MARIA
Thomasine and Maggie and Corker arrived and filled the overseer's house
with noise. They were a blatantly healthful, boisterous set, only
Thomasine showing gleams of quiet. They wanted at once to play on the
ridge, but now Hagar wouldn't play on the ridge. She said she didn't
like it any more. As she spoke, her thin shoulders drew together, and
her eyes also, and two vertical lines appeared between these. "What you
shakin' for?" asked Corker. "Got a chill?"
So they played down by the branch where the willows grew, or in the
old, disused tobacco-house, or in the orchard, or about a haystack on a
hillside. Corker wanted always to play robbers or going to sea. Maggie
liked to jump from the haystack or to swing, swing, swing, holding to
the long, pendant green withes of the weeping willow, or to climb the
apple trees. Thomasine liked to make dams across the streamlet below
the tobacco-house. She liked to shape wet clay, and she saved every
pebble or bit of bright china, or broken blue or green glass with which
to decorate a small grotto they were making. She also liked to play
ring-around-a-rosy, and to hunt for four-leaved clovers. Hagar liked to
play going to sea, but she did not care for robbers. She liked to swing
from the willows and to climb a particular apple tree which she loved,
but she did not want to jump from the haystack, nor to climb all trees.
She liked almost everything that Thomasine liked, but she was not
so terribly fond of ring-around-a-rosy. In her own likings she found
herself somewhat lonely. None of the three, though Thomasine more than
the others, cared much for a book. They would rather have a sugar-cake
any day. When it came to lying on the hillside without speaking and
watching the clouds and the tree-tops, they did not care for that at
all. However, when they were tired, and everything else failed, they
did like Hagar to tell them a story. "Aladdin" they liked--sitting in
the shadow of the haystack, their chins on their hands, Thomasine's
eyes still unconsciously alert for four-leaved clovers, Corker with a
June apple, trying to determine whether he would bite into it now or
wait until Aladdin's mother had uncovered the jewels before the Sultan.
They liked "Aladdin" and "Queen Gulnare and Prince Beder" and "Snow
White and Rose Red."
And then came the day that they went after raspberries. That morning
Hagar, turning the doorknob of her mother's room, found the door softly
opened from within and Phoebe on the threshold. Phoebe came out,
closing the door gently behind her, beckoned to Hagar, and the two
crossed the hall to the deep window. "I wouldn't go in this mahnin' ef
I were you, honey," said Phoebe. "Miss Maria done hab a bad night. She
couldn't sleep an' her heart mos' give out. Oh, hit's all right now,
an' she's been lyin' still an' peaceful since de dawn come up. But we
wants her to sleep an' we don' want her to talk. An' Old Miss thinks
an' Phoebe thinks too, honey, dat you'd better not go in this mahnin'.
Nex' time Old Miss 'll let you stay twice as long to make up for it."
Hagar looked at her large-eyed, "Is my mother going to die, Aunt
Phoebe?"
But old Phoebe put her arms around her and the wrinkles came out all
over her brown face as they did when she laughed. Phoebe was a good
woman, wise and old and tender and a strong liar. "Law, no, chile--What
put dat notion in yo' po' little haid? No, indeedy! We gwine pull Miss
Maria through, jes' as easy! Dr. Bude he say he gwine do hit, and what
Dr. Bude say goes for sho! Phoebe done see him raise de mos' dead.
Law, no, don' you worry 'bout Miss Maria! An' de nex' time you goes in
de room, you kin stay jes' ez long ez you like. You kin sit by her er
whole hour an' won't nobody say you nay."
Downstairs Captain Bob was sitting on the sunny step of the sunny back
porch, getting a thorn out of Luna's paw. "Hi, Gipsy," he said, when
Hagar came and stood by him; "what's the matter with breakfast this
morning?"
"I don't know," said Hagar. "I haven't seen grandmother to-day. Uncle
Bob--"
"Well, chicken?"
"They'd tell you, wouldn't they, if my mother was going to die?"
Captain Bob, having relieved Luna of the thorn, gave his attention
fully to his great-niece. He was slow and kindly and unexacting and
incurious and unimaginative, and the unusual never occurred to him
before it happened. "Maria going to die? That's damned nonsense,
partridge! Haven't heard a breath of it--isn't anything to hear. Nobody
dies at Gilead Balm--hasn't been a death here since the War. Besides,
Medway's away.--Mustn't get notions in your head--makes you unhappy,
and things go on just the same as ever." He pulled her down on the step
beside him. "Look at Luna, now! She ain't notionate--are you, Luna?
Luna and I are going over the hills this morning to find Old Miss's
guineas for her. Don't you want to go along?"
"I don't believe I do, thank you, Uncle Bob."
