Hagar Read online

  CHAPTER IV

  THE CONVICT

  "My dear Bishop!" exclaimed Mrs. LeGrand; "won't you come here and talkto this little girl?"

  "To Hagar?" answered the Bishop. "What is the trouble with Hagar?Have you broken your doll, poor dear?" He came easily across to thehorsehair sofa, a good man, by definition, as ever was. "What'sgrieving you, little girl?"

  "I think that it is Hagar who may come to grieve others," said Mrs.LeGrand. "I do not suppose it is my business to interfere,--as I shouldinterfere were she in my charge at Eglantine,--but I cannot but see inmy daily task how difficult it is to eradicate from a youthful mind thestain that has been left by an improper book--"

  "An improper book! What are you doing, Hagar, with an improper book?"

  The Bishop put out his hand and took it. He looked at the title and atthe author's name beneath, turned over a dozen pages, closed the book,and put it from him on the cold, bare mahogany table. "It was not forthis that I christened you," he said.

  Miss Serena joined the group.

  "Serena," appealed Mrs. LeGrand, "_do_ you think Hagar ought to beallowed to contaminate her mind by a book like that?"

  Miss Serena looked. "That child!--She's been reading Darwin!"

  A slow colour came into her cheeks. The book was shocking, but thetruly shocking thing was how absolutely Hagar had disobeyed. MissSerena's soul was soft as wax, pliant as a reed to the authorities herworld ranged before her. By an inevitable reaction stiffness showedin the few cases where she herself held the orb of authority. To bedisobeyed was very grievous to her. Where it was only negligence inregard to some command of her own,--direction to a servant, commandsin her Sunday-School class,--she had often to put up with it, thoughalways with a swelling sense of injury. But when things combined,when disobedience to Serena Ashendyne was also disobedience to theconstituted authorities, Miss Serena became adamant.

  Now she looked at Hagar with a little gasp, and then, seeing throughthe open door the elder Mrs. Ashendyne entering from the kitchen, shecalled to her. "Mother, come here a moment!"...

  "If she had said that she was sorry," pronounced the Bishop, "you mightforgive her, I think, this time. But if she is going to harden herheart like that, you had best let her see that all sin, in whateverdegree, brings suffering. And I should suit, I think, the punishmentto the offence. Hagar told me only yesterday that she had rather reada book than gather cherries or play with dolls, or go visiting, oranything. I think I should forbid her to open any book at all for aweek."

  Behind Gilead Balm, beyond the orchard and a strip of meadow, spranga ridge of earth, something more than a hill, something less thana low mountain. It was safe, dry, warm, and sandy, too cut-overand traversed to be popular with snakes, too within a stone's throwof the overseer's house and the overseer's dogs to be subject totramps or squirrel-hunting boys, just wooded enough and furrowed withshallow ravines to make it to children a romantic, sprite-inhabitedregion. When children came to Gilead Balm, as sometimes, in the slow,continuous procession through the houses of a people who traditionallykept "open house," they did come, Hagar and they always playedfreely and alone on the home-ward-facing side of the ridge. When theoverseer's grandchildren, too, came to visit him, they and Hagar playedhere, and sometimes Mary Magazine, Isham and Car'line's ten-year-oldat the Ferry, was allowed to spend the day, and she and Hagar playedtogether on the ridge. Hagar was very fond of Mary Magazine.

  One day, having completed her circle of flower dolls before hercompanion's was done, she leaned back against the apple tree beneathwhich the two were seated and thoughtfully regarded the other'sdown-bent brown face and "wrapped" hair. "Mary Magazine, you couldn'thave been named 'Mary Magazine.' You were named Mary Magdalene."

  "No'm," said Mary Magazine, a pink morning-glory in one hand and ablue one in the other. "No'm. I'm named Mary Magazine. My mammy donenamed me for de lady what took her cologne bottle somebody give herChristmas, an' poured it on her han' an' rubbed Jesus' feet."

  When Mary Magazine didn't come to Gilead Balm and no children werestaying in the house, and the overseer's grandchildren were at theirhome on the other side of the county, Hagar might--provided always shelet some one know where she was going--Hagar might play alone on theridge. To-day, having asked the Colonel if she might, she was playingthere alone.

