Hagar 46

Hagar 46

There was a small table beside him. He opened the bag and turned the

contents out upon this, then began to sort them. No one--it was a

Gilead Balm way--claimed letter or paper until the Colonel had made as

many little heaps as there were individuals and had placed every jot

and tittle of mail accruing, ending by shaking out the empty bag. He

did all this to-day. Captain Bob had only a county paper--no letters

for Old Miss--a good deal of forwarded mail for Mrs. LeGrand--the

Colonel's own--letters and papers for Hagar. The Colonel handled each

piece, glanced at the superscription, put it in the proper heap.

He shook out the bag; then, gathering up Mrs. LeGrand's mail, gave

it to her with a smile and a small courtly bow. Miss Serena rose,

work in hand, and took hers from the table. Lisa walked gravely up,

then returned to Captain Bob with the county paper in her mouth. The

Colonel's shrunken long fingers took up Hagar's rather large amount and

held it out to her. "Here, Gipsy"--the last time for many a day that

he called her Gipsy. A letter slipped from the packet to the floor.

Bending, the Colonel picked it up, and in doing so for the first time

regarded the printing on the upper left-hand corner--_Return in five

days to the ---- Equal Suffrage League_. The envelope turned in his

hand. On its reverse, across the flap, was boldly stamped--VOTES FOR

WOMEN.

 

Colonel Argall Ashendyne straightened himself with a jerk.

"Hagar!--What is that? How do you happen to get letters like

that?--Answer!"

 

His granddaughter, who had risen to take her mail, regarded first the

letter and then the Colonel with some astonishment. "What do you mean,

grandfather? The letter's from my friend, Elizabeth Eden. I wonder if

you don't remember her, that summer long ago at the New Springs?"

 

The Colonel's forefinger stabbed the three words on the back of the

envelope. "You don't have friends and correspondents who are working

for _that_?"

 

"Why not? I propose presently actively to work for it myself."

 

Apoplectic silence on the part of the Colonel. The suddenly arisen

storm darted an electric feeler from one to the other upon the porch.

 

"What's the matter?" demanded Captain Bob. "Something's the matter!"

 

Old Miss, who had not clearly caught the Colonel's words, yet felt the

tension and put in an authoritative foot. "What have you done now,

Hagar? Who's been writing to you? What is it, Colonel?"

 

Ralph, in his riding-clothes, coming through the hall from the back

where he had just dismounted, felt the sultry hush. "What's happened?

What's the matter, Hagar?"

 

"Get me a glass of water, Serena!" breathed the Colonel. He still held

the letter.

 

"My dear friend, let me fan you!" exclaimed Mrs. LeGrand, and moved to

where she could see the offending epistle. "VOTES FOR--oh, Hagar, you

surely aren't one of _those_ women!"

 

Miss Serena, who had flown for the water, returned. The Colonel drank

and the blood receded from his face. The physical shock passed, there

could be seen gathering the mental lightning. Miss Serena, too, read

over his shoulder "VOTES-- ... Oh, _Hagar_!"

 

Hagar laughed--a cool, gay, rippling sound. "Why, how round-eyed you

all are! It isn't murder and forgery. Is the word 'rebellion' so

strange to you? May I have my letter, grandfather?"

 

The Colonel released the letter, but not the situation. "Either you

retire from such a position and such activities, or you cease to be

granddaughter of mine--"

 

Old Miss, enlightened by an aside from Mrs. LeGrand, came into action.

"She doesn't mean that she's friends with those brazen women who want

to be men? What's that? She says she's going to work with them? I don't

believe it! I don't believe that even of Maria's daughter. Going around

speaking and screaming and tying themselves to Houses of Parliament and

interrupting policemen! If I believed it, I don't think I'd ever speak

to her again in this life! Women Righters and Abolitionists!--doing

their best to drench the country with blood, kill our people and bring

the carpetbaggers upon us! Wearing bloomers and cutting their hair

short and speaking in town-halls and wanting to change the marriage

service!--Yes, they do wear bloomers! I saw one doing it in New York in

1885, when I was there with your grandfather. And she had short hair--"

 

Mrs. LeGrand, as the principal of a School for Young Ladies, always

recognized her responsibility to truth. She stood up for veracity.

"Dear Mrs. Ashendyne, it is not just like that now. There are a great

many more suffragists now--so many that society has agreed not to

ostracize them. Some of them are pretty and dress well and have a good

position. I was at a tea in Baltimore and there were several there.

I've even heard women in Virginia--women that you'd think ought to

know better--say that they believed in it and that sooner or later we'd

have a movement here. Of course, you don't hear that kind of talk, but

I can assure you there's a good deal of it. Of course, I myself think

it is perfectly dreadful. Woman's place is the home. And we can surely

trust _everything_ to the chivalry of our Southern men. I am sure Hagar

has only to think a little--The whole thing seems to me so--so--so

_vulgar_!"

