite and clear, there was no room for doubt or for hope. These facts then had to be dealt with. How did other women deal with them? Not so much better than she did, after all, as it appeared when one was allowed to see beneath the amiable surface of their lives. They were all spinning round and round, in a dizzy little circle, all whirling and toiling and troubling, to no purpose.
Even Lady Engleton, who appeared so bright and satisfied, had her secret misery which spoilt her life. She had beauty, talent, wealth, everything to make existence pleasant and satisfactory, but she had allowed externals and unessentials to encroach upon it, to govern her actions, to usurp the place of her best powers, to creep into her motives, till there was little germ and heart of reality left, and she was beginning to feel starved and aimless in the midst of what might have been plenty. Lady Engleton had turned to her neighbour at the Red House in an instinctive search for sympathy, as the more genuine side of her nature began to cry out against the emptiness of her graceful and ornate existence. Hadria was startled by the revelation. Hubert had always held up Lady Engleton as a model of virtue and wisdom, and perfect contentment. Yet she too, it turned out, for all her smiles and her cheerfulness, was busy and weary with futilities. She too, like the fifty daughters of Danaus, was condemned to the idiot’s labour of eternally drawing water in sieves from fathomless wells.
ALGITHA’S marriage took place almost immediately. There was no reason for delay. She stayed at the Cottage, and was married at Craddock Church, on one of the loveliest mornings of the year, as the villagers noticed with satisfaction. Both sisters had become favourites in the neighbourhood among the poorer people, and the inhabitants mustered to see the wedding.
It was only for her mother’s sake that Algitha had consented to a conventional ceremony. She said that she and Wilfrid both hated the whole barbaric show. They submitted only because there was no help for it. Algitha’s mother would have broken her heart if they had been bound merely by the legal tie, as she and Wilfrid desired.
“Indeed, the only tie that we respect is that of our love and faith. If that failed, we should scorn to hold one another in unwilling bondage. We are not entirely without self-respect.”
The couple were to take a tour in Italy, where they hoped to meet Valeria and Professor Fortescue. Joseph Fleming was married, almost at the same time, to his merry Irish girl.
The winter came suddenly. Some terrific gales had robbed the trees of their lingering yellow leaves, and the bare branches already shewed their exquisite tracery against the sky. Heavy rain followed, and the river was swollen, and there were floods that made the whole country damp, and rank, and terribly depressing. Mrs. Fullerton felt the influence of the weather, and complained of neuralgia and other ailments. She needed watching very carefully, and plenty of cheerful companionship. This was hard to supply. In struggling to belie her feelings, day after day, Hadria feared, at times, that she would break down disastrously. She was frightened at the strange haunting ideas that came to her, the dread and nameless horror that began to prey upon her, try as she would to protect herself from these nerve-torments, which she could trace so clearly to their causes. If only, instead of making one half insane and stupid, the strain of grief would but kill one outright, and be done with it!
Old Dodge was a good friend to Hadria, at this time. He saw that something was seriously wrong, and he managed to convey his affectionate concern in a thousand little kindly ways that brought comfort to her loneliness, and often filled her eyes with sudden tears. Nor was he the only friend she had in the village, whose sympathy was given in generous measure. Hadria had been able to be of use, at the time of the disastrous epidemic which had carried off so many of the population, and since then had been admitted to more intimate relationship with the people; learning their troubles and their joys, their anxieties, and the strange pathos of their lives. She learnt, at this time, the quality of English kindness and English sympathy, which Valeria used to say was equalled nowhere in the world.
Before the end of the winter, Algitha and her husband returned.
“I’m real glad, mum, that I be,” said Dodge, “to think as you has your sister with you again. There ain’t nobody like one’s kith and kin, wen things isn’t quite as they should be, as one may say. Miss Fullerton—which I means Mrs. Burton—is sure to do you a sight o’ good, bless ’er.”
Dodge was right. Algitha’s healthy nature, strengthened by happiness and success, was of infinite help to Hadria, in her efforts to shake off the symptoms that had made her frightened of herself. She did not know what tricks exhausted nerves might play upon her, or what tortures they had in store for her.
Algitha’s judgments were inclined to be definite and clear-cut to the point of hardness. She did not know the meaning of over-wrought nerves, nor the difficulties of a nature more imaginative than her own. She had found her will-power sufficient to meet all the emergencies of her life, and she was disposed to feel a little contemptuous, especially of late, at a persistent condition of difficulty and confusion. Her impulse was to attack such a condition and bring it to order, by force of will. The active temperament is almost bound to misunderstand the imaginative or artistic spirit and its difficulties. A realcul de sacwas to Algitha almost unthinkable. Theremustbe some means of finding one’s way out.
Hadria’s present attitude amazed and irritated her. She objected to her regular church-going, as dishonest. Was she not, for the sake of peace and quietness, professing that which she did not believe? And how was it that she was growing more into favour with the Jordans and Walkers and all the narrow, wooden-headed people? Surely an ominous sign.
After the long self-suppression, the long playing of a fatiguing rôle, Hadria felt an unspeakable relief in Algitha’s presence. To her, at least, she need not assume a false cheerfulness.
Algitha noticed, with anxiety, the change that was coming over her sister, the spirit of tired acquiescence, the insidious creeping in of a slightly cynical view of things, in place of the brave, believing, imaginative outlook that she had once held towards life. This cynicism was more or less superficial however, as Algitha found when they had a long and intimate conversation, one evening in Hadria’s room, by her fire; but it was painful to Algitha to hear the hopeless tones of her sister’s voice, now that she was speaking simply and sincerely, without bitterness, but without what is usually called resignation.
