Hagar 43

Hagar 43

"What would it be?"

 

"I do not know.... After a while, an age hence maybe, when the light

is stronger, we will coin it. Now there is only intuition of the

change.... There is something in a translation I was reading of one

of the Upanishads, 'But he who discerns all creatures in his Self and

his Self in all creatures, has no disquiet.... What delusion, what

grief can be with him in whom all creatures have become the very self

of the thinker, discerning their oneness?... He has spread around a

thing, bright, bodiless, taking no hurt, sinewless, pure, unsmitten by

evil.... That might come after a long, long time, after change upon

change."

 

The great sea murmured on, a wild white bird flew across the round of

vision, melted into the sunset.

 

"And each change is greater by geometrical progression than was the one

before?"

 

"Not the change itself, but that into which the change leads us. Each

time we depart at right angles.... Yes, I think so."

 

"And the movement of women toward freedom of field and toward

self-recognition--no less than the general movement toward

socialization--is part of the change?"

 

"All things are part of it.... Yes, it is part."

 

She rose from the sand. "The sun is setting." They walked back to the

surrey and took the homeward road. As they came over the Blue Hills

it was first dusk; the town lay, grey-pearl, before them, and above it

swam the moon, full and opaline. "How many days have you now?"

 

"Just seven."

 

"Have you heard from Rose Darragh?"

 

"Yes. She's been doing her work and mine, too. She begs me to stay

another two weeks, but I must not. There is no need--I am perfectly

well again--it would only be selfish enjoyment."

 

"I wish it were possible--but if it's not, it's not.... Oh, how large

the moon is! You can almost see it a globe--it is like a beautiful,

lighted Japanese lantern."

 

"Where will we go to-morrow afternoon?"

 

"We cannot go anywhere to-morrow afternoon, for, alas! I have to go to

a garden-party at Government House. But the next day we might go to Old

Fort. What is that fragrance--those strange lilies? Look now at the

Japanese lantern!"

 

They went to Old Fort and came back in the warm evening light, driving

close to the sounding sea. "Five days now," said Denny. "Well, I have

been so happy."

 

That night Hagar could not sleep. She rose at last from the bed and

paced her moon-flooded room. All the long windows were wide; the night

air came in and brought a sighing of the trees. After a while she

stepped out upon the gallery that ran along the face of the house.

Medway's room was down stairs and away from this front; she had the

long silvered pathway to herself. She paced it slowly, up and down,

wooing calm. Each time she reached the end of the gallery, she paused a

moment and looked across the sleeping town that lay for the most part

below this house and garden, to where she could guess the roof of the

small, inexpensive, half hotel, half boarding-house where Denny bided.

When after a time she discovered that she was doing this, she shook

herself away from the action. "No, Hagar, no!"

 

Going to the other end of the gallery, she found there a low chair

and sat down, leaning her head against the railing. It was the middle

of the night. Something in the place and in the balm of the air

brought back to her those days and nights in Alexandria, so long ago.

There, too, she had had to make choice.... "I could love him here and

now--love him--love him in the old immemorial way.... Well, I will

not!" She put her elbows on her knees, her chin in her hands. "_Rose

Darragh--Rose Darragh--Rose Darragh_"--it struck through her mind,

slow and heavily vibrant, like a deep and melancholy music. She rose

and paced the gallery again, but when she came to the farther end, she

turned without pause or look over the moonlit town.

 

"_Rose Darragh--Rose Darragh_"--she made it rhythmic, breathing deeply

and quietly, saying the name inwardly, deeply, but without passion now,

saying it like a comrade's name. "_Rose Darragh--Rose Darragh--Rose

Darragh--_"

 

Calm came at last, repose of mind, victory. She sat down again, leaned

her arms upon the railing, and followed with her eyes the lonely,

silver moon. Work was in the world, the all-friend Work; and Beauty was

in the world, the all-friend Beauty; and one good put out of reach,

mind and spirit must make another and were equal to the task. "Rose

Darragh--Rose Darragh!--not if I could would I hurt you," said Hagar;

and took her attention from that matter and put it first upon the

stars, and then upon some lines of Shelley's that she loved, and then

upon the story she had in hand. It was not well to go to bed thinking

of a story, and when at last she left the gallery and laid herself

straight upon the cool linen, she stilled the waves of the mind-stuff

and let the barque of attention drift whither it would. At last she

seemed in a deep forest long ago and far away, and there she went to

sleep with a feeling of violets under her hand.

