The Daughters of Danaus Part 23

He seized her hand.

"No, no, nothing that you may think could cure me of the hope of making you my wife. I care for what you _are_, not for what you _think_. You know how little I cling to the popular version of the domestic story. I have told you over and over again that it offends me in a thousand ways.

I hate the _bourgeois_ element in it. What have we really to disagree about?"

He managed to be very convincing. He shewed that for a woman, life in her father's house is far less free than in her own home; that existence could be moulded to any shape she pleased. If Hadria hesitated only on this account her last reason was gone. It was not fair to him. He had been patient. He had kept silence for many months. But he could endure the suspense no longer. He took her hand. Then suddenly she rose.

"No, no. I can't, I can't," she cried desperately.

"I will not listen to denial," he said following her. "I cannot stand a second disappointment. You have allowed me to hope."

"How? When? Never!" she exclaimed.

"Ah, yes, Hadria. I am older than you and I have more experience. Do you think a man will cease to hope while he continues to see the woman he loves?"

Hadria turned very pale.

"You seemed to have forgotten--your sister a.s.sured me--Ah, it was treacherous, it was cruel. She took advantage of my ignorance, my craving for companionship."

"No, it is you who are cruel, Hadria, to make such accusations. I do not claim the slightest consideration because you permitted those practices.

But you cannot suppose that my feeling has not been confirmed and strengthened since I have seen you again. Why should you turn from me?

Why may I not hope to win you? If you have no repugnance to me, why should not I have a chance? Hadria, Hadria, answer me, for heaven's sake. Oh, if I could only understand what is in your mind!"

She would have found it a hard task to enlighten him. He had succeeded, to some extent, in lulling her fears, not in banishing them, for a sinister dread still muttered its warning beneath the surface thoughts.

The strength of Temperley's emotion had stirred her. The magic of personal influence had begun to tell upon her. It was so hard not to believe when someone insisted with such certainty, with such obvious sincerity, that everything would be right. He seemed so confident that she could make him happy, strange as it appeared. Perhaps after all----?

And what a release from the present difficulties. But could one trust? A confused ma.s.s of feeling struggled together. A temptation to give the answer that would cause pleasure was very strong, and beneath all lurked a trembling hope that perhaps this was the way of escape. In apparent contradiction to this, or to any other hope, lay a sense of fatality, a sad indifference, interrupted at moments by flashes of very desperate caring, when suddenly the love of life, the desire for happiness and experience, for the exercise of her power, for its use in the service of her generation, became intense, and then faded away again, as obstacles presented their formidable array before the mind. In the midst of the confusion the thought of the Professor hovered vaguely, with a dim distressing sense of something wrong, of something within her lost and wretched and forlorn.

Mrs. Fullerton pa.s.sed through the room on the arm of Mr. Gordon. How delighted her mother would be if she were to give up this desperate attempt to hold out against her appointed fate. What if her mother and Mrs. Gordon and all the world were perfectly right and far-seeing and wise? Did it not seem more likely, on the face of it, that they _should_ be right, considering the enormous majority of those who would agree with them, than that she, Hadria, a solitary girl, unsupported by knowledge of life or by fellow-believers, should have chanced upon the truth? Had only Valeria been on her side, she would have felt secure, but Valeria was dead against her.

"We are not really at variance, believe me," Temperley pleaded. "You state things rather more strongly than I do--a man used to knocking about the world--but I don't believe there is any radical difference between us." He worked himself up into the belief that there never were two human beings so essentially at one, on all points, as he and Hadria.

"Do you remember the debate that evening in the garret? Do you remember the sentiments that scared your sister so much?" she asked.

Temperley remembered.

"Well, I don't hold those sentiments merely for amus.e.m.e.nt and recreation. I mean them. I should not hesitate a moment to act upon them. If things grew intolerable, according to my view of things, I should simply go away, though twenty marriage-services had been read over my head. Neither Algitha nor I have any of the notions that restrain women in these matters. We would brook no such bonds. The usual claims and demands we would neither make nor submit to. You heard Algitha speak very plainly on the matter. So you see, we are entirely unsuitable as wives, except to the impossible men who might share our rebellion. Please let us go back to the hall. They are just beginning to dance another reel."

