Hagar

Midway of the poem she turned a little so that she could see the reader.

He sat in the circle of lamplight, a presentable man, well-formed, dark-eyed, and enthusiastic; fairly presentable within, too, very fairly clean, a good son, filled with not unhonourable ambitions; good, average, human stuff with an individual touch of impressionability and a strong desire to be liked, as he expressed it, "for himself"; young still, with the momentum and emanation of youth. The lamp had a rose and amber shade. It threw a softened, coloured, dreamy light. Everything within its range was subtly altered and enriched.

Hagar sat in her corner, upon the low stool, in the firelight, as motionless as though she were in a trance. Her eyes, large, of a marvellous hazel, beneath straight, well-pencilled brows of deepest brown, were fixed steadily upon the man reading. Slowly, tentatively, something rich and delicate seemed to rise within her, something that clung to soul and body, something strange, sweet and painful, something that, spreading and deepening with great swiftness, suffused her being and made her heart at once ecstatic and sorrowful. She blushed deeply, felt the crimsoning, and wished to drop her head upon her arms and be alone in a balmy darkness. It was as though she were in a strange dream, or in one of her long romances come real.

Laydon put the book down upon the table. While he read, one of the maids, Zinia, had brought a note to Miss Bedford, and that lady had gone away to answer it. Mrs. Lane knitted on, her lips moving, her back to the table and the hearth. Francie Smythe was sorting silks. "That was a lovely piece," she said unemotionally, and went on dividing orange from lemon. The girl with the menthol pencil was more appreciative. "Once, when I was a little girl I went with my father and mother to Rome. We went out on the Campagna. I remember now how it was all green and flat and wide as the sea and still, and there were great arches running away—away—and a mist that they said was fever." Her voice sank. She sighed and rubbed her forehead with the menthol. Her eyes closed.

Edgar Laydon rose and came into the circle of firelight. He was moved by his own reading, shaken with the impulse and rhythm of the poem. He stood by the mantel and faced Hagar. She was one of his pupils, she recited well; of the essays, the "compositions," which were produced under his direction, hers were the best; he had told her more than once that her work was good; in short, he was kindly disposed toward her. To this instant that was all; he was scrupulously correct in his attitude toward the young ladies whom he taught. He had for his work a kind of unnecessary scorn; he felt that he ought to be teaching men, or at the very least should hold a chair in some actual college for women. Eglantine was nothing but a Young Ladies' Seminary. He felt quite an enormous gulf between himself and those around him, and, as a weakness will sometimes quaintly do, this feeling kept him steady. Until this moment he was as indifferent to Hagar Ashendyne, as to any one of the fifty whom he taught, and he was indifferent to them all. He had a picture in his mind of the woman whom some day he meant to find and woo, but she wasn't in the least like any one at Eglantine.

Now, in an instant, came a change. Hagar's eyes, very quiet and limpid, were upon him. Perhaps, deep down, far distant from her conscious self, she willed and exercised an ancient power of her sex and charmed him to her; perhaps—in his lifted mood, the great, sensuous swing of the verse still with him, the written cry of passion faintly drumming within his veins—he would have suddenly linked that diffused emotion to whatever presence, young and far from unpleasing, might have risen at this moment to confront him. However that may be, Laydon's eyes and those of Hagar met. Each gaze held the other for a breathless moment, then the lids fell, the heart beat violently, a colour surged over the face and receded, leaving each face pale. A log, burned through, parted, striking the hearth with a sound like the click of a closing trap.

Mrs. Lane, having come to an easy part in the pattern, turned her face to the rest of the room. "Aren't we going to have some more poetry? Read us some more, Mr. Laydon."

The girl with the menthol pencil spoke dreamily. "Isn't there another piece about the Campagna? I can see it plain—green like the sea and arches and tombs and a mist hanging over it, and a road going on—a road going on—a road going on."

CHAPTER VIII
HAGAR AND LAYDON

This is what they did. The next day was soft as balm. To Hagar, sitting in the sun on the step of the west porch, came the sound of steps over the fallen leaves of what was called at Eglantine the Syringa Alley—sycamore boughs above and syringa bushes thickly planted and grown tall, making winding walls for a winding path. The red surged over Hagar, her eyes, dark-ringed, half-closed. Laydon, emerging from the alley, came straight toward her, over a space of gravel and wind-brought leaves. It was mid-morning, the place open and sunny, to be viewed from more windows than one, with the servants, moreover, going to and fro on their morning business, apt to pass this gable end. Aunt Dorinda, for instance, the old, turbaned cook, passed, but she saw nothing but one of the teachers stopping to say, "Merry Christmas!" to Miss Hagar. All the servants liked Miss Hagar.

What Laydon said was not "Merry Christmas!" but, "Hagar, Hagar! that was Love came to us last night! I have not slept. I have been like a madman all night! I did not know there was such a force in the world."

"I did not sleep either," answered Hagar. "I did not sleep at all."

"Every one can see us here. Let us walk toward the gate, through the alley."

She rose from the step and went with him. Well in the shelter of the syringa, hidden from the house, he stopped, and laid his hands lightly upon her shoulders, then, as she did not resist, drew her to him. They kissed, they clung together in a long embrace, they uttered love's immemorial words, smothering each with each, then they fell apart; and Hagar first buried her face in her hands, then, uncovering it, broke into tremulous laughter, laughter that had a sobbing note.

"What will they say at Gilead Balm—oh, what will they say at Gilead Balm?"

"Say!" answered Laydon. "They'll say that they wish your happiness! Hagar, how old are you?"

"I'm nearly eighteen."

"And old for your years. And I—I am twenty-eight, and young for my years." Laydon laughed, too. He was giddy with happiness. "Gilead Balm! What a strange name for a place—and you've lived there always—"

"Always."

They were moving now down the alley toward a gate that gave upon the highroad. Near by lay an open field seized upon, at Christmas, by a mob of small boys with squibs and torpedoes and cannon crackers. They had a bonfire, and the wood smoke drifted across, together with the odour of burning powder. The boys were shouting like Liliputian soldiery, and the squibs and giant crackers shook the air as with a continuous elfin bombardment. The nearest church was ringing its bells. Laydon and Hagar came to the gate—not the main but a lesser entrance to Eglantine. No one was in view; hand in hand they leaned against the wooden palings. Before them stretched the road, an old, country pike going on and on between cedar and locust and thorn until it dropped into the violet distance.

"I wish we were out upon it," said Hagar; "I wish we were out upon it, going on and on through the world, travelling like gipsies!"

"You look like a gipsy," he said. "Have you got gipsy blood in you?"

"No.... Yes. Just to go on and on. The open road—and a clear fire at night—and to see all things—"

"Hagar—Why did they call you Hagar?"

"I don't know. My mother named me."

"Hagar, we've got to think a little.... It took us so by surprise.... We had best, I think, just quietly say nothing to anybody for a while.... Don't you think so?"

"I had not thought about it, but I will," said Hagar. She gazed down the road, her brows knit. The Christmas cannonading went on, a continuous miniature tearing and shaking of the air, with a dwarf shouting and laughing, and small coalescing clouds of powder smoke. The road ran, a quiet, sunny streak, past this small bedlam, into the still distance. "I won't tell any one at Eglantine," she said at last, "until Mrs. LeGrand comes back. She will be back in a week. But I'll write to grandmother to-night."