 

Five days, and Denny left Nassau. "It's not saying good-bye. In May,

when you come to New York--"

 

"Yes, in May I'll see you and Rose Darragh. Until May, then--"

 

Denny and she clasped hands, both hands. "Thank God for friends!" he

said with the odd little laugh that she liked, with the catch in the

voice at the end of it as though he had started to laugh and then Life

had come in. His eyes were misty. He brushed his hand across them. "You

are dancing before me," he said apologetically.

 

She laughed herself. "And you are dancing before me! Good-bye,

good-bye, Denny Gayde! Let's be friends always."

 

From the garden she watched the Miami steam slowly down the narrow

harbour, and, passing the lighthouse, turn to the open sea. She watched

it until it was but a black speck with a dark feather of smoke, and

then until the feather and all had melted into the sky. "Well," she

said, "there's work and beauty and high cheer, and Time that smooths

away most violences!"

 

But she did not see Denny and Rose Darragh in May. That evening at

dinner Medway was more than usually good company. He had a high colour;

his hair and curling beard had been cut just the length that was most

becoming; he looked superbly handsome. Often he affected Hagar as would

a very fine canvas, some portrait by Titian. To-night was one of these

nights.

 

Greer dined with them, and he was urging Medway as he had urged before

to let him paint him. "Fortune's smiling on us both--on you as well as

me. Neither of us may have such a chance again! Let me--ah, let me!"

 

"What should I do with it when it was done, and if I liked it--which

you know, Greer, is not dead certain? You can't hang portraits in a

nomad's tent, and I haven't a soul in the world to give it to,--my

mother would like a coloured photograph of me, but she wouldn't like

Greer's picture,--unless Gipsy will take it when she sets up her own

establishment--"

 

"I will take it with thanks," said Hagar. "Let Mr. Greer do it."

 

Medway said he would consider it. Dinner went off gaily with stories

and badinage. Afterwards the traveller from the Colonial came in,

and then the violinist. He played for them--played rhapsodies and

fantasias. It was after eleven when the three guests departed. Greer's

gay voice could be heard down the street--

 

"'A Saint-Blaise, à la Zuecca,

Vous étiez, vous étiez bien aise

A Saint-Blaise.

A Saint Blaise, à la Zuecca

Nous étions bien là--'"

 

Thomson appeared, with Mahomet behind him to put out the lights.

 

"Good-night--sleep right!" said Medway. "Pleasant fellows, aren't they?"

 

Toward daylight she was awakened by a knock at her door, followed by

Thomson's voice. "Mr. Ashendyne has had some kind of a stroke, Miss

Hagar--" She sprang up, threw on a kimono, opened the door, and ran

downstairs with Thomson. "I heard him breathing heavily--I've waked

Mahomet and sent the black boy for the doctor--"

 

It was paralysis. And after months of Nassau, she took him back to the

mainland and northward by slow stages, not to Gilead Balm, for he made

always "No!" with his head and eyes to that, and not to New York for he

seemed impatient of that, too; but at last to Washington. There she and

Thomson found a pleasant residence to let on a tree-embowered avenue,

and there they moved him, and there she stayed with him two years and

read a vast number of books aloud, and between the readings cultivated

a sunny talkativeness. At the end of the two years there came a second

stroke which killed him.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER XXVI

 

GILEAD BALM

 

 

"It's a foolish piece of idealism," said Ralph. "But she's had her way

so long I suppose it's impossible now to check her."

 

The Colonel's irritation exploded. White-haired, hawk-nosed and eyed, a

little stooped now, a good deal shrunken in his black, old-fashioned,

aristocratic clothes, he lifted a bloodless hand and made emphasis

with a long forefinger. "Precisely so! One world mistake lay in ever

giving property unqualifiedly into a woman's hands, and another in

ever encouraging occupations outside the household, and so breeding

this independent attitude--an attitude which I for one find the

most intolerable feature of this intolerable latter age! I opposed

the Married Woman's Property Act in this state, but the people were

infatuated and passed it. Married or single, the principle is the same.

It is folly to give woman control of any considerable sum of money--"