Hadria

“ Hadria exclaimed. “What could more simply describe the action of our Great Majority?”
“You are positively impish in your mood to-day!” exclaimed Lady Engleton. “What should we do without our Great Majority, as you call it? It is absolutely necessary to put some curb on the wild impulses of pure reason”—a sentiment that Hadria greeted with chuckles of derision.
Joseph Fleming was looking longingly towards the grave, but his face was resigned, for the Ancient Mariner had him button-holed securely. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Lady Engleton laughed. “Then, Mrs. Temperley, you do feel rather wicked yourself, although you don’t admire our nice, well-behaved, average woman.”
“Oh, the mere opposite of an error isn’t always truth,” said Hadria.
“The weather has run to your head!” cried Henriette.
Hadria’s eyes kindled. “Yes, it is like wine; clear, intoxicating sparkling wine, and its fumes are mounting! Why does civilisation never provide for these moments?”
“What would you have? A modified feast of Dionysius?”
“Why not? The whole earth joins in the festival and sings, except mankind. ”

“ He sat and looked on, enjoying his idleness with the zest of a hard worker. The twinkle of amusement faded gradually from his face, and the sadness that Hadria had noticed the day before, returned to his eyes. She was leaning against the dyke, pensively enjoying her festive meal. The dark fresh blue of her gown, and the unwonted tinge of colour in her cheeks, gave a vigorous and healthful impression, in harmony with the weather-beaten stones and the windy breadth of the northern landscape. ”

“ Henriette thought that Hadria must indeed have changed very much during the last years. Well, of course, when very young, Hadria said, one had extravagant notions: one imagined all sorts of wild things about the purposes of the human brain: not till later did one realize that the average brain was merely an instrument of adjustment, a sort of spirit-level which enabled its owner to keep accurately in line with other people. Henriette ought to rejoice that Hadria had thus come to bow to the superiority of the collective wisdom. ”

“ Nature in her most maternal and uninspired mood—Mother earth submissive to the dictatorship of man, permitting herself to be torn, and wounded, and furrowed, and harrowed at his pleasure, yielding her substance and her life to sustain the produce of his choosing, her body and her soul abandoned supine to his caprice. The sight had an exasperating effect upon Hadria. ”

“ Hadria grasped a swaying spray that the wind blew towards her, and clasped it hard in her hand, regardless of the thorns. “It gives me a keen, fierce pleasure to know that for all their training and constraining and incitement and starvation, I have not developed masses of treacly instinct in which mind and will and every human faculty struggle, in vain, to move leg or wing, like some poor fly doomed to a sweet and sticky death. ”

“ If one has but the spirit that can soar high enough to really be resolved upon stars, or the ambition sufficiently vaulting to be determined on kingdoms, then—so ran the dogma—stars and kingdoms would be forthcoming, though obstacles were never so determined. No member except Hadria had ever dreamt of insinuating that one might have a very pronounced taste for stars and kingdoms—nay, a taste so dominant that life would be worthless unless they were achieved—yet might be forced, by the might of events, to forego them. Hadria’s own heresy had been of the head rather than of the heart. ”

“ He was emotional by temperament, but circumstance had doomed him to repression and solitude. This call on her sympathy did more than anything to set Hadria’s mind at rest. She gave a vast sigh when that feeling of confidence became confirmed. Life, then, need no longer be ridiculous! Hard and cruel it might be, full of lost dreams, but at least there would be something in it that was perfect. This new emotional centre offered the human summum bonum: release from oneself.
Hadria and the Professor met, one morning, in the gardens of the Priory. ”

“ Objects loomed up large and indistinct, as through a mist; vague forms drifted by, half revealed, to melt away again; here and there were clear outlines and solid impressions, to be deemed trustworthy and given a place of honour; thence a disproportion in the general conception; it being almost beyond human power to allow sufficiently for that which is unknown.
For some time, however, the dominant impression on Hadria’s mind was of her own gigantic ignorance. ”

“ Rather than be left alone at the mercy of elemental things, with no little hut, warm and dark and stuffy, to shelter one, a woman will sacrifice everything—liberty, ambition, health, power, her very dignity. There was a letter in Hadria’s pocket at this moment, eloquently protesting in favour of the mud hut.
Hadria must have been appearing to listen favourably to Temperley’s pleading, for he said eagerly, “Then I have not spoken this time quite in vain. I may hope that perhaps some day——”
“Some day,” repeated Hadria, passing her hand across her eyes. “It doesn’t really matter. ”

“ It never occurred to her that he was blinder than Henriette herself, to the real centre and heart of the difficulty.
It has been said that what the human being longs for above all things, is to be understood: that he prefers it infinitely to being over-rated. Professor Theobald gave Hadria this desired sensation. ”

“ It seemed as if Hadria were exercising some influence of a magnetic quality. She was always the point of attraction, whether she created a spell with her music, or her speech, or her mere personality. In her present mood, this was peculiarly gratifying. The long divorce from initiative work which events had compelled, the loss of nervous vigour, the destruction of dream and hope, had all tended to throw her back on more accessible forms of art and expression, and suggested passive rather than active dealings with life. ”

“ There is not one chance in ten thousand that Hadria will happen to meet exactly the right person. I have made a mistake in my life. I shall do all in my power to urge her to avoid following in my footsteps. ”

“ But Hadria preferred to go on and rest at home. She asked when Professor Fortescue was coming to see them at the Red House, but her tone was less open and warm than usual, in addressing him. He said that to-morrow he would walk over in the afternoon, if he might. Hadria would not allow her companions to come out of their way to accompany her home. At the Priory gate—where the griffins were grinning as derisively as ever at the ridiculous ways of men—they took their respective roads. ”

