The Daughters of Danaus Part 60

"It is not fair to use that word. I tell you that we both confidently expected that when you had more experience you would be like other women and adjust yourself sensibly to your conditions."

"I see," said Hadria, "and so it was decided that Hubert was to pretend to have no objections to my wild ideas, so as to obtain my consent, trusting to the ponderous bulk of circ.u.mstance to hold me flat and subservient when I no longer had a remedy in my power. You neither of you lack brains, at any rate." Henriette clenched her hands in the effort of self-control.

"In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, our forecasts would have come true," she said. "I mean----"

"That is refres.h.i.+ngly frank," cried Hadria.

"We thought we acted for the best."

"Oh, if it comes to that, the Spanish Inquisitors doubtless thought that they were acting for the best, when they made bonfires of heretics in the market-places." Henriette bent her head and clasped the arms of the chair, tightly.

"Well, if there be any one at fault in the matter, _I_ am the culprit,"

she said in a voice that trembled. "It was _I_ who a.s.sured Hubert that experience would alter you. It was I who represented to him that though you might be impulsive, even hard at times, you could not persist in a course that would give pain, and that if you saw that any act of yours caused him to suffer, you would give it up. I was convinced that your character was good and n.o.ble _au fond_, Hadria, and I have believed it up to this moment."

Hadria drew herself together with a start, and her face darkened. "You make me regret that I ever had a good or a pitiful impulse!" she cried with pa.s.sion.

She went to the window and stood leaning against the cas.e.m.e.nt, with crossed arms.

Henriette turned round in her chair.

"Why do you always resist your better nature, Hadria?"

"You use it against me. It is the same with all women. Let them beware of their 'better natures,' poor hunted fools! for that 'better nature'

will be used as a dog-chain, by which they can be led, like toy-terriers, from beginning to end of what they are pleased to call their lives!"

"Oh, Hadria, Hadria!" cried Miss Temperley with deep regret in her tone.

But Hadria was only roused by the remonstrance.

"It is cunning, shallow, heartless women, who really fare best in our society; its conditions suit them. _They_ have no pity, no sympathy to make a chain of; _they_ don't mind stooping to conquer; _they_ don't mind playing upon the weaker, baser sides of men's natures; _they_ don't mind appealing, for their own ends, to the pity and generosity of others; _they_ don't mind swallowing indignity and smiling abjectly, like any woman of the harem at her lord, so that they gain their object.

_That_ is the sort of 'woman's nature' that our conditions are busy selecting. Let us cultivate it. We live in a scientific age; the fittest survive. Let us be 'fit.'"

"Let us be womanly, let us do our duty, let us hearken to our conscience!" cried Henriette.

"Thank you! If my conscience is going to be made into a helm by which others may guide me according to their good pleasure, the sooner that helm is destroyed the better. That is the conclusion to which you drive me and the rest of us, Henriette."

"Charity demands that I do not believe what you say," said Miss Temperley.

"Oh, don't trouble to be charitable!"

Henriette heaved a deep sigh. "Hadria," she said, "are you going to allow your petty rancour about this--well, I will call it error of ours, if you like to be severe--are you going to bear malice and ruin your own life and Hubert's and the children's? Are you so unforgiving, so lacking in generosity?"

"_You_ call it an error. _I_ call it a treachery," returned Hadria. "Why should the results of that treachery be thrust on to _my_ shoulders to bear? Why should _my_ generosity be summoned to your rescue? But I suppose you calculated on that sub-consciously, at the time."

"_Hadria!_"

"This is a moment for plain speaking, if ever there was one. You must have reckoned on an appeal to my generosity, and on the utter helplessness of my position when once I was safely entrapped. It was extremely clever and well thought out. Do you suppose that you would have dared to act as you did, if there had been means of redress in my hands, after marriage?"

"If I _did_ rely on your generosity, I admit my mistake," said Henriette bitterly.

"And now when your deed brings its natural harvest of disaster, you and Hubert come howling, like frightened children, to have the mischief set straight again, the consequences of your treachery averted, by _me_, of all people on this earth!"

