Hagar 1
Hagar
Author: Mary Johnston
CONTENTS
I. THE PACKET-BOAT 1
II. GILEAD BALM 8
III. THE DESCENT OF MAN 19
IV. THE CONVICT 30
V. MARIA 45
VI. EGLANTINE 57
VII. MR. LAYDON 70
VIII. HAGAR AND LAYDON 82
IX. ROMEO AND JULIET 92
X. GILEAD BALM 104
XI. THE LETTERS 116
XII. A MEETING 132
XIII. THE NEW SPRINGS 143
XIV. NEW YORK 154
XV. LOOKING FOR THOMASINE 170
XVI. THE MAINES 184
XVII. THE SOCIALIST MEETING 194
XVIII. A TELEGRAM 208
XIX. ALEXANDRIA 221
XX. MEDWAY 231
XXI. AT ROGER MICHAEL'S 244
XXII. HAGAR IN LONDON 257
XXIII. BY THE SEA 266
XXIV. DENNY GAYDE 275
XXV. HAGAR AND DENNY 284
XXVI. GILEAD BALM 300
XXVII. A DIFFERENCE OF OPINION 313
XXVIII. NEW YORK AGAIN 323
XXIX. ROSE DARRAGH 332
XXX. AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE 341
XXXI. JOHN FAY 351
XXXII. RALPH 360
XXXIII. GILEAD BALM 372
XXXIV. BRITTANY 382
HAGAR
HAGAR
CHAPTER I
THE PACKET-BOAT
"_Low Braidge!_"
The people on deck bent over, some until heads touched knees, others,
more exactly calculating, just sufficiently to clear the beams. The
canal-boat passed beneath the bridge, and all straightened themselves
on their camp-stools. The gentlemen who were smoking put their cigars
again between their lips. The two or three ladies resumed book or
knitting. The sun was low, and the sycamores and willows fringing the
banks cast long shadows across the canal. The northern bank was not so
clothed with foliage, and one saw an expanse of bottom land, meadows
and cornfields, and beyond, low mountains, purple in the evening light.
The boat slipped from a stripe of gold into a stripe of shadow, and
from a stripe of shadow into a stripe of gold. The negro and the mule
on the towpath were now but a bit of dusk in motion, and now were lit
and, so to speak, powdered with gold-dust. Now the rope between boat
and towpath showed an arm-thick golden serpent, and now it did not show
at all. Now a little cloud of gnats and flies, accompanying the boat,
shone in burnished armour and now they put on a mantle of shade.
A dark little girl, of twelve years, dark and thin, sitting aft on the
deck floor, her long, white-stockinged legs folded decorously under
her, her blue gingham skirt spread out, and her Leghorn hat upon her
knees, appealed to one of the reading ladies. "Aunt Serena, what is
'evolution'?"
Miss Serena Ashendyne laid down her book. "'Evolution,'" she said
blankly, "'what is evolution?'"
"I heard grandfather say it just now. He said, 'That man Darwin and his
evolution'--"
"Oh!" said Miss Serena. "He meant a very wicked and irreligious
Englishman who wrote a dreadful book."
"Was it named 'Evolution'?"
"No. I forget just what it is called. 'Beginning'--No! 'Origin of
Species.' That was it."
"Have we got it in the library at Gilead Balm?"
"Heavens! No!"
"Why?"
"Your grandfather wouldn't let it come into the house. No lady would
read it."
"Oh!"
Miss Serena returned to her novel. She sat very elegantly on the
camp-stool, a graceful, long-lined, drooping form in a greenish-grey
delaine picked out with tiny daisies. It was made polonaise. Miss
Serena, alone of the people at Gilead Balm, kept up with the fashions.
At the other end of the long, narrow deck a knot of country gentlemen
were telling war stories. All had fought in the war--the war that had
been over now for twenty years and more. There were an empty sleeve and
a wooden leg in the group and other marks of bullet and sabre. They
told good stories, the country gentlemen, and they indulged in mellow
laughter. Blue rings of tobacco-smoke rose and mingled and made a haze
about that end of the boat.
"How the gentlemen are enjoying themselves!" said placidly one of the
knitting ladies.
The dark little girl continued to ponder the omission from the library.
"Aunt Serena--"
"Yes, Hagar."
"Is it like 'Tom Jones'?"
"'Tom Jones'! What do you know about 'Tom Jones'?"
"Grandfather was reading it one day and laughing, and after he had done
with it I got it down from the top shelf and asked him if I might read
it, and he said, 'No, certainly not! it isn't a book for ladies.'"
"Your grandfather was quite right. You read entirely too much anyway.
Dr. Bude told your mother so."
The little girl turned large, alarmed eyes upon her. "I don't read half
as much as I used to. I don't read except just a little time in the
morning and evening and after supper. It would _kill_ me if I couldn't
read--"
"Well, well," said Miss Serena, "I suppose we shall continue to spoil
you!"
She said it in a very sweet voice, and she patted the child's arm
and then she went back to "The Wooing O't." She was fond of reading
novels herself, though she liked better to do macramé work and to paint
porcelain placques.
The packet-boat glided on. It was almost the last packet-boat in the
state and upon almost its last journey. Presently there would go away
forever the long, musical winding of the packet-boat horn. It would
never echo any more among the purple hills, but the locomotive would
shriek here as it shrieked elsewhere. Beyond the willows and sycamores,
across the river whose reaches were seen at intervals, gangs of
convicts with keepers and guards and overseers were at work upon the
railroad.
The boat passing through a lock, the dark little girl stared,
fascinated, at one of these convicts, a "trusty," a young white man
who was there at the lock-keeper's on some errand and who now stood
speaking to the stout old man on the coping of masonry. As the water
in the lock fell and the boat was steadily lowered and the stone walls
on either hand grew higher and higher, the figure of the convict came
to stand far above all on deck. Dressed hideously, in broad stripes of
black and white, it stood against the calm evening sky, with a sense
of something withdrawn and yet gigantic. The face was only once turned
toward the boat with its freight of people who dressed as they pleased.
It was not at all a bad face, and it was boyishly young. The boat
slipped from the lock and went on down the canal, between green banks.
The negro on the towpath was singing and his rich voice floated acros
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