“Truly parents must have a bad time of it!” she exclaimed, “but does it really console them that their children should have a bad time of it too?”
Algitha was trembling and very pale.
“Mother says I shall ruin my life by this fad. What real good am I going to do? She says it is absurd the way we talk of things we know nothing about.”
“But she won’t let us know about things; one must talk about something!” cried Hadria with a dispirited laugh.
“She says she has experience of life, and we are ignorant of it. I reminded her that our ignorance was not exactly our fault.”
“Ah! precisely. Parents throw their children’s ignorance in their teeth, having taken precious good care to prevent their knowing anything. I can’t understand parents; they must have been young themselves once. Yet they seem to have forgotten all about it. They keep us hoodwinked and infantile, and then launch us headlong into life, with all its problems to meet, and all momentous decisions made for us, past hope of undoing.” Hadria rose restlessly in her excitement. “Surely no creature was ever dealt with so insanely as the well-brought-up girl! Surely no well-wisher so sincere as the average parent ever ill-treated his charge so preposterously.”
Again there was a long silence, filled with painful thought. “One begins to understand a little, why women do things that one despises, and why the proudest of them so often submit to absolute indignity. You remember when Mrs. Arbuthnot and——”
“Ah, don’t!” cried Algitha, flushing. “Nothing ought to induce a woman to endure that.”
“H’m——I suspect the world that we know nothing about, Algitha, has ways and means of applying the pressure such as you and I scarcely dream of.” Hadria spoke with half-closed eyes that seemed to see deep and far. “I have read and heard things that have almost taken my breath away! I feel as if I could kill every man who acquiesces in the present order of things. It is an insult to every woman alive!”
In Hadria’s room that night, Algitha finally decided to delay her going for another six months, hoping by that time that her mother would have grown used to the idea, and less opposed to it. Mr. Fullerton dismissed it, as obviously absurd. But this high-handed treatment roused all the determination that Algitha had inherited from her father. The six months had to be extended, in order to procure funds. Algitha had a small income of her own, left her by her godmother, Miss Fortescue. She put aside this, for her purpose. Further delay, through Mrs. Trevelyan, brought the season round again to autumn, before Algitha was able to make her final preparations for departure.