They sat late into the evening. Theobald could not find an excuse to outstay his colleague, since they were both guests at the same house.
“I must see you alone some time to-morrow,” he managed to whisper. There was no time for a reply.
“I shall go and rest before dinner,” said Valeria.
Hadria went into the house by the open window of the drawing-room. She sank back on the sofa; a blackness came before her eyes.
“No, no, I won’t, Iwon’t. Let me learn not to let things overpower me, in future.”
When Valeria entered, dressed for dinner, she found Hadria, deadly pale, standing against the sofa, whose arm she was grasping with both hands, as if for dear life. Valeria rushed forward.
“Good heavens, Hadria! are you going to faint?”
“No,” said Hadria, “I am not going to faint, if there is such a thing as human will.”
THE morning had passed as usual, but household arrangements at the Cottage had required much adjustment, one of the maids being ill. She had been sent away for a rest, and the difficulty was to find another. Mary went from the Red House as substitute, in the mean time, and the Red House became disorganised.
“You look distracted with these little worries, Hadria. I should have said that some desperate crisis was hanging over you, instead of merely a domestic disturbance.” Valeria was established on the lawn, with a book.
“I am going to seek serenity in the churchyard,” explained Hadria.
“But I thought Professor Theobald said something about calling.”
“I leave you to entertain him, if he comes,” Hadria returned, and hastened away. She stopped at Martha’s cottage for the child. Ah! What would become of her if it were not for Martha? The two sauntered together along the Craddock road.
All night long, Hadria had been trying to decide when and how to speak to Professor Theobald. Should she send for him? Should she write to him? Should she trust to chance for an opportunity of speaking? But, no, she could not endure to see him again in the presence of others, before she had spoken! Yesterday’s experience had been too terrible. She had brought pencil and paper with her, in order to be able to write to him, if she decided on that course. There were plenty of retired nooks under the shade of the yew-trees in the churchyard, where one could write. The thick hedges made it perfectly secluded, and at this hour, it was always solitary. Little Martha was gathering wild-flowers in the hedges. She used to pluck them to lay on her mother’s grave. She had but a vague idea of that unknown mother, but Hadria had tried to make the dead woman live again, in the child’s mind, as a gentle and tender image. The little offering was made each time that they took their walk in the direction of Craddock. The grave looked fresh and sweet in the summer sunshine, with the ivy creeping up the tomb-stone and half obliterating the name. A rose-tree that Hadria and Martha had planted together, was laden with rich red blooms.
The two figures stood, hand in hand, by the grave. The child stooped to place her little tribute of flowers at the head of the green mound. Neither of them noticed a tall figure at the wicket gate. He stood outside, looking up the path, absolutely motionless. Martha let go Hadria’s hand, and ran off after a gorgeous butterfly that had fluttered over the headstone: a symbol of the soul; fragile, beautiful, helpless thing that any rough hand may crush and ruin. Hadria turned to watch the graceful, joyous movement of the child, and her delight in the beauty of the rich brown wings, with their enamelled spots of sapphire.
“Hadria!”
She gave a little gasping cry, and turned sharply. Professor Theobald looked at her with an intent, triumphant expression. She stood before him, for the moment, as if paralysed. It was by no means the first time that this look had crossed his face, but she had been blind, and had not fully understood it. He interpreted her cry and her paleness, as signs of the fullness of his power over her. This pleased him immeasurably. His self-love basked and purred. He felt that his moment of triumph had come. Contrasting this meeting with the last occasion when they had stood together beside this grave, had he not ground for self-applause? He remembered so well that unpleasant episode. It was Hadria who stoodthenin the more powerful position. He had actually feared to meet her eye. He remembered how bitterly she had spoken, of her passion for revenge, of the relentless feud between man and woman. They had discussed the question of vengeance; he had pointed out its futility, and Hadria had set her teeth and desired it none the less. Lady Engleton had reminded her of a woman’s helplessness if she places herself in opposition to a man, for whom all things are ordered in the society that he governs; her only chance of striking a telling blow being through his passions. If he were in love with her,thenthere might be some hope of making him wince. And Hadria, with a fierce swiftness had accepted the condition, with a mixture of confidence in her own power of rousing emotion, if she willed, and of scorn for the creature who could be appealed to through his passions, but not through his sense of justice. That she might herself be in that vulnerable condition, had not appeared to strike her as possible. It was a challenge that he could not but accept. She attracted him irresistibly. From the first moment of meeting, he had felt her power, and recognized, at the same time, the strange spirit of enmity that she seemed to feel towards him, and to arouse in him against her. He felt the savage in him awake, the desire of mere conquest. Long had he waited and watched, and at last he had seen her flush and tremble at his approach; and as if to make his victory more complete and insolent, it was atthisgrave that she was to confess herself ready to lose the world for his sake! Yes; and she should understand the position of affairs to the full, and consent nevertheless!
Her adoption of the child had added to his triumph. He could not think of it without a sense of something humourous in the relation of events. If ever Fate was ironical, this was the occasion! He felt so sure of Hadria to-day, that he was swayed by an overpowering temptation to reveal to her the almost comic situation. It appealed to his sense of the absurd, and to the savagery that lurked, like a beast of prey, at the foundation of his nature. Her evident emotion when he arrived yesterday afternoon and all through his visit, her agitation to-day, at the mere sound of his voice, assured him that his hold over her was secure. He must be a fool indeed if he could not keep it, in spite of revelations. To offer himself to her threatened vengeance of his own accord, and to see her turned away disarmed, because she loved him; that would be the climax of his victory!
There was something of their old antagonism, in the attitude in which they stood facing one another by the side of the grave, looking straight into one another’s eyes. The sound of the child’s happy laughter floated back to them across the spot where its mother lay at rest. Whether Theobald’s intense consciousness of the situation had, in some way, affected Hadria, or whether his expression had given a clue, it would be difficult to say, but suddenly, as a whiff of scent invades the senses, she became aware of a new and horrible fact which had wandered into her mind, she knew not how; and she took a step backwards, as if stunned, breathing shortly and quickly. Again he interpreted this as a sign of intense feeling.
“Hadria,” he said bending towards her, “you do love me?” He did not wait for her answer, so confident did he feel. “You love me for myself, not for my virtues or qualities, for I have but few of those, alas!” She tried to speak, but he interrupted her. “I want to make a confession to you. I can never forget what you said that day of Marion Fenwick’s wedding, at the side of this very grave; you said that you wanted to take vengeance on the man who had brought such misery to this poor woman. You threatened—at least, it amounted to a threat—to make him fall in love with you, if ever you should meet him, and to render him miserable through his passion. I loved you and I trembled, but I thought to myself, ‘What if I could make her return my love? Where would the vengeance bethen?’”
Hadria had remained, for a second, perfectly still, and then turned abruptly away.
