One could not rely on them. They had enthusiasm—Oh, but enthusiasmà faire peur, but presently “un monsieur avec des moustaches seduisantes” approaches, and then “Phui, c’est tout fini!” There was something of fatality in the affair. The instinct was terrible; a demoniacal possession. It was for women a veritable curse, a disease. M. Jouffroy had pronounced views on the subject. He regarded the maternal instinct as the scourge of genius. It was, for women, the devil’s truncheon, his rod of empire. This “reproductive rage” held them—in spite of all their fine intuitions and astonishing ability—after all on the animal plane; cut them off from the little band of those who could break up new ground in human knowledge, and explore new heights of Art and Nature.
“I speak to you thus, Madame, not because I think little of your sex, but because I grudge them to the monster who will not spare us even one!”
Hadria worked with sufficient energy to please even Jouffroy. Her heart was in it, and her progress rapid. Everything was organized, in her life, for the one object. At the School of Music, she was in an atmosphere of work, everyone being bent on the same goal, each detail arranged to further the students in their efforts. It was like walking on a pavement after struggling uphill on loose sand; like breathing sea-breezes after inhaling a polluted atmosphere.
In old days, Hadria used to be haunted by a singular recurrent nightmare: that she was toiling up a steep mountain made of hard slippery rock, the summit always receding as she advanced. Behind her was a vast precipice down which she must fall if she lost her footing; and always, she saw hands without bodies attached to them placing stones in the path, so that they rolled down and had to be evaded at the peril of her life. And each time, after one set of stones was evaded, and she thought there would be a time of respite, another batch was set rolling, amid thin, scarcely audible laughter, which came on the storm-wind that blew precipice-wards across the mountain; and invariably she awoke just as a final avalanche of cruel stones had sent her reeling over the hideous verge.
One is disposed to make light of the sufferings gone through in a dream, though it would trouble most of us to explain why, since the agony of mind is often as extreme as possibly could be endured in actual life. From the day of her arrival in Paris, Hadria was never again tormented with this nightmare.
Composition went on rapidly now. Soon there was a little pile of new work for M. Jouffroy’s inspection. He was delighted, criticizing severely, but always encouraging to fresh efforts. As for the publishing, that was a different matter. In spite of M. Jouffroy’s recommendation, publishers could not venture on anything of a character so unpopular. The music had merit, but it was eccentric. M. Jouffroy was angry. He declared that he would play something of Madame’s at the next Châtelet concert. There would be opposition, but he would carry his point. And he did. But the audience received it very coldly. Although Hadria had expected such a reception, she felt a chill run through her, and a sinking of the heart. It was like a cold word that rebuffs an offer of sympathy, or an appeal for it. It sent her back into depths of loneliness, and reminded her how cut off she was from the great majority of her fellows, after all. And then Guy de Maupassant’s dreadful “Solitude” came to her memory. There is no way (the hero of the sketch asserts) by which a man can break the eternal loneliness to which he is foredoomed. He cannot convey to others his real impressions or emotion, try as he may. By a series of assertions, hard to deny, the hero arrives at a terrible conclusion amounting to this: Art, affection, are in vain; we know not what we say, nor whom we love.
Jouffroy came out of the theatre, snorting and ruffled.
“But they are imbeciles, all!”
Hadria thought that perhapsshewas the “imbecile”; it was a possibility to be counted with, but she dared not say so to the irate Jouffroy.
He was particularly angry, because the audience had confirmed his own fear that only very slowly would the quality of the music be recognized by even the more cultivated public. It had invaded fresh territory, he said, added to the range of expression, and was meanwhile a new language to casual listeners. It was rebel music, offensive to the orthodox. Hubert had always said that “it was out of the question,” and he appeared to have been right.
“Bah, ce ne sont que des moutons!” exclaimed Jouffroy. If the work had been poorer, less original, there would not have been this trouble. Was there not some other method by which Madame could earn what was necessary,en attendent?
In one of Professor Fortescue’s letters, he had reminded Hadria of his eagerness to help her. Yet, what could he do? He had influence in the world of science, but Hadria could not produce anything scientific! She bethought her of trying to write light descriptive articles, of a kind depending not so much on literary skill as on subject and epistolary freshness of touch. These she sent to the Professor, not without reluctance, knowing how overburdened he already was with work and with applications for help and advice. He approved of her idea, and advised the articles being sent the round of the magazines and papers.
Through his influence, one of the shorter articles was accepted, and Hadria felt encouraged. Her day was now very full. The new art was laborious, severely simple in character, though she studiously made her articles. Her acquaintances had multiplied very rapidly of late, and although this brought into her experience much that was pleasant and interesting, the demands of an enlarging circle swallowed an astonishing number of hours. An element of trouble had begun to come into the life that had been so full of serenity, as well as of regular and strenuous work. Hadria was already feeling the effects of anxiety and hurry. She had not come with untried powers to the fray. The reserve forces had long ago been sapped, in the early struggles, beginning in her girlhood and continuing at increasing pressure ever since. There was only enough nerve-force to enable one to live from hand to mouth. Expenditure of this force having been so often in excess of income, economy had become imperative. Yet, economy was difficult. M. Jouffroy was always spurring her to work, to throw over everything for this object; letters from England incessantly urged a very different course; friends in Paris pressed her to visit them, to accompany them hither and thither, to join musical parties, to compose little songs (some bagatelle in celebration of a birthday or wedding), to drive to the further end of the town to play to this person or that who had heard of Madame’s great talent. Hadria was glad to do anything she could to express her gratitude for the kindness she had received on all hands, but, alas! there were only a certain number of hours in the day, and only a certain number of years in one’s life, and art was long. Moreover, nerves were awkward things to play with.
Insidiously, treacherously, difficulties crept up. Even here, where she seemed so free, the peculiar claims that are made, by common consent, on a woman’s time and strength began to weave their tiny cords around her. She took warning, and put an end to any voluntary increase of her circle, but the step had been taken a little too late. The mischief was done. To give pain or offence for the sake of an hour or two, more or less, seemed cruel and selfish, yet Hadria often longed for the privilege that every man enjoys, of quietly pursuing his work without giving either.
A disastrous sense of hurry and fatigue began to oppress her. This was becoming serious. She must make a stand. Yet her attempts at explanation were generally taken as polite excuses for neglecting those who had been kind and cordial.
Jouffroy taxed her with looking tired. One must not be tired. One must arrange the time so as to secure ample rest and recreation after the real work was over. Women were so foolish in that way. They did everything feverishly. They imagined themselves to have inexhaustible nerves.
Hadria hinted that it was perhaps others who demanded of them what was possible only to inexhaustible nerves.
True; towards women, people behaved as idiots. How was it possible to produce one’s best, if repose were lacking? Serenity was necessary for all production.
As well expect water perpetually agitated to freeze, as expect the crystals of the mind to produce themselves under the influence of incessant disturbance.
