Hagar

She sat in the embrace of the sycamore, her feet lightly resting on the spring earth, her shoulders just touching the pale bark of the tree, her arms folded, her eyes level; poised, recollected as a young Brahman, conscious of an expanded space, a deeper time. How long she sat there she did not know; the sun slipped lower, touched her knees with gold. She sighed at last, raised her hands and turned her body.

What, perhaps, had roused her was the sound of a horse's hoofs upon the river road. At any rate, she now marked a black horse coming in the distance, down the road, by the speckled sycamores. It came on with a gay sound upon the wind-dried earth, and in its rider she presently recognized her cousin, Ralph Coltsworth.

"What are you doing here?" she asked when he reined in the black horse beside her. "Why aren't you at the University with Blackstone under your arm?"

He dismounted, fastened his horse, and came across to the sycamore root. "It's big enough for two, isn't it?" he asked, and sat down facing her. "You mentioned the University? The University, bless its old heart! doesn't appreciate me."

"Ralph! Have you been expelled?"

"Suspended." Hands behind head, he regarded first the blue sky behind the interlaced bare branches, then the tall and great gnarled trunk, then the brown-clad figure of his cousin, enthroned before him. "The suspense," he said, "is exquisite."

"What did you do?"

He grimaced. "I don't remember. Why talk about it? It wasn't much. Cakes and ale—joie de vivre—chimes at midnight—same old song." He laughed. "I gather that you've been rusticated, too."

Hagar winced. "Don't!... Let's laugh about other things. You'll break your family's hearts at Hawk Nest."

"Old Miss said in a letter which mother showed me that you were breaking hers. What kind of a fellow is he, Hagar?—Like me?"

Hagar looked at him gravely. "Not in the least. How long are you going to stay at Hawk Nest?"

"Oh, a month! I'm coming to see you every other day."

"Are you?"

"I am. If I could draw I'd like to draw you just as you look now—half marquise, half dryad—sitting before your own front door!"

"Well, you can't draw," said Hagar. "And it's getting cold, and the dryad is going home."

"All right," said Ralph. "I'm going, too. I've come to spend the night."

Leading his horse, he walked beside her. In the green lane, a wintry sunset glory over every slope and distant wood, the house between its black cedars rising before them, he halted a moment. "I haven't seen you since August when I rode over to tell Gilead Balm good-bye. You've changed. You've 'done growed.'"

"That may be. I've grown to-day."

"Since I came?"

"No. Before you came. For the first time I suppose in your life, grandmother is going to be sorry to see you. She worships you."

"She was sorry to see you, too, wasn't she? It's rather nice to be companions out of favour."

"Oh!" cried Hagar. "You are and always were the most provoking twister of the truth! I want to say to you that I do not consider that ours are similar cases! And now, if you please, that is the last word I am going to say to you on such a matter."

"All right!" said Ralph. "I was curious, of course. But I acknowledge your right to shut me up."

They passed through the home gate,—where a boy took his horse,—and went up the hill together. Dilsey was lighting the lamps. As they entered the hall Miss Serena came out of the library—Miss Serena looking curiously agitated. "Dilsey, hasn't Miss Hagar come in yet?... Oh, Hagar! I've been searching the place for you—Why, Ralph! Where on earth did you come from? Has the University burned down? Have you got a holiday?"

The library door was ajar. The Colonel's voice made itself heard from within. "Serena! Is that Hagar? Tell her to come here."

The three entered the room together. There was a slight clamour of surprise and greeting from its occupants for Ralph, but it died down in the face, as it were, of things of greater importance.

"What's the matter?" he asked, bringing up at last by Captain Bob in the background.

"A letter from Medway," answered the other. "Shh!"

The evenings falling cold, there was a fire upon the hearth. The reading-lamp was lit; all the room was in a glow that caressed the stiff portraits, the old mahogany and horsehair furniture, the bookcases and the books within. In the smaller of the two great chairs by the hearth sat Old Miss, preternaturally straight, her hands folded on the black silk apron which she donned in the evening, her still comely face and head rising from the narrow, very fine embroidered collar fastened by an oval brooch in which, in a complicated pattern, was wrought the hair of dead Coltsworths and Hardens. Her face wore a look at once softened and fixed. Across from her, in the big chair by the leaf-table, sat Colonel Ashendyne, a little greyer, a little more hawklike of nose, a little sparer in frame as the years went by, but emphatically not a person to whom could be applied the term "old." There breathed from him still an insolent, determined prime, a timelessness, a pictorial quality as of some gallery masterpiece. With the greyish-amber of his yet plentiful hair, his mustache and imperial, the racer set of his head, his well-shaped jaw and long nervous hands, his fine, long, spare figure and his eye in which a certain bladelike keenness and cynicism warred with native sensuousness, he stayed in the memory like such a canvas. His mood always showed through him, though somewhat cloudily like light through a Venetian glass. That it was a mixed and curious mood to-night, Hagar felt the moment she was in the room. She did not always like her grandfather, but she usually understood him. She saw the letter that had rested on the mantelpiece, the letter from Paris, in his hand, and at once there came over her a curious foreboding, she did not know whether of good or evil.

"Sit down," said the Colonel. "I have something to read to you."

For two months and more he had not looked at her without anger in his eyes. To-night the cloud seemed at least partly to have gone by. There was even in the Colonel's tone a touch of blandness, of enjoyment of the situation. She sat down, wondering, her eyes upon the letter. On occasion, when she searched her heart through, she found but a shrivelled love for her father. Except that he had had half-share in giving her life, she really did not know what she had to love him for. Now, however, what power of growth there was in the winter-wrapped root broke the soil. She began to tremble. "What is the matter? Is father ill? Is he coming home?"

"Not immediately," said the Colonel. "No, he is not ill. He appears to be in his usual health and to exhibit his usual good spirits. Your grandmother and I were fortunate in having a son of a disposition so happy that he left all clouds and difficulties, including his own, to other people. At the proper moment he has always been able to find a burden-bearer. No, Medway is well, and apparently happy. He has remarried."

"Remarried!..."

It was the Colonel's intention to read her the letter—indeed, it carried an inclosure for her—as he had already read it, twice, with varying comment, to the others assembled. But he chose to make first, his own introduction. "You've heard of the cat that always falls on its feet? Well, that's your father, Gipsy!"—Even in the whirl of the moment Hagar could not but note that he called her "Gipsy."—"That's Medway! Here's a careless, ungrateful, disobedient son, utterly reckless of his obligations. Is he hanged or struck by lightning? Not he! He goes happily along—Master Lucky-Dog! He makes a disastrous marriage with a penniless remnant of a broken-down family on some lost coast or other and brings her home, and presently there's a child. Does he undertake to support them, stay by his bargain, however poor a one? Not he! He's got a tiny income in his own right, left him by his maternal grandfather—just enough, with care, for one! Off he goes with that in his pocket and a wealthy friend and, from that day to this, we haven't laid eyes on Prince Fortunatus! Well, what happens? Does he come to eating husks with the swine and so at last slink back! Not he! He enjoys life; he's free and footloose; he's put his burden on other folk's backs! Death comes along and unmakes his marriage. His doting mother and his weak father apparently are prepared to charge themselves with the maintenance of his child. Why should he trouble? He doesn't—not in the least! He's got just enough in his own right to let him wander, en garçon, over creation. If he took the least care of another he couldn't wander, and he likes to wander. Ah, I understand Medway, from hair to heel!—What comes of it all? We used to believe in Nemesis, but that, like other beliefs, is going by the board. Isn't he going to suffer? Not at all! He remains the cat that falls, every time, upon its feet.—This, Gipsy, is the letter."

