Hagar

The hymn ended, a woman lifted both hands and prayed with fervour and a strange, natural eloquence. Then the squad gathered up horn and drum and tambourines, and, drawing a part of the crowd with it, moved up the street to another skirmish ground.

Rachel and Willy and Hagar drifted on. The night was still young, the stars glittering above, the gaslamps making a vista, the footfalls on the pavement murmurous as a stream. The clanging of the street-car bell, the rush of a train on the neighbouring Elevated, the abrupt rise and fall of passing voices—all exercised a fascination. The night was coloured, rhythmic. They came to a building, narrow and plain, with lit windows, as of a hall, on the second floor, and with a clean, fairly lighted stair going up from an open street door. Men and women were entering. A care-worn, stooping, workman-looking man stood by the door with handbills or leaflets which he was giving out. "Socialist Meeting," he said. "Good speaking. The Unemployed and the Strikes. Socialist Meeting. Everybody welcome."

Hagar stopped. "Rachel, I want to go in here. Yes, I do! Come now, be good to me, Rachel! Mr. Maine wants to go, too."

"Socialists!" said Willy. "Those are the people who are blowing up everybody with bombs. I didn't suppose New York would let them hold a meeting! They're devils!"

But Willy had so well-grown a human curiosity that he was not averse to a glimpse of devils. Perhaps he heard himself, back home in the sleepy county, talking at the village post-office or in the churchyard before church. "Yes, and where else do you think I went? I went to a Socialist Meeting! Bomb-throwers—Socialists and Anarchists, you know!" Rachel, hardly more informed, was ready to-night for anything a little desperate. She would not have taken Hagar where she positively thought she ought not to go,—but if these were desperate people going in, they were, to say the least, pretty quiet and orderly and decent-looking;—and it could do no harm just to slip in and sit on a back seat for a few minutes and look on—just as you might go to mass in a cathedral abroad, disapproving all the time, of course. But Hagar had a book or two in her mind, and in addition the talk that Sunday afternoon at the Settlement.

When they had climbed the stairs and come into the hall, which was a small one, they found that the back seats were all taken. Apparently all seats were taken, but as they stood hesitating, a young man beckoned, and before they knew it they found themselves well down the place, seated near the platform. Rachel looked around a little uneasily. "Crowded, and they all look so intent! It's not going to be easy to get up and leave."

The hall was rude enough, and small, the light not brilliant, the platform a few bare boards. Upon it stood a deal table, and three or four chairs. Back of these, fastened against the wall, was a red flag, and on either side of this a strip of canvas with large letters. On one side, UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD, and on the other, WORKINGMEN, UNITE! Now standing beside the table, and slowly walking from end to end of the platform, a dark-eyed, well-knit man was speaking, quite conversationally, with a direct appeal, now to this quarter of the hall, now to that. His voice was deep and mellow; he spoke without denunciations, with a quiet reasonableness and conviction. At the moment he was stating a theory, giving the data upon which it was based, weighing it, comparing it with its counter theory. He used phrases—"Economic Determinism"—"Unearned Increment"—"Class-Consciousness"—"Problem of Distribution"—explained clearly what he meant by them, then put them aside. "They are phrases that will serve their ends and pass from speech," he said. "We shall bring in modifiers, we shall make other phrases, and they, too, in their turn, will pass from the tongues of men; but the idea behind them—the idea—the idea and its expression, the intellectual and moral sanction, the thing that is metaphysical and immortal, that will not pass! The very word Socialism may pass, but Socialism itself will be in the blood and bone and marrow of the world that is to be! And this is what is that Socialism." He began to speak in aphorisms, in words from old Wisdom-Religions, and then, for all they were stories of quite modern happenings, in parables—the woe of the world epitomized, a generalization of its needs, all lines of help synthesized into a world saviour, which, lo! was the world itself. He made an end, stood a moment with kindling eyes, then sat down. After an appreciable silence there came a strange, deep applause, men and women striking fist on palm, striking the bare floor with ill-shod feet.

A small, wiry dark man, sitting on the platform, rose and spoke rapidly for twenty minutes. He had a caustic wit and the power of invective which, if possessed by the other, had not been displayed. Once or twice he evoked a roar of angry laughter. When he had finished, and the applause had subsided, the chairman of the evening stood up and spoke. "As the comrades know, it is our habit to turn the last half-hour into an open meeting. Nearly always there's somebody who's been thinking and studying and wants to say a word as to what he's found—or there's somebody who's got a bit of personal experience that he thinks might help a comrade who's struggling, maybe, through a like pit. Anybody that feels like speaking out, let him do it—or let her do it. Men and women, we're all comrades—and though Socialists are said not to be religious, we're all religious enough to like a good experience meeting—"

He paused, waiting for some one to rise. The first speaker came for a moment to his side. "Mr. Chairman, may I say one word to our comrades, and to any others who may be here? It is this. If 'religious' means world-service and a recognition and a striving toward the ultimate divine in my neighbour as in myself, and in myself as in my neighbour—then I think Socialism may be called religious."

As he moved back to his chair a man arose in the back of the house and began to speak. After a moment the chairman halted him with a gesture. "It is difficult for the comrades on this side the hall to hear you. Won't you come to the platform?" The man hesitated, then nodded his head; and with a certain deliberateness moved down the aisle, and stepping upon the only slightly raised platform stood facing the gathering. A colour flared in his cheek, and his hands, held somewhat stiffly at his sides, opened and shut. It was evident that he was not an accustomed speaker, and that there was diffidence or doubt of himself and his welcome to be overcome. He began stammering, with nervous hesitation. If anything he could say would help by one filing he would say it, though he wasn't used—yet—to speaking. He owed a debt and he believed in paying debts—though not the way the world made you pay them.

It was hard to tell how young or old he was. At times he looked boyish; then, when a certain haggard, brooding aspect came upon him, he seemed a middle-aged man. His clothes were poor, but whole and clean, his shirt a grey flannel one. Above the loose collar showed a short, dark beard, well-cut features, and deep-set dark eyes.

