Hagar 51

Hagar 51

Hagar, with her odd, pensive, enigmatical face, drove the strain back

to the limbo whence it came. She and Lily talked of the girls so

long ago at Eglantine, of Sylvie and Francie and all the rest, the

living and the dead, and the scattered fates. Neither had ever been

back to the school, but she could tell Lily of Mrs. LeGrand's health

and prosperity. "You don't like her," said Lily. "I was so ill and

homesick, I didn't have energy one way or the other, but she was very

smooth, I remember that, ... and we were all to marry, and only to

marry--marry money and social position--especially social position."

They talked of the teachers. "I liked Miss Gage," said Hagar, "and Mrs.

Lane was a gentle, sweet woman. Do you remember M. Morel?"

 

"Yes, and Mr. Laydon."

 

Lily started. "Oh, Hagar, I had forgotten that! But perhaps there was

nothing in it--"

 

Hagar laughed. "If you meant that at eighteen I sincerely thought I

loved Mr. Laydon--and that he, as sincerely, I do believe, thought that

he loved me--yes, there was that in it! But we found out with fair

promptness that it was false fire.--I have not seen nor heard of him

for many years. He taught at Eglantine for a while, and then he went, I

believe, to some Western school.... Lily, Lily! I have had a long life!"

 

"I have had as long a one in years," said Lily. "But yours has been the

fuller. You have a wonderful life."

 

"We all have wonderful lives," answered Hagar. "One is rich after this

fashion, one after that."

 

The bell rang. In another moment Denny Gayde came into the big room.

The six years since the Nassau month had wrought little outer change.

He was still somewhat thin and worn, with a face at once keen and

quiet, a little stern, with eyes that saw away, away--He was more light

than heat, but there was warmth, too, and it glowed and deepened all

around "Onward!" When he said the name of his paper, it was as though

he caressed it. He was like a lighthouse-keeper whose whole being had

become bent, on a wreck-strewn shore, to tending and heightening the

light, to sending the rays streaming across the reefs.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER XXXI

 

JOHN FAY

 

 

"Denny," said Hagar, "ask Mary Magazine to give you a coffee-cup."

Denny came back with it and she filled it from the silver urn. "Rose

went to Brooklyn to-night?"

 

"Yes.--I was to have spoken down on Omega Street, but at the last

moment Harding came in and I sent him instead. 'Onward!' 's got the

strongest kind of stuff this week, and there are some finishing

touches--I'm going back to the office in an hour or two. Rose said that

she asked you for that poem, and that you said you would give it, and

she thought you might have it ready. I've got a telling place for it--"

 

"Drink your coffee and talk to the others while I copy it out," said

Hagar. She rose and went to the desk in the smaller room. When she came

back, Lily was dreaming with her eyes upon the forest bough, and the

two men sat discussing Syndicalism. She laid a folded piece of paper

upon the table beside Denny's hand. "There are only three verses."

 

He opened the paper and read them. "Thank you, Hagar! You've struck it

home."

 

He refolded the paper and was about to put it in his pocket when John

Fay held out his hand. "Mayn't I see it, too?" He looked at Hagar.

 

"Yes, of course, if you wish."

 

Fay read it, held the paper in his hand for a moment, then gave it

back to Denny. "I wish I could write like that," he said.

 

His tone was so oddly humble that Hagar laughed. "I wish that I could

build great bridges across deep rivers!" she said.

 

They sat and talked, and the poem gave leadings to their talk, though

they did not speak of the poem. At first it was Fay, answering Hagar's

questions, telling of the struggle of muscle and brain with the

physical earth, of mountain-piercing, river-spanning, harbour-making.

He was thirty-nine; he had been engineering, building in strange

and desert places since he was a boy; he had a host of memories of

struggles, now desperate and picturesque, now patient and drudging,

grapples of mind with matter, first-hand encounters with solids and

liquids and gases. He had had to manage men in order to manage these;

he had had to know how to manage men. Born with an enquiring mind, he

learned as he went along his governments and peoples, their customs,

institutions, motor-faiths, strengths and weaknesses; also he knew the

natural history of places, and loved Mother Earth and a good part of

her progeny. He had also a defined, quizzical humour which saved the

day for him when it grew too strenuous. He talked well, with a certain

drawling fitness of phrase which brought Medway into Hagar's mind, but

not unpleasantly. There had been much in Medway which she had liked.