Mrs. LeGrand came out upon the porch, fresh and charming in a figured
dimity with a blue ribbon. "Mrs. Ashendyne and Serena are talking to
Dr. Bude, and as you men must be famished, Captain Bob, I am going to
ring for breakfast and pour out your coffee for you--"
In the hall Hagar appealed to her. "Mrs. LeGrand, can't I go into
grandmother's room and hear what Dr. Bude says about my mother?" But
Mrs. LeGrand smiled and shook her head and laid hands on her. "No,
indeed, dear child! Your mother's all right. You come with me, and have
your breakfast."
The Bishop appearing at the stair foot, she turned to greet him. Hagar,
slipping from her touch, stole down the hall to Old Miss's chamber and
tried the door. It gave and let her in. Old Miss was seated in the big
chair, Dr. Bude and the Colonel were standing on either side of the
hearth, and Miss Serena was between them and the door.
"Hagar!" exclaimed Miss Serena. "Don't come in now, dear. Grandmother
and I will be out to breakfast in a moment."
But Hagar had the courage of unhappiness and groping and fear for the
most loved. She fled straight to Dr. Bude. "Dr. Bude--oh, Dr. Bude--is
my mother going to die?"
"No, Bude," said the Colonel from the other side of the hearth.
Dr. Bude, an able country doctor, loved and honoured, devoted and
fatherly and wise, made a "Tchk!" with his tongue against the roof of
his mouth.
Old Miss, leaving the big chair, came and took Hagar and drew her back
with her into the deep chintz hollows. No one might doubt that Old Miss
loved her granddaughter. Now her clasp was as stately as ever, but her
voice was quite gentle, though of course authoritative--else it could
not have belonged to Old Miss. "Your mother had a bad night, dear, and
so, to make her quiet and comfortable, we sent early for Dr. Bude. She
is going to sleep now, and to-morrow you shall go in and see her. But
you can only go if you are a good, obedient child. Yes, I am telling
you the truth. I think Maria will get well. I have never thought
anything else.--Now, run away and get your breakfast, and to-day you
and Thomasine and Maggie and Corker shall go raspberrying."
Dr. Bude spoke from the braided rug. "No one knows, Hagar, what's
going to happen in this old world, do they? But Nature has a way of
taking care of people quite regardless and without waiting to consult
the doctors. I've watched Nature right closely, and I never give up
anything. Your mother's right ill, my dear, but so have a lot of other
people been right ill and gotten well. You go pick your raspberries,
and maybe to-morrow you can see her--"
"Can't I see her to-night?"
"Well, maybe--maybe--" said the doctor.
The raspberry patches were almost two miles away, past a number of
shaggy hills and dales. A wood road led that way, and Hagar and
Thomasine and Maggie and Corker, with Jinnie, a coloured woman, to take
care of them, felt the damp leaf mould under their feet. A breeze,
coming through oak and pine, tossed their hair and fluttered the girls'
skirts and the broad collar of Corker's voluminous shirt. The sky was
bright blue, with two or three large clouds like sailing vessels with
all sail on. A cat-bird sang to split its throat. They saw a black
snake, and a rabbit showed a white tip of tail, and a lightning-blasted
pine with a large empty bird-nest in the topmost crotch, ineffably
lonely and deserted against the deep sky, engaged their attention. They
had various adventures. Each of the children carried a tin bucket for
berries, and Jinnie carried a white-oak split basket with dinner in
it--sandwiches and rusks and a jar with milk and snowball cakes. They
were going to stay all day. That was what usually they loved. It was so
adventurous.
Corker strode along whistling. Maggie whistled, too, as well as a boy,
though he looked disdain at her and said, "Huh! Girls can't whistle!"
"Dar's a piece of poetry I done heard," said Jinnie,--
"'Er whistlin' woman an' er crowin' hen,
Dey ain' gwine come ter no good end.'"
Thomasine hummed as she walked. She had filled her bucket with various
matters as she went along, and now she was engaged in fashioning out
of the green burrs of the burdock a basket with an elaborate handle.
"Don't you want some burrs?" she asked Hagar, walking beside her.
Thomasine was always considerate and would give away almost anything
she had.
Hagar took the burrs and began also to make a basket. She was being
good. And, indeed, as the moments passed, the heavy, painful feeling
about her heart went away. The doctor had said and grandmother had
said, and Uncle Bob and Phoebe and every one.... The raspberries.
She instantly visualized one of the blue willow saucers filled with
raspberries, carried in by herself to her mother, at supper-time.
Yarrow was in bloom and Black-eyed Susans and the tall white Jerusalem
candles. Coming back she would gather a big bouquet for the grey jar
on her mother's table. She grew light-hearted. A bronze butterfly
fluttered before her, the heavy odour of the pine filled her nostrils,
the sky was so blue, the air so sweet--there was a pearly cloud like
a castle and another like a little boat--a little boat. Off went her
fancy, lizard-quick, feather-light.
"Swing low, sweet chariot--"
sang Jinnie as she walked.
