The Daughters of Danaus Part 57

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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sail her, as of late it had been a.s.sailing 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 s.e.x 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 pa.s.sion 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 circ.u.mstances might be; she had a great talent that she had no right to sacrifice to any circ.u.mstances 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 a.s.sist 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."