"Merci;" Madame required nothing more.



CHAPTER XXXIII.

"... Rushes life on a race As the clouds the clouds chase; And we go, And we drop like the fruits of the tree, Even we, Even so."

Just at first, it was a sheer impossibility to do anything but bask and bathe in the sunny present, to spend the days in wandering incredulously through vernal Paris, over whose bursting freshness and brilliancy the white clouds seemed to be driven, with the same joy of life. The city was crammed; the inhabitants poured forth in swarms to enjoy, in true French fashion, the genial warmth and the universal awakening after the long capricious winter. It was actually hot in the sun, and fresh light clothing became a luxury, like a bath after a journey. The year had raised its siege, and there was sudden amity between man and Nature. Shrivelled man could relax the tension of resistance to cold and damp and change, and go forth into the sun with cordial insouciance. In many of the faces might be read this kindly amnesty, although there were some so set and fixed with past cares that not even the soft hand of a Parisian spring could smooth away the lines, or even touch the spirit.

These Hadria passed with an aching pity. Circumstance had been to them a relentless taskmaster. Perhaps they had not rubbed the magic ring of will, and summoned the obedient genius. Perhaps circumstance had forbidden them even the rag wherewith to rub—or the impulse.

Sallying forth from the pension, Hadria would sometimes pause, for a moment, at the corner of the street, where it opened into the Place de la Concorde, irresolute, because of the endless variety of possible ways to turn, and places to visit. She seldom made definite plans the day before, unless it were for the pleasure of changing them. The letter of introduction to Madame Vauchelet had remained unpresented. The sense of solitude, combined for the first time with that of freedom, was too delightful to forego. One must have time to realize and appreciate the sudden calm and serenity; the sudden absence of claims and obstructions and harassing criticisms. Heavens, what a price people consented to pay for the privilege of human ties! what hard bargains were driven in the kingdom of the affections! Thieves, extortionists, usurers—and in the name of all the virtues!

"Yes, solitude has charms!" Hadria inwardly exclaimed, as she stood watching the coming and going of people, the spouting of fountains, the fluttering of big sycamore leaves in the Champs Elysees.

Unhappily, the solitude made difficulties. But meanwhile there was a large field to be explored, where these difficulties did not arise, or could be guarded against. Her sex was a troublesome obstruction. "One does not come of centuries of chattel-women for nothing!" she wrote to Algitha. Society bristled with insults, conscious and unconscious. Nor had one lived the brightest, sweetest years of one's life tethered and impounded, without feeling the consequences when the tether was cut. There were dreads, shrinkings, bewilderments, confusions to encounter; the difficulties of pilotage in unknown seas, of self-knowledge, and guidance suddenly needed in new ranges of the soul; fresh temptations, fresh possibilities to deal with; everything untested, the alphabet of worldly experience yet to learn.

But all this was felt with infinitely greater force a little later, when the period of solitude was over, and Hadria found herself in the midst of a little society whose real codes and ideas she had gropingly to learn. Unfamiliar (in any practical sense) with life, even in her own country, she had no landmarks or finger-posts, of any kind, in this new land. Her sentiment had never been narrowly British, but now she realized her nationality over-keenly; she felt herself almost grotesquely English, and had a sense of insular clumsiness amidst a uprightly, dexterous people. Conscious of a thousand illusive, but very real differences in point of view, and in nature, between the two nations, she had a baffled impression of walking among mysteries and novelties that she could not grasp. She began to be painfully conscious of the effects of the narrow life that she had led, and of the limitations that had crippled her in a thousand ways hitherto scarcely realized.

"One begins to learn everything too late," she wrote to Algitha. "This ought all to have been familiar long ago. I don't know anything about the world in which I live. I have never before caught so much as a distant glimpse of it. And even now there are strange thick wrappings from the past that cling tight round and hold me aloof, strive as I may to strip off that past-made personality, and to understand, by touch, what things are made of. I feel as if I would risk anything in order to really know that. Why should a woman treat herself as if she were Dresden china? She is more or less insulted and degraded whatever happens, especially if she obeys what our generation is pleased to call the moral law. The more I see of life, the more hideous seems the position that women hold in relation to the social structure, and the more sickening the current nonsense that is talked about us and our 'missions' and 'spheres.' It is so feeble, so futile, to try to ornament an essentially degrading fact. It is such insolence to talk to us—good heavens, to us!—about holiness and sacredness, when men (to whom surely a sense of humour has been denied) divide their women into two great classes, both of whom they insult and enslave, insisting peremptorily on the existence of each division, but treating one class as private and the other as public property. One might as well talk to driven cattle in the shambles about their 'sacred mission' as to women. It is an added mockery, a gratuitous piece of insolence."