Work? Yes. Work never harmed any man or woman. It was harassment that killed. Work of the mind, of the artistic powers, that was a tonic to the whole being. But little distractions, irregular duties, worries, uncertainties—Jouffroy shook his head ominously. And not only to the artist were they fatal. It was these that drew such deep lines on the faces of women still young. It was these that destroyed ability and hope, and killed God only knew how many of His good gifts! Poverty: that could be endured with all its difficulties, if that were the one anxiety. It was never theonebut the multitude of troubles that destroyed. Serenity there must be. A man knew that, and insisted on having it. Friends were no true friends if they robbed one of it. For him, he had a poor opinion of that which people called affection, regard. As forl’amour, that was the supreme egotism. The affections were simply a means to “make oneself paid.” Affection! Bah! One did not offer it for nothing,bien sûr! It was through this insufferable pretext that one arrived at governing others. “Comment?Your presence can give me happiness, and you will not remain always beside me? It is nothing to you how I suffer? To me whom you love you refuse this small demand?” Jouffroy opened his eyes, with a scornful glare. “It is inthatfashion, I promise you, that one can rule!”
“Ah, monsieur,” said Hadria, “you are a keen observer. How I wish you could live a woman’s life for a short time. You are wise now, but afterthat——”
“Madame, I have sinned in my day, perhaps to merit purgatorial fires; but, without false modesty, I do not think that I have justly incurred the penalty you propose to me.”
Hadria laughed. “It would be a strange piece of poetic justice,” she said, “if all the men who have sinned beyond forgiveness in this incarnation, should be doomed to appear in the next, as well-brought-up women.”
Jouffroy smiled.
“Fancy some conquering hero reappearing in ringlets and mittens, as one’s maiden aunt.”
Jouffroy grinned. “Ce serait dur!”
“Ah, mon Dieu!” cried Madame Vauchelet, “if men had to endure in the next world that which they have made women suffer in this—that would be an atrocious justice!”
STUBBORNLY Hadria sent her packets to the publishers; the publishers as firmly returned them. She had two sets flying now, like tennis balls, she wrote to Miss Du Prel: one set across the Channel. The publishers, she feared, played the best game, but she had the English quality of not knowing when she was beaten. Valeria had succeeded in finding a place for two of the articles. This was encouraging, but funds were running alarmingly low.
Theapartementwould have either to be given up, or to be taken on for another term, at the end of the week. A decision must be made. Hadria was dismayed to find her strength beginning to fail. That made the thought of the future alarming. With health and vigour nothing seemed impossible, but without that——
It seemed absurd that there should be so much difficulty about earning a living. Other women had done it. Valeria had always made light of the matter—when she had the theory of the sovereignty of the will to support.
Another couple of articles which seemed to their creator to possess popular qualities were sent off.
But after a weary delay, they shared the fate of their predecessors. Hadria now moved into a smaller suite of rooms, parting regretfully with Therése, and flinging herself once more on the mercy of a landlady. This time M. Thillard had discovered the lodging for her; a shabby, but sunny little house, kept by a motherly woman with a reputation for perfect honesty. Expenses were thus kept down, but unhappily very little was coming in to meet them. It was impossible to pull through the year at this rate. But, of course, there was daily hope of something turning up. The arrival of the post was always an exciting moment. At last Hadria wrote to ask Algitha to try and sell for her a spray of diamonds, worth about eighty pounds.
Time must be gained, at all hazards. Algitha tried everywhere, and enquired in all directions, but could not get more than five-and-twenty pounds for it. She felt anxious about her sister, and thought of coming over to Paris to see her, in order to talk over some matters that could no longer be kept out of sight.
Algitha had wished to give Hadria an opportunity for work and rest, and to avoid recurrence of worry; but it was no longer possible or fair to conceal the fact that there were troubles looming ahead, at Dunaghee. Their father had suffered several severe losses through some bank failures; and now that wretched company in which he had always had such faith appeared to be shaky, and if that were also to smash, the state of affairs would be desperate. Their father, in his optimistic fashion, still believed that the company would pull through. Of course all this anxiety was telling seriously on their mother. And, alas! she had been fretting very much about Hadria. After Algitha’s misdeed, this second blow struck hard.
One must act on one’s own convictions and not on those of somebody else, however beloved that other person might be, but truly the penalty of daring to take an independent line of action was almost unbearably severe. It really seemed, at times, as if there were nothing for it but to fold one’s hands and do exactly as one was bid. Algitha was beginning to wonder whether her own revolt was about to be expiated by a life-long remorse!
“Ah, if mother had only not sacrificed herself for us, how infinitely grateful I should feel to her now! What sympathy there might have been between us all! If she had but given herself a chance, how she might have helped us, and what a friend she might have been to us, and we to her! But she would not.”
Algitha said that her mother evidently felt Hadria’s departure as a disgrace to the family. It was pathetic to hear her trying to answer people’s casual questions about her, so as to conceal the facts without telling an untruth. Hadria was overwhelmed by this letter. Her first impulse was to pack up and go straight to Dunaghee. But as Algitha was there now, this seemed useless, at any rate for the present. And ought she after all to abandon her project, for which so much had been risked, so much pain inflicted? The question that she and Algitha thought they had decided long ago, began to beat again at the door of her conscience and her pity. Her reason still asserted that the suffering which people entail upon themselves, through a frustrated desire to force their own law of conduct on others, must be borne by themselves, as the penalty of their own tyrannous instinct and of their own narrow thought. It was utterly unfair to thrust that natural penalty of prejudice and of self-neglect on to the shoulders of others. Why should they be protected from the appointed punishment, by the offering of another life on the altar of their prejudice? Why should such a sacrifice be made in order to gratify their tyrannical desire to dictate? It was not fair, it was not reasonable.
Yet this conclusion of the intellect did not prevent the pain of pity and compunction, nor an inconsequent sense of guilt.
Meanwhile it would be best, perhaps, to await Algitha’s arrival, when affairs might be in a less uncertain state. All decision must be postponed till then. “Try and come soon,” she wrote to her sister.
To add to the anxieties of the moment, little Martha seemed to lose in energy since coming to the new abode, and Hadria began to fear that the house was not quite healthy. It was very cheap, and the landlady was honest, but if it had this serious drawback, another move, with probably another drawback, seemed to threaten. This was particularly troublesome, for who could tell how long it would be possible to remain in Paris? Hadria thought of the doctrine of the sovereignty of the will, and of all the grand and noble things that the Preposterous Society had said about it, not to mention Emerson and others—and she smiled.
However, she worked on, putting aside her anxieties, as far as was possible. She would not fail for lack of will, at any rate. But it was a hard struggle. Martha had to be very carefully watched just now.
Happily, after a few anxious days, she began to recover her fresh colour and her high spirits. The move would not be necessary, after all. Hadria had become more and more attached to the child, whose lovable qualities developed with her growth. She was becoming singularly like her unhappy mother, in feature and in colouring. Her eyes were large and blue and sweet, with a little touch of pathos in them that Hadria could not bear to see. It seemed almost like the after-glow of the mother’s suffering.
