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.