My dear Father and Mother:—As well as I can remember, I was staying at Dinard when I last wrote you. I was there because of the presence in that charming place of a lady whose acquaintance I had made, the previous year, at Aix-les-Bains. From Dinard I followed her, in November, to Nice, and from Nice to Italy. I spent a portion of February as her guest in her villa near Sorrento, and there matters were brought to a conclusion. I proposed marriage and she accepted. We were married a week ago in Rome, in the English church, before a large company, the American Minister giving her away. There were matters to be arranged with her banker and lawyer in Paris, and so, despite the fact that March is a detestable month in this city, we immediately came on here. Later we shall be in Brittany, and we talk of Norway for the summer.

The lady whom I have married was the widow of —— ——, the noted financier and railroad magnate. She is something under my own age, accomplished, attractive, handsome, and possessed of a boundless good nature and a benevolent heart. We understand each other's nature and expect to be happy together. I need hardly tell you that being who she is, she has extreme wealth. If you read the papers—I do not—you may perhaps recall that ——'s will left his millions to her absolutely without condition. There were no children. To close this matter:—she has been generous to a degree in insisting that certain settlements be made—it leaves me with a personal financial independence and assurance of which, of course, I never dreamed.... I have often regretted that I have been able to do so little for you, or for the upkeep of dear old Gilead Balm. This, in the future, may be rectified. I understand that you have had to raise money upon the place, and I wish you would let me know the amount.

The Colonel's eyes darted cold fire. He let the sheet fall for the moment and turned upon Hagar, sitting motionless on the ottoman by the fire. "Damn your father's impertinence, Gipsy!" he said.

Old Miss spoke in a soft and gentle voice. "Why do you call it that, Colonel? Medway always had a better heart than he's ever been given credit for. Why shouldn't he help now that he can do so? It's greatly to his credit that he should write that way."

"Sarah," said the Colonel, "you are a soft-hearted—mother!"

Captain Bob spoke from beyond the table. Captain Bob did not often speak, nor often with especial weight, but he had been pondering this matter for three quarters of an hour, and he had a certain kind of common sense. "I think Sarah's right. Medway's a curiosity to me, but I've always held that he was born that way. You are, you know; you're born so or you aren't born so. He's pretty consistent. There never was a time when I wouldn't have said that he would come to the fore just as soon as he didn't have to deny himself. Now the time's come, and here he is. I think Sarah's right. Forgive and forget! If he wants to pay his debts—and God knows he owes you and Sarah a lot—I'd let him. And as to Gipsy there—better late than never! Read her what he says."

"I am going to," said the Colonel sardonically. He read the page that remained, then laid the letter on the table, put his hands behind his head and regarded his granddaughter. "The benevolent parent arrived at last upon the scene—a kindly disposed stepmother with millions—and that teacher of surface culture to young ladies at Eglantine! Among the three you ought to be quite ideally provided for! I hope Medway will like the teacher."

Old Miss came, unexpectedly, to her granddaughter's aid. "Don't worry her, Colonel! I haven't thought her looking well to-day. Give her her letter, and let her go and think it out quietly by herself.—If you like, child, Phœbe shall bring you your supper."

Hagar did like—oh, would like that, thank you, grandmother, very much! She took the letter—it was addressed to her in a woman's hand—which her father had enclosed and which her grandfather now held out to her, and went away, feeling somewhat blindly for the door, leaving the others staring after her. Upstairs she lit her lamp and placed it on Maria's table, by Maria's couch. Then, curled there, against the chintz-covered pillows,—they were in a pattern of tulips and roses,—she read the very kind letter which her stepmother had written.

CHAPTER XII
A MEETING

The New Springs had been so christened about a hundred years before, when a restless pioneer family had moved westward and upward from the Old Springs, thirty miles away, at the foot of the great forest-clad range. The New Springs had been a deer-lick, and apparently, from the number of arrowheads forever being unearthed, a known region to the Indians. Now the Indians were gone, and the deer fast, fast withdrawing. Occasionally buck or doe was shot, but for the most part they were phantoms of the past. So with the bear who used to come down to the corncribs in the lonely clearings. Bear Mountain still rose dark blue, like a wall, and the stark cliff called Bear's Den caught the first ray of the sun, but the bears themselves were seldom seen. They also were phantoms of the past. But the fish stayed in the mountain streams. There were many streams and many fish,—bright, speckled mountain trout, darting and flashing among pools and cascades, now seen in the sunlight, now lurking by fern-crowned rocks, in the shadow of the dark hemlock spruce. The region was Fisherman's Paradise.

It was almost an all-day's climb from the nearest railway station to the New Springs. You took the stage in the first freshness of the morning; you went gaily along for a few miles through a fair grazing country; then the stage began to climb, and it climbed and climbed until you wondered where and when the thing was going to stop. Every now and then driver and passengers got down and walked. Here it was shady, with wonderful banks of rhododendron, with ferns and overhanging trees, and here it was sunny and hot, with the wood scrub or burned, and the only interesting growth huckleberries and huckleberries and huckleberries, dwarf under the blazing sun, with butterflies flitting over them. Up here you had wonderful views; you saw a sea of mountains, tremendous, motionless waves; the orb as it had wrinkled when man and beast and herb were not. At last, somewhere on the long crest, having been told that you must bring luncheon with you and having provided yourself at the railway station with cold bread and fruit and hard-boiled eggs, you had luncheon. It was eaten near a bubbling spring with a water-trough at which the horses were drinking, and eaten with the most tremendous appetite. By now you were convinced that the air up here was blowing through a champagne bottle. Luncheon over and the horses rested, on went the stage. Quite in the mid-afternoon you began to go down the mountain. Somewhat later, in a turn by a buckwheat field waving white in the summer wind, the driver would point with his whip—"Right down there—there's the New Springs! Be there in an hour now."

It might be "right down there," but still the New Springs was pretty high in the world, away, away above sea level. You always slept at the New Springs under blankets, you nearly always had a fire in the evening; even the heat of the midday sun in the dog days was only a dry, delightful warmth. Hardly anywhere did the stars shine so brightly, the air was so rare and fine.