"You are his wife, the mother of his children."

"In heaven's name, Henriette, why do you always run into my very jaws?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"Why do you catalogue my injuries when your point is to deny them?"

Henriette rose with a vivid flush.

"Hadria, Hubert is one of the best men in England. I----"

"When have I disputed that?"

Hadria advanced towards Miss Temperley, and stood looking her full in the face.

"I believe that Hubert has acted conscientiously, according to his standard. But I detest his standard. He did not think it wrong or treacherous to behave as he did towards me. But it is _that very fact_ that I so bitterly resent. I could have forgiven him a sin against myself alone, which he acknowledged to be a sin. But this is a sin against my entire s.e.x, which he does _not_ acknowledge to be a sin. It is the insolence that is implied in supposing it allowable for a man to trick a woman in that way, without the smallest damage to his self-respect, that sticks so in my throat. What does it imply as regards his att.i.tude towards all women? Ah! it is _that_ which makes me feel so rancorous. And I resent Hubert's calm a.s.sumption that he had a right to judge what was best for me, and even to force me, by fraud, into following his view, leaving me afterwards to adjust myself with circ.u.mstance as best I might: to make my bitter choice between unconditional surrender, and the infliction of pain and distress, on him, on my parents, on everybody. Ah, you calculated cunningly, Henriette! I _am_ a coward about giving pain, little as you may now be disposed to credit it. You have tight hold of the end of my chain."

Hadria was pacing restlessly up and down the room. Little Martha ran out with her doll, and offered it, as if with a view to chase away the perturbed look from Hadria's face. The latter stooped mechanically and took the doll, smiling her thanks, and stroking the child's fair curls tenderly. Then she recommenced her walk up and down the room, carrying the doll carefully on her arm.

"Take care of dolly," Martha recommended, and went back to her other toys.

"Yes, Henriette, you and Hubert have made your calculations cleverly.

You have advocates only too eloquent in my woman's temperament. You have succeeded only too well by your fraud, through which I now stand here, with a life in fragments, bound, chafe as I may, to choose between alternative disasters for myself and for all of us. Had you two only acted straightly with me, and kindly allowed me to judge for myself, instead of treacherously insisting on judging for me, this knot of your tying which you navely bring me to unravel, would never have wrung the life out of me as it is doing now--nor would it have caused you and Hubert so much virtuous distress."

Hadria recommenced her restless pacing to and fro.

"But, Hadria, _do_ be calm, _do_ look at the matter from our point of view. I have owned my indiscretion." (Hadria gave a little scornful cry.) "Surely you are not going to throw over all allegiance to your husband on _that_ account, even granting he was to blame." Hadria stopped abruptly.

"I deny that I owe allegiance to a man who so treated me. I don't deny that he had excuses. The common standards exonerate him; but, good heavens, a sense of humour, if nothing else, ought to save him from making this grotesque claim on his victim! To preach the duties of wife and mother to _me!_" Hadria broke into a laugh. "It is inconceivably comic."

Henriette shrugged her shoulders. "I fear my sense of humour is defective. I can't see the justice of repudiating the duty of one's position, since there the position _is_, an accomplished fact not to be denied. Why not make the best of it?"

"Henriette, you are amazing! Supposing a wicked bigamist had persuaded a woman to go through a false marriage ceremony, and when she became aware of her real position, imagine him saying to her, with grave and virtuous mien, 'My dear, why repudiate the duties of your position, since there your position _is_, an accomplished fact not to be denied?'"

"Oh, that's preposterous," cried Henriette.

"It's preposterous and it's parallel."

"Hubert did not try to entrap you into doing what was wrong."

"We need not discuss that, for it is not the point. The point is that the position (be that right or wrong) was forced on the woman in both cases by fraud, and is then used as a pretext to exact from her the desired conduct; what the author of the fraud euphoniously calls 'duty.'"

"You are positively insulting!" cried Henriette, rising.

By this time, Hadria had allowed the doll to slip back, and its limp body was hanging down disconsolately from her elbow, although she was clutching it, with absent-minded anxiety, to her side, in the hope of arresting its threatened fall.