Hagar 53

Hagar 53

"Well, you couldn't say anything else," said Hagar. "Only I devoutly

hope--" She moved toward her own room. "I'll dress quickly."

 

"And don't you think," said Thomasine, "that I'd better not dine with

you--"

 

"I think just the contrary," answered Hagar, and vanished.

 

Ralph came. He was the Ralph of three years ago, of that last autumn

week at Gilead Balm, only with certain things accentuated. He was

richer, he had more and more a name in finance; his state was now

loudly and perpetually proud of him. There was an indefinable

hardening.... He was very handsome, Thomasine thought; he looked

tremendously Somebody. He had been around the world--his physician had

sent him off because of a threatened breaking-down. Apparently that

had been staved off, pushed at least into a closet to stay there a few

years. He talked well, with vigorous, clipped sentences, of Australia

and China and India. Hagar, sitting opposite him in a filmy black gown,

kept the talk upon travel. She had not seen him for eighteen months,

and before then, for a long while, their meetings had been casual, cold

and stiff enough, with upon his side an absurd hauteur. The eighteen

months had at least dissipated that.... Dinner over, they went for

coffee back to the apartment, and Thomasine determinedly disappeared.

Old Gilead Balm talk was in Thomasine's mind. Ralph Coltsworth and

Hagar Ashendyne were to mate--Old Miss had somehow kept that in the

air, even so long, long ago.

 

In the grave and restful room with its shaded lights Hagar poured a cup

of coffee for her cousin and gave it to him.

 

Taking it, he took for a moment also her two hands, long, slender, and

very finely made. "Ringless!" he said.

 

Hagar, withdrawing them, poured her own coffee. "I have never cared to

wear jewels. A necklace and an old brooch or two of my mother's are

almost the only things I have."

 

Ralph looked about the room. The bough of flaming maple was gone and

in its place rested a great branch of cone-bearing white pine.

 

Her eyes followed his. "I can see the forest through it. Do you

remember the great pine above the spring?"

 

His gaze still roamed. "And you call this home?"

 

"Yes, it is home."

 

"Without a man?"

 

She smiled. "Do you think there can be no home without a man?"

 

He drank his coffee; then, putting down the cup, rose and moved about

the deep and wide place. She watched him from her armchair, long and

slim as Diana in her black robe. He looked at the walls with their rows

of cabined thought and the pictures above, at the great library table

with its tokens of work, and then, standing before the wide, clear

windows, at the multitudinous lights of the world without. A sound as

of a distant sea came through the glass. "And without a child?"

 

Her clear voice sounded behind him. "You are mistaken," she said. "My

work is my child. One human being serves and expresses in one way and

one in another, and I think it is not the office which is higher or

lower, but only the mind with which the office is performed. Did I ever

meet a man whom I loved and who was my comrade, and who loved me and

saw in me his comrade, my home would probably open to that man. And

we two might say, 'Now in cleanliness and joy and awe will we bring

a child into our home.' ... I think that would be a happy thing to

happen. But if it does not happen, none the less will I have my earthly

home as I have my unearthly, and be happy in it, and none the less will

I do world-work and rejoice in the doing. And if it happened, it would

be but added bliss--it would be by no means all the bliss, or all the

world, nor should it be. We grow larger than that.... And now, having

answered your question, come! let us sit down and talk about what you

are doing and when you are going down to Hawk Nest. I had a letter from

Gilead Balm last week--from Aunt Serena."

 

He came and sat down. "The last time I was at Gilead Balm--two years

and a half ago--they said they had ceased to write to you."

 

"They have begun again," said Hagar calmly. "Dear Ralph, we live in the

twentieth century. You yourself are here to-night, eating my bread and

salt."

 

"Have you been to Gilead Balm?"

 

"Yes, I went last summer, and again the summer before. Not for long,

for a little while. Grandfather and grandmother and Aunt Serena said

some hard things, but I think they enjoyed saying them, and I could

ramble over the old place, and, indeed, I think, though they would

never have said so, that they were glad to have me there. I will not

quarrel. They are so feeble--the Colonel and Old Miss. I do not think

they can live many years longer."

 

"Are you going again this summer?"

 

"Yes."

