"However that may be, it seems to me, that a sort of shiver is going through all Society, as if it had suddenly become very much aware of things and couldn't make them out—nor itself."

"Like a creature beginning to struggle through a bad illness. I do think it is all extremely remarkable, especially the bad illness."

"You are as strange as your epoch," cried Lady Engleton.

"It is a sorry sign when one remarks health instead of disease."

"Upon my word, you have a wholesome confidence in yourself!"

"I do not, in that respect, differ from my kind," Hadria returned calmly.

"It is that which was that seems to you astonishing, not that which is to be," Lady Engleton commented, pensively. "For my part I confess I am frightened, almost terrified at times, at that which is to be."

"I am frightened, terrified, so that the thought becomes unbearable, at that which is," said Hadria.

There was a long silence. Lady Engleton appeared to be again plunged in thought.

"The maternal instinct—yes; it seems to be round that unacknowledged centre that the whole storm is raging."

"A desperate question that Society shrinks from in terror: whether women shall be expected to conduct themselves as if the instinct had been weighed out accurately, like weekly stores, and given to all alike, or whether choice and individual feeling is to be held lawful in this matter—there is the red-hot heart of the battle."

"Remember men of science are against freedom in this respect. (I do wish our man of science would make haste.)"

"They rush to the rescue when they see the sentimental defences giving way," said Hadria. "If the 'sacred privilege' and 'noblest vocation' safeguards won't hold, science must throw up entrenchments."

"I prefer the more romantic and sentimental presentment of the matter," said Lady Engleton.

"Naturally. Ah! it is pathetic, the way we have tried to make things decorative; but it won't hold out much longer. Women are driving their masters to plain speaking—the ornaments are being dragged down. And what do we find? Bare and very ugly fact. And if we venture to hint that this unsatisfactory skeleton may be modified in form, science becomes stern. She wishes things, in this department, left as they are. Women are made for purposes of reproduction; let them clearly understand that. No picking and choosing."

"Men pick and choose, it is true," observed Lady Engleton in a musing tone, as if thinking aloud.

"Ah, but that's different—a real scientific argument, though a superficial observer might not credit it. At any rate, it is quite sufficiently scientific for this particular subject. Our leaders of thought don't bring out their Sunday-best logic on this question. They lounge in dressing-gown and slippers. One gets to know the oriental pattern of that dressing-gown and the worn-down heels of those old slippers."

"They may be right though, notwithstanding their logic," said Lady Engleton.

"By good luck, not good guidance. I wonder what her Serene Highness Science would say if she heard us?"

"That we two ignorant creatures are very presumptuous."

"Yes, people always fall back on that, when they can't refute you."

Lady Engleton smiled.

"I should like to hear the question discussed by really competent persons. (Well, if luncheon is dead cold it will be his own fault.)"

"Oh, really competent persons will tell us all about the possibilities of woman: her feelings, desires, capabilities, and limitations, now and for all time to come. And the wildly funny thing is that women are ready, with open mouths, to reverently swallow this male verdict on their inherent nature, as if it were gospel divinely inspired. I may appear a little inconsistent," Hadria added with a laugh, "but I do think women are fools!"

They had strolled on along the path till they came to the schoolmistress's grave, which was green and daisy-covered, as if many years had passed since her burial. Hadria stood, for a moment, looking down at it.

"Fools, fools, unutterable, irredeemable fools!" she burst out.

"My dear, my dear, we are in a churchyard," remonstrated Lady Engleton, half laughing.

"We are at this grave," said Hadria.

"The poor woman would have been among the first to approve of the whole scheme, though it places her here beneath the daisies."

"Exactly. Am I not justified then in crying 'fool'? Don't imagine that I exclude myself," she added.

"I think you might be less liable to error if you were rather more of a fool, if I may say so," observed Lady Engleton.

"Oh error! I daresay. One can guard against that, after a fashion, by never making a stretch after truth. And the reward comes, of its kind. How green the grave is. The grass grows so fast on graves."

Lady Engleton could not bear a churchyard. It made one think too seriously.

"Oh, you needn't unless you like!" said Hadria with a laugh. "Indeed a churchyard might rather teach us what nonsense it is to take things seriously—our little affairs. This poor woman, a short while ago, was dying of grief and shame and agony, and the village was stirred with excitement, as if the solar system had come to grief. It all seemed so stupendous and important, yet now—look at that tall grass waving in the wind!"



CHAPTER XXVIII.

Professor Theobald had been engaged, for the last ten minutes, in instructing Joseph Fleming and a few stragglers, among whom was Dodge, in the characteristics of ancient architecture. He was pointing out the fine Norman window of the south transept, Joseph nodding wearily, Dodge leaning judicially on his broom and listening with attention. Joseph, as Lady Engleton remarked, was evidently bearing the Normans a bitter grudge for making interesting arches. The Professor seemed to have no notion of tempering the wind of his instruction to the shorn lambs of his audience.

"I can't understand why he does not join us," said Lady Engleton. "It must be nearly luncheon time. However, it doesn't much matter, as everyone seems to be up here. I wonder," she went on after a pause, "what the bride would think if she had heard our conversation this morning!"

"Probably she would recognize many a half-thought of her own," said Hadria.

Lady Engleton shook her head.

"They alarm me, all these ideas. For myself, I feel bound to accept the decision of wise and good men, who have studied social questions deeply."

Personal feeling had finally overcome her desire to fight off the influence of tradition.

"I do not feel competent to judge in a matter so complex, and must be content to abide by the opinions of those who have knowledge and experience."

Lady Engleton thus retreated hastily behind cover. That was a strategic movement always available in difficulties, and it left one's companion in speculation alone in the open, arrogantly sustaining an eagle-gaze in the sun's face. The advantages of feminine humility were obvious. One could come out for a skirmish and then run for shelter, in awkward moments. No woman ought to venture out on the bare plain without a provision of the kind.

Hadria had a curious sensation of being so exposed, when Lady Engleton retreated behind her "good and wise men," and she had the usual feminine sense of discomfort in the feeling of presumption that it produced. Heredity asserted itself, as it will do, in the midst of the fray, just when its victim seems to have shaken himself free from the mysterious obsession. But Hadria did not visibly flinch. Lady Engleton received the impression that Mrs. Temperley was too sure of her own judgment to defer even to the wisest.

She experienced a pleasant little glow of humility, wrapping herself in it, as in a protecting garment, and unconsciously comparing her more moderate and modest attitude favourably with her companion's self-confidence. Just at that moment, Hadria's self-confidence was gasping for breath. But her sense of the comic in her companion's tactics survived, and set her off in an apparently inconsequent laugh, which goaded Lady Engleton into retreating further, to an encampment of pure orthodoxy.

"I fear there is an element of the morbid, in all this fretful revolt against the old-established destiny of our sex," she said.

The advance-guard of Professor Theobald's party was coming up. The Professor himself still hung back, playing the Ancient Mariner to Joseph Fleming's Wedding Guest. Most unwilling was that guest, most pertinacious that mariner.

Hadria had turned to speak to Dodge, who had approached, broom in hand. "Seems only yesterday as we was a diggin' o' that there grave, don't it, mum?" he remarked pleasantly, including Hadria in the credit of the affair, with native generosity.

"It does indeed, Dodge. I see you have been tidying it up and clearing away the moss from the name. I can read it now. Ellen Jervis.—Requiescat in pace."

"We was a wonderin' wot that meant, me and my missus."

Hadria explained.

"Oh indeed, mum. She didn't die in peace, whatever she be a doin' now, not she didn't, pore thing. I was jest a tellin' the gentleman" (Dodge indicated Professor Theobald with a backward movement of the thumb), "about the schoolmarm. He was talkin' like a sermon—beautiful—about the times wen the church was built; and about them as come over from France and beat the English—shameful thing for our soldiers, 'pears to me, not as I believes all them tales. Mr. Walker says as learnin' is a pitfall, wich I don't swaller everything as Mr. Walker says neither. Seems to me as it don't do to be always believin' wot's told yer, or there's no sayin' wot sort o' things you wouldn't come to find inside o' yer, before you'd done."

Hadria admitted the danger of indiscriminate absorption, but pointed out that if caution were carried too far, one might end by finding nothing inside of one at all, which also threatened to be attended with inconvenience.

Dodge seemed to feel that the desagrements in this last case were trivial as compared with those of the former.

"Dodge is a born sceptic," said Lady Engleton. "What would you say, Dodge, if some tiresome, reasonable person were to come and point out something to you that you couldn't honestly deny, and yet that seemed to upset all the ideas that you had felt were truest and best?"

Dodge scratched his head. "I should say as what he said wasn't true," replied Dodge.

"But if you couldn't help seeing that it was true?"

"That ud be arkard," Dodge admitted.

"Then what would you do?"

Dodge leant upon the broom-handle, apparently in profound thought. His words were waited for.

"I think," he announced at last, "as I shouldn't do nothin' partic'lar."

"Dodge, you really are an oracle!" Hadria exclaimed. "What could more simply describe the action of our Great Majority?"

