THE DESCENT OF MAN
A pool of June sunlight lay on the library floor. It made a veritable
Pool of Siloam, with all around a brown, bank-like duskiness. The room
was 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 gilt
frames. Beneath three of these were fixed silhouettes of Revolutionary
Ashendynes; beneath the others, war photographs, _cartes de visite_, a
dozen in one frame. There was a mahogany escritoire and mahogany chairs
and a mahogany table, and, before the fireplace, a fire-screen done in
cross-stitch by a colonial Ashendyne. The curtains were down for the
summer, and the dark, polished floor was bare. The room was large, and
there presided a pleasant sense of unencumbered space and coolness.
In the parlour, across the hall, Miss Serena had been allowed full
power. Here there was a crocheted macramé lambrequin across the
mantel-shelf, and a plush table-scarf worked with chenille, and
fine thread tidies for the chairs, and a green-and-white worsted
"water-lily" mat for the lamp, and embroidery on the piano cover. Here
were pelargoniums and azaleas painted on porcelain placques, and a
painted screen--gladioli and calla lilies,--and autumn leaves mounted
on the top of a small table, and a gilded milking stool, and gilded
cat-tails in decalcomania jars. But the Colonel had barred off the
library. "Embroider petticoat-world to the top of your bent--but don't
embroider books!"
The Colonel was not in the library. He had mounted his horse and
ridden off down the river to see a brother-in-law about some piece
of business. Ashendynes and Coltsworths fairly divided the county
between them. Blood kin and marriage connections,--all counted to the
seventeenth degree,--traditional old friendships, old acquaintances,
clients, tenants, neighbours, the coloured people sometime their
servants, folk generally, from Judge to blacksmith,--the two families
and their allies ramified over several hundred square miles, and when
you said "the county," what you saw were Ashendynes and Coltsworths.
They lived in brick houses set among green acres and in frame houses
facing village streets. None were in the least rich, a frightful,
impoverishing war being no great time behind them, and many were
poor--but one and all they had "quality."
The Colonel was gone down the river to Hawk Nest. Captain Bob was in
the stable yard. Muffled, from the parlour, the doors being carefully
closed, came the notes of "Silvery Waves." Miss Serena was practising.
It was raspberry-jam time of year. In the brick kitchen out in the
yard Old Miss spent the morning with her knitting, superintending
operations. A great copper kettle sat on the stove. Between it and the
window had been placed a barrel and here perched a half-grown negro
boy, in his hands a pole with a paddle-like cross-piece at the further
end. 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 floated
delectable odours of raspberry jam. Old Miss sat in an ample low chair
in 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, ill
with a low fever. Dr. Bude came every other day, and he said that he
hoped it was nothing much but that he couldn't tell yet: Mrs. Ashendyne
must lie quiet and take the draught he left, and her room must be kept
still and cool, and he would suggest that Phoebe, whom she seemed to
like to have about her, should nurse her, and he would suggest, too,
that there be no disturbing conversation, and that, indeed, she be
left in the greatest quiet. It seemed nervous largely--"Yes, yes,
that's true! We all ought to fight more than we do. But the nervous
system isn't the imaginary thing people think! She isn't very strong,
and--wrongly, of course--she dashes herself against conditions and
environment 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 shadow
in the room. Sometimes she asked for Hagar, and sometimes for hours she
seemed to forget that Hagar existed. Old Miss, coming into the room
at one of these times, and seeing her push the child from her with a
frightened air and a stammering "I don't know you"--Old Miss, later in
the 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 kinder
to remain out of her mother's room, seeing that her presence there
evidently troubled her mother.
"It troubles her sometimes," said Hagar, "but it doesn't trouble her
most times. Most times she likes me there."
"I do not think you can judge of that," said her grandmother. "At any
rate, 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 thread
over 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 doctor
say that your mother must not be agitated, and you saw yourself, a
while ago, that she did not seem to want you. I will tell Phoebe. Be
a good, obedient child!--Bring me the bag yonder, and let's see if we
can't find enough pink worsted for a doll's afghan."
That had been two days ago. Hagar went, morning and evening, to her
mother's room, and sometimes Maria knew her and held her hands and
played with her hair, and sometimes she did not seem to know her and
ignored her or talked to her as a stranger. Her grandmother told her to
pray for her mother's recovery. She did not need the telling; she loved
her mother, and her petitions were frequent. Sometimes she got down on
her knees to make them; sometimes she just made them walking around.