 

Miss Serena broke out passionately. "It's against the Bible! I don't

see how any _religious_ woman--"

 

Hagar, who had gone back to her chair, turned her eyes toward Captain

Bob.

 

"Confound it, Gipsy! What do you want to put your feet on the table and

smoke cigars for?"

 

Hagar looked at Ralph.

 

He was gazing at her with eyes that were burning and yet sullen and

angry. "Women, I suppose, have got to have follies and fads to amuse

themselves with. At any rate, they have them. Suffrage or bridge, it

doesn't much matter, so long as it's not let really to interfere. If it

begins to do that, we'll have to put a stop to it. Woman, I take it,

was made for man, and she'll have to continue to recognize that fact.

Good Lord! It seems to me that if we give her our love and pay her

bills, she might be satisfied!"

 

All having spoken, Hagar spoke. "I should like, if I may, to tell you

quietly and reasonably why--" her eyes were upon her grandfather.

 

"I wish to hear neither your excuses nor your reasons," said the

Colonel. "I want to hear a retraction and a promise."

 

Hagar turned slightly, "Grandmother--"

 

"Don't," said Old Miss, "talk to me! When you're wrong, you're wrong,

and that's all there is to it! Maria used to try to explain, and then

she stopped and I was glad of it."

 

Hagar leaned back in her chair and regarded the circle of her

relatives. She felt for a moment more like Maria than Hagar. She felt

trapped. Then she realized that she was not trapped, and she smiled.

Thanks to the evolving whole, thanks to the years and to her eternal

self pacing now through a larger moment than those moments of old,

she was not by position Maria, she was not by position Miss Serena.

Before her, quiet and fair, opened her Fourth Dimension. Inner freedom,

ability to work, personal independence, courage and sense of humour and

a sanguine mind, breadth and height of vision, tenderness and hope,

her waiting friends, Elizabeth, Marie, Rachel, Molly and Christopher,

Denny, Rose Darragh, many another--her work, the story now hovering

in her brain, what other and different work might rise above the

horizon--the passion to help, help largely, lift without thinking if it

were or were not her share of the weight--the universe of the mind, the

growing spirit and the wings of the morning ... there was her land of

escape, real as the hills of Gilead Balm. She crossed the border with

ease; she was not trapped. Even now her subtle self was serenely over.

And the Hagar Ashendyne appearing to others upon this porch was not

chained there, was not riveted to Gilead Balm. Next week, indeed, she

would be gone.

 

A tenderness came over Hagar for her people. All her childhood was

surrounded by them; they were dear, deep among the roots of things. She

wanted to talk to them; she longed that they should understand. "If

you'd listen," she said, "perhaps you'd see it a little differently--"

 

The Colonel spoke with harshness. "There is no need to see it

differently. It is you who should see it differently."

 

"It comes of the kind of things you've always read!" cried Miss Serena.

"Books that I wouldn't touch!"

 

"Yes, Maria was always reading, too," said Old Miss. For her it _was_

less Hagar than Maria sitting there....

 

"If it was anything we didn't know, we would, of course, listen to

you, Hagar dear," said Mrs. LeGrand. "I should be glad to listen

anyhow, just as I listened to those two women in Baltimore. But I must

say their arguments sounded to me very foolish. Ladies in the South

certainly don't need to come into contact with the horrors they talked

about. And I cannot consider the discussion of such subjects delicate.

I should certainly consider it disastrous if my girls at Eglantine

gained any such knowledge. To talk about their being white slaves and

things like that--it was nauseating!"

 

"Would you listen, Ralph?" asked Hagar.

 

"I'll listen to you, Hagar, on any other subject but this."

 

Mrs. LeGrand's voice came in again. She was fluttering her fan. "All

these theories that you women are advancing nowadays--if they _paid_,

if you stood to gain anything by them, if by advancing them you

didn't, so it seems to me, always come out at the little end of the

horn--people ridiculing you, society raising its eyebrows, men afraid

to marry you--! My dear Hagar, men, collectively speaking--men don't

want women to exhibit mind in all directions. They don't object to

their showing it in certain directions, but when it comes to women

showing it all around the circle they do object, and from my point

of view quite properly! Men naturally require a certain complaisance

and deference from women. There's no need to overdo it, but a certain

amount of physical and mental dependence they certainly do want!

Well, what's the use of a woman quarrelling with the world as it's

made? Between doing without independent thinking and doing without an

establishment and someone to provide for you--! So you see," said Mrs.