Laydon measured the gate with his hand. "I had rather not tell my mother at once. She is very delicate and nervous, and perhaps she has grown a little selfish in her love for me. Besides, she had set her heart on—" He threw that matter aside, it being a young and attractive kinswoman with money. "I had rather not tell her just now. Then, as to Mrs. LeGrand.... Of course, I suppose, as I am a teacher here, and you are a pupil ... but there, too, had we not best delay a little? It will make a confusion—things will be said—my position will become an embarrassing one. And you, too, Hagar,—it won't be pleasant for you either. Isn't it better just to keep our own concerns to ourselves for a while? And your people up the river—why not not tell them until summer-time? Then, when you go home,—and when I have finished my engagement here, for I don't propose to come back to Eglantine next year,—then you can tell them, and so much better than you could write it! I could follow you to Gilead Balm—we could tell them together. Then we could discuss matters and our future intelligently—and that is impossible at the moment. Let us just quietly keep our happiness to ourselves for a while! Why should the world pry into it?" He seized her hands and pressed his face against them. "Let us be happy and silent."

She looked at him with her candid eyes. "No, we shouldn't be happy that way. I'll write to grandmother to-night."

They gazed at each other, the gate between them. The strong enchantment held, but a momentary perplexity crossed it, and the never long-laid dust of pain was stirred. "I am not asking anything wrong," said Laydon, a hurt note in his voice. "I only see certain embarrassments—difficulties that may arise. But, darling, darling! it shall be just as you please! 'I'd crowns resign to call you mine'—and so I reckon I can face mother and Mrs. LeGrand and Colonel Ashendyne!" A flush came into his cheek. "I've been so foolish, too, as to—as to pay a little attention to Miss Bedford. But she is too sensible a woman to think that I meant anything seriously—"

"Did you?"

"Not in the least," said Laydon truthfully. "A man gets lonely, and he craves affection and understanding, and he's in a muddle before he knows it. There isn't anything else there, and I never said a word of love to her. Darling, darling! I never loved any one until last night by the fire, and you looked up at me with those wonderful eyes, and I looked down, and our eyes met and held, and it was like a fine flame all over—and now I'm yours till death—and I'll run any gauntlet you tell me to run! If you write to your people to-night, so will I. I'll write to Colonel Ashendyne."

They left the gate and again pursued the syringa alley. The sound of the Christmas bombardment drifted away. When they reached the shadow of the great bushes, he kissed her again. All the air was blue and hazy and the church bells were ringing, ringing. "I haven't any money," said Laydon. "Mother has a very little, but I've never been able, somehow, to lay by. I'll begin now, though, and then, as I told you, I expect next year to have a much better situation. Dr. —— at —— thinks he may get me in there. It would be delightful—a real field at last, the best of surroundings and a tolerable salary. If I were fortunate there, we could marry very soon, darling, darling! But as it is—It is wretched that Eglantine pays so little, and that there is so little recognition here of ability—no career—no opportunity! But just you wait and see—you one bright spot here!"

Hagar gazed at the winding path, strewn with bronze leaves, and at the syringa bushes, later to be laden with fragrant bloom, and at the great white sycamore boughs against the pallid blue, and at the roof and chimneys of Eglantine, now apparent behind the fretwork of trees. The inner eye saw the house within, the three-years-familiar rooms, her "tower room"—and all the human life, the girls, the teachers, the servants. Bright drops came to her eyes. "I've been unhappy here, too, sometimes. But I couldn't stay three years in a place and not love something about it."

"That is because you are a woman," said the lover. "With a man it is different. If a place isn't right, it isn't right.—If I had but five thousand dollars! Then we might marry in a month's time. As it is, we'll have to wait and wait and wait—"

"I am going to work, too," said Hagar. "I am going to try somehow to make money."

He laughed. "You dear gipsy! You just keep your beautiful, large eyes, and those dusky warm waves of hair, and your long slim fingers, and the way you hold yourself, and let 'trying to earn money' go hang! That's my part. Too many women are trying to earn money, anyhow—competing with us.—You've got just to be your beautiful self, and keep on loving me." He drew a long breath. "Jove! I can see you now, in a parlour that's our own at ——, receiving guests—famous guests, maybe, after a while; people who will come distances to see me! For I don't mean to remain unknown. I know I've got ability."

Before they left the alley they settled that both should write that night to Gilead Balm. Laydon found the idea distasteful enough; older and more worldly-wise than the other, he knew that there would probably ensue a tempest, and he was constitutionally averse to tempests. He was well enough in family, but no great things; he had a good education, but so had others; he could give a good character—already he was running over in mind a list of clergymen, educators, prominent citizens, and Confederate veterans to whom he could refer Colonel Ashendyne. He had some doubt, however, as to whether comparative spotlessness of character would have with Colonel Ashendyne the predominant and overweening value that it should have. Money—he had no means; position—he had as yet an uncertain foothold in the world, and no powerful relatives to push him. Unbounded confidence he had in himself, but the point was to create that confidence in Hagar's people. Of course, they would say that she was too young, and that he had taken advantage. His skirts were clear there; both had truthfully been taken prisoners, fallen into an ambuscade of ancient instinct; there hadn't been the slightest premeditation. But how to convey that fact to the old Bourbon up the river? Laydon had once been introduced to Colonel Ashendyne upon one of the latter's rare visits to the neighbouring city and to Eglantine. He remembered stingingly the Colonel's calm and gentlemanly willingness immediately to forget the existence of a teacher of Belles-Lettres in a Young Ladies' School. The letter to Gilead Balm. He didn't want to write it, but he was going to—oh! he was going to.... Women were curiously selfish about some things.... Mrs. LeGrand, too; he thought that he would write about it to Mrs. LeGrand. He could imagine what she would say, and he didn't want to hear it. He was in love, and he was going to do the honourable thing, of course; he had no idea otherwise. But he certainly entertained the wish that Hagar could see how entirely honourable, as well as discreet, would be silence for a while.

Hagar never thought of it in terms of "honour." She had no adequate idea of his reluctance. It might be said that she knew already the arching of Mrs. LeGrand's brows and the lightning and thunder that might issue from Gilead Balm. Grandfather and grandmother, Aunt Serena and Uncle Bob looked upon her as nothing but a child. She wasn't a child; she was eighteen. She felt no need to vindicate herself, nor to apologize. She was moving through what was still almost pure bliss, moving with a dreamlike tolerance of difficulties. What did it matter, all those things? They were so little. The air was wine and velvet, colours were at once soft and clear, sound was golden. In the general transfiguration the man by her side appeared much like a demigod. Her wings were fairly caught and held by the honey. It was natural for her to act straightforwardly, and when she must propose that she act so still, it was simply a putting forward, an unveiling of the mass of her nature. She showed herself thus and so, and then went on in her happy dream. Had he been able to make her realize his great magnanimity in giving up his point of view to hers, perhaps she might have striven for magnanimity, too, and acquiesced in a temporary secrecy, perhaps not—on the whole, perhaps not. Had she deeply felt the secrecy to be necessary, had they paced the earth in another time and amid actual dangers, wild beasts could not have torn from her a relation of their case.

