IT was only just light enough to discern the five human forms in the dimness of the garret; the rays of the moon having to find their way through the deep window-embrasures of the keep. Less illumination would have sufficed to disclose the ancient character of the garret, with its low ceiling, and the graduated mouldings of the cornice, giving the effect of a shallow dome. The house stood obviously very high, for one could see from the windows for miles over a bleak country, coldly lit by the rays of the moon, which was almost at the full. Into the half light stole presently the sound of some lively instrument: a reel tune played, as it were, beneath one’s breath, but with all the revel and rollicking emphasis of that intoxicating primitive music. And then in correspondingly low relief, but with no less emphasis, the occupants of this singular ball-room began to dance. One might have fancied them some midnight company of the dead, risen from their graves for this secret revelry, so strange was the appearance of the moving figures, with the moonlight catching, as they passed, the faces or the hands. They danced excellently well, as to the manner born, tripping in and out among the shadows, with occasional stamping, in time to the music, and now and again that wild Celtic shout or cry that sets the nerves athrill. In spite of the whole scene’s being enacted in a low key, it seemed only to gain in intensity from that circumstance, and in fantastic effect.

Among the dancers was one who danced with peculiar spirit and brilliancy, and her little cry had a ring and a wildness that never failed to set the others going with new inspiration.

She was a slight, dark-haired girl, with a pale, rather mysterious face, and large eyes. Not a word was spoken, and the reel went on for nearly ten minutes. At length the girl with the dark hair gave a final shout, and broke away from the circle.

With her desertion the dance flagged, and presently came to an end. The first breaking of the silence gave a slight shock, in spite of the subdued tones of the speaker.

“It is no use trying to dance a reel without Hadria,” said a tall youth, evidently her brother, if one might judge from his almost southern colouring and melancholy eyes. In build and feature he resembled the elder sister, Algitha, who had all the characteristics of a fine northern race.

“Old Maggie said the other day, that Hadria’s dancing of the reel was no ‘right canny,’” Algitha observed, in the same low tone that all the occupants of the garret instinctively adopted.

“Ah!” cried Fred, “old Maggie has always looked upon Hadria as half bewitched since that night when she found her here ‘a wee bit bairn,’ as she says, at this very window, in her nightshirt, standing on tiptoe to see the moonlight.”

“It frightened the poor old thing out of her wits, of course,” said Algitha, who was leaning with crossed arms, in a corner of the deep-set window. The fine outlines of face and form were shewn in the strange light, as in a boldly-executed sketch, without detail. Pride and determination were the dominant qualities so indicated. Her sister stood opposite, the moonshine making the smooth pallor of her face more striking, and emphasizing its mysterious quality.

The whole group of young faces, crowded together by the window, and lit up by the unsympathetic light, had something characteristic and unusual in its aspect, that might have excited curiosity.

“Tell us the story of the garret, Hadria,” said Austin, the youngest brother, a handsome boy of twelve, with curling brown hair and blue eyes.

“Hadria has told it hundreds of times, and 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 and a misery.”

The oak table over which Hadria bent forward towards her audience, appeared to be applauding this sentiment vigorously. It rocked to and fro on the uneven floor with great clamour.

“Thus,” the speaker went on, “these relaxed and derivative people are living on the strength of the strong. He who is strong must carry with him, as a perpetual burden, a mass of such pensioners, who are scared and shocked at his rude individuality; and if he should trip or stumble, if he should lose his way in the untrodden paths, in seeking new truth and a broader foundation for the lives of men, then a chorus of censure goes up from millions of little throats.”

“Hear, hear!” cried Algitha and Fred, and the table rocked enthusiastically.

“But when the good things are gained for which the upholders have striven and perhaps given their lives, then there are no more greedy absorbers of the bounty than these same innumerable little throats.”

The table led the chorus of assent.

“And now,” said the lecturer slowly, “consider this in relation to the point at issue. Emerson asserts that circumstance can always be conquered. But is not circumstance, to a large extent, created by these destroyers, as I have called them? Has not the strongest soul to count with these, who weave the web of adverse conditions, whose dead weight has to be carried, whose work of destruction has to be incessantly repaired? Who can dare to say ‘I am master of my fate,’ when he does not know how large may be the share of the general burden that will fall to him to drag through life, how great may be the number of these parasites who are living on the moral capital of their generation? Surely circumstance consists largely in the inertia, the impenetrability of the destroyers.”

Ernest shewed signs of restiveness. He shuffled on his chair, made muttered exclamations.

“Presently,” said the lecturer reassuringly.

“Or put it in another way,” she went on. “A man may make a thing—circumstance included—but he is not a sort of moral spider; he can’t spin it out of his own inside. He wants something to make it of. The formative force comes from within, but he must have material, just as much as a sculptor must have his marble before he can shape his statue. There is a subtle relation between character and conditions, and it is this relation that determines Fate. Fate is as the statue of the sculptor.”

“That’s where Hadria mainly differs from you,” said Fred, “you make the thing absolute; Hadria makes it a matter of relation.”