  "Playing" was the accepted word. They always talked of her as"playing," and she herself repeated the word.

  "May I go play awhile on the ridge?"

  "I reckon so, Gipsy. Wear your sunbonnet and don't get into anymischief."

  At the overseer's house she stopped to talk with Mrs. Green, pickingpease in the garden. "Mahnin', Hagar," said Mrs. Green. "How's yo' mathis mahnin'?"

  "I think she's better, Mrs. Green. She laughed a little this morning.Grandmother let me stay a whole half-hour, and mother talked about_her_ grandmother, and about picking up shells on the beach, and abouta little boat that she used to go out to sea in. She said that all lastnight she felt that boat beneath her. She laughed and said it felt likegoing home.--Only"--Hagar looked at Mrs. Green with large, wistfuleyes--"only home's really Gilead Balm."

  "Of course it is," said Mrs. Green cheerfully. She sat down on anoverturned bucket between the green rows of pease, and pushed backher sunbonnet from her kind, old wrinkled face. "I remember when yo'ma came here jest as well. She was jest the loveliest thing!--But ofcourse all her own people were a good long way off, and she was aseafarer herself, and she couldn't somehow get used to the hills. I'veheard her say they jest shut her in like a prison.... But then, aftera while, you came, an' I reckon, though she says things sometimes,wherever you are she feels to be home. When it comes to being a woman,the good Lord has to get in com-pensation somewhere, or I don't reckonnone of us could stand it.--I'm glad she's better."

  "_I'm_ glad," said Hagar. "Can I help you pick the pease, Mrs. Green?"

  "Thank you, child, but I've about picked the mess. You goin' to playon the ridge? I wish Thomasine and Maggie and Corker were here to playwith you."

  "I wish they were," said Hagar. Her eyes filled. "It's a very lonesomeday. Yesterday was lonesome and to-morrow's going to be lonesome--"

  "Haven't you got a good book? I never see such a child for books."

  Two tears came out of Hagar's eyes. "I was reading a book Aunt Serenatold me not to read.--And now I'm not to read _anything_ for a wholeweek."

  "Sho!" exclaimed Mrs. Green. "What did you do that for? Don't you knowthat little girls ought to mind?"

  Hagar sighed. "Yes, I suppose they ought.... I wish I had now.... It'sso lonesome not to read when your mother's sick and grandmother won'tlet me go into the room only just a little while morning and evening."

  "Haven't you got any pretty patchwork nor nothin'?"

  Hagar standing among the blush roses, looked at her with sombre eyes."Mrs. Green, I hate to sew."

  "Oh!" exclaimed Mrs. Green. "That's an awful thing to say!"

  She sat on the overturned bucket, between the pale-green, shiny-poddedpeavines, her friendly old face, knobbed and wrinkled like a Japanesecarving, gleaming from between the faded blue slats of her sunbonnet,and she regarded the child before her with real concern. "I wondernow," she said, "if you're goin' to grow up a rebel? Look-a-here,honey, there ain't a mite of ease and comfort on that road."

  "That's what the Yankees called us all," said Hagar. 'Rebels.'"

  "Ah, I don't mean 'rebel' that-er-way," said Mrs. Green. "There'slonelier and deeper ways of rebellin'. You don't get killed with anarmy cheerin' you, and newspapers goin' into black, and a state fullof people, that were 'rebels' too, keepin' your memory green,--whathappens, happens just to you, by yourself without any company, and nowreaths of flowers and farewell speeches. They just open the door andput you out."

  "Out where?"

  "Out by yourself. Out of this earth's favour. And, though we mayn'tthink it," said Mrs. Green, "this earth's favour is our sunshine. It'sright hard to go where there isn't any sunshine.... I don't know whyI'm
talking like this to you--but you're a strange child and alwayswere, and I reckon you come by it honest!" She rose from among thepeavines. "Well, I've been baking apple turnovers, and they ain't badto picnic on! Suppose you take a couple up on the ridge with you."