“I knew it would be a shock to you. I did not dare to tell you before. Think what depended on it for me. Had I told you at that moment, I knew all hope for me would be at an end. But now, it seems to me my duty to tell you. If you wish for vengeance still, here I am at your mercy—take it.” He stretched out his arms and stood waiting before her. But she was silent. He was not surprised. Such a revelation, at such a moment, must, of necessity, stun her.
“Hadria, pronounce my fate. Do you wish for vengeance still? You have only to take it, if you do. Only for heaven’s sake, don’t keep me in suspense. Tell me your decision.”
Still silence.
“Do you want to take revenge on me now?” he repeated.
“No;” she said abruptly, “of what use would it be? No, no, wait, wait a moment. I want no vengeance. It is useless for women to try to fight against men; they can onlyhatethem!”
The Professor started, as if he had been struck.
They stood looking at one another.
“In heaven’s name, what is the meaning of this? Am I to be hated for a sin committed years ago, and long since repented? Have you no breadth of sympathy, no tolerance for erring humanity? Am I never to be forgiven? Oh, Hadria, Hadria, this is more than I can bear!”
She was standing very still and very calm. Her tones were clear and deliberate.
“If vengeance is futile, so is forgiveness. It undoes no wrong. It is not a question of forgiveness or of vengeance. I think, after all, if I were to attempt the impossible by trying to avenge women whom men have injured, I should begin with the wives. In this case” (she turned to the grave), “the tragedy is more obvious, but I believe the everyday tragedy of the docile wife and mother is even more profound.”
“You speak as coldly, as bitterly, as if you regarded me as your worst enemy—I who love you.” He came forward a step, and she drew back hurriedly.
“All that is over. I too have a confession to make.”
“Good heavens, what is it? Are you not what I thought you? Have you some history, some stain—? Don’t for pity’s sake tell me that!”
Hadria looked at him, with a cold miserable smile. “That is really amusing!” she cried; “I should not hold myself responsible to you, for my past, in any case. My confession relates to the present. I came up here with this pencil and paper, half resolved to write to you—I wanted to tell you that—that I find—I find my feelings towards you have changed——”
He gave a hoarse, inarticulate cry, and turned sharply round. His hands went up to his head. Then he veered suddenly, and went fiercely up to her.
“Then youarein earnest? Youdohate me! for a sin dead and buried? Good God! could one have believed it? Because I was honest with you, where another man would have kept the matter dark, I am to be thrown over without a word, without a chance. Lord, and this is what a woman calls love!”
He broke into a laugh that sounded ghastly and cruel, in the serene calm of the churchyard. The laugh seemed to get the better of him. He had lost self-control. He put his hands on his hips and went on laughing harshly, yet sometimes with a real mirth, as if by that means only could he express the fierce emotions that had been roused in him. Mortified and furious as he was, he derived genuine and cynical amusement from the incident.
“And the devotion that we have professed—think of it! and the union of souls—ha, ha, ha! and the common interests and the deep sympathy—it is screaming! Almost worth the price I pay, for the sake of the rattling good joke! And by this grave! Great heavens, how humourous is destiny!” He leant his arms on the tomb-stone and laughed on softly, his big form shaking, his strange sinister face appearing over the stone, irradiated with merriment. In the dusk, among the graves, the grinning face looked like that of some mocking demon, some gargoyle come to life, to cast a spell of evil over the place.
“Ah, me, life has its comic moments!” His eyes were streaming. “I fear I must seem to you flippant, but you will admit the ludicrous side of the situation. I am none the less ready to cut my throat—ha, ha, ha! Admit, my dear Hadria—Mrs. Temperley—that it appeals also toyoursense of humour. A common sense of humour, you know, was one of our bonds of union. What more appropriate than that we should part with shaking sides? Oh, Lord! oh, Lord! what am I to do? One can’t live on a good joke for ever.”
He grasped his head in his hands; then suddenly, he broke out into another paroxysm. “The feminine nature always the same, always, always; infinitely charming and infinitely volatile. Delicious, and oh how instructive!”
He slowly recovered calmness, and remained leaning on the gravestone.
“May I ask when this little change began to occur!” he asked presently.
“If you will ask in a less insolent fashion.”
He drew himself up from his leaning attitude, and repeated the question, in different words.
Hadria answered it, briefly.
“Oh, I see,” he said, the savage gleam coming back to his eyes. “The change in your feelings began when Fortescue appeared?”
Hadria flushed.
“It was when he appeared that I became definitely aware of that which I had been struggling with all my might and main to hide from myself, for a long time.”
“And that was——?”
“That there was something in you that made me—well, why should I not say it?—that made me shrink.”
He set his lips.
“You have not mentioned the mysterious something.”
“An element that I have been conscious of from the first day I saw you.”
“Something thatIhad, and Fortescue hadnot, it would seem.”
“Yes.”
“And so, on account of this diaphanous, indescribable, exquisite something, I am to be calmly thrown over; calmly told to go about my business!” He began to walk up and down the pathway, with feverish steps, talking rapidly, and representing Hadria’s conduct in different lights, each one making it appear more absurd and more unjust than the last.
“I have no defence to make,” she said, “I know I have behaved contemptibly; self-deception is no excuse. I can explain but not justify myself. I wanted to escape from my eternal self; I was tired of fighting and always in vain. I wanted to throw myself into the life and hopes of somebody else, somebody whohadsome chance of a real and effective existence. Then other elements of attraction and temptation came; your own memory will tell how many there were. You knew so well how to surround me with these. Everything conspired to tempt me. It seemed as if, in you, I had found a refuge from myself. You have no little power over the emotions, as you are aware. My feeling has been genuine, heaven knows! but, always, always, through it all, I have been aware of this element that repels me; and I have distrusted you.”
“I knew you distrusted me,” he said gloomily.
“It is useless to say I bitterly regret it all. Naturally, I regret it far more bitterly than you can do. And if my conduct towards you rankles in your heart, you can remember that I have to contend with what is far worse than any sense of being badly treated: the sense of having treated someone badly.”
He walked up and down, with bent head and furrowed brows. He looked like some restless wild animal pacing its cage. Intense mortification gave him a strange, malicious expression. He seemed to be casting about for a means of returning the stunning blow that he had received, just at the moment of expected triumph.
“Damn!” he exclaimed with sudden vehemence, and stood still, looking down into Hadria’s face, with cruel, glittering eyes.
He glanced furtively around. There was no one in sight. Even little Martha was making mud-pies by the church door. The thick yew trees shut in the churchyard from the village. There was not a sound, far or near, to break the sense of seclusion.
“And you mean to tell me we are to part? You mean to tell me that this is your final decision?”
She bowed her head. With a sudden strong movement, he flung his arms round her and clasped her in an embrace, as fierce and revengeful as the sweep of the wind which sends great trees crashing to the ground, and ships to the bottom of the sea.
