“But I haven’t all the day, or any part of it, for certain,” said Hadria.
“If you grudge the little services you do for me, pray abandon them,” said the mother, genuinely hurt.
Hadria entered her room, one evening, tired out and profoundly depressed. A table, covered with books, stood beside the fire. She gave the top-heavy pile an impatient thrust and the mass fell, with a great crash, to the floor. A heap of manuscript—her musical achievement for the past year—was involved in the fall. She contemplated the wreck gravely.
“Yes, it is I who am weak, not circumstance that is strong. If I could keep my mind unmoved by the irritations; if I could quarrel with mother, and displease father, and offend all the world without a qualm, or without losing the delicate balance of thought and mood necessary for composition, then I should, to some extent, triumph over my circumstances; I should not lose so much time in this wretched unstringing. Only were I so immovably constituted, is it probable that I should be able to compose at all?”
She drew the score towards her. “People are surprised that women have never done anything noteworthy in music. People are so intelligent!” She turned over the pages critically. If only this instinct were not so overwhelmingly strong! Hadria wondered how many other women, from the beginning of history, had cursed the impulse to create! Fortunately, it was sometimes extinguished altogether, as to-night, for instance, when every impression, every desire was swept clean out of her, and her mind presented a creditable blank, such as really ought to satisfy the most exacting social mentor. In such a state, a woman might be induced to accept anything!
Hadria brought out two letters from her pocket; one from the Professor, the other from Miss Du Prel. The latter had been writing frequently of late, pointing out the danger of Hadria’s exaggerated ideas, and the probability of their ruining her happiness in life. Valeria had suffered herself from “ideas,” and knew how fatal they were. Life could not be exactly as one would have it, and it was absolutely necessary, in order to avoid misery for oneself and others, to consent to take things more or less as they were; to make up one’s mind to bend a little, rather than have to break, in the end. Things were never quite so shocking as they seemed to one’s youthful imagination. The world was made up of compromises. Good was mixed with evil everywhere. The domestic idea, as Hadria called it, might be, in its present phase, somewhat offensive, but it could be redeemed in its application, in the details and “extenuating circumstances.” Valeria could not warn Hadria too earnestly against falling into the mistake that Valeria herself had made. She had repudiated the notion of anything short of an ideal union; a perfect comradeship, without the shadow of restraint or bondage in the relationship; and not having found it, she had refused the tie altogether. She could not bring herself to accept the lesser thing, having conceived the possibility of the greater. She now saw her error, and repented it. She was reaping the penalty in a lonely and unsatisfied life. For a long time her work had seemed to suffice, but she felt now that she had been trusting to a broken reed. She was terrified at her solitude. She could not face the thought of old age, without a single close tie, without a home, without a hold upon her race.
She ended by entreating Hadria not to refuse marriage merely because she could not find a man to agree with her in everything, or capable of entering into the spirit of the relationship that perhaps would unite the men and women of the future. It was a pity that Hadria had not been born a generation later, but since she had come into the world at this time of transition, she must try to avoid the tragedy that threatens all spirits who are pointing towards the new order, while the old is still working out its unexhausted impetus.
This reiterated advice had begun to trouble Hadria. It did not convince her, but Valeria’s words were incessantly repeating themselves in her mind; working as a ferment among her thoughts.
The letters from Miss Du Prel and the Professor were to her, a source of great pleasure and of great pain. In her depressed moods, they would often rather increase her despondency, because the writers used to take for granted so many achievements that she had not been able to accomplish.
“They think I am living and progressing as they are; they do not know that the riot and stir of intellectual life has ceased. I am like a creature struggling in a quicksand.”