Hagar Read online

  CHAPTER III

  THE DESCENT OF MAN

  A pool of June sunlight lay on the library floor. It made a veritablePool of Siloam, with all around a brown, bank-like duskiness. The roomwas by no means book-lined, but there were four tall mahogany cases,one against each wall, well filled for the most part with mellow calf.Flanking each case hung Ashendyne portraits, in oval, very old giltframes. Beneath three of these were fixed silhouettes of RevolutionaryAshendynes; beneath the others, war photographs, _cartes de visite_, adozen in one frame. There was a mahogany escritoire and mahogany chairsand a mahogany table, and, before the fireplace, a fire-screen done incross-stitch by a colonial Ashendyne. The curtains were down for thesummer, and the dark, polished floor was bare. The room was large, andthere presided a pleasant sense of unencumbered space and coolness.

  In the parlour, across the hall, Miss Serena had been allowed fullpower. Here there was a crocheted macram? lambrequin across themantel-shelf, and a plush table-scarf worked with chenille, andfine thread tidies for the chairs, and a green-and-white worsted"water-lily" mat for the lamp, and embroidery on the piano cover. Herewere pelargoniums and azaleas painted on porcelain placques, and apainted screen--gladioli and calla lilies,--and autumn leaves mountedon the top of a small table, and a gilded milking stool, and gildedcat-tails in decalcomania jars. But the Colonel had barred off thelibrary. "Embroider petticoat-world to the top of your bent--but don'tembroider books!"

  The Colonel was not in the library. He had mounted his horse andridden off down the river to see a brother-in-law about some pieceof business. Ashendynes and Coltsworths fairly divided the countybetween them. Blood kin and marriage connections,--all counted to theseventeenth degree,--traditional old friendships, old acquaintances,clients, tenants, neighbours, the coloured people sometime theirservants, folk generally, from Judge to blacksmith,--the two familiesand their allies ramified over several hundred square miles, and whenyou said "the county," what you saw were Ashendynes and Coltsworths.They lived in brick houses set among green acres and in frame housesfacing village streets. None were in the least rich, a frightful,impoverishing war being no great time behind them, and many werepoor--but one and all they had "quality."

  The Colonel was gone down the river to Hawk Nest. Captain Bob was inthe stable yard. Muffled, from the parlour, the doors being carefullyclosed, came the notes of "Silvery Waves." Miss Serena was practising.It was raspberry-jam time of year. In the brick kitchen out in theyard Old Miss spent the morning with her knitting, superintendingoperations. A great copper kettle sat on the stove. Between it and thewindow had been placed a barrel and here perched a half-grown negroboy, in his hands a pole with a paddle-like cross-piece at the furtherend. With this he slowly stirred, round and round, the bubbling,viscous mass in the copper kettle. Kitchen doors and windows were wide,and in came the hum of bees and the fresh June air, and out floateddelectable odours of raspberry jam. Old Miss sat in an ample low chairin the doorway, knitting white cotton socks for the Colonel.

  The Bishop--who was a bishop from another state--was writing letters.Mrs. LeGrand had taken her novel out to the hammock beneath the cedars.Upstairs, in her own room, in a big four-poster bed, lay Maria, illwith a low fever. Dr. Bude came every other day, and he said that hehoped it was nothing much but that he couldn't tell yet: Mrs. Ashendynemust lie quiet and take the draught he left, and her room must be keptstill and cool, and he would suggest that Phoebe, whom she seemed tolike to have about her, should nurse her, and he would suggest, too,that there be no disturbing conversation, and that, indeed, she beleft in the greatest quiet. It seemed nervous largely--"Yes, yes,that's true! We all ought to fight more than we do. But the nervoussystem isn't the imaginary thing people think! She isn't very strong,and--wrongly, of course--she dashes herself against conditions andenvironment like a bird against glass. I don't suppose," said Dr. Bude,"that it would be possible for her to travel?"