"You are positively impish in your mood to-day!" exclaimed Lady Engleton. "What should we do without our Great Majority, as you call it? It is absolutely necessary to put some curb on the wild impulses of pure reason"—a sentiment that Hadria greeted with chuckles of derision.

Joseph Fleming was looking longingly towards the grave, but his face was resigned, for the Ancient Mariner had him button-holed securely.

"What are they lingering for so long, I wonder?" cried Lady Engleton impatiently. "Professor Theobald is really too instructive to-day. I will go and hurry him."

Joseph welcomed her as his deliverer.

"I was merely waiting for you two ladies to move; I would have come on with Mr. Fleming. I am extremely sorry," said the Professor.

He followed Lady Engleton down the path between the graves, with something of the same set expression that had been on his face when he came up the path of the cottage garden to admire the baby.

"It appears that we were all waiting for each other," said Lady Engleton.

"This 'ere's the young woman's grave, sir—Ellen Jervis—'er as I was a tellin' you of," said Dodge, pointing an earth-stained finger at the mound.

"Oh, yes; very nice," said the Professor vaguely. Hadria's laugh disconcerted him. "I mean—pretty spot—well chosen—well made."

Hadria continued to laugh. "I never heard less skilled comment on a grave!" she exclaimed. "It might be a pagoda!"

"It's not so easy as you seem to imagine to find distinctive epithets. I challenge you. Begin with the pagoda."

"One of the first canons of criticism is never to attempt the feat yourself; jeer rather at others."

"The children don't like the new schoolmarm near so well as this 'un," observed Dodge, touching the grave with his broom. "Lord, it was an unfort'nate thing, for there wasn't a better girl nor she were in all Craddock (as I was a tellin' of you, sir), not when she fust come as pupil teacher. It was all along of her havin' no friends, and her mother far away. She used to say to me at times of an afternoon wen she was a passin' through the churchyard—'Dodge,' says she, 'do you know I have no one to care for, or to care for me, in all the world?' I used to comfort her like, and say as there was plenty in Craddock as cared for her, but she always shook her head, sort o' sad."

"Poor thing!" Lady Engleton exclaimed.

"And one mornin' a good time after, I found her a cryin' bitter, just there by her own grave, much about where the gentleman 'as his foot at this moment" (the Professor quickly withdrew it). "It was in the dusk o' the evenin', and she was a settin' on the rail of old Squire Jordan's grave, jes' where you are now, sir. We were sort o' friendly, and wen I heard 'er a taking on so bad, I jes' went and stood alongside, and I sez, 'Wy Ellen Jervis,' I sez, 'wot be you a cryin' for?' But she kep' on sobbin' and wouldn't answer nothin'. So I waited, and jes' went on with my work a bit, and then I sez again, 'Ellen Jervis, wot be you a cryin' for?' And then she took her hands from her face and she sez, 'Because I am that miserable,' sez she, and she broke out cryin' wuss than ever. 'Dear, dear,' I sez, 'wot is it? Can't somebody do nothin' for you?'

"'No; nobody in the world can help me, and nobody wants to; it would be better if I was under there.' And she points to the ground just where she lies now—I give you my word she did—and sure enough, before another six months had gone by, there she lay under the sod, 'xacly on the spot as she had pointed to. She was a sinner, there's no denyin', but she 'ad to suffer for it more nor most."

"Very sad," observed Professor Theobald nervously, with a glance at Hadria, as if expecting derision.

"It is a hard case," said Lady Engleton, "but I suppose error has to be paid for."

"Well, I don't know 'xacly," said Dodge, "it depends."

"On the sex," said Hadria.

"I have known them as spent all their lives a' injurin' of others, and no harm seemed to come to 'em. And I've seed them as wouldn't touch a fly and always doin' their neighbours a kind turn, wot never 'ad a day's luck."

"Let us hope it will be made up in the next world," said Lady Engleton. Dodge hoped it would, but there was something in the turn of his head that seemed to denote a disposition to base his calculations on this, rather than on the other world. He was expected home by his wife, at this hour, so wishing the company good day, and pocketing the Professor's gratuity with a gleam of satisfaction in his shrewd and honest face, he trudged off with his broom down the path, and out by the wicket-gate into the village street.

"I never heard that part of the story before," said Lady Engleton, when the gravedigger had left.

It was new to everybody. "It brings her nearer, makes one realize her suffering more painfully."

Hadria was silent.

Professor Theobald cast a quick, scrutinizing glance at her.

"I can understand better now how you were induced to take the poor child, Mrs. Temperley," Lady Engleton remarked.

They were strolling down the path, and Professor Theobald was holding open the gate for his companions to pass through. His hand seemed to shake slightly.

"I don't enjoy probing my motives on that subject," said Hadria.

"Why? I am sure they were good."

"I can't help hoping that that child may live to avenge her mother; to make some man know what it is to be horribly miserable—but, oh, I suppose it's like trying to reach the feelings of a rhinoceros!"

"There you are much mistaken, Mrs. Temperley," said the Professor. "Men are as sensitive, in some respects, as women."

"So much the better."

"Then do you think it quite just to punish one man for the sin of another?"

"No; but there is a deadly feud between the sexes: it is a hereditary vendetta: the duty of vengeance is passed on from generation to generation."

"Oh, Mrs. Temperley!" Lady Engleton's tone was one of reproach.

"Yes, it is vindictive, I know; one does not grow tender towards the enemy at the grave of Ellen Jervis."

"At least, there were two sinners, not only one."

"Only one dies of a broken heart."

"But why attempt revenge?"

"Oh, a primitive instinct. And anything is better than this meek endurance, this persistent heaping of penalties on the scapegoat."

"No good ever came of mere revenge, however," said Professor Theobald.

"Sometimes that is the only form of remonstrance that is listened to," said Hadria. "When people have the law in their own hands and Society at their back, they can afford to be deaf to mere verbal protest."

"As for the child," said Lady Engleton, "she will be in no little danger of a fate like her mother's."

Hadria's face darkened.

"At least then, she shall have some free and happy hours first; at least she shall not be driven to it by the misery of moral starvation, starvation of the affections. She shall be protected from the solemn fools—with sawdust for brains and a mechanical squeaker for heart—who, on principle, cut off from her mother all joy and all savour in life, and then punished her for falling a victim to the starved emotional condition to which they had reduced her."

"The matter seems complex," said Lady Engleton, "and I don't see how revenge comes in."

"It is a passion that has never been eradicated. Oh, if I could but find that man!"

"A man is a hard thing to punish,—unless he is in love with one."

"Well, let him be in love!" cried Hadria fiercely.



CHAPTER XXIX.

The sound of music stole over the gardens of the Priory, at sunset. It was the close of one of the most exquisite days of Spring. A calm had settled over the country with the passing away of the sun-god. His attendant winds and voices had been sacrificed on his funeral pyre.

Two figures sat on the terrace by the open window of the drawing-room, listening to the utterance, in music, of a tumultuous, insurgent spirit. In Professor Fortescue, the musical passion was deeply rooted, as it is in most profoundly sympathetic and tender natures. Algitha anxiously watched the effect of her sister's playing on her companion.

The wild power of the composer was not merely obvious, it was overwhelming. It was like "a sudden storm among mountains," "the wind-swept heavens at midnight," "the lonely sea": he struggled for the exactly-fitting simile. There was none, because of its many-sidedness. Loneliness remained as an ever-abiding quality. There were moon-glimpses and sun-bursts over the scenery of the music; there was sweetness, and a vernal touch that thrilled the listeners as with the breath of flowers and the fragrance of earth after rain, but always, behind all fancy and grace and tenderness, and even passion, lurked that spectral loneliness. The performer would cease for some minutes, and presently begin again in a new mood. The music was always characteristic, often wild and strange, yet essentially sane.

"There is a strong Celtic element in it," said the Professor. "This is a very wonderful gift. I suppose one never does really know one's fellows: her music to-night reveals to me new sides of Hadria's character."

"I confess they alarm me," said Algitha.

"Truly, this is not the sort of power that can be safely shut up and stifled. It is the sort of power for which everything ought to be set aside. That is my impression of it."

"I am worried about Hadria," Algitha said. "I know her better than most people, and I know how hard she takes things and what explosive force that musical instinct of hers has. Yet, it is impossible, as things are, for her to give it real utterance. She can only open the furnace door now and then."

The Professor shook his head gravely. "It won't do: it isn't safe. And why should such a gift be lost?"

"That's what I say! Yet what is to be done? There is no one really to blame. As for Hubert, I am sorry for him. He had not the faintest idea of Hadria's character, though she did her best to enlighten him. It is hard for him (since he feels it so) and it is desperate for her. You are such an old friend, that I feel I may speak to you about it. You see what is going on, and I know it is troubling you as it does me."

"It is indeed. If I am not very greatly mistaken, here is real musical genius of the first order, going to waste: strong forces being turned in upon the nature, to its own destruction; and, as you say, it seems as if nothing could be done. It is the more ironically cruel, since Hubert is himself musical."

