Hagar 12

Hagar 12

"There is almost always some one," answered Mrs. LeGrand. "And if a

girl knows how to make the best of herself, there inevitably arrives

her own establishment and the right man to take care of her. If"--she

shrugged--"if she doesn't know how to make the best of herself, she

might as well go work in a store. No one would especially object. That

is, they would not object except that when that kind of thing creeps

up higher in the scale of society, and girls who can perfectly well be

supported at home go out and work for pay, it makes an unfortunate kind

of precedent and reacts and reflects upon those who do know how to

make the best of themselves."

 

Hagar spoke diffidently. "But a lot of women had to work after the war.

Mrs. Lane and General ----'s daughters, and you yourself--"

 

"That is quite different," said Mrs. LeGrand. "Gentlewomen in reduced

circumstances may have to battle alone with the world, but they do not

like it, and it is only hard fate that has put them in that position.

It's an unnatural one, and they feel it as such. What I am talking

of is that nowadays you see women--young women--actually choosing to

stand alone, actually declining support, and--er--refusing generally to

make the best of themselves. It's part of the degeneracy of the times

that you begin to see women--women of breeding--in all kinds of public

places, working for their living. It's positively shocking! It opens

the gate to all kinds of things."

 

"Wrong things?"

 

"Ideas, notions. Roger Michael's ideas, for instance,--which I must

say are extremely wrong-headed. I regretted that I had asked her here.

She was hardly feminine." Mrs. LeGrand stretched herself, rubbed her

plump, firm arms, from which the figured silk had fallen back, and rose

from the couch. "I hope that Eglantine girls will always think of these

things as ladies should. And now, my dear, will you tell Mrs. Lane that

I want to see her?"

 

Mrs. LeGrand went away from Eglantine for ten days. Of the women

teachers living in the house, all went but Mrs. Lane and Miss Bedford.

All the girls went but three, and they were, first, Hagar Ashendyne;

second, a pale thin girl from the Far South, a martyr to sick

headaches; and third, Francie Smythe, a girl apparently without many

home people. Francie was sweetly dull, with small eyes and a perpetual

smile.

 

How quiet seemed the great house with its many rooms! They closed the

large dining-room and used the small room where Roger Michael had

supped. They shut the classrooms and the study-hall and the book-room,

and sat in the evenings in the bowery, flowery parlour. Here, the very

first evening, and the second, came Mr. Laydon with Browning in one

pocket and Tennyson in the other.

 

Mrs. Lane was knitting an afghan of a complicated pattern. Her lips

moved softly, continuously, counting. Mr. Laydon, making an eloquent

pause midway of "Tithonous" caught this _One--two--three--four_--and

had a fleeting __EXPRESSION__ of pain. Mrs. Lane saw the depth to which she

had sunk in his esteem and flushed over her delicate, pensive face. For

the remainder of the hour she sat with her knitting in her lap. But

really the afghan must be finished, and so, the second evening, she

placed her chair so as to face not the reader but a shadowy corner, and

so knit and counted in peace. Miss Bedford neither knit nor counted;

she said that she adored poetry and sighed rapturously where something

seemed to be indicated. She also adored conversation and argumentation

as to this or that nice point. What did Mr. Laydon think Browning

really meant in "Childe Roland," and was Porphyria's lover really mad?

Was Amy really to blame in "Locksley Hall"? Miss Bedford made play with

her rather fine eyes and teased the fringe of the table-cover. The pale

girl from the Far South--Lily was her name--sat by the fire and now

rubbed her forehead with a menthol pencil and now stroked Tipsy Parson,

Mrs. LeGrand's big black cat. Francie Smythe had a muslin apron full

of coloured silks and was embroidering a centre-piece--yellow roses

with leaves and thorns. Francie was a great embroiderer. Hagar sat

upon a low stool by the hearth, over against Lily, close to the slowly

burning logs. She was a Fire-Worshipper. The flames were better to her

than jewels, and the glowing alleys and caverns below were treasure

caves and temples. She sat listening in the rosy light, her chin in her

hands. She thought that Mr. Laydon read very well--very well, indeed.

 

"'Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles,

Miles and miles,

On the solitary pastures--'"

 

Midway of the poem she turned a little so that she could see the reader.

 

He sat in the circle of lamplight, a presentable man, well-formed,

dark-eyed, and enthusiastic; fairly presentable within, too, very

fairly clean, a good son, filled with not unhonourable ambitions; good,

average, human stuff with an individual touch of impressionability

and a strong desire to be liked, as he expressed it, "for himself";

young still, with the momentum and emanation of youth. The lamp had

a rose and amber shade. It threw a softened, coloured, dreamy light.