Having been, from childhood, more or less at issue with her surroundings, Hadria had never fully realized their power upon her personality. But now daily a fresh recognition of her continued imprisonment, baffled her attempt to look at things with clear eyes. She struggled to get round and beyond that past-fashioned self, not merely in order to see truly, but in order to see at all. And in doing so, she ran the risk of letting go what she might have done better to hold. She felt painfully different from these people among whom she found herself. Her very trick of pondering over things sent her spinning to hopeless distances. They seemed to ponder so wholesomely little. Their intelligence was devoted to matters of the moment; they were keen and well-finished and accomplished. Hadria used to look at them in astonishment. How did these quick-witted people manage to escape the importunate inquisitive demon, the familiar spirit, who pursued her incessantly with his queries and suggestions? He would stare up from river and street and merry gardens; his haunting eyes looked mockingly out of green realms of stirring foliage, and his voice was like a sardonic echo to the happy voices of the children, laughing at their play under the flickering shadows, of mothers discussing their cares and interests, of men in blouses, at work by the water-side, or solemn, in frock-coats, with pre-occupations of business and bread-winning. The demon had his own reflections on all these seemingly ordinary matters, and so bizarre were they at times, so startling and often so terrible, that one found oneself shivering in full noontide, or smiling, or thrilled with passionate pity at "the sad, strange ways of men."

It was sweet to stretch one's cramped wings to the sun, to ruffle and spread them, as a released bird will, but it was startling to find already little stiff habits arisen, little creaks and hindrances never suspected, that made flight in the high air not quite effortless and serene.

The Past is never past; immortal as the Gods, it lives enthroned in the Present, and sets its limits and lays its commands.

Cases have been known of a man blind from birth being restored to sight, at mature age. For a time, the appearance of objects was strange and incomprehensible. Their full meaning was not conveyed to him; they remained riddles. He could not judge the difference between near and far, between solid and liquid; he had no experience, dating from childhood, of the apparent smallness of distant things, of the connexion between the impression given to the touch by solids and their effect on the eye. He had all these things to learn. A thousand trifling associations, of which those with normal senses are scarcely conscious, had to be stumblingly acquired, as a child learns to connect sound and sight, in learning to read.

Such were the changes of consciousness that Hadria found herself going through; only realising each phase of the process after it was over, and the previous confusion of vision had been itself revealed, by the newly and often painfully acquired co-ordinating skill.

But, as generally happens, in the course of passing from ignorance to knowledge, the intermediate stage was chaotic. Objects loomed up large and indistinct, as through a mist; vague forms drifted by, half revealed, to melt away again; here and there were clear outlines and solid impressions, to be deemed trustworthy and given a place of honour; thence a disproportion in the general conception; it being almost beyond human power to allow sufficiently for that which is unknown.

For some time, however, the dominant impression on Hadria's mind was of her own gigantic ignorance. This ignorance was far more confusing and even misleading than it had been when its proportions were less defined. The faint twinkle of light revealed the dusky outline, bewildering and discouraging the imagination. Intuitive knowledge was disturbed by the incursion of scraps of disconnected experience. This condition of mind made her an almost insoluble psychological problem. Since she was evidently a woman of pronounced character, her bewilderment and tentative attitude were not allowed for. Her actions were regarded as deliberate and cool-headed, when often they would be the outcome of sheer confusion, or chance, or perhaps of a groping experimental effort.

The first three weeks in Paris had been given up to enjoying the new conditions of existence. But now practical matters claimed consideration. The pension in the Rue Boissy d'Anglas was not suitable as a permanent abode. Rooms must be looked for, combining cheapness with a good situation, within easy distance of the scene of Hadria's future musical studies, and also within reach of some park or gardens for Martha's benefit.