“You don’t love me?” he enquired.
“Let me go, let me go—coward—madman!”
“You don’t love me?” he repeated.
“Ihateyou—let me go!”
“If this is the last time——”
“I wish I couldkillyou!”
“Ah, that is the sort of woman I like!”
“You make me know what it is to feel like a murderess!”
“And to look like one, by heaven!”
She wrenched herself away, with a furious effort.
“Coward!” she cried. “I did right to mistrust you!”
Little Martha ran up and offered her a wild heartsease which she had found on one of the graves. Hadria, trembling and white, stooped instinctively to take the flower, and as she did so, the whole significance of the afternoon’s revelation broke over her, with fresh intensity. His child!
He stood watching her, with malice in his eyes.
“Come, come, Martha, let us go, let us go,” she cried, feverishly.
He moved backwards along the path, as they advanced.
“I have to thank you for bestowing a mother’s care on my poor child. You can suppose what a joy the thought has been to me all along.”
Hadria flushed.
“You need not thank me,” she answered. “As you know, I did it first for her mother’s sake, and out of hatred to you, unknown as you then were to me. Now I will do it for her own sake, and out of hatred to you, bitterer than ever.”
She stooped to take the child’s hand.
“You are most kind, but I could not think of troubling you any longer. I think of taking the little one myself. She will be a comfort to me, and will cheer my lonely home. And besides you see, duty, Mrs. Temperley, duty——”
Hadria caught her breath, and stopped short.
“You are going to take her away from me? You are going to revenge yourself like that?”
“You have made me feel my responsibilities towards my child, as I fear I did not feel them before. I am powerless, of course, to make up for the evil I have done her, but I can make some reparation. I can take her to live with me; I can give her care and attention, I can give her a good education. I have made up my mind.”
Hadria stood before him, white as the gravestone.
“You said that vengeance was futile. So it is. Leave the child to me. She shall—she shall want for nothing. Only leave her to me.”
“Duty must be our first consideration,” he answered suavely.
“I can give her all she needs. Leave her to me.”
But the Professor shook his head.
“How do I know you have told me the truth?” Hadria exclaimed, with a flash of fury.
“Do you mean to dispute it?” he asked.
She was silent.
“I think you would find that a mistaken policy,” he said, watching her face.
“I don’t believe you can take her away!” cried Hadria. “I am acting for her mother, and her mother, not having made herself into your legal property,hassome legal right to her own child. I don’t believe you can make me give her up.”
The Professor looked at her calmly.
“I think you will find that the law has infinite respect for a father’s holiest feelings. Would you have it interfere with his awakening aspirations to do his duty towards his child? What a dreadful thought! And then, I think you have some special views on the education of the little one which I cannot entirely approve. After all, a woman has probably to be a wife and mother, on the good old terms that have served the world for a fair number of centuries, when one comes to consider it: it is a pity to allow her to grow up without those dogmas and sentiments that may help to make the position tolerable, if not always satisfactory, to her. Though, as a philosopher, one may see the absurdity of popular prejudices, yet as a practical man, one feels the inexpediency of disturbing the ideas upon which the system depends, and thus adding to the number of malcontents. All very well for those who think things out for themselves; but the education of a girl should be on the old lines, believe me. You will not believe me, I know, so I think it better, for this as well as for other reasons, to take my daughter under my own care. I am extremely sorry that you should have had all this trouble and responsibility for nothing. And I am grieved that your educational idea should be so frustrated, but what am I to do? My duty is obvious!”
“I regret that you did not become a devotee to duty, either a little sooner or a little later,” Hadria returned. “For the present, I suppose Martha will remain with Hannah, until your conscience decides what course you will take, and until I see whether you can carry out your threat.”
“Certainly, certainly! I don’t wish to give you any unnecessary pain.”
“You are consideration itself.” Hadria stooped to take the child’s hand. The little fingers nestled confidingly in her palm.
“Will you say good-bye, Martha?” asked the Professor, stooping to kiss her. Martha drew away, and struck her father a sturdy blow on the face. She had apparently a vague idea that he had been unkind to her protectress, and that he was an enemy.
“Oh, cruel, cruel! What if I don’t bring her any more toys?” Martha threatened tears.
“Will you allow us to pass?” said Hadria. The Professor stood aside, and the two went, hand in hand, down the narrow path, and through the wicket gate out of the churchyard. Hadria carried still the drooping yellow heartsease that the little girl had given her.
PROFESSOR THEOBALD made his confession to Lady Engleton on that same night, when he also announced that he found it suddenly necessary to return to town.
It was some time before she recovered from her astonishment and horror. He told his story quietly, and without an effort to excuse himself.
“Of course, though I can’t exonerate you, Professor, I blame her more than you,” she said finally, “for her standard in the matter was so different from your’s—you being a man.”
The Professor suppressed a smile. It always seemed strange to him that a woman should be harder on her own sex than on his, but he had no intention of discouraging this lack ofesprit de corps; it had its obvious conveniences.
“Did she confess everything to her aunt after her return from Portsmouth?” asked Lady Engleton.
“Yes; I have that letter now.”
“In which your name is mentioned?”
“In which my name is mentioned. I sent money to the girl, but she returned it. She said that she hated me, and would not touch it. So I gave the money to the aunt, and told her to send it on, in her own name, to Ellen, for the child’s support. Of course I made secrecy a condition. So as a matter of fact, I have acknowledged the child, though not publicly, and I have contributed to its support from its birth.”
“But I thought Mrs. Temperley had been supporting it!” cried Lady Engleton.
“Nevertheless I have continued to send the money to the aunt. If Mrs. Temperley chose to take charge of the child, I certainly had nothing to complain of. And I could not openly contribute without declaring myself.”
“Dear me, it is all very strange! What would Hadria say if she knew?”
“She does know.”
“What, all along?”
“No, since yesterday.”
“And how does she take it?”
“She is bitter against me. It is only natural, especially as I told her that I wanted to have the child under my own care.”
“Ah, that will be a blow to her. She was wrapped up in the little girl.”
Professor Theobald pointed out the difficulties that must begin to crop up, as she grew older. The child could not have the same advantages, in her present circumstances, as the Professor would be able to give her. Lady Engleton admitted that this was true.
“Then may I count on you to plead my cause with Mrs. Temperley?”
“If Hadria believes that it is for the child’s good, she will not stand in the way.”
“Unless——. You remember that idea of vengeance that she used to have?”
“Oh, she would not let vengeance interfere with the child’s welfare!”
“I hope not. You see I don’t want to adopt strong measures. The law is always odious.”
“The law!” Lady Engleton looked startled. “Are you sure that the law would give you the custody of the child?”
