Hagar 13

Hagar 13

She rose from the step and went with him. Well in the shelter of the

syringa, hidden from the house, he stopped, and laid his hands lightly

upon her shoulders, then, as she did not resist, drew her to him. They

kissed, they clung together in a long embrace, they uttered love's

immemorial words, smothering each with each, then they fell apart; and

Hagar first buried her face in her hands, then, uncovering it, broke

into tremulous laughter, laughter that had a sobbing note.

 

"What will they say at Gilead Balm--oh, what will they say at Gilead

Balm?"

 

"Say!" answered Laydon. "They'll say that they wish your happiness!

Hagar, how old are you?"

 

"I'm nearly eighteen."

 

"And old for your years. And I--I am twenty-eight, and young for my

years." Laydon laughed, too. He was giddy with happiness. "Gilead Balm!

What a strange name for a place--and you've lived there always--"

 

"Always."

 

They were moving now down the alley toward a gate that gave upon the

highroad. Near by lay an open field seized upon, at Christmas, by a mob

of small boys with squibs and torpedoes and cannon crackers. They had

a bonfire, and the wood smoke drifted across, together with the odour

of burning powder. The boys were shouting like Liliputian soldiery, and

the squibs and giant crackers shook the air as with a continuous elfin

bombardment. The nearest church was ringing its bells. Laydon and Hagar

came to the gate--not the main but a lesser entrance to Eglantine. No

one was in view; hand in hand they leaned against the wooden palings.

Before them stretched the road, an old, country pike going on and on

between cedar and locust and thorn until it dropped into the violet

distance.

 

"I wish we were out upon it," said Hagar; "I wish we were out upon it,

going on and on through the world, travelling like gipsies!"

 

"You look like a gipsy," he said. "Have you got gipsy blood in you?"

 

"No.... Yes. Just to go on and on. The open road--and a clear fire at

night--and to see all things--"

 

"Hagar--Why did they call you Hagar?"

 

"I don't know. My mother named me."

 

"Hagar, we've got to think a little.... It took us so by surprise....

We had best, I think, just quietly say nothing to anybody for a

while.... Don't you think so?"

 

"I had not thought about it, but I will," said Hagar. She gazed

down the road, her brows knit. The Christmas cannonading went on, a

continuous miniature tearing and shaking of the air, with a dwarf

shouting and laughing, and small coalescing clouds of powder smoke. The

road ran, a quiet, sunny streak, past this small bedlam, into the still

distance. "I won't tell any one at Eglantine," she said at last, "until

Mrs. LeGrand comes back. She will be back in a week. But I'll write to

grandmother to-night."

 

Laydon measured the gate with his hand. "I had rather not tell my

mother at once. She is very delicate and nervous, and perhaps she has

grown a little selfish in her love for me. Besides, she had set her

heart on--" He threw that matter aside, it being a young and attractive

kinswoman with money. "I had rather not tell her just now. Then, as

to Mrs. LeGrand.... Of course, I suppose, as I am a teacher here, and

you are a pupil ... but there, too, had we not best delay a little? It

will make a confusion--things will be said--my position will become

an embarrassing one. And you, too, Hagar,--it won't be pleasant for

you either. Isn't it better just to keep our own concerns to ourselves

for a while? And your people up the river--why not _not_ tell them

until summer-time? Then, when you go home,--and when I have finished

my engagement here, for I don't propose to come back to Eglantine next

year,--then you can tell them, and so much better than you could write

it! I could follow you to Gilead Balm--we could tell them together.

Then we could discuss matters and our future intelligently--and that

is impossible at the moment. Let us just quietly keep our happiness to

ourselves for a while! Why should the world pry into it?" He seized her

hands and pressed his face against them. "Let us be happy and silent."

 

She looked at him with her candid eyes. "No, we shouldn't be happy that

way. I'll write to grandmother to-night."

 

They gazed at each other, the gate between them. The strong

enchantment held, but a momentary perplexity crossed it, and the

never long-laid dust of pain was stirred. "I am not asking anything

wrong," said Laydon, a hurt note in his voice. "I only see certain

embarrassments--difficulties that may arise. But, darling, darling! it

shall be just as you please! 'I'd crowns resign to call you mine'--and

so I reckon I can face mother and Mrs. LeGrand and Colonel Ashendyne!"

A flush came into his cheek. "I've been so foolish, too, as to--as to

pay a little attention to Miss Bedford. But she is too sensible a

woman to think that I meant anything seriously--"

 

"Did you?"

 

"Not in the least," said Laydon truthfully. "A man gets lonely, and

he craves affection and understanding, and he's in a muddle before he

knows it. There isn't anything else there, and I never said a word of

_love_ to her. Darling, darling! I never loved any one until last night

by the fire, and you looked up at me with those wonderful eyes, and I

looked down, and our eyes met and held, and it was like a fine flame

all over--and now I'm yours till death--and I'll run any gauntlet you

tell me to run! If you write to your people to-night, so will I. I'll

write to Colonel Ashendyne."