“ Yet the more Hadria studied this clear, and vigorous, and tender nature, the more she felt, in him, the absence of that particular personal hold on life which so few human beings are without, a grip usually so hard to loosen, that only the severest experience, and the deepest sorrow have power to destroy it. ”

“ You put me in a most unpleasant position this afternoon, forcing me to receive a person whom I have never been introduced to, or heard of——”
“Valeria Du Prel has been heard of throughout the English-speaking world,” said Hadria rhetorically.
“So much the worse,” retorted Mrs. Fullerton. “No nicely brought up woman is ever heard of outside her own circle.”
Hadria recalled a similar sentiment among the ancient Greeks, and thought how hard an old idea dies.
“She might have been some awful person, some unprincipled adventuress, and that I believe is what she is. ”

“ With visions such as these, the members of the Preposterous Society had fired their imaginations, and gained impetus for their various efforts and their various ambitions.
Hadria had been among the most hopeful of the party, and had pointed to the loftier visions, and the more impersonal aims. Circumstance must give way, compromise was wrong; we had but a short time in this world, and mere details and prejudices must not be allowed to interfere with one’s right to live to the utmost of one’s scope. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Hadria cried.
“Hear, hear!” assented Algitha.
“Unpleasant facts being a foregone conclusion,” Hadria added, “the point to aim at obviously is interesting facts—and plenty of them.”
Ernest flicked a pebble off the parapet of the balustrade of the little temple, and watched it fall, with a silent splash, into the river.
“I never met girls before, who wanted to come out of their cotton-wool,” he observed. “I thought girls loved cotton-wool. They always seem to.”
“Girls seem an astonishing number of things that they are not,” said Hadria, “especially to men. ”

“ Am I to be hated for a sin committed years ago, and long since repented? Have you no breadth of sympathy, no tolerance for erring humanity? Am I never to be forgiven? Oh, Hadria, Hadria, this is more than I can bear! ”

“ Three weeks after these events Hadrian was again in Alexandria. He kept aloof from all the festivals instituted in honor of the new god Antinous, and smiled incredulously when he was told that a new star had appeared in the sky, and that an oracle had declared it to be the soul of his lost favorite. ”

“ In the morning, Hadrian summoned Gentilotto, Sterling, Whitehead, Carvale, della Volta, Semphill, Van Kristen. He fancied that the gentlemen-of-the-chamber curiously eyed Him. That was so. He guessed in a moment that now He always would have to stand the fire of curious eyes, to overhear the ostentatious whispers of people who wished to be known for nasty thinkers—of people who wished to see the Roman Pontiff wriggling on a white-hot gridiron. Very well. He would stand fire: perhaps, up to a certain point, He would answer questions of general (but not of particular) interest. ”

“ Hadrian happened to look out of one of the windows of his palace. Seeing a man, bent with age, with a basket on his shoulders, standing near the gate, he ordered him to be admitted to his presence. "What is thy pleasure, old man?" demanded Hadrian. "May it please your majesty," replied the man, "to recollect seeing once a very old man planting some trees, when you desired him, if ever he should gather the fruit, to let you know. I am that old man and this is the fruit of those very trees. ”

“ The Emperor Hadrian passing near Tiberias in Galilee, observed an old man digging a large trench in order to plant some fig trees. "Hadst thou properly employed the morning of thy life," said Hadrian, "thou needest not have worked so hard in the evening of thy days." "I have well employed my early days, nor will I neglect the evening of my life; and let God do what he thinks best," replied the man. "How old mayest thou be, good man?" asked the emperor. "A hundred years," was the reply. "What," exclaimed Hadrian, "a hundred years old art thou, and still plantest trees! ”

“ Hadria would often go to see the old man, trying to cheer him and minister to his growing ailments. His shrewdness was remarkable. Mr. Fullerton quoted Dodge as an authority on matters of practical philosophy, and the old gravedigger became a sort of oracle at the Cottage. Wilfrid Burton complained that he was incessantly confronted with some saying of Dodge, and from this there was no appeal. ”

“ Italy was not first in the heart of Hadrian. She was third. He served Her, because He saw Her instant need. The second of His loved lands did not know Herself to be in need of Him: hence, He offered Her no more than courtesy. He did not want America to tell Him not to monkey with the buzz-saw. And England was first. And what could He do for England? The thought, that He might do something, alone sustained Him now. Life among the millions of articulately-speaking men had become an ever-present horror to Him. ”

“ Hadrian named to the consistory the Lord Percy of New York as Cardinal-deacon of St. Kyriak-at-the-Baths-of-Diocletian. His Eminency became resplendent in vermilion, tall, refined, reticent, with dark wide dewy eyes. He was admired in silence. The Pope by some accident turned His gaze to Ragna: he had such an aspect as caused His Holiness to look more intently. Ragna's great strong jaw moved as though to munch; and his glance defiantly shifted.
"Your Eminency is free to address Us," the Supreme Pontiff said to Him.
"I wish rather to address the Sacred College," Ragna answered, rising. ”

“ The buildings we have studied present a partial portrait of the man. Hadrian the hunter, the soldier, the statesman comes out clearly in reliefs, coins, and inscriptions we have not room to treat. But the buildings reflect the dilettante Hadrian, uneasy, moody, whimsical, formal, distant, unapproachable, tense, self-conscious, cold. They show many facets of his character: in the Teatro Marittimo, his love of privacy, and his restlessness; in the Temple of Venus and Rome, the neat, abstract quality of his mind, his sense of humor, his self-conscious pairing of himself with Augustus ”