Hagar 3

Hagar 3

The little girl named Hagar lagged a little going up the low hill on

which the house stood. She was growing fast, and all journeys were

exciting, and she was taking iron because she wasn't very strong,

and she had had a week of change and had been thinking hard and was

tired. She wanted to see her mother, and indeed she wanted to see all

at Gilead Balm, for, unlike her mother, she loved Gilead Balm, but

going up the hill she lagged a little. Partly it was to look at the

star and to listen to the distant bells. She was not aware that she

observed that which we call Nature with a deep passion and curiosity,

that beauty was the breath of her nostrils, and that she hungered

and thirsted after the righteousness of knowledge. She only came

slowly, after many years, into that much knowledge of herself. To-day

she was but an undeveloped child, her mind a nebula just beginning

to spiral. In conversation she would have applied the word "pretty"

indiscriminately to the flushed sky, the star, the wheeling swallows,

the yellow primroses. But within, already, the primroses struck one

note, and the wheeling swallows another, and the sky another, and the

star another, and, combined, they made a chord that was like no other

chord. Already her moments were distinguished, and each time she saw

Gilead Balm she saw, and dimly knew that she saw, a different Gilead

Balm.

 

She climbed the hill a little stumblingly, a dark, thin child with

braided, dusky hair. She was so tired that things went into a kind

of mist--the house and the packet-boat and the lock and the convict

and the piping frogs and the cat-tails in a marsh and the word

"evolution."... And then, up on the low hilltop, Dilsey and Plutus lit

the lamps, and the house had a row of topaz eyes;--and here was the

cedar at the little gate, and the smell of box--box smell was always of

a very especial character, dark in hue, cool in temperature, and quite

unfathomably old. The four passed through the house gate and went up

the winding path between the box and the old, old blush roses--and here

was the old house dog Roger fawning on the Colonel--and the topaz eyes

were growing bigger, bigger....

 

"I am glad to get home," said Miss Serena, in front. "It's curious how,

every time you go from home, something happens to cure you of a roving

disposition."

 

Captain Bob laughed. "Never knew you had a roving disposition, Serena!

Luna here, now,--Luna's got a roving disposition--haven't you, old

girl?"

 

"Luna," replied Miss Serena with some asperity, "Luna makes no effort

to alter her disposition. I do. Everybody's got tendencies and notions

that it is their bounden duty to suppress. If they don't, it leads to

all kind of changes and upheavals.--And that is what I criticize in

Maria. She makes no effort, either. It's most unfortunate."

 

The Colonel, in front of them all, moved on with a fine serenity. He

had taken off his hat, and in the yet warm glow the grey-amber of his

hair seemed fairly luminous. As he walked he looked appreciatively

up at the evening star. He read poetry with a fine, discriminating,

masculine taste, and now, with a gesture toward the star, he repeated

a line of Byron. Maria and her idiosyncrasies troubled him only when

they stood actually athwart his path; certainly he had never brooded

upon them, nor turned them over in his hand and looked at them. She

was his son's wife--more, he was inclined to think, the pity! She

was, therefore, Ashendyne, and she was housed at Gilead Balm. He was

inclined to be fond of the child Hagar. As for his son--the Colonel, in

his cooler moments, supposed, damn it! that he and Medway were too much

alike to get on together. At any rate, whatever the reason, they did

not get on together. Gilead Balm had not seen the younger Ashendyne for

some years. He was in Europe, whence he wrote, at very long intervals,

an amiable traveller's letter. Neither had he and Maria gotten on well

together.

 

The house grew large, filling all the foreground. The topaz eyes

changed to a wide, soft, diffused light, pouring from windows and

the open hall door. In it now appeared the figures of the elder Mrs.

Ashendyne, of the Bishop, and Mrs. LeGrand, coming out upon the porch

to welcome the travellers.

 

Hagar took her grandmother's kiss and Mrs. LeGrand's kiss and the

Bishop's kiss, and then, after a few moments of standing still in the

hall while the agreeable, southern voices rose and fell, she stole

away, went up the shallow, worn stairway, turned to the left, and

opened the door of her mother's room. She opened it softly. "Uncle

Plutus says you've got a headache."

 

Maria's voice came from the sofa in the window. "Yes, I have. Shut the

door softly, and don't let us have any light. But I don't mind your

sitting by me."