Lines came into Hagar's forehead between her eyes. She had seen this man somewhere. Where? She had a trick of holding her mind passive, when the wanted memory would slowly rise, like water from a deep, deep well. Now, after a minute or two, it came. She had seen him in the street-car that night, going from Eglantine to see "Romeo and Juliet." He had been in workman's clothes, he had touched her skirt, standing before her in the car; then he had found a seat, and she had watched him unfold and read a newspaper. Some vague, uncertain thought that she could not trace had made her regard him at intervals until with Miss Bedford and Lily and Laydon she had left the car....

The man on the platform had shaken off the initial clumsiness of speech and bearing. Like a swimmer, he had needled the wave. He was not clumsy now; he was speaking with short, stripped words, nakedly, with earnestness at white heat. Once he had been dumb and angry, he said, as a maddened dog. He had been through years that had made him so. He had been growing like a wolf. There were times when he wanted to take hold of the world's throat and tear it out. "Do you remember Ishmael in the Bible?—his hand against every man and every man's hand against him? Well, I was growing to feel that way." Then at that point—"and that was perhaps three years ago, and I was down South in a town in my state, trying to get work. I knew how to break rock, and I knew how to make parts of shoes, and I didn't know much besides, except that it was a hard world and I hated it"—at this point chance "or something" had sent him an acquaintance, an educated man, a bookkeeper in the concern where he finally got a job. Out of the acquaintanceship had grown a friendship. "After a while I got to going to his house. He had a wife who helped him lots." The three used to talk together, and the man lent him books and made him read them, and "little by little, he led me on. He was like an old man I knew in the mountains when I was a boy. He showed me that we're all sick and sorry, but that we're growing a principle of health. He showed me how slow we creep up from worm to man, and how now we're fluttering toward something farther on, and how hands of the past come upon us, and how we yet escape—and the wings strengthen. He showed me how vindictiveness is no use, and how much that is wrong with the world is owing to poor social mechanism and can be changed. He showed me what Brotherliness means, on the road to Unity. He put it in my mind and heart to want to help. He told me I had a good mind. I had always rather liked books, but I'd been where I couldn't get any, even if they'd given you time for reading. He made me study things out, and one day I began to think—think for myself—think it out. I've never stopped. Usually now, I'm at night-school nights. I'm learning, and I'm going to keep on, until I make thinking Wisdom." He studied the ceiling a moment, then spoke out with a ring in his voice. "I was a mountain boy. When I wasn't out of my teens I got drunk at a dance and played hell-fool and almost killed a man or two. Then the sheriff chased me up to Catamount Gap, and the stuff was still in me and my head hitting the stars, and I shot and shot at the sheriff.... Well, the end of all that playing was that I went to the penitentiary for four years. One thing I want wisdom for is to know how to talk to people about what is called crime and about that great crime, our law courts and penal system. Well, I came out of the penitentiary, and then it was very hard to get work. It was bitter hard. That's another thing I want learning and wisdom for—to talk about that. You see, the penitentiary wasn't content with the four years; it followed me always. And then it's hard to get work anyhow. There wasn't any use in going back to the mountains. But after a while I got work and kept it. Then, three months ago, I came up here, and I got work here. I'm working on your streets now, and studying between times.... I'm standing up here to-night to tell you that you've got a flag that draws the unhappy to you, when it happens that they're seeking with the mind. I don't know much about class-consciousness. We didn't have it in the mountains, though, of course, we had it in the penitentiary. But I know that we've got to take the best that was in the past and leave the worst, and go on with the best toward new things. We've got to help others and help ourselves. And it doesn't do just to want to help; you've got to have a working theory; you've got to use your mind. You've got to consider your line of march and mark it out and blast away the rock upon it and go on. And I am willing to be of your construction gang. The man I was talking about thought pretty much that way, too. He said there were a lot of isolated people, here, there, and everywhere, not only those that call themselves working-people, but others, too, and women just as well as men, who were thinking that way—that they might not call themselves Socialists, but that they were blood kin just the same. I don't know why, to-night, but I am thinking of something that happened when I had been a year in the penitentiary, and they had rented a lot of us up the river to make the bed for a railroad. While I was up there, I couldn't stand it any longer, and I ran away. They set the dogs on my track and took me, of course, but before they did, I was lying in a thicket, and I hadn't had anything to eat for two days and a night. A little girl, about twelve years old, I reckon, came over a hill and down to the stream by the thicket. She gathered flowers and set them around a big rock for a flower doll tea-party. She had two little apple pies and she put those in the middle—and then she saw me, lying in the thicket. And I was wearing"—the colour flared into his face, then ebbed—"I was wearing stripes.... I don't think she ever thought of being frightened. She gave me both pies, and she sat and talked to me like a friendly human being. I've never forgotten. And when the dogs came, as they did pretty soon, and the men behind them, she lay on the grass and cried and cried as if her heart would break. I've never forgotten. That's what I mean. I don't care what we've done, if we're not fiends incarnate, and very few of us are, we've got to feel toward one another like that. We've got to feel, 'if you are struck, I am struck. If you are wearing stripes, I am wearing stripes.' We've got to feel something more than Brotherhood. We've got to feel identity. And as a part, anyway, of that road seems to me to be named Socialization, I'm willing to be called a Socialist."

He nodded to the audience, and, stepping from the platform, amid a clapping of hands and stamping of feet, did not return to his place in the back of the hall, but sat upon the edge of the stage, his hands clasped around his knee. A German clockmaker and a fiery, dark woman spoke each for a few minutes, and then the meeting ended. There was a noise of rising, of pushing back chairs, a surge of people, in part toward the exit, in part toward the platform. Hagar touched Rachel on the arm. "Wait here for me. I want to speak to that man.—Yes, I know him. Wait here, Rachel."

She made her way to the space before the platform where men and women were pressing about the speakers. The man with the grey flannel shirt was answering a question or two, put by the dark-eyed man who had spoken first. He stood with a certain mountain litheness and lack of tension. A movement, his answer given, brought him face to face with Hagar. She had taken off her hat, so that it might not trouble the people behind her, and she had it still in her hand. Her dark, soft hair framed her face much as it had done in childhood; she was looking at him with wide, startled eyes.

"I had to come to tell you," she said, "that I am glad you came through. I never forgot you either."