“No; I don’t think it is all for the best,” said Hadria. “I think, as far as my influence goes, it is all for the worst. What fatal argument my life will give to those who are seeking reasons to hold our sex in the old bondage! My struggles, my failure, will add to the staggering weight that we all stumble under. I have hindered more—that is the bitter thing—by having tried and failed, than if I had never tried at all. Mrs. Walker, Mrs. Gordon herself, has given less arguments to the oppressors than I.”
“But why? But how?” cried Algitha incredulously.
“Because no one can point tothem, as they will to me, and say, ‘See, what a ghastly failure! See how feeble after all, are these pretentious women of the new order, who begin by denying the sufficiency of the life assigned them, by common consent, and end by failing in that and in the other which they aspire to. What has become of all the talent and all the theories and resolves?’ And so the next girl who dares to have ambitions, and dares to scorn therôleof adventuress that society allots to her, will have the harder fate because of my attempt. Now nothing in the whole world,” cried Hadria, her voice losing the even tones in which she had been speaking, “nothing in the whole world will ever persuade me thatthatis all for the best!”
“I never said it was, but when a thing has to be, why not make the best of it?”
“And so persuade people that all is well, when all is not well! That’s exactly what women always do and always have done, and plume themselves upon it. And so this ridiculous farce is kept up, because these wretched women go smiling about the world, hugging their stupid resignation to their hearts, and pampering up their sickly virtue, at the expense of their sex. Hang their virtue!”
Algitha laughed.
“Itissomewhat self-regarding certainly, in spite of the incessant renunciation and sacrifice.”
“Oh, self-sacrifice in a woman, is always her easiest course. It is the nearest approach to luxury that society allows her,” cried Hadria, irascibly.
“It is most refreshing to hear you exaggerate, once more, with the old vigour,” her sister cried.
“If I have a foible, it is under-statement,” returned Hadria, with a half-smile.
“Then I think you haven’t a foible,” said Algitha.
“That I am ready to admit; but seriously, women seem bent on proving that you may treat them as you like, but they will ‘never desert Mr. Micawber.’”
Algitha smiled.
“They are so mortally afraid of getting off the line and doing what might not be quite right. They take such a morbid interest in their own characters. They are so particular about their souls. The female soul is such a delicate creation—like a bonnet. Look at a woman trimming and poking at her bonnet—that’s exactly how she goes on with her soul.”
Algitha laughed and shrugged her shoulders.
“It has trained her in a sort of heroism, at any rate,” she said.
“Heroism! talk of Spartan boys, they are not in it! A woman will endure martyrdom with the expression of a seraph,—an extremely aggravating seraph. She looks after her soul as if it were the ultimate fact of the universe. She will trim and preen that ridiculous soul, though the heavens fall and the rest of her sex perish.”
“Come now, I think there are exceptions.”
“A few, but very few. It is a point of honour, a sacred canon. Women will go on patiently drawing water in sieves, and pretend they are usefully employed because it tires them!”
“They believe it,” said Algitha.
“Perhaps so. But it’s very silly.”
“It is really well meant. It is a submission to the supposed will of heaven.”
“A poor compliment to Heaven!” Hadria exclaimed.
“Well, it is not, of course, your conception nor mine of the will of heaven, but it is their’s.”
Hadria shrugged her shoulders. “I wish women would think a little less of Heaven in the abstract, and a little more of one another, in the concrete.”
“Nobody has ever taught them to think of one another; on the contrary, they have always been trained to think of men, and of Heaven, and their souls. That training accounts for their attitude towards their own sex.”
“I suppose so. A spirit of sisterhood among women would have sadly upset the social scheme, as it has been hitherto conceived. Indeed the social scheme has made such a spirit well-nigh impossible.”
“A conquering race, if it is wise, governs its subjects largely through their internecine squabbles and jealousies.But what if they combine——?”
“Ah!” Hadria drew a deep sigh. “I wish the moment of sisterhood were a little nearer.”
“Heaven hasten it!” cried Algitha.
“Perhaps it is nearer than we imagine. Women are quick learners, when they begin. But, oh, it is hard sometimes to make them begin. They are so annoyingly abject; so painfully diffident. It is their pride to be humble. The virtuous worm won’t even turn!”
“Poor worm! It sometimes permits itself the relief of verbal expression!” observed Algitha.
Hadria laughed. “There are smiling, villainous worms, who deny themselves eventhat!”
After a long silence, Algitha taking the poker in her hand and altering the position of some of the coals, asked what Hadria meant to do in the future; how she was going to “turn,” if that was her intention.
“Oh, I cannot even turn!” replied Hadria. “Necessity knows no law. The one thing I won’t do, is to be virtuously resigned. And I won’t ‘make the best of it.’”
Algitha laughed. “I am relieved to hear so wrong-headed a sentiment from you. It sounds more like your old self.”