 

The couch was deep and heaped with pillows. Maria's slight, small

form was drawn up in a corner, her head high, her hands twisted and

locked about her knees. She wore a soft white wrapper, tied beneath her

breast with a purple ribbon. She had beautiful hair. Thick and long

and dusky, it was now loosened and spread until it made a covering

for the pillows. Out from its waves looked her small face, still and

exhausted. The headache, after having lasted all day, was going away

now at twilight. She just turned her dark eyes upon her daughter. "I

don't mind your lying down beside me," she said. "There's room. Only

don't jar my head--" Hagar lay carefully down upon the couch, her head

in the hollow of her mother's arm. "Did you have a good time?"

 

"Yes.... Pretty good."

 

"What did you do?"

 

"There was another little girl named Sylvie. We played in the hayloft,

and we made willow baskets, and we cut paper dolls out of a 'Godey's

Lady's Book.' I named mine Lucy Ashton and Diana Vernon and Rebecca,

and she didn't know any good names, so I named hers for her. We named

them Rosalind and Cordelia and Vashti. Then there was a lady who played

backgammon with me, and I read two books."

 

"What were they?"

 

"One was 'Gulliver's Travels.' I didn't like it altogether, though I

liked some of it. The other was Shelley's 'Shorter Poems.' Oh"--Hagar

rose to a sitting posture--"I liked that better than anything I've

_ever_ read--"

 

"You are young to be reading Shelley," said her mother. She spoke with

her lips only, her young, pain-stilled face high upon the pillows.

"What did you like best?"

 

Hagar pondered it. "I liked the 'Cloud,' and I liked the 'West Wind,'

and I liked the 'Spirit of Night'--"

 

Some one tapped at the door, and then without waiting for an answer

opened it. The elder Mrs. Ashendyne entered. Hagar slipped from the

sofa and Maria changed her position, though very slightly. "Come in,"

she said, though Mrs. Ashendyne was already in.

 

"Old Miss," as the major part of Gilead Balm called her, Old Miss

crossed the room with a stately tread and took the winged chair. She

intended tarrying but a moment, but she was a woman who never stood

to talk. She always sat down like a regent, and the standing was

done by others. She was a large woman, tall rather than otherwise,

of a distinct comeliness, and authoritative--oh, authoritative from

her black lace cap on her still brown, smoothly parted hair, to her

low-heeled list shoes, black against her white stockings! Now she

folded her hands upon her black stuff skirt and regarded Maria. "Are

you better?"

 

"Yes, thank you."

 

"If you would take my advice," said Mrs. Ashendyne, "and put

horseradish leaves steeped in hot water to your forehead and the back

of your neck, you would find it a great relief."

 

"I had some lavender water," said Maria.

 

"The horseradish would have been far better. Are you coming to supper?"

 

"No, I think not. I do not care for anything. I am not hungry."

 

"I will have Phoebe fetch you a little thin chipped beef and a beaten

biscuit and a cup of coffee. You must eat.--If you gave way less it

would be better for you."

 

Maria looked at her with sombre eyes. At once the fingers slipped to

other and deeper notes. "If I gave way less.... Well, yes, I do give

way. I have never seen how not to. I suppose if I were cleverer and

braver, I should see--"

 

"What I mean," said Old Miss with dignity, "is that the Lord,

for his own good purposes,--and it is _sinful_ to question his

purposes,--regulated society as it is regulated, and placed women where

they are placed. No one claims--certainly I don't claim--that women

as women do not see a great deal of hardship. The Bible gives us to

understand that it is their punishment. Then I say take your punishment

with meekness. It is possible that by doing so you may help earn

remission for all."

 

"There was always," said Maria, "something frightful to me in the old

notion of whipping-boys for kings and princes. How very bad to be the

whipping-boy, and how infinitely worse to be the king or prince whose

whipping-boy you were!"

 

A red came into Mrs. Ashendyne's face. "You are at times positively

blasphemous!" she said. "I do not at all see of what, personally, you

have to complain. If Medway is estranged from you, you have probably

only yourself to thank--"

 

"I never wish," said Maria, "to see Medway again."

 

Medway's mother rose with stateliness from the winged chair. "When it

comes to statements like that from a wife, it is time for old-fashioned

people like myself to take our leave.--Phoebe shall bring you your

supper. Hagar, you had better come with me."

 

"Leave Hagar here," said the other.

 

"The bell will ring in ten minutes. Come, child!"

 

"Stay where you are, Hagar. When the bell rings, she shall come."