The Daughters of Danaus

by Mona Caird

Hadria raised her head at last, and her eyes wandered out to the sweet old garden, decked in the miraculous hues of spring. The unutterable loveliness brought, for a second, a strange, inconsequent sense of peace; it seemed like a promise and a message from an unknown god.

But after that momentary and inexplicable experience, the babble of thought went on as before. The old dream mounted again heavenwards, like a cloud at sunset; wild fancies fashioned themselves in the brain. And then, in fantastic images, Hadria seemed to see a panorama of her own life and the general life pass before her, in all their incongruity and confusion. The great mass of that life showed itself as prose, because the significance of things had not been grasped or suspected; but here and there, the veil was pierced—by some suffering soul, by some poet’s vision—and the darkness of our daily, pompous, careworn, ridiculous little existence made painfully visible.

“It is all absurd, all futile!” (so moved the procession of the thoughts); “and meanwhile the steady pulse of life beats on, not pausing while we battle out our days, not waiting while we decide how we shall live. We are possessed by a sentiment, an ideal, a religion; old Time makes no comment, but moves quietly on; we fling the thing aside as tawdry, insufficient; the ideal is tarnished, experience of the world converts us—and still unmoved, he paces on. We are off on another chase; another conception of things possesses us; and still the beat of his footstep sounds in our ears, above the tumult. We think and aspire and dream, and meanwhile the fires grow cold upon the hearth, the daily cares and common needs plead eloquently for our undivided service; the stupendous movement of Existence goes on unceasingly, at our doors; thousands struggling for gold and fame and mere bread, and resorting to infamous devices to obtain them; the great commercial currents flow and flow, according to their mystic laws; the price of stocks goes up, goes down, and with them, the life and fate of thousands; the inconsequent bells ring out from Craddock Church, and the people congregate; the grave of the schoolmistress sleeps in the sunshine, and the sound of the bells streams over it—meaning no irony—to lose itself in the quiet of the hills; rust and dust collect in one’s house, in one’s soul; and this and that, and that and this,—like the pendulum of the old time-piece, with its solemn tick—dock the moments of one’s life, with each its dull little claim and its tough little tether, and lead one decorously to the gateway of Eternity.”

There was a flutter of wings, in the room. A robin hopped in at the window and perched daintily on the table-ledge, its delicate claws outlined against the whiteness of the dust-sheet, its head inquisitively on one side, as if it were asking the reason of the musician’s unusual silence. Suddenly, the little creature fluffed out its feathers, drew itself together, and warbled forth a rich ecstatic song, that seemed to be deliberately addressed to its human companion. Hadria raised her bowed head. Up welled the swift unaccustomed tears, while the robin, with increasing enthusiasm, continued his song. His theme, doubtless, was of the flicker of sunlit shrubberies, the warmth of summer, the glory of spring, the sweetness of the revolving seasons. For cure of heart-ache, he suggested the pleasantness of garden nooks, and the repose that lingers about a dew-sprinkled lawn. All these things were warmly commended to the human being whose song of life had ceased.

“But they break my heart, little singer, they break my heart!”

The robin lifted up its head and warbled more rapturously than ever.

The tears were falling fast now, and silently. The thoughts ran on and on. “I know it all, I know it all, and my heart is broken—and it is my own fault—and it does not matter—the world is full of broken hearts—and it does not matter, it does not matter. But, oh, if the pain might stop, if the pain might stop! The robin sings now, because the spring is here; but it is not always spring. And some day—perhaps not this winter, but some day—the dear little brown body will agonize—it will die alone, in the horrible great universe; one thinks little of a robin, but it agonizes all the same when its time comes; it agonizes all the same.”

The thoughts were drowned, for a moment, in a flood of terrible, unbearable pity for all the sorrow of the world.

The robin seemed to think that he had a mission to cheer his companion, for he warbled merrily on. And beside him, the dust-motes danced the wildest of dances, in the shaft of sunshine.

“It is very lovely, it is very lovely—the world is a miracle, but it is all like a taunt, it is like an insult, this glory of the world. I am born a woman, and to be born a woman is to be exquisitely sensitive to insult and to live under it always, always. I wish that I were as marble to the magic of Life, I wish that I cared for nothing and felt nothing. I pray only that the dream and the longing may be killed, and killed quickly!”