The Daughters of Danaus | Page 5

the girl in him!" cried Hadria.
"I didn't mean that, but perhaps it is true."
"If he had been a girl, he would have known that conditions do count
hideously in one's life. I think that there are more 'destroyers' to be
carried about and pampered in this department of existence than in any
other (material conditions being equal)."
"Do you mean that a girl would have more difficulty in bringing her
power to maturity and getting it recognized than a man would have?"
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