"'Forgot you either!'—" The man stared at her.

"They were apple turnovers," she said; but before she had really spoken there came the flush and light of recognition.

"Oh—h!..." He fell back a step; then, with a reddened cheek and a light in his eyes, put out his hand. She laid hers in it; his fingers closed over hers in a grasp strong enough to give pain.

Then, as their hands dropped, as she fell back a little, the second speaker came between, then others. Suddenly the lights were lowered, people were staying too long. Rachel's hand on Hagar's arm drew her back. "Come, we must go!" Willy, too, was insistent. "It's getting late. Show's over!" The space between her and the boy of the thicket, the figure drawn against the sky of the canal lock, widened, filled with forms in the partial dusk. She was half-drawn, half-pushed by the outgoing stream through the door, out upon the stair, and so down to the street, where now there were fewer lights. The wind had arisen and the air turned colder. "We'll take this cross-town car, and then the Elevated," and while she was still bewildered, they were on the car. The bell clanged, they went on; again, in what seemed the shortest time, they were out in the night, then climbing the long stairs, then through the gate and upon the rushing Elevated. Willy talked and talked. He was excited. "I thought it was going to be all about bombs! But they talked sense, didn't they?—and there was something in the air that kind of warmed you! Next time I'm in New York I'm going again. Look at the lights streaming off! By Jiminy! New York's great!"

He was not staying at the Maines', but with other kinspeople a few blocks away. He saw the two in at the door, said good-night, and went whistling away. Hagar and Rachel turned off the lowered gas in the hall and went softly upstairs.

As they passed Mrs. Maine's door she asked sleepily from within, "Did you enjoy the play?"

"We didn't go," said Rachel. "We'll tell you about it in the morning."

When the two had said good-night and parted and Hagar, in her own room, kneeling at the window, looked up at the Pleiades, at Aldebaran—only then came the realization that she did not know that man's name, that she had never heard it. In her thoughts he had always been "the boy."

CHAPTER XVIII
A TELEGRAM

The next day she went down to the Settlement.

Elizabeth was at home. "Yes, I could give you a list of books on Socialism. I read a good deal along those lines myself. I am glad you are interested."

"I am interested," answered Hagar. "I cannot get any of these books now, but I am looking for fifty dollars, and when it comes, I will."

"But I can lend you two or three," said Elizabeth. "Won't you take them—dear Hagar?"

She regarded the younger woman with her steady, friendly eyes, her strong lips just parting in a smile. There was perhaps nine years' difference in their ages, but mentally they came nearer. It was the first time that she had dropped the formal address.

Hagar answered with a warm colour and a tremulous light from brow to chin. "Yes, if you'll be so good—Elizabeth!"

She crossed the floor with the other to the long, low, bookcase. Elizabeth drew out a couple of volumes. "These are good to begin with—and this." She stood a moment in thought, her back to the case, her elbow resting on its polished top and her head upon her hand. On a shelf behind her stood a small bronze Psyche, a photograph of Botticelli's Judith, a drawing of Florence Nightingale. "Hagar," said Elizabeth, "if I give you two or three books upon the position of woman in the past and to-day, will you read them?"

"I will read anything you give me, Elizabeth."

She took her parcel of books and went back to the Maines'. She read with great rapidity. Her memory was not a verbal one, but her very tissues seemed to absorb the sense of what she read. Much in these books simply formulated for her with clearness what was already in solution in her mind. Here and there she was conscious of lines of difference, of inward criticism, but in the main they but enlarged a content already there, but brought above the threshold, named and fed what she was already thinking. Her mind went back to Eglantine and Roger Michael's talk. "No. It did not begin even here. It was in me. It had been in me a long time, only I didn't know it, or called it other names."

Before these books were finished she got her fifty dollars from the magazine, and the magazine itself was sent her with her story in it. She sat and read the story, and it seemed strange and new in its robe of print. The magazine had provided an illustration—and how strange it was to see her figures (or rather not her figures) moving and laughing there! Again and again, after the first time, she opened the magazine and in part or whole read the story and gazed upon the illustration—half a dozen or more times during the first twenty-four hours, then with dwindling frequency day after day, for a week or so. After that her appetite for her own completed work flagged. She laid the magazine away, and it was years before she read that story again. The fifty dollars—She put thirty-five away to go toward her summer clothes and wrote to her grandmother that she had done so. The remaining fifteen she expended on books, taking starred titles from Elizabeth's list. In January she wrote "The Lame Duck." She sent it to one of the great monthlies. It was accepted, she was paid a fair price, and the monthly gave her to understand that it should like to see Hagar Ashendyne's next story.

The letter came as she was leaving the house for a walk in the Park. There was no great distance to go before you came to an entrance, and she often went alone and wandered here and there by herself. The country was in her veins; not to see trees and grass very often was very bad. She opened the letter, saw what it was, then walked on in a rosy mist. After a while, out under the branched grey trees, she found a bench, sat down, and read it again and yet again. Her soul passioned to do this thing; to write, to write well, to give out wonderfully, beautifully. A letter that told her it was so, that she was doing that which, with the strongest longing, she longed to do, must be to her golden as a love letter. With it open on her lap, with her eyes on the serene, pearl-grey meadow on the edge of which she sat, she stayed a long time, dreaming. A young man and woman, lovers evidently, slowly passed her bench beneath the trees. She watched them with tranquil eyes. "They're lovers," and she felt a reflex of their bliss. They passed, and she watched as happily the grey spaces where a few sheep stirred, and the edge of trees beyond, dream trees in the mist.

Quite simply she fell to thinking of "the boy." He had been often in her mind since the evening of that meeting; she wondered about him a good deal. She did not know his name; she had no idea where he lived; he might be in New York now, or he might not be; she might pass him in the street and not know—though, indeed, now she kept a lookout. He did not know her name; she was to him "the little girl" as he was to her "the boy." They might never meet again, but she had a faith that it would not be so. What she felt toward him was but friendliness, concern, and some admiration; but the feeling had a soft glow and pulse. The most marked thing was the consciousness that she knew him truly; reasoning did not come into it; she could have told herself a dozen times how little she did know, and it would have made no difference. It was as though the boy and she had seen each other's essential self through a clear pane of glass.