  There grew, on the very top of the ridge, a cucumber tree thatHagar loved. Underneath was a little fine, sparse grass and enoughpennyroyal to make the place aromatic when the sunshine drew out allits essence, as was the case to-day. Over the light soil, between thesprigs of pennyroyal, went a line of ants carrying grains of somepale, amber-clear substance. Hagar watched them to their hill. When,one by one, they had entered, a second line of foragers emerged andwent off to the right through the grass. In a little time these, too,reappeared, each carrying before her a tiny bead of the amber stuff.Hagar watched, elbows on ground and chin on hands. She had a feelingthat they were people, and she tried giving them names, but they wereso bewilderingly alike that in a moment she could not tell which was"Brownie" and which "Pixie" and which "Slim." She turned upon her backand lying in the grass and pennyroyal saw above her only blue sky andblue sky. She stared into it. "If the angels were sailing like thebirds up there and looking down--and looking down--we people mightseem all alike to them--all alike and not doing things that were verydifferent--all alike.... Only there are our clothes. Pink ones and blueones and white ones and black ones and plaid ones and striped ones--"She stared at the blue until she seemed to see step after step of blue,a great ladder leading up, and then she turned on her side and gazed atGilead Balm and, a mile away, the canal and the shining river.

  She could see many windows, but not her mother's window. She had toimagine that. Lonesomeness and ennui, that had gone away for a bit inthe interest of watching the ants, returned full force. She stood upand cast about for something to break the spell.

  The apple turnovers wrapped in a turkey-red, fringed napkin, rested ina small willow basket upon the grass. Hagar was not hungry, but sheconsidered that she might as well eat a turnover, and then that shemight as well have a party and ask a dozen flower dolls. Her twelveyears were as a moving plateau--one side a misty looming landscape ofthe mind, older and higher than her age would forecast; on the other,green, hollow, daisy-starred meadows of sheer childhood. Her attentionpassed from side to side, and now it settled in the meadows.

  She considered the grass beneath the cucumber tree for a dining-room,and then she grew aware that she was thirsty, and so came to theconclusion that she would descend the back side of the ridge to thespring and have the party there. Crossing the hand's breadth of levelground she began to climb down the long shady slope toward a streamthat trickled through a bit of wood and a thicket, and a small,ice-cold spring in a ferny hollow. The sun-bathed landscape, river andcanal and fields and red-brick Gilead Balm with its cedars, and thegarden and orchard, and the overseer's house sank from view. There wasonly the broad-leaved cucumber tree against the deep blue sky. Thetrunk of the cucumber tree disappeared, and then the greater branches,and then the lesser branches toward the top, and then the bushy greentop itself. When Hagar and the other children played on the ridge, theyfollowed her lead and called this side "the far country." To them--orperhaps only to Hagar--it had a clime, an atmosphere quite differentfrom the homeward-facing side.

  When she came to the spring at the foot of the ridge she was verythirsty. She knelt on a great sunken rock, and, taking off hersunbonnet, leaned forward between the fern and mint, made a cup ofher hands and drank the sparkling water. When she had had all shewished, she settled back and regarded the green, flowering thicket.It came close to the spring, filling the space between the waterand the wood, and it was a wild, luxuriant tangle. Hagar's fancybegan to play with it. Now it was a fairy wood for Thumbelina--nowTitania and Oberon danced there in the moonlight--now her mind gave itheight and hugeness, and it was the wood around the Sleeping Beauty.The light-winged minutes went by and then she remembered the appleturnovers.... Here was the slab of rock for the table. She spread theturkey-red napkin for cloth, and she laid blackberry leaves for plates,and put the apple turnovers grandly in the middle. Then she moved aboutthe hollow and gathered her guests. Wild rose, ox-eye daisy, Black-eyedSusan, elder, white clover, and columbine--quite a good party.... Sheset each with due ceremony on the flat rock, before a blackberry-leafplate, and then she took her own place facing the thicket, and aftera polite little pause, folded her hands and closed her eyes. "We willsay," she said, "a silent Grace."

  When she opened her eyes, she opened them full upon othereyes--haggard, wolfishly hungry eyes, looking at her from out thethicket, behind them a body striped like a wasp....

  "I didn't mean to scare you," said the boy, "but if you ever went mostof two days and a night without anything to eat, you'd know how itfelt."