“I won’t be called wrong-headed on this account,” said Hadria. “If my life is to bear testimony to the truth, its refrain ought to be, ‘This is wrong, this is futile, this is cruel, this is damnable.’ I shall warn every young woman I come across, to beware, as she grows older, and has people in her clutches, not to express her affection by making unlimited demands on the beloved objects, nor by turning the world into a prison-house for those whom she honours with her devotion. The hope of the future lies in the rising generation. You can’t alter those who have matured in the old ideas. It is for us to warn. Iwon’tpretend to think that things are all right, when I know they are not all right. That would be mean. What is called making the best of it, would testify all the wrong way. My life, instead of being a warning, would be a sort of a trap. Let me at least play the humble rôle of scarecrow. I am in excellent condition for it,” she added, grasping her thin wrist.
Algitha shook her head anxiously.
“I fear,” she said, “that the moral that most people will draw will be: ‘Follow in the path of Mrs. Gordon, however distasteful it may seem to you, and whatever temptations you feel towards a more independent life. If you don’t, you will come to grief.’”
“Then you think it would be better to be ‘resigned,’ and look after one’s own soul?”
“Heaven knows what would be better!” Algitha exclaimed. “But one thing is certain, you ought to look after your body, for the present at any rate.”
HADRIA had found the autumn saddening, and the winter tempt her to morbid thoughts, but the coming of spring made her desperate. It would not allow her to be passive, it would not permit her emotions to lie prone and exhausted. Everything was waking, and she must wake too, to the bitterest regret and the keenest longings of which she was capable.
She had tried to avoid everything that would arouse these futile emotions; she had attempted to organise her life on new lines, persisting in her attitude of non-surrender, but winning, as far as she was able, the rest that, at present, could only be achieved by means of a sort of inward apathy. It was an instinctive effort of self-preservation. She was like a fierce fire, over which ashes have been heaped to keep down the flames, and check its ardour. She had to eat her heart out in dullness, to avoid its flaming out in madness. But the spring came and carried her away on its torrent. She might as well have tried to resist an avalanche. She thought that she had given up all serious thought of music; the surrender was necessary, and she had judged it folly to tempt herself by further dallying with it. It was too strong for her. And the despair that it awoke seemed to break up her whole existence, and render her unfit for her daily task. But now she found that, once more, she had underrated the strength of her own impulses. For some time she resisted, but one day, the sun shone out strong and genial, the budding trees spread their branches to the warm air, a blackbird warbled ecstatically from among the Priory shrubberies, and Hadria passed into the garden of the Griffins.
The caretaker smiled, when she saw who stood on the doorstep.
“Why ma’am, I thought you was never coming again to play on the piano; Ihavemissed it, that I have. It makes the old place seem that cheerful—I can almost fancy it’s my poor young mistress come back again. She used to sit and play on that piano, by the hour together.”
“I am glad you have enjoyed it,” said Hadria gently. The blinds were pulled up in the drawing-room, the piano was uncovered, the windows thrown open to the terrace.
“You haven’t had much time for playing since your mamma has been ill,” the woman continued, dusting the keys and setting up the music-rest.
“To-day my mother has a visitor; Mrs. Joseph Fleming is spending the afternoon with her,” said Hadria.
“To be sure, ma’am, to be sure, a nice young lady, and so cheerful,” said the good woman, bustling off to wind up the tall old clock with the wise-looking face, that had been allowed to run down since Hadria’s last visit. “Seems more cheerful like,” observed the caretaker, as the steady tick-tack began to sound through the quiet room.
“And have you fed my birds regularly, Mrs. Williams?” asked Hadria, taking off her hat and standing at the open window looking out to the terrace.
“Yes indeed, ma’am, every day, just as you used to do when you came yourself. And they has got so tame; they almost eats out of my hand.”
“And my robin? I hope he has not deserted us.”
“Oh, no, he comes right into the room sometimes and hops about, just as he did that afternoon, the last time you was here! I think it’s the same bird, for he likes to perch on that table and pick up the crumbs.”
“Poor little soul! If you will give me a scrap of bread, Mrs. Williams——”
The caretaker left the room, and returned with a thick slice, which Hadria crumbled and scattered on the window-sill, as she stepped out to the terrace.
The calm old mansion with its delicate outlines, its dreamy exquisite stateliness, spoke of rest and sweet serenity. The place had the melancholy but also the repose of greatness. It was rich in all that lies nearest to the heart of that mysterious, dual-faced divinity that we call beauty, compounded of sorrow and delight.
Ah! if only its owner could come and take up his abode here. If only he would get well! Hadria’s thoughts wandered backwards to that wonderful evening, when she had played to him and Algitha, and they had all watched the sunset afterwards, from the terrace. How long was it since she had touched the piano in this old drawing-room? Never since she returned from Paris. Even her own piano at home had been almost equally silent. She believed that she had not only quite abandoned hope with regard to music, but that she had prepared herself to face the inevitable decay of power, the inevitable proofs of her loss, as time went on. But so far, she had only had proofs that she could do astonishingly much if she had the chance.