“Exactly,” assented the lecturer, catching the remark. “Difficulties need not be really obstructive to the best development of a character or a power, nor a smooth path always favourable. Obstacles may be of a kind to stimulate one person and to annihilate another. It is not a question of relative strength between character and circumstance, as people are so fond of asserting. That is mere gibberish. It means nothing. The two things cannot be compared, for they are not of the same nature. They can’t be reduced to a common denominator.”

Austin appreciated this illustration, being head of his class for arithmetic.

“We shall never be able to take a reasonable view of this question till we get rid of that ridiculous phrase, ‘If the soul is strong enough, it can overcome circumstance.’ In a room filled with carbonic acid instead of ordinary air, a giant would succumb as quickly as a dwarf, and his strength would avail him nothing. Indeed, if there is a difference, it is in favour of the dwarf.”

Ernest frowned. This was all high treason against his favourite author. He had given his sister a copy of Emerson’s works last Christmas, in the hope that her views might be enlightened, and this was the disgraceful use she made of it!

“Finally,” said Hadria, smiling defiantly at her brother, “let us put the question shortly thus: Given (say) great artistic power, given also a conscience and a strong will, is there any combination of circumstances which might prevent the artistic power (assuming it to be of the highest order and strength) from developing and displaying itself, so as to meet with general recognition?”

“No,” asserted Ernest, and there was a hesitating chorus on his side.

“There seem to me to be a thousand chances against it,” Hadria continued. “Artistic power, to begin with, is a sort of weakness in relation to the everyday world, and so, in some respects, is a nice conscience. I think Emerson is shockingly unjust. His beaming optimism is a worship of success disguised under lofty terms. There is nothing to prove that thousands have not been swamped by maladjustment of character to circumstance, and I would even go so far as to suggest that perhaps the very greatest of all are those whom the world has never known, because the present conditions are inharmonious with the very noblest and the very highest qualities.”

No sooner was the last word uttered than the garret became the scene of the stormiest debate that had ever been recorded in the annals of the Preposterous Society, an institution that had lately celebrated its fifth anniversary. Hadria, fired by opposition, declared that the success of great people was due not simply to their greatness, but to some smaller and commoner quality which brought them in touch with the majority, and so gave their greatness a chance.

At this, there was such a howl of indignation that Algitha remonstrated.

“We shall be heard, if you don’t take care,” she warned.

“My dear Algitha, there are a dozen empty rooms between us and the inhabited part of the house, not to mention the fact that we are a storey above everyone except the ghosts, so I think you may compose yourself.”

However, the excited voices were hushed a little as the discussion continued. One of the chief charms of the institution, in the eyes of the members of the Society, was its secrecy. The family, though united by ties of warm affection to their parents, did not look for encouragement from them in this direction. Mr. Fullerton was too exclusively scientific in his bent of thought, to sympathize with the kind of speculation in which his children delighted, while their mother looked with mingled pride and alarm at these outbreaks of individuality on the part of her daughters, for whom she craved the honours of the social world. In this out-of-the-way district, society smiled upon conformity, and glared vindictively at the faintest sign of spontaneous thinking. Cleverness of execution, as in music, tennis, drawing, was forgiven, even commended; but originality, though of the mildest sort, created the same agonizing disturbance in the select circle, as the sight of a crucifix is wont to produce upon the father of Evil. Yet by some freak of fortune, the whole family at Dunaghee had shewn obstinate symptoms of individuality from their childhood, and, what was more distressing, the worst cases occurred in the girls.

In the debate just recorded, that took place on Algitha’s twenty-second birthday, Ernest had been Hadria’s principal opponent, but the others had also taken the field against her.

“You have the easier cause to champion,” she said, when there was a momentary lull, “for all your evidences can be pointed to and counted; whereas mine, poor things—pale hypotheses, nameless peradventures—lie in forgotten churchyards—unthought of, unthanked, untrumpeted, and all their tragedy is lost in the everlasting silence.”

“You will never make people believe in what might have been,” said Algitha.

“I don’t expect to.” Hadria was standing by the window looking out over the glimmering fields and the shrouded white hills. “Life is as white and as unsympathetic as this,” she said dreamily. “We just dance our reel in our garret, and then it is all over; and whether we do the steps as our fancy would have them, or a little otherwise, because of the uneven floor, or tired feet, or for lack of chance to learn the steps—heavens and earth, what does it matter?”

“Hadria!” exclaimed an astonished chorus.

The sentiment was so entirely unlike any that the ardent President of the Society had ever been known to express before, that brothers and sisters crowded up to enquire into the cause of the unusual mood.

“Oh, it is only the moonlight that has got into my head,” she said, flinging back the cloudy black hair from her brow.

Algitha’s firm, clear voice vibrated through the room.

“But I think it matters very much whether one’s task is done well or ill,” she said, “and nobody has taught me to wish to make solid use of my life so much as you have, Hadria. What possesses you to-night?”

“I tell you, the moonlight.”

“And something else.”

“Well, it struck me, as I stood there with my head full of what we have been discussing, that the conditions of a girl’s life of our own class are pleasant enough, but they are stifling, absolutely stifling; and not all the Emersons in the world will convince me to the contrary. Emerson never was a girl!”

There was a laugh.

“No; but he was a great man,” said Ernest.

“Then he must have had something of 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!”