"Oh, yes, but in quite a different way. His fetish is good taste, or what he thinks such. Hadria's compositions set his teeth on edge. His nature is conventional through and through. He fears adverse comment more than any earthly thing. And yet the individual opinions that compose the general 'talk' that he so dreads, are nothing to him. He despises them heartily. But he would give his soul (and particularly Hadria's) rather than incur a whisper from people collectively."

"That is a very common trait. If we feared only the opinions that we respect, our fear would cover but a small area."

The music stole out again through the window. The thoughts of the listeners were busy. It was not until quite lately that Professor Fortescue had fully realised the nature of Hadria's present surroundings. It had taken all his acuteness and his sympathy to enable him to perceive the number and strength of the little threads that hampered her spontaneity. As she said, they were made of heart-strings. A vast spider's web seemed to spread its tender cordage round each household, for the crippling of every winged creature within its radius. Fragments of torn wings attested the struggles that had taken place among the treacherous gossamer.

"And the maddening thing is," cried Algitha, "that there is nobody to swear at. Swearing at systems and ideas, as Hadria says, is a Barmecide feast to one's vindictiveness."

"It is the tyranny of affection that has done so much to ruin the lives of women," the Professor observed, in a musing tone.

Then after a pause: "I fear your poor mother has never got over your little revolt, Algitha."

"Never, I am sorry to say. If I had married and settled in Hongkong, she would scarcely have minded, but as it is, she feels deserted. Of course the boys are away from home more than I am, yet she is not grieved at that. You see how vast these claims are. Nothing less than one's entire life and personality will suffice."

"Your mother feels that you are throwing your life away, remember. But truly it seems, sometimes, as if people were determined to turn affection into a curse instead of a blessing!"

"I never think of it in any other light," Algitha announced serenely.

The Professor laughed. "Oh, there are exceptions, I hope," he said. "Love, like everything else that is great, is very, very rare. We call the disposition to usurp and absorb another person by that name, but woe betide him or her who is the object of such a sentiment. Yet happily, the real thing is to be found now and again. And from that arises freedom."

Hadria was playing some joyous impromptu, which seemed to express the very spirit of Freedom herself.

"I think Hadria has something of the gipsy in her," said Algitha. "She is so utterly and hopelessly unfitted to be the wife of a prim, measured, elegant creature like Hubert—good fellow though he is—and to settle down for life at Craddock Dene."

"Yes," returned the Professor, "it has occurred to me, more than once, that there must be a drop of nomad blood somewhere among the ancestry."

"Hadria always says herself, that she is a vagabond in disguise."

He laughed. Then, as he drew out a tobacco-pouch from his pocket and proceeded to light his pipe, he went on, in quiet meditative fashion, as if thinking aloud: "The fact of the matter is, that in this world, the dead weight of the mass bears heavily upon the exceptional natures. It comes home to one vividly, in cases like this. The stupidity and blindness of each individual goes to build up the dead wall, the impassable obstacle, for some other spirit. The burden that we have cast upon the world has to be borne by our fellow man or woman, and perhaps is doomed to crush a human soul."

"It seems to me that most people are engaged in that crushing industry," said Algitha with a shrug. "Don't I know their bonnets, and their frock-coats and their sneers!"

The Professor smiled. He thought that most of us were apt to take that attitude at times. The same spirit assumed different forms. "While we are sneering at our fellow mortal, and assuring him loftily that he can certainly prevail, if only he is strong enough, it may be our particular dulness or our hardness that is dragging him down to a tragic failure, before our eyes."

The sun was low when the player came out to the terrace and took her favourite seat on the parapet. The gardens were steeped in profound peace. One could hear no sound for miles round. The broad country made itself closely felt by its stirring silence. The stretches of fields beyond fields, the woodlands in their tender green, the long, long sweep of the quiet land, formed a benign circle round the garden, and led the sense of peace out and out to the horizon, where the liquid light of the sky touched the hills.

The face of the Professor had a transparent look and a singular beauty of expression, such as is seen on the faces of the dead, or on the faces of those who are carried beyond themselves by some generous enthusiasm.

They watched, in silence, the changes creeping over the heavens, the subtle transmutations of tint; the fairylands of cloud, growing like dreams, and melting in golden annihilation; the more delicate and exquisite, the sooner the end.

The first pale hints of splendour had spread, till the whole West was throbbing with the radiance. But it was short-lived. The soul of the light, with its vital vibrating quality, seemed to die, and then slowly the glow faded, till every sparkle was gone, and the amphitheatre of the sky lay cold, and dusk, and empty. It was not till the last gleam had melted away that a word was spoken.

"It is like a prophecy," said Hadria.

"To-morrow the dawn, remember."

Hadria's thoughts ran on in the silence.

The dawn? Yes; but all that lost splendour, those winged islands, those wild ranges of mountain where the dreams dwell; to-morrow's dawn brings no resurrection for them. Other pageants there will be, other cloud-castles, but never again just those.

Had the Professor been following her thoughts?

"Life," he said, "offers her gifts as the Sibyl her books; they grow fewer as we refuse them."

"Ah! that is the truth that clamours in my brain, warning and pointing to an empty temple, like the deserted sky, a little while ahead."

"Be warned then."

"Ah! but what to do? I am out of myself now with the spring; there are so many benign influences. I too have winged islands, and wild ranges where the dreams dwell; life is a fairy-tale; but there is always that terror of the departure of the sun."

"Carpe diem."

Hadria turned a startled and eager face towards the Professor, who was leaning back in his chair, thoughtfully smoking. The smoke curled away serenely through the calm air of the evening.

"You have a great gift," he said.

"One is afraid of taking a thing too seriously because it is one's own."

The Professor turned almost angrily.

"Good heavens, what does it matter whose it is? There may be a sort of inverted vanity in refusing fair play to a power, on that ground. Alas! here is one of the first morbid signs of the evil at work upon you. If you had been wholesomely moving and striving in the right direction, do you think you would have been guilty of that piece of egotism?"

"Vanity pursues one into hidden corners of the mind. I am so used to that sort of spirit among women. Apparently I have caught the infection."

"I would not let it go farther," advised the Professor.

"To do myself justice, I think it is superficial," said Hadria with a laugh. "I would dare anything, anything for a chance of freedom, for——," she broke off, hesitating. "I remember once—years ago, when I was quite a girl—seeing a young ash-tree that had got jammed into a chink so that it couldn't grow straight, or spread, as its inner soul, poor stripling, evidently inspired it to grow. Outside, there were hundreds of upright, vigorous, healthful young trees, fulfilling that innate idea in apparent gladness, and with obvious general advantage, since they were growing into sound, valuable trees, straight of trunk, nobly developed. I felt like the poor sapling in the cranny, that had just the same natural impetus of healthy growth as all the others, but was forced to become twisted, and crooked, and stunted and wretched. I think most women have to grow in a cranny. It is generally known as their Sphere." Algitha gave an approving chuckle. "I noticed," Hadria added, "that the desperate struggle to grow of that young tree had begun to loosen the masonry of the edifice that cramped it. There was a great dangerous-looking crack right across the building. The tree was not saved from deformity, but it had its revenge! Some day that noble institution would come down by the run."

"Yes. Well, the thing to do is to get out of it," said the Professor.

"You really advise that?"

"Advise? One dare not advise. It is too perilous. No general theories will hold in all instances."

"Tell me," said Hadria, "what are the qualities in a human being that make him most serviceable, or least harmful?"

"What qualities?" Professor Fortescue watched the smoke of his pipe curling away, as if he expected to find the answer in its coils. He answered slowly, and with an air of reflection.

"Mental integrity, and mercy. A resolute following of reason (in which I should include insight) to its conclusion, though the heavens fall, and an unfailing fellow-feeling for the pain and struggle and heart-ache and sin that life is so full of. But one must add the quality of imagination. Without imagination and its fruits, the world would be a howling wilderness."

"I wish you would come down with me, some day, to the East End and hold out the hand of fellowship to some of the sufferers there," cried Algitha. "I am, at times, almost in despair at the mass of evil to be fought against, but somehow you always make me feel, Professor, that the race has all the qualities necessary for redemption enfolded within itself."

"But assuredly it has!" cried the Professor. "And assuredly those redeeming qualities will germinate. Otherwise the race would extinguish itself in cruelty and corruption. Let people talk as they please about the struggle for existence, it is through the development of the human mind and the widening of human mercy that better things will come."

"One sees, now and then, in a flash, what the world may some day be," said Hadria. "The vision comes, perhaps, with the splendour of a spring morning, or opens, scroll-like, in a flood of noble music. It sounds unreal, yet it brings a sense of conviction that is irresistible."

"I think it was Pythagoras who declared that the woes of men are the work of their own hands," said the Professor. "So are their joys. Nothing ever shakes my belief that what the mind of man can imagine, that it can achieve."

"But there are so many pulling the wrong way," said Algitha sadly.

"Ah, one man may be miserable through the deeds of others; the race can only be miserable through its own."

After a pause, Algitha put a question: How far was it justifiable to give pain to others in following one's own idea of right and reasonable? How far might one attempt to live a life of intellectual integrity and of the widest mercy that one's nature would stretch to?

