Part 81 (1/2)
”How charming!” cried Henriette benevolently, ”and how characteristic!”
As Hadria sank in faith and hope, she rose in the opinion of her neighbours. She was never nearer to universal unbelief than now, when the orthodox began to smile upon her.
Life presented itself to her as a mere welter of confused forces. If goodness, or aspiration, or any G.o.dlike thing arose, for a moment--like some s.h.i.+pwrecked soul with hands out-stretched above the waves--swiftly it sank again submerged, leaving only a faint ripple on the surface, soon overswept and obliterated.
She could detect no light on the face of the troubled waters. Looking around her at other lives, she saw the story written in different characters, but always the same; hope, struggle, failure. The pathos of old age wrung her heart; the sorrows of the poor, the lonely, the illusions of the seeker after wealth, the utter vanity of the objects of men's pursuit, and the end of it all!
”I wonder what is the secret of success, Hadria?”
”Speaking generally, I should say to have a petty aim.”
”Then if one succeeds after a long struggle,” said Algitha pensively.
”One finds it, I doubt not, the dismalest of failures.”
A great cloud of darkness seemed to have descended over the earth.
Hadria felt cut off even from Nature. The splendours of the autumn appeared at a vast distance from her. They belonged to another world.
She could not get near them. Mother earth had deserted her child.
A superficial apathy was creeping over her, below which burnt a slow fire of pain. But the greater the apathy, which expressed itself outwardly in a sort of cheerful readiness to take things as they came, the more delighted everybody appeared to be with the repentant sinner.
Her a.s.sociates seemed to desire earnestly that she should go to church, as they did, in her best bonnet----and why not? She would get a best bonnet, as ridiculous as they pleased, and let Mr. Walker do his worst.
What did it matter? Who was the better or the worse for what she thought or how she acted? What mattered it, whether she were consistent or not?
What mattered it if she seemed, by her actions, to proclaim her belief in dogmas that meant nothing to her, except as interesting products of the human mind? She had not enough faith to make it worth while to stand alone.
Lord Engleton said he thought it right to go to church regularly, for the sake of setting an example to the ma.s.ses, a sentiment which always used to afford Hadria more amus.e.m.e.nt than many intentional witticisms.
She went often to the later service, when the autumn twilight lay heavy and sad upon the churchyard, and the peace of evening stole in through the windows of the church. Then, as the sublime poetry of psalmist or prophet rolled through the Norman arches, or the notes of the organ stole out of the shadowed chancel, a spirit of repose would creep into the heart of the listener, and the tired thoughts would take a more rhythmic march. She felt nearer to her fellows, at such moments, than at any other. Her heart went out to them, in wistful sympathy. They seemed to be standing together then, one and all, at the threshold of the great Mystery, and though they might be parted ever so widely by circ.u.mstance, temperament, mental endowment, manner of thought, yet after all, they were brethren and fellow sufferers; they shared the weakness, the longing, the struggle of life; they all had affections, ambitions, heart-breakings, sins, and victories; the differences were slight and transient, in the presence of the vast unknown, the Ultimate Reality for which they were all groping in the darkness. This sense of brotherhood was strongest with regard to the poorer members of the congregation: the labourers with their toil-stained hands and bent heads, the wives, the weary mothers, their faces seamed with the ceaseless strain of child-bearing, and hard work, and care and worry. In their prematurely ageing faces, in their furrowed brows, Hadria could trace the marks of Life's bare and ruthless hand, which had pressed so heavily on those whose task it had been to bestow the terrible gift. Here the burden had crushed soul and flesh; here that insensate spirit of Life had worked its will, gratified its rage to produce and reproduce, it mattered not what in the semblance of the human, so long only as that wretched semblance repeated itself, and repeated itself again, _ad nauseam_, while it destroyed the creatures which it used for its wild purpose----
And the same savage story was written, once more, on the faces of the better dressed women: worry, weariness, apathy, strain; these were marked unmistakeably, after the first freshness of youth had been driven away, and the features began to take the mould of the habitual thoughts and the habitual impressions.
And on these faces, there was a certain pettiness and coldness not observable on those of the poorer women.
Often, when one of the neighbours called and found Hadria alone, some chance word of womanly sympathy would touch a spring, and then a sad, narrow little story of trouble and difficulty would be poured out; a revelation of the bewildered, toiling, futile existences that were being pa.s.sed beneath a smooth appearance; of the heart-ache and heroism and misplaced sacrifice, of the ruined lives that a little common sense and common kindness might have saved; the unending pain and trouble about matters entirely trivial, entirely absurd; the ceaseless travail to bring forth new elements of trouble for those who must inherit the deeds of to-day; the burdened existences agonizing to give birth to new existences, equally burdened, which in their turn, were to repeat the ceaseless oblation to the G.o.ds of Life.
”Futile?” said Lady Engleton. ”I think women are generally fools, _entre nous_; that is why they so often fill their lives with sound and fury, accomplis.h.i.+ng nothing.”
Hadria felt that this was a description of her own life, as well as that of most of her neighbours.
”I can understand so well how it is that women become conventional,” she said, apparently without direct reference to the last remark, ”it is so useless to take the trouble to act on one's own initiative. It annoys everybody frightfully, and it accomplishes nothing, as you say.”
”My dear Hadria, you alarm me!” cried Lady Engleton, laughing. ”You must really be very ill indeed, if you have come to this conclusion!”
In looking over some old papers and books, one afternoon, Hadria came upon the little composition called _Futility_, which a mood had called forth at Dunaghee, years ago. She had almost forgotten about it, and in trying it over, she found that it was like trying over the work of some other person.
It expressed with great exactness the feelings that overwhelmed her now, whenever she let her imagination dwell upon the lives of women, of whatever cla.s.s and whatever kind. Futility! The mournful composition, with its strange modern character, its suggestion of striving and confusion and pain, expressed as only music could express, the yearning and the sadness that burden so many a woman's heart to-day.
She knew that the music was good, and that now she could compose music infinitely better. The sharpness of longing for her lost art cut through her. She half turned from the piano and then went back, as a moth to the flame.