“Girls seem an astonishing number of things that they are not,” said Hadria, “especially to men. A poor benighted man might as well try to get on to confidential terms with the Sphinx, as to learn the real thoughts and wishes of a girl.”
“You two are exceptional, you see,” said Ernest.
“Oh, everybody’s exceptional, if you only knew it!” exclaimed his sister. “Girls;” she went on to assert, “are stuffed with certain stereotyped sentiments from their infancy, and when that painful process is completed, intelligent philosophers come and smile upon the victims, and point to them as proofs of the intentions of Nature regarding our sex, admirable examples of the unvarying instincts of the feminine creature. In fact,” Hadria added with a laugh, “it’s as if the trainer of that troop of performing poodles that we saw, the other day, at Ballochcoil, were to assure the spectators that the amiable animals were inspired, from birth, by a heaven-implanted yearning to jump through hoops, and walk about on their hind legs——”
“But there are such things as natural instincts,” said Ernest.
“There are such things as acquired tricks,” returned Hadria.
A loud shout, accompanied by the barking of several dogs, announced the approach of the two younger boys. Boys and dogs had been taking their morning bath in the river.
“You have broken in upon a most interesting discourse,” said Ernest. “Hadria was really coming out.”
This led to a general uproar.
When peace was restored, the conversation went on in desultory fashion. Ernest and Hadria fell apart into a more serious talk. These two had always been “chums,” from the time when they used to play at building houses of bricks on the nursery floor. There was deep and true affection between them.
The day broke into splendour, and the warm rays, rounding the edge of the eastward rock, poured straight into the little temple. Below and around on the cliff-sides, the rich foliage of holly and dwarf oak, ivy, and rowan with its burning berries, was transformed into a mass of warm colour and shining surfaces.
“What always bewilders me,” Hadria said, bending over the balustrade among the ivy, “is the enormous gulf between what might be and what is in human life. Look at the world—life’s most sumptuous stage—and look at life! The one, splendid, exquisite, varied, generous, rich beyond description; the other, poor, thin, dull, monotonous, niggard, distressful—is that necessary?”
“But all lives are not like that,” objected Fred.
“I speak only from my own narrow experience,” said Hadria.
“Oh, she is thinking, as usual, of that unfortunate Mrs. Gordon!” cried Ernest.
“Of her, and the rest of the average, typical sort of people that I know,” Hadria admitted. “I wish to heaven I had a wider knowledge to speak from.”
“If one is to believe what one hears and reads,” said Algitha, “life must be full of sorrow indeed.”
“But putting aside the big sorrows,” said her sister, “the ordinary every day existence that would be called prosperous, seems to me to be dull and stupid to a tragic extent.”
“The Gordons of Drumgarran once more! I confess I can’t see anything particularly tragic there,” observed Fred, whose memory recalled troops of stalwart young persons in flannels, engaged for hours, in sending a ball from one side of a net to the other.
“It is more than tragic; it is disgusting!” cried Hadria with a shiver. Algitha drew herself together. She turned to her eldest brother.
“Look here, Ernest; you said just now that girls were shielded from the realities of life. Yet Mrs. Gordon was handed over by her protectors, when she was little more than a school-girl, without knowledge, without any sort of resource or power of facing destiny, to—well, to the hateful realities of the life that she has led now for over twenty years. There is nothing to win general sympathy in this case, for Mr. Gordon is good and kind; but oh, think of the existence that a ‘protected,’ carefully brought-up girl may be launched into, before she knows what she is pledged to, or what her ideas of life may be! If that is what you call protection, for heaven’s sake let us remain defenceless.”
Fred and Ernest accused their elder sister of having been converted by Hadria. Algitha, honest and courageous in big things and in small, at once acknowledged the source of her ideas. Not so long ago, Algitha had differed from the daughters of the neighbouring houses, rather in force of character than in sentiment.
She had followed the usual aims with unusual success, giving unalloyed satisfaction to her proud mother. Algitha had taken it as a matter of course that she would some day marry, and have a house of her own to reign in. A home, not a husband, was the important matter, and Algitha had trusted to her attractions to make a good marriage; that is, to obtain extensive regions for her activities. She craved a roomy stage for her drama, and obviously there was only one method of obtaining it, and even that method was but dubious. But Hadria had undermined this matter of fact, take-things-as-you-find-them view, and set her sister’s pride on the track. That master-passion once aroused in the new direction, Algitha was ready to defend her dignity as a woman, and as a human being, to the death. Hadria felt as a magician might feel, who has conjured up spirits henceforth beyond his control; for obviously, her sister’s whole life would be altered by this change of sentiment, and, alas, her mother’s hopes must be disappointed. The laird of Clarenoc—a fine property, of which Algitha might have been mistress—had received polite discouragement, much to his surprise and that of the neighbourhood. Even Ernest, who was by no means worldly, questioned the wisdom of his sister’s decision; for the laird of Clarenoc was a good fellow, and after all, let them talk as they liked, what was to become of a girl unless she married? This morning’s conversation therefore touched closely on burning topics.
“Mrs. Gordon’s people meant it for the best, I suppose,” Ernest observed, “when they married her to a good man with a fine property.”
“That is just the ghastly part of it!” cried Hadria; “from ferocious enemies a girl might defend herself, but what is she to do against the united efforts of devoted friends?”
“I don’t suppose Mrs. Gordon is aware that she is so ill-used!”
“Another gruesome circumstance!” cried Hadria, with a half laugh; “for that only proves that her life has dulled her self-respect, and destroyed her pride.”
“But, my dear, every woman is in the same predicament, if predicament it be!”
“What a consolation!” Hadria exclaimed, “all the foxes have lost their tails!”
“It may be illogical, but people generally are immensely comforted by that circumstance.”
The conversation waxed warmer and more personal. Fred took a conservative view of the question. He thought that there were instincts implanted by Nature, which inspired Mrs. Gordon with a yearning for exactly the sort of existence that fate had assigned to her. Algitha, who had been the recipient of that lady’s tragic confidences, broke into a shout of laughter.
“Well, Harold Wilkins says——”
This name was also greeted with a yell of derision.
“I don’t see why you girls always scoff so at Harold Wilkins,” said Fred, slightly aggrieved, “he is generally thought a lot of by girls. All Mrs. Gordon’s sisters adore him.”
“He needs no further worshippers,” said Hadria.
Fred was asked to repeat the words of Harold Wilkins, but to soften them down if too severe.
“He laughs at your pet ideas,” said Fred ruthlessly.
“Break it gently,