The New Springs boasted no imposing dwellings. There was a hotel, of faint, old, red brick, with a pillared verandah, and there were half a dozen one-story frame cottages, each with a small porch and growing over it its individual vine. Honeysuckle clambered over one, and hops over another, and a scarlet bean over a third, and so on. There was an ice-cold sulphur spring where the bubbles were always rising, and around it was built a rustic pavilion. Also there existed a much-out-of-repair bowling-alley.

"Yes, there's the New Springs," said the driver, pointing with his whip. "But, Lord! it stopped being new a long time ago."

There were hardly any passengers to-day; only three in fact: two women and a man. All three were young enough to accomplish with enjoyment a great deal of walking up the long mountain. They had laughed and talked together, though of very nothings as became just-met folk. The birds and the bees and butterflies, the flowers, the air, and the view had been the chief subjects of comment. Now, back in the stage for the descent, they held in their hands flowers and ferns and branches covered with ripe huckleberries which they detached from the stems, lifted to their lips and ate. The two women were friends, coming, so they now explained to their fellow-traveller, from a distance to this little out-of-the-way place. The brother of one, it seemed, was a great fisherman and came often. He was not here this year; he was travelling in Palestine; but he had advised his sister, who was a little broken down and wanted a quiet place to work in, to come here. She said, jubilantly, that if the air was always going to be like this she was glad she had come. It had seemed funny, at first, to think of coming South for the summer—though her friend was half-Southern and didn't mind.

"I'm wondering," said the fellow-traveller, with an effect of gallantry, "what in the world the work can be! The very latest thing, I suppose, in fancy-work—or perhaps you do pastels?"

Elizabeth Eden looked at him with her very candid grey eyes. "I'm doing a book of statistics—women and children in industry."

"And I," said the other, Marie Caton, "I teach English to immigrant girls. We are both Settlement workers."

Laydon prided himself on his ability quickly to shift sail. "Oh!" he said; "a Settlement! That's an idea that hasn't got down to us yet. We are rather lazy, I suppose.—I was reading, though, an excellent article upon Settlements in one of the current magazines only the other day. Ladies, especially, seem to be going in for that kind of work;—of course, it is, when you think of it, only an extension of their historic function as 'loaf-giver.' Charity and Woman—they're almost synonymous."

"That's a magnificent compliment—or meant to be!" said Marie Caton. Her eyes were dancing. "I wonder what you'd say if I said that charity—charity in your sense—is one of woman's worst weaknesses? Thank God Settlements, bad as they are, aren't charity!"

"Look at the view, Marie," said Elizabeth. "And, oh! feel that wind! Isn't it divine?"

"Winds blow from all four points at oncet up here," said the driver. "Ain't many people at the New Springs this summer. Fish don't bite, or everybody's gone to the World's Fair, or something or other! Ain't more'n forty people, countin' children."

"What kind of people are they? Do the women fish, too?"

"No, ma'am, not much. It's the husbands and brothers and fathers does the fishing mostly—though there's Mrs. Josslyn. She fishes. The others just sit around in rocking-chairs, I reckon, and crochet. Them that has children looks after them, and them that hasn't listens to them that has. Then it's a fine air for the health; fine air and fine water. A lot of tired people come. Then there's others get into the habit of meeting friends here. Being on the border, as it were, it's convenient for more states than one. Colonel Ashendyne, for instance,—he comes because General Argyle and Judge Black and he made a pact in the war that if they lived through they'd spend a month together every two years until they died. They've kept it faithful, and because Judge Black's a great fisherman, and General Argyle likes the juleps they make here, and Colonel Ashendyne knew the place when he was a boy, they pitched on the New Springs. When they're here together, they're the three Kings.—Git up thar, Dandy!—This year the Colonel's got his daughter and granddaughter with him."

Laydon nodded, looking animated and handsome. "I know the Ashendynes. Indeed—but that is neither here nor there. The Ashendynes," he explained for the benefit of the two foreigners, "are one of our oldest families, with connections everywhere; not wealthy,—we have very little wealth, you know,—but old, very widespread and honoured. A number of them in the past were really famous. It might be said of the Ashendynes as it was said of an English family—'All the sons were brave and all the daughters virtuous.'"

"You seem," said Marie Caton, "to have a profound acquaintance with the best literature."

Laydon disclaimed it with a modest shake of the head. "Oh, only so-so! However, literature is my profession. I have a chair of Belles-Lettres."

"That is interesting," said Elizabeth in her friendly voice. "Is it your vacation? Are you a fisherman, too?"

"Oh, I fish a little on occasion! But I am not what you call a great fisherman. And I was never at the New Springs before." He gave a half-boyish, embarrassed laugh. "To tell the truth, I am one of those persons who've come because another person happens to be here—"

"Oh!" said Marie Caton, "I see!" She began presently to hum beneath her breath—

"Oh, what a rough piece of road!"

"It ain't often mended," said the driver. "They say times is changing,—there was a fellow through here last summer said they was changing so rapid they made you dizzy,—but there ain't much change gotten round to Bear Mountain. I remember that identical rut there when I was just a little shaver.—Look out, now, on that side, and you'll see the New Springs again! We ain't more'n a mile an' a half away now. The ladies often walk up here to see the sunset."

"There's one coming up the road now," said Marie Caton, "In a green gingham and a shady hat."

"That," said the driver, "'ll be Miss Hagar—Colonel Ashendyne's granddaughter. She and me's great friends. Come by here 'most any evenin' and you'll find her sittin' on the big rock there, lookin' away to Kingdom Come."

"Stop a minute," spoke Laydon, "and let me out here. I know Miss Ashendyne. I'll wait here to meet her and walk back to the Springs with her."

He lifted his hat to his fellow-travellers and the stage went on without him. "A nice, clean-looking man," said Elizabeth who was inveterate at finding good; "not very original, but then who is?"

"I can't answer it," said Marie promptly. "Now we'll see the girl! She's coming up straight and light, like a right mountain climber." The stage met and passed Hagar, she and the driver exchanging "Good-evenings!" The stage lumbered on down the slope. "I liked her looks," said Marie. "Now, they're meeting—"

"Don't look back."

"All right, I won't. I'd like such consideration myself.—Betsy, Betsy! You are going to get strong enough at the New Springs to throw every statistic between Canada and Mexico!"

Back beside the big rock at the bend of the road, Hagar and Laydon met. "There isn't any one to see!" he exclaimed, and would have taken her in his arms.

She evaded his grasp, putting out her hand and a light staff which she carried. "No, Mr. Laydon! Wait—wait—" Stepping backward to the rock by the wayside she sat down upon it, behind her all the waves of the Endless Mountains. "I only got your letter yesterday. It had been delayed. If I had had it in time, I should have written to you not to come."

