Hagar 44

Hagar 44

"Just so, my dear friend! It is not in the least," spoke the Colonel,

"that I am acquisitive or that it will make any great difference to

me personally if Medway's wealth stays in the family or no. What I am

commenting upon is the folly of giving a woman power to do so foolish

a thing."

 

"Hagar always _could_ do foolish things," said Miss Serena, looking up

from her Mexican drawnwork.

 

"I don't quite understand yet," said Mrs. LeGrand. "Mrs. Ashendyne was

telling me in the big room yesterday evening, and then some one came

in--dear Medway's will left her without proviso all that he had--"

 

"As was quite proper," said Ralph, "the Colonel to the contrary. Well,

the principal comes to considerably over a million dollars--the cool

million his second wife left him by her will and the settlement she

had already made upon their marriage. The investment is gilt-edged.

Altogether it would make Hagar not an extremely rich woman as riches

are counted nowadays, but--yes, certainly for the South--a very rich

woman. But now comes in your feminine tender conscience--"

 

"Hagar refuses to put on black," said Miss Serena. "I don't see that

she's got a tender conscience--"

 

"The entire amount--everything that came from the fortune--she turns

back to the fund which the second wife established for workingmen's

housing. She states that she agrees with her stepmother's views as

to how the fortune was made, and that she does not care to be a

beneficiary. She says that her stepmother had evidently given thought

to the matter and preferred that form of 'restitution' and that her

only duty is simply to return this million and more to the fund already

erected, and from which it was diverted for Cousin Medway's benefit."

 

"Duty!" exclaimed Mrs. LeGrand. "I don't see where 'duty' comes in. Her

'duty' is to see that her father was wise for her. If he was content

there's surely no reason why she should not be so!"

 

"Hagar," said Miss Serena, "never could see proper distinctions between

people. I don't see that working-people are housed so badly--"

 

Ralph laughed mirthlessly. "Yes, they are, Cousin Serena! Scarcely any

of them have tiled bathrooms and the best type of porcelain-lined tub,

and very few have libraries that'll accommodate more than a thousand

volumes, and quite a number do without nurseries papered with scenes

from Mother Goose. And as they're all for that kind of housing, they're

preparing to move in--just a little preliminary ousting of a few people

with more brains and money and in they go!--cuckoos laying their eggs

in abler folks' nests! This is the age of the cuckoo."

 

"How absurd," said Miss Serena, "Gilead Balm hasn't a tiled bathroom,

nor an extremely large library, and when I was a child the nursery

wasn't papered at all. But we are perfectly comfortable at Gilead Balm.

It's a heinous sin--discontent with your lot in life."

 

"Do you mean," asked Mrs. LeGrand, "that, against your counsel and

advice, Hagar is really going headstrongly on to do this silly thing?"

 

"Apparently so. She is," said the Colonel, "of age. There again was a

mistake--to let women come of age. Perpetual minors--"

 

Mrs. LeGrand laughed. "Colonel, you are not very gallant!"

 

The Colonel turned to her. "Oh, my dear friend, you're not the modern,

unwomanly type that professes to see something degrading in the

subordination that God and Nature have decreed for woman! Gallant!

That's just what I am. Knights and gallantry were for the type that's

vanishing, though"--he bowed to Mrs. LeGrand, who had not a little of

her old beauty left--"though here and there is left a shining example!"

 

Mrs. LeGrand used her fan. "Oh, Colonel, there are many of us who like

the old ways best."

 

Ralph drummed with his fingers upon the table. "To come back to Hagar--"

 

Hagar herself entered the room.

 

She was dressed in white; she was a little thin and pale, for the

last weeks had been trying ones. Habitually she had a glancing way of

ranging from an appearance of youth almost girlish to a noble look of

young maturity. To-day she looked her thirty-one years, but looked them

regally.

 

Once the Colonel would not have hesitated to hector her, Miss Serena

peevishly to blame what she could not understand, Mrs. LeGrand to

attempt smoothly to put her down. All that seemed impossible now. There

was about her the glamour of successful work, of a known person. Mrs.

LeGrand had recently purchased a "Who's Who," and had found her there.

_Ashendyne, Hagar, author; b. Gilead Balm, in Virginia_, and so on.