To-day, for the first time, the final ordeal had to be gone through. And her imagination had never conceived its horror. She was to be taken at her word. The neglected gift was beginning to show signs of decay and enfeeblement. It had given fair warning for many a year, by the persistent appeal that it made, the persistent pain that it caused; but the famine had told upon it at last. It was dying. As this fact insinuated itself into the consciousness, in the teeth of a wild effort to deny it, despair flamed up, fierce and violent. She regretted that she had not thrown up everything long ago, rather than endure this lingering death; she cursed her hesitation, she cursed her fate, her training, her circumstances, she cursed herself. Whatever there was to curse, she cursed. What hideous nonsense to imagine herself ready to face this last insult of fate! She was like a martyr, who invites the stake and the faggot, and knows what he has undertaken only when the flames begin to curl about his feet. She had offered up her power, her imperious creative instinct, to the Lares and Penates; those greedy little godlets whom there was no appeasing while an inch of one remained that they could tear to pieces. She clenched her hands, in agony. The whole being recoiled now, at the eleventh hour, as a fierce wild creature that one tries to bury alive. She looked back along the line of the past and saw, with too clear eyes, the whole insidious process, so stealthy that she had hardly detected it, at the time. She remembered those afternoons at the Priory, when the restless, ill-trained power would assert itself, free for the moment, from the fetters and the dismemberment that awaited it in ordinary life. But like a creature accustomed to the yoke, she had found it increasingly difficult to use the moments of opportunity when they came. The force of daily usage, the necessary bending of thoughts in certain habitual directions, had assisted the crippling process, and though the power still lay there, stiffer than of yore, yet the preliminary movements and readjustments used up time and strength, and then gradually, with the perpetual repetition of adverse habits, the whole process became slower, harder, crueler.
“Good heavens! arealldoors going to be shut against me?”
It was more than she could bear! And yet it must be borne—unless—no, there was no “unless.” It was of no use to coquet with thoughts of suicide. She had thought all that out long ago, and had sought, at more than one crisis of desperate misery, for refuge from the horror and the insults of life. But there were always others to be considered. She could not strike them so terrible a blow. Retreat was ruthlessly cut off. Nothing remained but the endurance of a conscious slow decay; nothing but increasing loss and feebleness, as the surly years went by. They were going, going, these years of life, slipping away with their spoils. Youth was departing, everything was vanishing; her very self, bit by bit, slowly but surely, till the House of Life would grow narrow and shrunken to the sight, the roof descend. The gruesome old story of the imprisoned prince flashed into her mind; the wretched captive, young and life-loving, who used to wake up, each morning, to find that of the original seven windows of his dungeon, one had disappeared, while the walls had advanced a foot, and to-morrow yet another foot, till at length the last window had closed up, and the walls shrank together and crushed him to death.
“I can’t, Ican’tendure it!”
Hadria had leaned forward against the key-board, which gave forth a loud crash of discordant notes, strangely expressive of the fall and failure of her spirit.
She remained thus motionless, while the airs wandered in from the garden, and a broad ray of sunlight showed the strange incessant gyrations of the dust atoms, that happened to lie within the revealing brightness. The silence was perfect.
Hadria raised her head at last, and her eyes wandered out to the sweet old garden, decked in the miraculous hues of spring. The unutterable loveliness brought, for a second, a strange, inconsequent sense of peace; it seemed like a promise and a message from an unknown god.
But after that momentary and inexplicable experience, the babble of thought went on as before. The old dream mounted again heavenwards, like a cloud at sunset; wild fancies fashioned themselves in the brain. And then, in fantastic images, Hadria seemed to see a panorama of her own life and the general life pass before her, in all their incongruity and confusion. The great mass of that life showed itself as prose, because the significance of things had not been grasped or suspected; but here and there, the veil was pierced—by some suffering soul, by some poet’s vision—and the darkness of our daily, pompous, careworn, ridiculous little existence made painfully visible.
“It is all absurd, all futile!” (so moved the procession of the thoughts); “and meanwhile the steady pulse of life beats on, not pausing while we battle out our days, not waiting while we decide how we shall live. We are possessed by a sentiment, an ideal, a religion; old Time makes no comment, but moves quietly on; we fling the thing aside as tawdry, insufficient; the ideal is tarnished, experience of the world converts us—and still unmoved, he paces on. We are off on another chase; another conception of things possesses us; and still the beat of his footstep sounds in our ears, above the tumult. We think and aspire and dream, and meanwhile the fires grow cold upon the hearth, the daily cares and common needs plead eloquently for our undivided service; the stupendous movement of Existence goes on unceasingly, at our doors; thousands struggling for gold and fame and mere bread, and resorting to infamous devices to obtain them; the great commercial currents flow and flow, according to their mystic laws; the price of stocks goes up, goes down, and with them, the life and fate of thousands; the inconsequent bells ring out from Craddock Church, and the people congregate; the grave of the schoolmistress sleeps in the sunshine, and the sound of the bells streams over it—meaning no irony—to lose itself in the quiet of the hills; rust and dust collect in one’s house, in one’s soul; and this and that, and that and this,—like the pendulum of the old time-piece, with its solemn tick—dock the moments of one’s life, with each its dull little claim and its tough little tether, and lead one decorously to the gateway of Eternity.”
There was a flutter of wings, in the room. A robin hopped in at the window and perched daintily on the table-ledge, its delicate claws outlined against the whiteness of the dust-sheet, its head inquisitively on one side, as if it were asking the reason of the musician’s unusual silence. Suddenly, the little creature fluffed out its feathers, drew itself together, and warbled forth a rich ecstatic song, that seemed to be deliberately addressed to its human companion. Hadria raised her bowed head. Up welled the swift unaccustomed tears, while the robin, with increasing enthusiasm, continued his song. His theme, doubtless, was of the flicker of sunlit shrubberies, the warmth of summer, the glory of spring, the sweetness of the revolving seasons. For cure of heart-ache, he suggested the pleasantness of garden nooks, and the repose that lingers about a dew-sprinkled lawn. All these things were warmly commended to the human being whose song of life had ceased.
