Part 48 (2/2)

here is one of the first morbid signs of the evil at work upon you. If you had been wholesomely moving and striving in the right direction, do you think you would have been guilty of that piece of egotism?”

”Vanity pursues one into hidden corners of the mind. I am so used to that sort of spirit among women. Apparently I have caught the infection.”

”I would not let it go farther,” advised the Professor.

”To do myself justice, I think it is superficial,” said Hadria with a laugh. ”I would dare anything, _any_thing for a chance of freedom, for----,” she broke off, hesitating. ”I remember once--years ago, when I was quite a girl--seeing a young ash-tree that had got jammed into a c.h.i.n.k so that it couldn't grow straight, or spread, as its inner soul, poor stripling, evidently inspired it to grow. Outside, there were hundreds of upright, vigorous, healthful young trees, fulfilling that innate idea in apparent gladness, and with obvious general advantage, since they were growing into sound, valuable trees, straight of trunk, n.o.bly developed. I felt like the poor sapling in the cranny, that had just the same natural impetus of healthy growth as all the others, but was forced to become twisted, and crooked, and stunted and wretched. I think most women have to grow in a cranny. It is generally known as their Sphere.” Algitha gave an approving chuckle. ”I noticed,” Hadria added, ”that the desperate struggle to grow of that young tree had begun to loosen the masonry of the edifice that cramped it. There was a great dangerous-looking crack right across the building. The tree was not saved from deformity, _but_ it had its revenge! Some day that n.o.ble inst.i.tution would come down by the run.”

”Yes. Well, the thing to do is to get out of it,” said the Professor.

”You really advise that?”

”Advise? One dare not advise. It is too perilous. No general theories will hold in all instances.”

”Tell me,” said Hadria, ”what are the qualities in a human being that make him most serviceable, or least harmful?”

”What qualities?” Professor Fortescue watched the smoke of his pipe curling away, as if he expected to find the answer in its coils. He answered slowly, and with an air of reflection.

”Mental integrity, and mercy. A resolute following of reason (in which I should include insight) to its conclusion, though the heavens fall, and an unfailing fellow-feeling for the pain and struggle and heart-ache and sin that life is so full of. But one must add the quality of imagination. Without imagination and its fruits, the world would be a howling wilderness.”

”I wish you would come down with me, some day, to the East End and hold out the hand of fellows.h.i.+p to some of the sufferers there,” cried Algitha. ”I am, at times, almost in despair at the ma.s.s of evil to be fought against, but somehow you always make me feel, Professor, that the race has all the qualities necessary for redemption enfolded within itself.”

”But a.s.suredly it has!” cried the Professor. ”And a.s.suredly those redeeming qualities will germinate. Otherwise the race would extinguish itself in cruelty and corruption. Let people talk as they please about the struggle for existence, it is through the development of the human mind and the widening of human mercy that better things will come.”

”One sees, now and then, in a flash, what the world may some day be,”

said Hadria. ”The vision comes, perhaps, with the splendour of a spring morning, or opens, scroll-like, in a flood of n.o.ble music. It sounds unreal, yet it brings a sense of conviction that is irresistible.”

”I think it was Pythagoras who declared that the woes of men are the work of their own hands,” said the Professor. ”So are their joys.

Nothing ever shakes my belief that what the mind of man can imagine, that it can achieve.”

”But there are so many pulling the wrong way,” said Algitha sadly.

”Ah, one man may be miserable through the deeds of others; the race can only be miserable through its own.”

After a pause, Algitha put a question: How far was it justifiable to give pain to others in following one's own idea of right and reasonable?

How far might one attempt to live a life of intellectual integrity and of the widest mercy that one's nature would stretch to?

Professor Fortescue saw no limits but those of one's own courage and ability. Algitha pointed out that in most lives the limit occurred much sooner. If ”others”--those tyrannical and absorbent ”others”--had intricately bound up their notions of happiness with the prevention of any such endeavour, and if those notions were of the usual negative, home-comfort-and-affection order, narrowly personal, fruitful in nothing except a sort of sentimental egotism that spread over a whole family--what Hadria called an _egotism a douze_--how far ought these ideas to be respected, and at what cost?

Professor Fortescue was unqualified in his condemnation of the sentiment which erected sacrificial altars in the family circle. He spoke scornfully of the doctrine of renunciation, so applied, and held the victims who brought their gifts of power and liberty more culpable than those who demanded them, since the duty of resistance to recognised wrong was obvious, while great enlightenment was needed to teach one to forego an unfair privilege or power that all the world concurred in pressing upon one.

”Then you think a person--even a feminine person--justified in giving pain by resisting unjust demands?”

”I certainly think that all attempts to usurp another person's life on the plea of affection should be stoutly resisted. But I recognise that cases must often occur when resistance is practically impossible.”

”One ought not to be too easily melted by the 'shrieks of a near relation,'” said Hadria. ”Ah, I have a good mind to try. I don't fear any risk for myself, nor any work; the stake is worth it. I don't want to grow cramped and crooked, like my poor ash-tree. Perhaps this may be a form of vanity too; I don't know, I was going to say I don't care.”

The scent of young leaves and of flowers came up, soft and rich from the garden, and as Hadria leant over the parapet, a gust of pa.s.sionate conviction of power swept over her; not merely of her own personal power, but of some vast, flooding, beneficent well-spring from which her own was fed. And with the inrush, came a glimpse as of heaven itself.

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