 

They left the gate and again pursued the syringa alley. The sound of

the Christmas bombardment drifted away. When they reached the shadow of

the great bushes, he kissed her again. All the air was blue and hazy

and the church bells were ringing, ringing. "I haven't any money," said

Laydon. "Mother has a very little, but I've never been able, somehow,

to lay by. I'll begin now, though, and then, as I told you, I expect

next year to have a much better situation. Dr. ---- at ---- thinks he

may get me in there. It would be delightful--a real field at last,

the best of surroundings and a tolerable salary. If I were fortunate

there, we could marry very soon, darling, darling! But as it is--It is

wretched that Eglantine pays so little, and that there is so little

recognition here of ability--no career--no opportunity! But just you

wait and see--you one bright spot here!"

 

Hagar gazed at the winding path, strewn with bronze leaves, and at

the syringa bushes, later to be laden with fragrant bloom, and at the

great white sycamore boughs against the pallid blue, and at the roof

and chimneys of Eglantine, now apparent behind the fretwork of trees.

The inner eye saw the house within, the three-years-familiar rooms,

her "tower room"--and all the human life, the girls, the teachers, the

servants. Bright drops came to her eyes. "I've been unhappy here, too,

sometimes. But I couldn't stay three years in a place and not love

something about it."

 

"That is because you are a woman," said the lover. "With a man it is

different. If a place isn't right, it isn't right.--If I had but five

thousand dollars! Then we might marry in a month's time. As it is,

we'll have to wait and wait and wait--"

 

"I am going to work, too," said Hagar. "I am going to try somehow to

make money."

 

He laughed. "You dear gipsy! You just keep your beautiful, large eyes,

and those dusky warm waves of hair, and your long slim fingers, and the

way you hold yourself, and let 'trying to earn money' go hang! That's

my part. Too many women are trying to earn money, anyhow--competing

with us.--You've got just to be your beautiful self, and keep on loving

me." He drew a long breath. "Jove! I can see you now, in a parlour

that's our own at ----, receiving guests--famous guests, maybe, after

a while; people who will come distances to see me! For I don't mean to

remain unknown. I know I've got ability."

 

Before they left the alley they settled that both should write that

night to Gilead Balm. Laydon found the idea distasteful enough;

older and more worldly-wise than the other, he knew that there

would probably ensue a tempest, and he was constitutionally averse

to tempests. He was well enough in family, but no great things;

he had a good education, but so had others; he could give a good

character--already he was running over in mind a list of clergymen,

educators, prominent citizens, and Confederate veterans to whom

he could refer Colonel Ashendyne. He had some doubt, however, as

to whether comparative spotlessness of character would have with

Colonel Ashendyne the predominant and overweening value that it

should have. Money--he had no means; position--he had as yet an

uncertain foothold in the world, and no powerful relatives to push

him. Unbounded confidence he had in himself, but the point was to

create that confidence in Hagar's people. Of course, they would say

that she was too young, and that he had taken advantage. His skirts

were clear there; both had truthfully been taken prisoners, fallen

into an ambuscade of ancient instinct; there hadn't been the slightest

premeditation. But how to convey that fact to the old Bourbon up the

river? Laydon had once been introduced to Colonel Ashendyne upon one of

the latter's rare visits to the neighbouring city and to Eglantine. He

remembered stingingly the Colonel's calm and gentlemanly willingness

immediately to forget the existence of a teacher of Belles-Lettres

in a Young Ladies' School. The letter to Gilead Balm. He didn't want

to write it, but he was going to--oh! he was going to.... Women were

curiously selfish about some things.... Mrs. LeGrand, too; he thought

that he would write about it to Mrs. LeGrand. He could imagine what she

would say, and he didn't want to hear it. He was in love, and he was

going to do the honourable thing, of course; he had no idea otherwise.

But he certainly entertained the wish that Hagar could see how entirely

honourable, as well as discreet, would be silence for a while.

 

Hagar never thought of it in terms of "honour." She had no adequate

idea of his reluctance. It might be said that she knew already the

arching of Mrs. LeGrand's brows and the lightning and thunder that

might issue from Gilead Balm. Grandfather and grandmother, Aunt Serena

and Uncle Bob looked upon her as nothing but a child. She wasn't a

child; she was eighteen. She felt no need to vindicate herself, nor to

apologize. She was moving through what was still almost pure bliss,

moving with a dreamlike tolerance of difficulties. What did it matter,

all those things? They were so little. The air was wine and velvet,

colours were at once soft and clear, sound was golden. In the general