Algitha laughed. “I am relieved to hear so wrong-headed a sentiment from you. It sounds more like your old self.”
“I won’t be called wrong-headed on this account,” said Hadria. “If my life is to bear testimony to the truth, its refrain ought to be, ‘This is wrong, this is futile, this is cruel, this is damnable.’ I shall warn every young woman I come across, to beware, as she grows older, and has people in her clutches, not to express her affection by making unlimited demands on the beloved objects, nor by turning the world into a prison-house for those whom she honours with her devotion. The hope of the future lies in the rising generation. You can’t alter those who have matured in the old ideas. It is for us to warn. I won’t pretend to think that things are all right, when I know they are not all right. That would be mean. What is called making the best of it, would testify all the wrong way. My life, instead of being a warning, would be a sort of a trap. Let me at least play the humble rôle of scarecrow. I am in excellent condition for it,” she added, grasping her thin wrist.
Algitha shook her head anxiously.
“I fear,” she said, “that the moral that most people will draw will be: ‘Follow in the path of Mrs. Gordon, however distasteful it may seem to you, and whatever temptations you feel towards a more independent life. If you don’t, you will come to grief.’”
“Then you think it would be better to be ‘resigned,’ and look after one’s own soul?”
“Heaven knows what would be better!” Algitha exclaimed. “But one thing is certain, you ought to look after your body, for the present at any rate.”
CHAPTER L.
HADRIA had found the autumn saddening, and the winter tempt her to morbid thoughts, but the coming of spring made her desperate. It would not allow her to be passive, it would not permit her emotions to lie prone and exhausted. Everything was waking, and she must wake too, to the bitterest regret and the keenest longings of which she was capable.
She had tried to avoid everything that would arouse these futile emotions; she had attempted to organise her life on new lines, persisting in her attitude of non-surrender, but winning, as far as she was able, the rest that, at present, could only be achieved by means of a sort of inward apathy. It was an instinctive effort of self-preservation. She was like a fierce fire, over which ashes have been heaped to keep down the flames, and check its ardour. She had to eat her heart out in dullness, to avoid its flaming out in madness. But the spring came and carried her away on its torrent. She might as well have tried to resist an avalanche. She thought that she had given up all serious thought of music; the surrender was necessary, and she had judged it folly to tempt herself by further dallying with it. It was too strong for her. And the despair that it awoke seemed to break up her whole existence, and render her unfit for her daily task. But now she found that, once more, she had underrated the strength of her own impulses. For some time she resisted, but one day, the sun shone out strong and genial, the budding trees spread their branches to the warm air, a blackbird warbled ecstatically from among the Priory shrubberies, and Hadria passed into the garden of the Griffins.