Although adding to Hadria’s anxieties, the child gave a sense of freshness and youth to the littleménage. She made the anxieties easier to bear.
Hadria came in, one morning, from her work, tired and full of foreboding. Hat and cloak were laid aside, and she sank into an arm-chair, lying back to lazily watch the efforts of the child to overturn the obstinate blue man, who was still the favourite plaything, perhaps because he was less amenable than the rest.
Martha looked up for sympathy. She wished to be helped in her persistent efforts to get the better of this upstart blue man with the red cap, who serenely resumed his erect position just as often as he was forced to the ground. He was a stout, healthy-looking person, inclining toembonpoint; bound to succeed, if only from sheer solidity of person. Hadria was drawn into the game, and the two spent a good half hour on the rug together, playing with that and other toys which Martha toddled off to the cupboard to collect. The child was in great delight. Hadria was playing with her; she liked that better than having Jean Paul Auguste to play with. He took her toys away and always wanted to play a different game.
The clock struck two. Hadria felt that she ought to go and see Madame Vauchelet; it was more than a week since she had called, and the kind old friend was always gently pained at an absence of that length.
Then there was an article to finish, and she ought really to write to Dunaghee and Henriette and—well the rest must wait. Several other calls were also more than due, but it was useless even to consider those to-day. In spite of an oppressive sense of having much to do—perhapsbecauseof it—Hadria felt as if it were a sheer impossibility to rise from that hearthrug. Besides, Martha would not hear of it. A desire to rest, to idle, to float down the stream, instead of trying always to swim against it, became overpowering. The minutes passed away.
“The question is, Martha,” Hadria said gravely, as she proceeded to pile up a towering edifice of bricks, at the child’s command, “the question is: Are we going to stick to our plan, or are we going to be beaten? Oh, take care, don’t pull down the fairy palace! That is a bad trick that little fingers have. No, no, I must have my fairy palace; I won’t have it pulled down. It is getting so fine, too; minarets and towers, and domes and pinnacles, all mixed beautifully. Such an architecture as you never saw! But some day perhaps you will see it. Those blue eyes look as if they were made for seeing it, in the time to come.”
“Pretty eyes!” said Martha with frank vanity, and then: “Pretty house!”
“It is indeed a pretty house; they all are. But they are so horribly shaky. The minarets are top-heavy, I fear. That’s the fault of the makers of these bricks. They ought to make the solid ones in proper proportion. But they can’t be persuaded.”
“Knock it down,” said Martha, thrusting forth a mischievous hand, which was caught in time to prevent entire destruction of the precious edifice. Half the minarets had fallen.
“They must go up again,” said Hadria. “How cruel to spoil all the work and all the beauty.” But Martha laughed with the delight of easy conquest.
She watched with great interest the reconstruction, and seemed anxious that every detail should be finished and worthy her iconoclasm. Having satisfied herself that her strength would not be wasted on an incomplete object, she made a second attempt to lay the palace low. Again she was frustrated. The building had soared, by this time, to an ambitious height, and its splendour had reached the limits of the materials at command. The final pinnacle which was required to cope the structure had been mislaid. Hadria was searching for it, when Martha, seizing her chance, struck the palace a blow in its very heart, and in an instant, the whole was a wreck.
“Oh, if that is to be the way of it, why should I build?” asked Hadria.
Martha gave the command for another ornamental object which she might destroy.
“One would suppose you were a County-Council,” Hadria exclaimed, “or the practical man. No, you shall have no more beauty to annihilate, little Vandal.”
Martha, however, was now engaged in dissecting a doll, and presently a stream of sawdust from its chest announced that she had accomplished her dearest desire. She had found out what was inside that human effigy.
“I wish I could get at the sawdust thatIam stuffed with,” Hadria thought dreamily, as she watched the doll grow flabbier. “It is wonderful how little one does know one’s own sawdust. It would be convenient to feel a little surer just now, for evidently I shall need it all very soon. And I feel somewhat like that doll, with the stream pouring out and the body getting limp.”
She rose at last, and went to the window. The radiance of sun and green trees and the stir of human life; the rumble of omnibuses and the sound of wheels; the suggestion to the imagination of the river just a little way off, and the merry littlebateaux-mouches—it was too much. Hadria rang for Hannah; asked her to take the child for a walk in the Bois, stooped down to kiss the little upturned face, and went off.
In another ten minutes she was on board one of the steamboats, on her way up the river.
She had no idea whither she was going; she would leave that to chance. She only desired to feel the air and the sun and have an opportunity to think. She soothed her uneasiness at the thought of Madame Vauchelet’s disappointment by promising herself to call to-morrow. She sat watching the boats and the water and the gay banks of the river with a sense of relief, and a curious sort of fatalism, partly suggested perhaps, by the persistent movement of the boat, and the interminable succession of new scenes, all bubbling with human life, full of the traces of past events. One layer of consciousness was busily engaged in thinking out the practical considerations of the moment, another was equally busy with the objective and picturesque world of the river side. If the two or more threads of thought were not actually followed at the same instant, the alternation was so rapid as not to be perceived. What was to be done? How was the situation to be met, if the worst came to the worst? Ah! what far harder contests had gone on in these dwellings that one passed by the hundred. What lives of sordid toil had been struggled through, in the effort to earn the privilege of continuing to toil!
Hadria was inspired by keen curiosity concerning these homes and gardens, and the whole panorama that opened before her, as the little steamer puffed up the river. She longed to penetrate below the surface and decipher the strange palimpsest of human life. What scenes, what tragedies, what comedies, those bright houses and demure little villas concealed. It was not exactly consoling to remember how small her own immediate difficulties were in comparison to those of others, but it seemed to help her to face them. She would not be discouraged. She had her liberty, and that had to be paid for. Surely patience would prevail in the end. She had learnt so much since she left home; among other things, the habit of facing practical difficulties without that dismay which carefully-nurtured women inevitably feel on their first movement out of shelter. Yes, she had learnt much, surprisingly much, in the short time. Her new knowledge contained perhaps rather dangerous elements, for she had begun to realize her own power, not only as an artist, but as a woman. In this direction, had she so chosen.... Her thoughts were arrested at this point, with a wrench. She felt the temptation assail her, as of late it had been assailing her faintly, to explore this territory.
But no, that was preposterous.
It was certainly not that she regarded herself as accountable, in this matter, to any one but herself; it was not that she acknowledged the suzerainty of her husband. A mere legal claim meant nothing to her, and he knew it. But there were moral perils of no light kind to be guarded against; the danger such as a gambler runs, of being drawn away from the real objects of life, of losing hold of one’s main purpose, to say nothing of the probable moral degeneration that would result from such experiment. Yet there was no blinking the fact that the desire had been growing in Hadria to test her powers of attraction to the utmost, so as to discover exactly their range and calibre. She felt rather as a boy might feel who had come upon a cask of gunpowder, and longed to set a match to it, just to see exactly how high it would blow off the roof. She had kept the growing instincts at bay, being determined that nothing avoidable should come between her and her purpose. And then—well considering in what light most men, in their hearts, regarded women—if one might judge from their laws and their conduct and their literature, and the society that they had organized—admiration from this sex was a thing scarcely to be endured. Yet superficially, it was gratifying.
