Mona Caird

“ They are fighting and struggling in some unknown contest which they take, poor things, so very seriously, and which really matters so very little after all! The broad, long lines of the landscape speak eloquently of the folly of that old death-struggle. It is strange to think of those stone warriors fighting on century after century as the seasons go by, always there and always fighting when the sun touches them in the morning, when the white moon peers over the jagged outline of the little mountains just behind, and finds them at it still! ”

“ Algitha drew herself up. “If one is unjustly restrained,” she said, “it is perfectly right to brave the infliction of the sort of pain that people feel only because they unfairly object to one’s liberty of action.”
“But what a frightful piece of circumstance that is to encounter,” cried Hadria, “to have to buy the mere right to one’s liberty by cutting through prejudices that are twined in with the very heart-strings of those one loves! Ah! that particular obstacle has held many a woman helpless and suffering, like some wretched insect pinned alive to a board throughout a miserable lifetime! ”

“ But one records and records, and yet one has not Provence. One has but her mountains and contours, her blue sky, and perhaps her wild wind—but there is always something beyond.
One sees the Rhone and the Durance on their way to 25 the sea—splendid headlong rivers; one sees the melancholy brooding wilderness of the Crau, where Hercules and the quarrelsome Titans flung those huge stones at one another in the dim old days; one sees always the strange, fantastic little limestone chain of the Alpilles which finishes to the south-east the great semicircle begun to the west by the higher ranges. ”

“ 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! ”

“ To the left, a magnificent plane-tree spreads golden foliage far and wide, brimming up to our bedroom windows just overhead. And a little further from the house, on this side of a sombre row of cypresses, with an ethereal view to the left of palest mountain peaks—a Provençal rose garden!
"But gather, gather, Mesdames," invites our kind host, "gather as many as you will." He smiles at our amazed delight, and waves a hospitable hand towards the masses of blossom, radiantly fresh and fair.
Roses of Provence! ”

“ Hadria raised her bowed head. Up welled the swift unaccustomed tears, while the robin, with increasing enthusiasm, continued his song. His theme, doubtless, was of the flicker of sunlit shrubberies, the warmth of summer, the glory of spring, the sweetness of the revolving seasons. For cure of heart-ache, he suggested the pleasantness of garden nooks, and the repose that lingers about a dew-sprinkled lawn. All these things were warmly commended to the human being whose song of life had ceased. ”

“ Gilles, Maguelonne, Aigues Mortes, were among these old cities or ruins, of which Narbonne alone is of much importance to-day.
When they were flourishing, the country was more or less covered with vegetation; and of a dream-like loveliness these twin-shores must have been with their fair cities dotting the green shores; towers and palaces repeating themselves in the stillness of the lagoons; gliding ships richly laden threading the waterways, passing and repassing; a fresh little wind coming in from the sea, and the vast blue of those waters stretching forth to the edge of the world! ”

“ Human bodies take but little room, and the abyss seemed to swallow them, as some greedy animal its prey. But Hadria knew, in her dream, that some day it would have claimed its last victim, and the surface would be level and solid, so that people would come and go, scarcely remembering that beneath their feet was once a chasm into which throbbing lives had to descend, to darkness and a living death. ”

“ Fields, vineyards, olive-groves, castles, cities, drift by as in a beautiful dream.
All the while the hot Provençal sun is beating on the barge, and the sorceress river is flowing and flowing: the whole scene a symbol of the country and its magic. After one has swept down and toiled up the Rhone in the Caburle, one knows a little more of what it all means, this fief of the sun and wind, this Land of the Passionate River! ”

“ I have struggled long enough. I can keep silence no longer. I have thought of late that your feeling for me had changed; a thousand things have made me hope—good heavens, if you knew what that means to a man who had lost it! Ah! speak—don’t look like that, Hadria,—what is there in me that you always turn from? Speak, speak!”
“Ah! life is horribly difficult!” she exclaimed. “I wish to heaven I had never budged from the traditions in which I was educated—either that, or that everybody had discarded them. I feel one way and think another.”
“Then you do love me, Hadria,” he cried. ”

