HAGAR
HAGAR
BY
MARY JOHNSTON
[Illustration]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1913
COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY MARY JOHNSTON
ALL 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. The
canal-boat passed beneath the bridge, and all straightened themselves
on their camp-stools. The gentlemen who were smoking put their cigars
again between their lips. The two or three ladies resumed book or
knitting. The sun was low, and the sycamores and willows fringing the
banks cast long shadows across the canal. The northern bank was not so
clothed with foliage, and one saw an expanse of bottom land, meadows
and cornfields, and beyond, low mountains, purple in the evening light.
The boat slipped from a stripe of gold into a stripe of shadow, and
from a stripe of shadow into a stripe of gold. The negro and the mule
on the towpath were now but a bit of dusk in motion, and now were lit
and, so to speak, powdered with gold-dust. Now the rope between boat
and towpath showed an arm-thick golden serpent, and now it did not show
at 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 the
deck floor, her long, white-stockinged legs folded decorously under
her, her blue gingham skirt spread out, and her Leghorn hat upon her
knees, appealed to one of the reading ladies. "Aunt Serena, what is
'evolution'?"
Miss Serena Ashendyne laid down her book. "'Evolution,'" she said
blankly, "'what is evolution?'"
"I heard grandfather say it just now. He said, 'That man Darwin and his
evolution'--"
"Oh!" said Miss Serena. "He meant a very wicked and irreligious
Englishman who wrote a dreadful book."
"Was it named 'Evolution'?"
"No. I forget just what it is called. 'Beginning'--No! 'Origin of
Species.' 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 would
read it."
"Oh!"
Miss Serena returned to her novel. She sat very elegantly on the
camp-stool, a graceful, long-lined, drooping form in a greenish-grey
delaine picked out with tiny daisies. It was made polonaise. Miss
Serena, 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 gentlemen
were telling war stories. All had fought in the war--the war that had
been over now for twenty years and more. There were an empty sleeve and
a wooden leg in the group and other marks of bullet and sabre. They
told good stories, the country gentlemen, and they indulged in mellow
laughter. Blue rings of tobacco-smoke rose and mingled and made a haze
about that end of the boat.
"How the gentlemen are enjoying themselves!" said placidly one of the
knitting 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 done
with it I got it down from the top shelf and asked him if I might read
it, 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 half
as much as I used to. I don't read except just a little time in the
morning and evening and after supper. It would _kill_ me if I couldn't
read--"
"Well, well," said Miss Serena, "I suppose we shall continue to spoil
you!"
She said it in a very sweet voice, and she patted the child's arm
and then she went back to "The Wooing O't." She was fond of reading
novels herself, though she liked better to do macramé work and to paint
porcelain placques.
The packet-boat glided on. It was almost the last packet-boat in the
state and upon almost its last journey. Presently there would go away
forever the long, musical winding of the packet-boat horn. It would
never echo any more among the purple hills, but the locomotive would
shriek here as it shrieked elsewhere. Beyond the willows and sycamores,
across the river whose reaches were seen at intervals, gangs of
convicts with keepers and guards and overseers were at work upon the
railroad.
The boat passing through a lock, the dark little girl stared,
fascinated, at one of these convicts, a "trusty," a young white man
who was there at the lock-keeper's on some errand and who now stood
speaking to the stout old man on the coping of masonry. As the water
in the lock fell and the boat was steadily lowered and the stone walls
on either hand grew higher and higher, the figure of the convict came
to stand far above all on deck. Dressed hideously, in broad stripes of
black and white, it stood against the calm evening sky, with a sense
of something withdrawn and yet gigantic. The face was only once turned
toward 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 boat
slipped 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 and
fragrant smoke. The captain of the packet-boat came up the companionway
and 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 of
the boat a negro winded the long packet-boat horn. It echoed and echoed
from the purple hills.
The dark little girl was still staring at the dwindling lock. The
black-and-white figure, striped like a zebra, was there yet, though it
had come down out of the sky and had now only the green of the country
about and behind it. It grew smaller and smaller until it was no larger
than a black-and-white woodpecker--it was gone.
She appealed again to Miss Serena. "Aunt Serena, what do you suppose he
did?"
Miss Serena, who prided herself upon her patience, put down her book
for the tenth time. "Of whom are you speaking, Hagar?"
"That man back there--the convict."
"I didn't notice him. But if he is a convict, he probably did something
very wicked."
Hagar sighed. "I don't think _anybody_ ought to be made to dress like
that. 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 in
an 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't
let 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 not
those 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 will
give 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 the
tobacco-smoke wrapped her in a fragrant fog. Out of it came, genially,
the Colonel's voice, rich as old madeira, shot like shot silk with
curious electric tensions and strains and agreements, a voice at once
mellifluous and capable of revealments demanding other adjectives, a
voice 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 greying
amber of his hair, mustache, and imperial; with his eyes, not large but
finely shaped and coloured; with his slightly aquiline nose; with the
height and easy swing of his body that was neither too spare nor too
full. It went with him from head to foot, and, though it was certainly
not a loud voice nor a too-much-used one, it quite usually dominated
whatever group for the moment enclosed the Colonel. He was speaking now
in 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 degenerate
age to rule their own households and arrange their own duels--'" He
became 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 suggested
hat, but with her small palm held out, cupped. One by one they dropped
into it quarter or dime, and each, as his coin tinkled down, had for
the collector of bounty a drawling, caressing, humorous word. She
thanked each gentleman as his bit of silver touched her hand and
thanked with a sedate little manner of perfection. Manners at Gilead
Balm were notoriously of a perfection.
Hagar took the money to the woman with the baby and gave it to her
shyly, with a red spot in each cheek. She was careful to explain, when
the woman began to stammer thanks, that it was from her grandfather
and the other gentlemen and that they were anxious to help. She was a
very honest little girl, with an honest wish to place credit where it
belonged.
Back beside Miss Serena she sat and studied the moving green banks.
The sun was almost down; there were wonderful golden clouds above the
mountains. Willow and sycamore, on the river side of the canal, fell
away. Across an emerald, marshy strip, you saw the bright, larger
stream, mirror for the bright sky, and across it in turn you saw
limestone cliffs topped with shaggy woods, and you heard the sound of
picks 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, riding
sideways 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 the
sky-line. "We shall be at Gilead Balm in ten minutes.--You ask too many
questions, Hagar! It is a very bad habit to be always interrogating. It
is quite distinctly unladylike."