From various chronicles of the realm of contemporary literature she

had gathered that Hagar's name would be found in yet more exclusive

lists than "Who's Who." Of course, all in the room had read much of

what she had written, and equally, of course, each of the four had,

for temperamental reasons, spokenly or unspokenly depreciated it. But

all knew that she had--though they could not see the justice of her

having--that standing in the world. Mrs. LeGrand always, with patrons,

smoothly brought it in that she had been a pupil at Eglantine. None

of them knew how much she made by her writing; it was to be supposed

it was something, seeing that she was coolly throwing away a million

dollars. There was likewise the glamour of much absence in foreign

lands; the undefined feeling that here were novelties of experience and

adventure, ground with which she was familiar and they were not. Of

experience and adventure in psychical lands they took no account. But

it was undeniable that her knowing Europe and Asia and Africa added to

the already considerable difficulty in properly expressing to Hagar how

criminally foolish she was being. Added to that, there was something in

herself that prevented it.

 

Ralph spoke first. "We were talking, Hagar, about your idea of what

to do with Cousin Medway's money. Here are only kinspeople and old

friends, and we all wish that you wouldn't do it, and think that

there'll come a day when you'll be sorry--"

 

The Colonel, leaning back in his chair, stroked his white imperial.

"I should never have said, Gipsy, that you were the sentimental,

beggar-tending kind--"

 

Hagar's kindly eyes that had travelled from her cousin to her

grandfather, now went on to Mrs. LeGrand. "And you?" they seemed to say.

 

"Why couldn't you," said Mrs. LeGrand, "do both? Why couldn't you give

a handsome donation--give a really large amount to this charity? And

then why not feel that you had, so to speak, the rest in trust, and

give liberally, so much a year, to all kinds of worthy enterprises? I

don't believe the most benevolent heart could find anything to complain

of in that--"

 

Hagar's eyes went to Miss Serena.

 

"You ought to take advice," said Miss Serena. "How can you know that

your judgment is good?"

 

Hagar gave her eyes to all in company. "It is right that you should say

what you think. We are all too bound together for one not to be ready

to listen and give weight to what the others think. But having done

it, our own judgment has to determine at last, hasn't it? It seems to

me that it is right to do what I am doing--what I have done, for it is

practically accomplished. I saw all necessary lawyers and people last

week in New York. Of course, I hope that you'll come to see it as I do,

but if you do not, still I'll hope that you'll believe that I am right

in doing what I hold to be right. And now don't let's talk of that any

more."

 

"What I want to know," said Miss Serena, "is how you're going to live,

if you don't take your dead father's support--"

 

Hagar looked at her in surprise. "Live? Why, live as I have lived for

years--upon what I earn."

 

"I didn't suppose you could do that.--What _do_ you earn?"

 

"It depends. Some years more, some years less. I have published a good

deal and there is a continuing sale. England and America together, I am

good for something more than ten thousand a year."

 

Miss Serena stared at her. A film seemed to come over her eyes, the

muscles of her face slightly worked. "Somewhere about thirty years

ago," she said painfully, "I thought I'd write a book. I'd thought

of a pretty story. I wrote to a printing and publishing company in

Richmond about it, but they wrote back that I'd have to _pay_ to have

it printed."

 

That night in her bedroom, plethoric with small products of needle,

crochet-needle, and paint-box, Miss Serena drew down the shades of

all four windows preparatory to undressing. She was upstairs, there

was a thick screen of cedars and no house or hill or person who could

possibly command her windows, but she would have been horribly uneasy

with undrawn shades. Ready for bed, she always blew out the lamp before

she again bared the windows.

 

Some one knocked at the door. "Who is it?" called Miss Serena, her hand

upon her dress-waist.

 

"It's Hagar. May I come in?"

 

It seemed that Hagar just wanted to talk. And she talked, with charm,

of twenty things. Mostly of happenings about the old place. She asked

about the latest panel of garden lilies and cat-tails, and she took the

wonderfully embroidered pincushion from the bureau and admired it. "I

think that I'm going to have an apartment in New York this winter, and

if I do, won't you make me a pincushion? And, Aunt Serena, you must

come sometimes to see me."

 

"You'll be marrying. You ought to marry Ralph."

 

"Even so, you could come to see me, couldn't you? But I am not going to

marry Ralph."

 

Miss Serena stiffened. "The whole family wants you to--" She was upon

family authority, and the wooing had to be done all over again....

 

"I saw Thomasine in New York. She's going to live with me as my

secretary. You know that she has been a typewriter and stenographer

for a long time, and they say she is an excellent one. She has been

studying, too, other things at night, after her long hours. She is

as pretty and sweet as ever. When you come, the three of us will do

wonderful things together--"