This ideal place of abode was at last found. It cost rather more than Hadria had wished to spend on mere lodging, but otherwise it seemed perfect. It was in a quiet street between the Champs Elysees and the river. Two great thoroughfares ran, at a respectful distance, on either side, with omnibuses always passing. Hadria could be set down within a few minutes' walk of the School of Music, or, if she liked to give the time, could walk the whole way to her morning's work, through some of the most charming parts of Paris. As for Martha, she was richly provided with playgrounds. The Bois could be quickly reached, and there were always the Champs Elysees or the walk beneath the chestnuts by the river, along the Cours de la Reine and the length of the quays. Even Hannah thought the situation might do. Hadria had begun her studies at the School of Music, and found the steady work not only a profound, though somewhat stern enjoyment, but a solid backbone to her new existence, giving it cohesion and form. Recreation deserved its name, after work of this kind. Any lurking danger of too great speculative restlessness disappeared. There had been a moment when the luxurious joy of mere wandering observation and absorption, threatened to become overwhelming, and to loosen some of the rivets of the character.

But work was to the sum-total of impulse what the central weight was to one of Martha's toys: a leaden ballast that always brought the balance right again, however wildly the little tyrant might swing the creature off the perpendicular. When Hadria used to come in, pleasantly tired with her morning's occupation, and the wholesome heat of the sun, to take her simple dejeuner in the little apartment with Martha, a frivolous five minutes would often be spent by the two in endeavouring to overcome the rigid principles of that well-balanced plaything. But always the dead weight at its heart frustrated their attempts. Martha played the most inconsiderate pranks with its centre of gravity, but quite in vain. When a little French boy from the etage above was allowed to come and play with Martha, she proceeded to experiment upon his centre of gravity in the same way, and seemed much surprised when Jean Paul Auguste not only howled indignantly, but didn't swing up again after he was overturned. He remained supine, and had to be reinstated by Hadria and Hannah, and comforted with sweetmeats. Martha's logic received one of its first checks. She evidently made up her mind that logic was a fallacious mode of inference, and determined to abandon it for the future. These rebuffs in infancy, Hadria conjectured, might account for much!

About three weeks passed in almost pure enjoyment and peace; and then it was discovered that the cost of living, in spite of an extremely simple diet, was such as might have provided epicurean luxuries for a family of ten. Hadria's enquiries among her acquaintances elicited cries of consternation. Obviously the landlady, who did the marketing, must be cheating on a royal scale, and there was nothing for it but to move. Hadria suggested to Madame Vauchelet, whose advice she always sought in practical matters, that perhaps the landlady might be induced to pursue her lucrative art in moderation; could she not put it honestly down in the bill "Peculation—so much per week?"

Madame Vauchelet was horrified. "Impossible!" she cried; one must seek another apartment. If only Hannah understood French and could do the marketing herself. But Hannah scorned the outlandish lingo, and had a poor opinion of the nation as a whole.

It was fatiguing and somewhat discouraging work to begin, all over again, the quest of rooms, especially with the difficulty about the landlady always in view, and no means of ascertaining her scale of absorption. It really seemed a pity that it could not be mentioned as an extra, like coal and lights. Then one would know what one was about. This uncertain liability, with an extremely limited income, which was likely to prove insufficient unless some addition could be made to it, was trying to the nerves.

In order to avoid too great anxiety, Hadria had to make up her mind to a less attractive suite of rooms, farther out of town, and she found it desirable to order many of the comestibles herself. Madame Vauchelet was untiring in her efforts to help and advise. She initiated Hadria into the picturesque mysteries of Parisian housekeeping. It was amusing to go to the shops and markets with this shrewd Frenchwoman, and very enlightening as to the method of living cheaply and well. Hadria began to think wistfully of a more permanent menage in this entrancing capital, where there were still worlds within worlds to explore. She questioned Madame Vauchelet as to the probable cost of a femme de menage. Madame quickly ran through some calculations and pronounced a sum alluringly small. Since the landlady difficulty was so serious, and made personal superintendence necessary, it seemed as if one might as well have the greater comfort and independence of this more home-like arrangement.

Madame Vauchelet recommended an excellent woman who would cook and market, and, with Hannah's help, easily do all that was necessary. After many calculations and consultations with Madame Vauchelet, Hadria finally decided to rent, for three months, a cheerful little suite of rooms near the Arc de Triomphe.

Madame Vauchelet drank a cup of tea in the little salon with quiet heroism, not liking to refuse Hadria's offer of the friendly beverage. But she wondered at the powerful physique of the nation that could submit to the trial daily.

