The Daughters of Danaus Part 20

"And if they do?"

"Then, if the sentiment stands test and trial, and proves genuine, and not a silly freak, the fact ought to be frankly faced. Husband and wife have no business to go on keeping up a bond that has become false and irksome."

Miss Temperley broke into protest. "But surely you don't mean to defend such faithlessness."

Algitha would not admit that it _was_ faithlessness. She said it was mere honesty. She could see nothing inherently wrong in falling in love genuinely after one arrived at years of discretion. She thought it inherently idiotic, and worse, to make a choice that ought to be for life, at years of _in_discretion. Still, people _were_ idiotic, and that must be considered, as well as all the other facts, such as the difficulty of really knowing each other before marriage, owing to social arrangements, and also owing to the training, which made men and women always pose so ridiculously towards one another, pretending to be something that they were not.

"Well done, Algitha," cried Ernest, laughing; "I like to hear you speak out. Now tell me frankly: supposing you married quite young, before you had had much experience; supposing you afterwards found that you and your husband had both been deceiving yourselves and each other, unconsciously perhaps; and suppose, when more fully awakened and developed, you met another fellow and fell in love with him genuinely, what would you do?"

"Oh, she would just mention it to her husband casually," Fred interposed with a chuckle, "and disappear."

"I should certainly not go through terrific emotions and self-accusations, and think the end of the world had come," said Algitha serenely. "I should calmly face the situation."

"Calmly! She by supposition being madly in love!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Fred, with a chuckle.

"Calmly," repeated Algitha. "And I should consider carefully what would be best for all concerned. If I decided, after mature consideration and self-testing, that I ought to leave my husband, I should leave him, as I should hope he would leave me, in similar circ.u.mstances. That is my idea of right."

"And is this also your idea of right, Miss Fullerton?" asked Temperley, turning, in some trepidation, to Hadria.

"That seems to me right in the abstract. One can't p.r.o.nounce for particular cases where circ.u.mstances are entangled."

Hubert sank back in his chair, and ran his hand over his brow. He seemed about to speak, but he checked himself.

"Where did you get such extraordinary ideas from?" cried Miss Temperley.

"They were like Topsy; they growed," said Fred.

"We have been in the habit of speculating freely on all subjects," said Ernest, "ever since we could talk. This is the blessed result!"

"I am not quite so sure now, that the Preposterous Society meets with my approval," observed Miss Temperley.

"If you had been brought up in the bosom of this Society, Miss Temperley, you too, perhaps, would have come to this. Think of it!"

"Does your mother know what sort of subjects you discuss?"

There was a shout of laughter. "Mother used often to come into the nursery and surprise us in hot discussion on the origin of evil," said Hadria.

"Don't you believe what she says, Miss Temperley," cried Fred; "mother never could teach Hadria the most rudimentary notions of accuracy."

"Her failure with my brothers, was in the department of manners," Hadria observed.

"Then she does _not_ know what you talk about?" persisted Henriette.

"You ask her," prompted Fred, with undisguised glee.

"She never attends our meetings," said Algitha.

"Well, well, I cannot understand it!" cried Miss Temperley. "However, you don't quite know what you are talking about, and one mustn't blame you."

"No, don't," urged Fred; "we are a sensitive family."

"Shut up!" cried Ernest with a warning frown.

"Oh, you are a coa.r.s.e-grained exception; I speak of the family average,"

Fred answered with serenity.

Henriette felt that nothing more could be done with this strange audience. Her business was really with the President of the Society. The girl was bent on ruining her life with these wild notions. Miss Temperley decided that it would be better to talk to Hadria quietly in her own room, away from the influence of these eccentric brothers and that extraordinary sister. After all, it was Algitha who had originated the shocking view, not Hadria, who had merely agreed, doubtless out of a desire to support her sister.

"I have not known you for seven years, but I am going to poke your fire," said Henriette, when they were established in Hadria's room.

"I never thought you would wait so long as that," was Hadria's ambiguous reply.

Then Henriette opened her batteries. She talked without interruption, her companion listening, agreeing occasionally with her adversary, in a disconcerting manner; then falling into silence.

"It seems to me that you are making a very terrible mistake in your life, Hadria. You have taken up a fixed idea about domestic duties and all that, and are going to throw away your chances of forming a happy home of your own, out of a mere prejudice. You may not admire Mrs.

Gordon's existence; for my part I think she leads a very good, useful life, but there is no reason why all married lives should be like hers."

"Why are they, then?"

"I don't see that they are."

"It is the prevailing type. It shows the way the domestic wind blows.

Fancy having to be always resisting such a wind. What an oblique, shorn-looking object one would be after a few years!"

Henriette grew eloquent. She recalled instances of women who had fulfilled all their home duties, and been successful in other walks as well; she drew pictures in attractive colours of Hadria in a home of her own, with far more liberty than was possible under her parents' roof; and then she drew another picture of Hadria fifteen years hence at Dunaghee.

Hadria covered her face with her hands. "You who uphold all these social arrangements, how do you feel when you find yourself obliged to urge me to marry, not for the sake of the positive joys of domestic existence, but for the merely negative advantage of avoiding a hapless and forlorn state? You propose it as a _pis-aller_. Does _that_ argue that all is sound in the state of Denmark?"

"If you had not this unreasonable objection to what is really a woman's natural destiny, the difficulty would not exist."

"Have women no pride?"

Henriette did not answer.

"Have they no sense of dignity? If one marries (accepting things on the usual basis, of course) one gives to another person rights and powers over one's life that are practically boundless. To retain one's self-direction in case of dispute would be possible only on pain of social ruin. I have little enough freedom now, heaven knows; but if I married, why my very thoughts would become the property of another.

Thought, emotion, love itself, must pa.s.s under the yoke! There would be no nook or corner entirely and indisputably my own."

"I should not regard that as a hards.h.i.+p," said Henriette, "if I loved my husband."

"I should consider it not only a hards.h.i.+p, but beyond endurance."

"But, my dear, you are impracticable."

"That is what I think domestic life is!" Hadria's quiet tone was suddenly changed to one of scorn. "You talk of love; what has love worthy of the name to do with this preposterous interference with the freedom of another person? If _that_ is what love means--the craving to possess and restrain and demand and hamper and absorb, and generally make mincemeat of the beloved object, then preserve me from the master-pa.s.sion."

Henriette was baffled. "I don't know how to make you see this in a truer light," she said. "There is something to my mind so beautiful in the close union of two human beings, who pledge themselves to love and honour one another, to face life hand in hand, to share every thought, every hope, to renounce each his own wishes for the sake of the other."

"That sounds very elevating; in practice it breeds Mr. and Mrs. Gordon."