Hagar 4

Hagar 4

The elder Mrs. Ashendyne's voice deepened. "It is hard for me to see

the mind of my son's child perverted, filled with all manner of foolish

queries and rebellions."

 

"Your son's child," answered Maria from among her pillows, "happens to

be also my child. His family has just had her for a solid week. Now,

pray let me have her for an hour." Her eyes, dark and large in her

thin, young face, narrowed until the lashes met. "I am perfectly aware

of how deplorable is the whole situation. If I were wiser and stronger

and more heroic, I suppose I should break through it. I suppose I

should go away with Hagar. I suppose I should learn to work. I suppose

I should somehow keep us both. I suppose I might live again. I suppose

I might ... even ... get a divorce--"

 

Her mother-in-law towered. "The Bishop shall talk to you the first

thing in the morning--"

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER III

 

THE DESCENT OF MAN

 

 

A pool of June sunlight lay on the library floor. It made a veritable

Pool of Siloam, with all around a brown, bank-like duskiness. The room

was by no means book-lined, but there were four tall mahogany cases,

one against each wall, well filled for the most part with mellow calf.

Flanking each case hung Ashendyne portraits, in oval, very old gilt

frames. Beneath three of these were fixed silhouettes of Revolutionary

Ashendynes; beneath the others, war photographs, _cartes de visite_, a

dozen in one frame. There was a mahogany escritoire and mahogany chairs

and a mahogany table, and, before the fireplace, a fire-screen done in

cross-stitch by a colonial Ashendyne. The curtains were down for the

summer, and the dark, polished floor was bare. The room was large, and

there presided a pleasant sense of unencumbered space and coolness.

 

In the parlour, across the hall, Miss Serena had been allowed full

power. Here there was a crocheted macramé lambrequin across the

mantel-shelf, and a plush table-scarf worked with chenille, and

fine thread tidies for the chairs, and a green-and-white worsted

"water-lily" mat for the lamp, and embroidery on the piano cover. Here

were pelargoniums and azaleas painted on porcelain placques, and a

painted screen--gladioli and calla lilies,--and autumn leaves mounted

on the top of a small table, and a gilded milking stool, and gilded

cat-tails in decalcomania jars. But the Colonel had barred off the

library. "Embroider petticoat-world to the top of your bent--but don't

embroider books!"

 

The Colonel was not in the library. He had mounted his horse and

ridden off down the river to see a brother-in-law about some piece

of business. Ashendynes and Coltsworths fairly divided the county

between them. Blood kin and marriage connections,--all counted to the

seventeenth degree,--traditional old friendships, old acquaintances,

clients, tenants, neighbours, the coloured people sometime their

servants, folk generally, from Judge to blacksmith,--the two families

and their allies ramified over several hundred square miles, and when

you said "the county," what you saw were Ashendynes and Coltsworths.

They lived in brick houses set among green acres and in frame houses

facing village streets. None were in the least rich, a frightful,

impoverishing war being no great time behind them, and many were

poor--but one and all they had "quality."

 

The Colonel was gone down the river to Hawk Nest. Captain Bob was in

the stable yard. Muffled, from the parlour, the doors being carefully

closed, came the notes of "Silvery Waves." Miss Serena was practising.

It was raspberry-jam time of year. In the brick kitchen out in the

yard Old Miss spent the morning with her knitting, superintending

operations. A great copper kettle sat on the stove. Between it and the

window had been placed a barrel and here perched a half-grown negro

boy, in his hands a pole with a paddle-like cross-piece at the further

end. With this he slowly stirred, round and round, the bubbling,

viscous mass in the copper kettle. Kitchen doors and windows were wide,

and in came the hum of bees and the fresh June air, and out floated

delectable odours of raspberry jam. Old Miss sat in an ample low chair

in the doorway, knitting white cotton socks for the Colonel.

 

The Bishop--who was a bishop from another state--was writing letters.

Mrs. LeGrand had taken her novel out to the hammock beneath the cedars.

Upstairs, in her own room, in a big four-poster bed, lay Maria, ill

with a low fever. Dr. Bude came every other day, and he said that he

hoped it was nothing much but that he couldn't tell yet: Mrs. Ashendyne

must lie quiet and take the draught he left, and her room must be kept

still and cool, and he would suggest that Phoebe, whom she seemed to

like to have about her, should nurse her, and he would suggest, too,

that there be no disturbing conversation, and that, indeed, she be

left in the greatest quiet. It seemed nervous largely--"Yes, yes,

that's true! We all ought to fight more than we do. But the nervous

system isn't the imaginary thing people think! She isn't very strong,

and--wrongly, of course--she dashes herself against conditions and

environment like a bird against glass. I don't suppose," said Dr. Bude,

"that it would be possible for her to travel?"