Why it should be so, was difficult to say, since it scarcely imposed upon one’s very vanity. Yet it was easy enough to understand how women who had no very dominant interest in life, might come to have a thirst for masculine homage and for power over men till it became like the gambler’s passion for play; and surely it had something in it of the same character.
The steamer was stopping now at St. Cloud. Yielding to an impulse, Hadria alighted at the landing-stage and walked on through the little town towards the palace.
The sun was deliciously hot; its rays struck through to the skin, and seemed to pour in life and well-being. The wayfarer stood looking up the steep green avenue, resting for a moment, before she began the ascent. At the top of the hill she paused again to look out over Paris, which lay spread far and wide beneath her, glittering and brilliant; the Eiffel Tower rising above domes and spires, in solitary inconsequence. It seemed to her as if she were looking upon the world and upon life, for the last time. A few weeks hence, would she be able to stand there and see the gay city at her feet? She plunged back along one of the converging avenues, yielding to the fascination of green alleys leading one knows not whither. Wandering on for some time, she finally drifted down hill again, towards the stately little garden near the palace. She was surprised by a hurrying step behind her, and Jouffroy’s voice in her ear. She was about to greet him in her usual fashion, when he stopped her by plunging head foremost into a startling tirade—about her art, and her country, and her genius, and his despair; and finally his resolve that she should not belong to the accursed list of women who gave up their art for “la famille.”
The more Hadria tried to discover what had happened and what he meant, the faster he spoke and the more wildly he gesticulated.
He had seen how she was drifting away from her work and becoming entangled in little affairs of no importance, and he would not permit it. He cared not what her circumstances might be; she had a great talent that she had no right to sacrifice to any circumstances whatever. He had come to save her. Not finding her at herapartement, he had concluded that she had taken refuge at her beloved St. Cloud.Mon Dieu!was he to allow her to be taken away from her work, dragged back to a narrow circle, crushed, broken, ruined—she who could give such a sublime gift to her century—but it was impossible! It would tear his heart. He would not permit it; she must promise him not to allow herself to be persuaded to abandon her purpose, no matter on what pretext they tried to lure her. Hadria, in vain, enquired the cause of this sudden excitement. Jouffroy only repeated his exhortations. Why did she not cut herself entirely adrift from her country, her ties?
“They are to you, Madame, an oppression, a weariness, a——”
“M. Jouffroy, I have never spoken to you about these things. I cannot see how you are in a position to judge.”
“Ah, but I know. Have I not heardcette chère Madame Bertauxdescribe the life of an English village? And have I not seen——?”
“Seen what?”
“Cette dame.I have seen her at your apartment this afternoon. Do not annihilate me, Madame; I mean not to offend you. The lady has come from England on purpose to entrap you; she came last night, and she stays at the Hotel du Louvre. She spoke to me of you.” Jouffroy raised his hands to heaven. “Ha! then I understood, and I fled hither to save you.”
“Tell me, tell me quickly, Monsieur, has she fair hair and large grey eyes. Is she tall?”
No, the lady was small, with dark hair, and brown, clever eyes.
“A lady, elegant, well-dressed, but, ah! a woman to destroy the soul of an artist merely by her presence. I told her that you had decided to remain in France, to adopt it as your country, for it was the country of your soul!”
“Good heavens!” exclaimed Hadria, unable to repress a little burst of laughter, in spite of her disappointment and foreboding.
“I told her that your friends would not let you go back to England, to the land of fogs, the land of thebourgeois. The lady seemed astonished, even indignant,” continued Jouffroy, waving his hands excitedly, “and she endeavoured to make me silent, but she did not have success, I promise you. I appealed to her. I pointed out to her your unique power. I reminded her that such power is a gift supreme to the world, which the world must not lose. For the making of little ones and the care of theménage, there were other women, but you—you were a priestess in the temple of art, you were without prejudice, without thebourgeoisconscience,grâce au ciel!you had the religion of the artist, and your worship was paid at the shrine of Apollo.Enfin, I counselled this elegant lady to return to England and to leave you in peace. Always with a perfect politeness,” added Jouffroy, panting from excess of emotion. Hadria tried in vain to gather the object of this sudden visit on the part of Henriette (for Henriette the elegant lady must certainly be).
“I must return at once,” she said. “I fear something must have gone wrong at home.” Jouffroy danced with fury.
“But I tell you, Madame, that she will drag you back to your fogs; she will tell you some foolish story, she will address herself to your pity. Your family has doubtless become ill. Families have that habit when they desire to achieve something. Bah, it is easy to become ill when one is angry, and so to make oneself pitied and obeyed. It is a common usage. Madame, beware; it is for you the critical moment. One must choose.”
“It is not always a matter of choice, M. Jouffroy.”
“Always,” he insisted. He endeavoured to induce her to linger, to make a decision on the spot. But Hadria hastened on towards the river. Jouffroy followed in despair. He ceased not to urge upon her the peril of the moment and the need for resolute action. He promised to help her by every means in his power, to watch over her career, to assist her in bringing her gift to maturity. Never before had he felt a faith so profound, or an interest so fervid in the genius of any woman. One had, after all, regarded them (“les femmes”) as accomplished animals.
“But of whom one demands the duties of human beings and the courage of heroes,” added Hadria.
“Justement,” cried Jouffroy. But Madame had taught him a superb truth. For her, he felt a sentiment of admiration and reverence the most profound. She had been to him a revelation. He entreated her to bestow upon him the privilege of watching over her career. Let her only make the wise decision now, everything would arrange itself. It needed only courage.
“This is the moment for decision. Remain now among us, and pursue your studies with a calm mind, and I promise you—I, Jouffroy, who have the right to speak on this matter—I promise you shall have a success beyond the wildest dreams of your ambition. Madame, you do not guess your own power. I know how your genius can be saved to the world; I know the artist’s nature. Have I not had the experience of twenty years? I know what feeds and rouses it, and I know what kills it. And this I tell you, Madame, that if you stay here, you have a stupendous future before you; if you return to your fogs and your tea-parties—ah, then, Madame, your genius will die and your heart will be broken.”
IT was with great reluctance that Jouffroy acceded to Hadria’s wish to return home alone. She watched the river banks, and the boats coming and passing, with a look of farewell in her eyes. She meant to hold out to the utmost limits of the possible, but she knew that the possiblehadlimits, and she awaited judgment at the bar of destiny.
She hurried home on arriving at the quay, and found Henriette waiting for her.
“What is it? Tell me at once, if anything is wrong.”
“Then you knew I was here!” exclaimed Miss Temperley.
“Yes; M. Jouffroy told me. He found me at St. Cloud. Quick, Henriette, don’t keep me in suspense.”