Her mind did not dwell long upon him to-day. She sat with her hands crossed above the letter, and her eyes, half-veiled, upon the far horizon. To write—to write—to produce, to lead forth, to give birth, to push out and farther on forever, to make a beautiful thing, and always a more beautiful thing—always—always.... She was more mind than body as she sat there; she saw her thought-children going up to heaven before her.

There came an impulse to look on beauty that other minds had sent forth. She rose and walked, with her light, rhythmic swiftness, northward toward the Metropolitan. When she passed the turnstile there lacked less than an hour of closing time. She went at once toward the rooms where were the casts. There was hardly a moving figure besides herself; there were only the still, white giants. She entered an alcove where there was a seat drawn before a cast of the tomb of Lorenzo de' Medici. She sat down and gazed upon Michael Angelo's Thinker. After a while her eyes moved to the great figures of Twilight and Dawn, and then, rising, she crossed to Guliano's Tomb and stood before Day and Night. Presently she left the alcove, and crossing by the models of the Parthenon and of Notre Dame came into the Hall of the Antique and into the presence of the great Venus. Here she stayed until a man came through the place and said it was closing time.

In February she sent to the same monthly "The Mortal." It passed from hand to hand until in due time it reached the editor. He read it, then strolled into the assistant editor's room:—"New star in the sky." But before Hagar could hear from the monthly, another moment in her life was here.

A week after she had mailed this story, she and Rachel were together one evening in the latter's room. It was pouring rain, and there would be no company. Supper was just over,—the Maines clung to supper,—and the children had not been put to bed. Nightgowned, they made excursions and alarms from their nursery into their mother's room and out again and in again. Then Rachel turned out the gas, and they all sat in the light of the coal fire, and first Rachel told a story, and then Betty told one, and then Hagar, and then Charley. They were all stories out of Mother Goose, so no one had to wait long for their turn. Then Hagar had to tell about Bouncing Bet and Creeping Charley, which was a continued story with wonderful adventures, an adventure a night. Then the clock struck eight with a leaden sound, and Mammy appeared in the nursery door. "You carry me!" cried Bouncing Bet, and "You carry me!" cried Creeping Charley. So Rachel took one and Hagar took the other, mounted them like papooses, and in the nursery shot each into the appropriate small, white bed.

Back before the fire, with the lights still out, the two sat for a time in silence. Hagar had a story in mind. She was musing it out, seeing the figures come true in the lit hollows. Rachel had a habit of crooning to herself. She went on now with one of the children's rhymes:—

Hagar stirred, lifted her arms, and clasped her hands behind her head. "How the rain pours! The winter is nearly over. It has been a wonderful winter."

"I'm glad you've found it so," said Rachel. "You've got a wonder-world of your own, behind your eyes. Everything spins out for good for you sooner or later and somehow or other. You're lucky!"

"Aren't you lucky, too? Haven't you liked this winter?"

"Oh, I've liked it so-so! I've liked you."

"Rachel, I wish you'd be happy. You've got those darling children."

"I am happy where the children touch. And, oh, yes, they touch a long way round! But there's a gap in the circle where you go out lonely and come in lonely."

"That's true of everybody's circle:—mine, yours, everybody's. But you chafe so. You blow the coals with your breath."

"I don't need to blow the coal. It burns without that.... Let me tell you, Hagar. There are two kinds of people in the world. The people who are half or maybe two thirds the way out of the pit and the mire and the slough and the shadow so thick you can cut it! They are rising still, and their garments are getting clean and white, and they can see the wonderful round landscape, and they look at it with calm, wide eyes. They're nearly out; they're more or less spectators. The other kind—they're the poor, dull, infuriated actors. They're still in; they can hardly see even the rim of the pit. The first kind wants to help and does help. It's willing for the others to lay hold of its hands, its skirts, to drag out by. It's willing as an angel, and often the others wouldn't get out at all if it didn't give aid. But it's seen, of course, and it's away beyond.... People like Elizabeth Eden, for instance.... But the other kind—my kind.—It's all personal with us yet—we're fighting and loving and hating, down here in the muck and turmoil—all of us who are yet devils, and those who are half-devils, and those of us who are just getting vision and finding the stepping-stones—the animal and the half-animal, and those who've only got pointed ears—all resenting and striking out and trampling one another, knowing, some of us, that there are better things and yet not knowing how to get the shining garments; others not caring—Oh, I tell you, life's a bubbling cauldron!"

"I know it is—deep above and deep below. But—"

Rachel rose, went to the window, and stood, brow against the pane, looking out. The rain dashed against the glass; all the street lights were blurred; the gusty wind shook the bare boughs of the one tree upon the block, "You don't know anything about my married life. Well, I'm going to tell you."

She came back to the fire, pushed a footstool upon the hearth, and sat down, crouching close to the flame. "I'm not yet twenty-six. I was married to Julian Bolt when I was eighteen. I'd known him—or I thought I'd known him—for years. His mother and sisters went in summer to the place in the mountains where we always went. They had money, though less than people supposed. Julian spent two weeks with them each summer. He was older than I, of course,—years older. But he used to row us girls upon the lake, and to play tennis with us, and we thought him wonderful. We called him 'The Prince.' As I got older, he rowed me sometimes alone on the lake, and now and then we went for a walk together. He was good-looking, and he dressed and talked well, and he spent money. I had heard somebody call him 'a man-about-town'—but I didn't know what 'a man-about-town' meant. There were two or three families in the place with daughters out or about to come out, and they made Julian Bolt very welcome. I never heard a father or mother there say a word against him. Mine didn't.

"Well, I came out very early, and the summer after, when I went to Virginia, to the White with my aunt, and that winter when I stayed with some army people at Old Point, he came to both places, and I knew that he came to see me. He told me so.... Of course, though I would have died rather than say it, even to myself, of course, I was expecting men to fall in love with me and ask me to marry them—and expecting to choose one, having first, of course, fallen in love with him, and be married in white satin and old lace, and be romantically happy and provided for ever after! Isn't that the thinking rôle for every properly brought-up girl? The funny thing is that I'd rather die than see Betty come upon that treadmill they've built for a girl's mind!... Well, I was on it all right....