“But they break my heart, little singer, they break my heart!”
The robin lifted up its head and warbled more rapturously than ever.
The tears were falling fast now, and silently. The thoughts ran on and on. “I know it all, I know it all, and my heart is broken—and it is my own fault—and it does not matter—the world is full of broken hearts—and it does not matter, it does not matter. But, oh, if the pain might stop, if the pain might stop! The robin sings now, because the spring is here; but it is not always spring. And some day—perhaps not this winter, but some day—the dear little brown body will agonize—it will die alone, in the horrible great universe; one thinks little of a robin, but it agonizes all the same when its time comes; it agonizes all the same.”
The thoughts were drowned, for a moment, in a flood of terrible, unbearable pity for all the sorrow of the world.
The robin seemed to think that he had a mission to cheer his companion, for he warbled merrily on. And beside him, the dust-motes danced the wildest of dances, in the shaft of sunshine.
“It is very lovely, it is very lovely—the world is a miracle, but it is all like a taunt, it is like an insult, this glory of the world. I am born a woman, and to be born a woman is to be exquisitely sensitive to insult and to live under it always, always. I wish that I were as marble to the magic of Life, I wish that I cared for nothing and felt nothing. I pray only that the dream and the longing may be killed, and killed quickly!”
In the silence, the bird’s note sounded clear and tender. The dance of the dust-motes, like the great dance of Life itself, went on without ceasing.
The robin seemed to insist on a brighter view of things. He urged his companion to take comfort. Had the spring not come?
“But you do not understand, you do not understand, little soul that sings—the spring is torturing me and taunting me. If only it would kill me!”
The robin fluffed out his feathers, and began again to impart his sweet philosophy. Hadria was shedding the first unchecked tears that she had shed since her earliest childhood. And then, for the second time to-day, that strange unexplained peace stole into her heart. Reason came quickly and drove it away with a sneer, and the horror and the darkness closed round again.
“If I might only die, if I might only die!”
But the little bird sang on.
“QUITE hopeless!”
Joseph Fleming repeated the words incredulously.
“Yes,” said Lady Engleton, “it is the terrible truth.”
The Professor had been growing worse, and at length, his state became so alarming that he decided to return to England. Miss Du Prel and an old friend whom she had met abroad, accompanied him.
“I understand they are all at the Priory,” said Joseph.
“Yes; Miss Du Prel telegraphed to Mrs. Temperley, and Mrs. Temperley and I put our heads together and arranged matters as well as we could in the emergency, so that the Professor’s wish might be gratified. He desired to return to the Priory, where his boyhood was spent.”
“And is there really no hope?”
“None at all, the doctor says.”
“Dear me, dear me!” cried Joseph. “And is he not expected to live through the summer?”
“The summer! ah no, Mr. Fleming, he is not expected to live many days.”
“Dear me, dear me!” was all that Joseph could say. Then after a pause, he added, “I fear Mrs. Temperley will feel it very much. They were such old friends.”
“Oh! poor woman, she is heart-broken.”
The Professor lingered longer than the doctor had expected. He was very weak, and could not bear the fatigue of seeing many people. But he was perfectly cheerful, and when feeling a little better at times, he would laugh and joke in his old kindly way, and seemed to enjoy the fragment of life that still remained to him.
“I am so glad I have seen the spring again,” he said, “and that I am here, in the old home.”
He liked to have the window thrown wide open, when the day was warm. Then his bed would be wheeled closer to it, so that the sunshine often lay across it, and the scent of the flowering shrubs and the odour of growth, as he called it, floated in upon him. He looked out into a world of exquisite greenery and of serene sky. The room was above the drawing-room, and if the drawing-room windows were open, he could hear Hadria playing. He often used to ask for music.
The request would come generally after an exhausting turn of pain, when he could not bear the fatigue of seeing people.
“I can’t tell you what pleasure and comfort your music is to me,” he used to say, again and again. “It has been so ever since I knew you. When I think of the thousands of poor devils who have to end their lives in some wretched, lonely, sordid fashion, after hardships and struggles and very little hope, I can’t help feeling that I am fortunate indeed, now and all through my life. I have grumbled at times, and there have been sharp experiences—few escape those—but take it all round, I have had my share of good things.”
He had one great satisfaction: that he had discovered, before the end of his days, the means which he had so long been seeking, of saving the death-agony of animals that are killed for food. Some day perhaps, he said, men might cease to be numbered among the beasts of prey, but till then, at least their victims might be spared as much pain as possible. He had overcome the difficulty of expense, which had always been the main obstacle to a practical solution of the problem. Henceforth there was no need for any creature to suffer, in dying for man’s use. If people only knew and realized how much needless agony is inflicted on these helpless creatures, in order to supply the daily demands of a vast flesh-eating population, they would feel that, as a matter of fact, he had been doing the human race a good turn as well as their more friendless fellow-beings. It was impossible to imagine that men and women would not suffer at the thought of causing suffering to the helpless, if once they realized that suffering clearly. Men and women were not devils! Theobald had always laughed at him for this part of his work, but he felt now, at the close of his life, that he could dwell upon that effort with more pleasure than on any other, although others had won him far more applause, and this had often brought him contempt. If only he could be sure that the discovery would not be wasted.
“It shall be our business to see that it is not,” said Valeria, in a voice tremulous with unshed tears.