"I told you in it," smiled Laydon, "that I was not afraid of your grandfather. He can't eat me. The New Springs is as much mine to come to as it is his. I had just three days before I go to —— to see about that opening there. The idea came to me that if I could really see him and talk to him, he might become reconciled. And then, dear little girl! I wanted to see you! I couldn't resist—"

As he spoke he moved toward her again. She shook her head and put out again the hand with the staff. "No. That is over.... I came up here to meet you because I wanted to find out—to know—to be certain, at once—"

"To find out—to know—to be certain of what?" He smiled. "That I am just the same?—That I love you still?"

"To be certain," said Hagar, "that I was mistaken.... I have got my certainty."

"I wish," said Laydon, after a pause, "that I knew what you were driving at. There was something in your last month's letter, and for the matter of that in the month before, that struck cold. Have I offended you in any way, Hagar?"

"You have not been to blame," said Hagar. "I don't think either of us was to blame. I think it was an honest mistake. I think we took a passing lightning flash for the sun in heaven.... Mr. Laydon, that evening in the parlour at Eglantine and the morning after, when we walked to the gate, and the road was sunny and lonely and the bells were ringing, oh, then I am sure I loved you—" She drew her hand across brow and eyes. "Or, if not you, I loved—Love! But after that, oh, steadily after that, it lessened—"

"'Lessened'!—You mean that you are not in love with me as you were?"

"I am not in love with you at all. I was in love with you, or.... I was in love. I am not now." She struck her staff against the rock. "I almost hope I'll never be in love again!"

Across from a cleared hillside, steep and grassy, came a tinkling of sheep-bells. The sun hung low in the west and the trees cast shadows across the road. A vireo was singing in a walnut tree, a chipmunk ran along a bit of old rail fence. A zephyr brought an odour dank and rich, from the aged forest that hung above.

"I think," said Laydon, "that you are treating me very badly."

"Am I? I am sorry.... You mustn't think that I haven't been wretched over all this. But it would be treating you badly, indeed, if I were such a coward as to let it go on." She looked at him oddly. "Will you be—Are you much hurt?"

"I—I—" said Laydon. "I do not think you quite conceive what you are saying, nor what such a cool pronunciamento must mean to a man! Hurt? Yes, I am hurt. My pride—my confidence in you—my assurance that I had your heart and that you had put your life in my keeping—the love that I truly felt for you—"

"'Felt.'—You loved me, loving you. Oh," said Hagar, "I feel so old—so old!"

"I loved you sincerely. I imperilled my position for you—to a certain extent, all my prospects in life. I had delightful visions of the day when we should be finally together—the home you would make—the love and protection I should give you—"

"You are honest," said Hagar, "and I like honesty. If I have done you any wrong at all, if I have made life any harder for you, if I have destroyed any ideals, if I have done you the least harm, I very heartily beg your pardon."

Laydon drew from his pocket a small box and opened it. "I had brought you that—"

Hagar took it in her hand and looked at it. "It is lovely!" she said. "A diamond and a sapphire! And it isn't going to be wasted. You keep it. Sooner or later you'll surely need it. You couldn't have bought a prettier one." She looked up with a soft, bright, almost maternal face. "You don't know how much happier I am having faced it, and said it, and had it over with! And you—I don't believe you are so unhappy! Now are you—now are you?"

"You have put me in an absurd position. What am I to say—"

"To people? Nothing—or what you please. I will tell grandfather myself, to-night—and Aunt Serena. I shall tell them that you have behaved extremely well, and that it was all my fault. Or no! I shall tell them that we both found out that we had been mistaken, for I think that that is the truth. And that we have had an explanation, and are now and for always just well-wishers and common friends and nothing more. I am going to try—I think that now maybe I can do it—to get grandfather to treat you properly. There is nobody else here whose business it is, or who knows anything about it—and you have only three days anyway. There are some pleasant people, and you'll meet them. It isn't going to be awkward, indeed, it isn't—"

"By George!" said Laydon, "if you aren't the coolest.... Of course, if this is the way you feel, it may be wisest not to link my life with—Naturally a man wants entire love, admiration, and confidence—"

"Just so," said Hagar. "And you'll find some one to feel all that. And now let's walk to the New Springs."

CHAPTER XIII
THE NEW SPRINGS

Laydon's three days spun themselves out to five with a fine smoothness. Colonel Ashendyne's tone was balm itself to what it might have been. Miss Serena was willing to discuss with him "In Memoriam" and the novels of Miss Broughton, and Ralph Coltsworth who was also at the New Springs walked with him over the place. Laydon was keen enough to see that Hagar had appealed to her family, and that Ashendyne breeding had rallied to her support. He was at once provoked and soothed; now conscious only of the injury to his healthy self-love, and now of a vague relief that, young as he still was, and with that wonderful future all to make, he really was not tied down. His very vanity would not agree but that the woman with whom he had thought himself in love must be of a superior type and an undeniable charm, but the same vanity conceded gently that to err was mortal, and that there were as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it, and that he certainly had not been fatally smitten—on the whole, she, poor little thing! had probably suffered the most of the two. Charming as she was, the glamour for him, he conceded, was gone. He had come off pretty well, after all.

When the five days were up, he felt positive regret at having to go, and his good-bye to all the Ashendynes was cordial. He had already written to Mrs. LeGrand, and, of course, to his mother. He went; the stage took him up the mountain....

"For all I could see—and I watched pretty closely—there didn't anything come of it," remarked Marie Caton. "On the whole, I am rather glad. Now you can't hear the rumble of the stage any longer. He's gone out of the picture.—Betsy, stop writing and look at the robin and the chipmunk—"

They had the tiniest cottage to themselves—Elizabeth's brother being an old-timer here, and his letter to the proprietor procuring them great consideration. There were but two rooms in the cottage. Roof and porch, it was sunk in traveller's-joy, and in front sprang a vast walnut tree, and beyond the walnut a span-wide stream purled between mint over a slaty bed. From the porch you looked southward over mountains and mountains, and every evening Antares looked redly back at you. Now it was morning, and wrens and robins and cat-birds all were singing.

Elizabeth looked up from the table where she was working. "If I watch chipmunks all morning, I'll never get these textile figures done.—Mrs. Josslyn said at breakfast that it wasn't a good day for fishing, and that she might wander by."

"She's coming now. I see her in the distance. I like Molly Josslyn."

"So do I.—We haven't been here a week and yet we talk as though we had known these people always!"

"Well, the fact that quite a number knew your brother made for there being no ice to break. And it would be so absurd not to know one another at the New Springs! as absurd as if a shipload of people cast on a desert island—Here she is. Come in, Mrs. Josslyn!"

"Thank you, I don't want a chair," said Molly Josslyn. "You don't mind if I sit on the edge of the porch and dangle my feet, do you? Nor if I take off my hat and roll up my sleeves so that I can feel the air on my arms?"

"Not a bit. Take the hairpins out of your hair and let it fly."

"I wish that I could cut it off!" said Molly viciously. "I will some day! Pretty nearly a whole three-quarters of an hour out of every twenty-four gone in brushing and combing and doing up hair! You have to do it in the morning and the middle of the day and the evening. A twentieth part of your whole waking existence!... Oh, me!"