Professor Fortescue saw no limits but those of one's own courage and ability. Algitha pointed out that in most lives the limit occurred much sooner. If "others"—those tyrannical and absorbent "others"—had intricately bound up their notions of happiness with the prevention of any such endeavour, and if those notions were of the usual negative, home-comfort-and-affection order, narrowly personal, fruitful in nothing except a sort of sentimental egotism that spread over a whole family—what Hadria called an egotism a douze—how far ought these ideas to be respected, and at what cost?

Professor Fortescue was unqualified in his condemnation of the sentiment which erected sacrificial altars in the family circle. He spoke scornfully of the doctrine of renunciation, so applied, and held the victims who brought their gifts of power and liberty more culpable than those who demanded them, since the duty of resistance to recognised wrong was obvious, while great enlightenment was needed to teach one to forego an unfair privilege or power that all the world concurred in pressing upon one.

"Then you think a person—even a feminine person—justified in giving pain by resisting unjust demands?"

"I certainly think that all attempts to usurp another person's life on the plea of affection should be stoutly resisted. But I recognise that cases must often occur when resistance is practically impossible."

"One ought not to be too easily melted by the 'shrieks of a near relation,'" said Hadria. "Ah, I have a good mind to try. I don't fear any risk for myself, nor any work; the stake is worth it. I don't want to grow cramped and crooked, like my poor ash-tree. Perhaps this may be a form of vanity too; I don't know, I was going to say I don't care."

The scent of young leaves and of flowers came up, soft and rich from the garden, and as Hadria leant over the parapet, a gust of passionate conviction of power swept over her; not merely of her own personal power, but of some vast, flooding, beneficent well-spring from which her own was fed. And with the inrush, came a glimpse as of heaven itself.

"I wonder," she said after a long silence, "why it is that when we know for dead certain, we call it faith."

"Because, I suppose, our certainty is certainty only for ourselves. If you have found some such conviction to guide you in this wild world, you are very fortunate. We need all our courage and our strength——"

"And just a little more," Hadria added.

"Yes; sometimes just a little more, to save us from its worst pitfalls."

It struck both Hadria and her sister that the Professor was looking very ill and worn this evening.

"You are always giving help and sympathy to others, and you never get any yourself!" Hadria exclaimed.

But the Professor laughed, and asserted that he was being spoilt at Craddock Dene. They had risen, and were strolling down the yew avenue. A little star had twinkled out.

"I am very glad to have Professor Fortescue's opinion of your composition, Hadria. I was talking to him about you, and he quite agrees with me."

"What? that I ought to——?"

"That you ought not to go on as you are going on at present."

"But that is so vague."

"I suppose you have long ago tried all the devices of self-discipline?" said the Professor. "There are ways, of course, of arming oneself against minor difficulties, of living within a sort of citadel. Naturally much force has to go in keeping up the defences, but it is better than having none to keep up."

Hadria gave a quiet smile. "There is not a method, mental or other, that I have not tried, and tried hard. If it had not been for the sternest self-discipline, my mind at this moment, would be so honeycombed with small pre-occupations (pleasant and otherwise), that it would be incapable of consecutive ideas of any kind. As it is, I feel a miserable number of holes here"—she touched her brow—"a loss of absorbing power, at times, and a mental slackness that is really alarming. What remains of me has been dragged ashore as from a wreck, amidst a rush of wind and wave. But just now, thanks greatly to your sympathy and Algitha's, I seem restored to myself. I can never describe the rapture of that sensation to one who has never felt himself sinking down and down into darkness, to a dim hell, where the doom is a slow decay instead of the fiery pains of burning."

"This is all wrong, wrong!" cried the Professor anxiously.

"Ah! but I feel now, such certainty, such courage. It seems as if Fate were giving me one more chance. I have often run very close to making a definite decision—to dare everything rather than await this fool's disaster. But then comes that everlasting feminine humility, sneaking up with its simper: 'Is not this presumptuous, selfish, mistaken, wrong? What business have you, one out of so many, to break roughly through the delicate web that has been spun for your kindly detention?' Of course my retort is: 'What business have they to spin the web?' But one can never get up a real sense of injured innocence. It is always the spiders who seem injured and innocent. However, this time I am going to try, though the heavens fall!"

A figure appeared, in the dusk, at the further end of the avenue. It proved to be Miss Du Prel, who had come to find Hadria. Henriette had arrived unexpectedly by the late afternoon train, and Valeria had volunteered to announce her arrival to her sister-in-law.

"Ah!" exclaimed Hadria, "heaven helps him who helps himself! This will fit in neatly with my plans."



CHAPTER XXX.

Valeria Du Prel, finding that Miss Temperley proposed a visit of some length, returned to town by the early morning train.

"Valeria, do you know anyone in Paris to whom you could give me a letter of introduction?" Hadria asked, at the last moment, when there was just time to write the letter, and no more.

"Are you going to Paris?" Valeria asked, startled.

"Please write the letter and I will tell you some day what I want it for."

"Nothing very mad, I hope?"

"No, only a little—judiciously mad."

"Well, there is Madame Bertaux, in the Avenue Kleber, but her you know already. Let me see. Oh yes, Madame Vauchelet, a charming woman; very kind and very fond of young people. She is about sixty; a widow; her husband was in the diplomatic service."

Valeria made these hurried comments while writing the letter.

"She is musical too, and will introduce you, perhaps, to the great Joubert, and others of that set. You will like her, I am sure. She is one of the truly good people of this world. If you really are going to Paris, I shall feel happier if I know that Madame Vauchelet is your friend."

Sophia's successor announced that the pony-cart was at the door.

Miss Du Prel looked rather anxiously at Hadria and her sister-in-law, as they stood on the steps to bid her good-bye. There was a look of elation mixed with devilry, in Hadria's face. The two figures turned and entered the house together, as the pony-cart passed through the gate.

Hadria always gave Miss Temperley much opportunity for the employment of tact, finding this tact more elucidating than otherwise to the designs that it was intended to conceal; it affected them in the manner of a magnifying-glass. About a couple of years ago, the death of her mother had thrown Henriette on her own resources, and set free a large amount of energy that craved a legitimate outlet. The family with whom she was now living in London, not being related to her, offered but limited opportunities.

Henriette's eye was fixed, with increasing fondness, upon the Red House. There lay the callow brood marked out by Nature and man, for her ministrations. With infinite adroitness, Miss Temperley questioned her sister-in-law, by inference and suggestion, about the affairs of the household. Hadria evaded the attempt, but rejoiced, for reasons of her own, that it was made. She began to find the occupation diverting, and characteristically did not hesitate to allow her critic to form most alarming conclusions as to the state of matters at the Red House. She was pensive, and mild, and a little surprised when Miss Temperley, with a suppressed gasp, urged that the question was deeply serious. It amused Hadria to reproduce, for Henriette's benefit, the theories regarding the treatment and training of children that she had found current among the mothers of the district.

Madame Bertaux happened to call during the afternoon, and that outspoken lady scoffed openly at these theories, declaring that women made idiots of themselves on behalf of their children, whom they preposterously ill-used with unflagging devotion.

"The moral training of young minds is such a problem," said Henriette, after the visitor had left, "it must cause you many an anxious thought."

Hadria arranged herself comfortably among cushions, and let every muscle relax.

"The boys are so young yet," she said drowsily. "I have no doubt that will all come, later on."

"But, my dear Hadria, unless they are trained now——"

"Oh, there is plenty of time!"

"Do you mean to say——?"

"Only what other people say. Nothing in the least original, I assure you. I see the folly and the inconvenience of that now. I have consulted hoary experience. I have sat reverently at the feet of old nurses. I have talked with mothers in the spirit of a disciple, and I have learnt, oh, so much!"

"Mothers are most anxious about the moral training of their little ones," said Henriette, in some bewilderment.

"Of course, but they don't worry about it so early. One can't expect accomplished morality from poor little dots of five and six. The charm of infancy would be gone."

Miss Temperley explained, remonstrated. Hadria was limp, docile, unemphatic. Perhaps Henriette was right, she didn't know. A sense of honour? (Hadria suppressed a smile.) Could one, after all, expect of six what one did not always get at six and twenty? Morals altogether seemed a good deal to ask of irresponsible youth. Henriette could not overrate the importance of early familiarity with the difference between right and wrong. Certainly it was important, but Hadria shrank from an extreme view. One must not rush into it without careful thought.

"But meanwhile the children are growing up!" cried Henriette, in despair.

Hadria had not found that experienced mothers laid much stress on that fact. Besides, there was considerable difficulty in the matter. Henriette did not see it. The difference between right and wrong could easily be taught to a child.

Perhaps so, but it seemed to be thought expedient to defer the lesson till the distant future; at least, if one might judge from the literature especially designed for growing minds, wherein clever villainy was exalted, and deeds of ferocious cruelty and revenge occurred as a daily commonplace among heroes. The same policy was indicated by the practice of allowing children to become familiar with the sight of slaughter, and of violence of every kind towards animals, from earliest infancy. Hadria concluded from all this, that it was thought wise to postpone the moral training of the young till a more convenient season.

Henriette looked at her sister-in-law, with a sad and baffled mien. Hadria's expression was solemn, and as much like that of Mrs. Walker as she could make it, without descending to obvious caricature.