But Laydon thought that she was thinking in terms of "honour." Pure women were naturally up in arms at the suggestion of secrecy. Their delicate minds had at once a vision of deception, desertion, all kinds of horrors. He acknowledged that men had given them reason for the vision; they could not be blamed if they saw it even when an entirely honourable and devoted man was at their feet. He smiled at what he supposed Hagar thought; his warm sense of natural supremacy became rich and deep; he felt like an Eastern king unfolding a generous and noble nature to some suppliant who had reason to doubt those qualities in Eastern kings at large—he experienced a sumptuous, Oriental, Ahasuerus-and-Esther feeling. Poor little girl! If she had any absurd fear like that—He began to be eager to get to the letter to Colonel Ashendyne. He could see his own strong black handwriting on a large sheet of bond paper. My dear Colonel Ashendyne:—You will doubtless be surprised at the nature and contents of this letter, but I beg of you to—

The syringa alley ended, and the west wing of the house, beyond which stretched the offices, opened upon them. Zinia, the mulatto maid, and old Daniel, the gardener, watched them from a doorway. "My Lord!" said Zinia. "Dey's walkin' right far apart, but I knows a co'tin' air when I sees it! Miss Sarah better come back here!"

Daniel frowned. He had been born on the Eglantine place and the majesty and honour and glory of Eglantine were his. "Shet yo' mouf, gal! Don't no co'tin' occur at Eglantine. Hit's Christmas an' everybody looks good an' shinin' lak de angels. Dey two jes' been listenin' to de 'lumination an' talkin' jography an' Greek!"

As the two stepped upon the west porch, the door opened and Miss Bedford came out—Miss Bedford in a very pretty red hood and a Connemara cloak. Miss Bedford had a sharp look. "Where did you two find each other?" she asked; then, without waiting for an answer, "Hagar! Mrs. Lane has been looking for you. She wants you to help her do up parcels for her mission children. I've been tying up things until I am tired, and now I am going to walk down the avenue for a breath of air. Hurry in, dear; she needs you.—Oh, Mr. Laydon! there's a passage in 'The Ring and the Book' that I've been wanting to ask you to explain—"

Hagar went in and tied up parcels in coloured tissue paper. The day went by as in a dream. There was a Christmas dinner, with holly on the table, and little red candles, and in the afternoon she went with Mrs. Lane to a Christmas tree for poor children in the Sunday-School room of a neighbouring church. The tree blazed with an unearthly splendour, the star in the top seemed effulgent, the "Ohs!" and "Ahs!" and laughter of the circling children, fell into a rhythm like sweet, low, distant thunder.

That night she wrote both to her grandmother and her grandfather. When she had made an end of doing so, she kneeled upon the braided rug before the fire in her tower room, loosed her dark hair, shook it around her, and sat as in a tent, her arms clasping her knees, her head bowed upon them. "Carcassonne—Aigues-Mortes. Carcassonne—Aigues-Mortes. I can't send a letter to father, for I don't know where to address it. Mother—mother—mother! I can't send a letter to you either...."

CHAPTER IX
ROMEO AND JULIET

That week a noted actress played Juliet several evenings in succession at the theatre in the neighbouring town. The ladies left adrift at Eglantine read in the morning paper a glowing report of the performance. Miss Bedford said she was going; she never missed an opportunity to see "Romeo and Juliet."

Mr. Laydon, walking in at that moment—they were all in the small book-room—caught the statement. "Why shouldn't you all go? I have seen her play it once, but I'd like to see it again." He laughed. "I feel reckless and I'm going to get up a theatre-party! Mrs. Lane, won't you go?"

Mrs. Lane shook her head. "My theatre days are over," she said in her gentle, plaintive voice. "Thank you just the same, Mr. Laydon. But the others might like to go."

"Miss Bedford—"

"We ought," said Miss Bedford, "by rights to have Mrs. Lane to chaperon us, but it's Christmas, isn't it?—and everybody's a little mad! Thank you, Mr. Laydon."

Laydon looked at Francie. "Miss Smythe, won't you come, too?" He had made a rapid calculation. Yes, it would cost only so much,—they would go in of course on the street car,—and in order to ask one he would have to ask all.

Yes, Francie would go, though she was sorry that it was Shakespeare, and just caught herself in time from saying so. "It will be lovely," she said, instead, unemotionally.

Miss Bedford supplied the lacking enthusiasm. "It will be the treat of the winter! Oh, the Balcony Scene, and where she drinks the sleeping-draught, and the tomb—" She moved nearer Laydon as she spoke and managed to convey to him, sotto voce, "You mustn't be extravagant, you generous man! Don't think that you have to ask these girls just because they are in the room." But she was too late; Laydon was already asking.

"Miss Goldwell, won't you come, too, to see 'Romeo and Juliet'?"

If she didn't have a headache, Miss Goldwell would be glad to,—"Thank you, Mr. Laydon."

"Miss Ashendyne, won't you?"

"Yes, thank you."

"I will go at once," said Laydon, "and get the tickets."

In the end, Lily Goldwell went, and Francie Smythe did not. Francie developed a sore throat that put Mrs. Lane in terror of tonsillitis. Nothing must go wrong—nobody must get ill while dear Mrs. LeGrand was away!—it would be madness for Francie to go out. Where "what Mrs. LeGrand might think" came into it, Mrs. Lane was adamant. Francie sullenly stayed at home. Lily, for a marvel, didn't have a headache, and she said she would take her menthol pencil, in case the music should bring on one.

The four walked down the avenue, beneath the whispering trees. There was no moon, but the stars shone bright, and it was not cold. Mr. Laydon and Miss Bedford went a little in front, and Lily and Hagar followed. They passed through the big gate and, walking down the road a little way, came to where the road became a street, and, at ten minutes' interval, a street-car jingled up, reversed, and jingled back to town again.

On the street-car Miss Bedford and Mr. Laydon were again together, and Lily and Hagar. Between the two pairs stretched a row of men, several with the evening newspaper. It was too warm in the car, and Lily, murmuring something, took out her menthol pencil. Hagar studied the score of occupants, and the row of advertisements, and the dark night without the windows. The man next her had a newspaper, and now he began to talk to an older man beside him.

"The country's doing pretty well, seems to me."

The other grunted. "Isn't anything doing pretty well. I'm getting to be a Populist."

"Oh, go away! Are you going to the World's Fair?"

"No. There's going to be the biggest panic yet in this country about one year from now."

"Oh, cheer up! You've been living on Homestead."

"If I have, it's poor living."

Across the aisle a woman was talking about the famine in Russia. "We are going to try to get up a bazaar and make a little money to send to get food with. Tolstoy—"

The horse-car jingled, jingled through the night. All the windows were down; it grew hot and close and crowded. The black night without pressed alongside, peered through the clouded glass. Within were a muddy glare and swaying and the mingled breath of people.

Lily sighed. "Don't you ever wish for just a clear Nothing? No pain, no feeling, no people, no light, no sound, no anything?"

