Hagar Read online

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  HAGAR

  HAGAR

  BY MARY JOHNSTON

 

  BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge 1913

  COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY MARY JOHNSTONALL RIGHTS RESERVED_Published October 1913_

  CONTENTS

  I. THE PACKET-BOAT 1 II. GILEAD BALM 8 III. THE DESCENT OF MAN 19 IV. THE CONVICT 30 V. MARIA 45 VI. EGLANTINE 57 VII. MR. LAYDON 70 VIII. HAGAR AND LAYDON 82 IX. ROMEO AND JULIET 92 X. GILEAD BALM 104 XI. THE LETTERS 116 XII. A MEETING 132 XIII. THE NEW SPRINGS 143 XIV. NEW YORK 154 XV. LOOKING FOR THOMASINE 170 XVI. THE MAINES 184 XVII. THE SOCIALIST MEETING 194 XVIII. A TELEGRAM 208 XIX. ALEXANDRIA 221 XX. MEDWAY 231 XXI. AT ROGER MICHAEL'S 244 XXII. HAGAR IN LONDON 257 XXIII. BY THE SEA 266 XXIV. DENNY GAYDE 275 XXV. HAGAR AND DENNY 284 XXVI. GILEAD BALM 300 XXVII. A DIFFERENCE OF OPINION 313 XXVIII. NEW YORK AGAIN 323 XXIX. ROSE DARRAGH 332 XXX. AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE 341 XXXI. JOHN FAY 351 XXXII. RALPH 360 XXXIII. GILEAD BALM 372 XXXIV. BRITTANY 382

  HAGAR

  HAGAR

  CHAPTER I

  THE PACKET-BOAT

  "_Low Braidge!_"

  The people on deck bent over, some until heads touched knees, others,more exactly calculating, just sufficiently to clear the beams. Thecanal-boat passed beneath the bridge, and all straightened themselveson their camp-stools. The gentlemen who were smoking put their cigarsagain between their lips. The two or three ladies resumed book orknitting. The sun was low, and the sycamores and willows fringing thebanks cast long shadows across the canal. The northern bank was not soclothed with foliage, and one saw an expanse of bottom land, meadowsand cornfields, and beyond, low mountains, purple in the evening light.The boat slipped from a stripe of gold into a stripe of shadow, andfrom a stripe of shadow into a stripe of gold. The negro and the muleon the towpath were now but a bit of dusk in motion, and now were litand, so to speak, powdered with gold-dust. Now the rope between boatand towpath showed an arm-thick golden serpent, and now it did not showat all. Now a little cloud of gnats and flies, accompanying the boat,shone in burnished armour and now they put on a mantle of shade.

  A dark little girl, of twelve years, dark and thin, sitting aft on thedeck floor, her long, white-stockinged legs folded decorously underher, her blue gingham skirt spread out, and her Leghorn hat upon herknees, appealed to one of the reading ladies. "Aunt Serena, what is'evolution'?"

  Miss Serena Ashendyne laid down her book. "'Evolution,'" she saidblankly, "'what is evolution?'"

  "I heard grandfather say it just now. He said, 'That man Darwin and hisevolution'--"

  "Oh!" said Miss Serena. "He meant a very wicked and irreligiousEnglishman who wrote a dreadful book."

  "Was it named 'Evolution'?"

  "No. I forget just what it is called. 'Beginning'--No! 'Origin ofSpecies.' That was it."

  "Have we got it in the library at Gilead Balm?"

  "Heavens! No!"

  "Why?"

  "Your grandfather wouldn't let it come into the house. No lady wouldread it."

  "Oh!"

  Miss Serena returned to her novel. She sat very elegantly on thecamp-stool, a graceful, long-lined, drooping form in a greenish-greydelaine picked out with tiny daisies. It was made polonaise. MissSerena, alone of the people at Gilead Balm, kept up with the fashions.

  At the other end of the long, narrow deck a knot of country gentlemenwere telling war stories. All had fought in the war--the war that hadbeen over now for twenty years and more. There were an empty sleeve anda wooden leg in the group and other marks of bullet and sabre. Theytold good stories, the country gentlemen, and they indulged in mellowlaughter. Blue rings of tobacco-smoke rose and mingled and made a hazeabout that end of the boat.

  "How the gentlemen are enjoying themselves!" said placidly one of theknitting ladies.

  The dark little girl continued to ponder the omission from the library."Aunt Serena--"

  "Yes, Hagar."

  "Is it like 'Tom Jones'?"

  "'Tom Jones'! What do you know about 'Tom Jones'?"

  "Grandfather was reading it one day and laughing, and after he had donewith it I got it down from the top shelf and asked him if I might readit, and he said, 'No, certainly not! it isn't a book for ladies.'"

  "Your grandfather was quite right. You read entirely too much anyway.Dr. Bude told your mother so."

  The little girl turned large, alarmed eyes upon her. "I don't read halfas much as I used to. I don't read except just a little time in themorning and evening and after supper. It would _kill_ me if I couldn'tread--"

  "Well, well," said Miss Serena, "I suppose we shall continue to spoilyou!"

  She said it in a very sweet voice, and she patted the child's armand then she went back to "The Wooing O't." She was fond of readingnovels herself, though she liked better to do macram? work and to paintporcelain placques.

  The packet-boat glided on. It was almost the last packet-boat in thestate and upon almost its last journey. Presently there would go awayforever the long, musical winding of the packet-boat horn. It wouldnever echo any more among the purple hills, but the locomotive wouldshriek here as it shrieked elsewhere. Beyond the willows and sycamores,across the river whose reaches were seen at intervals, gangs ofconvicts with keepers and guards and overseers were at work upon therailroad.