“Sure of the law? My dear lady, one might as well be sure of a woman—pardon me; you know that I regard this quality of infinite flexibility as one of the supreme charms of your sex. I can’t say that I feel it to be the supreme charm of the law. Mrs. Temperley claims to have her authority through the mother, because she has the written consent of the aunt to the adoption, but I think this is rather stretching a point.”
“I fear it is, since the poor mother was dead at the time.”
“I can prove everything I have said to the satisfaction of anybody,” continued Theobald, “I think my claim to take charge of my child is well established, and you will admit the wish is not unreasonable.”
“It does you great credit, but, oh dear, it will be hard for Mrs. Temperley.”
“I fear it will. I am most grieved, but what am I to do? I must consider the best interests of the child.”
“Doubtless, but you are a trifle late, Professor, in thinking of that.”
“Would you prefer it to be never than late?”
“Heaven forbid!”
“Then I may rely on you to explain the position of affairs to Mrs. Temperley? You will understand that it is a painful subject between us.”
Lady Engleton readily promised. She called at the Red House immediately after Professor Theobald’s departure. The interview was long.
“Then I have not spoken in vain, dear Hadria?” said Lady Engleton, in her most sympathetic tone. Hadria was very pale.
“On the contrary, you have spoken to convince.”
“I knew that you would do nothing to stand in the way of the child.”
Hadria was silent.
“I am very sorry about it. You were so devoted to the little girl, and it does seem terribly hard that she should be taken away from you.”
“It was my last chance,” Hadria muttered, half audibly.
“Then I suppose you will not attempt to resist?”
“No,” said Hadria.
“He thinks of leaving Martha with you for another month.”
“Really? It has not struck him that perhaps I may not keep her for another month. Now that it is once established that Martha is to be regarded as underhisguardianship and authority, and that my jurisdiction ceases, he must take her at once. I will certainly not act forhimin that matter. Since you are in his confidence, would you kindly tell him that?”
Lady Engleton looked surprised. “Certainly; I suppose he and his sister will look after the child.”
“I shall send Martha up with Hannah.”
“It will astonish him.”
“Does he really think I am going to act as his deputy?”
“He thought you would be glad to have Martha as long as possible.”
“As the child of Ellen Jervis, yes—not as his child.”
“I don’t see that it matters much, myself,” said Lady Engleton, “however, I will let him know.”
“By telegram, please, because Martha will be sent to-morrow.”
“What breathless haste!”
“Why delay? Hannah will be there—she knows everything about her charge; and if she is only allowed to stay——”
“He told me he meant to keep her.”
“I am thankful for that!”
By this time, the story had flown through the village; nothing else was talked of. The excitement was intense. Gossip ran high in hall and cottage. Professor Fortescue alone could not be drawn into the discussion. Lady Engleton took him aside and asked what he really thought about it. All he would say was that the whole affair was deeply tragic. He had no knowledge of the circumstances and feelings involved, and his judgment must therefore be useless. It seemed more practical to try to help one’s fellows to resist sin, than to shriek at convicted sinners.
His departure had been fixed for the following morning.
“So you and poor little Martha will go up together by the afternoon train, I suppose,” said Lady Engleton.
Hadria spent the rest of the day at Martha’s cottage. There were many preparations to make. Hannah was bustling about, her eyes red with weeping. She was heart-broken. She declared that she could never live with “that bad man.” But Hadria persuaded her, for Martha’s sake, to remain. And Hannah, with another burst of tears, gave an assurance which amounted to a pledge, that she would take a situation with the Father of Evil himself, rather than desert the blessed child.
“I wonder if Martha realizes at all what is going to happen,” said Hadria sadly, as she stood watching the little girl playing with her toys. Martha was talking volubly to the blue man. He still clung to a precarious existence (though he was seriously chipped and faded since the Paris days), and had as determined a centre of gravity as ever.
“I don’t think she understands, ma’am,” said Hannah. “I kep’ on tellin’ her, and once she cried and said she did not want to go, but she soon forgot it.”
Hadria remained till it was time to dress for dinner. Professor Fortescue had promised to dine with her and Valeria on this last evening. Little Martha had been put early to bed, in order that she might have a long rest before the morrow’s journey. The golden curls lay like strands of silk on the pillow, the bright eyes were closed in healthful slumber. The child lay, the very image of fresh and pure and sweet human life, with no thought and no dread of the uncertain future that loomed before her. Hannah had gone upstairs to pack her own belongings. The little window was open, as usual, letting the caressing air wander in, as sweet and fresh as the little body and soul to which it had ministered from the beginning.
The busy, loud-ticking clock was working on with cheerful unconcern, as if this were just like every other day whose passing moments it had registered. The hands were pointing towards seven, and the dinner hour was half-past seven. Hadria stood looking down at the sleeping child, her hands resting on the low rail of the cot. There was a desolate look in her eyes, and something more terrible still, almost beyond definition. It was like the last white glow of some vast fire that has been extinguished.
Suddenly—as something that gives way by the run, after a long resistance—she dropped upon her knees beside the cot with a slight cry, and broke into a silent storm of sobs, deep and suppressed. The stillness of the room was unbroken, and one could hear the loud tick-tack of the little clock telling off the seconds with business-like exactness.
THE evening was sultry. Although the windows of the dining-room were wide open, not a breath of air came in from the garden. A dull, muggy atmosphere brooded sullenly among the masses of the evergreens, and in the thick summer foliage of the old walnut tree on the lawn.
“How oppressive it is!” Valeria exclaimed.
She had been asked to allow a niece of Madame Bertaux, who was to join some friends in Italy, to make the journey under her escort, and the date of her departure was therefore fixed. She had decided to return to town on the morrow, to make her preparations.
Valeria declared impulsively that she would stay at home, after all. She could not bear to leave Hadria for so many lonely months.
“Oh, no, no,” cried Hadria in dismay, “don’t let me beginalreadyto impoverish other lives!”
Valeria remonstrated but Hadria persisted.
“At least I have learntthatlesson,” she said. “I should have been a fool if I hadn’t, for my life has been a sermon on the text.”
Professor Fortescue gave a little frown, as he often did when some painful idea passed through his mind.
“It is happening everywhere,” said Hadria, “the poor, sterile lives exhaust the strong and full ones. I will not be one of those vampire souls, at least not while I have my senses about me.”
Again, the little frown of pain contracted the Professor’s brow.
The dusk had invaded the dinner table, but they had not thought of candles. They went straight out to the still garden. Valeria had a fan, with which she vainly tried to overcome the expression of the atmosphere. She was very low-spirited. Hadria looked ill and exhausted. Little Martha’s name was not mentioned. It was too sore a subject.
“I can’t bear the idea of leaving you, Hadria, especially when you talk like that. I wish,howI wish, that some way could be found out of this labyrinth. Is this sort of thing to be the end of all the grand new hopes and efforts of women? Is all our force to be killed and overwhelmed in this absurd way?”
“Ah, no, not all, in heaven’s name!”