“There is nothing of immediate seriousness,” Henriette replied, and her sister-in-law drew a breath of relief. Tea was brought in by Hannah, and a few questions were asked and answered. Miss Temperley having been installed in an easy chair, and her cloak and hat removed, said that her stay in Paris was uncertain as to length. It would depend on many things. Hadria rang for the tray to be taken away, after tea was over, and as Hannah closed the door, a sensation of sick apprehension overcame her, for a moment. Henriette had obviously come to Paris in order to recapture the fugitive, and meant to employ all her tact in the delicate mission. She was devoted to Hubert and the children, heart and soul, and would face anything on their behalf, including the present disagreeable task. Hadria looked at her sister-in-law with admiration. She offered homage to the prowess of the enemy.
Miss Temperley held a commanding position, fortified by ideas and customs centuries old, and supported by allies on every side.
It ran through Hadria’s mind that it was possible to refuse to allow the subject to be broached, and thus escape the encounter altogether. It would save many words on both sides. But Henriette had always been in Hubert’s confidence, and it occurred to Hadria that it might be well to define her own position once more, since it was thus about to be directly and frankly attacked. Moreover, Hadria began to be fired with the spirit of battle. It was not merely for herself, but on behalf of her sex, that she longed to repudiate the insult that seemed to her, to be involved in Henriette’s whole philosophy.
However, if the enemy shewed no signs of hostility, Hadria resolved that she also would keep the truce.
Miss Temperley had already mentioned that Mrs. Fullerton was now staying at the Red House, for change of air. She had been far from well, and of course was worrying very much over these money troubles and perils ahead, as well as about Hadria’s present action. Mrs. Fullerton had herself suggested that Henriette should go over to Paris to see what could be done to patch up the quarrel.
“Ah!” exclaimed Hadria, and a cloud settled on her brow. Henriette had indeed come armedcap à pie!
There was a significant pause. “And your mission,” said Hadria at length, “is to recapture the lost bird.”
“We are considering your own good,” murmured Miss Temperley.
“If I have not always done what I ought to have done in my life, it is not for want of guidance and advice from others,” said Hadria with a smile and a sigh.
“You are giving everyone so much pain, Hadria. Do you never think of that?”
There was another long pause. The two women sat opposite one another. Miss Temperley’s eyes were bent on the carpet; Hadria’s on a patch of blue sky that could be seen through a side street, opposite.
“If you would use your ability on behalf of your sex instead of against it, Henriette, women would have cause to bless you, for all time!”
“Ah! if you did but know it, Iamusing what ability I have on their behalf,” Miss Temperley replied. “I am trying to keep them true to their noble mission. But I did not come to discuss general questions. I came to appeal to your best self, Hadria.”
“I am ready,” said Hadria. “Only, before you start, I want you to remember clearly what took place at Dunaghee before my marriage; for I foresee that our disagreement will chiefly hang upon your lapse of memory on that point, and upon my perhaps inconveniently distinct recollection of those events.”
“I wish to lay before you certain facts and certain results of your present conduct,” said Henriette.
“Very good. I wish to lay before you certain facts and certain results of your past conduct.”
“Ah! do not let us wrangle, Hadria.”
“I don’t wish to wrangle, but I must keep hold of these threads that you seem always to drop. And then there is another point: when I talked of leaving home, it was notIwho suggested that it should be for ever.”
“I know, I know,” cried Henriette hastily. “I have again and again pointed out to Hubert how wrong he was in that, and how he gave you a pretext for what you have done. I admit it and regret it deeply. Hubert lost his temper; that is the fact of the matter. He thought himself bitterly wronged by you.”
“Quite so; he felt it a bitter wrong that I should claim that liberty of action which I warned him before our marriage that Ishouldclaim. He made no objectionthen: on the contrary, he professed to agree with me; and declared that he did not care what I might think; but now he says that in acting as I have acted, I have forfeited my position, and need not return to the Red House.”
“I know. But he spoke in great haste and anger. He has made me hisconfidante.”
“And his ambassador?”
Henriette shook her head. No; she had acted entirely on her own responsibility. She could not bear to see her brother suffering. He had felt the quarrel deeply.
“On account of the stupid talk,” said Hadria. “Thatwill soon blow over.”
“On account of the talk partly. You know his sensitiveness about anything that concerns his domestic life. He acutely feels your leaving the children, Hadria. Try to put yourself in his place. Wouldyounot feel it?”
“If I were a man with two children of whom I was extremely fond, I have no doubt that I should feel it very much indeed if I lost an intelligent and trustworthy superintendent, whose services assured the children’s welfare, and relieved me of all anxiety on their account.”
“If you are going to take this hard tone, Hadria, I fear you will never listen to reason.”
“Henriette, when people look popular sentiments squarely in the face, they are always called hard, or worse. You have kept yourself thoroughly informed of our affairs. Whose parental sentiments were gratified by the advent of those children—Hubert’s or mine?”
“But you are a mother.”
Hadria laughed. “You play into my hands, Henriette. You tacitly acknowledge that it was not formygratification that those children were brought into the world (a common story, let me observe), and then you remind me that I am a mother! Your mentor must indeed be slumbering. You are simply scathing—on my behalf! Have you come all the way from England for this?”
“Youwon’tunderstand. I mean that motherhood has duties. You can’t deny that.”
“I can and I do.”
Miss Temperley stared. “You will find no human being to agree with you,” she said at length.
“That does not alter my opinion.”
“Oh, Hadria, explain yourself! You utter paradoxes. I want to understand your point of view.”
“It is simple enough. I deny that motherhood has duties except when it is absolutely free, absolutely uninfluenced by the pressure of opinion, or by any of the innumerable tyrannies that most children have now to thank for their existence.”
Miss Temperley shook her head. “I don’t see that any ‘tyranny,’ as you call it, exonerates a mother from her duty to her child.”
“There we differ. Motherhood, in our present social state, is the sign and seal as well as the means and method of a woman’s bondage. It forges chains of her own flesh and blood; it weaves cords of her own love and instinct. She agonizes, and the fruit of her agony is not even legally hers. Name me a position more abject! A woman with a child in her arms is, to me, the symbol of an abasement, an indignity, more complete, more disfiguring and terrible, than any form of humiliation that the world has ever seen.”
“You must be mad!” exclaimed Miss Temperley. “That symbol has stood to the world for all that is sweetest and holiest.”
“I know it has! So profound has been our humiliation!”
“I don’t know what to say to anyone so wrong-headed and so twisted in sentiment.”
Hadria smiled thoughtfully.
“While I am about it, I may as well finish this disclosure of feeling, which, again I warn you, isnotpeculiar to myself, however you may lay that flattering unction to your soul. I have seen and heard of many a saddening evidence of our sex’s slavery since I came to this terrible and wonderful city: the crude, obvious buying and selling that we all shudder at; but hideous as it is, to me it is far less awful than this other respectable form of degradation that everyone glows and smirks over.”
Miss Temperley clasped her hands in despair.
“I simply can’t understand you. What you say is rank heresy against all that is most beautiful in human nature.”
