Hagar 9

Hagar 9

While they were eating the snowball cakes, a large cloud came up and

determinedly covered the sun. By the time they had eaten the last

crumb, lightnings were playing. "Dar now, I done tol' you!" cried

Jinnie. "I never see such children anyhow! Old Miss an' Mrs. Green jus'

ought-ter whip you all! Now you gwine git soppin' wet an' maybe de

lightning'll strike you, too!"

 

"No, it won't!" cried Corker. "The cow-house's my castle, an' we've

been robbing a freight train an' the constable an' old Captain Towney

and the army are after us--I'm going to get to the cow-house first!"

 

Maggie scrambled to her feet. "No, you ain't! I'm going to--"

 

The cow-house was dark and somewhat dirty, but they found a tolerable

square yard or two of earthen floor and they all sat close together

for warmth--the air having grown quite cold--and for company, a

thunderstorm, after all, being a thing that made even train robbers and

castled barons feel rather small and helpless. For an hour lightnings

flashed and thunders rolled and the rain fell in leaden lines. Then

the lightnings grew less frequent and vivid, and the thunder travelled

farther away, but the rain still fell. "Oh, it's so stupid and dark in

here!" said Corker. "Let's tell stories. Hagar, you tell a story, and

Jinnie, you tell a story!"

 

Hagar told about the Snow Queen and Kay and Gerda, and they liked that

very well. All the cow-house was dark as the little robber girl's hut

in the night-time when all were asleep save Gerda and the little

robber girl and the reindeer. When they came to the reindeer, Corker

said he heard him moving behind them in a corner, and Maggie said she

heard him, too, and Jinnie called out, "Whoa, dere, Mr. Reindeer! You

des er stay still till we's ready fer you!"--and they all drew closer

together with a shudder of delight.

 

The clouds were breaking--the lines of rain were silver instead

of leaden. Even the cow-house was lighter inside. There was no

reindeer, after all; there were only brown logs and trampled earth and

mud-daubers' nests and a big spider's web. "Now, Jinnie," said Corker,

"you tell a ghost story."

 

Thomasine objected. "I don't like ghost stories. Hagar doesn't either."

 

"I don't mind them much," said Hagar. "I don't have to believe them."

 

But Jinnie chose to become indignant. "You jes' hab to believe dem.

Dey're true! My lan'! Goin' ter church an' readin' de Bible an' den

doubtin' erbout ghosts! I'se gwine tell you er story you's got ter

believe, 'cause hit's done happen! Hit's gwine ter scare you, too! Dey

tell me hit scare a young girl down in de Hollow inter fits. Hit's

gwine ter mek yo' flesh crawl. Sayin' ghos' stories ain't true, when

everybody knows dey's true!"

 

The piece of ancient African imagination, traveller of ten thousand

years through heated forests, was fearsome enough. "Ugh!" said the

children and shivered and stared.--It took the sun, indeed, to drive

the creeping, mistlike thoughts away.

 

Going home through the rain-soaked woodland, Hagar began to gather

flowers. Her bucket of berries on her arm, she stepped aside for this

bloom and that, gathering with long stems, making a sheaf of blossoms.

"What you doin' dat for?" queried Jinnie. "Dey's all wet. You'll jes'

ruin dat gingham dress!" But Hagar kept on plucking Black-eyed Susans,

and cardinal flowers, and purple clover and lady's-lace.

 

They came, in the afternoon glow, in sight of Gilead Balm. They came

closer until the house was large, standing between its dark, funereal

cedars, with a rosy cloud behind.

 

"All the blinds are closed as though we'd gone away!" said Hagar. "I

never saw it that way before."

 

Mrs. Green was at the lower gate, waiting for them. Her old, kind,

wrinkled face was pale between the slats of her sunbonnet, but her

eyelids were reddened as though she had been weeping. "Yes, yes,

children, I'm glad you got a lot of berries!--Corker and Maggie and

Thomasine, you go with Jinnie. Mind me and go.--Hagar, child, you and

me are goin' to come on behind.... You and me are goin' to sit here

a bit on the summer-house step.... The Colonel said I was the best

one after all to do it, and I'm going to do it, but I'd rather take a

killing! ... Yes, sit right here, with my arm about you. Hagar, child,

I've got something to tell you, honey."

 

Hagar looked at her with large, dark eyes. "Mrs. Green, why are all the

shutters closed?"

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER VI

 

EGLANTINE

 

 

No one could be so cross-grained as to deny that Eglantine was a sweet

place. It lay sweetly on just the right, softly swelling hill. The old

grey-stucco main house had a sweet porch, with wistaria growing sweetly

over it; the long, added grey-stucco wings had pink and white roses

growing sweetly on trellises between the windows. There were silver

maples and heavily blooming locust trees and three fine magnolias.