 

They talked again of his journey and recovered health, of New York,

of the political and financial condition of the country; or rather

he gave his view upon this and she sat studying him, her fine, long

hands folded in her lap. What with question and remark she kept him

for a long time upon general topics, or upon his increasing part in

the subtle machinery behind so much that made general talk;--but at

last, skilfully as she fenced, he came back to personal life and to

his resentment of all her attitude.... He had thought that time and

absence had cured his passion for her. Even a month ago he had told

himself that there was left only family interest, old boyish memories.

He disapproved intensely of the way she thought of things; she was not

at all the wife for him. Sylvie Carter was--he would go to see Sylvie

just as soon as he reached New York.... And then, upon the boat, coming

over, it was of Hagar that he dreamed all the time. Like a gathering

thunderstorm it was all coming back. Landing in New York he had only

thought of her, all last night and to-day. It was an obsession, he told

himself that--he could see that once he had her, possessed her, owned

her, he would fight her through life ... or she would fight him ... and

all the same the obsession had him, whirling him like a leaf in storm.

 

He spoke with a suddenness startling to himself. "What is between us

is all this fog of damnable ideas that has arisen in the last twenty

years! If it wasn't for that you would marry me."

 

Hagar took the jade Buddha from the table and weighed it in her hands.

"Oh, give me patience--" she murmured.

 

He rose and began to pace the floor. The physical, the passionate side

of him was in storm. He was not for nothing a Coltsworth. Coltsworths

were dominating people, they were masterful. They wished to prevail,

body and point of view, point of view, perhaps, no less than body. They

were not content to have their scheme of life and to allow another

a like liberty; their scheme must lie upon and smother under the

other's. They wished submissiveness of mind--the other person's mind.

They wished it in their relations with men--Ralph himself preferred

subservient officials, subservient secretaries, subservient boards,

subservient legislators. He preferred men to listen in the club, he

liked a deferential murmur from his acquaintance. He had followers whom

he called friends. A certain number of these truly admired him; he was

to them feudal and splendid. He was a Coltsworth and Coltsworths liked

to dominate the minds and fortunes of men. When it came to collective

womankind, they might have said that they had really never considered

the question--naturally men dominated women. To them God was male. They

would have agreed with the Kentucky editor that the feminist movement

was an audacious attempt to change the sex of Deity.... The thing that

angered the Coltsworths through and through was Revolt. Political,

economic, intellectual, spiritual--Revolt was Revolt, whatever

adjective went before! Rage boiled up in the mind of the master. And

when the revolted was not perturbed, or anxious or fluttered, but

stood aloof and was aloof, when the revolt was successful, when the

rebellion had become revolution and the new flag was up and the citadel

impregnable--the sense of wrath and injury overflowed like the waves of

Phlegethon. It overflowed now with Ralph.

 

He turned from the window. "All this rebellion of women is unthinkable!"

 

Hagar looked at him somewhat dreamily. "However, it has occurred."

 

"Things can't change like that--"

 

"The answer to that is that they have changed."

 

She sat and smiled at him, quite eluding him, a long way off. "Do you

think that only mind in man rebels? Mind in woman does it too. And

it comes about that there are always more rebels, men and women. We

are quite numerous to-day.... But there are women who do not rebel,

as there are men. There are many women who will grant you your every

premise, who are horrified in company with you, horrified at us

others.... Why do you not wish to mate among your own kind?"

 

"I wish to mate with _you_!"

 

She shook her head. "That you cannot do.... There is being drawn a

line. Some men and women are on one side of it, and some men and women

are on the other side of it. There is taking place a sorting-out.... In

the things that make the difference you are where you were when Troy

fell. I cannot go back, down all those slopes of Time."

 

"I am afire for you."

 

"You wake in me no answering fire." She rose. "I will talk about much

with you, but I will talk no longer about love. You may take your

choice. Stay and talk as my old playmate and cousin, or say good-night

and good-bye."

 

"If I go," said Ralph hoarsely, "I shall not come again--I shall not

ask you again--"

 

"Ralph, Ralph! do you think I shall weep for that?... You do think that

I shall weep for that!... You are mad!"

 

"By God!" said Ralph, and quivered, "I wish that we were together in a

dark wood--I wish that you were in a captured city, and I was coming

through the broken gate--" Suddenly he crossed the few feet between

them, caught and crushed her in his arms, bruising her lips with his.

"Just be a woman--you dark, rich thing with wings--"

 

Hagar had a physical strength for which he was unprepared. Exerting