"O God, save my mother. For Jesus' sake. Amen."--"O God, let my mother
get 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 and
vases. She always liked to do that, and she had been happy for almost
an 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, for
the upper shelves, on a chair, hunted something to read. "Ministering
Children"--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 and
Rosamond and all of them by heart. "Rasselas"--she had read it.
"Scottish Chiefs"--she had read it. The forms of Wallace and Helen
and Murray and Edwin flitted through her mind--she half put out her
hand to the book, then withdrew it. She wasn't at all happy, and she
wanted novelty. Miss Mühlbach--"Prince Eugene and His Times"--"Napoleon
and Marie Louise"--she had read those, too. "The Draytons and the
Davenants"--she half thought she would read about Olive and Roger
again, but at last she passed them by also. There wasn't anything on
that 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 was
in most of these volumes.
The shelf that she undertook next had another air. To Hagar each case
had its own air, and each shelf its own air, and each book its own
air. "Blair's Rhetoric"--she had read some of that, but she didn't
want it to-day. "Pilgrim's Progress"--she knew that by heart. "Burke's
Speeches"--"Junius"--she had read "Junius," as she had read many
another thing simply because it was there, and a book was a book. She
had read it without much understanding, but she liked the language.
Milton--she knew a great part of Milton, but to-day she didn't want
poetry. Poetry was for when you were happy. Scott--on another day Scott
might have sufficed, but to-day she wanted something new--so new and so
interesting that it would make the hard, unhappy feeling go away. She
stepped from the hassock upon the chair and began to study the titles
of 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 to
face with the shelf. The book was even pushed back as though it had
retired--or had been retired--behind its fellows so as to be out of
danger, or, perhaps, out of the way of being dangerous. Hagar put in
her slender, sun-browned hand and drew it forward until she could read
the 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 a
fascination. She glanced at the first page: "He who wishes to decide
whether man is the modified descendant of some preëxisting form--"
Hagar turned upon the chair and looked about her. The room was a desert
for solitude and balmy quiet. Distantly, through the closed parlour
doors, came Miss Serena's rendering of "Monastery Bells." She knew
that her grandfather was down the river, and that her grandmother was
making raspberry jam. She knew that the Bishop was in his room, and
that Mrs. LeGrand was out under the cedars. Uncle Bob did not count
anyway--he rarely asked embarrassing questions. She may have hesitated
one moment, but no more. She got down from the chair, put it back
against the wall, closed the bookcase door, and taking the "Descent
of Man" with her went over to the old, worn horsehair sofa and curled
herself 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 the
slim, long-fingered hand that clasped it.
Hagar knew quite well what she was doing. She was going to read a book
which, if her course were known, she would be forbidden to read. It had
happened before now that she had read books under the ban of Gilead
Balm. But heretofore she had always been able to say that she had not
known that they were so, had not known she was doing wrong. That could
not be said in this case. Aunt Serena had distinctly told her that
Charles Darwin was a wicked and irreligious man, and that no lady would
read his books.... But then Aunt Serena had unsparingly condemned other
books which Hagar's mind yet refused to condemn. She had condemned "The
Scarlet Letter." When Gilead Balm discovered Hagar at the last page of
that book, there had ensued a family discussion. Miss Serena said that
she blushed when she thought of the things that Hagar was learning.