"Julian had money, and he spent it recklessly. I didn't see how recklessly; I didn't see anything except that he liked me; for he sent me the most beautiful flowers, the most expensive bon-bons and books and magazines. It was a gay winter. Looking back, it seems to me that everybody was eating and drinking, for to-morrow we die. I knew I must fall in love—that had been suggested to me, suggested for years, just as regularly and powerfully as any hypnotist could do it. The whole world was bent on suggesting it to every young girl. You see, the world's selfish. It wants to live, and it can't live unless the young girl says Yea. And it can't leave it, or it thinks it can't, to Nature working in a certain number in her own good time. It must cheat and beguile and train the girl—every girl—every girl! I tell you, I didn't know any more about marriage than I did about life on the planet Mars! I was packing my trunks for a voyage—and I didn't know where I was going. I didn't know anything about it. No one offered me a Baedeker.... It was orange blossoms and a veil and a ring—and I didn't know what either meant—and felicitations and presents and 'Hear the golden wedding-bells!' and 'They lived happily ever after.' Julian was handsome and lavish and popular, and his family were all right, and if he had been gay he would now settle down; and father and mother were satisfied, and people said I was to be envied.... I married at eighteen. I hadn't read much. I didn't know anything. No one told me anything. Maybe the world thinks that if it tells, the young girl would say No.

"We went on a wedding-trip. I suppose sometimes a wedding-trip isn't a mockery. I'm not so bitter as not to know that often it isn't so—that often it is all right. I'm not denying love, and clean men and considerate. I'm not denying hosts of marriages that without any very high ideal are fit and decent enough. I'm not denying noble lovers—men and women—and noble marriages. I'm only saying that the other kind, the kind that's not fit nor clean nor decent and anything but noble, is so frequent and commonplace that it is rather laughable and altogether sardonic and devilish to kneel down and worship as we do the Institution of Staying Together—Staying Together at any price, even when evidently the only clean thing to do would be to Stay Apart.... My wedding-trip lasted four months. I went eighteen, and I came back old as I am now—older than I am now; for I have grown younger these last two years. My marriage wasn't the noble kind. It was the kind you couldn't make noble. It wasn't even the decent, low-order type. It was a sink and a pit and a horror."

She bent and stirred the fire. Outside the gusty wind went by and the rain beat upon the windows. "I know that there are marriages where woman is the ruiner. There are women who are wreckers. They fasten themselves on a man's life and drain it dry. They are devil-fish. They hold him in their arms and break his bones. They're among the worst of us struggling here in the pit. They're wicked women. They may be fewer than wicked men, or they may be equal in number, I don't know. I'm not talking of wicked men or wicked women in that sense. I'm talking of men whom the world does not call wicked, and of a great army of women like myself, an army that stretches round the world and through hundreds of years.... An army? It isn't an army. We never had any weapons. We were never taught to fight. We were never allowed to ask questions. We were told there were no questions to ask. We were young girls, dreaming, dropped into the wolf pack ... and it goes on all the time. It is going on now. It may be going on when Betty grows up—though I'll tell her! You needn't be afraid. I'll tell her....

"That wedding trip—that honeymoon. I had married a handsome beast—a cruel one, too. He treated me like a slave, bought for one purpose, wanted for one purpose, kept for one purpose. I wasn't enough for him—I found that out very soon. But those others were freer than I. They made him pay them.... He would have said that he paid me, too; that he supported me. Perhaps it's true. I only know that I am going to have Betty taught to support herself."

"You should have left him."

"We were in Europe. I hadn't any money. I was beaten down and stunned. When I tried to write to father and mother, I couldn't. They would have said that I was hysterical, and for God's sake to consider the family name!... I have been a woman slow to develop mentally. What poise I've got, what reading, what knowledge, what everything, has come to me since that time. Then I didn't know how to hold my head up and march out. Then I only wanted to die.... We came home, and it was to find father with a desperate illness. I couldn't tell mother then. I doubt if I could ever have told her. I doubt if it would have done any good if I had.... We went to live in a house up on the Sound. Julian said his fortune was getting low, and that it would be cheaper there. But he himself came into town and stayed when he wished. He spent a great deal of money. I do not know what he did with it. He threw away all that he had.... I knew by now that Betty was coming. She was born before I was nineteen. And Charley was born a year afterward—born blind, and I knew why. I loved my children. But my marriage remained what it had always been. When Charley was nearly a year old, I couldn't stand it any longer. If I could stand it for myself, I saw that I couldn't stand it for them. I couldn't let them grow up having that kind of a mother, the kind that would stand it.... Julian went away. Every two or three months he took all the money he could lay his hands on and disappeared. I knew that he had dived into all that goes on here, in some places, in this city. He would be gone sometimes two weeks, sometimes longer.... Well, this time I took Betty and Charley and came home, came here—and they tried to persuade me to go back. The Bishop was here, visiting his nephew, and he came and tried to persuade me to go back. But I wouldn't ... and there was no need. Within the week Julian was killed in a fray in a house a mile, I suppose, from where we sit. That was two years ago."

She rose and moved about the firelit room. "Yes, I've got the two children, and life's healing over. I don't call myself unhappy now. At times I'm quite gay—and you don't know how eerie it feels! But happy or not, Hagar, I'll never forget—I'll never forget—I'll never forget! They talk about the end of the century, and about our seeing the beginning of better things. They say the twentieth century will be an age of clearer Thinking and greater Courage, and they talk about the coming great Movements.—There's one Movement that I want to see, and that's the Movement to tell the young girl. If I were the world I wouldn't have my dishonoured life as it gets it now.... And now let's talk about something else."

Hagar crossed to her, took her in her arms, and kissed her lips and forehead. "I love you, Rachel. Come, let's look at the rain, how it streams! Listen! Isn't that thunder?"

They stood at the window and looked out upon the slanting lines and the glistening asphalt. The doorbell rang.

"Who on earth can that be?" Rachel went to the door, opened it, and stood listening. "A telegram. Dicey is bringing it up. It's for you, Hagar."