The street-car turned a corner and swayed and jingled into a lighted, business street, where were Christmas windows and upon the pavement a Christmas throng. A drug store—a wine and liquor store—a grocery—a clothing store—a wine and liquor store—a drug store; amber and crimson, green and blue, broken and restless arrived the lights through the filmy glass. Laughter and voices of the crowd came with a distant humming, through which clanged the street-car bell. The car stopped for passengers, then creaked on again. A workman entered, stood for a couple of minutes, touching Hagar's skirt, then, a man opposite rising and leaving the car, sank into the vacant place. Hagar's eyes swept him dreamily; then, she knew not why, she fell to observing him with a puzzled, stealthy gaze. He was certainly young, and yet he did not look so. The lower part of his face was covered by a short soft, dark beard; he had a battered slouch hat pulled down low; the eyes beneath were sombre and the face lined. There was a dinner pail at his feet. He, too, had an evening paper; Hagar saw the headlines of the piece he was reading: "HOMESTEAD"; and underneath, "STRONG HAND OF THE LAW." Outside, topaz and ruby and emerald drifted by the windows of a wine and liquor store.

She knit her brows. Some current in the shoreless sea of mind had been started, but she could not trace its beginning nor where it led. Another minute and the car stopped before the theatre.

Within, Laydon manœuvred, and the end was that if he had Miss Bedford upon his right, yet he had Hagar upon his left. The orchestra had not yet begun; the house was dim, people entering, those seated having to stand up to let the others pass. Once, when this happened, he leaned toward her until their shoulders touched, until his breath was upon her cheek. He dared so much as to whisper, "If only we were here, just you and I, together!"

Every one was seated now, and she looked at the people with their festal, Christmas air. There was a girl in a box who was like Sylvie, and nearer yet a grey-haired gentleman with a certain vague resemblance to her grandfather. Her thought flashed across the dark country, up the winding, amber-hued river to Gilead Balm. They would have had her letter yesterday. The shimmer and murmur of the filled theatre were all about her, but so was Gilead Balm—she tried to hear what they would be saying there to-night. The music began, and in a moment she was in a colourful dream. The curtain went up, and here was the hot, sunshiny street of Verona and all the heady wine of youth and love.

When the curtain fell and the lights brightened, Miss Bedford, after frantically applauding, claimed Laydon for her own. She had raptures to impart, criticisms to exchange, knowledge to imbibe. Minutes passed ere, during a momentary lapse into her programme, Laydon could bend toward the lady on his left. Did she like it? What did she think of Juliet?—What did she think of Romeo?—Was it not well-staged?

Hagar did not know whether it were well staged or not. She was eighteen years old; she had been very seldom to the theatre; she was moving through a dreamy paradise. She wanted just to sit still and bring it all back before the inner eye. Despite the fact that he was her lover, she was not sorry when Laydon must turn to the lady on his right. When Lily spoke to her, she said, "Don't let's talk. Let's sit still and see it all again." Lily agreed. She was no chatterbox herself. The music played; the lights in the house were lowered; up, slowly, gently, went the curtain; here was the orchard of the Capulets.

The great concave of the theatre was dim. Laydon's hand sought Hagar's, found it in the semi-darkness, held it throughout the act. She acquiesced; and yet—and yet—She did not wish him to fondle her hand, nor yet, as once or twice he did, to whisper to her. She wished to listen, listen. She was in Verona, not here.

The act closed. The lights went up, Laydon softly withdrew his hand. He applauded loudly, all the house applauded. Hagar hated the clapping, not experienced enough to know how breath-of-life it was to the people behind the curtain. Already the curtain was rising for Juliet to come forth and bow, and then for Juliet to bring forth Romeo, and both to bow. Had she known, she would have applauded, too; she was a kindly child. The curtain was down now, the house rustling. All around was talking; people seemed never to wish to be quiet. Laydon was talking, too, answering Miss Bedford's artful-artless queries, embarking on a commentary upon act and actors. He talked with a conscious brilliance as became a professor of Belles-Lettres, more especially for Hagar's delight, but aware also that the people directly in front and behind were listening. Was Hagar delighted? Very slowly and insidiously, like a slender serpent stealing into some Happy Valley, there came into her heart a distaste for commentaries. As the valley might be ignorant of the serpent, so neither did she know what was the matter; she was only not so mystically happy as she had been before.

The orchestra came back, there was a murmur of expectation, Laydon ceased to discourse of Bandello, and of Dante's reference to Montague and Capulet. Lily, on the other side of Hagar, complained of the heat and the music. "I like stringed instruments, but those great brass horns make the back of my head hurt so."

Hagar touched her cold, little hand. "Poor Lily! I wish you didn't feel badly all the time! I wish you liked the horns."

The curtain rose, the play rolled on. Mercutio was slain,—Mercutio and Tybalt,—Romeo was banished. The scene changed, and here was the great window of Juliet's room—the rope ladder—the envious East.

Hagar sat, bent forward, her eyes dark and wide, the wine-red in her cheeks. When the curtain went down she did not move; Laydon, under cover of the loud applause, spoke to her twice before she attended. Her eyes came back from a long way off, her mind turned with difficulty. "Yes? What is it?" Laydon was easily aggrieved. "You are thinking more of this wretched play," he whispered, "than you are of me!"

On rolled the swift events, gorgeous and swift as shadows. The curtain fell, the curtain rose. The potion was drunk—the wailing was made—Balthasar rode to warn Romeo. There came the last act: the poison—County Paris—the Tomb—

It was over.... She helped Lily with her red evening cloak, she found Miss Bedford's striped silk bag that Laydon could not find; they all passed out of the house of enchantments. Here was the night, and the night wind, and broken lights and carriages, and a clamour of voices, and at last the clanging street-car with a great freight of talking people. She wanted to sit still and dream it over—and fortunately Laydon was again occupied with Miss Bedford.

"You liked it, didn't you?" asked Lily. "I think that you like things that you imagine better than you like things that you do."

Hagar looked at her with eyes that were yet wide and fixed. "I don't know. If you could be and do all that you can imagine—but you can't—you can't—" she smiled and rubbed her hand across her eyes— "and it's a tragedy."

When they left the street-car and walked toward the Eglantine gates, it was drawing toward midnight. Laydon and Hagar now moved side by side through the darkness. Lily—who said that her head had ached very little, thank you!—exchanged comments on the play with Miss Bedford.

Laydon held the gate open; then, closing it, fell a few feet behind with Hagar. "You enjoyed it?"

"Oh—"

He was again in love. "The plays we'll see together, darling, darling! 'Two souls with but a single thought—'"

"There is no need to walk so fast," said Miss Bedford. "Oh, Mr. Laydon, a briar has caught my skirt—Will you—? Oh, thank you!"

The house showed before them. "The parlour windows are lighted," said Lily. "Mrs. Lane must have company."

Mrs. Lane did have company. She herself opened the front door to them. Mrs. Lane's eyes were red, and she looked frightened. "Wait," she said, and got between the little group and the parlour door. "Lily, you had best go straight upstairs, my dear! Miss Bedford, will you please wait here with me just a minute? Mr. Laydon, Mrs. LeGrand says will you come into the parlour? Hagar, you are to go, too. Your grandfather is here."

Colonel Ashendyne stood between the table and the fire. Mrs. LeGrand was seated upon the sofa, which meant that she sat in state. Mrs. Lane, who came presently stealing in again, sat back from the centre in a meek, small chair, and at intervals wiped her eyes. The culprits stood.