The Professor heaved a sigh of relief, at this assurance.
“My earlier work is safe; what I have done in other directions, is already a part of human knowledge and resource, but this is just the sort of thing that might be so easily lost and forgotten. These sufferings are hidden, and when people do not see a wrong, they do not think of it; make them think, make them think!”
A week had gone by since the Professor’s arrival at the Priory. He was in great pain, but had intervals of respite. He liked, in those intervals, to see his friends. They could scarcely believe that he was dying, for he still seemed so full of interest in the affairs of life, and spoke of the future as if he would be there to see it. One of the most distressing interviews was with Mr. Fullerton, who could not be persuaded that the invalid had but a short time to live. The old man believed that death meant, beyond all question, annihilation of the personality, and had absolutely no hope of meeting again.
“Don’t be too sure, old friend,” said the Professor; “don’t be too sure of anything, in this mysterious universe.”
The weather kept warm and genial, and this was favourable to his lingering among them a little longer. But his suffering, at times, was so great that they could scarcely wish for this delay. Hadria used always to play to him during some part of the afternoon. The robin had become a constant visitor, and had found its way to the window of the sick-room, where crumbs had been scattered on the sill. The Professor took great pleasure in watching the little creature. Sometimes it would come into the room and hop on to a chair or table, coquetting from perch to perch, and looking at the invalid, with bright inquisitive eyes. The crumbs were put out at a certain hour each morning, and the bird had acquired the habit of arriving almost to the moment. If, by chance, the crumbs had been forgotten, the robin would flutter ostentatiously before the window, to remind his friends of their neglected duty.
During the last few days, Hadria had fancied that the Professor had divined Valeria’s secret, or that she had betrayed it.
There was a peculiar, reverent tenderness in his manner towards her, that was even more marked than usual.
“Can’t we save him? can’t we save him, Hadria?” she used to cry piteously, when they were alone. “Surely, surely there is some hope. Science makes such professions; why doesn’t it do something?”
“Ah, don’t torture yourself with false hope, dear Valeria.”
“The world is monstrous, life is unbearable,” exclaimed Valeria, with a despairing break in her voice.
But one afternoon, she came out of the sick-room with a less distraught expression on her worn face, though her eyes shewed traces of tears.
The dying man used to speak often about his wife to Hadria. This had been her room, and he almost fancied her presence about him.
“Do you know,” he said, “I have found, of late, that many of my old fixed ideas have been insidiously modifying. So many things that I used to regard as preposterous have been borne in upon me, in a singular fashion, as by no means so out of the question. I have had one or two strange experiences and now a hope—I might say a faith—has settled upon me of an undying element in our personality. I feel that we shall meet again those we have loved here—some time or another.”
“What a sting that would take from the agony of parting,” cried Hadria.
“And, after all, is it less rational to suppose that there is some survival of the Self, and that the wild, confused earthly experience is an element of a spiritual evolutionary process, than to suppose that the whole universe is chaotic and meaningless? For what we call mind exists, and it must be contained in the sum-total of existence, or how could it arise out of it? Therefore, some reasonable scheme appears more likely than a reasonless one. And then there is that other big fact that stares us in the face and puts one’s fears to shame: human goodness.”
Hadria’s rebellious memory recalled the fact of human cruelty and wickedness to set against the goodness, but she was silent.
“What earthly business has such a thing as goodness or pity to appear in a fortuitous, mindless, soulless universe? Where does it come from? What is its origin? Whence sprang the laws that gave it birth?”
“It gives more argument to faith than any thing I know,” she said, “even if there had been but one good man or woman since the world began.”
“Ah, yes; the pity and tenderness that lie in the heart of man, even of the worst, if only they can be appealed to before they die, may teach us to hope all things.”
There was a long silence. Through the open window, they could hear the soft cooing of the wood-pigeons. Among the big trees behind the house, there was a populous rookery, noisy now with the squeaky voices of the young birds, and the deeper cawing of the parent rooks.
“I have been for many years without one gleam of hope,” said the Professor slowly. “It is only lately that some of my obstinate preconceptions have begun to yield to other suggestions and other thoughts, which have opened up a thousand possibilities and a thousand hopes. And I have not been false to my reason in this change; I have but followed it more fearlessly and more faithfully.”
“I have sometimes thought,” said Hadria, “that when we seem to cling most desperately to our reason, we are really refusing to accept its guidance into unfamiliar regions. We confuse the familiar with the reasonable.”
“Exactly. And I want you to be on your guard against that intellectual foible, which I believe has held me back in a region of sadness and solitude that I need not have lingered in, but for that.”
There was a great commotion in the rookery, and presently a flock of rooks swept across the window, in loud controversy, and away over the garden in a circle, and then up and up till they were a grey little patch of changing shape, in the blue of the sky.
The dying man followed them with his eyes. He had watched such streaming companies start forth from the old rookery, ever since his boyhood. The memories of that time, and of the importunate thoughts that had haunted him then, at the opening of life, returned to him now.
He had accomplished a fraction of what he had set out to attempt, with such high hopes. His dream of personal happiness had failed; many an illusion had been lost, many a bitterly-regretted deed had saddened him, many an error had revenged itself upon him. He drew a deep sigh.