“But if women won’t repudiate, in practice, the claims that they hold to be unjust, in theory, how can they hope to escape? We may talk to all eternity, if we don’t act.”
Hadria shrugged her shoulders.
“Your reasoning is indisputable, but what can one do? Therearecases——in short, some things are impossible!”
Valeria was silent. “I have thought, at times, that you might make a better stand,” she said at last, clinging still to her theory of the sovereignty of the will.
Hadria did not reply.
The Professor shook his head.
“You know my present conditions,” said Hadria, after a silence. “I can’t overcome them. But perhaps some one else in my place might overcome them. I confess I don’t see how. Do you?”
Valeria hesitated. She made some vague statement about strength of character, and holding on through storm and stress to one’s purpose; had not this been the history of all lives worth living?
Hadria agreed, but pressed the practical question. And that Valeria could not answer. She could not bring herself to say that the doctor’s warnings ought to be disregarded by Hadria, at the risk of her mother’s life. It was not merely a risk, but a practical certainty that any further shock or trouble would be fatal. Valeria was tongue-tied.
“Now do you see why I feel so terrified when anyone proposes to narrow down his existence, even in the smallest particular, for my sake?” asked Hadria. “It is because I see what awful power a human being may acquire of ravaging and of ruling other lives, and I don’t want to acquire that power. I see that the tyranny may be perfectly well-intentioned, and indeed scarcely to be called tyranny, for it is but half conscious, yet only the more irresistible for that.”
“It is one’s own fault if one submits toconscioustyranny,” the Professor put in, “and I think tyrant and victim are then much on a par.”
“A meredemandcan be resisted,” Hadria added; “it isgrief, real grief, however unreasonable, that brings people to their knees. But, oh, may the day hasten, when people shall cease to grieve when others claim their freedom!”
Valeria smiled. “I don’t think you are in much danger of grudging liberty to your neighbours, Hadria; so you need not be so frightened of becoming a vampire, as I think you call it.”
“Notnow, but how can one tell what the result of years and years of monotonous existence may be, or the effect of example? How did it happen that my mother came to feel aggrieved if her daughters claimed some right of choice in the ordering of their lives? I suppose it is becausehermother felt aggrieved ifsheventured to call her soul her own.”
Valeria laughed.
“But it is true,” said Hadria. “Very few of us, if any, are in the least original as regards our sorrowing. We follow the fashion. We are not so presumptuous as to decide for ourselves what shall afflict us.”
“Or what shall transport us with joy,” added Valeria, with a shrug.
“Still less perhaps. Tradition says ‘Weep, this is the moment,’ or ‘Rejoice, the hour has come,’ and we chant our dirge or kindle our bonfires accordingly. Why, it means a little martyrdom to the occasional sinner who selects his own occasion for sorrow or for joy.”
Valeria laughed at the notion of Hadria’s being under the dictatorship of tradition, or of anything else, as to her emotions.
But Hadria held that everybody was more or less subject to the thraldom. And the thraldom increased as the mind and the experience narrowed. And as the narrowing process progressed, she said, the exhausting or vampire quality grew and grew.
“I have seen it, I have seen it! Those who have been starved in life, levy a sort of tax on the plenty of others, in the instinctive effort to replenish their own empty treasure-house. Only that is impossible. One can gain no riches in that fashion. One can only reduce one’s victim to a beggary like one’s own.”
Valeria was perturbed.
“The more I see of life, the more bitter a thing it seems to be a woman! And one of the discouraging features of it is, that women are so ready to oppress each other!”
“Because they have themselves suffered oppression,” said the Professor. “It is a law that we cannot evade; if we are injured, we pay back the injury, whether we will or not, upon our neighbours. If we are blessed, we bless, but if we are cursed, we curse.”
“These moral laws, or laws of nature, or whatever one likes to call them, seem to be stern as death!” exclaimed Valeria. “I suppose we are all inheriting the curse that has been laid upon our mothers through so many ages.”
“We are not free from the shades of our grandmothers,” said Hadria, “only I hope a little (when I have not been to the Vicarage for some time) that we may be less of a hindrance and an obsession to our granddaughters than our grandmothers have been to us.”
“Ah! that way lies hope!” cried the Professor.
“I wish, IwishI could believe!” Valeria exclaimed. “But I was born ten years too early for the faith of this generation.”
“It is you who have helped to give this generation its faith,” said Hadria.
“But have you real hope and real faith, in your heart of hearts? Tell me, Hadria.”
Hadria looked startled.
“Ah! I knew it. Womendon’treally believe that the cloud will lift. If they really believed what they profess, they would prove it. They would not submit and resign themselves. Oh, why don’t you shew what a woman can do, Hadria?”
Hadria gave a faint smile.
She did not speak for some time, and when she did, her words seemed to have no direct reference to Valeria’s question.
“I believe that there are thousands and thousands of women whose lives have run on parallel lines with mine.”
She recalled a strange and grotesque vision, or waking-dream, that she had dreamt a few nights before: of a vast abyss, black and silent, which had to be filled up to the top with the bodies of women, hurled down to the depths of the pit of darkness, in order that the survivors might, at last, walk over in safety. Human bodies take but little room, and the abyss seemed to swallow them, as some greedy animal its prey. But Hadria knew, in her dream, that some day it would have claimed its last victim, and the surface would be level and solid, so that people would come and go, scarcely remembering that beneath their feet was once a chasm into which throbbing lives had to descend, to darkness and a living death.
Valeria looked anxious and ill at ease. She watched Hadria’s face.
She was longing to urge her to leave Craddock Dene, but was deterred by the knowledge of the uselessness of such advice. Hadria could not take it.
“I chafe against these situations!” cried Valeria. “I am so unused, in my own life, to such tethers and limitations. They would drive me crazy!”
“Oh,” Hadria exclaimed, with an amused smile, “this is a new cry!”
“I don’t care,” said Valeria discontentedly. “I never supposed that onecouldbe tied hand and foot, in this way. I should never stand it. It is intolerable!”
“These are what you have frequently commended to me as ‘home ties,’” said Hadria.
“Oh, but it is impossible!”
“You attack the family!” cried the Professor.
“If the family makes itself ridiculous——?”
The Professor and Hadria laughed. Valeria was growing excited.
“The natural instinct of man to get his fun at his neighbour’s expense meets with wholesome rebuffs in the outer world,” said the Professor, “but in the family it has its chance. That’s why the family is so popular.”
Valeria, with her wonted capriciousness, veered round in defence of the institution that she had been just jeering at.
“Well, after all, it is the order of Nature to have one’s fun at the expense of someone, and I don’t believe we shall ever be able to practise any other principle, I mean on a national scale, however much we may progress.”
“Oh, but we shan’t progress unless wedo,” said the Professor.
“You are always paradoxical.”