“Surely the rank heresy is to be laid at the door of those who degrade and enslave that which they assert to be most beautiful in human nature. But I am not speaking to convince; merely to shew where you cannot count upon me for a point of attack. Try something else.”
“But it is so strange, so insane, as it seems to me. Do you mean to throw contempt on motherhoodper se?”
“I am not discussing motherhoodper se; no woman has yet been in a position to know what it isper se, strange as it may appear. No woman has yet experienced it apart from the enormous pressure of law and opinion that has, always, formed part of its inevitable conditions. The illegal mother is hounded by her fellows in one direction; the legal mother is urged and incited in another: free motherhood is unknown amongst us. I speak of it as it is. To speak of itper se, for the present, is to discuss the transcendental.”
There was a moment’s excited pause, and Hadria then went on more rapidly. “You know well enough, Henriette, what thousands of women there are to whom the birth of their children is an intolerable burden, and a fierce misery from which many would gladly seek escape by death. And indeed manydoseek escape by death. What is the use of this eternal conspiracy of silence about that which every woman out of her teens knows as well as she knows her own name?”
But Henriette preferred to ignore that side of her experience. She murmured something about the maternal instinct, and its potency.
“I don’t deny the potency of the instinct,” said Hadria, “but I do say that it is shamefully presumed upon. Strong it obviously must be, if industrious cultivation and encouragements and threats and exhortations can make it so! All the Past as well as all the weight of opinion and training in the Present has been at work on it, thrusting and alluring and coercing the woman to her man-allotted fate.”
“Nature-allotted, if you please,” said Henriette. “There is no need for alluring or coercing.”
“Why do it then? Now, be frank, Henriette, and try not to be offended. Wouldyoufeel no sense of indignity in performing a function of this sort (however noble and so on you might think itper se), if you knew that it would be demanded of you as a duty, if you did not welcome it as a joy?”
“I should acknowledge it as a duty, if I did not welcome it as a joy.”
“In other words, you would accept the position of a slave.”
“How so?”
“By bartering your womanhood, by using these powers of body, in return for food and shelter and social favour, or for the sake of so-called ‘duty’ irrespective of—perhaps in direct opposition to your feelings. How then do you differ from the slave woman who produces a progeny of young slaves, to be disposed of as shall seem good to her perhaps indulgent master? I see no essential difference.”
“I see the difference between honour and ignominy,” said Henriette. Hadria shook her head, sadly.
“The differences are all in detail and in circumstance. I am sorry if I offend your taste. The facts are offensive. The bewildering thing is that the facts themselves never seem to offend you; only the mention of them.”
“It would take too long to go into this subject,” said Henriette. “I can only repeat that I fail to understand your extraordinary views of the holiest of human instincts.”
“Thatcatch-word! And you use it rashly, Henriette, for do you not know that the deepest of all degradation comes of misusing that which is most holy?”
“A woman who does her duty is not to be accused of misusing anything,” cried Miss Temperley hotly.
“Is there then no sin, no misuse of power in sending into the world swarms of fortuitous, poverty-stricken human souls, as those souls must be who are born in bondage, with the blended instincts of the slave and the master for a proud inheritance? It sounds awful I know, but truth is apt to sound awful. Motherhood, as our wisdom has appointed it, among civilized people, represents a prostitution of the reproductive powers, which precisely corresponds to that other abuse, which seems to most of us so infinitely more shocking.”
Miss Temperley preferred not to reply to such a remark, and the entrance of little Martha relieved the tension of the moment. Henriette, though she bore the child a grudge, could not resist her when she came forward and put up her face to be kissed.
“She is really growing very pretty,” said Henriette, in a tone which betrayed the agitation which she had been struggling to hide.
Martha ran for her doll and her blue man, and was soon busy at play, in a corner of the room, building Eiffel Towers out of stone bricks, and knocking them down again.
“I don’t yet quite understand, Henriette, your object in coming to Paris.” Hadria’s voice had grown calmer.
“I came to make an appeal to your sense of duty and your generosity.”
“Ah!”
“I came,” Henriette went on, bracing herself as if for a great effort, “to remind you that when you married, you entered into a contract which you now repudiate.”
Hadria started up, reddening with anger.
“I did no such thing, and you know it, Henriette. How do youdareto sit there and tell me that?”
“I tell you nothing but the truth. Every woman who marries enters, by that fact, into a contract.”
Miss Temperley had evidently regarded this as a strong card and played it hopefully.
Hadria was trembling with anger. She steadied her voice. “Then you actually intended toentrapme into this so-called contract, by leading me to suppose that it would mean nothing more between Hubert and myself than an unavoidable formality! You tell me this to my face, and don’t appear to see that you are confessing an act of deliberate treachery.”
“Nonsense,” cried Henriette. “There was nothing that any sane person would have objected to, in our conduct.”
Hadria stood looking down scornfully on her sister-in-law. She shrugged her shoulders, as if in bewilderment.
“And yet you would have felt yourselves stained with dishonour for the rest of your lives had you procured anythingelseon false pretences! But a woman—that is a different affair. The code of honour does not here apply, it would seem.Anyfraud may be honourably practised onher, and wild is the surprise and indignation if she objects when she finds it out.”
“You are perfectly mad,” cried Henriette, tapping angrily with her fingers on the arm of her chair.
“What I say is true, whether I be mad or sane. What you call the ‘contract’ is simply a cunning contrivance for making a woman and her possible children the legal property of a man, and for enlisting her own honour and conscience to safeguard the disgraceful transaction.”
“Ah,” said Henriette, on the watch for her opportunity, “then you admit that her honour and conscienceareenlisted?”
“Certainly, in the case of most women. That enlistment is a masterpiece of policy. To make a prisoner his own warder is surely no light stroke of genius. But that is exactly what I refused to be from the first, and no one could have spoken more plainly. And now you are shocked and pained and aggrieved because I won’t eat my words. Yet we have talked over all this, in my room at Dunaghee, by the hour. Oh! Henriette, why did you not listen to your conscience and be honest with me?”
“Hadria, you insult me.”
“Why could not Hubert choose one among the hundreds and thousands of women who would have passed under the yoke without a question, and have gladly harnessed herself to his chariot by the reins of her own conscience?”
“I would to heaven hehad!” Henriette was goaded into replying.
Hadria laughed. Then her brow clouded with pain. “Ah, why did he not meet my frankness with an equal frankness, at the time? All this trouble would have been saved us both ifonlyhe had been honest.”
“My dear, he was in love with you.”
“And so he thought himself justified in deceiving me. There isindeedwar to the knife between the sexes!” Hadria stood with her elbows on the back of a high arm-chair, her chin resting on her hands.
“It is not fair to use that word. I tell you that we both confidently expected that when you had more experience you would be like other women and adjust yourself sensibly to your conditions.”
“I see,” said Hadria, “and so it was decided that Hubert was to pretend to have no objections to my wild ideas, so as to obtain my consent, trusting to the ponderous bulk of circumstance to hold me flat and subservient when I no longer had a remedy in my power. You neither of you lack brains, at any rate.” Henriette clenched her hands in the effort of self-control.