  Maria lay in the four-poster bed, making images of the light and shadowin the room. Sometimes she asked for Hagar, and sometimes for hours sheseemed to forget that Hagar existed. Old Miss, coming into the roomat one of these times, and seeing her push the child from her with afrightened air and a stammering "I don't know you"--Old Miss, later inthe day, took Hagar into her own room, set her in a chair beside her,taught her a new knitting-stitch, and explained that it would be kinderto remain out of her mother's room, seeing that her presence thereevidently troubled her mother.

  "It troubles her sometimes," said Hagar, "but it doesn't trouble hermost times. Most times she likes me there."

  "I do not think you can judge of that," said her grandmother. "At anyrate, I think it best that you should stay out of the room. You can,of course, go in to say good-morning and good-night.--Throw the threadover your finger like that. Mimy is making sugar-cakes this morning,and if you want to you can help her cut them out."

  "Grandmother, please let me go _four_ times a day--"

  "No. I do not consider it best for either of you. You heard the doctorsay that your mother must not be agitated, and you saw yourself, awhile ago, that she did not seem to want you. I will tell Phoebe. Bea good, obedient child!--Bring me the bag yonder, and let's see if wecan't find enough pink worsted for a doll's afghan."

  That had been two days ago. Hagar went, morning and evening, to hermother's room, and sometimes Maria knew her and held her hands andplayed with her hair, and sometimes she did not seem to know her andignored her or talked to her as a stranger. Her grandmother told her topray for her mother's recovery. She did not need the telling; she lovedher mother, and her petitions were frequent. Sometimes she got down onher knees to make them; sometimes she just made them walking around."O God, save my mother. For Jesus' sake. Amen."--"O God, let my motherget well. For Jesus' sake. Amen."--She had finished the pink afghan,and she had done the dusting and errands her grandmother appointed her.This morning they had let her arrange the flowers in the bowls andvases. She always liked to do that, and she had been happy for almostan hour--but then the feeling came back....

  The bright pool on the library floor did not reach to the bookcases.They were all in the gold-dust powdered umber of the rest of the room.Hagar standing before one of them, first on a hassock, and then, forthe upper shelves, on a chair, hunted something to read. "MinisteringChildren"--she had read it. "Stepping Heavenward"--she had read it."Home Influence" and "Mother's Recompense"--she had read them. Mrs.Sherwood--she had read Mrs. Sherwood--many volumes of Mrs. Sherwood.In after life it was only by a violent effort that she dismissed,in favour of any other India, the spectre of Mrs. Sherwood's India."Parent's Assistant and Moral Tales"--she knew Simple Susan andRosamond and all of them by heart. "Rasselas"--she had read it."Scottish Chiefs"--she had read it. The forms of Wallace and Helenand Murray and Edwin flitted through her mind--she half put out herhand to the book, then withdrew it. She wasn't at all happy, and shewanted novelty. Miss M?hlbach--"Prince Eugene and His Times"--"Napoleonand Marie Louise"--she had read those, too. "The Draytons and theDavenants"--she half thought she would read about Olive and Rogeragain, but at last she passed them by also. There wasn't anything onthat shelf she wanted. She called it the blue and green and red shelf,because the books were bound in those colours. Miss Serena's name wasin most of these volumes.

  The shelf that she undertook next had another air. To Hagar each casehad its own air, and each shelf its own air, and each book its ownair. "Blair's Rhetoric"--she had read some of that, but she didn'twant it to-day. "Pilgrim's Progress"--she knew that by heart. "Burke'sSpeeches"--"Junius"--she had read "Junius," as she had read manyanother thing simply because it was there, and a book was a book. Shehad read it without much understanding, but she liked the language.Milton--she knew a great part of Milton, but to-day she didn't wantpoetry. Poetry was for when you were happy. Scott--on another day Scottmight have sufficed, but to-day she wanted something new--so new and sointeresting that it would make the hard, unhappy feeling go away. Shestepped from the hassock upon the chair and began to study
the titlesof the books on almost the top shelf.... There was one in the corner,quite out of sight unless you were on a chair, right up here, face toface with the shelf. The book was even pushed back as though it hadretired--or had been retired--behind its fellows so as to be out ofdanger, or, perhaps, out of the way of being dangerous. Hagar put inher slender, sun-browned hand and drew it forward until she could readthe legend on the back--"The Descent of Man." She drew it quite forth,and bringing both hands into play opened it. "By Charles Darwin."She turned the leaves. There were woodcuts--cuts that exercised afascination. She glanced at the first page: "He who wishes to decidewhether man is the modified descendant of some pre?xisting form--"