“And if the scheme of the universe be a reasonable one,” he said half dreamily, “then one can account better for the lives that never fulfil themselves; the apparent failure that saddens one, in such numberless instances, especially among women. For in that case, the failure is only apparent, however cruel and however great. If the effort has been sincere, and the thought bent upon the best that could be conceived by the particular soul, then that effort and that thought must play their part in the upward movement of the race. I cannot believe otherwise.”
Hadria’s head was bent. Her lips moved, as if in an effort to speak, but no sound came.
“To believe that all the better and more generous hopes of our kind are to be lost and ineffectual, that genius is finally wasted, and goodness an exotic to be trampled under foot in the blind movements of Nature—that requires more power of faith than I can muster. Once believe that thought is the main factor, the motive force of the universe, then everything settles into its place, and we have room for hope; indeed it insists upon admission; it falls into the shadow of our life like that blessed ray of sunlight.”
It lay across the bed, in a bright streak.
“The hope leads me far. My training has been all against it, but it comes to me with greater and greater force. It makes me feel that presently, when we have bid one another farewell, it will not be for ever. We shall meet again, dear Hadria, believe me.” She was struggling with her tears, and could answer nothing.
“I wish so much that I could leave this hope, as a legacy to you. I wish I could leave it to Valeria. Take care of her, won’t you? She is very solitary and very sad.”
“I will, I will,” Hadria murmured.
“Do not turn away from the light of rational hope, if any path should open up that leads that way. And help her to do the same. When you think of me, let it be happily and with comfort.”
Hadria was silently weeping.
“And hold fast to your own colours. Don’t take sides, above all, with the powers that have oppressed you. They are terrible powers, and yet people won’t admit their strength, and so they are left unopposed. It is worse than folly to underrate the forces of the enemy. It is always worse than folly to deny facts in order to support a theory. Exhort people to face and conquer them. You can help more than you dream, even as things stand. I cannot tell you what you have done for me, dear Hadria.” (He held out his hand to her.) “And the helpless, human and animal—how they wring one’s heart! Do not forget them; be to them a knight-errant. You have suffered enough yourself, to know well how to bind their wounds.” The speaker paused, for a moment, to battle with a paroxysm of pain.
“There is so much anguish,” he said presently, “so much intolerable anguish, even when things seem smoothest. The human spirit craves for so much, and generally it gets so little. The world is full of tragedy; and sympathy, a little common sympathy, can do so much to soften the worst of grief. It is for the lack of that, that people despair and go down. I commend them to you.”
The figure lay motionless, as if asleep. The expression was one of utter peace. It seemed as if all the love and tenderness, all the breadth and beauty of the soul that had passed away, were shining out of the quieted face, from which all trace of suffering had vanished. The look of desolation that used, at times, to come into it, had entirely gone.
Hadria and Valeria stood together, by the bedside. At the foot of the bed was a glass vase, holding a spray of wild cherry blossom; Hadria had brought it, to the invalid’s delight, the day before. There were other offerings of fresh flowers; a mass of azaleas from Lady Engleton; bunches of daffodils that Valeria had gathered in the meadows; and old Dodge had sent a handful of brown and yellow wallflower, from his garden. The blind had been raised a few inches, so as to let in the sunlight and the sweet air. It was a glorious morning. The few last hot days had brought everything out, with a rush. The boughs of the trees, that the Professor had loved so to watch during his illness, were swaying gently in the breeze, just as they had done when his eyes had been open to see them. The wood-pigeons were cooing, the young rooks cawing shrilly in the rookery. Valeria seemed to be stunned. She stood gazing at the peaceful face, with a look of stony grief.
“Ican’tunderstand it!” she exclaimed at last, with a wild gesture, “Ican’tbelieve he will never speak to me again! It’s a horrible dream—oh, but too horrible—ah, why can’t I die as well as he?” She threw herself on her knees, shaken with sobs, silent and passionate. Hadria did not attempt to remonstrate or soothe her. She turned away, as a flood of bitter grief swept over her, so that she felt as one drowning.
Some minutes passed before Valeria rose from her knees, looking haggard and desolate. Hadria went towards her hastily.
“What’s that?” cried Valeria with a nervous start and a scared glance towards the window.
“The robin!” said Hadria, and the tears started to her eyes.
The bird had hopped in at his usual hour, in a friendly fashion. He picked up a few stray crumbs that had been left on the sill from yesterday, and then, in little capricious flights from stage to stage, finally arrived at the rail of the bed, and stood looking from side to side, with black, bright eyes, at the motionless figure. Hitherto it had been accustomed to a welcome. Why this strange silence? The robin hopped round on the rail, polished his beak meditatively, fluffed out his feathers, and then, raising his head, sang a tender requiem.
THE END.
“Does Marriage Hinder a Woman’s Self-development?”
In 1899,The Ladies’ Realmasked several well-known women to write on the set topic, “Does Marriage Hinder a Woman’s Self-development?” We reprint Mona Caird’s ingenious response.
PERHAPS it might throw some light on the question whether marriage interferes with a woman’s self-development and career, if we were to ask ourselves honestly how a man would fare in the position, say, of his own wife.
We will take a mild case, so as to avoid all risk of exaggeration.
Our hero’s wife is very kind to him. Many of his friends have far sadder tales to tell. Mrs. Brown is fond of her home and family. She pats the children on the head when they come down to dessert, and plies them with chocolate creams, much to the detriment of their health; but it amuses Mrs. Brown. Mr. Brown superintends the bilious attacks, which the lady attributes to other causes. As she never finds fault with the children, and generally remonstrates with their father, in a good-natured way, whenhedoes so, they are devoted to the indulgent parent, and are inclined to regard the other as second-rate.