Colonel Argall Ashendyne never lacked words with which to express his meaning—words that bit. Now his well-cut lips opened, and out there came like a scimitar his part of the ensuing conversation.

"Hagar, your letter was read yesterday evening. I immediately telegraphed to Mrs. LeGrand at Idlewood, and she obligingly took this morning's boat. I myself came down on the afternoon train, and got here two hours ago. Now, sir—" he turned on Laydon—"what have you got to say for yourself?"

"I—I—"began Laydon. He drew a breath and his spine stiffened. "I have to say, sir, that I love your granddaughter, and that I have asked her to marry me."

Mrs. LeGrand, while the colonel's hawk eye dwelt witheringly, spoke from the sofa. "I have no words, Mr. Laydon, in which to express my disapproval of your action, or my disappointment in one whom I had supposed a gentleman. In my absence you have chosen to abuse my confidence and to do a most dishonourable and ungentlemanly thing—a thing which, were it known, might easily bring disrepute upon Eglantine. You will understand, of course, that it terminates your connection with this school—"

"Mrs. LeGrand," said Laydon, "I have done nothing dishonourable."

"You have taken advantage of my absence, sir, to make love to one of my pupils—"

"To an inexperienced child, sir," said the Colonel;—"too young to know better or to tell pinchbeck when she sees it! You should be caned."

"Colonel Ashendyne, if you were a younger man—"

"Bah!" said the Colonel. "I am younger now and more real than you!—Hagar!"

"Yes, grandfather."

"Come here!"

Hagar came. The Colonel laid his hands upon her shoulders, a little roughly, but not too roughly. The two looked each other in the eyes. He was tall and she but of medium height, she was young and he was her elder, he was ancestor and she descendant, he was her supporter and she his dependant, he was grandfather and she was grandchild. Gilead Balm had always inculcated reverence for dominant kin and family authority. It had been Gilead Balm's grievance, long ago, against her mother that she recognized that so poorly.... But Hagar had always seemed to recognize it. "Gipsy," said the Colonel now, "I am not going to be hard upon you. It's the nature of the young to be foolish, and a young girl may be pardoned anything short of the irrecoverable. All that I want you to do is to see that you have been very foolish and to say as much to this—this gentleman. Simply turn round and say to him 'Mr.—' What's his name?—Layton?"

"I wrote to you day before yesterday, Colonel Ashendyne," said Laydon. "You saw my name there—"

"I never got your letter, sir! I got hers.—Hagar! say after me to this gentleman, 'Sir, I was mistaken in my sentiment toward you, and I here and now release you from any fancied engagement between us.'—Say it!"

As he spoke, he wheeled her so that she faced Laydon. She stood, a scarlet in her cheeks, her eyes dark, deep, and angry. "Hagar!" cried Laydon, maddened, too, "are you going to say that?"

"No," answered Hagar. "No, I am not going to say it! I have done nothing wrong nor underhand, and neither have you! Mrs. LeGrand knew that you were coming here, in the evening, to read to us. Why shouldn't you come? Well, one evening you were reading and I was listening, and I was not thinking of you and you were not thinking of me. And then, suddenly, something—Love—came into this room and took us prisoner. We did not ask him here, we did not know anything.... But when it happened we knew it, and next morning, out in the open air, we told each other about it. Nothing could have kept us from doing that, and nothing had a right to keep us from it! Nothing!—And that very night I wrote to you, grandfather—and he wrote.... If I am mistaken I am mistaken, but I will find it out for myself!" She twisted herself in the Colonel's grasp until she faced him. "You say that you are real—Well, I am real too! I am as real as you are!"

The Colonel's fine, bony hands closed upon her shoulders until she caught her breath with the pain. The water rushed to her eyes, but she kept it from over-brimming. "Don't cry!" said a voice within her. "Whatever you do, don't cry!" It was like her mother's voice, and she answered instantly. Colonel Ashendyne, his lips white beneath his grey mustache, shook her violently, so violently that, pushed from her footing, she stumbled and sank to her knee.

Laydon came up with clenched fists and the colour gone from his face. "Let her go, damn you!—"

Mrs. Lane uttered a faint cry and Mrs. LeGrand rose from the sofa.

CHAPTER X
GILEAD BALM

The March winds shook the rusty cedars and tossed the pink peach branches, and carried a fleet of clouds swiftly overhead through the blue aërial sea. They rattled the windows of Gilead Balm and bent the chimney smoke aslant like streamers. The winds were rough but not cold. Now and again they sank into the sunniest of calms, little periods of stillness, small doldrums punctuating the stormiest sentences. Then with a whistle, shriller and shriller, they mounted again, tremendously exhilarated, sweeping earth and sky.

On the ridge back of Gilead Balm the buds of the cucumber tree were swelling, the grass beneath was growing green, the ants were out in the sunshine. Up in the branches a bluebird was exploring building-sites.

Hagar came wandering over the ridge. The wind wrapped her old brown dress about her limbs and blew her dark hair into locks and tendrils. Luna followed her, but Luna in no frolicsome mood. Luna was old, old, and to-day dispirited because Captain Bob had gone to a meeting of Democrats in the neighbouring town and had left her behind. Depression was writ in every line of Luna's body, and an old, experienced weariness and disillusionment in the eye with which she looked askance at a brand-new white butterfly on a brand-new dandelion.

Hagar stood with her back to the cucumber tree and surveyed the scene. The hills, scurried over by the shadows of the driven clouds, the river—the river winding down to the sea, and the ditch where used to be the canal; and away, away, the white plume of a passenger train. She was mad for travel, for wandering, for the open road; all the world sung to her as with a thousand tongues in the books she read. Pictures, cathedrals, statues, cities, snow on mountains, the ocean, deserts, torrid lands, France, Spain, Italy, England—oh, to go, to go! She would have liked to fling herself on the blowing wind and go with it over land and sea.

She looked with hot, sombre eyes at Gilead Balm. It was the home she had always known and she loved it; it was home,—yes, it was home; but it was not so pleasant at home just now. March—and the Colonel had withdrawn her from Eglantine, ordered her home, the first of January! January, February, a part of March—and her grandfather still eaten with a cold anger every time he looked at her, and her grandmother, outraged at her suddenly manifested likeness to Maria and Maria's "ways," almost as bad! Aunt Serena gave her no sympathy; Aunt Serena had become almost violent on the subject. If you were going to rebel and disobey, Aunt Serena told her, if you were going to be forward and almost fast, and rebel and disobey, you needn't look for any sympathy from her! Colonel Ashendyne had been explicit enough back in January. "When you send about his business that second-rate person you've chosen to entangle yourself with, then and not till then will you be 'Gipsy' again to me!"