 

Maria lay in the four-poster bed, making images of the light and shadow

in the room. Sometimes she asked for Hagar, and sometimes for hours she

seemed to forget that Hagar existed. Old Miss, coming into the room

at one of these times, and seeing her push the child from her with a

frightened air and a stammering "I don't know you"--Old Miss, later in

the day, took Hagar into her own room, set her in a chair beside her,

taught her a new knitting-stitch, and explained that it would be kinder

to remain out of her mother's room, seeing that her presence there

evidently troubled her mother.

 

"It troubles her sometimes," said Hagar, "but it doesn't trouble her

most times. Most times she likes me there."

 

"I do not think you can judge of that," said her grandmother. "At any

rate, I think it best that you should stay out of the room. You can,

of course, go in to say good-morning and good-night.--Throw the thread

over your finger like that. Mimy is making sugar-cakes this morning,

and if you want to you can help her cut them out."

 

"Grandmother, please let me go _four_ times a day--"

 

"No. I do not consider it best for either of you. You heard the doctor

say that your mother must not be agitated, and you saw yourself, a

while ago, that she did not seem to want you. I will tell Phoebe. Be

a good, obedient child!--Bring me the bag yonder, and let's see if we

can't find enough pink worsted for a doll's afghan."

 

That had been two days ago. Hagar went, morning and evening, to her

mother's room, and sometimes Maria knew her and held her hands and

played with her hair, and sometimes she did not seem to know her and

ignored her or talked to her as a stranger. Her grandmother told her to

pray for her mother's recovery. She did not need the telling; she loved

her mother, and her petitions were frequent. Sometimes she got down on

her knees to make them; sometimes she just made them walking around.

"O God, save my mother. For Jesus' sake. Amen."--"O God, let my mother

get well. For Jesus' sake. Amen."--She had finished the pink afghan,

and she had done the dusting and errands her grandmother appointed her.

This morning they had let her arrange the flowers in the bowls and

vases. She always liked to do that, and she had been happy for almost

an hour--but then the feeling came back....

 

The bright pool on the library floor did not reach to the bookcases.

They were all in the gold-dust powdered umber of the rest of the room.

Hagar standing before one of them, first on a hassock, and then, for

the upper shelves, on a chair, hunted something to read. "Ministering

Children"--she had read it. "Stepping Heavenward"--she had read it.

"Home Influence" and "Mother's Recompense"--she had read them. Mrs.

Sherwood--she had read Mrs. Sherwood--many volumes of Mrs. Sherwood.

In after life it was only by a violent effort that she dismissed,

in favour of any other India, the spectre of Mrs. Sherwood's India.

"Parent's Assistant and Moral Tales"--she knew Simple Susan and

Rosamond and all of them by heart. "Rasselas"--she had read it.

"Scottish Chiefs"--she had read it. The forms of Wallace and Helen

and Murray and Edwin flitted through her mind--she half put out her

hand to the book, then withdrew it. She wasn't at all happy, and she

wanted novelty. Miss Mühlbach--"Prince Eugene and His Times"--"Napoleon

and Marie Louise"--she had read those, too. "The Draytons and the

Davenants"--she half thought she would read about Olive and Roger

again, but at last she passed them by also. There wasn't anything on

that shelf she wanted. She called it the blue and green and red shelf,

because the books were bound in those colours. Miss Serena's name was

in most of these volumes.

 

The shelf that she undertook next had another air. To Hagar each case

had its own air, and each shelf its own air, and each book its own

air. "Blair's Rhetoric"--she had read some of that, but she didn't

want it to-day. "Pilgrim's Progress"--she knew that by heart. "Burke's

Speeches"--"Junius"--she had read "Junius," as she had read many

another thing simply because it was there, and a book was a book. She

had read it without much understanding, but she liked the language.

Milton--she knew a great part of Milton, but to-day she didn't want

poetry. Poetry was for when you were happy. Scott--on another day Scott

might have sufficed, but to-day she wanted something new--so new and so

interesting that it would make the hard, unhappy feeling go away. She

stepped from the hassock upon the chair and began to study the titles

of the books on almost the top shelf.... There was one in the corner,

quite out of sight unless you were on a chair, right up here, face to

face with the shelf. The book was even pushed back as though it had

retired--or had been retired--behind its fellows so as to be out of

danger, or, perhaps, out of the way of being dangerous. Hagar put in

her slender, sun-browned hand and drew it forward until she could read

the legend on the back--"The Descent of Man." She drew it quite forth,

and bringing both hands into play opened it. "By Charles Darwin."

She turned the leaves. There were woodcuts--cuts that exercised a

fascination. She glanced at the first page: "He who wishes to decide

whether man is the modified descendant of some preëxisting form--"

 

Hagar turned upon the chair and looked about her. The room was a desert

for solitude and balmy quiet. Distantly, through the closed parlour

doors, came Miss Serena's rendering of "Monastery Bells." She knew

that her grandfather was down the river, and that her grandmother was

making raspberry jam. She knew that the Bishop was in his room, and

that Mrs. LeGrand was out under the cedars. Uncle Bob did not count

anyway--he rarely asked embarrassing questions. She may have hesitated