"Do you think it quite wise, Henriette, to run dead against the customs of ages? Do you think it safe to ignore the opinion of countless generations of those who were older and wiser than ourselves?"

"Dear me, how you have changed!" cried Miss Temperley.

"Advancing years; the sobering effects of experience," Hadria explained. She was grieved to find Henriette at variance with those who had practical knowledge of education. As the child grew up, one could easily explain to him that the ideas and impressions that he might have acquired, in early years, were mostly wrong, and had to be reversed. That was quite simple. Besides, unless he were a born idiot of criminal tendencies, he was bound to find it out for himself.

"But, my dear Hadria, it is just the early years that are the impressionable years. Nothing can quite erase those first impressions."

"Oh, do you think so?" said Hadria mildly.

"Yes, indeed, I think so," cried Henriette, losing her temper.

"Oh, well of course you may be right."

Hadria had brought out a piece of embroidery (about ten years old), and was working peacefully.

On questions of hygiene, she was equally troublesome. She had taken hints, she said, from mothers of large families. Henriette laid stress upon fresh air, even in the house. Hadria believed in fresh air; but was it not going a little far to have it in the house?

Henriette shook her head.

Fresh air was always necessary. In moderation, perhaps, Hadria admitted. But the utmost care was called for, to avoid taking cold. She laid great stress upon that. Children were naturally so susceptible. In all the nurseries that she had visited, where every possible precaution was taken against draughts, the children were incessantly taking cold.

"Perhaps the precautions made them delicate," Henriette suggested. But this paradox Hadria could not entertain. "Take care of the colds, and the fresh air will take care of itself," was her general maxim.

"But, my dear Hadria, do you mean to tell me that the people about here are so benighted as really not to understand the importance to the system of a constant supply of pure air?"

Hadria puckered up her brow, as if in thought. "Well," she said, "several mothers have mentioned it, but they take more interest in fluid magnesia and tonics."

Henriette looked dispirited.

At any rate, there was no reason why Hadria should not be more enlightened than her neighbours, on these points. Hadria shook her head deprecatingly. She hoped Henriette would not mind if she quoted the opinion of old Mr. Jordan, whose language was sometimes a little strong. He said that he didn't believe all that "damned nonsense about fresh air and drains!" Henriette coughed.

"It is certainly not safe to trust entirely to nurses, however devoted and experienced," she insisted. Hadria shrugged her shoulders. If the nurse did constitutionally enjoy a certain stuffiness in her nurseries—well the children were out half the day, and it couldn't do them much harm. (Hadria bent low over her embroidery.)

The night?

"Oh! then one must, of course, expect to be a little stuffy."

"But," cried Miss Temperley, almost hopeless, "impure air breathed, night after night, is an incessant drain on the strength, even if each time it only does a little harm."

Hadria smiled over her silken arabesques. "Oh, nobody ever objects to things that only do a little harm." There was a moment of silence.

Henriette thought that Hadria must indeed have changed very much during the last years. Well, of course, when very young, Hadria said, one had extravagant notions: one imagined all sorts of wild things about the purposes of the human brain: not till later did one realize that the average brain was merely an instrument of adjustment, a sort of spirit-level which enabled its owner to keep accurately in line with other people. Henriette ought to rejoice that Hadria had thus come to bow to the superiority of the collective wisdom.

But Henriette had her doubts.

Hadria carefully selected a shade of silk, went to the light to reassure herself of its correctness, and returned to her easy chair by the fire. Henriette resumed her knitting. She was making stockings for her nephews.

"Henriette, don't you think it would be rather a good plan if you were to come and live here and manage affairs—morals, manners, hygiene, and everything?"

Henriette's needles stopped abruptly, and a wave of colour came into her face, and a gleam of sudden joy to her eyes.

"My dear, what do you mean?"

"Hubert, of course, would be only too delighted to have you here, and I want to go away."

"For heaven's sake——"

"Not exactly for heaven's sake. For my own sake, I suppose: frankly selfish. It is, perhaps, the particular form that my selfishness takes—an unfortunately conspicuous form. So many of us can have a nice cosy pocket edition that doesn't show. However, that's not the point. I know you would be happier doing this than anything else, and that you would do it perfectly. You have the kind of talent, if I may say so, that makes an admirable ruler. When it has a large political field we call it 'administrative ability'; when it has a small domestic one, we speak of it as 'good housekeeping.' It is a precious quality, wherever it appears. You have no scope for it at present."

Henriette was bewildered, horrified, yet secretly thrilled with joy on her own account. Was there a quarrel? Had any cloud come over the happiness of the home? Hadria laughed and assured her to the contrary. But where was she going, and for how long? What did she intend to do? Did Hubert approve? And could she bear to be away from her children? Hadria thought this was all beside the point, especially as the boys were shortly going to school. The question was, whether Henriette would take the charge.

Certainly, if Hadria came to any such mad decision, but that, Henriette hoped, might be averted. What would people say? Further discussion was checked by a call from Mrs. Walker, whom Hadria had the audacity to consult on questions of education and hygiene, leading her, by dexterous generalship, almost over the same ground that she had traversed herself, inducing the unconscious lady to repeat, with amazing accuracy, Hadria's own reproduction of local views.

"Now am I without authority in my ideas?" she asked, after Mrs. Walker had departed. Henriette had to admit that she had at least one supporter.

"But I believe," she added, "that your practice is better than your preaching."

"It seems to be an ordinance of Nature," said Hadria, "that these things shall never correspond."



CHAPTER XXXI.

Hadria said nothing more about her project, and when Henriette alluded to it, answered that it was still unfurnished with detail. She merely wished to know, for certain, Henriette's views. She admitted that there had been some conversation on the subject between Hubert and herself, but would give no particulars. Henriette had to draw her own conclusions from Hadria's haggard looks, and the suppressed excitement of her manner.

Henriette always made a point of being present when Professor Fortescue called, as she did not approve of his frequent visits. She noticed that he gave a slight start when Hadria entered. In a few days, she had grown perceptibly thinner. Her manner was restless. A day or two of rain had prevented the usual walks. When it cleared up again, the season had taken a stride. Still more glorious was the array of tree and flower, and their indescribable freshness suggested the idea that they were bathed in the mysterious elixir of life, and that if one touched them, eternal youth would be the reward. Professor Theobald gazed at Hadria with startled and enquiring eyes, when they met again.

"You look tired," he said.

"I am, rather. The spring is always a little trying."

"Especially this spring, I find."

The gardens of the Priory were now at the very perfection of their beauty. The supreme moment had come of flowing wealth of foliage and delicate splendour of blossom, yet the paleness of green and tenderness of texture were still there.

Professor Theobald said suddenly, that Hadria looked as if she were turning over some project very anxiously in her mind—a project on which much depended.

"You are very penetrating," she replied, after a moment's hesitation, "that is exactly what I am doing. When I was a girl, my brothers and sisters and I used to discuss the question of the sovereignty of the will. Most of us believed in it devoutly. We regarded circumstance as an annoying trifle, that no person who respected himself would allow to stand in his way. I want to try that theory and see what comes of it."

"You alarm me, Mrs. Temperley."

"Yes, people always do seem to get alarmed when one attempts to put their favourite theories in practice."

"But really—for a woman——"

"The sovereignty of the will is a dangerous doctrine?"

"Well, as things are; a young woman, a beautiful woman."

"You recall an interesting memory," she said.

"Ah, that is unkind."

Her smile checked him.

"When you fall into a mocking humour, you are quite impracticable."

"I merely smiled," she said, "sweetly, as I thought."

"It is really cruel; I have not had a word with you for days, and the universe has become a wilderness."

"A pleasant wilderness," she observed, looking round.

"Nature is a delightful background, but a poor subject."

"Do you think so? I often fancy one's general outlook would be nicer, if one had an indistinct human background and a clear foreground of unspoiled Nature. But that may be a jaundiced view."

Hadria went off to meet Lady Engleton, who was coming down the avenue with Madame Bertaux. Professor Theobald instinctively began to follow and then stopped, reddening, as he met the glance of Miss Temperley. He flung himself into conversation with her, and became especially animated when he was passing Hadria, who did not appear to notice him. As both Professors were to leave Craddock Dene at the end of the week, this was the last meeting in the Priory gardens.

Miss Temperley found Professor Theobald entertaining, but at times a little incoherent.

"Why, there is Miss Du Prel!" exclaimed Henriette. "What an erratic person she is. She went to London the day before yesterday, and now she turns up suddenly without a word of warning."

This confirmed Professor Theobald's suspicions that something serious was going on at the Red House.

Valeria explained her return to Hadria, by saying that she had felt so nervous about what the latter might be going to attempt, that she had come back to see if she could be of help, or able to ward off any rash adventure.

There was a pleasant open space among the shrubberies, where several seats had been placed to command a dainty view of the garden and lawns, with the house in the distance, and here the party gradually converged, in desultory fashion, coming up and strolling off again, as the fancy inspired them.

Cigars were lighted, and a sense of sociability and enjoyment suffused itself, like a perfume, among the group.

