Hagar 50

Hagar 50

"All right!--I'll pay the cab." He came back to her, and they moved

across and under the trees. "Are you interested?"

 

"I think I am. I haven't made up my mind. We're so far South that as a

movement it's all as yet only a rather distant sound. How do you feel

about it?"

 

"Why, I think it's an honest proposition. I've never seen why not.

We're all human together, aren't we? But building bridges for South

American Governments has kept me, too, a little out of earshot. I see

what the papers say, and they're saying a good deal."

 

"Ours chiefly confine themselves to being scandalized by the English

Militants."

 

"Then your papers are very foolish. Who ever supposed there weren't

Jacobins in every historic struggle for liberty? Sometimes they help

and sometimes they hinder, and sometimes they do both at once. It's

rather superficial to see only the 'left,' and not the movement of

which it is the 'left.'"

 

They came beneath the trees upon the fringe of the crowd about one of

the gold-swathed stands. This was an attentive crowd, not restless but

listening, slanted forward. The man from the taxicab touched a young

workman upon the arm. "Who is it speaking?" The other turned a pale,

tense face. "It's one that can hold them. It's Rose Darragh, speaking

for the working-women."

 

The two made their way to where they could see and hear. Rose Darragh,

speaking with a lifted irony and passion, sent her last Parthian

arrow, paused a moment, then cried with a vibrant voice, "Give the

working-woman a vote!" and stepped back and down from the stand. "By

George!" breathed the man from the cab. The crowd applauded--for such

a meeting applauded loudly.

 

The young man to whom the two had appealed cried out also. "Give the

working-woman a vote! She's working dumb and driven under your factory

laws! Give her the vote!"

 

A large, bald-headed, stubborn-jawed man who had been making

_sotto-voce_ remarks, turned with anger. "And have them striking at the

polls as well as striking in the shop! Doubling the ignorant vote and

getting into the way of business! You'd better listen to what I tell

you! Woman's place is at home--damn her!"

 

The man next him was a clergyman. "I agree with you, sir, that woman's

place is the home, but I object to your expletive!"

 

The bald-headed man was willing to be placatory. "Well, Reverend, if

we're only two words apart--Are you going to stay here? I'm not! I

don't believe in encouraging them--"

 

"I believe you to be right there, sir. Woman's Sphere--" they went off

together.

 

The man from the cab, John Fay by name, with his sister-in-law, Lily

Fay, who had been Lily Goldwell, moved still nearer the front. They

could see Rose Darragh pausing for a moment beside the stand before she

went away to another tribune. A woman dressed in wood-brown spoke to

her laughing; then, a hand on her shoulder, mounted to the platform.

 

Two women behind Lily Fay whispered together excitedly, "Hagar

Ashendyne?"

 

"Yes. I didn't know she was going to speak to-day--but she and Rose

Darragh often do speak together. They're great friends.... Somebody

ought to tell them who she is--Oh! they know--"

 

"_Shh!_"

 

"Oh, she's holding them--"

 

Lily Fay clutched her companion's arm. "Hagar Ashendyne! I went to

school with her--"

 

"The writer?"

 

"Yes. How strange it seems.... Oh, listen!"

 

Hagar's voice came to them, silver clear as a swinging bell. "Men and

women--I am going to tell you why a woman like myself finds herself

to-day under a mental and moral compulsion consciously to further what

is called the Woman Movement--"

 

She spoke for ten minutes. When she ended and stepped from the

platform, there followed a moment of silence, then applause broke

forth. A dark-eyed, breathless girl, a lettered ribbon across her coat,

caught her hand. "Hurry! We're waiting for you at the next stand. Rose

Darragh is just through--" The two hastened away together, lithe and

free beneath the falling brown leaves. A Columbia man was speaking well

for the Men's League, but a good proportion of the crowd, John and Lily

Fay among them, followed the wood-brown skirt.

 

They followed from stand to stand during the next hour, at the end of

which time speaking was over for that day. The crowd broke up; the

speakers, after some cheerful talk among themselves, gathered together

their banners and pennants and went their several ways; committees

looked after the taking-down of the stands.

 

Lily went over to Hagar Ashendyne standing with Rose Darragh and Molly

Josslyn, talking to a little group of friendly people. "I'm Lily

Goldwell. Do you remember?"

 

Hagar put her arms about her. "Oh, Lily, how is your head? Have you got

that menthol pencil still?"

 

"My head got better and I threw it away. Oh, Hagar, you are a sight

for sair een!... Yes, I'm Lily Fay, now. I'm on my way to England to

join my husband. The boat sails next week. I'm at the ----. This is my

brother-in-law, John Fay."

