Читать книгу The Daughters of Danaus - Mona Caird - Страница 10

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MISS DU PREL had promised to allow Hadria to drive her to Darachanarvan, a little town on the banks of the river, about seven miles across country.

Hadria was in high spirits, as they trundled along the white roads with the wind in their faces, the hills and the blue sky spread out before them, the pleasant sound of the wheels and the trotting of the pony setting their thoughts to rhythm.

The trees were all shedding their last yellow leaves, and the air was full of those faded memories of better days, whirling in wild companies across the road, rushing upward on the breast of some vagabond gust, drifting, spinning, shuddering along the roadside, to lie there at last, quiet, among a host of brothers, with little passing tremors, as if (said Valeria) they were silently sobbing because of their banishment from their kingdom of the air.

Miss Du Prel, though she enjoyed the beauty of the day and the scenery, seemed sad of mood. “This weather recalls so many autumns,” she said. “It reminds me too vividly of wonderful days, whose like I shall never see again, and friends, many of whom are dead, and many lost sight of in this inexorable coming and going of people and things, this inexorable change that goes on for ever. I feel as if I should go mad at times, because it will not stop, either in myself or others.”

“Ah, that is a dreadful thought!”

“It comes to me so insistently, perhaps, because of my roving life,” she said.

She paused for a moment, and then she fell into one of her exalted moods, when she seemed to lose consciousness of the ordinary conditions around her, or rather to pierce deeper into their significance and beauty. Her speech would, at such times, become rhythmic and picturesque; she evidently saw vivid images before her, in which her ideas embodied themselves.

“Most people who live always in one place see the changes creeping on so gradually that they scarcely feel them, but with me this universal flux displays itself pitilessly, I cannot escape. Go where I will, there is something to measure the changes by. A shoal of yellow leaves whispers to me of seasons long ago, and the old past days, with their own intimate character that nothing ever repeats, flash before me again with the vividness of yesterday; and a flight of birds—ah! if I could express what they recall! The dead years pass again in a great procession, a motley company—some like emperors, crowned and richly dowered, with the sound of trumpets and the tramping of many obsequious feet; and others like beggars, despoiled and hungry, trudging along a dusty high road, or like grey pilgrims bound, with bleeding feet, for a far-off shrine.”

They entered a little beech-wood, whose leaves made a light of their own, strange and mystical.

“Yours must have been a wonderful life!” said Hadria.

“Yes, I have seen and felt many things,” answered Miss Du Prel, stirred by the intoxication of the motion and the wind and the sunlight, “life has been to me a series of intense emotions, as it will be to you, I fear——”

“You fear?” said Hadria.

“Yes; for that means suffering. If you feel, you are at the mercy of all things. Every wind that blows uses you as an Æolian harp.”

“That must be charming, at least for those who live in your neighbourhood,” said Hadria.

“No; for often the harp rings false. Its strings get loosened; one hangs slack and jars, and where then is your harmony?”

“One would run the risk of many things rather than let one’s strings lie dumb,” said Hadria.

“What a dangerous temperament you have!” cried Valeria, looking round at the glowing face beside her.

“I must take my risks,” said Hadria.

“I doubt if you know what risks there are.”

“Then I must find out,” she answered.

“One plays with fire so recklessly before one has been burnt.”

Hadria was silent. The words sounded ominous.

“Will can do so much,” she said at length. “Do you believe in the power of the human will to break the back of circumstance?”

“Oh, yes; but the effort expended in breaking its back sometimes leaves one prone, with a victory that arrives ironically too late. However I don’t wish to discourage you. There is no doubt that human will has triumphed over everything—but death.”

Again the sound of the pony’s hoofs sounded through the silence, in a cheerful trot upon the white roads. They were traversing an open, breezy country, chequered with wooded hollows, where generally a village sought shelter from the winds. And these patches of foliage were golden and red in the meditative autumn sunshine, which seemed as if it were a little sad at the thought of parting with the old earth for the coming winter.

“I think the impossible lesson to learn would be renouncement,” said Hadria. “I cannot conceive how anyone could say to himself, while he had longings and life still in him, ‘I will give up this that I might have learnt; I will stop short here where I might press forward; I will allow this or that to curtail me and rob me of my possible experience.’ ”

“Well, I confess that has been my feeling too, though I admire the spirit that can renounce.”

“Admire? Oh, yes, perhaps; though I am not so sure that the submissive nature has not been too much glorified—in theory. Nobody pays much attention to it in practice, by the way.”

Miss Du Prel laughed. “What an observant young woman you are.”

“Renunciation is always preached to girls, you know,” said Hadria—“preached to them when as yet they have nothing more than a rattle and a rag-doll to renounce. And later, when they set about the business of their life, and resign their liberty, their talents, their health, their opportunity, their beauty (if they have it), then people gradually fall away from the despoiled and obedient being, and flock round the still unchastened creature who retains what the gods have given her, and asks for more.”

“I fear you are indeed a still unchastened creature!”

“Certainly; there is no encouragement to chasten oneself. People don’t stand by the docile members of Society. They commend their saints, but they drink to their sinners.”

Miss Du Prel smiled.

“It is true,” she admitted. “A woman must not renounce too much if she desires to retain her influence.”

“Pas trop de zèle,” Hadria quoted.