Meal-times are often trying in this household, for Sophia is very particular about her food; sometimes she sends it out with a rude message to the cook. Not that John objects to this. He wishes she would do it oftener, for the cook gets used to Mr. Brown’s second-hand version of his wife’s language. He simply cannot bring himself to hint at Mrs. Brown’s robust objurgations. Shecanexpress herself when it comes to a question of her creature comforts!
John’s faded cheeks, the hollow lines under the eyes, and hair out of curl, speak of the struggle for existence as it penetrates to the fireside. If Sophia but knew what it meant to keep going the multitudinous details and departments of a household! Her idea of adding housemaids and pageboys whenever there is a jolt in the machinery has landed them in expensive disasters, time out of mind. And then, it hopelessly cuts off all margin of income for every other purpose. It is all rather discouraging for the hero of this petty, yet gigantic tussle, for he works, so to speak, in a hostile camp, with no sympathy from his entirely unconscious spouse, whom popular sentiment nevertheless regards as the gallant protector of his manly weakness.
If incessant vigilance, tact, firmness, foresight, initiative, courage and judgment—in short, all the qualities required for governing a kingdom, and more—have made things go smoothly, the wife takes it as a matter of course; if they go wrong, she naturally lays the blame on the husband. In the same way, if the children are a credit to their parents, that is only as it should be. But if they are naughty, and fretful, and stupid, and untidy, is it not clear that there must be some serious flaw in the system which could produce such results in the offspring of Mrs. Brown? What word in the English language is too severe to describe the man who neglects to watch with sufficient vigilance over his children’s health and moral training, who fails to see that his little boys’ sailor-suits and knickerbockers are in good repair, that their boot-lace ends do not fly out from their ankles at every step, that their hair is not like a hearth-brush, that they do not come down to dinner every day with dirty hands?
To every true man, the cares of fatherhood and home are sacred and all-sufficing. He realises, as he looks around at his little ones, that they are his crown and recompense.
John often finds thathiscrown-and-recompense gives him a racking headache by war-whoops and stampedes of infinite variety, and there are moments when he wonders in dismay if he is really a true man! He has had the privilege of rearing and training five small crowns and recompenses, and he feels that he could face the future if further privilege, of this sort, were denied him. Not but that he is devoted to his family. Nobody who understands the sacrifices he has made for them could doubt that. Only, he feels that those parts of his nature which are said to distinguish the human from the animal kingdom, are getting rather effaced.
He remembers the days before his marriage, when he was so bold, in his ignorant youth, as to cherish a passion for scientific research. He even went so far as to make a chemical laboratory of the family box-room, till attention was drawn to the circumstance by a series of terrific explosions, which shaved off his eyebrows, blackened his scientific countenance, and caused him to be turned out, neck and crop, with his crucibles, and a sermon on the duty that lay nearest him,—which resolved itself into that of paying innumerable afternoon calls with his father and brothers, on acquaintances selected—as he declared in his haste—for their phenomenal stupidity. His father pointed out how selfish it was for a young fellow to indulge his own little fads and fancies, when he might make himself useful in a nice manly way, at home.
When, a year later, the scapegrace Josephine, who had caused infinite trouble and expense to all belonging to her, showed a languid interest in chemistry, a spare room was at once fitted up for her, and an extraordinary wealth of crucibles provided by her delighted parents; and when explosions and smells pervaded the house, her father, with a proud smile, would exclaim: “What genius and enthusiasm that dear girl does display!” Josephine afterwards became a distinguished professor, with an awestruck family, and a husband who made it his chief duty and privilege to save her from all worry and interruption in her valuable work.
John, who knows in his heart of hearts that he could have walked round Josephine, in the old days, now speaks with manly pride of his sister, the Professor. His own bent, however, has always been so painfully strong that he even yet tries to snatch spare moments for his researches; but the strain in so many directions has broken down his health. People always told him that a man’s constitution was not fitted for severe brain-work. He supposes it is true.
During those odd moments, he made a discovery that seemed to him of value, and he told Sophia about it, in a mood of scientific enthusiasm. But she burst out laughing, and said he would really be setting the Thames on fire if he didn’t take care.
“Perhaps you will excuse my remarking, my dear, that I think you might be more usefully, not to say becomingly employed, in attending to your children and your household duties, than in dealing with explosive substances in the back dining-room.”
And Sophia tossed off her glass of port in such an unanswerable manner, that John felt as if a defensive reply would be almost of the nature of a sacrilege. So he remained silent, feeling vaguely guilty. And as Johnny took measles just then, and it ran through the house, there was no chance of completing his work, or of making it of public value.
Curiously enough, a little later, Josephine made the very same discovery—only rather less perfect—and every one said, with acclamation, that science had been revolutionised by a discovery before which that of gravitation paled.
John still hoped, after twenty years of experience, that presently, by some different arrangement, some better management on his part, he would achieve leisure and mental repose to do the work that his heart was in; but that time never came.
No doubt John was not infallible, and made mistakes in dealing with his various problems: do the best of us achieve consummate wisdom? No doubt, if he had followed the advice that we could all have supplied him with, in such large quantities, he might have done rather more than he did. But the question is: Did his marriage interfere with his self-development and career, and would many other Johns, in his circumstances, have succeeded much better?