Hagar 6

Hagar 6

"Of course it is," said Mrs. Green cheerfully. She sat down on an

overturned bucket between the green rows of pease, and pushed back

her sunbonnet from her kind, old wrinkled face. "I remember when yo'

ma came here jest as well. She was jest the loveliest thing!--But of

course all her own people were a good long way off, and she was a

seafarer herself, and she couldn't somehow get used to the hills. I've

heard her say they jest shut her in like a prison.... But then, after

a while, you came, an' I reckon, though she says things sometimes,

wherever you are she feels to be home. When it comes to being a woman,

the good Lord has to get in com-pensation somewhere, or I don't reckon

none of us could stand it.--I'm glad she's better."

 

"_I'm_ glad," said Hagar. "Can I help you pick the pease, Mrs. Green?"

 

"Thank you, child, but I've about picked the mess. You goin' to play

on the ridge? I wish Thomasine and Maggie and Corker were here to play

with you."

 

"I wish they were," said Hagar. Her eyes filled. "It's a very lonesome

day. Yesterday was lonesome and to-morrow's going to be lonesome--"

 

"Haven't you got a good book? I never see such a child for books."

 

Two tears came out of Hagar's eyes. "I was reading a book Aunt Serena

told me not to read.--And now I'm not to read _anything_ for a whole

week."

 

"Sho!" exclaimed Mrs. Green. "What did you do that for? Don't you know

that little girls ought to mind?"

 

Hagar sighed. "Yes, I suppose they ought.... I wish I had now.... It's

so lonesome not to read when your mother's sick and grandmother won't

let me go into the room only just a little while morning and evening."

 

"Haven't you got any pretty patchwork nor nothin'?"

 

Hagar standing among the blush roses, looked at her with sombre eyes.

"Mrs. Green, I hate to sew."

 

"Oh!" exclaimed Mrs. Green. "That's an awful thing to say!"

 

She sat on the overturned bucket, between the pale-green, shiny-podded

peavines, her friendly old face, knobbed and wrinkled like a Japanese

carving, gleaming from between the faded blue slats of her sunbonnet,

and she regarded the child before her with real concern. "I wonder

now," she said, "if you're goin' to grow up a rebel? Look-a-here,

honey, there ain't a mite of ease and comfort on that road."

 

"That's what the Yankees called us all," said Hagar. 'Rebels.'"

 

"Ah, I don't mean 'rebel' that-er-way," said Mrs. Green. "There's

lonelier and deeper ways of rebellin'. You don't get killed with an

army cheerin' you, and newspapers goin' into black, and a state full

of people, that were 'rebels' too, keepin' your memory green,--what

happens, happens just to you, by yourself without any company, and no

wreaths of flowers and farewell speeches. They just open the door and

put you out."

 

"Out where?"

 

"Out by yourself. Out of this earth's favour. And, though we mayn't

think it," said Mrs. Green, "this earth's favour is our sunshine. It's

right hard to go where there isn't any sunshine.... I don't know why

I'm talking like this to you--but you're a strange child and always

were, and I reckon you come by it honest!" She rose from among the

peavines. "Well, I've been baking apple turnovers, and they ain't bad

to picnic on! Suppose you take a couple up on the ridge with you."

 

There grew, on the very top of the ridge, a cucumber tree that

Hagar loved. Underneath was a little fine, sparse grass and enough

pennyroyal to make the place aromatic when the sunshine drew out all

its essence, as was the case to-day. Over the light soil, between the

sprigs of pennyroyal, went a line of ants carrying grains of some

pale, amber-clear substance. Hagar watched them to their hill. When,

one by one, they had entered, a second line of foragers emerged and

went off to the right through the grass. In a little time these, too,

reappeared, each carrying before her a tiny bead of the amber stuff.

Hagar watched, elbows on ground and chin on hands. She had a feeling

that they were people, and she tried giving them names, but they were

so bewilderingly alike that in a moment she could not tell which was

"Brownie" and which "Pixie" and which "Slim." She turned upon her back

and lying in the grass and pennyroyal saw above her only blue sky and

blue sky. She stared into it. "If the angels were sailing like the

birds up there and looking down--and looking down--we people might

seem all alike to them--all alike and not doing things that were very

different--all alike.... Only there are our clothes. Pink ones and blue

ones and white ones and black ones and plaid ones and striped ones--"

She stared at the blue until she seemed to see step after step of blue,

a great ladder leading up, and then she turned on her side and gazed at

Gilead Balm and, a mile away, the canal and the shining river.

 

She could see many windows, but not her mother's window. She had to

imagine that. Lonesomeness and ennui, that had gone away for a bit in

the interest of watching the ants, returned full force. She stood up

and cast about for something to break the spell.