"What a sigh!"

"I've been in rocking-chair-and-gossip land over on the big porch. I've heard everybody—in a petticoat—who wasn't there hanged, drawn, and quartered. Of course, I knew they were eager to get at me, and so I was obliging and came away."

Marie Caton laughed. "Miss Eden here is an optimist of the first water. If you ask her she'll tell you that women are growing beyond that sort of thing—that they don't sting one another half as much as they used to!"

"No, I don't think they do," said Mrs. Josslyn. "I think that's getting apparent nowadays. Speaking for myself, fresh air and out of doors and swinging off by one's self seem to make a body more or less charitable. But some of us have got the habit yet. Gnat or wasp or hornet or snake, on they go!" she laughed. "Over on the porch it wasn't anything but a little cloud of gnats. They weren't really stinging—just getting between your eyes and the blue sky."

"But it is growing better—it is, it is!" said Elizabeth. "I wouldn't give up that belief for anything."

"No, don't!" said Molly Josslyn. "I like women and like to think well of them."

A strong, rosy blonde, she stood up and stretched her arms above her head. "I wish there were a pool somewhere, deep enough to swim in! I'd like to cross the Hellespont this morning—swim it and swim back.—Christopher is coming to-morrow."

"Christopher?"

"My husband—Christopher Josslyn. They don't," said Mrs. Josslyn, "make them any nicer than Christopher! Christopher was my born mate." And went away with a beamy look, over the grass.

Marie spoke thoughtfully. "Yesterday I heard one of the gnats singing. It sang, 'Yes, rather handsome, but don't you find her dreadfully unfeminine?'"

"Oh, 'feminine'!" said Elizabeth, and went on adding figures.

Marie Caton took a book from the generous number ranged around a jar of Black-eyed Susans on the rustic table in the middle of the porch, but "The chipmunks and the robins get so in the way," she presently dreamily murmured, and then, "You had just as well put up your work. Here's Judge Black and General Argyle!"

Judge Black was sixty-two, rather lean than stout, rather short than tall, clean-shaven, with a good-looking countenance below grizzled, close-clipped hair, with a bald spot at the top like a monk's tonsure. General Argyle was a much larger and taller man, big-framed, wide-girthed, with a well-set head framed about with shaggy white hair. His countenance was rubicund, his voice mellow. He was sixty-seven, in some respects very old, and in others quite young. Usually, at the New Springs, Colonel Ashendyne marched in company, but this morning—"Ashendyne's got some family conference or other on hand. It's a day off for fishing, and nobody seems to have a mind for whist or poker, and the papers haven't come. Argyle and I are floating around like two lost corks or the Babes in the Wood—"

"So I said," said General Argyle richly, "let's stroll over there and say good-morning to Tom Eden's sister and her attractive friend.—No, no; no chairs! We'll sit here on the steps. As soon as Ashendyne appears, we're going after young Coltsworth and have a turn in the bowling-alley. Must exercise!—that's what I'm always telling Black here—"

"As if I didn't exercise," said Judge Black, "more in a day than he does in a week.—What a pretty little porch you've got! Books, flowers, needlework—"

The General surveyed it, too. "It is pretty. Woman's touch—woman's touch!"

"That isn't needlework in the basket," said Marie demurely. "It's apples. Will you have one?"

"No, thanks, Mistress Eve—or yes, on second thoughts, I will! What are you reading?—'The Doll's House.' Ibsen!"

"Yes."

"I do not know," said the Judge, "what young ladies are coming to! I have never had time, nor, I may say, inclination, to read Ibsen myself, but of course I know the kind of thing he's responsible for. And, frankly, I should not permit my daughter to read that book!"

"Oh," said Marie, "I don't think myself it is a book for a child!"

"She's not a child. She's twenty-six. I should dissuade my wife, too, from reading it."

"Then your wife," answered Marie, "would miss an illuminating piece of literature."

Elizabeth came in with her serene voice. "Don't you think, Judge Black, that we all acquire a habit of judging a writer, whom we haven't yet had time to study for ourselves, too much in terms of some review or other, or of the mere unthinking, current talk? I think we all do it. I believe when you read Ibsen you will feel differently about him."

"Not I!" said the Judge. "I have seen extracts enough. I tell you, Miss Eden, the age is reading too much of such decadent stuff—"

"Oh, 'decadent'!"

"And it is read, amazingly, by women. I would rather see my wife or daughter with the old dramatists at their worst in their hands than with stuff like that—! Overturning all our concepts, criticizing supremacies—I beg your pardon, Miss Caton, but if you knew how women, nowadays, amaze me—"

"Stop hectoring, Black," said the General mellowly. "She's not in the dock. Just so that women stay women, they can fill their heads with what stuff they will—"

"Exactly!" said Judge Black. "Do you see them staying women?"

"Women of the past," said Elizabeth.

"That is woman,—the women of the past. There isn't any other. The eternal feminine—"

"I think you are limiting the eternal and denying the universe power to evolve," said Elizabeth. "Why not eternally the man of the past? Why not 'There isn't any other'? Why not 'The eternal masculine'? Why do you change and grow from age to age?"

"I'm not so sure that they do," said Marie sotto voce.

"Yes, they do! They grow and become freer always; though I think," said Elizabeth painfully, "that they lag in the way they look at women.—Well, if you grow, being one half, do you suppose that we are not going to grow, being the other half? And if you think that the principle of growth is not in us, still I shouldn't worry! If we can't grow, we won't grow, and you needn't fash yourselves. On the other hand, if we can, we will—and that is all there is about it. And it wouldn't do you the least harm to read Ibsen—nor to get another definition of 'decadent.'"

She leaned forward in her chair. "Do you see that strip of blanched grass there?—or rather it was blanched yesterday when that board over there was lying upon it and had lain, I don't know how long!—blanched and bent and sicklied over. Now look! It is getting colour and standing straight—only beginning, but it is beginning—beginning to be on terms with the sun! Well, that grass is woman to-day! The heavy board is being lifted, and that's the change and all the change—and you find it 'pernicious'!"

Glowing-cheeked, she ceased speaking. Judge Black's colour, too, had heightened. "My dear Miss Eden, how did all this begin? I'm the last person in the world to deny to woman a proper freedom. I only ask that it shan't go beyond a certain point—that it shan't threaten the unsettling of a certain divine status quo—"

"I doubt if a divine status quo is ever unsettled, Judge Black," said Elizabeth. "But there—but there!" She smiled, and she had a very sweet, sunny smile. "I didn't in the least mean to quarrel! Tom will have told you that I sometimes use my tongue, and that's the ancient woman, still, isn't it? You see I care for women—being one—a good deal."

"Let us," said Marie Caton, "talk about fishing."

General Argyle chuckled. "Black doesn't think you know anything about fishing. He has to acknowledge that Mrs. Josslyn does—but then he thinks that she's a charming lusus naturæ. I like to hear you give it to Black. Pay him back. He's always giving it to me!"