Everything within its range was subtly altered and enriched.

 

"'And I knew--while thus the quiet-coloured eve

Smiles to leave

To their folding, all our many tinkling fleece

In such peace,

And the slopes and rills in undistinguished grey

Melt away--'"

 

Hagar sat in her corner, upon the low stool, in the firelight, as

motionless as though she were in a trance. Her eyes, large, of a

marvellous hazel, beneath straight, well-pencilled brows of deepest

brown, were fixed steadily upon the man reading. Slowly, tentatively,

something rich and delicate seemed to rise within her, something that

clung to soul and body, something strange, sweet and painful, something

that, spreading and deepening with great swiftness, suffused her being

and made her heart at once ecstatic and sorrowful. She blushed deeply,

felt the crimsoning, and wished to drop her head upon her arms and

be alone in a balmy darkness. It was as though she were in a strange

dream, or in one of her long romances come real.

 

"'In one year they sent a million fighters forth,

South and North,--

And they built their gods a brazen pillar high

As the sky-- ...

... Love is best.'"

 

Laydon put the book down upon the table. While he read, one of the

maids, Zinia, had brought a note to Miss Bedford, and that lady had

gone away to answer it. Mrs. Lane knitted on, her lips moving, her

back to the table and the hearth. Francie Smythe was sorting silks.

"That was a lovely piece," she said unemotionally, and went on

dividing orange from lemon. The girl with the menthol pencil was more

appreciative. "Once, when I was a little girl I went with my father

and mother to Rome. We went out on the Campagna. I remember now how it

was all green and flat and wide as the sea and still, and there were

great arches running away--away--and a mist that they said was fever."

Her voice sank. She sighed and rubbed her forehead with the menthol.

Her eyes closed.

 

Edgar Laydon rose and came into the circle of firelight. He was moved

by his own reading, shaken with the impulse and rhythm of the poem. He

stood by the mantel and faced Hagar. She was one of his pupils, she

recited well; of the essays, the "compositions," which were produced

under his direction, hers were the best; he had told her more than once

that her work was good; in short, he was kindly disposed toward her. To

this instant that was all; he was scrupulously correct in his attitude

toward the young ladies whom he taught. He had for his work a kind of

unnecessary scorn; he felt that he ought to be teaching men, or at

the very least should hold a chair in some actual college for women.

Eglantine was nothing but a Young Ladies' Seminary. He felt quite an

enormous gulf between himself and those around him, and, as a weakness

will sometimes quaintly do, this feeling kept him steady. Until this

moment he was as indifferent to Hagar Ashendyne, as to any one of the

fifty whom he taught, and he was indifferent to them all. He had a

picture in his mind of the woman whom some day he meant to find and

woo, but she wasn't in the least like any one at Eglantine.

 

Now, in an instant, came a change. Hagar's eyes, very quiet and limpid,

were upon him. Perhaps, deep down, far distant from her conscious self,

she willed and exercised an ancient power of her sex and charmed him

to her; perhaps--in his lifted mood, the great, sensuous swing of the

verse still with him, the written cry of passion faintly drumming

within his veins--he would have suddenly linked that diffused emotion

to whatever presence, young and far from unpleasing, might have risen

at this moment to confront him. However that may be, Laydon's eyes and

those of Hagar met. Each gaze held the other for a breathless moment,

then the lids fell, the heart beat violently, a colour surged over

the face and receded, leaving each face pale. A log, burned through,

parted, striking the hearth with a sound like the click of a closing

trap.

 

Mrs. Lane, having come to an easy part in the pattern, turned her face

to the rest of the room. "Aren't we going to have some more poetry?

Read us some more, Mr. Laydon."

 

The girl with the menthol pencil spoke dreamily. "Isn't there another

piece about the Campagna? I can see it plain--green like the sea and

arches and tombs and a mist hanging over it, and a road going on--a

road going on--a road going on."

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER VIII

 

HAGAR AND LAYDON

 

 

This is what they did. The next day was soft as balm. To Hagar, sitting

in the sun on the step of the west porch, came the sound of steps

over the fallen leaves of what was called at Eglantine the Syringa

Alley--sycamore boughs above and syringa bushes thickly planted and

grown tall, making winding walls for a winding path. The red surged

over Hagar, her eyes, dark-ringed, half-closed. Laydon, emerging

from the alley, came straight toward her, over a space of gravel and

wind-brought leaves. It was mid-morning, the place open and sunny, to

be viewed from more windows than one, with the servants, moreover,

going to and fro on their morning business, apt to pass this gable end.