She struck a match and lit the gas. Hagar opened the brown envelope and unfolded the sheet within. The telegram was from Gilead Balm, from her grandfather:—

Cables from physician and Consul at Alexandria. Terrible accident. Yacht on which were Medway and his wife wrecked. His wife drowned, body not recovered. Medway seriously injured. Life not despaired of, but believe it will leave him crippled. Ill in hotel there. Unconscious at present. Every attention. Your grandmother will fret herself ill unless I go. Insists that you accompany me. Have telegraphed for passage on boat sailing Saturday. Arrive in New York Friday morning. Get ready.—Argall Ashendyne.

CHAPTER XIX
ALEXANDRIA

"My master," said the valet, "is fond of Cairo and detests Alexandria. As soon as he is able to be moved, if not sooner, he will wish to be moved."

"He is not able now," said Hagar.

"No, Miss. He is still delirious."

"The doctor says that he is very ill."

"Yes, Miss. But if I may make so bold, I think Mr. Ashendyne will recover. I have lived with him a long time, Miss."

"What is your name?"

"Thomson, Miss."

The Colonel entered. "He didn't know me. Nor would I have known him. He is pretty badly knocked to pieces.—What have you got there? Tea? I want coffee." Thomson moved to the bell, and gave the order to the Arab who appeared with the swiftness of a genie. "Is there anything else, sir?"

"No, not now."

"The English papers are upon the small table, sir." And Thomson glided from the room.

The Colonel looked about him. "Humph! Millionaires fix themselves luxuriously."

"I keep seeing her," said Hagar. "Her body lying drowned there."

The Colonel glanced at her. "Pull yourself together, Gipsy! Whatever you do, don't get morbid."

"I won't," Hagar answered. "I'm like you there, grandfather. I hate it. But it isn't morbidness to think a little of her."

The Arab brought the coffee. "Turkish coffee!" said the Colonel, not without relish in his voice. "I always wanted to taste—" He did so, appreciatively. "Ah, it's good—" He leaned back in the deep wicker chair and gazed upon the latest attendant. "And what may be your name?"

The figure spread its hands and said something unintelligible. "Humph! Comment vous nommez-vous?"

"Mahomet, Monsieur."

"We've come, Gipsy," said the Colonel, "far from old Virginia. Well, I always wanted to travel, but I never could. I had a sense of responsibility."

It struck Hagar with the force of novelty that what he said was true. He had such a sense. There had always been times when she did not like her grandfather, and times when she did. But during the last two weeks, filled with a certain loneliness and strangeness for them both, she had felt nearer to him than ever before. There had chanced to be on the boat few people whom he found congenial. He had been forced to fall back upon his granddaughter's companionship, and in doing so he had made the discovery that the child had a mind. He liked mind. Of old, when he was most sarcastically harsh toward Maria, he had yet grudgingly admitted that she had mind—only, which was the deep damnation, she used it so wrongheadedly! But Gipsy—Gipsy wouldn't have those notions! The Laydon matter had been just a foolish girl's affair. She had been obstinate, but she had seen her mistake. As for Ralph—Ralph would get her yet. The Colonel had been careful, in their intercourse during the voyage, to bring forward none of her mother's notions. He found that she knew really an amazing amount of geography and history, that to a certain extent she followed public events, that she knew Byron and could quote Milton, and that though she had no Greek (he had forgotten most of his), she was familiar with translations and could not only give a connected account of the Olympian family, but could follow in their windings the minor myths. The long voyage, the hours when they reclined side by side in their steamer chairs, or with the country need for exercise paced from prow to stern, and from stern to prow, taught him more about his granddaughter than had done the years at Gilead Balm. She told him of the acceptance of "The Lame Duck" and the sending of "The Mortal," and he was indulgent toward her prospects. "There have been women who have done very good work of a certain type. It's limited, but it's good of its kind. As letter-writers they have always excelled. Of course, it isn't necessary for you to write, and in the Old South, at least, we've always rather deprecated that kind of thing for a woman."

The Colonel drank his thick coffee from its little metal cup with undeniable and undenied pleasure. He was not hypocritical, and he never canted. His only son lay in a large bedroom of this luxurious suite, maimed and hardly conscious, and whether he would live or die no one knew. But the Colonel had never wept over Medway in the past and he was not going to weep now. He drank his coffee leisurely, and when it was done Mahomet took salver and cup away. Rising, the Colonel walked to one of the windows and stood looking out at a bougainvillæa-covered wall, a shaggy eucalyptus tree, and a seated beggar, fearful to the eye. It was afternoon, and they had been in Alexandria since eight o'clock. "I sent a cable to your grandmother. The doctors think he's holding his own, but I don't know. It looks pretty bad. They've got a nurse from a hospital here,—two, in fact,—and that man Thomson is invaluable.... I've seen, too, this morning, before they let me into the room, his wife's brother. It seems that he was in London at the time, and came on and has very properly waited here for our arrival. We walked through the Place Mahomet Ali, and he took me to a very good club, where we sat and talked.... Her will—it's rather curious. I suppose Medway, if he lives, will be disappointed. And yet, with care, he'll have enough." The Colonel laughed, rather grimly. "We'd think in Virginia, that a million was a good livelihood, but standards are changing, and doubtless he's been feeling many times that amount between his fingers. It occurred to me that they must have quarrelled. It's like a woman to fling off and do a thing like that hastily. Her brother says, however, that he believes they were really happy together. He fancies that she had some feminine scruple or other as to the way her first husband obtained his wealth,—as the world goes, entirely honourable transactions, I believe,—and that she had an idea of 'restoring' it. She made this last will in London, just before they started on this long trip that's ended so. It's been read. There's a string of bequests to servants and so on. She leaves just one million, well invested, to Medway. The rest, and it's an enormous rest, goes into a fund, for erecting model lodging-houses and workmen's dwellings. Philanthropy mad!" said the Colonel. "Her brother's got, I understand, some millions of his own, and he could afford to smile. Also, he's been supposing for a year that it would all go to Medway. Well, that's where Medway is—if he lives. Fifty thousand or so a year," said the Colonel, regarding the beggar, "is not an income to be despised. I should be happy if I saw, each year, in clear money, an eighth as much."