"That's right!" said Black. "Pitch into me! Cover me with obloquy! Poor homeless, friendless sailor with the pole star mysteriously shifted from its place—" ...

"The homeless, friendless sailor stayed a long time, even with the pole star shifted," remarked Marie, forty minutes later.

"I certainly didn't mean to be rude," murmured Elizabeth, her eyes upon the disappearing guests, now well on their way to the bowling-alley. "They mean you never to resent a thing which they would at once recognize for an impertinence if one of themselves said it to another—"

"Oh, I shouldn't dub you rude," said the other. "And if he found you uncomfortable for a minute, you made up for it afterwards! You were charming enough, just as charming as if the pole star had never shifted. He went off still in mind the Eastern King."

"Ah," said Elizabeth, "that is where all of us are weak. We say the truth, and then we bring in 'charm' and sandpaper it away again! It's going to take another generation, Marie!"

"Another?" said Marie. "A dozen, more like!—Now I suppose I can read 'The Doll's House' in peace.—No, by all that's fated in this place, here comes another guest!"

This was Ralph Coltsworth, but he made no long tarrying; he was as transient as a butterfly. "Have you ladies seen Hagar Ashendyne? I want her to go to walk with me, and I can't find her anywhere."

"No, we haven't," said Marie. "Judge Black and General Argyle are looking for you to play tenpins."

Ralph smiled back at her. "Let them look! It will do the old codgers good. Do you like this place?"

"Yes, very much. Don't you?"

"Oh, I like it so-so!" said Ralph. "It's a good enough lotus land, but there's a lack somehow of wild, exciting adventure. I've been trying to read on the hotel porch. What do you think they're talking about over there? Fringed doilies!"

"What do you like to do and to talk about?"

"Live things." He laughed, tossed an apple into the air and caught it again. "I want first to make fifty millions, and then I want to spend fifty millions!"

"What an admirable American you are!"

"Am I not? And I vary it with just wanting to be a cowboy with a six-shooter on a Western plain—" He tossed the apple into the air again and, watching it, missed the glimpse of Hagar which the other two received. She appeared around the corner of a neighbouring cottage, her face directed toward the traveller's-joy porch, saw Coltsworth, wheeled and withdrew. He caught the apple, and after gazing meditatively for a moment in the direction of the tenpin-alley, sighed, and said that he supposed after all he might as well go help the General demolish the Army of the Potomac. "That's what he calls the pins when they're set up. He takes the biggest bowl and sends it thundering. I believe he thinks for the moment it is a ball from one of his old twenty-pounders. He sees fire and smells smoke. Sometimes he demolishes the Army of the Potomac and sometimes he doesn't; but he never gets discouraged. The next cannon ball will surely do the work!"

When he was gone, and had been gone twenty minutes or more, Hagar reappeared. She came swiftly across the grass, mounted the porch steps, and stood, with a little deprecating shake of her head for the offered chair, by Elizabeth's work-table. "I am not going to stay, thank you! Miss Eden, somebody told me last night that you had written and published books—"

"Only text and reference books—compilations," said Elizabeth. "I only do that kind of unoriginal work."

"Yes, but a book is a book," said Hagar. "What I wondered was if you wouldn't be good enough to tell me some things. No one in all my connection writes—I don't know any one to go to. I only want to know plain things—A, B, C's of how to manage—"

"About a manuscript, you mean?"

"Yes. I don't know anything. I've read all kinds of useless things and so little useful! For instance," said Hagar, "is it wrong to write on both sides of the paper?"

CHAPTER XIV
NEW YORK

In August—the Ashendynes being back at Gilead Balm—the "Young People's Home Magazine" published Hagar's fairy story. Gilead Balm was impressed, but not greatly impressed. It had the aristocratic tradition as to writers; no Ashendyne had ever needed to be one. There had been editor Ashendynes, in the old fiery, early, and mid-century times, but editorship came out naturally from the political stream, and the political, with law, planting, and soldiery, had been the Ashendyne stream. The Ashendyne mind harked back to Early Georgian, even to Stuart times; when you said "writer" it saw something Grub Streetish. In addition, Hagar's was, of course, only a child's story.

The two hundred dollars shrank in impressiveness from being known of after and not before Medway Ashendyne's letter. But to the eyes of her grandmother and her Aunt Serena the two hundred dollars was the impressive, the only really impressive, thing. Her grandmother advised that it be put in bank. Miss Serena said that, when she was Hagar's age, she had had a watch and chain for more than two years. "What would you like to do with it, Gipsy?" asked Captain Bob.

The colour came into Hagar's cheeks. "With one half I want to get my two winter dresses and my coat and hat, and with the other half I want to get books."

"Books!" exclaimed the Ashendynes—the Colonel was not present. "Why, aren't there books enough here?"

"They are not the kind of books I need."

"Nonsense!" said Old Miss. "Get your winter clothes if you wish,—though I am sure that Medway means now to send the Colonel money for you,—but save the rest. It will come in useful some day. Some day, child, you'll be thinking about your marriage clothes."

"Luna and I came over the hill just now with Ralph Coltsworth," remarked Captain Bob cheerfully, apropos of nothing. "He says he's studying hard—means to catch up at the University and be a credit to the family."

Miss Serena was talented in taking offence at small things. She had evolved the watch-and-chain idea and she thought it should have received more consideration. In addition she had the kind of memory that always holds the wrong things. "Books! I suppose you mean a kind of books that we certainly don't have many of here!—French novels and Darwin and the kind of books those two Northern women were reading this summer! Even when you were a child—don't you remember, mother?—you had a perfect talent for getting your hands on debasing literature! I supposed you had outgrown it. I'm sure Mrs. LeGrand never encouraged it. A hundred dollars worth of books!—and I suppose you are to choose them! Well, if I were father, I'd look over the list first."

"Aunt Serena," said Hagar, with a Spanish gravity and courtesy, "there are times when I understand the most violent crimes.... Yes; I know you don't know what I mean."

That was in August. September passed and part of October, and then, late in that month, Hagar went to New York.

Medway Ashendyne and his wife were travelling in the East. Next year or the year after, they might, Medway wrote, be in America. In the meantime, Hagar must have advantages. He had not the least idea, he wrote his father, what kind of a person she was. Her letters were formal, toneless and colourless to a degree. He hoped she had not inherited—But whatever she had inherited, she was, of course, his daughter, and he must take care of her, being now in a position properly to do so. His wife suggested, for the moment, a winter in New York, properly chaperoned. The money would be forthcoming (there followed a memorandum of a handsome sum placed in bank to the Colonel's credit). He could, he knew, leave it to his father and mother to see that she was properly chaperoned. His wife had thought of making certain suggestions, but upon talking it over together, they had come to the conclusion that, at the moment, at least, it would be wisest not to interfere with the Gilead Balm order and way of life. It was admirably suited, he judged, for a young girl's bringing up—much better than the modern American way of doing things. Only in France—or the Orient—was the jeune fille really preserved.

