Hagar 7
Hagar stared at him, faint reflecting lines of anxiety and unhappiness
on her brow, quiverings about her lips. "Ought you to have run away?
Was it right to run away?" The colour flooded her face. It was always
hard for her to tell of her errors, but she felt that she and the boy
were in somewhat the same case, and that she ought to do it. "I did
something my aunt had told me not to do. It was reading a book that
she said was wicked. I can't see yet that it was wicked. It was very
interesting. But the Bishop said that he didn't christen me for that,
and that it was a sin. And now, for a whole week, grandmother says that
I'm not to read any book at all--which is very hard. What I mean is,"
said Hagar, "though I don't feel yet that there was anything wicked in
that book (I didn't read much of it), I feel perfectly certain that I
ought to obey grandmother. The Bible tells you so, and I believe in the
Bible." Her brow puckered again. "At least, I believe that I believe
in the Bible. And if there wasn't anybody in the house, and the most
interesting books were lying around, I wouldn't--at least I think I
wouldn't--touch one till the week is over." She tried earnestly to
explain her position. "I mean that if I really did wrong--and I reckon
I'll have to say that I oughtn't to have disobeyed Aunt Serena, though
the Bible doesn't say anything about aunts--I'll take the hard things
that come after. Of course"--she ended politely--"your folks may have
been mistaken, and you may not have done anything wrong at all--"
The boy bloomed at her. "I'll tell you what I did. I live 'way out in
the mountains, the other end of nowhere. Well, Christmas there was a
dance in the Cove, and I went, but Nancy Horn, that had promised to go
with me, broke her word and went with Dave Windless. There was a lot of
apple jack around, and I took more'n I usually take. And then, when
we were dancing the reel, somebody--and I'll swear still it was Dave,
though he swore in the court-room it wasn't--Dave Windless put out his
foot and tripped me up! Well, Nancy, she laughed.... I don't remember
anything clear after that, and I thought that the man who was shooting
up the room was some other person, though I did think it was funny the
pistol was in my hand.... Anyhow, Dave got a ball through his hip, and
old Daddy Jake Willy, that I was awful fond of and wouldn't have hurt
not for a still of my own and the best horse on the mountain, he got
his bow arm broken, and one of the women was frightened into fits, and
next week when her baby was born and had a harelip she said I'd done
it.... Anyhow the sheriff came and took me--it was about dawn, 'way up
on the mountain-side, and I still thought it was another man going away
toward Catamount Gap and the next county where there wasn't any Nancy
Horn--I thought so clear till I fired at the sheriff and broke his
elbow and the deputy came up behind and twisted the pistol away, and
somebody else threw a gourd of water from the spring over me ... and I
come to and found it had been me all the time.... That's what I did,
and I got four years."
"Four years?" said Hagar. "Four years in--in jail?"
"In the penitentiary," said the boy. "It's a worse word than jail....
I know what's right and wrong. Liquor's wrong, and the Judge said
carrying concealed weapons was wrong, and I reckon it is, though there
isn't much concealment when everybody knows you're wearing them....
Yes, liquor's wrong, and quarrels might go off just with some words
and using your fists if powder and shot weren't right under your hand,
tempting you. Yes, drinking's wrong and quarreling's wrong, and after I
come to my senses it didn't need no preacher like those that come round
Sundays to tell me that. But I tell you what's the whole floor space of
hell wronger than most of the things men do and that's the place the
lawyers and the judges and the juries send men to!"
"Do you mean that they oughtn't to--to do anything to you? You _did_ do
wrong."
"No, I don't mean that," said the boy. "I've got good sense. If I
didn't see it at first, old Daddy Jake Willy came to the county jail
three or four times, and he made me see it. The Judge and the lawyer
couldn't ha' made me see it, but _he_ did. And at last I was willing
to go." His face worked. "The day before I was to go I was in that
cell I'd stayed in then two months and I looked right out into the
sunshine. You could see Old Rocky Knob between two bars, and Bear's
Den between two, and Lonely River running down into the valley between
the other two, and the sun shining over everything--shining just like
it's shining to-day. Well, I stood there, looking out, and made a
good resolution. I was going to take what was coming to me because I
deserved it, having broken the peace and lamed men and hurt a woman,
and broken Daddy Jake's arm and fired at the sheriff. I hadn't meant
to do all that, but still I had done it. So I said, 'I'll take it. And
I won't give any trouble. And I'll keep the rules. If it's a place to
make men better in, I'll come out a better man. I'll work just as hard
as any man, and if there's books to study I'll study, and I'll keep the
rules and try to help other people, and when I come out, I'll be young
still and a better man.'" He rose to his full height in the thicket,
the upper half of his striped body showing like a swimmer's above the
matted green. He sent out his young arms in a wide gesture at once
mocking and despairing, but whether addressed to earth or heaven was
not apparent. "You see, I didn't know any more about that place than a
baby unborn!"
