The Daughters of Danaus | Page 2

you know it as well as she does."
"But I want to hear it again--about the attack upon the keep, and the shouting of the men, while the lady was up here starving to death."
But Algitha shook her head.
"We don't come up here to tell stories, we must get to business."
"Will you have the candle, or can you see?" asked Fred, the second brother, a couple of years younger than Hadria, whom he addressed. His features were irregular; his short nose and twinkling grey eyes suggesting a joyous and whimsical temperament.
"I think I had better have the candle; my notes are very illegible."
Fred drew forth a candle-end from his pocket, stuck it into a quaint-looking stand of antique steel, much eaten with rust, and set the candle-end alight.
Algitha went into the next room and brought in a couple of chairs. Fred followed her example till there were enough for the party. They all took their places, and Hadria, who had been provided with a seat facing them, and with a rickety wooden table that trembled responsively to her slightest movement, laid down her notes and surveyed her audience. The faces stood out strangely, in the lights and shadows of the garret.
"Ladies and gentlemen," she began; "on the last occasion on which the Preposterous Society held its meeting, we had the pleasure of listening to an able lecture on 'Character' by our respected member Demogorgon" (the speaker bowed to Ernest, and the audience applauded). "My address to-night on 'Fate' is designed to contribute further ideas to this fascinating subject, and to pursue the enquiry more curiously."
The audience murmured approval.
"We were left at loggerheads, at the end of the last debate. I doubted Demogorgon's conclusion, while admiring his eloquence. To-night, I will put before you the view exactly contrary to his. I do not assert that I hold this contrary view, but I state it as well as I am able, because I think that it has not been given due consideration."
"This will be warm," Fred was heard to murmur with a chuckle, to an adjacent sister. The speaker looked at her notes.
"I will read," she said, "a passage from Emerson, which states very strikingly the doctrine that I am going to oppose."
Hadria held her paper aslant towards the candle-end, which threw a murky yellow light upon the background of the garret, contrasting oddly with the thin, clear moonbeams.
"'But the soul contains the event that shall befall it, for the event is only the actualization of its thoughts; and what we pray to ourselves for is always granted. The event is the print of your form. It fits you like your skin. What each does is proper to him. Events are the children of his mind and body.'"
Algitha leant forward. The members of the Preposterous Society settled into attitudes of attention.
Hadria said that this was a question that could not fail to be of peculiar interest to them all, who had their lives before them, to make or mar. It was an extremely difficult question, for it admitted of no experiment. One could never go back in life and try another plan. One could never make sure, by such a test, how much circumstance and how much innate ideas had to do with one's disposition. Emerson insisted that man makes his circumstance, and history seemed to support that theory. How untoward had been, in appearance, the surroundings of those who had made all the great movements and done all the great deeds of the world. Let one consider the poverty, persecution, the incessant discouragement, and often the tragic end of our greatest benefactors. Christ was but one of the host of the crucified. In spite of the theory which the lecturer had undertaken to champion, she believed that it was generally those people who had difficult lives who did the beneficent deeds, and generally those people who were encouraged and comfortable who went to sleep, or actively dragged down what the thinkers and actors had piled up. In great things and in small, such was the order of life.
"Hear, hear," cried Ernest, "my particular thunder!"
"Wait a minute," said the lecturer. "I am going to annihilate you with your particular thunder." She paused for a moment, and her eyes rested on the strange white landscape beyond the little group of faces upturned towards her.
"Roughly, we may say that people are divided into two orders: first, the organizers, the able, those who build, who create cohesion, symmetry, reason, economy; and, secondly, the destroyers, those who come wandering idly by, and unfasten, undo, relax, disintegrate all that has been effected by the force and vigilance of their betters. This distinction is carried into even the most trivial things of life. Yet without that organization and coherence, the existence of the destroyers themselves would become a chaos