There came a knock at the door and the physician entered. He was an American, a young, fresh-coloured man with an air of strength and capability. He had lunched with the two Ashendynes, and now came in as one at home. He looked graver now than then; there was a plain cloud upon his brow. "I don't believe he can hold out," he said abruptly. "He has a magnificent constitution, and his body is making a splendid fight, but—It may come at any minute with a quick collapse. Of course, I'm not saying that it will be so. But if Miss Ashendyne wishes to see him, or to be with him if it should happen to be the end—"

Hagar turned deadly pale. The Colonel, not usually considerate of her or given to thinking that she needed consideration, was somehow different to-day. "If you'd rather not, Gipsy—? Indeed, I think that you had better not. It isn't as though you had been always with him." He turned to the physician. "She has seen very little of her father since baby-hood."

But Hagar had steadied herself and risen from her chair. "Thank you, grandfather, but I would rather go with you." It was almost sunset, and the splendid western light flooded the chamber where the sick man lay. He lay low upon the pillows, with only a light covering. There had been, beside injuries to spine and limb, and some internal hurt, a bad blow over the head. This was bandaged; fold after fold of gauze wrapped around forehead and crown. "Oh," thought Hagar, "it is like the white helmet in that dream!" But the features below were not flushed with health; they were grey and drawn. The second physician, standing at the bed-head, lifted his hand from the pulse and moved to the side of the first. "A little stronger." The nurse placed a chair for Hagar. Thomson, at the windows, raised the jalousies higher, and the light evening breeze blew through the room. "It may or it may not be," said the first doctor in a low voice to the Colonel. "If he pulls through to-night, I'll say he wins."

The amber, almost red, light of the sun bathed the bed. When the sun sank, a violet light covered it. When the short twilight was gone, and the large, mild stars shone out, they brought shaded lamps, and the bed lay half in that light and half in the shadow. In the room, through the slow passing hours, hushed, infrequent movements took place, the doctors relieving each other in the watch by the bed, the night nurse arriving, the giving of stimulants, whispered consultations by the window. The adjoining room was prepared for rest and relaxation; there was a table with bread and cold meat and wine. The Colonel came and went, noiseless as a shadow, but a restless shadow. Once or twice during the night his touch upon her shoulder or his hand beckoning from the doorway drew Hagar forth. "You'd better rest, child. Here, drink this wine!" Each time she stayed half an hour or so, either in the room or out upon the balcony which gave upon a garden, but then she stole back into the bedroom.

She sat in a big chair which she had drawn aside and out of the way. She could, however, see the bed and the figure upon it; not clearly, because the lights were low, but dimly. She rather felt than saw it; it was as though a sixth sense were busy. She sat very still. Her father.... Through her mind, automatically, without any conscious willing, drifted words and images that spoke of father and child. It might be a Bible verse, it might be a line from a younger poet, it might be an image from some story or history. Father and child—father and daughter—father and daughter.... To sit and see her father die, and to feel no deep sorrow, no rending sense of companionship departing, no abject, suffocating pulsing of a stricken heart, no lifted hope and faith or terror for him, no transcending sense of self-relinquishment, while the loved one flew farther and swifter and higher out of her sight, away from this life's low level.... She could not feel any of that. As little as the Colonel did she believe in or practise cant. She knew that she could not feel it thus, and knew why. But there was a great forlornness in sitting there and watching this stranger die.

She tried to strengthen the faint memories that the past held. Was she five or six years old the last time she had seen him? The distinctest image was of underneath the cedars at Gilead Balm. There was a shawl spread upon the grass. Her father was lying on it, his hat tilted over his eyes. There was a book beside him. She had been gathering dandelions, and she came and sat down on the edge of the shawl and opened the book. She thought every book had pictures, but there were none in that one. Then he had waked up and laughed at her, and said, "Come here!"—It flashed into her consciousness, from where it had lain unrecalled all these years, just what he had said. He had said, "Come here, Miss Ugly, Ill-omened Name!" She had gone, and in playing with her he had accidentally burned her finger with his lighted cigar. And then—it came to her with an effect of warmth and sunshine, and with a feeling of wanting to laugh, with tears in her eyes—he had been beautifully, charmingly shocked and apologetic. He had taken her away and made Old Miss bandage the finger, and then he had shouldered her and carried her into the orchard and broken boughs of apple blossoms for her and told her "Jack and the Beanstalk." ... That was almost all she could remember; or if there were one or two less agreeable things, she would not remember those now. She tried to keep the warmth about her heart; on the whole, aided by human pity for the broken form upon the bed, she succeeded better than she could have dreamed.

The man upon the bed!—Outside the fatherhood, outside the physical relation between them—there he was, a human being with death hovering above. It was easier to think of him just as a fellow-being; she laid hold of that thought and kept it. A fellow-mortal—a fellow-mortal. With a strange sense of relief, she let the images and words and the painful straining for some filial feeling pass from her soul. She did not know why she should feel toward him filially; he had not, like her mother, suffered to give her life; he had probably never thought of her; she had not been to him the concern in the matter. Nor hardly since had he acted parentally toward her. With a wry humour she had to concede the winter in New York, the summer at the New Springs, but it hardly seemed that the sacrifice could have been great, or that the need for gratitude was extreme. Her soul rose against any hypocrisy. She could not and she would not try to say, "Dear father—dear father!" The vision of her mother rose beside her.... But just to think of him as a human being—she could do that; a man lying there on the knife edge of the present, with the vast, unplumbed gulf before him.... That dream of the blue sea and the palm trees and the low pale-coloured houses returned to mind, but she put it from her somewhat shudderingly. He had looked so abounding in life, so vivid and vital, with the white hat like a helmet!... A fellow-mortal, lying there, helpless and suffering....

At three in the morning the physician in charge, who had been sitting for some time beside the bed, rose and moved away. He nodded his head to his fellow. Hagar caught the satisfaction in the gesture even before, in passing her chair, he paused to say just audibly, "I think your father will recover." A short time passed, and then the Colonel touched her arm. "They think it safe for us to go. He is stronger. Come! They'll call if there is any need, but they don't think there will be."