 

"I've got to be at Carnegie Hall to-night," said Hagar. "And I have

something to do to-morrow through the day--but the evening's free.

Won't you come to dinner with me--both of you? Yes, I want you, want

you bad! Come early--come at six."

 

To-morrow was the serenest autumn day. Lily and John Fay walked from

their hotel through a twilight tinted like a shell. When they came to

the apartment house and were carried up, up, and left the elevator and

rang at the door before them and it opened and they were admitted by

a tidy coloured maid, it was to find themselves a little in advance

of their hostess. Mary Magazine explained with slow, soft courtesy.

"Miss Hagar cert'n'y meant to be home er long time befo' you come,

she cert'n'y did. But there's er big strike goin' on--er lot of

sewing-women--an' she went with Miss Elizabeth Eden early this mahnin',

an' erwhile ago she telephone if you got heah first, you must 'scuse

her anyhow an' make yo'selves at home 'cause she'll be heah presently.

She had," Mary Magazine explained further, "to send Miss Thomasine to

see somebody for her in Boston, so there isn't anybody to entertain you

twel she comes. If you'll just make yo'selves comfortable--" and Mary

Magazine smiled slowly and disappeared.

 

The large room had not greatly altered in appearance since Rachel and

Hagar first arranged it, three years ago. There were more books, a few

more prints, more signed photographs, a somewhat richer tone of time.

It was a good room, quiet and fine, not lacking an air of nobility. A

great bough of red autumn leaves flamed at one end like a stained-glass

window. A door opening into a small room showed a typewriter and

a desk piled with work. The two visitors, with fifteen minutes of

sole possession before them, strolled to the windows and admired the

far-flung, grandiose view, twilight beginning to be starred with the

city lights; then turned back to the room and its strong charm.

 

"We've lived through the revolution, I think," said John Fay. "The

senses move more slowly than the event. We're just taking it in, and we

call it all to make. But it's really made."

 

"I see what you mean. But they--but we--have all this monstrous amount

of hard work yet--"

 

"Yes. Introducing the revolution to the slow-minded. But I gather it's

being done." He moved about the room, looking at the photographs.

"Artists and thinkers and world-builders, men and women.... Those years

down there around the Equator, I could at least take the magazines,

and I got each twelvemonth a box of books. I know all these people. I

used to feel quite intimate with them, down there building bridges....

Building bridges is great work. I believe in it thoroughly and quite

enjoy doing it.... And these are bridge-builders, too, and I had

a fraternal feeling. I've cut their pictures, men and women, from

the magazines and stuck them up in my hut and said good-morning and

good-evening to them." He had the pleasantest, humorous eyes, and now

they twinkled. "Sometimes I like them so well that I really kow-towed

to them. And I've laid a platonic sprig of flowers before more than

one of these women's pictures. Perhaps I'd better not tell her so, but

there was a picture of Hagar Ashendyne--"

 

The door opened and Hagar entered. She wore the wood-brown dress of

yesterday--she was somewhat pale, with circles under her eyes. "Ah,

I am sorry!" she said, "but I could not help it. The strike ... and

they send the girls to the Island. Two or three of us went to the

court--oh, the snaky, blind thing we call Justice!" Her eyes filled.

"Pardon! but if you had been there--" She caught herself up, dashed the

moisture from her eyes and said--and looked--that she was glad to see

them. "We'll put the things away that make your heart ache! I'll go and

change, and we'll eat our dinner and have a pleasant, pleasant time!"

 

In a very little while she was back, dressed in white, amethysts in

an old and curious setting about her throat. They had been Maria's,

and to-night she looked like Maria, lines of the haunted mind about

her mouth and between her eyes. Only it was not her personal fate

that troubled her, but a wider haunting. At dinner, in the café at

the corner table, she told them, when they asked her, a little of

where she had been and what she had done during the day, told them of

this pitiful case and of that. Then after a moment's silence she said

resolutely, "Don't let us talk about these things any more. Let us talk

about happy things. Talk to me about yourself, Lily!"

 

"There isn't much to tell," said Lily; "I've been quite terribly

sheltered. For years I was ill, and then I grew better. I've travelled

a little, and I like Maeterlinck and Vedanta and Bergson, and I play

the violin not so badly, and Robert, my husband, is very good to me. I

haven't grown much, I am afraid, since I was at Eglantine. But more and

more continually I want to grow. Do you remember, at Eglantine--"

 

Dinner was not long. They came down to the grave and fair room with the