“In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, our forecasts would have come true,” she said. “I mean——”
“That is refreshingly frank,” cried Hadria.
“We thought we acted for the best.”
“Oh, if it comes to that, the Spanish Inquisitors doubtless thought that they were acting for the best, when they made bonfires of heretics in the market-places.” Henriette bent her head and clasped the arms of the chair, tightly.
“Well, if there be any one at fault in the matter,Iam the culprit,” she said in a voice that trembled. “It wasIwho assured Hubert that experience would alter you. It was I who represented to him that though you might be impulsive, even hard at times, you could not persist in a course that would give pain, and that if you saw that any act of yours caused him to suffer, you would give it up. I was convinced that your character was good and nobleau fond, Hadria, and I have believed it up to this moment.”
Hadria drew herself together with a start, and her face darkened. “You make me regret that I ever had a good or a pitiful impulse!” she cried with passion.
She went to the window and stood leaning against the casement, with crossed arms.
Henriette turned round in her chair.
“Why do you always resist your better nature, Hadria?”
“You use it against me. It is the same with all women. Let them beware of their ‘better natures,’ poor hunted fools! for that ‘better nature’ will be used as a dog-chain, by which they can be led, like toy-terriers, from beginning to end of what they are pleased to call their lives!”
“Oh, Hadria, Hadria!” cried Miss Temperley with deep regret in her tone.
But Hadria was only roused by the remonstrance.
“It is cunning, shallow, heartless women, who really fare best in our society; its conditions suit them.Theyhave no pity, no sympathy to make a chain of;theydon’t mind stooping to conquer;theydon’t mind playing upon the weaker, baser sides of men’s natures;theydon’t mind appealing, for their own ends, to the pity and generosity of others;theydon’t mind swallowing indignity and smiling abjectly, like any woman of the harem at her lord, so that they gain their object.Thatis the sort of ‘woman’s nature’ that our conditions are busy selecting. Let us cultivate it. We live in a scientific age; the fittest survive. Let us be ‘fit.’”
“Let us be womanly, let us do our duty, let us hearken to our conscience!” cried Henriette.
“Thank you! If my conscience is going to be made into a helm by which others may guide me according to their good pleasure, the sooner that helm is destroyed the better. That is the conclusion to which you drive me and the rest of us, Henriette.”
“Charity demands that I do not believe what you say,” said Miss Temperley.
“Oh, don’t trouble to be charitable!”
Henriette heaved a deep sigh. “Hadria,” she said, “are you going to allow your petty rancour about this—well, I will call it error of ours, if you like to be severe—are you going to bear malice and ruin your own life and Hubert’s and the children’s? Are you so unforgiving, so lacking in generosity?”
“Youcall it an error.Icall it a treachery,” returned Hadria. “Why should the results of that treachery be thrust on tomyshoulders to bear? Why shouldmygenerosity be summoned to your rescue? But I suppose you calculated on that sub-consciously, at the time.”
“Hadria!”
“This is a moment for plain speaking, if ever there was one. You must have reckoned on an appeal to my generosity, and on the utter helplessness of my position when once I was safely entrapped. It was extremely clever and well thought out. Do you suppose that you would have dared to act as you did, if there had been means of redress in my hands, after marriage?”
“If Ididrely on your generosity, I admit my mistake,” said Henriette bitterly.
“And now when your deed brings its natural harvest of disaster, you and Hubert come howling, like frightened children, to have the mischief set straight again, the consequences of your treachery averted, byme, of all people on this earth!”
“You are his wife, the mother of his children.”
“In heaven’s name, Henriette, why do you always run into my very jaws?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Why do you catalogue my injuries when your point is to deny them?”
Henriette rose with a vivid flush.
“Hadria, Hubert is one of the best men in England. I——”
“When have I disputed that?”
Hadria advanced towards Miss Temperley, and stood looking her full in the face.
“I believe that Hubert has acted conscientiously, according to his standard. But I detest his standard. He did not think it wrong or treacherous to behave as he did towards me. But it isthat very factthat I so bitterly resent. I could have forgiven him a sin against myself alone, which he acknowledged to be a sin. But this is a sin against my entire sex, which he doesnotacknowledge to be a sin. It is the insolence that is implied in supposing it allowable for a man to trick a woman in that way, without the smallest damage to his self-respect, that sticks so in my throat. What does it imply as regards his attitude towards all women? Ah! it isthatwhich makes me feel so rancorous. And I resent Hubert’s calm assumption that he had a right to judge what was best for me, and even to force me, by fraud, into following his view, leaving me afterwards to adjust myself with circumstance as best I might: to make my bitter choice between unconditional surrender, and the infliction of pain and distress, on him, on my parents, on everybody. Ah, you calculated cunningly, Henriette! Iama coward about giving pain, little as you may now be disposed to credit it. You have tight hold of the end of my chain.”
Hadria was pacing restlessly up and down the room. Little Martha ran out with her doll, and offered it, as if with a view to chase away the perturbed look from Hadria’s face. The latter stooped mechanically and took the doll, smiling her thanks, and stroking the child’s fair curls tenderly. Then she recommenced her walk up and down the room, carrying the doll carefully on her arm.
“Take care of dolly,” Martha recommended, and went back to her other toys.
“Yes, Henriette, you and Hubert have made your calculations cleverly. You have advocates only too eloquent in my woman’s temperament. You have succeeded only too well by your fraud, through which I now stand here, with a life in fragments, bound, chafe as I may, to choose between alternative disasters for myself and for all of us. Had you two only acted straightly with me, and kindly allowed me to judge for myself, instead of treacherously insisting on judging for me, this knot of your tying which you naïvely bring me to unravel, would never have wrung the life out of me as it is doing now—nor would it have caused you and Hubert so much virtuous distress.”
Hadria recommenced her restless pacing to and fro.
“But, Hadria,dobe calm,dolook at the matter from our point of view. I have owned my indiscretion.” (Hadria gave a little scornful cry.) “Surely you are not going to throw over all allegiance to your husband onthataccount, even granting he was to blame.” Hadria stopped abruptly.
“I deny that I owe allegiance to a man who so treated me. I don’t deny that he had excuses. The common standards exonerate him; but, good heavens, a sense of humour, if nothing else, ought to save him from making this grotesque claim on his victim! To preach the duties of wife and mother tome!” Hadria broke into a laugh. “It is inconceivably comic.”
Henriette shrugged her shoulders. “I fear my sense of humour is defective. I can’t see the justice of repudiating the duty of one’s position, since there the positionis, an accomplished fact not to be denied. Why not make the best of it?”
“Henriette, you are amazing! Supposing a wicked bigamist had persuaded a woman to go through a false marriage ceremony, and when she became aware of her real position, imagine him saying to her, with grave and virtuous mien, ‘My dear, why repudiate the duties of your position, since there your positionis, an accomplished fact not to be denied?’”