Going, she stopped for a moment close beside the bed. She had not been this near before. Medway lay there, with his head swathed in bandages, with his lips and chin unshorn, with no colour now in his cheeks, with his eyes closed. Hagar felt the sudden smart of tears between her own lids. The gold thread of the dandelion day tied itself to the natural human pity and awe. Her lips trembled. "Father!" she said, in the lowest of whispers. Her hand moved falteringly until, for the lightest moment, it rested upon his.

In the outer room the physician joined them. "He'll still have to fight for it, and there may be setbacks. It's going to be a weary, long, painful siege for him, but I don't believe he's going to die. Indeed, I think that, except in the one respect, we'll get him back to being a well man with a long life before him."

"And that respect?"

"I'm afraid, Colonel Ashendyne, that he'll never walk again. If he does, it will be with crutches and with great difficulty."

When, half an hour later, Hagar opened the door of her own room, the dawn was coming. It was a comfortable bedroom, large, cool, and high-pitched, and it, too, had a balcony. The bed invited; she was deadly tired; and yet she doubted if she could sleep. She stood in the middle of the room, her hands over her eyes, then, a little stumblingly, she went out upon the balcony. It was a small place, commanding the east. There was a chair and a little table on which you could rest your arms, and your head upon them, sideways so that you could see the sky. It was just grey light; there were three palm trees rustling, rustling. After a while purple came into the sky, and then pale, pale gold. The wind fell, the palms stood still, the gold widened until all the east was gold. She saw distant, strange, flat roofs, a distant dome and slender towers, all against the pale, pale gold. The air was cool and unearthly still. Her head upon her arm, her face very quiet, her eyes open upon the deepening light, she stayed until the gardeners came into the garden below.

CHAPTER XX
MEDWAY

Five days later, Medway, one morning, recognized the Colonel. "Why, my dear father, what are you doing here?... What's it all about?" His feeble voice died away; without waiting for an answer, he lapsed into a kind of semi-consciousness. Out of this, day by day, though, he came more strongly. Directly he appeared to accept, without further curiosity, his father's occasional presence in the room. Another interval, and he began to question the physician and nurses. "Back, eh?—and leg, and this thing on my head. I don't remember.—A kind of crash.... What happened?"

Evasive answers did for a while, but it was evident that they would not do for ever. In the end it was Thomson who told him.

"You did, did you!" exclaimed the doctor in the outer room. "Well, I don't know but what it's just as well!"

"I couldn't help it, sir. He pinned me down."

The Colonel spoke. "Just what and how much did you tell him?"

"I told him, sir, about the wreck, and how he got beaten about, and how I fastened him, when he was senseless and we were sinking, to a bit of spar, and how we were picked up with some of the crew about dawn. And about his being brought here, and being very well cared for, and your coming from New York, you and Miss Ashendyne, and that he'd been wonderful close to dying, but was all right now, and what the date was, and things like that, sir."

"Did he ask for his wife?"

"Yes, sir."

"And you told him?"

"Yes, sir."

The doctor rose. "Well, I'm glad it's done. I'll go see—" and disappeared into the sick-room.

"I think you did well, Thomson," said the Colonel. "When you've got to take a thing, you'd better stand up and take it, and the quicker the better."

"Yes, sir," said Thomson; and adjusted the jalousies, it being now very warm and the glare at times insupportable.

The Colonel, under the guidance of a dragoman of the best, had been shopping, and was in white duck. Hagar, too, had secured from a French shop muslin and nainsook.

Thomson had been concerned for her lack of any maid or female companionship. He had gently broached the subject a week or two before. "Mrs. Ashendyne had an excellent maid, Miss, who was with us on the yacht that night and was saved. But she's of a high-wrought nature, and the shock and cold and everything rather laid her up. She has a brother who is a photographer in Cairo, having married a native woman, and she's gone to stay with him awhile, before she goes back into service. If that hadn't been the case, Miss, you might, if you wished, have taken her on. I think she would have given satisfaction. As it is, Miss, I know some English people with a shop here, and I think through them I could find you some one. She would not be a superior lady's maid like Cécile, but—"

Hagar had declined the offer. "I never had a maid, thank you, Thomson. I can do for myself very well."

She liked Thomson, and Thomson agreed with the nurse that she was a considerate young lady. Now, having adjusted the blinds, Thomson left the room.

The Colonel paced up and down, his hands behind him. The white duck was becoming; he did not look sixty. Hair, mustache, and imperial were quite grey; except for that he had never aged to Hagar's eyes. His body had the same height and swing, the same fine spareness; his voice kept the same rich inflections, all the way from mellow and golden to the most corroding acid; he dominated, just as she remembered him in her childhood. Not all of his two weeks in Egypt had been spent by Medway's bedside; he had been fairly over Alexandria, and to Meks and Ramleh, and even afield to Abûkir and Rosetta. He had offered to take her with him upon these later excursions, but she had refused. The brother of her father's wife was going with him, and she correctly thought that they would be freer without her. The Colonel acquiesced. "I dare say you'll have chances enough to see things, Gipsy." It was her first intimation that any one had in mind her staying....

Now the Colonel, after pacing awhile, spoke reflectively. "At this rate it won't be long before he's really well enough to talk. I'll have to have several talks with him. Did you gather, Gipsy, that Thomson had told him that he would remain crippled?"

"I do not think he told him that, grandfather."

"That's going to be the shock," said the Colonel. "Well, he'll have to be told! I think Thomson—or the doctor—had better do it. And then he'll have to learn about that will. Altogether, it may delay his convalescence a little. Of course, I'll stay until he's practically recovered—as far as he can recover."

"Do you think that ... perhaps ... he might like to go home—to go home to Gilead Balm?"

"Not," answered the Colonel, "if I know Medway, and I think I do! To come back, crippled, after all these primrose years—to sleep in his old room, and Maria's—to sit on the porch and listen to Bob and Serena—No!"

That night in her own room Hagar placed two candles on the table, took a sheet of paper and a pencil, and sitting down, made a calculation. The night was warm to oppression; through the windows came the indefinite, hot, thick murmur of the evening city. Hagar sat with bare arms and throat and loosened hair. She wrote her name, Hagar Ashendyne, and her age, and then, an inch below, a little table,—