  The boat passing through a lock, the dark little girl stared,fascinated, at one of these convicts, a "trusty," a young white manwho was there at the lock-keeper's on some errand and who now stoodspeaking to the stout old man on the coping of masonry. As the waterin the lock fell and the boat was steadily lowered and the stone wallson either hand grew higher and higher, the figure of the convict cameto stand far above all on deck. Dressed hideously, in broad stripes ofblack and white, it stood against the calm evening sky, with a senseof something withdrawn and yet gigantic. The face was only once turnedtoward the boat with its freight of people who dressed as they pleased.It was not at all a bad face, and it was boyishly young. The boatslipped from the lock and went on down the canal, between green banks.The negro on the towpath was singing and his rich voice floated across--

  "For everywhere I went ter pray, I met all hell right on my way."

  The country gentlemen were laughing again, wrapped in the blue andfragrant smoke. The captain of the packet-boat came up the companionwayand passed from group to group like a benevolent patriarch. Down below,supper was cooking; one smelled the coffee. The sun was slipping lower,in the green bottoms the frogs were choiring. Standing in the prow ofthe boat a negro winded the long packet-boat horn. It echoed and echoedfrom the purple hills.

  The dark little girl was still staring at the dwindling lock. Theblack-and-white figure, striped like a zebra, was there yet, though ithad come down out of the sky and had now only the green of the countryabout and behind it. It grew smaller and smaller until it was no largerthan a black-and-white woodpecker--it was gone.

  She appealed again to Miss Serena. "Aunt Serena, what do you suppose hedid?"

  Miss Serena, who prided herself upon her patience, put down her bookfor the tenth time. "Of whom are you speaking, Hagar?"

  "That man back the
re--the convict."

  "I didn't notice him. But if he is a convict, he probably did somethingvery wicked."

  Hagar sighed. "I don't think _anybody_ ought to be made to dress likethat. It--it smudged my soul just to look at it."

  "Convicts," said Miss Serena, "are not usually people of fine feelings.And you ought to take warning by him never to do anything wicked."

  A silence while the trees and the flowering blackberry bushes went by;then, "Aunt Serena--"

  "Yes?"

  "The woman over there with the baby--she says her husband got hurt inan accident--and she's got to get to him--and she hasn't got any money.The stout man gave her something, and I _think_ the captain wouldn'tlet her pay. Can't I--wouldn't you--can't I--give her just a little?"

  "The trouble is," said Miss Serena, "that you never know whether or notthose people are telling the truth. And we aren't rich, as you know,Hagar. But if you want to, you can go ask your grandfather if he willgive you something to give."

  The dark little girl undoubled her white-stockinged legs, got up,smoothed down her blue gingham dress, and went forward until thetobacco-smoke wrapped her in a fragrant fog. Out of it came, genially,the Colonel's voice, rich as old madeira, shot like shot silk withcurious electric tensions and strains and agreements, a voice at oncemellifluous and capable of revealments demanding other adjectives, avoice that was the Colonel's and spoke the Colonel from head to heel.It went with his beauty, intact yet at fifty-eight, with the greyingamber of his hair, mustache, and imperial; with his eyes, not large butfinely shaped and coloured; with his slightly aquiline nose; with theheight and easy swing of his body that was neither too spare nor toofull. It went with him from head to foot, and, though it was certainlynot a loud voice nor a too-much-used one, it quite usually dominatedwhatever group for the moment enclosed the Colonel. He was speaking nowin a kind of energetic, golden drawl. "So he came up to me and said,'Dash it, Ashendyne! if gentlemen can't be allowed in this degenerateage to rule their own households and arrange their own duels--'" Hebecame aware of the child standing by him, and put out a well-formed,nervous hand. "Yes, Gipsy? What is it you want now?"

  Hagar explained sedately.

  "Her husband hurt and can't get to him to nurse him?" said the Colonel."Well, well! That's pretty bad! I suppose we must take up a collection.Pass the hat, Gipsy!"

  Hagar went to each of the country gentlemen, not with the suggestedhat, but with her small palm held out, cupped. One by one they droppedinto it quarter or dime, and each, as his coin tinkled down, had forthe collector of bounty a drawling, caressing, humorous word. Shethanked each gentleman as his bit of silver touched her hand andthanked with a sedate little manner of perfection. Manners at GileadBalm were notoriously of a perfection.

  Hagar took the money to the woman with the baby and gave it to hershyly, with a red spot in each cheek. She was careful to explain, whenthe woman began to stammer thanks, that it was from her grandfatherand the other gentlemen and that they were anxious to help. She was avery honest little girl, with an honest wish to place credit where itbelonged.

  Back beside Miss Serena she sat and studied the moving green banks.The sun was almost down; there were wonderful golden clouds above themountains. Willow and sycamore, on the river side of the canal, fellaway. Across an emerald, marshy strip, you saw the bright, largerstream, mirror for the bright sky, and across it in turn you sawlimestone cliffs topped with shaggy woods, and you heard the sound ofpicks against rock and saw another band of convicts, white and black,making the railroad. The packet-boat horn was blown again,--long,musical, somewhat mournfully echoing. The negro on the towpath, ridingsideways on his mule, was singing still.

  "Aunt Serena--"

  "Yes, Hagar."

  "Why is it that women don't have any money?"

  Miss Serena closed her book. She glanced at the fields and thesky-line. "We shall be at Gilead Balm in ten minutes.--You ask too manyquestions, Hagar! It is a very bad habit to be always interrogating. Itis quite distinctly unladylike."