  "I never did," said Hagar. "But I can imagine it. I wish I had askedMrs. Green for _five_ apple turnovers." As she spoke, she pushed thered fringed napkin with the second turnover toward him. "Eat that one,too. I truly don't want any, and the flowers are never hungry."

  He bit into the second turnover. "It seems mean to eat up yourtea-party, but I'm 'most dead, and that's the truth--"

  Hagar, sitting on the great stone with her hands folded in her lapand her sunbonnet back on her shoulders, watched her suddenly acquiredguest. He would not come clear out of the thicket; the tangled growthheld him all but head and shoulders. "I believe I've seen you before,"she said at last. "About two weeks ago grandfather and Aunt Serena andI were on the packet-boat. Weren't you at the lock up the river? Theboat went down and down until you were standing 'way up, just againstthe sky. I am almost sure it was you."

  He reddened. "Yes, it was me." Then, dropping the arm that held the yetuneaten bit of turnover, he broke out. "I didn't run away while I was atrusty! I wouldn't have done it! One of the men lied about me and saiddirty words about my people, and I jumped on him and knocked his headagainst a stone until he didn't come to for half an hour! Then they didthings to me, and did what they called degrading me. 'No more trustyingfor you!' said the boss. So I run away--three days ago." He wiped hisforehead with his sleeve. "It seems more like three years. I reckonthey've got the dogs out."

  "What have they got the dogs out for?"

  "Why, to hunt me. I--I--"

  His voice sunk. Terror came back, and will-breaking fear, a chillnausea and swooning of the soul. He groaned and half rose from thethicket. "I was lying here till night, but I reckon I'd better begoing--" His eyes fell upon his body and he sank back. "O God! I reckonin hell we'll wear these clothes."

  Hagar stared at him, faint reflecting lines of anxiety and unhappinesson her brow, quiverings about her lips. "Ought you to have run away?Was it right to run away?" The colour flooded her face. It was alwayshard for her to tell of her errors, but she felt that she and the boywere in somewhat the same case, and that she ought to do it. "I didsomething my aunt had told me not to do. It was reading a book thatshe said was wicked. I can't see yet that it was wicked. It was veryinteresting. But the Bishop said that he didn't christen me for that,and that it was a sin. And now, for a whole week, grandmother says thatI'm not to read any book at all--which is very hard. What I mean is,"said Hagar, "though I don't feel yet that there was anything wicked inthat book (I didn't read much of it), I feel perfectly certain that Iought to obey grandmother. The Bible tells you so, and I believe in theBible." Her brow puckered again. "At least, I believe that I believein the Bible. And if there wasn't anybody in the house, and the mostinteresting books were lying around, I wouldn't--at least I think Iwouldn't--touch one till the week is over." She tried earnestly toexplain her position. "I mean that if I really did wrong--and I reckonI'll have to say that I oughtn't to have disobeyed Aunt Serena, thoughthe Bible doesn't say anything about aunts--I'll take the hard thingsthat come after. Of course"--she ended politely--"your folks may havebeen mistaken, and you may not have done anything wrong at all--"

  The boy bloomed at her. "I'll tell you what I did. I live 'way out inthe mountains, the other
end of nowhere. Well, Christmas there was adance in the Cove, and I went, but Nancy Horn, that had promised to gowith me, broke her word and went with Dave Windless. There was a lot ofapple jack around, and I took more'n I usually take. And then, whenwe were dancing the reel, somebody--and I'll swear still it was Dave,though he swore in the court-room it wasn't--Dave Windless put out hisfoot and tripped me up! Well, Nancy, she laughed.... I don't rememberanything clear after that, and I thought that the man who was shootingup the room was some other person, though I did think it was funny thepistol was in my hand.... Anyhow, Dave got a ball through his hip, andold Daddy Jake Willy, that I was awful fond of and wouldn't have hurtnot for a still of my own and the best horse on the mountain, he gothis bow arm broken, and one of the women was frightened into fits, andnext week when her baby was born and had a harelip she said I'd doneit.... Anyhow the sheriff came and took me--it was about dawn, 'way upon the mountain-side, and I still thought it was another man going awaytoward Catamount Gap and the next county where there wasn't any NancyHorn--I thought so clear till I fired at the sheriff and broke hiselbow and the deputy came up behind and twisted the pistol away, andsomebody else threw a gourd of water from the spring over me ... and Icome to and found it had been me all the time.... That's what I did,and I got four years."