Lady Engleton was delighted to see Miss Du Prel again. She did so want to continue the hot discussion they were having at the Red House that afternoon, when Mr. Temperley would be so horridly logical. He smiled and twisted his moustache.

"We were interrupted by some caller, and had to leave the argument at a most exciting moment."

"An eternally interesting subject!" said Temperley; "what woman is, what she is not."

"My dread is that presently, the need for dissimulation being over, all the delightful mystery will have vanished," said Professor Theobald. "I should tire, in a day, of a woman I could understand."

"You tempt one to enquire the length of the reign of a satisfactory enigma," cried Lady Engleton.

"Precisely the length of her ability to mystify me," he replied.

"Your future wife ought to be given a hint."

"Oh! a wife, in no case, could hold me: the mere fact that it was my duty to adore her, would be chilling. And when added to that, I knew that she had placed it among the list of her obligations to adore me—well, that would be the climax of disenchantment."

Hubert commended his wisdom in not marrying.

"The only person I could conceivably marry would be my cook; in that case there would be no romance to spoil, no vision to destroy."

"I fear this is a cloak for a poor opinion of our sex, Professor."

"On the contrary. I admire your sex too much to think of subjecting them to such an ordeal. I could not endure to regard a woman I had once admired, as a matter of course, a commonplace in my existence."

Henriette plunged headlong into the fray, in opposition to the Professor's heresy. The conversation became general.

Professor Theobald fell out of it. He was furtively watching Hadria, whose eyes were strangely bright. She was sitting on the arm of a seat, listening to the talk, with a little smile on her lips. Her hand clasped the back of the seat rigidly, as if she were holding something down.

The qualities and defects of the female character were frankly canvassed, each view being held with fervour, but expressed with urbanity. Women were always so and so; women were absolutely never so and so: women felt, without exception, thus and thus; on the contrary, they were entirely devoid of such sentiments. A large experience and wide observation always supported each opinion, and eminent authorities swarmed to the standard.

"I do think that women want breadth of view," said Lady Engleton.

"They sometimes want accuracy of statement," observed Professor Theobald, with a possible second meaning in his words.

"It seems to me they lack concentration. They are too versatile," was Hubert's comment.

"They want a sense of honour," was asserted.

"And a sense of humour," some one added.

"They want a feeling of public duty."

"They want a spice of the Devil!" exclaimed Hadria.

There was a laugh.

Hubert thought this was a lack not likely to be felt for very long. It was under rapid process of cultivation.

"Why, it is a commonplace, that if a woman is bad, she is always very bad," cried Lady Engleton.

"A new and intoxicating experience," said Professor Fortescue. "I sympathize."

"New?" his colleague murmured, with a faint chuckle.

"You distress me," said Henriette.

Professor Fortescue held that woman's "goodness" had done as much harm in the world as men's badness. The one was merely the obverse of the other.

"This is strange teaching!" cried Lady Engleton.

The Professor reminded her that truth was always stranger than fiction.

"To the best men," observed Valeria, "women show all their meanest qualities. It is the fatality of their training."

Professor Theobald had noted the same trait in other subject races.

"Pray, don't call us a subject race!" remonstrated Lady Engleton.

"Ah, yes, the truth," cried Hadria, "we starve for the truth."

"You are courageous, Mrs. Temperley."

"Like the Lady of Shallott, I am sick of shadows."

"The bare truth, on this subject, is hard for a woman to face."

"It is harder, in the long run, to waltz eternally round it with averted eyes."

"But, dear me, why is the truth about ourselves hard to face?" demanded Valeria.

"I am placed between the horns of a dilemma: one lady clamours for the bare truth: another forbids me to say anything unpleasing."

"I withdraw my objection," Valeria offered.

"The ungracious task shall not be forced upon unwilling chivalry," said Hadria. "If our conditions have been evil, some scars must be left and may as well be confessed. Among the faults of women, I should place a tendency to trade upon and abuse real chivalry and generosity when they meet them: a survival perhaps from the Stone Age, when the fittest to bully were the surviving elect of society."

Hadria's eyes sparkled with suppressed excitement.

"Freedom alone teaches us to meet generosity, generously," said Professor Fortescue; "you can't get the perpendicular virtues out of any but the really free-born."

"Then do you describe women's virtues as horizontal?" enquired Miss Du Prel, half resentfully.

"In so far as they follow the prevailing models. Women's love, friendship, duty, the conduct of life as a whole, speaking very roughly, has been lacking in the quality that I call perpendicular; a quality implying something more than upright."

"You seem to value but lightly the woman's acknowledged readiness for self-sacrifice," said Lady Engleton. "That, I suppose, is only a despised horizontal virtue."

"Very frequently."

"Because it is generally more or less abject," Hadria put in. "The sacrifice is made because the woman is a woman. It is the obeisance of sex; the acknowledgment of servility; not a simple desire of service."

"The adorable creature is not always precisely obeisant," observed Theobald.

"No; as I say, she may be capricious and cruel enough to those who treat her justly and generously" (Hadria's eyes instinctively turned towards the distant Priory, and Valeria's followed them); "but ask her to sacrifice herself for nothing; ask her to cherish the selfishness of some bully or fool; assure her that it is her duty to waste her youth, lose her health, and stultify her mind, for the sake of somebody's whim, or somebody's fears, or somebody's absurdity, then she needs no persuasion. She goes to the stake smiling. She swears the flames are comfortably warm, no more. Are they diminishing her in size? Oh no—not at all—besides she was rather large, for a woman. She smiles encouragement to the other chained figures, at the other stakes. Her reward? The sense of exalted worth, of humility; the belief that she has been sublimely virtuous, while the others whom she serves have been—well the less said about them the better. She has done her duty, and sent half a dozen souls to hell!"

Henriette uttered a little cry.

"Where one expects to meet her!" Hadria added.

Professor Theobald was chuckling gleefully.

Lady Engleton laughed. "Then, Mrs. Temperley, you do feel rather wicked yourself, although you don't admire our nice, well-behaved, average woman."

"Oh, the mere opposite of an error isn't always truth," said Hadria.

"The weather has run to your head!" cried Henriette.

Hadria's eyes kindled. "Yes, it is like wine; clear, intoxicating sparkling wine, and its fumes are mounting! Why does civilisation never provide for these moments?"

"What would you have? A modified feast of Dionysius?"

"Why not? The whole earth joins in the festival and sings, except mankind. Some frolic of music and a stirring dance!—But ah! I suppose, in this tamed England of ours, we should feel it artificial; we should fear to let ourselves go. But in Greece—if we could fancy ourselves there, shorn of our little local personalities—in some classic grove, on sunlit slopes, all bubbling with the re-birth of flowers and alive with the light, the broad all-flooding light of Greece that her children dreaded to leave more than any other earthly thing, when death threatened—could one not imagine the loveliness of some garlanded dance, and fancy the naiads, and the dryads, and all the hosts of Pan gambolling at one's heels?"

"Really, Mrs. Temperley, you were not born for an English village. I should like Mrs. Walker to hear you!"

"Mrs. Walker knows better than to listen to me. She too hides somewhere, deep down, a poor fettered thing that would gladly join the revel, if it dared. We all do."

Lady Engleton dwelt joyously on the image of Mrs. Walker, cavorting, garlanded, on a Greek slope, with the nymphs and water-sprites for familiar company.

Lady Engleton had risen laughing, and proposed a stroll to Hadria.

Henriette, who did not like the tone the conversation was taking, desired to join them.

"I never quite know how far you are serious, and how far you are just amusing yourself, Hadria," said Lady Engleton. "Our talking of Greece reminds me of some remark you made the other day, about Helen. You seemed to me almost to sympathize with her."

Hadria's eyes seemed to be looking across miles of sea to the sunny Grecian land.

"If a slave breaks his chains and runs, I am always glad," she said.

"I was talking about Helen."

"So was I. If a Spartan wife throws off her bondage and defies the laws that insult her, I am still more glad."

"But not if she sins?" Henriette coughed, warningly.

"Yes; if she sins."

"Oh, Hadria," remonstrated Henriette, in despair.

"I don't see that it follows that Helen did sin, however; one does not know much about her sentiments. She revolted against the tyranny that held her shut in, enslaved, body and soul, in that wonderful Greek world of hers. I am charmed to think that she gave her countrymen so much trouble to assert her husband's right of ownership. It was at his door that the siege of Troy ought to be laid. I only wish elopements always caused as much commotion!" Lady Engleton laughed, and Miss Temperley tried to catch Hadria's eye.

"Well, that is a strange idea! And do you really think Helen did not sin? Seriously now."

"I don't know. There is no evidence on that point." Lady Engleton laughed again.

"You do amuse me. Assuming that Helen did not sin, I suppose you would (if only for the sake of paradox) accuse the virtuous Greek matrons—who sat at home, and wove, and span, and bore children—of sinning against the State!"

"Certainly," said Hadria, undismayed. "It was they who insidiously prepared the doom for their country, as they wove and span and bore children, with stupid docility. As surely as an enemy might undermine the foundations of a city till it fell in with a crash, so surely they brought ruin upon Greece."

