Part 11 (1/2)
”Ah! there's the difficulty. What _can_ one do instead, without breaking somebody's heart? Nothing, except breaking one's own. And even putting that difficulty aside, it seems as if everyone's hand were against a woman who refuses the path that has been marked out for her.”
”No, no, it is not so bad as that. There are many openings now for women.”
”But,” said Hadria, ”as far as I can gather, ordinary ability is not sufficient to enable them to make a scanty living. The talent that would take a man to the top of the tree is required to keep a woman in a meagre supply of bread and b.u.t.ter.”
”Allowing for exaggeration, that is more or less the case,” Miss Du Prel admitted.
”I have revolted against the common lot,” she went on after a pause, ”and you see what comes of it; I am alone in the world. One does not think of that when one is quite young.”
”Would you rather be in Mrs. Gordon's position than in your own?”
”I doubt not that she is happier.”
”But would you change with her, surrendering all that she has surrendered?”
”Yes, if I were of her temperament.”
”Ah! you always evade the question. Remaining yourself, would you change with her?”
”I would never have allowed my life to grow like hers.”
”No,” said Hadria, laughing, ”you would probably have run away or killed yourself or somebody, long before this.”
Miss Du Prel could not honestly deny this possibility. After a pause she said:
”A woman cannot afford to despise the dictates of Nature. She may escape certain troubles in that way; but Nature is not to be cheated, she makes her victim pay her debt in another fas.h.i.+on. There is no escape. The centuries are behind one, with all their weight of heredity and habit; the order of society adds its pressure--one's own emotional needs. Ah, no! it does not answer to pit oneself against one's race, to bid defiance to the fundamental laws of life.”
”Such then are the alternatives,” said Hadria, moving close to the river's brink, and casting two big stones into the current. ”There stand the devil and the deep sea.”
”You are too young to have come to that sad conclusion,” said Miss Du Prel.
”But I haven't,” cried Hadria. ”I still believe in revolt.”
The other shook her head.
”And what about love? Are you going through life without the one thing that makes it bearable?”
”I would not purchase it at such a cost. If I can't have it without despoiling myself of everything that is worth possessing, I prefer to go without.”
”You don't know what you say!” exclaimed Miss Du Prel.
”But why? Love would be ruined and desecrated. I understand by it a sympathy so perfect, and a reverence so complete, that the conditions of ordinary domestic existence would be impossible, unthinkable, in connection with it.”
”So do I understand love. But it comes, perhaps, once in a century, and if one is too fastidious, it pa.s.ses by and leaves one forlorn; at best, it comes only to open the gates of Paradise, for a moment, and to close them again, and leave one in outer darkness.”
”Always?”
”I believe always,” answered Miss Du Prel.
The running of the river sounded peacefully in the pause that followed.