There were thickets of weigelia and spiræa and forsythia, and winding

walks, and an arbour, and the whole twenty acres or so was enclosed

by a thorny, osage-orange hedge, almost, though not quite so high as

the hedge around the Sleeping Beauty's palace. It was a sweet place.

Everyone said so--parents and guardians, the town that neighboured

Eglantine, tourists that drove by, visitors to the Commencement

exercises--everybody! The girls themselves said so. It was praised of

all--almost all. The place was sweet. M. Morel, the French teacher, who

was always improving his English, and so on the hunt for synonyms, once

said in company that it was saccharine.

 

Miss Carlisle, who taught ancient and modern history and, in the

interstices, astronomy and a blue-penciled physiology, gently corrected

him. "Oh, M. Morel! We never use that word in this sense! If you wish

to vary the term you might use 'charming,' or 'refined,' or 'elegant.'

Besides"--she gazed across the lawn--"it isn't so sweet, I always

think, in November as it is in April or May."

 

"The sweetest time, I think," said Miss Bedford, who taught

mathematics, geography, and Latin, "is when the lilac is in bloom."

 

"And when the robins nest again," sighed a pensive, widowed Mrs. Lane,

who taught the little girls.

 

"It is 'refined' always," said M. Morel. "November or April, what is ze

difference? It has ze atmosphere. It is sugary."

 

"Here," remarked Miss Gage, who taught philosophy--"here is Mrs.

LeGrand."

 

All rose to greet the mistress of Eglantine as she came out from the

hall upon the broad porch. Mrs. LeGrand's graciously ample form was

wrapped in black cashmere and black lace. Her face was unwrinkled,

but her hair had rapidly whitened. It was piled upon her head after

an agreeable fashion and crowned by a graceful small cap of lace.

She was ample and creamy and refinedly despotic. With her came her

god-daughter, Sylvie Maine. It was early November, and the sycamores

were yet bronze, the maples aflame. It was late Friday afternoon, and

the occasion the arrival and entertainment overnight of an English

writer of note, a woman visiting America with a book in mind.

 

Mrs. LeGrand said that she had thought she heard the carriage wheels.

Mr. Pollock, the music-master, said, No; it was the wind down the

avenue. Mrs. LeGrand, pleasantly, just condescending enough and not too

condescending, glanced from one to the other of the group. "M. Morel

and Mr. Pollock and you, Miss Carlisle and Miss Bedford, will, I hope,

take supper with our guest and me? Sylvie, here, will keep her usual

place. I can't do without Sylvie. She spoils me and I spoil her! And we

will have besides, I think, the girl that has stood highest this month

in her classes. Who will it be, Miss Gage?"

 

"Hagar Ashendyne, Mrs. LeGrand."

 

Mrs. LeGrand had a humorous smile. "Then, Sylvie, see that Hagar's

dress is all right and try to get her to do her hair differently. I

like Eglantine girls to look their birth and place."

 

"Dear Cousin Olivia," said Sylvie, who was extremely pretty, "for all

her plainness, Hagar's got distinction."

 

But Mrs. LeGrand shrugged her shoulders. She couldn't see it. A little

wind arising, all the place became a whirl of coloured leaves. And now

the carriage wheels were surely heard.

 

Half an hour later Sylvie went up to Hagar's room. It was what was

called the "tower room"--small and high up--too small for anything

but a single bed and one inmate. It wasn't a popular room with the

Eglantine girls--a room without a roommate was bad enough, and then,

when it was upon another floor, quite away from every one--! Language

failed. But Hagar Ashendyne liked it, and it had been hers for three

years. She had been at Eglantine for three years, going home to Gilead

Balm each summer. She was eighteen--old for her age, and young for her

age.

 

Sylvie found her curled in the window-seat, and spoke twice before she

made her hear. "Hagar! come back to earth!"

 

Hagar unfolded her long limbs and pushed her hair away from her eyes.

"I was travelling," she said. "I was crossing the Desert of Sahara with

a caravan."

 

"You are," remarked Sylvie, "too funny for words!--You and I are to

take supper with 'Roger Michael'!"

 

A red came into Hagar's cheek. "Are we? Did Mrs. LeGrand say so?"

 

"Yes--"

 

Hagar lit the lamp. "'Roger Michael'--'Roger Michael'--Sylvie, wouldn't

you rather use your own name if you wrote?"

 

"Oh, I don't know!" answered Sylvie vaguely. "What dress are you going

to wear?"

 

"I haven't any but the green."

 

"Then wear your deep lace collar with it. Cousin Olivia wants you to

look as nice as possible. Don't you want me to do your hair?"

 

Hagar placed the lamp upon the wooden slab of a small, old-time