"Oh, Hadria, you are quite beside yourself to-day!" cried Henriette.

"A love of paradox will lead you far!" said Lady Engleton. "We have always been taught to think a nation sound and safe whose women were docile and domestic."

"What nation, under those conditions, has ever failed to fall in with a mighty crash, like my undermined city? Greece herself could not hold out. Ah, yes; we have our revenge! a sweet, sweet revenge!"

Lady Engleton was looking much amused and a little dismayed, when she and her companions rejoined the party.

"I never heard anyone say so many dreadful things in so short a space of time," she cried. "You are distinctly shocking."

"I am frank," said Hadria. "I fancy we should all go about with our hair permanently on end, if we spoke out in chorus."

"I don't quite like to hear you say that, Hadria."

"I mean no harm—merely that every one thinks thoughts and feels impulses that would be startling if expressed in speech. Don't we all know how terrifying a thing speech is, and thought? a chartered libertine."

"Why, you are saying almost exactly what Professor Theobald said the other day, and we were so shocked."

"And yet my meaning has scarcely any relation to his," Hadria hastened to say. "He meant to drag down all belief in goodness by reminding us of dark moments and hours; by placarding the whole soul with the name of some shadow that moves across it, I sometimes think from another world, some deep under-world that yawns beneath us and sends up blackness and fumes and strange cries." Hadria's eyes had wandered far away. "Are you never tormented by an idea, an impression that you know does not belong to you?"

Lady Engleton gave a startled negative. "Professor Fortescue, come and tell me what you think of this strange doctrine?"

"If we had to be judged by our freedom from rushes of evil impulse, rather than by our general balance of good and evil wishing, I think those would come out best, who had fewest thoughts and feelings of any kind to record." The subject attracted a small group.

"Unless goodness is only a negative quality," Valeria pointed out, "a mere absence, it must imply a soul that lives and struggles, and if it lives and struggles, it is open to the assaults of the devil."

"Yes, and it is liable to go under too sometimes, one must not forget," said Hadria, "although most people profess to believe so firmly in the triumph of the best—how I can't conceive, since the common life of every day is an incessant harping on the moral: the smallest, meanest, poorest, thinnest, vulgarest qualities in man and woman are those selected for survival, in the struggle for existence."

There was a cry of remonstrance from idealists.

"But what else do we mean when we talk by common consent of the world's baseness, harshness, vulgarity, injustice? It means surely—and think of it!—that it is composed of men and women with the best of them killed out, as a nerve burnt away by acid; a heart won over to meaner things than it set out beating for; a mind persuaded to nibble at edges of dry crust that might have grown stout and serviceable on generous diet, and mellow and inspired with noble vintage."

"You really are shockingly Bacchanalian to-day," cried Lady Engleton.

Hadria laughed. "Metaphorically, I am a toper. The wonderful clear sparkle, the subtle flavour, the brilliancy of wine, has for me a strange fascination; it seems to signify so much in life that women lose."

"True. What beverage should one take as a type of what they gain by the surrender?" asked Lady Engleton, who was disposed to hang back towards orthodoxy, in the presence of her uncompromising neighbour.

"Oh, toast and water!" replied Hadria.



Part III.



CHAPTER XXXII.

The speed was glorious. Back flashed field and hill and copse, and the dear "companionable hedgeways." Back flew iterative telegraph posts with Herculean swing, into the Past, looped together in rhythmic movement, marking the pulses of old Time. On, with rack and roar, into the mysterious Future. One could sit at the window and watch the machinery of Time's foundry at work; the hammers of his forge beating, beating, the wild sparks flying, the din and chaos whirling round one's bewildered brain;—Past becoming Present, Present melting into Future, before one's eyes. To sit and watch the whirring wheels; to think "Now it is thus and thus; presently, another slice of earth and sky awaits me"—ye Gods, it is not to be realized!

The wonder of the flying land—England, England with her gentle homesteads, her people of the gentle voices; and the unknown wonder of that other land, soon to change its exquisite dream-features for the still more thrilling, appealing marvel of reality—could it all be true? Was this the response of the genius of the ring, the magic ring that we call will? And would the complaisant genius always appear and obey one's behests, in this strange fashion?

Thoughts ran on rhythmically, in the steady, flashing movement through verdant England. The Real! that was the truly exquisite, the truly great, the true realm of the imagination! What imagination was ever born to conceive or compass it?

A rattle under a bridge, a roar through a tunnel, and on again, through Kentish orchards. A time of blossoming. Disjointed, delicious impressions followed one another in swift succession, often superficially incoherent, but threaded deep, in the stirred consciousness, on a silver cord:—the unity of the creation was as obvious as its multiplicity.

Images of the Past joined hands with visions of the Future. In these sweet green meadows, men had toiled, as thralls, but a few lifetimes ago, and they had gathered together, as Englishmen do, first to protest and reasonably demand, and then to buy their freedom with their lives. Their countrywoman sent a message of thanksgiving, backward through the centuries, to these stout champions of the land's best heritage, and breathed an aspiration to be worthy of the kinship that she claimed.

The rattle and roar grew into a symphony—full, rich, magnificent, and then, with a rush, came a stirring musical conception: it seized the imagination.

Oh, why were they stopping? It was a little country station, but many passengers were on the platform. A careworn looking woman and a little girl entered the carriage, and the little girl fixed her eyes on her fellow-traveller with singular persistence. Then the more practical features of the occasion came into view, and all had an enthralling quality of reality—poetry. The sound of the waiting engine breathing out its white smoke into the brilliant air, the powerful creature quiescent but ready, with the turn of a handle, to put forth its slumbering might; the crunching of footsteps on the gravel, the wallflowers and lilacs in the little station garden, the blue of the sky, and ah! the sweetness of the air when one leant out to look along the interminable straight line of rails, leading—whither? Even the very details of one's travelling gear: the tweed gown meet for service, the rug and friendly umbrella, added to the feeling of overflowing satisfaction. The little girl stared more fixedly than ever. A smile and the offer of a flower made her look down, for a minute, but the gaze was resumed. Wherefore? Was the inward tumult too evident in the face? Well, no matter. The world was beautiful and wide!

The patient monster began to move again, with a gay whistle, as if he enjoyed this chase across country, on the track of Time. He was soon at full speed again, on his futile race: a hapless idealist in pursuit of lost dreams. The little girl watched the dawn of a smile on the face of the kind, pretty lady who had given her the flower. A locomotive figuring as an idealist! Where would one's fancy lead one to next?

Ah the sea! heaving busily, and flashing under the morning radiance. Would they have a good crossing? The wind was fresh. How dreamy and bright and windy the country looked, and how salt was the sea-breeze! Very soon they would arrive at Folkestone. Rugs and umbrellas and handbags must be collected. The simple, solid commonplace of it all, touched some wholesome spring of delight. What a speed the train was going at! One could scarcely stand in the jolting carriage. Old Time must not make too sure of his victory. One felt a wistful partisanship for his snorting rival, striving for ever to accomplish the impossible. The labouring visionary was not without significance to aspiring mortals.

The outskirts of the town were coming in sight; grey houses bleakly climbing chalky heights. It would be well to put on a thick overcoat at once. It was certain to be cold in the Channel.

Luckily Hannah had a head on her shoulders, and could be trusted to follow the directions that had been given her.

The last five minutes seemed interminable, but they did come to an end. There was an impression of sweet salt air, of wind and voices, of a hurrying crowd; occasionally a French sentence pronounced by one of the officials, reminiscent of a thousand dreams and sights of foreign lands; and then the breezy quay and waiting steamboat.

The sound of that quiet, purposeful hiss of the steam sent a thrill along the nerves. Hannah and her charge were safely on board; the small luggage followed, and lastly Hadria traversed the narrow bridge, wondering when the moment would arrive for waking up and finding herself in her little bedroom at Craddock Dene? What was she thinking of? Dream? This was no dream, this bold, blue, dancing water, this living sunshine, this salt and savour and movement and brilliancy!

The other was the dream; it seemed to be drifting away already. The picture of the village and the house and the meadows, and the low line of the hills was recalled as through a veil; it would not stand up and face the emphatic present. At the end of a few months, would there be anything left of her connexion with the place where she had passed six—seven years of her life? and such years! They had put scars on her soul, as deep and ghastly as ever red-hot irons had marked on tortured flesh. Perhaps it was because of this rabid agony undergone, that now she seemed to have scarcely any clinging to her home,—for the present at any rate. And she knew that she left only sorrow for conventional disasters behind her. The joy of freedom and its intoxication drowned every other feeling. It was sheer relief to be away, to stretch oneself in mental liberty and leisure, to look round at earth and sky and the hurrying crowds, in quiet enjoyment; to possess one's days, one's existence for the first time, in all these long years! It was as the home-coming of a dispossessed heir. This freedom did not strike her as strange, but as obvious, as familiar. It was the first condition of a life that was worth living. And yet never before had she known it. Ernest and Fred and even Austin had enjoyed it from boyhood, and in far greater completeness than she could ever hope to possess it, even now.