 

Fay was no monopolist. The talk went from one to another, and Denny

drew more into it. He had been listening attentively to Fay. "It's your

work," he said, "and it's tremendous and basic work. You've been doing

it through the ages ever since it first occurred to us that we could

lengthen an arm with a stick and crack a nut--or an enemy's head--with

a stone. It's tremendous and basic still. And the people who work under

your direction, and atom by atom give you power?"

 

"Why, one day," said Fay, "they'll work as artists. A far day,

doubtless, and there are degrees in artists; but I see no other

conclusion. And to give the artist component in the mass of humanity

a chance to strengthen and come out is, I take it, the tremendous and

basic work to which we've all got to devote the next century or two."

 

"Oh, you're all right!" said Denny.

 

Hagar smiled. "My old 'News from Nowhere'--"

 

"But with a difference," said Denny. "Morris's was an over-simplified

dream."

 

"Yes; we are more complex and flowing than that. But it was lovely. Do

you remember the harvest home, and the masons, so absorbed and happy in

their building ... like children, and yet conscious artists, buoyant,

free--"

 

Fay looked at her. "What," he said, "is _your_ vision of the country

that is coming?"

 

Her candid eyes met his. "I have no clear vision," she said. "Visions,

too, are flowing. The vision of to-day is not that of yesterday and

to-morrow's may be different yet. Moreover, I don't want to fix a

vision, to mount it like a butterfly and keep it with the life gone

out. We've done too much of that all along the way behind us. Vision

grows, and who wishes to say 'Lo, the beautiful End!' There is no End.

I do not wish a rigid mind, posturing before one altar-piece. Pictures

dissolve and altars are portable."

 

"Yes," said Denny, "but--"

 

"Lily says she reads Vedanta. Well, it is the Yogi's _Neti--neti!_

Almost your only possible definition as yet is, 'Not this--not this!'

The country that is coming--It is not capitalism, though capitalism

is among its ancestors. It is not war, though in the past it warred.

It is not ecclesiasticism, though ecclesiasticism, too, was an inn on

its road. It is not sex-aristocracy, though that, too, is behind it;

it is not preoccupation with sex at all. It is not sectionalism, nor

nationalism, nor imperialism. It is not racial arrogance. It is not

arrogance at all. It is not exploitation. It is not hatred. It is not

selfishness. It is not lust. It is not bigotry. It is not ignorance,

or pride in ignorance.--_Neti, neti!_... It is beauty--and truth....

And always greater.... And it comes by knowledge, out of which grows

understanding, and by courage, out of which come great actions."

 

She ceased to speak, and leaned back in her chair, her hand at the

amethysts about her throat. Fay kept his eyes upon her. He was

conscious of a resurgence of a morning of a couple of years before when

he had cut from a magazine a page bearing a half-tone portrait and had

pinned it above his book-shelf. HAGAR ASHENDYNE had said the legend

below. The rustle of the palms outside his hut came to him, and the

mist of early morning above the waters.

 

The clock on Hagar's mantel-shelf struck ten with a silvery stroke.

 

Denny started. "I've got to go--work's calling!"

 

"I had rather hear you say, at ten o'clock, that sleep was calling,"

said Hagar. "You're working too hard, Rose says so, and I say so." She

looked at him with friendliness deep and tender, soft and bright.

"Almost Denny's only fault is that he makes his work his god rather

than his servant. At times he's perilously near offering it a human

sacrifice. Why will you, Denny?"

 

"There's so much to do and so few are doing it," said Denny. His eyes

were upon the great forest bough, but he seemed to be looking beyond

it, down long, long vistas. "I don't know that I worship work. But I

want every prisoner of wrong to rebel. And there's no time to waste

when you have to pass the word along to so many cells. Sometimes I

feel, too, like sitting down and playing, but when I do, I always begin

after a little to hear the chains." He laughed. "And I like you and

Rose preaching _dolce far niente_! If ever there were two who had the

power of work--!"

 

"All the same," said Hagar, "go to bed before two o'clock, won't you?"

 

He shook hands around and was gone. "What a wonderful face!" said Lily;

and Fay nodded. "A kind of worn, warrior angel--"

 

Hagar took Lily's hand and kissed it. "You've defined Denny to a

nicety! 'A kind of worn, warrior angel'--I like that!... No, don't go!

It isn't late."

 

"We'll stay, then, just one other half-hour. And now," said Lily, "tell

me about yourself. We see your name, of course, and what the papers

think you are doing. But you yourself--"

 

"But I myself?" said Hagar. "Ah, if you'll tell me, I'll tell you!" The

great bough of red leaves against the wall was repeated in miniature by

a spray upon the table, resting in a piece of cloudy Venetian glass.

Hagar took it from the vase and sat studying it, colour and line. She