“ Altogether Carcassonne was a place of artistic achievement.
The city, as we wended our way towards it, grew more and more dazzling to the sense of reality. That progress through the lower town, across the Aude, was like walking straight into the background of a mediæval painting—and who has not longed for that excursion? There was not a sight or a sound to mar the perfection of the place. Doubtless in the old days there would have been more stir as one approached the great double-towered gateway and crossed the bridge over what was once a moat. ”

“ And beside him, the dust-motes danced the wildest of dances, in the shaft of sunshine.
“It is very lovely, it is very lovely—the world is a miracle, but it is all like a taunt, it is like an insult, this glory of the world. I am born a woman, and to be born a woman is to be exquisitely sensitive to insult and to live under it always, always. I wish that I were as marble to the magic of Life, I wish that I cared for nothing and felt nothing. I pray only that the dream and the longing may be killed, and killed quickly!” ”

“ No one can be in the South, above all in Provence, knowing of its ancient festivals, its music, its farandoles and Saracenic dances, and fail to be startled into new realisation of this element that has passed out of our life, the menace that lies in the pervading dullness, that benumbed worship of sorrow, of "work" and "duty" without understanding and without freshness, that absence of fantasy and outcry that binds the modern world in a terrible and unnatural silence. Of what avail is it that the people are law-abiding at the cost of the very spring and essence of being? ”

“ The traditions of chivalry are among the priceless possessions of the human race, and it is in Provence that their aroma lingers with a potency scarcely to be found in any other country. The air is alive with rich influences. The heat of the sun, the extraordinary brilliance of light and colour, the dignity of an ancient realm whose every inch is penetrated with human doings and destinies, all combine towards an enchantment that belongs to the mysterious side of nature and prompts a host of unanswerable questions. ”

“ A painter, a writer, a musician, never comes in touch at all with his public. We hear his name, we admire or we decry his works, but the man or the woman who has toiled, and felt, and lived, is unknown to us. He is lost in his work.”
Hadria gave a murmur of assent.
“But you, Mrs. Temperley, have a very different story to tell. It is you, yourself, your personality, in all its many-sided charm that we all bow to; it is you, not your achievements that—that we love.” ”

“ For the vast majority of mankind there are now no recurrent pleasures worthy of the name, no balance to the dead weight of mere toil and ennui, no taste of that mysterious magnetism that dwells in throngs bent on the same object, inspired by the same joyous idea. With the 200 world of to-day has come a dulling of the aspect of things, a loss of élan and fire; a perilous deprivation of the primitive form of artistic outpouring. And it is more than doubtful whether mankind can exist without it. ”

“ Valeria shook her head, and remained silent. But her face expressed the sad thoughts left unsaid. In youth, it was all very well. One had the whole world before one, life to explore, one’s powers to test. But later on, when all that seemed to promise fades away, when the dreams drift out of sight, and strenuous efforts repeated and repeated, are beaten down by the eternal obstacles; when the heart is wearied by delay, disappointment, infruition, vain toil, then this once intoxicating world becomes a place of desolation to the woman who has rebelled against the common lot. ”

“ I decided to have freedom though the heavens should fall. I was unfitted by temperament to face the world, but I was equally unfitted to pay the price for protection—the blackmail that society levies on a woman: surrender of body and of soul. What could one expect, in such a case, but disaster? I often envy now the simple-minded woman who pays her price and has her reward—such as it is.”
“Ah! such as it is!” echoed Hadria. ”

“ To traverse the country in an express train, especially with the eyes still full of the more obvious beauties of the Pyrenees and the Alps, is to see all the wonder of the land of the troubadours reduced to the mere flatness of a map. In a few minutes the "rapide" had darted past some of its most ancient and romantic cities—quiet and simple they stand, merged into the very soil, with no large or striking features to catch the eye; only a patch of grey masonry in the landscape and a few towers upon the horizon, easily missed in the quick rush of the train. ”