Hadria was brimming over with pleasure in her new home, which breathed Paris from every pore. She had already surrounded herself with odds and ends of her own, with books and a few flowers. If only this venture turned out well, how delightful would be the next few months. Hadria did not clearly look beyond that time. To her, it seemed like a century. Her only idea as to the farther future was an abstract resolve to let nothing short of absolute compulsion persuade her to renounce her freedom, or subject herself to conditions that made the pursuit of her art impossible. How to carry out the resolve, in fact and detail, was a matter to consider when the time came. If one were to consider future difficulties as well as deal with immediate ones, into what crannies and interstices were the affairs of the moment to be crammed?

There has probably never been a human experience of even a few months of perfect happiness, of perfect satisfaction with conditions, even among the few men and women who know how to appreciate the bounty of Fate, when she is generous, and to take the sting out of minor annoyances by treating them lightly. Hadria was ready to shrug her shoulders at legions of these, so long as the main current of her purpose were not diverted. But she could not steel herself against the letters that she received from England.

Everyone was deeply injured but bravely bearing up. Her family was a stricken and sorrowing family. Being naturally heroic, it said little but thought the more. Relations whose names Hadria scarcely remembered, seemed to have waked up at the news of her departure and claimed their share of the woe. Obscure Temperleys raised astounded heads and mourned. Henriette wrote that she was really annoyed at the way in which everybody was talking about Hadria's conduct. It was most uncomfortable. She hoped Hadria was able to be happy. Hubert was ready to forgive her and to receive her back, in spite of everything. Henriette entreated her to return; for her own sake, for Hubert's sake, for the children's. They were just going off to school, poor little boys. Henriette, although so happy at the Red House, was terribly grieved at this sad misunderstanding. It seemed so strange, so distressing. Henriette had thoroughly enjoyed looking after dear Hubert and the sweet children. They were in splendid health. She had been very particular about hygiene. Hubert and she had seen a good deal of the Engletons lately. How charming Lady Engleton was! So much tact. She was advanced in her ideas, only she never allowed them to be intrusive. She seemed just like everybody else. She hated to make herself conspicuous; the very ideal of a true lady, if one might use the much-abused word. Professor Fortescue was reported to be still far from well. Professor Theobald had not taken the Priory after all. It was too large. It looked so deserted and melancholy now.

Henriette always finished her letters with an entreaty to Hadria to return. People were talking so. They suspected the truth; although, of course, one had hoped that the separation would be supposed to be temporary—as indeed Henriette trusted it would prove.

Madame Bertaux, who had just returned from England to her beloved Paris, reported to Hadria, when she called on the latter in her new abode, that everyone was talking about the affair with as much eagerness as if the fate of the empire had depended on it. Madame Bertaux recommended indifference and silence. She observed, in her sharp, good-natured, impatient way, that reforming confirmed drunkards, converting the heathen, making saints out of sinners, or a silk purse out of a sow's ear, would be mere child's play compared with the task of teaching the average idiot to mind his own business.



CHAPTER XXXIV.

The new menage went well. Therese was a treasure, and Martha's willing slave. Expenses were kept fairly reasonable by her care and knowledge. Still it must not be forgotten that the little income needed supplementing. Hadria had been aware of this risk from the first, but had faced it, regarding it as the less perilous of the alternatives that she had to choose between. The income was small, but it was her own absolutely, and she must live on that, with such auxiliary sums as she could earn. She hoped to be able to make a little money by her compositions. The future was all vague and unknown, but one thing was at least certain: it cost money to live, and in some way or other it had to be made. She told her kind friend, Madame Vauchelet, of her plan. Madame Vauchelet consulted her musical friends. People were sympathetic, but rather vague in their advice. It was always difficult, this affair. The beginning was hard. M. Thillard, a kindly, highly-cultivated man of about sixty, who had heard Hadria play, took great interest in her talent, and busied himself on her behalf.

He said he would like to interest the great Jouffroy in this work. It had so distinct and remarkable an individuality that M. Thillard was sure Jouffroy would be enchanted with it. For himself, he held that it shewed a development of musical form and expression extremely remarkable. He could not quite understand it. There was, he knew not what, in it, of strange and powerful; a music of the North; something of bizarre, something of mysterious, even of terrible, "une emotion epouvantable," cried M. Thillard, working himself to a climax as the theme inspired him, "There is genius in that work, but certainly genius." Madame Vauchelet nodded gravely at this pronouncement. It ought to be published, she said. But this supreme recompense of genius was apparently hard to achieve. The score was sent from publisher to publisher: "from pillar to post," said Hadria, "if one might venture on a phrase liable to misconstruction on the lips of disappointed ambition."