Hagar put out her arms to the wind. "I want to go away! I want to go away! I'm tired of it all—tired of living here—"

The wind blew past her with its long cry; then it suddenly sank, and there came almost a half-hour of bright calm, warm stillness, astral gold. Hagar sat down between the roots of the cucumber tree and took her head within her arms. By degrees, in the sunshine, emotion subsided; she began to think and dream. Her mind sent the shuttle far and fast, it touched here and touched there, and in the course of its weaving it touched Eglantine, touched and quit and touched again. Laydon was still at Eglantine. He had been a very satisfactory Professor of Belles-Lettres; Mrs. LeGrand really did not know where, in mid-season, to find such another. He had behaved wretchedly, but the mischief was done, and there was—on consideration—no need to tell the world about it, no especial need, indeed, of proclaiming it at Eglantine or to Eglantine patrons at large. He was not—Mrs. LeGrand did him that justice—he was not at all a "fast" man or likely to give further trouble upon this line. And he was a good teacher, a good talker, in demand for lectures on cultural subjects before local literary societies, popular and pleasing, a creditable figure among the Eglantine faculty. Much of this matter was probably Hagar's fault. She had made eyes at him, little fool! When the Colonel declared his determination,—with no reflections on Eglantine, my dear friend!—to bring to an end his granddaughter's formal education, and to take her back to Gilead Balm where this infatuation would soon disappear,—Mrs. LeGrand saw daylight. She had an interview with Colonel Ashendyne. He was profoundly contemptuous of what Mr. Laydon did for a living or where he did it, of whom he taught or what he taught, so long as there was distance between him and an Ashendyne. "You know—you know, my dear friend, that I have always had in mind Ralph Coltsworth!" She had an interview—concert pitch—with Laydon. She had a smooth, quiet talk with her teachers. She mentioned casually, to one after another of the girls, that Mrs. Ashendyne at Gilead Balm was not as young as she had been, nor as strong, and that Colonel Ashendyne thought that Hagar should be at home with her grandmother. She, Mrs. LeGrand, regretted it, but every girl's duty to her family was paramount. They would miss Hagar sadly,—she was a dear girl and a clever girl,—but it seemed right that she should go. Hagar went and Laydon stayed, and without a word from any principal in the affair, every girl at Eglantine knew that Mr. Laydon had kissed Hagar, and that Hagar had said that she would love him forever, and that Colonel Ashendyne was very angry, and was probably keeping Hagar on bread and water at that instant, and that it was all very romantic.... And then at Eglantine examinations came on, and dreams of Easter holiday, and after that of Commencement, and Mr. Laydon taught with an entire correctness and an impassive attitude toward all young ladies; and Miss Bedford, who had been very bitter at first and had said things, grew amiable again and reopened her Browning. The ripple smoothed out as all things smoothed out at Eglantine. The place resumed its pristine "sweetness." It was believed among the girls that Mr. Laydon and Hagar "corresponded," but it was not certainly known. Mr. Laydon wrapped himself in dignity as in a mantle. As for Hagar, she had always been rather far away.

Up on the ridge to-day, Hagar's mind dwelt somewhat on Eglantine, but not overmuch. It was not precisely Eglantine that she was missing. Was she missing Laydon? Certainly, at this period, she would have answered that she was—though, to be perfectly truthful, she might have added, "But I do not think of that all the time—not nearly all the time." She was unhappy, and on occasions her fancy brooded over that night in the Eglantine parlour when he read of love, and the flames became jewelled and alive, and she saw the turret on the plain, "by the caper overrooted, by the gourd overscored," and suddenly a warmth and light wrapped them both. The warmth and light certainly still dwelt over that scene and that moment. To a lesser extent it abided over and around the next morning, the west porch, the syringa alley. Very strangely, as she was dimly aware, it stretched only thinly over the following days, over even the night of "Romeo and Juliet." There was there a mixed and wavering light, changing, for the hour that immediately followed,—the hour when she faced her grandfather, and he spoke with knives as he was able to do, when he laid his hands upon her and said untrue and unjust things to Laydon,—into an angry glow. That hour was bright and hot like a ruby. How much was love, and how much outraged pride and a burning sense of wrong, she was not skilled to know, nor how much was actual chivalric defence of her partner in iniquity.... The parting interview, when she and Laydon, having stood upon their rights, obtained a strange half-hour in the Eglantine parlour—strange and stiff, with "Of course, if I love you, I'll be faithful," repeated on her part some five times, with, on his part, Byronic fervour, volcanic utterances. Had he not gone over them to himself afterwards, in his homely, cheerfully commonplace room in the brown cottage outside the Eglantine grounds? They had been fine; from the point of view of Belles-Lettres they could not have been bettered. He felt a glow as he recognized that fact, followed by a mental shot at the great Seat of Learning where he wished to be. "By George! that's the place I'm fitted for! The man they've got isn't in the same class—".... The parting interview—to the girl on the ridge a cloud seemed to hang over that, a cloud that was here and there rose-flushed, but just as often fading into grey. Hagar drove her thoughts back to the first evening and the jewelled fire; that was a clear, fair memory, innocent, rich and sincere. The others had, so strangely, a certain pain and dulness.

She had a sturdy power of reaction against the melancholy and the painful, and as to-day she could not, somehow, fix her mind unswervingly upon the one clear hour, and the others perplexed and hurt, her mind at last turned with decision from any contemplation whatsoever of the round of events which lay behind her presence here, in March, upon the ridge behind Gilead Balm. Rising, she left the cucumber tree and walked along the crest of the ridge. The wind was not blowing now, the sunshine was very golden, the little leaves were springing. She crossed the ribbon-like plateau to its northern edge, and stood, looking down that slope. It was somewhat heavily wooded, and in shadow. It fell steeply to a handsbreadth of sward, a purling streamlet, sunken boulders, a wide thicket and a wood beyond. Hagar, leaning against a young beech, gazed down the shadowed stillness. Her eyebrows lifted at their inner ends, lines came into her forehead, wistful markings about her lips. Sometimes when she knew that she was quite alone she spoke aloud to her self. She did this now. "I haven't been here since that day it happened.... Six years.... I wonder if he ran away again, or if he stayed there to the end. I wonder where he is now. Six years...."

The wind rose and blew fiercely, rattling in the thicket and bending every tree; then it sank again. Hagar leaned against the trunk of the beech and thought and thought. As a child she had been speculative, everywhere and all the time; with youth had come dreams and imaginations, pushing the older intense querying aside. Now of a sudden a leaf was turned. She dreamed and imagined still, but the thinker within her rose a step, gained a foot on the infinite, mounting stair. Hagar began to brood upon the state of the world. "Black and white stripes like a zebra.... How petty to clothe a man—a boy he was then—like that, mark him and brand him, until through life he sees himself striped black and white like a zebra—on his dying bed, maybe, sees himself like that! Vindictive. And the world sees him, too, like that, grotesque and mean and awful, and it cannot cleanse his image in its mind. It is foolish."

The wind roared again up and down the ridge. Hagar shivered and began to move toward the warmer side; then halted, turned, and came back to the beech. "I'll not go away until the sun comes from under that cloud and the wind drops. It's like leaving him alone in the thicket down there, in the cold and shadow." She waited until the sun came out and the wind dropped, then took her hand from the beech tree and went away. Leaving the ridge, she came to the overseer's house, hesitated a moment, then went and knocked at the kitchen door.

"Come in!" called Mrs. Green, who was sitting by the kitchen table, in the patch of sunlight before the window, sewing together strips of bright cloth and winding them into balls for a rag carpet. "You, Hagar? Come right in! Well, March is surely going out like a lion!"

"It's so windy that the clouds are running like sheep," said Hagar. She took a small, split-bottom rocking-chair, drew it near Mrs. Green, and began to wind carpet rags. "Red and blue and grey—it's going to be a beautiful carpet! Have you heard from Thomasine?"

