The Daughters of Danaus Part 61

"Oh, look at dolly, look, look!" cried Martha reproachfully. Hadria seized its legs and pulled it back again, murmuring some consolatory promise to its mistress.

"It is strange how you succeed in putting me on the defensive, Henriette--I who have been wronged. A horrible wrong it is too. It has ruined my life. You will never know all that it implies, never, never, though I talk till Doomsday. n.o.body will--except Professor Fortescue."

Henriette gave a horrified gesture. "I believe you are in love with that man. _That_ is the cause of all this wild conduct."

Miss Temperley had lost self-control for a moment.

Hadria looked at her steadily.

"I beg your pardon. I spoke in haste, Hadria. You have your faults, but Hubert has nothing to fear from you in that respect, I am sure."

"Really?" Hadria had come forward and was standing with her left elbow on the mantel-piece, the doll still tucked under her right arm. "And you think that I would, at all hazards, respect a legal tie which no feeling consecrates?"

"I do you that justice," murmured Henriette, turning very white.

"You think that I should regard myself as so completely the property of a man whom I do not love, and who actively dislikes me, as to hold my very feelings in trust for him. Disabuse yourself of that idea, Henriette. I claim rights over myself, and I will hold myself in p.a.w.n for no man. This is no news either to you or to Hubert. Why pretend that it is?"

Henriette covered her face with her hands.

"I can but hope," she said at length, "that even now you are saying these horrible things out of mere opposition. I cannot, I simply _cannot_ believe, that you would bring disgrace upon us all."

"If you chose to regard it as a disgrace that I should make so bold as to lay claim to myself, that, it seems to me, would be your own fault."

Henriette sprang forward white and trembling, and clutched Hadria's arm excitedly.

"Ah! you _could_ not! you _could_ not! Think of your mother and father, if you will not think of your husband and children. You terrify me!"

Hadria was moved with pity at Henriette's white quivering face.

"Don't trouble," she said, more gently. "There is no thunderbolt about to fall in our discreet circle." (A hideous crash from the overturning of one of Martha's Eiffel Towers seemed to belie the words.)

Miss Temperley's clutch relaxed, and she gave a gasp of relief.

"Tell me, Hadria, that you did not mean what you said."

"I can't do that, for I meant it, every syllable."

"Promise me then at least, that before you do anything to bring misery and disgrace on us all, you will tell us of your intention, and give us a chance of putting our side of the matter before you."

"Of protecting your vested interests," said Hadria; "your right of way through my flesh and spirit."

"Of course you put it unkindly."

"I will not make promises for the future. The future is quite enough hampered with the past, without setting antic.i.p.atory traps and springes for unwary feet. But I refuse this promise merely on general principles.

I am not about to distress you in that particular way, though I think you would only have yourselves to blame if I _were_."

Miss Temperley drew another deep breath, and the colour began to return to her face.

"So far, so good," she said. "Now tell me--Is there nothing that would make you accept your duties?"

"Even if I were to accept what you call my duties, it would not be in the spirit that you would desire to see. It would be in cold acknowledgment of the force of existing facts--facts which I regard as preposterous, but admit to be coercive." Henriette sank wearily into her chair.

"Do you then hold it justifiable for a woman to inflict pain on those near to her, by a conduct that she may think justifiable in itself?"

Hadria hesitated for a moment.

"A woman is so desperately entangled, and restricted, and betrayed, by common consent, in our society, that I hold her justified in using desperate means, as one who fights for dear life. She may harden her heart--if she can."

"I am thankful to think that she very seldom _can_!" cried Henriette.

"Ah! that is our weak point! For a long time to come, we shall be overpowered by our own cage-born instincts, by our feminine conscience that has been trained so cleverly to dog the woman's footsteps, in man's interest--his detective in plain clothes!"

"Of course, if you repudiate all moral claim----" began Henriette, weakly.

"I will not insult your intelligence by considering that remark."

"Are you determined to harden yourself against every appeal?" Hadria looked at her sister-in-law, in silence.

"Why don't you answer me, Hadria?"

"Because I have just been endeavouring, evidently in vain, to explain in what light I regard appeals on this point."

"Then Hubert and the children are to be punished for what you are pleased to call his fraud--the fraud of a man in love with you, anxious to please you, to agree with you, and believing you too good and n.o.ble to allow his life to be spoilt by this girl's craze for freedom. It is inconceivable!"

"I fear that Hubert must be prepared to endure the consequences of his actions, like the rest of us. It is the custom, I know, for the s.e.x that men call weaker, to saddle themselves with the consequences of men's deeds, but I think we should have a saner, and a juster world if the custom were discontinued."

"You have missed one of the n.o.blest lessons of life, Hadria," cried Miss Temperley, rising to leave. "You do not understand the meaning of self-sacrifice."

"A principle that, in woman, has been desecrated by misuse," said Hadria. "There is no power, no quality, no gift or virtue, physical or moral, that we have _not_ been trained to misuse. Self-sacrifice stands high on the list."

Miss Temperley shrugged her shoulders, sadly and hopelessly.

"You have fortified yourself on every side. My words only prompt you to throw up another earthwork at the point attacked. I do harm instead of good. I will leave you to think the matter over alone." Miss Temperley moved towards the door.

"Ah, you are clever, Henriette! You know well that I am far better acquainted with the weak points of my own fortifications than you can be, who did not build them, and that when I have done with the defence against you, I shall commence the attack myself. You have all the advantages on your side. Mine is a forlorn hope:--a handful of Greeks at Thermopylae against all the host of the Great King. We are foredoomed; the little band must fall, but some day, Henriette, when you and I shall be no more troubled with these turbulent questions--some day, these great blundering hosts of barbarians will be driven back, and the Greek will conquer. Then the realm of liberty will grow wide!"

"I begin to hate the very name!" exclaimed Henriette.

Hadria's eyes flashed, and she stood drawn up, straight and defiant, before the mantel-piece.

"Ah! there is a fiercer Salamis and a crueller Marathon yet to be fought, before the world will so much as guess what freedom means. I have no illusions now, regarding my own chances, but I should hold it as an honour to stand and fall at Thermopylae, with Leonidas and his Spartans."

"I believe that some day you will see things with different eyes," said Henriette.

The doll fell with a great crash, into the fender among the fire-irons, and there was a little burst of laughter. Miss Temperley pa.s.sed through the door, at the same instant, with great dignity.

CHAPTER x.x.xVII.