“There is something truly unmanageable about you, my dear!” cried Valeria, much amused. “Well, I too have had just that sort of instinct, just that imperious demand, just that impatience of restraint. I too regarded myself and my powers as mine to use as I would, responsible only to my own conscience. I decided to have freedom though the heavens should fall. I was unfitted by temperament to face the world, but I was equally unfitted to pay the price for protection—the blackmail that society levies on a woman: surrender of body and of soul. What could one expect, in such a case, but disaster? I often envy now the simple-minded woman who pays her price and has her reward—such as it is.”

“Ah! such as it is!” echoed Hadria.

“Who was it said, the other day, that she thought a wise woman always took things as they were, and made the best of them?”

“Some dull spirit.”

“And yet a practical spirit.”

“I am quite sure,” said Hadria, “that the stokers of hell are practical spirits.”

“Your mother must have had her work cut out for her when she undertook to bring you up,” exclaimed Miss Du Prel.

“So she always insinuates,” replied Hadria demurely.

They were spinning down hill now, into a warm bit of country watered by the river, and Hadria drew rein. The spot was so pleasant that they alighted, tied the pony to a tree, and wandered over the grass to the river’s edge. Hadria picked her way from stone to slippery stone, into the middle of the river, where there was comparatively safe standing room. Here she was suddenly inspired to execute the steps of a reel, while Valeria stood dismayed on the bank, expecting every moment, to see the dance end in the realms of the trout.

But Hadria kept her footing, and continued to step it with much solemnity. Meanwhile, two young men on horseback were coming down the road; but as a group of trees hid it from the river at this point, they were not noticed. The horsemen stopped suddenly when they cleared the group of trees. The figure of a young woman in mid-stream, dancing a reel with extreme energy and correctness, and without a smile, was sufficiently surprising to arrest them.

“As I thought,” exclaimed Hadria, “it is Harold Wilkins!”

“I shall be glad to see this conquering hero,” said Valeria.

Hadria, who had known the young man since her childhood, waited calmly as he turned his horse’s head towards the river, and advanced across the grass, raising his hat. “Good morning, Miss Fullerton.”

“Good morning,” Hadria returned, from her rock.

“You seem to be having rather an agreeable time of it.”

“Very. Are you fond of dancing?”

Mr. Wilkins was noted, far and wide, for his dancing, and the question was wounding.

He was tall and loosely built, with brown expressionless eyes, dark hair, a pink complexion, shelving forehead, and a weak yet obstinate mouth. His companion also was tall and dark, but his face was pale, his forehead broad and high, and a black moustache covered his upper lip. He had raised his hat gracefully on finding that the dancer in mid-stream was an acquaintance of his companion, and he shewed great self-possession in appearing to regard the dancing of reels in these circumstances, as an incident that might naturally be expected. Not a sign of surprise betrayed itself in the face, not even a glimmer of curiosity. Hadria was so tickled by this finished behaviour under difficulties, that she took her cue from it, and decided to treat the matter in the same polished spirit. She too would take it all decorously for granted.

Mr. Wilkins introduced his friend: Mr. Hubert Temperley. Hadria bowed gracefully in reply to Mr. Temperley’s salute.

“Don’t you feel a little cramped out there?” asked Mr. Wilkins.

“Dear me, no,” cried Hadria in mock surprise. “What could induce you to suppose I would come out here if I felt cramped?”

“Are you—are you thinking of coming on shore? Can I help you?”

“Thank you,” replied Hadria. “This is a merely temporary resting-place. We ought to be getting on; we have some miles yet to drive,” and she hurried her friend away. They were conducted to the pony-cart by the cavaliers, who raised their hats, as the ladies drove off at a merry pace, bowing their farewells.

“The eternal riddle!” Temperley exclaimed, as they turned the corner of the road.

“What is the eternal riddle?” Harold Wilkins enquired.

“Woman, woman!” Temperley replied, a little impatiently. He had not found young Wilkins quick to catch his meaning during the two hours’ ride, and it occurred to him that Miss Fullerton would have been a more interesting companion.

He made a good many enquiries about her and her family, on the way back to Drumgarren.

“We are invited to tennis at their house, for next Tuesday,” said Harold, “so you will have a chance of pursuing the acquaintance. For my part, I don’t admire that sort of girl.”

“Don’t you? I am attracted by originality. I like a woman to have something in her.”

“Depends on what it is. I hate a girl to have a lot of silly ideas.”

“Perhaps you prefer her to have but one,” said Temperley, “that one being that Mr. Harold Wilkins is a charming fellow.”

“Nothing of the kind,” cried Harold. “I can’t help it if girls run after me; it’s a great bore.”

Temperley laughed. “You, like Achilles, are pursued by ten thousand girls. I deeply sympathize, though it is not an inconvenience that has troubled me, even in my palmiest days.”

“Why, how old are you? Surely you are not going to talk as if those days were over?”

“Oh, I am moderately palmy still!” Temperley admitted. “Still, the hour approaches when the assaults of time will become more disastrous.”

“You and Hadria Fullerton ought to get on well together, for she is very musical,” said Harold Wilkins.

“Ah!” cried Temperley with new interest. “I could have almost told that from her face. Does she play well?”

“Well, I suppose so. She plays things without any tune that bore one to death, but I daresay you would admire it. She composes too, I am told.”