But at the end of a long and wearisome delay, the little packet was returned in a tattered condition to its discouraged author. M. Thillard made light of this. It was always thus at first. One must have patience.

"One must live," said Hadria, "or at least such is the prejudice under which one has been brought up."

"All will come," said M. Thillard. "You will see."

On one sunny afternoon, when Hadria had returned, thrilled and inspired by a magnificent orchestral performance at the Chatelet, she found Madame Vauchelet, M. Thillard, and the great Jouffroy waiting in her salon. Jouffroy was small, eccentric, fiery, with keen eager eyes, thick black hair, and overhanging brows. M. Thillard reminded Madame Temperley of her kind permission to present to her M. Jouffroy. Madame Temperley was charmed and flattered by Monsieur's visit.

It was an exciting afternoon. Madame Vauchelet was eager to hear the opinion of the great man, and anxious for Hadria to make a good impression.

The warm-hearted Frenchwoman, who had lost a daughter, of whom Hadria reminded her, had been untiring in her kindness, from the first. Madame Vauchelet, in her young days, had cherished a similar musical ambition, and Jouffroy always asserted that she might have done great things, as a performer, had not the cares of a family put an end to all hope of bringing her gifts to fruition.

The piano was opened. Jouffroy played. Madame Vauchelet, with her large veil thrown back, her black cashmere folds falling around her, sat in the large arm-chair, a dignified and graceful figure, listening gravely. The kindly, refined face of M. Thillard beamed with enjoyment; an occasional cry of admiration escaping his lips, at some exquisite touch from the master.

The time slipped by, with bewildering rapidity.

Monsieur Thillard asked if they might be allowed to hear some of Madame's compositions—those which she had already been so amiable as to play to him.

Jouffroy settled himself to listen; his shaggy eyebrows lowering over his eyes, not in severity but in fixity of attention. Hadria trembled for a moment, as her hands touched the keys. Jouffroy gave a nod of satisfaction. If there had been no such quiver of nerves he would have doubted. So he said afterwards to M. Thillard and Madame Vauchelet.

After listening, for a time, without moving a muscle, he suddenly sat bolt upright and looked round at the player. The character of the music, always individual, had grown more marked, and at this point an effect was produced which appeared to startle the musician. He withdrew his gaze, after a moment, muttering something to himself, and resumed his former attitude, slowly and gravely nodding his head. There was a long silence after the last of the lingering, questioning notes had died away.

"Is Madame prepared for work, for hard, faithful work?"

The answer was affirmative. She was only too glad to have the chance to work.

"Has Madame inexhaustible patience?"

"In this cause—yes."

"And can she bear to be misunderstood; to be derided for departure from old rules and conventions; to have her work despised and refused, and again refused, till at last the dull ears shall be opened and all the stupid world shall run shouting to her feet?"

The colour rushed into Hadria's cheeks. "Voila!" exclaimed Madame Vauchelet. M. Thillard beamed with satisfaction. "Did I not tell you?"

Jouffroy clapped his friend on the back with enthusiasm. "Il faut travailler," he said, "mais travailler!" He questioned Hadria minutely as to her course of study, approved it on the whole, suggesting alterations and additions. He asked to look through some more of her work.

"Mon Dieu," he ejaculated, as his quick eye ran over page after page.

"If Madame has a character as strong as her genius, her name will one day be on the lips of all the world." He looked at her searchingly.

"I knew it!" exclaimed M. Thillard. "Madame, je vous felicite."

"Ah!" cried Jouffroy, with a shake of his black shaggy head, "this is not a fate to be envied. C'est dur!"

"I am bewildered!" cried Hadria at last, in a voice that seemed to her to come from somewhere a long way off. The whole scene had acquired the character of a dream. The figures moved through miles of clear distance. Her impressions were chaotic. While a strange, deep confirmation of the musician's words, seemed to stir within her as if they had long been familiar, her mind entirely refused credence.