"I cannot let you go back. Oh, Hadria, you can't be so unjust as to force me to break off in this state of uncertainty. Just give me a word of hope, however slight, and I will be satisfied."

Hadria looked astonished. "Have you really taken in what I have just said?"

"Every word of it."

"And you realise that I mean it, _mean_ it, with every fibre of me."

"I understand; and I repeat that I shall not be happy until you are my wife. Have what ideas you please, only be my wife."

She gazed at him in puzzled scrutiny. "You don't think I am really in earnest. Let us go."

"I know you are in earnest," he cried, eagerly following her, "and still I----"

At that moment Harold Wilkins came up to claim Hadria for a promised dance. Temperley gave a gesture of impatience. But Harold insisted, and Hadria walked with her partner into the hall where Mrs. Gordon was now playing a sentimental waltz, with considerable poetic license as to time. As everyone said: Mrs. Gordon played with so much expression.

Temperley stood about in corners watching Hadria. She was flushed and silent, dancing with a still gliding movement under the skilful guidance of her partner.

Temperley tried to win a glance as she pa.s.sed round, but her eyes were resolutely fixed on the floor.

Algitha followed her sister's movements uneasily. She had noticed her absence during the last reel, and observed that Temperley also was not to be seen. She felt anxious. She knew Hadria's emotional susceptibility. She knew Temperley's convincing faculty, and also Hadria's uneasy feeling that she had done wrong in allowing the practices to be resumed.

Henriette had not failed to notice the signs of the times, and she annoyed Algitha beyond endurance by her obviously sisterly manner of addressing the family. She had taken to calling the boys by their first names.

Fred shared his sister's dislike to Henriette. "Tact!" he cried with a snort, "why a Temperley rushes in where a bull in a china-shop would fear to tread!"

Algitha saw that Hubert was again by Hadria's side before the evening was out. The latter looked white, and she avoided her sister's glance.

This last symptom seemed to Algitha the worst.

"What's the matter with Hadria?" asked Fred, "she will scarcely speak to me. I was just telling her the best joke I've heard this year, and, will you believe me, she didn't see the point! Yes, you may well stare! I tried again and she gave a nervous giggle; I am relating to you the exact truth. Do any of the epidemics come on like that?"

"Yes, one of the worst," said Algitha gloomily. Fred glared enquiry.

"I am afraid she has been led into accepting Hubert Temperley."

Fred opened his mouth and breathed deep. "Stuff! Hadria would as soon think of selling her soul to the devil."

"Oh, she is quite capable of that too," said Algitha, shaking her head.

"Well, I'm blowed," cried Fred.

Not long after this, the guests began to disperse. Mrs. Gordon and her party were among the last to leave, having a shorter distance to go.

Hubert Temperley was quiet and self-possessed, but Algitha felt sure that she detected a look of suppressed exultation in his demeanour, and something odiously brotherly in his mode of bidding them all good-night.

When everyone had left, and the family were alone, they gathered round the hall fire for a final chat, before dispersing for the night.

"What a delightful evening we have had, Mrs. Fullerton," said Miss Temperley. "It was most picturesque and characteristic. I shall always remember the charm and kindliness of Scottish hospitality."

"And I," said Ernest, _sotto voce_ to Algitha, "shall always remember the calm and thoroughness of English cheek!"

"Why, we had almost forgotten that the New Year is just upon us,"

exclaimed Mr. Fullerton. The first stroke of twelve began to sound almost as he spoke. He threw up the window and disclosed a night brilliant with stars. ("And under us graves," said Hadria to herself.)

They all crowded up, keeping silence as the slow strokes of the clock told the hour.

"A Happy New Year to all!" cried Mr. Fullerton heartily.

Part II.