 

The apple turnovers wrapped in a turkey-red, fringed napkin, rested in

a small willow basket upon the grass. Hagar was not hungry, but she

considered that she might as well eat a turnover, and then that she

might as well have a party and ask a dozen flower dolls. Her twelve

years were as a moving plateau--one side a misty looming landscape of

the mind, older and higher than her age would forecast; on the other,

green, hollow, daisy-starred meadows of sheer childhood. Her attention

passed from side to side, and now it settled in the meadows.

 

She considered the grass beneath the cucumber tree for a dining-room,

and then she grew aware that she was thirsty, and so came to the

conclusion that she would descend the back side of the ridge to the

spring and have the party there. Crossing the hand's breadth of level

ground she began to climb down the long shady slope toward a stream

that trickled through a bit of wood and a thicket, and a small,

ice-cold spring in a ferny hollow. The sun-bathed landscape, river and

canal and fields and red-brick Gilead Balm with its cedars, and the

garden and orchard, and the overseer's house sank from view. There was

only the broad-leaved cucumber tree against the deep blue sky. The

trunk of the cucumber tree disappeared, and then the greater branches,

and then the lesser branches toward the top, and then the bushy green

top itself. When Hagar and the other children played on the ridge, they

followed her lead and called this side "the far country." To them--or

perhaps only to Hagar--it had a clime, an atmosphere quite different

from the homeward-facing side.

 

When she came to the spring at the foot of the ridge she was very

thirsty. She knelt on a great sunken rock, and, taking off her

sunbonnet, leaned forward between the fern and mint, made a cup of

her hands and drank the sparkling water. When she had had all she

wished, she settled back and regarded the green, flowering thicket.

It came close to the spring, filling the space between the water

and the wood, and it was a wild, luxuriant tangle. Hagar's fancy

began to play with it. Now it was a fairy wood for Thumbelina--now

Titania and Oberon danced there in the moonlight--now her mind gave it

height and hugeness, and it was the wood around the Sleeping Beauty.

The light-winged minutes went by and then she remembered the apple

turnovers.... Here was the slab of rock for the table. She spread the

turkey-red napkin for cloth, and she laid blackberry leaves for plates,

and put the apple turnovers grandly in the middle. Then she moved about

the hollow and gathered her guests. Wild rose, ox-eye daisy, Black-eyed

Susan, elder, white clover, and columbine--quite a good party.... She

set each with due ceremony on the flat rock, before a blackberry-leaf

plate, and then she took her own place facing the thicket, and after

a polite little pause, folded her hands and closed her eyes. "We will

say," she said, "a silent Grace."

 

When she opened her eyes, she opened them full upon other

eyes--haggard, wolfishly hungry eyes, looking at her from out the

thicket, behind them a body striped like a wasp....

 

"I didn't mean to scare you," said the boy, "but if you ever went most

of two days and a night without anything to eat, you'd know how it

felt."

 

"I never did," said Hagar. "But I can imagine it. I wish I had asked

Mrs. Green for _five_ apple turnovers." As she spoke, she pushed the

red fringed napkin with the second turnover toward him. "Eat that one,

too. I truly don't want any, and the flowers are never hungry."

 

He bit into the second turnover. "It seems mean to eat up your

tea-party, but I'm 'most dead, and that's the truth--"

 

Hagar, sitting on the great stone with her hands folded in her lap

and her sunbonnet back on her shoulders, watched her suddenly acquired

guest. He would not come clear out of the thicket; the tangled growth

held him all but head and shoulders. "I believe I've seen you before,"

she said at last. "About two weeks ago grandfather and Aunt Serena and

I were on the packet-boat. Weren't you at the lock up the river? The

boat went down and down until you were standing 'way up, just against

the sky. I am almost sure it was you."

 

He reddened. "Yes, it was me." Then, dropping the arm that held the yet

uneaten bit of turnover, he broke out. "I didn't run away while I was a

trusty! I wouldn't have done it! One of the men lied about me and said

dirty words about my people, and I jumped on him and knocked his head

against a stone until he didn't come to for half an hour! Then they did

things to me, and did what they called degrading me. 'No more trustying

for you!' said the boss. So I run away--three days ago." He wiped his

forehead with his sleeve. "It seems more like three years. I reckon

they've got the dogs out."

 

"What have they got the dogs out for?"

 

"Why, to hunt me. I--I--"

 

His voice sunk. Terror came back, and will-breaking fear, a chill

nausea and swooning of the soul. He groaned and half rose from the

thicket. "I was lying here till night, but I reckon I'd better be

going--" His eyes fell upon his body and he sank back. "O God! I reckon in hell we'll wear these clothes."