The Colonel wrote to Mrs. LeGrand. Mrs. LeGrand returned one of her long, fluent letters. First of all, congratulations that Hagar had come to her senses about Mr. Laydon, then—"Now as to New York—"

Sylvie was going to New York too,—going to have singing lessons, for she had a very sweet voice, and every one agreed that it would be a mistake not to give it the best training. The problem of how to manage for Sylvie had received the following solution, and Mrs. LeGrand proffered it as a possible way to manage for Hagar also. There was Powhatan Maine's family in New York—Powhatan himself and Bessie and their widowed daughter, Mrs. Bolt, with her two children. They lived well, "in our quiet, homelike, Southern fashion, of course." Powhatan was a solid lawyer in a solid firm. Sylvie had paid them a visit once before, but of course this year it was a question of her being in New York for months and months. Now, ordinarily, the Maines would not have heard of such a thing, but this disastrous year, with everybody failing, Powhatan had lost heavily in stocks and apparently they were having to economize. At any rate, Bessie was willing, just for this year, to take Sylvie under her wing and to let her pay for her room and board. The Maines' house was a good, big one, and Mrs. LeGrand had very little doubt that, just as a family favour, Bessie would be willing to receive Hagar on similar terms. Bessie would certainly stipulate that the arrangement should be a quiet one, just between themselves, and that Hagar, no less than Sylvie, should be regarded merely as a young friend and connection, visiting her that winter. This understood, Bessie would look after the two as if they were her own. It was fortunate that neither Sylvie nor Hagar was "out," for the Maines were in mourning. But Powhatan and Bessie knew a great many people, and the two girls would probably see company enough. "You remember Bessie, don't you? Good-nature itself! Nothing pleases her so much as having people happy about her." Then, too, there would be Rachel Bolt. She could take Hagar to the theatre and to concerts and the picture galleries and where not. "The Maines are all members of St. Timothy's—the Bishop's nephew's church, you know."—In fine, Mrs. LeGrand advised that the Ashendynes write at once to Mrs. Maine. It was done and Hagar's winter soon arranged for.

New York!... She had dreamed of great cities, but she had never seen one. The night on the sleeping-car—her first night on any sleeping-car—she stayed awake and watched through the window the flying clouds and the moon and stars between, and, underneath, the fugitive landscape. There was a sense of exaltation, of rushing on with the rushing world. Now and again, as the train creaked and swung, and once, as another roared past, there came moments of fascinated terror. Rushing train and rushing world, all galloping wildly through the night, and in front, surely some bottomless precipice!... She and Sylvie had a section, and though Hagar had offered to take the upper berth, it had ended in their having it put back and sleeping together. Now Hagar sat up in bed, and looked at the sleeping Sylvie. There was a dim, blended light, coming from the lamp above and the moonlight night without. Sylvie lay, half-uncovered, fast asleep, her hair in glossy braids, her pretty face, shell-tinted, sunk in the pillow, her breast quietly rising and falling. Hagar had an intense, impersonal, abstract passion for beauty wherever and in whatever form it resided. Now, limbs beneath her, her arms nursing each other, she sat and regarded the sleeping Sylvie with a pure, detached admiration. The train roared into a station; she drew the window curtain until it roared out again, then bared the window, and sat and watched the flying dark woods and the silver surface of some wide water. New York—New York—New York....

Sylvie was a travelled lady. Sylvie had been to New York before. She had been to Florida and New Orleans and Niagara and Saratoga. She could play sweetly, not arrogantly,—Sylvie was not arrogant, except, perhaps, a little when it came to good looks,—the part of guide and mentor to Hagar. In the Jersey City station she kept a reassuring touch upon Hagar's arm down the long platform to the gate. "The New York Ferry has a sign over it. Even if they don't meet us, I know how to manage—Oh, there's Cousin Powhatan!"

It was a pearl-grey morning, going over, with a mist that was almost a fog hanging upon the water and making unearthly and like a mirage the strange sky-line before them. There were not so many huge, tall buildings as there would be in after years, but they were beginning. The mist drifted, opening and closing, and to the mist was added the fairy garlands and pennants of white steam. Out of the luminous haze grew white ferryboats and low barges, and here passed an opalescent shape like a vast moth wing. "A sailboat," said Hagar under her breath. The air was chill and clinging. Sylvie and Captain Powhatan Maine preferred to sit and talk within the cabin, but Hagar remained outside. She stood with her hands lightly touching the rail, her eyes wide. Another sailboat slipped past. She turned and looked along the widening water, oceanward, and in a rift of the grey pearl clouds she seemed to see, at a great distance, a looming woman shape. A salt odour filled her nostrils. "Oh, the sea! I smell the sea!"

The ferryboat glided into its slip, the bell rang, the chains rattled; out resonantly, from the lower deck, passed the great dray horses and heavy wagons; the passengers disembarked; a crowd hurried, in column, toward the Elevated. Half-bewildered, Hagar found herself mounting long flights of steps, passing through a gateway, entering a train, which at once, with a shriek, began to run upon a level with second-story windows. She saw dingy red-brick factory and tenement buildings close, close to her face; fire-escapes and staring windows with squalid or horribly tawdry rooms beyond; on the window-sills spindling, starved plants in ancient, battered tin cans, children's faces, women leaning out, children, children, children—"We have to go quite far uptown," said Captain Maine. "Well, and what do you girls want to see first?"

He was a short, stout, gallant gentleman with a fierce grey mustache. Sylvie talked for both. Hagar nodded her head or commanded a smile when manners seemed to indicate it, but her mind was dealing with a nightmare. "Was this—was this New York?" Once she turned her head toward their escort, but something told her that if, indeed, she asked the absurd question, he would say, "Why, yes! Don't you like it?"

Where were the domes and colonnades? Where the cleanness and fairness—where the order and beauty? Where was the noble, great city? Where were the happy people? She tried to tell herself, first, that all these were there, that this was but a chance ugly street the train was going through ... but they went through it for miles, and she caught glimpses of so many other streets that seemed no better! And then she tried to tell herself, that, after all, she must have known it would be something like this. She had seen before, on a small scale, in a small city, decrepit buildings and decrepit people of all ages. Poverty, dirt, and disease.... One city would be like another, only larger.... She must have known. But knowing did not seem to have helped—or perhaps she had never really seen, nor thought it out. She was tired and overstrained; a horror came upon her. She looked through a window into a room hung with a ghastly green, torn, and soiled paper. Men and women were working in it, bent over a long table, working haggardly and fast, the shirts of the men, the bodices of the women, open at the throat. Another window—a wretched, blowsy woman and a young man with a bloated, unwholesome face;—another, and an old, old woman with a crying child, whom she struck;—then mere blank windows or windows with starveling geraniums in broken pots; and beneath and around and everywhere voices and heavy wheels, and the train rushing on upon its trestle high in the air. Something black and cold and hopeless rolled over Hagar's soul. It was as though the train were droning, droning, a melancholy text.

