The Daughters of Danaus | Page 5

asked Fred.
"Yes; the odds are too heavy."
"A second-rate talent perhaps," Ernest admitted, "but not a really big one."
"I should exactly reverse that statement," said Hadria. "The greater the power and the finer its quality, the greater the inharmony between the nature and the conditions; therefore the more powerful the leverage against it. A small comfortable talent might hold its own, where a larger one would succumb. That is where I think you make your big mistake, in forgetting that the greatness of the power may serve to make the greatness of the obstacles."
"So much the better for me then," said Algitha, with a touch of satire; "for I have no idea of being beaten." She folded her arms in a serene attitude of determination.
"Surely it only wants a little force of will to enable you to occupy your life in the manner you think best," said Ernest.
"That is often impossible for a girl, because prejudice and custom are against her."
"But she ought to despise prejudice and custom," cried the brother, nobly.
"So she often would; but then she has to tear through so many living ties that restrain her freedom."
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! What would Emerson say to these cases? That 'Nature magically suits the man to his fortunes by making these the fruit of his character'? Pooh! I think Nature more often makes a man's fortunes a veritable shirt of Nessus which burns and clings, and finally kills him with anguish!"
CHAPTER II.
Once more the old stronghold of Dunaghee, inured for centuries to the changes of the elements, received the day's greeting. The hues of dawn tinged the broad hill pastures, or "airds," as they were called, round about the Tower of the Winds. No one was abroad yet in the silent lands, except perhaps a shepherd, tending his flock. The little farmstead of Craw Gill, that lay at a distance of about a couple of miles down the valley, on the side of a ravine, was apparently dead asleep. Cruachmore, the nearest upland farm, could scarcely be seen from the stronghold. The old tower had been added to, perhaps two hundred years ago; a rectangular block projecting from the corner of the original building, and then a second erection at right angles to the first, so as to form three sides of an irregular courtyard. This arrangement afforded some shelter from the winds which seldom ceased to blow in these high regions. The spot had borne the same reputation for centuries, as the name of the old tower implied.
The Tower of the Winds stood desolately, in the midst of a wide-eyed agricultural country, and was approached only by a sort of farm track that ran up hill and down dale, in a most erratic course, to the distant main road.
The country was not mountainous, though it lay in a northern district of Scotland; it was bleak and solitary, with vast bare fields of grass or corn; and below in the valley, a river that rushed sweeping over its rough bed, silent where it ran deep, but chattering busily in the shallows. Here was verdure to one's heart's content; the whole country being a singular mixture of bleakness on the heights, and woodland richness in the valleys; bitterly cold in the winter months, when the light deserted the uplands ridiculously early in the afternoon, leaving long mysterious hours that held the great silent stretches of field and hill-side in shadow; a circumstance, which had, perhaps, not been without its influence in the forming of Hadria's character. She, more than the others, seemed to have absorbed the spirit of the northern twilights. It was her custom to wander alone over the broad spaces of the hills, watching the sun set behind them, the homeward flight of the birds, the approach of darkness and the rising of the stars. Every instinct that was born in her with her Celtic blood--which lurked still in the family to the confounding of its fortunes--was fostered by the mystery and wildness of her surroundings.
Dawn and sunset had peculiar attractions for her.
Although the Preposterous Society had not separated until unusually late on the previous night, the President was up and abroad on this exquisite morning, summoned by some "message of range and