“ It is worse than folly to underrate the forces of the enemy. It is always worse than folly to deny facts in order to support a theory. Exhort people to face and conquer them. You can help more than you dream, even as things stand. I cannot tell you what you have done for me, dear Hadria.” (He held out his hand to her.) “And the helpless, human and animal—how they wring one’s heart! Do not forget them; be to them a knight-errant. You have suffered enough yourself, to know well how to bind their wounds.” The speaker paused, for a moment, to battle with a paroxysm of pain. ”

“ LES BAUX
In all Provence, perhaps in all Europe, there is no more astonishing relic of mediæval life than that "crater of a feudal volcano" Les Baux, [21] a veritable eagle's nest of a city in one of the wildest and highest points of the Alpilles. It is a morning's drive from St. Remy across the little range to its steep southern side.
We plunge straight into their heart and begin to mount by gradual windings through little valleys, arid and lonely. Dwarf oak, lavender and rosemary make their only covering. ”

“ Hadria was silent. The words sounded ominous.
“Will can do so much,” she said at length. “Do you believe in the power of the human will to break the back of circumstance?”
“Oh, yes; but the effort expended in breaking its back sometimes leaves one prone, with a victory that arrives ironically too late. However I don’t wish to discourage you. There is no doubt that human will has triumphed over everything—but death.”
Again the sound of the pony’s hoofs sounded through the silence, in a cheerful trot upon the white roads. ”

“ Scrambling down by chance steep pathways among the shrubs—losing my way more than once by following tracks that led to the edge of some miniature precipice—I found myself wondering, in the foolish, insistent way that one does wonder about trivial things, whether our tourist friend had managed to feel as disappointed as he had expected he would be with the Pont du Gard.
It looked absolutely sublime as one retreated from it on the homeward way; its towering arches rearing themselves tier above tier, like some dauntless human life lived steadily for a great purpose. ”

“ Hadria looked bewildered.
“To tell you the truth, I have always wondered why women have never felt as I am sure you feel towards life. You remember that day at Dunaghee when you were so annoyed at my guessing your thoughts. They were unmistakeable to one who shared them. Your sex has always been a riddle to me; there seemed to be something abject in their nature, even among the noblest of them. But you are no riddle. While I think you are the least simple woman I ever met, you are to me the easiest to understand.” ”

“ The immense block of masonry from its roots in the soil to its battlements in the sky stands clear against the 206 mysterious spaces, and presently it seems to stir and lean forward, as if it might fall or drift away in emulation of some free-born cloud that swims over its head. It is delightful to loiter in the road by the moat just below the hillock that rises to the river-bank and opposite the last of the towers, which stands at the angle of the castle between land and water. At this spot nothing can be seen of hill and river, only the tower and sky. ”

“ The horror of the tale lingers in the thoughts even as they turn to other things: to the figure of the lady herself leaning over the parapet of the little platform that hangs over the valley; to the scene in the castle after the tournament when the gay company has gathered in the hall, and there is singing and playing of the vielle and verse-making and dance; to the love-songs of Raimbaut, thrilling and sweet above those of other troubadours. He was but too fitted to attract: handsome, courtly, quick-witted, warm-hearted, a warrior poet, a knight and a singer. ”

“ Valeria might scoff, as those proverbially did who never felt a wound. Hadria found a certain lack of tender feeling among the happy few who had no such tragic burdens to sustain.
Not only were these prosaic subjects banished from within the cincture of the gentle griffins, but also the suspicions, spites, petty jealousies, vulgar curiosities, and all the indefinable little darts and daggers that fly in the social air, destroying human sympathy and good-will. Each mind could expand freely, no longer on the defensive against the rain of small stabs. ”

“ A thousand fears, regrets, self-accusations, revolts, swarmed insect-like in Hadria’s brain, as the train thundered through the darkness, every tumultuous sound and motion exaggerated to the consciousness, by the fact that there was no distraction of the attention by outside objects. Nothing offered itself to the sight except the strange lights and shadows of the lamp thrown on the cushions of the carriage; Henriette’s figure in one corner, Hannah, with the child, in another, and the various rugs and trappings of wandering Britons. ”