“There is no paradox here. I am just as certain as I am of my own existence, that real, solid, permanent progress is impossible to any people until they recognise, as a mere truism, that whatever is gained by cruelty, be it towards the humblest thing alive, is not gain, but the worst of loss.”
“Oh, you always go too far!” cried Valeria.
“I don’t admit that in a horror of cruelty, it is possible to go too far,” the Professor replied. “Cruelty is the one unpardonable sin.” He passed his hand across his brow, with a weary gesture, as if the pressure of misery and tumult and anguish in the world, were more than he could bear.
“You won’t give up your music, Hadria,” Valeria said, at the end of a long cogitation.
“It is a forlorn sort of pursuit,” Hadria answered, with a whimsical smile, “but I will do all I can.” Valeria seemed relieved.
“And you will not give up hope?”
“Hope? Of what?”
“Oh, of—of——. What an absurd question!”
Hadria smiled. “It is better to face facts, I think, than to shroud them away. After all, it is only by the rarest chance that character and conditions happen to suit each other so well that the powers can be developed. They are generally crushed. One more or less——.” Hadria gave a shrug.
The Professor broke in, abruptly.
“It is exactly the one more or less that sends the balance up or down, that decides the fate of men and nations. An individual often counts more than a generation. If that were not so, nothing would be possible, and hope would be insane.”
“Perhaps it is!” said Hadria beneath her breath.
The Professor had risen. He heard the last words, but made no remonstrance. Yet there was a something in his expression that gave comfort.
“I fear I shall have to be going back,” he said, looking at his watch. As he spoke, the first notes of a nightingale stole out of the shrubbery. Voices were hushed, and the three stood listening spellbound, to the wonderful impassioned song. Hadria marvelled at its strange serenity, despite the passion, and speculated vaguely as to the possibility of a paradox of the same kind in the soul of a human being. Passion and serenity? Had not the Professor combined these apparent contradictions?
There was ecstasy so supreme in the bird’s note that it had become calm again, like great heat that affects the senses, as with frost, or a flooded river that runs swift and smooth for very fulness.
Presently, a second nightingale began to answer from a distant tree, and the garden was filled with the wild music. One or two stars had already twinkled out.
“I ought really to be going,” said the Professor.
But he lingered still. His eyes wandered anxiously to Hadria’s white face. He said good-night to Valeria, and then he and Hadria walked to the gate together.
“You will come back and see us at Craddock Dene soon after you return, won’t you?” she said wistfully.
“Of course I will. And I hope that meanwhile, you will set to work to get strong and well. All your leisure ought to be devoted to that object, for the present. I should be so delighted to hear from you now and again, when you have a spare moment and the spirit moves you. I will write and tell you how I fare, if I may. If, at any time, I can be of service to you, don’t forget how great a pleasure it would be to me to render it. I hope if ever I come back to England——”
“When you come back,” Hadria corrected, hastily.
——“that we may meet oftener.”
“Indeed, that will be something to look forward to!”
They exchanged the hearty, lingering handshake of trusty friendship and deep affection. The last words, the last good wishes, were spoken, the last wistful effort was made of two human souls to bid each other be of good cheer, and to bring to one another comfort and hope. Hadria leant on the gate, a lonely figure in the dim star-light, watching the form that had already become shadowy, retreating along the road and gradually losing itself in the darkness.
AUTUMN had come round again. Craddock Dene had calmed down after the exciting event of the summer. Martha’s little cottage was now standing empty, the virginia creeper trailing wildly, in thick festoons and dangling sprays over the porch and creeping up round the windows, even threatening to cover them with a ruddy screen, since now the bright little face no longer looked out of the latticed panes, and the cottage was given over to dust and spiders.
Mrs. Temperley was often seen by the villagers passing along the road towards Craddock. She would sometimes pause at the cottage, to gather a few of the flowers that still came up in the tiny garden. It was said that she gathered them to lay on Ellen Jervis’s grave.
“Dear, dear, she do take on about that child!” Dodge used to say, as she passed up the street of Craddock. And Mrs. Gullick, good soul, would shake her head and express her sympathy, in spite of not “holding” with Mrs. Temperley’s “ways.”
Her poorer neighbours understood far more than the others could understand, how sorely she was grieving about the child. Because she said nothing on the subject, it was generally supposed that she had ceased to care. After all, it was an act of charity that she had undertaken, on an impulse, and it was quite as well that she should be relieved of the responsibility.
Hannah used to write regularly, to let her know how Martha was. Professor Theobald had directed Hannah to do this. The nurse had to admit that he was very good and very devoted to the child. She throve in her new home, and seemed perfectly happy.
Hadria was now delivered over to the tender mercies of her own thoughts. Her memories burnt, as corrosive acids, in her brain. She could find no shadow of protection from her own contempt. There was not one nook or cranny into which that ruthless self-knowledge could not throw its cruel glare. In the hours of darkness, in the haunted hours of the early morning, she and her memories played horrible games with one another. She was hunted, they the hunters. There was no thought on which she could rest, no consoling remembrance. She often wished that she had followed her frequent impulse to tell Miss Du Prel the whole wretched story. But she could not force herself to touch the subject through the painful medium of speech. Valeria knew that Hadria was capable of any outward law-breaking, but she would never be prepared for the breaking of her own inner law, the real canon on which she had always laid so much stress. And then she had shrunk from the idea of betraying a secret not solely her own. If she told the story, Valeria would certainly guess the name. She felt a still greater longing that Professor Fortescue should know the facts; he would be able to help her to face it all, and to take the memory into her life and let its pain eat out what was base and evil in her soul. He would give her hope; his experience, his extraordinary sympathy, would enable him to understand it all, better than she did herself. If he would look at this miserable episode unflinchingly, and still hold out his hand to her, as she knew he would, and still believe in her, then she might believe still in herself, in her power of rising after this lost illusion, this shock of self-detection, and of going on again, sadder, and perhaps stronger; but if he thought that since she was capable of a real treason against her gods, that she was radically unsound at heart, and a mass of sophistication, then—Hadria buried her face in the pillow. She went through so often now, these paroxysms of agony. Do what she would, look where she might, she saw no relief. She was afraid to trust herself. She was afraid to accept her own suggestions of comfort, if ever a ray of it came to her, lest it should be but another form of self-deception, another proof of moral instability. In her eternal tossing to and fro, in mental anguish, the despairing idea often assailed her: that after all, it did not matter what she did or thought. She was but an atom of the vast whole, a drop in the ocean of human life.
She had no end or motive in anything. She could go on doing what had to be done to the last, glad if she might bring a little pleasure in so acting, but beyond that, what was there to consider? The wounds to her vanity and her pride ached a little, at times, but the infinitely deeper hurt of disillusion overwhelmed the lesser feeling. She was too profoundly sad to care for that trivial mortification.