The Colonel had not blushed, but he said that such books unsettled all
received notions, and while he supported her he wasn't going to have
Medway'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 Hagar
that in this world, even if you didn't think you were doing wrong, it
made for all the happiness there seemed to be not to do what other
people thought you ought not to do.... But Hagar didn't believe yet
that there was anything wrong in reading "The Scarlet Letter." She had
been passionately sorry for Hester, and she had felt--she did not know
why--a kind of terrified pity for Mr. Dimmesdale, and she had loved
little Pearl. She had intended asking her mother what the red-cloth
letter 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 the
wood.... Perhaps Aunt Serena, having been mistaken about that book, was
mistaken, 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 justice
or authority or abstract rightness of the restraining hand, she was
capable of attaining the fruit whether forbidden or no. There was
always the check of great native kindliness. If what she wanted to do
was going--no matter how senselessly--to trouble or hurt other people's
feelings, on the whole she wouldn't do it. In the case of this June
day and the "Descent of Man" the library was empty. She only wanted to
look at the pictures and to run over the reading enough to see what it
was about--then she would put it back on the top shelf. She was not by
nature indirect or secretive. She preferred to go straightforwardly,
to act in the open. But if the wall of not-agreed-in objection stood
too high and thick before her, she was capable of stealing forth in the
dusk and seeking a way around it. Coiled now in the cool hollow of the
sofa, 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 at
the last ten minutes of her hour and a half at the piano, began to
play "Pearls and Roses." Out in the brick kitchen Old Miss dropped a
tablespoonful of raspberry jam into a saucer, let it cool, tasted, and
pronounced it done. The negro boy and Mimy between them lifted the
copper kettle from the stove. Upstairs in Gilead Balm's best room the
Bishop folded and slipped into an addressed envelope the last letter he
was going to write that morning. Out under the cedars Mrs. LeGrand came
to a dull stretch in her novel. She yawned, closed the book, and leaned
back against the pillows in the hammock.
Mrs. LeGrand was fair and forty, but only pleasantly plump. She had
a creamy skin, moderately large, hazel eyes, moderately far apart, a
small, straight nose, a yielding mouth, and a chin that indubitably
would presently be double. She was a widow and an orphan. Married at
nineteen, her husband, the stars of a brigadier-general upon his grey
collar, had within the year fallen upon some one of the blood-soaked
battle-grounds of the state. Her father, the important bearer of an
old, important name, had served the Confederacy well in a high civil
capacity. When the long horror of the war was over, and the longer,
miserable torture of the Reconstruction was passing, and a comparative
ease and pale dawn of prosperity rose over the state, Mrs. LeGrand
looked about her from the remnant of an old plantation on the edge of
a tidewater town. The house was dilapidated, but large. The grounds had
Old Neglect for gardener, but they, too, were large, and only needed
Good-Care-at-Last for complete rehabilitation. Mrs. LeGrand had a kind
of 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 by
her correspondents that this was just the thing for the daughter of a
public man and the widow of a gallant officer. It was both ladylike
and possible.... That was some years ago. Mrs. LeGrand's School for
Young Ladies was now an established fact. The house was repaired, the
grounds were trim, there was a corps of six teachers, with prospects
of expansion, there were day pupils and boarding pupils. Mrs LeGrand
saw in her mind's eye long wing-like extensions to the main house where
more boarding pupils might be accommodated.... She was successful, and
success agreed with her. The coat grew sleek, the cream rose to the
top, every angle disappeared; she was warmly optimistic, and smooth,
indolent good company. In the summer-time she left Eglantine and from
late June to September shared her time between the Springs and the
country homes of kindred, family connections, or girlhood friends. She
nearly always came for a fortnight or more to Gilead Balm.
Now, leaning back in the hammock, the novel shut, her eyes closed, she
was going pleasantly over to herself the additions and improvements
to be carried out at Eglantine. From this her mind slipped to her
correspondence with a French teacher who promised well, and thence
to certain letters received that week from patrons with daughters.
One of these, from a state farther south, spoke in highest praise of
Mrs. LeGrand's guardianship of the young female mind, of the safe and
elegant paths into which she guided it, and of her gift generally for
preserving dew and bloom and ignorance of evil in her interesting
charges. Every one likes praise and no one is so churlish as to refuse
a proffered bouquet or to doubt the judgment of the donor. Mrs. LeGrand
experienced from head to foot a soft and amiable glow.
For ten minutes longer she lay in an atmosphere of balm, then she
opened her eyes, drew her watch from her white-ribbon belt, and
glancing at it surmised that by now the Bishop might have finished his
letters. Upon this thought she rose, and paced across the bright June
grass to the house. "Pearls and Roses" floated from the parlour. Her
hand on the doorknob, Mrs. LeGrand paused irresolutely for a moment,
then lightly took it away and crossed the hall to the library. A minute
later the Bishop, portly and fine, letters in his hand, came down the
stairs, and turned toward this room. The mail-bag always hung, he
remembered, by the library escritoire. Though he was a large man, he
moved with great lightness; he was at once ponderous and easy. Miss
Serena at the piano could hardly have heard him pass the door, so
something occult, perhaps, made her ignore the _da capo_ over the bar
of "Pearls and Roses" which she had now reached. She struck a final
chord, rose, closed the piano, and left the parlour.