“Oh, that’s preposterous,” cried Henriette.
“It’s preposterous and it’s parallel.”
“Hubert did not try to entrap you into doing what was wrong.”
“We need not discuss that, for it is not the point. The point is that the position (be that right or wrong) was forced on the woman in both cases by fraud, and is then used as a pretext to exact from her the desired conduct; what the author of the fraud euphoniously calls ‘duty.’”
“You are positively insulting!” cried Henriette, rising.
By this time, Hadria had allowed the doll to slip back, and its limp body was hanging down disconsolately from her elbow, although she was clutching it, with absent-minded anxiety, to her side, in the hope of arresting its threatened fall.
“Oh, look at dolly, look, look!” cried Martha reproachfully. Hadria seized its legs and pulled it back again, murmuring some consolatory promise to its mistress.
“It is strange how you succeed in putting me on the defensive, Henriette—I who have been wronged. A horrible wrong it is too. It has ruined my life. You will never know all that it implies, never, never, though I talk till Doomsday. Nobody will—except Professor Fortescue.”
Henriette gave a horrified gesture. “I believe you are in love with that man.Thatis the cause of all this wild conduct.”
Miss Temperley had lost self-control for a moment.
Hadria looked at her steadily.
“I beg your pardon. I spoke in haste, Hadria. You have your faults, but Hubert has nothing to fear from you in that respect, I am sure.”
“Really?” Hadria had come forward and was standing with her left elbow on the mantel-piece, the doll still tucked under her right arm. “And you think that I would, at all hazards, respect a legal tie which no feeling consecrates?”
“I do you that justice,” murmured Henriette, turning very white.
“You think that I should regard myself as so completely the property of a man whom I do not love, and who actively dislikes me, as to hold my very feelings in trust for him. Disabuse yourself of that idea, Henriette. I claim rights over myself, and I will hold myself in pawn for no man. This is no news either to you or to Hubert. Why pretend that it is?”
Henriette covered her face with her hands.
“I can but hope,” she said at length, “that even now you are saying these horrible things out of mere opposition. I cannot, I simplycannotbelieve, that you would bring disgrace upon us all.”
“If you chose to regard it as a disgrace that I should make so bold as to lay claim to myself, that, it seems to me, would be your own fault.” Henriette sprang forward white and trembling, and clutched Hadria’s arm excitedly.
“Ah! youcouldnot! youcouldnot! Think of your mother and father, if you will not think of your husband and children. You terrify me!”
Hadria was moved with pity at Henriette’s white quivering face.
“Don’t trouble,” she said, more gently. “There is no thunderbolt about to fall in our discreet circle.” (A hideous crash from the overturning of one of Martha’s Eiffel Towers seemed to belie the words.)
Miss Temperley’s clutch relaxed, and she gave a gasp of relief.
“Tell me, Hadria, that you did not mean what you said.”
“I can’t do that, for I meant it, every syllable.”
“Promise me then at least, that before you do anything to bring misery and disgrace on us all, you will tell us of your intention, and give us a chance of putting our side of the matter before you.”
“Of protecting your vested interests,” said Hadria; “your right of way through my flesh and spirit.”
“Of course you put it unkindly.”
“I will not make promises for the future. The future is quite enough hampered with the past, without setting anticipatory traps and springes for unwary feet. But I refuse this promise merely on general principles. I am not about to distress you in that particular way, though I think you would only have yourselves to blame if Iwere.”
Miss Temperley drew another deep breath, and the colour began to return to her face.
“So far, so good,” she said. “Now tell me—Is there nothing that would make you accept your duties?”
“Even if I were to accept what you call my duties, it would not be in the spirit that you would desire to see. It would be in cold acknowledgment of the force of existing facts—facts which I regard as preposterous, but admit to be coercive.” Henriette sank wearily into her chair.
“Do you then hold it justifiable for a woman to inflict pain on those near to her, by a conduct that she may think justifiable in itself?”
Hadria hesitated for a moment.
“A woman is so desperately entangled, and restricted, and betrayed, by common consent, in our society, that I hold her justified in using desperate means, as one who fights for dear life. She may harden her heart—if she can.”
“I am thankful to think that she very seldomcan!” cried Henriette.
“Ah! that is our weak point! For a long time to come, we shall be overpowered by our own cage-born instincts, by our feminine conscience that has been trained so cleverly to dog the woman’s footsteps, in man’s interest—his detective in plain clothes!”
“Of course, if you repudiate all moral claim——” began Henriette, weakly.
“I will not insult your intelligence by considering that remark.”
“Are you determined to harden yourself against every appeal?” Hadria looked at her sister-in-law, in silence.
“Why don’t you answer me, Hadria?”
“Because I have just been endeavouring, evidently in vain, to explain in what light I regard appeals on this point.”
“Then Hubert and the children are to be punished for what you are pleased to call his fraud—the fraud of a man in love with you, anxious to please you, to agree with you, and believing you too good and noble to allow his life to be spoilt by this girl’s craze for freedom. It is inconceivable!”
“I fear that Hubert must be prepared to endure the consequences of his actions, like the rest of us. It is the custom, I know, for the sex that men call weaker, to saddle themselves with the consequences of men’s deeds, but I think we should have a saner, and a juster world if the custom were discontinued.”
“You have missed one of the noblest lessons of life, Hadria,” cried Miss Temperley, rising to leave. “You do not understand the meaning of self-sacrifice.”
“A principle that, in woman, has been desecrated by misuse,” said Hadria. “There is no power, no quality, no gift or virtue, physical or moral, that we havenotbeen trained to misuse. Self-sacrifice stands high on the list.”
Miss Temperley shrugged her shoulders, sadly and hopelessly.
“You have fortified yourself on every side. My words only prompt you to throw up another earthwork at the point attacked. I do harm instead of good. I will leave you to think the matter over alone.” Miss Temperley moved towards the door.
“Ah, you are clever, Henriette! You know well that I am far better acquainted with the weak points of my own fortifications than you can be, who did not build them, and that when I have done with the defence against you, I shall commence the attack myself. You have all the advantages on your side. Mine is a forlorn hope:—a handful of Greeks at Thermopylae against all the host of the Great King. We are foredoomed; the little band must fall, but some day, Henriette, when you and I shall be no more troubled with these turbulent questions—some day, these great blundering hosts of barbarians will be driven back, and the Greek will conquer. Then the realm of liberty will grow wide!”
“I begin to hate the very name!” exclaimed Henriette.
Hadria’s eyes flashed, and she stood drawn up, straight and defiant, before the mantel-piece.
“Ah! there is a fiercer Salamis and a crueller Marathon yet to be fought, before the world will so much as guess what freedom means. I have no illusions now, regarding my own chances, but I should hold it as an honour to stand and fall at Thermopylae, with Leonidas and his Spartans.”
“I believe that some day you will see things with different eyes,” said Henriette.
The doll fell with a great crash, into the fender among the fire-irons, and there was a little burst of laughter. Miss Temperley passed through the door, at the same instant, with great dignity.