  Hagar turned upon the chair and looked about her. The room was a desertfor solitude and balmy quiet. Distantly, through the closed parlourdoors, came Miss Serena's rendering of "Monastery Bells." She knewthat her grandfather was down the river, and that her grandmother wasmaking raspberry jam. She knew that the Bishop was in his room, andthat Mrs. LeGrand was out under the cedars. Uncle Bob did not countanyway--he rarely asked embarrassing questions. She may have hesitatedone moment, but no more. She got down from the chair, put it backagainst the wall, closed the bookcase door, and taking the "Descentof Man" with her went over to the old, worn horsehair sofa and curledherself up at the end in a cool and slippery hollow. A gold-dust shaft,slipping through the window, lit her hair, the printed page, and theslim, long-fingered hand that clasped it.

  Hagar knew quite well what she was doing. She was going to read a bookwhich, if her course were known, she would be forbidden to read. It hadhappened before now that she had read books under the ban of GileadBalm. But heretofore she had always been able to say that she had notknown that they were so, had not known she was doing wrong. That couldnot be said in this case. Aunt Serena had distinctly told her thatCharles Darwin was a wicked and irreligious man, and that no lady wouldread his books.... But then Aunt Serena had unsparingly condemned otherbooks which Hagar's mind yet refused to condemn. She had condemned "TheScarlet Letter." When Gilead Balm discovered Hagar at the last page ofthat book, there had ensued a family discussion. Miss Serena said thatshe blushed when she thought of the things that Hagar was learning.The Colonel had not blushed, but he said that such books unsettled allreceived notions, and while he supported her he wasn't going to haveMedway's child imbibing damned anarchical sentiments of any type.Old Miss said a number of things, most of which tended toward Maria.The latter had defended her daughter, but afterwards she told Hagarthat in this world, even if you didn't think you were doing wrong, itmade for all the happiness there seemed to be not to do what otherpeople thought you ought not to do.... But Hagar didn't believe yetthat there was anything wrong in reading "The Scarlet Letter." She hadbeen passionately sorry for Hester, and she had felt--she did not knowwhy--a kind of terrified pity for Mr. Dimmesdale, and she had lovedlittle Pearl. She had intended asking her mother what the red-clothletter that Hester Prynne wore meant, but it had gone out of her mind.The chapter she liked best was the one with little Pearl playing in thewood.... Perhaps Aunt Serena, having been mistaken about that book, wasmistaken, too, about Charles Darwin.

  Neither now nor later did she in any wise love the feel of wrong-doing.Forbidden fruit did not appeal to her merely because it was forbidden.But if there was no inner forbidding, if she truly doubted the justiceor authority or abstract rightness of the restraining hand, she wascapable of attaining the fruit whether forbidden or no. There wasalways the check of great native kindliness. If what she wanted to dowas going--no matter how senselessly--to trouble or hurt other people'sfeelings, on the whole she wouldn't do it. In the case of this Juneday and the "Descent of Man" the library was empty. She only wanted tolook at the pictures and to run over the reading enough to see what itwas about--then she would put it back on the top shelf. She was not bynature indirect or secretive. She preferred to go straightforwardly,to act in the open. But if the wall of not-agreed-in objection stoodtoo high and thick before her, she was capable of stealing forth in thedusk and seeking a way around it. Coiled now in the cool hollow of thesofa, half in and half out of the shaft of sunshine, she began to read.