With that he dropped like a stone back into the thicket and lay dumb
and close, with agonized eyes. Around the base of the ridge out of the
wood came the dogs; behind them three men with guns.
...One of the men was a jolly, fatherly kind of person. He tried to
explain to Hagar that they weren't really going to hurt the convict at
all--she saw for herself that the dogs hadn't hurt him, not a mite!
The handcuffs didn't hurt him either--they were loose and comfortable.
No; they weren't going to do anything to him, they were just going
to take him back.--He hadn't hurt her, had he? hadn't said anything
disagreeable to her or done anything but eat up her tea-party?--Then
that was all right, and the fatherly person would go himself with her
to the house and tell the Colonel about it. Of course he knew the
Colonel, everybody knew the Colonel! And "Stop crying, little lady!
That boy ain't worth it."
The Colonel's dictum was that the country was getting so damned
unsettled that Hagar must not again be let to play on the ridge alone.
Old Miss, who had had that morning a somewhat longish talk with Dr.
Bude, stated that she would tell Mary Green to send for Thomasine and
Maggie and Corker. "Dr. Bude thinks the child broods too much, and it
may be better to have healthy diversion for her in case--"
"In case--!" exclaimed Miss Serena. "Does he really think, mother, that
it's serious?"
"I don't think he knows," answered her mother. "I don't think it is,
myself. But Maria was never like anybody else--"
"Dear Maria!" said Mrs. LeGrand. "She should have made such a
brilliant, lovely woman! If only there was a little more compliance,
more feminine sweetness, more--if I may say so--unselfishness--"
"Where," asked the Bishop, "is Medway?"
Mrs. Ashendyne's needles clicked. "My son was in Spain, the last we
heard: studying the painter Murillo."
CHAPTER V
MARIA
Thomasine and Maggie and Corker arrived and filled the overseer's house
with noise. They were a blatantly healthful, boisterous set, only
Thomasine showing gleams of quiet. They wanted at once to play on the
ridge, but now Hagar wouldn't play on the ridge. She said she didn't
like it any more. As she spoke, her thin shoulders drew together, and
her eyes also, and two vertical lines appeared between these. "What you
shakin' for?" asked Corker. "Got a chill?"
So they played down by the branch where the willows grew, or in the
old, disused tobacco-house, or in the orchard, or about a haystack on a
hillside. Corker wanted always to play robbers or going to sea. Maggie
liked to jump from the haystack or to swing, swing, swing, holding to
the long, pendant green withes of the weeping willow, or to climb the
apple trees. Thomasine liked to make dams across the streamlet below
the tobacco-house. She liked to shape wet clay, and she saved every
pebble or bit of bright china, or broken blue or green glass with which
to decorate a small grotto they were making. She also liked to play
ring-around-a-rosy, and to hunt for four-leaved clovers. Hagar liked to
play going to sea, but she did not care for robbers. She liked to swing
from the willows and to climb a particular apple tree which she loved,
but she did not want to jump from the haystack, nor to climb all trees.
She liked almost everything that Thomasine liked, but she was not
so terribly fond of ring-around-a-rosy. In her own likings she found
herself somewhat lonely. None of the three, though Thomasine more than
the others, cared much for a book. They would rather have a sugar-cake
any day. When it came to lying on the hillside without speaking and
watching the clouds and the tree-tops, they did not care for that at
all. However, when they were tired, and everything else failed, they
did like Hagar to tell them a story. "Aladdin" they liked--sitting in
the shadow of the haystack, their chins on their hands, Thomasine's
eyes still unconsciously alert for four-leaved clovers, Corker with a
June apple, trying to determine whether he would bite into it now or
wait until Aladdin's mother had uncovered the jewels before the Sultan.
They liked "Aladdin" and "Queen Gulnare and Prince Beder" and "Snow
White and Rose Red."
And then came the day that they went after raspberries. That morning
Hagar, turning the doorknob of her mother's room, found the door softly
opened from within and Phoebe on the threshold. Phoebe came out,
closing the door gently behind her, beckoned to Hagar, and the two
crossed the hall to the deep window. "I wouldn't go in this mahnin' ef
I were you, honey," said Phoebe. "Miss Maria done hab a bad night. She
couldn't sleep an' her heart mos' give out. Oh, hit's all right now,
an' she's been lyin' still an' peaceful since de dawn come up. But we
wants her to sleep an' we don' want her to talk. An' Old Miss thinks
an' Phoebe thinks too, honey, dat you'd better not go in this mahnin'.
Nex' time Old Miss 'll let you stay twice as long to make up for it."
Hagar looked at her large-eyed, "Is my mother going to die, Aunt
Phoebe?"
But old Phoebe put her arms around her and the wrinkles came out all
over her brown face as they did when she laughed. Phoebe was a good
댓글 없음:
댓글 쓰기