Mrs. Green rose and took a letter from behind the clock. "Read it. She's been to a theatre and the Eden Musée and Brooklyn Bridge, and she's going to visit the Statue of Liberty."

Hagar read five pages of lined notepaper, all covered with Thomasine's pretty, precise writing. "She's having a good time.... I wish I were there, too. I've never seen New York."

"Never mind! You will one day," said Mrs. Green. "Yes, Thomasine's having a good time. Jim was born generous."

"Is she really going to work if he can get her a place?"

"Yes, child, she is. Times seems to me to be gettin' harder right along instead of easier. Girls have got to go out in the world and work nowadays, just the same as boys. I don't know as it will hurt them; anyway, they've got to do it. Food an' clothes don't ask which sect you belong to."

"Thomasine ought to have gone to school. Girls can go to college now, and Thomasine and I both ought to have gone to college."

"Landsake!" said Mrs. Green. "Ain't you been to college for going on three years?"

But Hagar shook her head. "No. Eglantine wasn't exactly a college. I ought to have gone to a different kind of place. Thomasine likes books, too."

"Yes, she likes them, but she don't like them nothing like as much as you do. But Thomasine's a good child and mighty refined. I hope Jim'll take pains to get her a place where they are nice people. He means all right, but there! men don't never quite understand."

"I wish I could earn money," said Hagar. "I wish I could."

Mrs. Green regarded her over her spectacles. "A lot of women have wished that, child. A lot of women have wished it, and then again a lot of women haven't wished it. Some would rather do for themselves an' for others an' some would rather be did for, and that's the world. I've noticed it in men, too."

"It's in my head all the time. I think mother put it there—"

"Yes, I know," said Mrs. Green. "A lot of us have felt that way. But it ain't so easy for women to make money. There's more ways they can't than they can. It's what they call 'Sentiment' fights them. Sentiment don't mind their being industrious, but it draws the line at their getting money for it. It says it ought to be a free gift. It don't grudge—at least it don't grudge much—a little egg and butter money, but anything more—Lord!" She sewed together two strips of blue flannel. "No, it ain't easy. And a woman kind of gets discouraged. She's put her ambition to sleep so often that now with most of them it seems asleep for keeps. Them that's industrious don't expect to rise or anything to come of it, and them that's lazy gets lazier. It's a funny world—for women.—There's a lot of brown strips in the basket there."

"I'm going to tell you what I've done," said Hagar, winding a red ball. "I've written a fairy story—but I don't suppose it will be taken."

"I always knew you could write," said Mrs. Green. "A fairy story! What's it about?"

"About fairies and a boy and a girl, and a lovely land they found by going neither north nor south nor east nor west, and what they did there. It seemed to me right good," said Hagar wistfully; "but I sent it off a month ago, and I've never heard a word about it."

"Where did you send it? I never did know," said Mrs. Green, "how what people writes gets printed and bound. It don't do it just of itself."

Hagar leaned forward in her rocking-chair. Her cheeks were carmine and her eyes soft and bright. "The 'Young People's Home Magazine' offered three prizes for the three best stories—stories that it could publish. And I thought, 'Why not I as well as another?'—and so I wrote a fairy story and sent it. The first prize is two hundred dollars, and the second prize is one hundred dollars, and the third is fifty dollars.—If I could get even the third prize, I would be happy."

"I should think you would!" exclaimed Mrs. Green. "Fifty dollars! I don't know as I ever saw fifty dollars all in one lump—exceptin' war money. When are you going to hear?"

"I don't know. I'm afraid I won't ever hear. I'm afraid it wasn't good enough—not even good enough for them to write to me and say it wouldn't do and tell me why."

"Well, I wouldn't give up hope," said Mrs. Green. "It's my motto to carry hope right spang through the grave." She rose, fed the fire, and filled the tea-kettle, then returned to her rag carpet. "You're lookin' a little thin, child. Don't let them worry you up at the house."

"I'm not," answered Hagar sombrely. The light went out of her eyes. She stitched slowly, drawing her thread through with deliberation.

Mrs. Green again looked over her spectacles. "They're mighty fine folk, the Ashendynes," she said at last. "They've got old blood and pride for a dozen, and the settest heads! Ain't nothin' daunts them, neither Satan nor the Lord. They're goin' to run their own race.—You're more like your mother, but I wouldn't say you didn't have something of your grandfather in you at times. You've got a dash of Coltsworth, too."

"Haven't I anything of my father at all?"

Mrs. Green, leaning forward into the sunlight, threaded her needle. "I wouldn't be bitter about my father, if I were you. People can be born without a sense of obligation and responsibility just as they can be born without other senses. I suppose it's there somewhere, only, so many other things are atop, it ain't hardly ever stirred. Your father's right rich in other things."

"He's so poor he couldn't either truly love my mother or truly let her go.—But I didn't mean to talk about him," said Hagar. She laid the ball she had been winding in the basket with the other balls and stood up, stretching her young arms above her head. "Listen to the wind! I wish it would blow me away, neither north nor south nor east nor west!"

"Yes, you are like your mother," said Mrs. Green. "Have you got to go? Then will you take your grandmother's big knitting-needles back to her for me? And don't you want a winesap?—there's a basket of them behind the door."

CHAPTER XI
THE LETTERS

Miss Serena was playing "Silvery Waves." Hagar, kneeling on the hearth-rug, warmed her hands at the fire and studied the illuminated text over the mantel. "Silvery Waves" came to an end, and Miss Serena opened the green music-book at "Santa Anna's March."

"Has Isham gone for the mail?" asked Hagar.

"Yes. He went an hour ago.—You're hoping, I suppose, for a letter from that dreadful man?"

"You know as well as I do," said Hagar, "that I gave my word and he gave his to write only once a month. And he isn't a dreadful man. He's just like everybody else."

"Ha!" said Miss Serena, and brought her hands down upon the opening chord. Hagar, her elbows on her knees, hid her eyes in her hands. Within her consciousness Juliet was speaking as she had spoken that night upon the stage—spoken in the book—spoken in immortal life, youth, love. Not so, she knew with a suddenness and clangour as of a falling city, not so could Juliet have spoken! "Like everybody else"—Was Laydon, then, truly, like everybody else?—A horror of weakness and fickleness came over her. Was there something direfully wrong with her nature, or was it possible for people simply to be mistaken in such a matter? Her head grew tired; she was so unhappy that she wished to creep away and weep and weep.... Miss Serena, having marched with Santa Anna, turned a dozen pages and began "The Mocking Bird. With Variations."

Old Miss's step was heard in the hall, very firm and authoritative. In a moment she entered the room, portly, not perceptibly aged, her hair, beneath her cap, hardly more than powdered with grey, still wearing black stuff gowns and white aprons and heelless low shoes over white stockings. Hagar rose from the rug and pushed the big chair toward the fire.

Old Miss dropped into it—no, not "dropped"—lowered herself with dignity. "Has Isham brought the mail?"

"No, not yet."

"I dreamed last night that there was a letter from Medway. Serena!"

"Yes, mother?"