He had gone too far. Had he said a remarkable talent, but——

Yet was it not, after all, possible? Nature scattered her gifts wildly and cruelly: cruelly, because she cared not into what cramped nooks and crannies she poured her maddening explosive: cruelly, because she hurled this fire from heaven with indiscriminate hand, to set alight one dared not guess how many chained martyrs at their stakes. Nature did not pick and choose the subjects of her wilful ministrations. She seemed to scatter at random, out of sheer gaiete de coeur, as Jouffroy had said, and if some golden grain chanced to be gleaming in this soul or that, what cause for astonishment? The rest might be the worst of dross. As well might the chance occur to one of Nature's children as to another. She did not bestow even one golden grain for nothing, bien sur; she meant to be paid back with interest. Just one bright bead of the whole vast circlet of the truth: perhaps it was hers, but more likely that these kind friends had been misled by their sympathy.

M. Jouffroy came next day to have a long talk with Hadria about her work and her methods. He was absolutely confident of what he had said, but he was emphatic regarding the necessity for work; steady, uninterrupted work. Everything must be subservient to the one aim. If she contemplated anything short of complete dedication to her art—well (he shrugged his shoulders), it would be better to amuse herself. There could be no half-measures with art. True, there were thousands of people who practised a little of this and a little of that, but Art would endure no such disrespect. It was the affair of a lifetime. He had known many women with great talent, but, alas! they had not persistence. Only last year a charming, beautiful young woman, with—mon Dieu!—a talent that might have placed her on the topmost rank of singers, had married against the fervent entreaties of Jouffroy, and now—he shrugged his shoulders with a gesture of pitying contempt—"elle est mere tout simplement." Her force had gone from herself into the plump infant, whose "cris dechirants" were all that now remained to the world of his mother's once magnificent voice. Helas! how many brilliant careers had he not seen ruined by this fatal instinct! Jouffroy's passion for his art had overcome the usual sentiment of the Frenchman, and even the strain of Jewish blood. He did not think a woman of genius well lost for a child. He grudged her to the fetish la famille. He went so far as to say that, even without the claims of genius, a woman ought to be permitted to please herself in the matter. When he heard that Madame had two children, and yet had not abandoned her ambition, he nodded gravely and significantly.

"But Madame has courage," he commented. "She must have braved much censure."

It was the first case of the kind that had come under his notice. He hoped much from it. His opinion of the sex would depend on Hadria's power of persistence. In consequence of numberless pupils who had shewn great promise, and then had satisfied themselves with "a stupid maternity," Jouffroy was inclined to regard women with contempt, not as regards their talent, which he declared was often astonishing, but as regards their persistency of character and purpose.

One could not rely on them. They had enthusiasm—Oh, but enthusiasm a 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 Chatelet 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 perhaps she was 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 the one but 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 for l'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 sur! 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 in that fashion, 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 after that——"

"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!"



CHAPTER XXXV.

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.

The apartement would 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 Therese, 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 little menage. 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 to embonpoint; 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—perhaps because of 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 that I am 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 little bateaux-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 her apartement, 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 heard cette chere Madame Bertaux describe 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 the bourgeois. 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 the menage, there were other women, but you—you were a priestess in the temple of art, you were without prejudice, without the bourgeois conscience, grace 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."



CHAPTER XXXVI.

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 possible had limits, 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 armed cap a 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, I am using 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 not I who 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 I should claim. He made no objection then: 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 his confidante."

"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. "That will 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. Would you not 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 for my gratification 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?"

"You won't understand. 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, is not peculiar 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 motherhood per se?"

"I am not discussing motherhood per se; no woman has yet been in a position to know what it is per 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 it per 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 many do seek 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. Would you feel no sense of indignity in performing a function of this sort (however noble and so on you might think it per 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."

"That catch-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 you dare to 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 to entrap me 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 anything else on false pretences! But a woman—that is a different affair. The code of honour does not here apply, it would seem. Any fraud may be honourably practised on her, 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 conscience are enlisted?"

"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 he had!" 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 if only he had been honest."

"My dear, he was in love with you."

"And so he thought himself justified in deceiving me. There is indeed war 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, I am the culprit," she said in a voice that trembled. "It was I who 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 noble au 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. They have no pity, no sympathy to make a chain of; they don't mind stooping to conquer; they don't mind playing upon the weaker, baser sides of men's natures; they don't mind appealing, for their own ends, to the pity and generosity of others; they don't mind swallowing indignity and smiling abjectly, like any woman of the harem at her lord, so that they gain their object. That is 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?"