Yet even this limited, this comparative freedom, which a man could afford to smile at, was intoxicating. Heavens! under what a leaden cloud of little obligations and restraints, and loneliness and pain, she had been living! And for what purpose? To make obeisance to a phantom public, not because she cared one iota for the phantom or its opinions, but because husband and parents and relations were terrified at the prospect of a few critical and disapproving remarks, that they would not even hear! How mad it all was! It was not true feeling, not affection, that prompted Hubert's opposition; it was not care for his real happiness that inspired Henriette with such ardour in this cause; they would both be infinitely happier and more harmonious in Hadria's absence. The whole source of their distress was the fear of what people would say when the separation became known to the world. That was the beginning and the end of the matter. Why could not the stupid old world mind its own business, in heaven's name? Good people, especially good women of the old type, would all counsel the imbecile sacrifice. They would all condemn this step. Indeed, the sacrifice that Hadria had refused to make, was so common, so much a matter of course, that her refusal appeared startling and preposterous: scarcely less astonishing than if a neighbour at dinner, requesting one to pass the salt, had been met with a rude "I shan't."

"A useful phrase at times, of the nature of a tonic, amidst our enervating civilisation," she reflected.

There was a tramping of passengers up and down the deck. People walked obliquely, with head to windward. Draperies fluttered; complexions verged towards blue. Only two ladies who had abandoned hope from the beginning, suffered from the crossing. The kindly sailors occupied their leisure in bringing tarpaulins to the distressed.

"Well, Hannah, how are you getting on?"

Hannah looked forward ardently to the end of the journey, but her charge seemed delighted with the new scene.

"Have you ever been to France before, ma'am?" Hannah asked, perhaps noticing the sparkle of her employer's eye and the ring in her voice.

"Yes, once; I spent a week in Paris with Mr. Temperley, and we went on afterwards to the Pyrenees. That was just before we took the Red House."

"It must have been beautiful," said Hannah. "And did you take the babies, ma'am?"

"They were neither of them in existence then," replied Mrs. Temperley. A strange fierce light passed through her eyes for a second, but Hannah did not notice it. Martha's shawl was blowing straight into her eyes, and the nurse was engaged in arranging it more comfortably.

The coast of France had become clear, some time ago; they were making the passage very quickly to-day. Soon the red roofs of Boulogne were to be distinguished, with the grey dome of the cathedral on the hill-top. Presently, the boat had arrived in the bright old town, and every detail of outline and colour was standing forth brilliantly, as if the whole scene had been just washed over with clear water and all the tints were wet.

The first impression was keen. The innumerable differences from English forms and English tones sprang to the eye. A whiff of foreign smell and a sound of foreign speech reached the passengers at about the same moment. The very houses looked unfamiliarly built, and even the letters of printed names of hotels and shops had a frivolous, spindly appearance—elegant but frail. The air was different from English air. Some bouillon and a slice of fowl were very acceptable at the restaurant at the station, after the business of examining the luggage was over. Hannah, evidently nourishing a sense of injury against the natives for their eccentric jargon, and against the universe for the rush and discomfort of the last quarter of an hour, was disposed to express her feelings by a marked lack of relish for her food. She regarded Hadria's hearty appetite with a disdainful expression. Martha ate bread and butter and fruit. She was to have some milk that had been brought for her, when they were en route again.

"Tout le monde en voiture!" Within five minutes, the train was puffing across the wastes of blowing sand that ran along the coast, beyond the town. The child, who had become accustomed to the noise and movement, behaved better than had been expected. She seemed to take pleasure in looking out of the window at the passing trees. Hannah was much struck with this sign of awakening intelligence. It was more than the good nurse showed herself. She scarcely condescended to glance at the panorama of French fields, French hills and streams that were rushing by. How pale and ethereal they were, these Gallic coppices and woodlands! And with what a dainty lightness the foliage spread itself to the sun, French to its graceful finger-tips! That grey old house, with high lichen-stained roof and narrow windows—where but in sunny France could one see its like?—and the little farmsteads and villages, full of indescribable charm. One felt oneself in a land of artists. There was no inharmonious, no unfitting thing anywhere. Man had wedded himself to Nature, and his works seemed to receive her seal and benediction. English landscape was beautiful, and it had a particular charm to be found nowhere else in the world; but in revenge, there was something here that England could not boast. Was it fanciful to see in the characteristics of vegetation and scenery, the origin or expression of the difference of the two races at their greatest?

"Ah, if I were only a painter!"

They were passing some fields where, in the slanting rays of the sun, peasants in blue blouses and several women were bending over their toil. It was a subject often chosen by French artists. Hadria understood why. One of the labourers stood watching the train, and she let her eyes rest on the patient figure till she was carried beyond his little world. If she could have painted that scene just as she saw it, all the sadness and mystery of the human lot would have stood forth eloquently in form and colour; these a magic harmony, not without some inner kinship with the spirit of man at its noblest.

What was he thinking, that toil-bent peasant, as the train flashed by? What tragedy or comedy was he playing on his rural stage? Hadria sat down and shut her eyes, dazzled by the complex mystery and miracle of life, and almost horrified at the overwhelming thought of the millions of these obscure human lives burning themselves out, everywhere, at every instant, like so many altar-candles to the unknown God!

"And each one of them takes himself as seriously as I take myself: perhaps more seriously. Ah, if one could but pause to smile at one's tragic moments, or still better, at one's sublime ones. But it can't be done. A remembrancer would have to be engaged, to prevent lapses into the sublime,—and how furious one would be when he nudged one, with his eternal: 'Beware!'"

It was nearly eight o'clock when the train plunged among the myriad lights of the great city. The brilliant beacon of the Eiffel Tower sat high up in the sky, like an exile star.

Gaunt and grim was the vast station, with its freezing purplish electric light. Yet even here, to Hadria's stirred imagination, there was a certain quality in the Titanic building, which removed it from the vulgarity of English utilitarian efforts of the same order.

In a fanciful mood, one might imagine a tenth circle of the Inferno, wherein those stern grey arches should loftily rise, in blind and endless sequence, limbing an abode of horror, a place of punishment for those, empty-hearted, who had lived without colour and sunshine, in voluntary abnegation, caring only for gain and success.

The long delay in the examination of the luggage, the fatigue of the journey, tended to increase the disposition to regard the echoing edifice, with its cold hollow reverberations, as a Circle of the Doomed. It was as if they passed from the realm of the Shades through the Gates of Life, when at length the cab rattled out of the courtyard of the station, and turned leftwards into the brilliant streets of Paris. It was hard to realize that all this stir and light and life had been going on night after night, for all these years, during which one had sat in the quiet drawing-room at Craddock Dene, trying wistfully, hopelessly, to grasp the solid fact of an unknown vast reality, through a record here and there. The journey was a long one to the Rue Boissy d'Anglas, but tired as she was, Hadria did not wish it shorter. Even Hannah was interested in the brilliantly lighted shops and cafes and the splendour of the boulevards. Now and again, the dark deserted form of a church loomed out, lonely, amidst the gaiety of Parisian street-life. Some electric lamp threw a distant gleam upon calm classic pillars, which seemed to hold aloof, with a quality of reserve rarely to be noticed in things Parisian. Hadria greeted it with a feeling of gratitude.

The great Boulevard was ablaze and swarming with life. The cafes were full; the gilt and mirrors and the crowds of consommateurs within, all visible as one passed along the street, while, under the awning outside, crowds were sitting smoking, drinking, reading the papers.

Was it really possible that only this morning, those quiet English fields had been dozing round one, those sleepy villagers spreading their slow words out, in expressing an absence of idea, over the space of time in which a Parisian conveyed a pocket philosophy?

The cabman directed his vehicle down the Rue Royale, passing the stately Madeleine, with its guardian sycamores, and out into the windy spaciousness of the Place de la Concorde.

A wondrous city! Hannah pointed out the electric light of the Eiffel Tower to her charge, and Martha put out her small hands, demanding the toy on the spot.

The festooned lights of the Champs Elysees swung themselves up, in narrowing line, till they reached the pompous arch at the summit, and among the rich trees of those Elysian fields gleamed the festive lamps of cafes chantants.

"Si Madame desire encore quelque chose?" The neat maid, in picturesque white cap and apron, stood with her hand on the door of the little bedroom, on one of the highest storeys of the pension. Half of one of the long windows had been set open, and the sounds of the rolling of vehicles over the smooth asphalte, mingled with those of voices, were coming up, straight and importunate, into the dainty bedroom. The very sounds seemed nearer and clearer in this keen-edged land. The bed stood in one corner, canopied with white and blue; a thick carpet gave a sense of luxury and deadened the tramp of footsteps; a marble mantel-piece was surmounted by a mirror, and supported a handsome bronze clock and two bronze ornaments. The furniture was of solid mahogany. A nameless French odour pervaded the atmosphere, delicate, subtle, but unmistakeable. And out of the open window, one could see a series of other lighted windows, all of exactly the same tall graceful design, opening in the middle by the same device and the same metal handle that had to be turned in order to open or close the window. Within, the rooms obviously modelled themselves on the one unvarying ideal. A few figures could be seen coming and going, busy at work or play. Above the steep roofs, a blue-black sky was alive with brilliant stars.