Sometimes, Professor Fortescue used to write to Hadria, and she looked forward to these letters as to nothing else. She heard from Valeria also, who had met the Professor at Siena. She said he did not look as well as she had hoped to find him. She could not see that he had gained at all, since leaving England. He was cheerful, and enjoying sunny Italy as much as his strength would allow. Valeria was shocked to notice how very weak he was. He had a look in his face that she could not bear to see. If he did not improve soon, she thought of trying to persuade him to return home to see his doctor again. When one was ill, home was the best place after all.
“You and Professor Fortescue,” she said, in closing her letter, “are the two people I love in the world. You are all that I have in life to cling to. Write to me, dearest Hadria, for I am very anxious and wretched.”
The affairs of life and death mix themselves incongruously enough, in this confused world. The next news that stirred the repose of Craddock Dene, was that of Algitha’s engagement to Wilfrid Burton. In spite of his socialistic views, Mrs. Fullerton was satisfied with the marriage, because Wilfrid Burton was well-connected and had good expectations. The mother had feared that Algitha would never marry at all, and she not only raised no objection, but seemed relieved. Wilfrid Burton had come down to stay at the Red House, during one of Algitha’s holidays, and it was then that the betrothal had taken place. The marriage promised to be happy, for the couple were deeply attached and had interests in common. They intended to continue to work on the same lines after they were married. Both parents were favourably impressed by the son-in-law elect, and the Cottage became the scene of exciting arguments on the subject of socialism. Mr. Fullerton insisted on holding Wilfrid Burton responsible for every sort of theory that had ever been attributed not merely to socialists, but to communists, anarchists, collectivists, nihilists, and the rest; and nothing would persuade him that the young man was not guilty of all these contradictory enormities of thought. Wilfrid’s personality, however, overcame every prejudice against him, on this account, after the first meeting.
Joseph Fleming, among others, congratulated Algitha heartily on her engagement.
“I can see you are very happy,” he said naïvely. She laughed and coloured.
“Indeed I ought to be. Life is gloriously worth living, when it is lived in the presence of good and generous souls.”
“I wishIhad married,” said Joseph pensively.
“It is not too late to mend,” suggested Algitha.
“How reckless you are!” exclaimed her sister. “How can you recommend marriage in the abstract? You happen to have met just the right person, but Mr. Fleming hasn’t, it would seem.”
“If one person can be so fortunate, so can another,” said Algitha.
“Why tempt Providence? Rather bear the ills you have——”
“I am surprised to hear you take a gloomy view of anything, Mrs. Temperley,” said Joseph; “I always thought you so cheerful. You say funnier things than any lady I have ever met, except an Irish girl who used to sing comic songs.”
Both sisters laughed.
“How do you know that, in the intervals of her comic songs, that girl has not a gloomy disposition?” asked Hadria.
“Oh no, you can see that she is without a care in the world; she is like Miss Fullerton, always full of good cheer and kindness.”
“Had she also slums to cheer her up?” asked Hadria.
“No, not at all. She never does anything in particular.”
“I am surprised that she is cheerful then,” said Algitha. “It won’t last.”
“It is her slums that keep my sister in such good spirits,” said Hadria.
“Really! Well, if you are fond of that sort of thing, Mrs. Temperley, there are some nasty enough places at the lower end of Craddock——”
“Oh, it isn’t that one clings to slums for slums’ sake,” cried Hadria laughing.
“I am afraid they are already overrun with visitors,” Joseph added. “There are so many Miss Walkers.”
It was not long after this conversation, that Craddock Dene was thrilled by another piece of matrimonial news. Joseph Fleming was announced to be engaged to the Irish girl who sang comic songs. She was staying with Mrs. Jordan at the time. And the Irish girl, whose name was Kathleen O’Halloran, came and sang her comic songs to Craddock Dene, while Joseph sat and beamed in pride and happiness, and the audience rippled with laughter.
Kathleen was very pretty and very fascinating, with her merry, kind-hearted ways, and she became extremely popular with her future neighbours.
Little changes had taken place in the village, through death or marriage or departure. Dodge had laid to rest many victims of influenza, which visited the neighbourhood with great severity. Among the slain, poor Dodge had to number his own wife. The old man was broken down with his loss. He loved to talk over her illness and death with Hadria, whose presence seemed to comfort him more than anything else, as he assured her, in his quaint dialect.
Sometimes, returning through the Craddock Woods, Hadria would pass through the churchyard on her way home, after her walk, and there she would come upon Dodge patiently at work upon some new grave, the sound of his pickaxe breaking the autumn silence, ominously. His head was more bent than of yore, and his hair was whiter. His old face would brighten up when he heard Hadria’s footstep, and he would pause, a moment or two, for a gossip. The conversation generally turned upon his old “missus,” who was buried under a yew tree, near the wicket gate. Then he would ask after Hadria’s belongings; about her father and mother, about Hubert, and the boys. Mr. Fullerton had made the gravedigger’s acquaintance, and won his hearty regard by many a chat and many a little kindness. Dodge had never ceased to regret that Martha had been taken away from Craddock. The place seemed as if it had gone to sleep, he said. Things weren’t as they used to be.
Hadria would often go to see the old man, trying to cheer him and minister to his growing ailments. His shrewdness was remarkable. Mr. Fullerton quoted Dodge as an authority on matters of practical philosophy, and the old gravedigger became a sort of oracle at the Cottage. Wilfrid Burton complained that he was incessantly confronted with some saying of Dodge, and from this there was no appeal.
The news from Italy was still far from reassuring. Valeria was terribly anxious. But she felt thankful, she said, to be with the invalid and able to look after him. The doctors would not hear of his returning to England at the approach of winter. It would be sheer suicide. He must go further south. Valeria had met some old friends, among them Madame Bertaux, and they had decided to go on together, perhaps to Naples or Sorrento. Her friends had all fallen in love with the Professor, as every one did. They were a great help and comfort to her. If it were not for the terrible foreboding, Valeria said she would be perfectly happy. The Professor’s presence seemed to change the very atmosphere. He spoke often about Hadria, and over and over again asked Valeria to watch over her and help her. And he spoke often about his wife. Valeria confessed that, at one time, she used to be horribly and shamefully jealous of this wife, whom he worshipped so faithfully, but now that feeling had left her. She was thankful for the great privilege of his friendship. A new tone had come over Valeria’s letters, of late; the desperate, almost bitter element had passed away, and something approaching serenity had taken its place.
No one, she said, could be in the Professor’s presence every day, and remain exactly the same as before. She saw his potent, silent influence upon every creature who crossed his path. He came and went among his fellows, quietly, beneficently, and each was the better for having met him, more or less, according to the fineness and sensitiveness of the nature.
“My love for him,” said Valeria, “used at one time to be a great trouble to me. It made me restless and unhappy. Now I am glad of it, and though there must be an element of pain in a hopeless love, yet I hold myself fortunate to have cherished it.”