"Hagar! What is the matter? You looked as though you were going to faint!"

But Hagar wasn't going to faint. She pulled herself together. "No, no! It isn't anything! I was tired, I suppose—"

"Mustn't faint in New York," said Captain Maine genially. "You'll get run over if you do."

On went the Elevated, and the walls of windows grew vaguely better—or the shock of surprise was over—or the armoured being within shouldered away a hampering unhappiness. New York—New York—New York! Hope and vision sprang afresh. The windows and the houses in which they were set decidedly bettered. There were distant glimpses of fine buildings, spires of churches, trees that must be in a park. The sun, which had been all morning hidden by clouds, came suddenly forth and flooded the world with October gold. The gulf between what she had dreamed and what she saw perceptibly narrowed, though it was still there and though it still ached. "Here we are!" said Captain Maine, and folded his newspaper. Out of the train upon a platform—then more stairs, this time running downward—then a block or two of walking, in the crisp air, then a very different street from those the train had rushed through and very different houses. "Here we are!" said their host again, and they mounted a brownstone stoop. A coloured maid opened the door—they passed into a narrow reception hall with the Maines' ancestral tall clock standing by the stair and on the opposing walls engravings of Southern generals; thence, through folding doors, into a cool, deep parlour and the embrace of Mrs. Maine.

Mrs. Maine was large and sleepy and quiet and dark, with a nebulous personality. Everybody who knew her said that she was extremely good-natured, while a few added that she was too indolent to be irascible, and a fair number called it native kindliness and adduced a range of respectable incidents. No one ever hinted at intellectuality, and she certainly did not shine in conversation; she was not, apparently, socially ambitious, and nobody could be said to take less trouble—and yet a number of people—chiefly Southerners dwelling in New York, the more decorative and prosperous of St. Timothy's congregation, and Powhatan Maine's legal associates and acquaintances—exhibited a certain partiality for the Maine house. Powhatan told good war stories and darky stories; almost always there appeared something good to eat, with a Southern name and flavour; and Mrs. Maine was as unobtrusive and comfortable to get on with as the all-pervasive ether. There was nothing riotous nor especially buoyant in the house; it was rather dim and dull and staid; but people who had begun to visit the Maines twenty years before visited still. Perhaps most of them were dim and dull and staid themselves. Others, perhaps, liked the occasional salt of an environment which was not habitually theirs. The house itself was deep and for a New York dwelling wide, cool, high-ceilinged, and dark, with a gleam of white marble mantel-pieces and antiquated crystal chandeliers, with some ancient Virginia furniture and some ebony and walnut abominations of the 'seventies. Everything was a little worn, tending toward shabbiness; but a shabbiness not extreme, as yet only comfortable, though with a glance toward a more helpless old age. There were a fair number of books, some portraits and good, time-yellowed engravings. There were four coloured servants beside the nurse for Mrs. Bolt's children. The children, Charley and Betty, were pudgy, quaint elves of three and five. Charley, the younger, had been blind from birth.

That evening, Rachel Bolt came before bedtime into Hagar's room. "May I sit and talk a little while? Sylvie and mother and father and Dick Dabney, who came in a little while ago, are playing duplicate whist."

"Of course you may. It's such a pleasant room you've given me."

Rachel turned in her chair and regarded it from wall to wall somewhat cynically. "Well, I suppose at the first blush it may seem so. It is, however, rather shabby. We meant to do it over again this year, but times are so tremendously hard that we gave it up with a lot of other things.—What I really came in for was to ask what kind of things and places and people you'd like to see this winter. It's agreed with your grandfather that I'm to take you around."

"It is good of you to be willing to do it—"

"Oh, I'm to be paid for doing it! I'll be spinning my spring outfit and Betty's and Charley's while we gallivant. But I do not mean"—she laughed—"that it is going to be hard or disagreeable work, unless"—she ended coolly—"you want to go to places where I don't want to go."

"To those places," said Hagar seriously, "I will go alone."

"Then," said Rachel, "we will get along very well.... What do you want to do anyhow?"

"I want to feel around for a while. And I'd like to be shown how to go and how to manage, just at first. But after that I hope you won't mind if I just wander about by myself." She lifted her long arms above her head in a gesture, harassed and restless. "I think there are people to whom solitude means as much as food or sleep."

"Do you want me to get up and say good-night?" asked Rachel promptly.

Hagar gave a warm little laugh. "Not yet awhile. I'm not that greedy and sleepy. I strive to be temperate.... What I want to see first are pictures. I have never seen any—barring those at home and at Eglantine."

"Well, we can go to the Metropolitan to-morrow."

"I should like that. Then I want to hear music. I have never heard any to count."

"There'll be concerts and the opera later. The opera is, of course, very expensive, but I understand that your father wants you to do pretty well what you wish. If you don't mind being high up, we can do a good deal of it reasonably."

"Then let us go high up."

"At the moment there aren't even concerts. We might find an organ recital, and on Sundays there is music in the park."

"Day after to-morrow is Sunday. I'll go and hear that. Then I want to go to the theatre."

"Most of that will come later, too. Are you fond of the theatre?"

"I don't know. That is why I want to go—to find out. I have never seen but three plays."

"What an awfully lucky person! What were they?"

"One—I was a little girl and I went to Richmond for two days—was 'Maria Stuart.' Janauschek played it. The next was in the small town near where I live. It was rather terribly done, I believe, and it kept me awake for a week afterward. I was fifteen. It was 'The Corsican Brothers.' Then"—said Hagar, "last winter I saw 'Romeo and Juliet.'... They didn't seem like plays. They seemed like life,—sometimes terrible and sometimes beautiful. I want to go to find out if it is always so."

"It isn't," said Rachel. "You are inexperienced."

"There is a natural history museum here, isn't there?"

"Yes, a large one."

"I want to go there. I want to see malachite and chrysoprase and jade, and the large blue butterflies and the apes up to man and the models of the pterodactyl and dinosaur and a hundred other things."

"Until now," said Rachel, "I have thought that Charley and Betty had the largest possible appetites. What else?"

"Am I tiring you?"

"Not a bit. Besides, it is business. I came in here to get a catalogue raisonné.—It's rather curious that you should have such a passion for minerals and species and prehistoric things."

"Is it? Well, I have it," said Hagar. She put her arms again behind and above her head. "If you want to know All, you must live All—though in honour preferring one to the other."

Beside her, on the little table by the hearth, was a paper and pencil. Suddenly she unlocked her hands, bent over and drew a sheet of paper from under the book with which she had covered it on Rachel's entrance. "I was trying to write something when you came in. It is rough and crude,—just the skeleton,—but it's something like what I mean and what I want." She held it out; then, with a deprecating gesture and a shy flush, "If it doesn't bore you—"

Rachel took it and read.