  "Four years?" said Hagar. "Four years in--in jail?"

  "In the penitentiary," said the boy. "It's a worse word than jail....I know what's right and wrong. Liquor's wrong, and the Judge saidcarrying concealed weapons was wrong, and I reckon it is, though thereisn't much concealment when everybody knows you're wearing them....Yes, liquor's wrong, and quarrels might go off just with some wordsand using your fists if powder and shot weren't right under your hand,tempting you. Yes, drinking's wrong and quarreling's wrong, and after Icome to my senses it didn't need no preacher like those that come roundSundays to tell me that. But I tell you what's the whole floor space ofhell wronger than most of the things men do and that's the place thelawyers and the judges and the juries send men to!"

  "Do you mean that they oughtn't to--to do anything to you? You _did_ dowrong."

  "No, I don't mean that," said the boy. "I've got good sense. If Ididn't see it at first, old Daddy Jake Willy came to the county jailthree or four times, and he made me see it. The Judge and the lawyercouldn't ha' made me see it, but _he_ did. And at last I was willingto go." His face worked. "The day before I was to go I was in thatcell I'd stayed in then two months and I looked right out into thesunshine. You could see Old Rocky Knob between two bars, and Bear'sDen between two, and Lonely River running down into the valley betweenthe other two, and the sun shining over everything--shining just likeit's shining to-day. Well, I stood there, looking out, and made agood resolution. I was going to take what was coming to me because Ideserved it, having broken the peace and lamed men and hurt a woman,and broken Daddy Jake's arm and fired at the sheriff. I hadn't meantto do all that, but still I had done it. So I said, 'I'll take it. AndI won't give any trouble. And I'll keep the rules. If it's a place tomake men better in, I'll come out a better man. I'll work just as hardas any man, and if there's books to study I'll study, and I'll keep therules and try to help other people, and when I come out, I'll be youngstill and a better man.'" He rose to his full height in the thicket,the upper half of his striped body showing like a swimmer's above thematted green. He sent out his young arms in a wide gesture at oncemocking and despairing, but whether addressed to earth or heaven wasnot apparent. "You see, I didn't know any more about that place than ababy unborn!"

  With that he dropped like a stone back into the thicket and lay dumband close, with agonized eyes. Around the base of the ridge out of thewood came the dogs; behind them three men with guns.

  ...One of the men was a jolly, fatherly kind of person. He tried toexplain to Hagar that they weren't really going to hurt the convict atall--she saw for herself that the dogs hadn't hurt him, not a mite!The handcuffs didn't hurt him either--they were loose and comfortable.No; they weren't going to do anything to him, they were just goingto take him back.--He hadn't hurt her, had he? hadn't said anythingdisagreeable to her or done anything but eat up her tea-party?--Thenthat was all right, and the fatherly person would go himself with herto the house and tell the Colonel about it. Of course he knew theColonel, everybody knew the Colonel! And "Stop crying, little lady!That boy ain't worth it."

  The Colonel's dictum was that the country was getting so damnedunsettled that Hagar must not again be let to play on the ridge alone.

  Old Miss, who had had that morning a somewhat longish talk with Dr.Bude, stated that she would tell Mary Green to send for Thomasine andMaggie and Corker. "Dr. Bude thinks the child broods too much, and itmay be better to have healthy diversion for her in case--"

  "In case--!" exclaimed Miss Serena. "Does he really think, mother, thatit's serious?"

  "I don't think he knows," answered her mother. "I don't think it is,myself. But Maria was never like anybody else--"

  "Dear Maria!" said Mrs. LeGrand. "She should have made such abrilliant, lovely woman! If only there was a little more compliance,more feminine sweetness, more--if I may say so--unselfishness--"

  "Where," asked the Bishop, "is Medway?"

  Mrs. Ashendyne's needles clicked. "My son was in Spain, the last weheard: studying the painter Murillo."