Hadria received this letter from the postman when she was coming out of Dodge’s cottage.
It threw her into a conflict of strong and painful feeling: foreboding, heart-sickness, a longing so strong to see her friends that it seemed as if she must pack up instantly and go to them, and through it all, a sense of loneliness that was almost unbearable. How she envied Valeria! To love with her whole heart, without a shadow of doubt; to have that element of warmth in her life which could never fail her, like sunshine to the earth. Among the cruelest elements of Hadria’s experience had been that emptying of her heart; the rebuff to the need for love, the conviction that she was to go through life without its supreme emotion. Professor Theobald had thrown away what might have been a master-passion. The outlook was so blank and cold, so unutterably lonely! She looked back to the days at Dunaghee, as if several lifetimes had passed between her and them. What illusions they had all harboured in those strange old days!
“Do you remember our famous discussion on Emerson in the garret?” she said to Algitha.
“Do I? It is one of the episodes of our youth that stands out most distinctly.”
“And how about Emerson’s doctrine?Arewe the makers of our circumstances?Doesour fate ‘fit us like a glove?’”
Algitha looked thoughtful. “I doubt it,” she said.
“Yet you have brilliantly done what you meant to do.”
“My own experience does not overshadow my judgment entirely, I hope,” said Algitha. “I have seen too much of a certain tragic side of life to be able to lay down a law of that sort. I can’t believe, for instance, that among all those millions in the East End, notoneman or woman, for all these ages, was born with great capacities, which better conditions might have allowed to come to fruition. I think you were right, after all. It is a matter of relation.”
The autumn was unusually fine, and the colours sumptuous beyond description. The vast old trees that grew so tall and strong, in the genial English soil, burnt away their summer life in a grand conflagration.
Hubert had successfully carried the day with regard to the important case which had taken him abroad, and had now returned to Craddock Dene. Henriette came to stay at the Red House.
She followed her brother, one day, into the smoking-room, and there, with much tact and circumlocution, gave him to understand that she thought Hadria was becoming more sensible; that she was growing more like other people, less opinionated, wiser, and better in every way.
“Hadria was always very sweet, of course,” said Henriette, “but she had the faults of her qualities, as we all have. You have had your trials, dear Hubert, but I rejoice to believe that Hadria will give you little further cause for pain or regret.” Hubert made no reply. He placed the tips of his fingers together and looked into the fire.
“I think that the companionship of Lady Engleton has been of great service to Hadria,” he observed, after a long pause.
“Unquestionably,” assented Henriette. “She has had an enormous influence upon her. She has taught Hadria to see that one may hold one’s own ideas quietly, without flying in everybody’s face. Lady Engleton is a pronounced agnostic, yet she never misses a Sunday at Craddock Church, and I am glad to see that Hadria is following her example. It must be a great satisfaction to you, Hubert. People used to talk unpleasantly about Hadria’s extremely irregular attendance. It is such a mistake to offend people’s ideas, in a small place like this.”
“That is what I told Hadria,” said Hubert, “and her mother has been speaking seriously to her on the subject. Hadria made no opposition, rather to my surprise. She said that she would go as regularly as our dining-room clock, if it gave us all so much satisfaction.”
“How charming!” cried Henriette benevolently, “and how characteristic!”
As Hadria sank in faith and hope, she rose in the opinion of her neighbours. She was never nearer to universal unbelief than now, when the orthodox began to smile upon her.
Life presented itself to her as a mere welter of confused forces. If goodness, or aspiration, or any godlike thing arose, for a moment—like some shipwrecked soul with hands out-stretched above the waves—swiftly it sank again submerged, leaving only a faint ripple on the surface, soon overswept and obliterated.
She could detect no light on the face of the troubled waters. Looking around her at other lives, she saw the story written in different characters, but always the same; hope, struggle, failure. The pathos of old age wrung her heart; the sorrows of the poor, the lonely, the illusions of the seeker after wealth, the utter vanity of the objects of men’s pursuit, and the end of it all!
“I wonder what is the secret of success, Hadria?”
“Speaking generally, I should say to have a petty aim.”
“Then if one succeeds after a long struggle,” said Algitha pensively.
“One finds it, I doubt not, the dismalest of failures.”
A great cloud of darkness seemed to have descended over the earth. Hadria felt cut off even from Nature. The splendours of the autumn appeared at a vast distance from her. They belonged to another world. She could not get near them. Mother earth had deserted her child.
A superficial apathy was creeping over her, below which burnt a slow fire of pain. But the greater the apathy, which expressed itself outwardly in a sort of cheerful readiness to take things as they came, the more delighted everybody appeared to be with the repentant sinner. Her associates seemed to desire earnestly that she should go to church, as they did, in her best bonnet——and why not? She would get a best bonnet, as ridiculous as they pleased, and let Mr. Walker do his worst. What did it matter? Who was the better or the worse for what she thought or how she acted? What mattered it, whether she were consistent or not? What mattered it if she seemed, by her actions, to proclaim her belief in dogmas that meant nothing to her, except as interesting products of the human mind? She had not enough faith to make it worth while to stand alone.
Lord Engleton said he thought it right to go to church regularly, for the sake of setting an example to the masses, a sentiment which always used to afford Hadria more amusement than many intentional witticisms.
She went often to the later service, when the autumn twilight lay heavy and sad upon the churchyard, and the peace of evening stole in through the windows of the church. Then, as the sublime poetry of psalmist or prophet rolled through the Norman arches, or the notes of the organ stole out of the shadowed chancel, a spirit of repose would creep into the heart of the listener, and the tired thoughts would take a more rhythmic march. She felt nearer to her fellows, at such moments, than at any other. Her heart went out to them, in wistful sympathy. They seemed to be standing together then, one and all, at the threshold of the great Mystery, and though they might be parted ever so widely by circumstance, temperament, mental endowment, manner of thought, yet after all, they were brethren and fellow sufferers; they shared the weakness, the longing, the struggle of life; they all had affections, ambitions, heart-breakings, sins, and victories; the differences were slight and transient, in the presence of the vast unknown, the Ultimate Reality for which they were all groping in the darkness. This sense of brotherhood was strongest with regard to the poorer members of the congregation: the labourers with their toil-stained hands and bent heads, the wives, the weary mothers, their faces seamed with the ceaseless strain of child-bearing, and hard work, and care and worry. In their prematurely ageing faces, in their furrowed brows, Hadria could trace the marks of Life’s bare and ruthless hand, which had pressed so heavily on those whose task it had been to bestow the terrible gift. Here the burden had crushed soul and flesh; here that insensate spirit of Life had worked its will, gratified its rage to produce and reproduce, it mattered not what in the semblance of the human, so long only as that wretched semblance repeated itself, and repeated itself again,ad nauseam, while it destroyed the creatures which it used for its wild purpose——