"The next text you paint I want you to do one for me. Honour thy father and mother that thy days may be long—"

Miss Serena turned on the piano-stool. "I'll do it right away, mother. It would be lovely in blue and gold.... You can't say that I haven't honoured father and mother."

Old Miss had drawn out her knitting and now her needles clicked. "No one honours them as they used to be honoured. No one obeys them as they used to obey. To-day children think that they are wiser than their fathers. They set up to use their own judgment until it's a scandal.... It's true you've been better than most, Serena. Taking you year in and year out, you've obeyed the commandment. It's more than many daughters and grand-daughters that I know have done." Her needles clicked again. "Yes, Serena, you haven't given us much trouble. You were easy to make mind from the beginning." She gave the due praise, but her tone was not without acerbity. It might almost have seemed that such forthright ductility and keeping of the commandment as had been Miss Serena's had its side of annoyance and satiety.

Hagar spoke from the window where she stood, her forehead pressed against the glass. "I see Isham down the road, by the Half-Mile Cedar."

Old Miss turned the heel of the Colonel's sock she was knitting. "Things that from the newspaper and my personal observation happen now in the world could not possibly have occurred when I was young. People defying their betters, women deserting their natural sphere, atheists denying hell and saying that the world wasn't made in six days, young girls talking about independence and their own lives—their own lives! Ha!"

Miss Serena began to play "The Sea in the Shell." "We all know how Hagar came by her disposition, but I must say it is an unfortunate one! When I was her age, no money could have made me act as she has done."

"No money could have made me, either," spoke Hagar at the window.

"Money has nothing to do with it!" said Old Miss. "At least as far as Hagar is concerned, nothing! But fitness, propriety, meekness, and modesty, consultation with those to whom she owes duty, and bowing to what they say—all those have something to do with it! But what could you expect? It was bound to come out some day. From a bush with thorns will come a bush with thorns."

"Here is Isham," said Hagar. "If you've said enough for to-day, grandmother, shall I get the mail?"

She brought the bag to her grandmother. When the Colonel was at home, no one else opened the small leather pouch and distributed its contents; when he was away Old Miss performed the ceremony. To-day he had mounted Selim and ridden to the meeting in the neighbouring town. Mrs. Ashendyne opened the bag and sorted the mail. There was no great amount of it, but—"I said so! I dreamed it. My dreams often come true. There it is!" "It" was a square letter, quite thick, addressed in a rather striking hand and bearing a foreign stamp and postmark. It was addressed to the Colonel, and Mrs. Ashendyne never opened the Colonel's letters—not even when they were from Medway. They were not from him very often. The last, and that thin between the fingers, had been in September. This one was so much thicker than that one! Old Miss gazed at it with greedy eyes.

Miss Serena, too, leaving the piano-stool, came to her mother's side and fingered the letter. "He must have had a lot to write about. From Paris.... I used to want to go to Paris so much!"

"Put it on the mantelpiece," said Old Miss. "It can't be long before the Colonel's home." Even when it was on the mantel-shelf she still sat looking at it with devouring eyes. "I dreamed it was coming—and there it is!" The remainder of the mail waited under her wrinkled hand.

Miss Serena grew mildly impatient. "What else is there, mother? I'm looking for a letter about those embroidery silks. There it is now, I think!" She drew from her mother's lap an envelope with a printed return address in the upper left-hand corner. "No, it isn't it. 'Young People's Home Magazine.' Some advertisement or other—people pay a lot to tell people about things they don't want! Miss Hagar Ashendyne. Here, Hagar! It evidently doesn't know that you are grown up—or think you are! There's my letter, mother,—under the 'Dispatch.'"

Hagar went away with the communication from the "Young People's Home Magazine" in her hand. She went upstairs to her own room. It had been her mother's room. She slept in the four-poster bed on which Maria had died, and she curled herself with a book in the corner of the flowered chintz sofa as Maria had done before her. She curled herself here to-day, though with the letter, not with a book. The letter lay upon her knees. She looked at it with a fixed countenance, hardly breathing. She had thought herself out of a deal of the conventional and materialized religious ideas of her world—not out of religion but out of conventional religion. She did not often pray now for rewards or benefits, or hiatuses in the common law, or for a salvation external to her own being. But at this moment the past reasserted itself. Her lips moved. "O God, let it have been taken! O God, let it have been taken! Let me have won the fifty dollars! Let me have won the third prize. O God, let it have been taken!"

At last, her courage at the sticking-point, she opened the envelope, and unfolded the letter within. The typewritten words swam before her eyes, the "Dear Madam," the page or two that followed, the "With Congratulations, we are faithfully yours." There was an enclosure—a cheque. She touched it with trembling fingers. It said: "Pay to Miss Hagar Ashendyne the Sum of Two Hundred Dollars."

An hour later, the dinner-bell sounding, she went downstairs. The Colonel and Captain Bob were yet at the meeting of Democrats. There was to be a public dinner; they would not be home before dusk. The three women ate alone, Dilsey waiting. Old Miss was preoccupied; the letter on the parlour mantelpiece filled her mind. "From Paris. In September he was at a place called Dinard." Miss Serena had her mind upon a panel—calla lilies and mignonette—which she was painting for the rectory parlour. As for Hagar, she did not talk much, nowadays, at Gilead Balm. If she were more silent than usual to-day, it passed without notice.

Only once Old Miss remarked upon her appearance. "Hagar, you've got a dazed look about the eyes. Are you feeling badly?"

"No, grandmother."

"You're not to get ill, child. I shall make a bottle of tansy bitters to-morrow morning. We've trouble enough in this family without your losing colour and getting circles round your eyes."

That was love and kindness from Old Miss. The water came into Hagar's eyes. She felt a desire to tell her grandmother and Aunt Serena about the letter, but in another moment it was gone. Her whole inner life was by now secret from them, and this seemed of the inner life. Presently, of course, she would deliberately tell them all; she had thought it out and determined that it would be after supper, before Uncle Bob went to bed and grandfather told her to get the chess-table. It seemed so wonderful a thing to her; she was so awed by it that she could not help the feeling that it would be wonderful to them, too.

In the afternoon she put a cape around her, left the home hill and went down the lane, skirted a ploughed field, and, crossing the river road, came immediately to the fringe of sycamores and willows upon the river bank. It was warmer and stiller than it had been in the morning, for the voice of the wind there sounded now the voice of the river; the many boughs above were still against the sky. She made for a great sycamore that she had known from childhood; it had a vast protuberant curving root in whose embrace you could sit as in an armchair. She sat there now and looked at the river that went so swiftly by. It was swollen with the spring rains; it made a deep noise, going by to the distant sea. To Hagar its voice to-day was at once solemn and jubilant, strong and stirred from depth to surface. She had with her the letter; how many times she had read it she could not have told. She could have said it by heart, but still she wanted to read it, to touch it, to become aware of meaning under meaning.... She could write, she could tell stories, she could write books.... She could earn money. It was one of the moments of her life: the moment when she knew of her mother's death—the moment when she changed Gilead Balm for Eglantine—the moment by the fire, Christmas eve—this moment. She was but eighteen; the right-angled turns in her road of this life had not been many; this was one and a main one. Suddenly, to herself, her life achieved purpose, direction. It was as though a rudderless boat had been suddenly mended, or a bewildered helmsman had seen the pole star.