  The broad band of gold-dust shifted place. Miss Serena, arrived atthe last ten minutes of her hour and a half at the piano, began toplay "Pearls and Roses." Out in the brick kitchen Old Miss dropped atablespoonful of raspberry jam into a saucer, let it cool, tasted, andpronounced it done. The negro boy and Mimy between them lifted thecopper kettle from the stove. Upstairs in Gilead Balm's best room theBishop folded and slipped into an addressed envelope the last letter hewas going to write that morning. Out under the cedars Mrs. LeGrand cameto a dull stretch in her novel. She yawned, closed the book, and leanedback against the pillows in the hammock.

  Mrs. LeGrand was fair and forty, but only pleasantly plump. She hada creamy skin, moderately large, hazel eyes, moderately far apart, asmall, straight nose, a yielding mouth, and a chin that indubitablywould presently be double. She was a widow and an orphan. Married atnineteen, her husband, the stars of a brigadier-general upon his greycollar, had within the year fallen upon some one of the blood-soakedbattle-grounds of the state. Her father, the important bearer of anold, important name, had served the Confederacy well in a high civilcapacity. When the long horror of the war was over, and the longer,miserable torture of the Reconstruction was passing, and a comparativeease and pale dawn of prosperity rose over the state, Mrs. LeGrandlooked about her from the remnant of an old plantation on the edge ofa tidewater town. The house was dilapidated, but large. The grounds hadOld Neglect for gardener, but they, too, were large, and only neededGood-Care-at-Last for complete rehabilitation. Mrs. LeGrand had a kindof smooth, continuous, low-pressure energy, but no money. "A girls'school," she murmured to herself.

  When she wrote, here and there over the state, it was at once seen byher correspondents that this was just the thing for the daughter of apublic man and the widow of a gallant officer. It was both ladylikeand possible.... That was some years ago. Mrs. LeGrand's School forYoung Ladies was now an established fact. The house was repaired, thegrounds were trim, there was a corps of six teachers, with prospectsof expansion, there were day pupils and boarding pupils. Mrs LeGrandsaw in her mind's eye long wing-like extensions to the main house wheremore boarding pupils might be accommodated.... She was successful, andsuccess agreed with her. The coat grew sleek, the cream rose to thetop, every angle disappeared; she was warmly optimistic, and smooth,indolent good company. In the summer-time she left Eglantine and fromlate June to September shared her time between the Springs and thecountry homes of kindred, family connections, or girlhood friends. Shenearly always came for a fortnight or more to Gilead Balm.

  Now, leaning back in the hammock, the novel shut, her eyes closed, shewas going pleasantly over to herself the additions and improvementsto be carried out at Eglantine. From this her mind slipped to hercorrespondence with a French teacher who promised well, and thenceto certain letters received that week from patrons with daughters.One of these, from a state farther south, spoke in highest praise ofMrs. LeGrand's guardianship of the young female mind, of the safe andelegant paths into which she guided it, and of her gift generally forpreserving dew and bloom and ignorance of evil in her interestingcharges. Every one likes praise and no one is so churlish as to refusea proffered bouquet or to doubt the judgment of the donor. Mrs. LeGrandexperienced from head to foot a soft and amiable glow.

  For ten minutes longer she lay in an atmosphere of balm, then sheopened her eyes, drew her watch from her white-ribbon belt, andglancing at it surmised that by now the Bishop might have finished hisletters. Upon this thought she rose, and paced across the bright Junegrass to the house. "Pearls and Roses" floated from the parlour. Herhand on the doorknob, Mrs. LeGrand paused irresolutely for a moment,then lightly took it away and crossed the hall to the library. A minutelater the Bishop, portly and fine, letters in his hand, came down thestairs, and turned toward this room. The mail-bag always hung, heremembered, by the l
ibrary escritoire. Though he was a large man, hemoved with great lightness; he was at once ponderous and easy. MissSerena at the piano could hardly have heard him pass the door, sosomething occult, perhaps, made her ignore the _da capo_ over the barof "Pearls and Roses" which she had now reached. She struck a finalchord, rose, closed the piano, and left the parlour.