The raspberry patches were in sunny hollows. There was a span-wide
stream, running pure over a gravel bed, and a grazed-over hillside,
green and short-piled as velvet, and deep woods closing in, shutting
out. Summer sunshine bathed every grass blade and berry leaf, summer
winds cooled the air, bees and grasshoppers and birds, squirrels in the
woods, rippling water, wind in the leaves made summer sounds. It was
a happy day. Sometimes Hagar, Thomasine, Maggie, Corker, and Jinnie
picked purply-red berries from the same bush; sometimes they scattered
and combined in twos and threes. Sometimes each established a corner
and picked in an elfin solitude. Sometimes they conversed or bubbled
over with laughter, sometimes they kept a serious silence. It was a
matter of rivalry as to whose bucket should first be filled. Hagar
strayed off at last to an angle of an old rail fence. The berries, as
she found, were very fine here. She called the news to the others, but
they said they had fine bushes, too, and so she picked on with a world
of her own about her. The June-bugs droned and droned, her fingers
moved slower and slower. At last she stopped picking, and, lying down
on a sunken rock by the fence, fell to dreaming. Her dreams were
already shot with thought, and she was apt, when she seemed most idle,
to be silently, inwardly growing. Now she was thinking about Heaven
and about God. She was a great committer of poetry to memory, and now,
while she lay filtering sand through her hands as through an hourglass,
she said over a stanza hard to learn, which yet she had learned some
days ago.
"Trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home--"
When she had repeated it dreamily, in an inward whisper, the problem of
why, in that case, she was so far from home engaged her attention. The
"here" and the "there--" God away, away off on a throne with angels,
and Hagar Ashendyne, in a blue sunbonnet here by a Virginia rail fence,
with raspberry stain on her hands. _Home_ was where you lived. God was
everywhere; then, was God right here, too? But Hagar Ashendyne couldn't
see the throne and the gold steps and floor and the angels. She could
make a picture of them, just as she could of Solomon's throne, or
Pharaoh's throne, or Queen Victoria's throne, but the picture didn't
stir anything at her heart. She wasn't homesick for the court. She was
homesick to be a good woman when she grew up, and to learn all the time
and to know beautiful things, but she wasn't homesick for Heaven where
God lived. Then was she wicked? Hagar wondered and wondered. The yellow
sand dropped from between her palms.... God in the sand, God in me, God
here and now.... Then God also is trying to grow more God.... Hagar
drew a great sigh, and for the moment gave it up.
Before her on the grey rail was a slender, burnished insect, all
gold-and-green armour. Around the lock of the fence came, like a
gold-and-green moving stiletto, a lizard which took and devoured the
gold-and-green insect.... God in the lizard, God in the insect, God
devouring God, making Himself feed Himself, growing so.... The sun
suddenly left the grass and the raspberry bushes. A cloud had hidden
it. Other cloud masses, here pearly white, here somewhat dark, were
boiling up from the horizon.
Jinnie called the children together. "What we gwine do? Look like er
storm. Reckon we better light out fer home!"
Protests arose. "Ho!" cried Corker, "it ain't going to be a storm. I
haven't got my bucket more'n half full and we haven't had a picnic
neither! Let's stay!"
"Let's stay," echoed Maggie. "Who's afraid of a little bit of storm
anyhow?"
"It's lots better for it to catch us here in the open," argued
Thomasine. "They're all tall trees in the wood. But _I_ think the
clouds are getting smaller--there's the sun again!"
The sunshine fell, strong and golden. "We's gwine stay den," said
Jinnie. "But ef hit rains an' you all gets wet an' teks cold, I's
gwine tell Old Miss I jus' couldn't mek you come erway!--Dar's de old
cow-house at de end of de field. I reckon we kin refugee dar ef de
worst comes to de worst."
While they were eating the snowball cakes, a large cloud came up and
determinedly covered the sun. By the time they had eaten the last
crumb, lightnings were playing. "Dar now, I done tol' you!" cried
Jinnie. "I never see such children anyhow! Old Miss an' Mrs. Green jus'
ought-ter whip you all! Now you gwine git soppin' wet an' maybe de
lightning'll strike you, too!"
"No, it won't!" cried Corker. "The cow-house's my castle, an' we've
been robbing a freight train an' the constable an' old Captain Towney
and the army are after us--I'm going to get to the cow-house first!"
Maggie scrambled to her feet. "No, you ain't! I'm going to--"
The cow-house was dark and somewhat dirty, but they found a tolerable
square yard or two of earthen floor and they all sat close together
for warmth--the air having grown quite cold--and for company, a
thunderstorm, after all, being a thing that made even train robbers and
castled barons feel rather small and helpless. For an hour lightnings
flashed and thunders rolled and the rain fell in leaden lines. Then
the lightnings grew less frequent and vivid, and the thunder travelled
farther away, but the rain still fell. "Oh, it's so stupid and dark in
here!" said Corker. "Let's tell stories. Hagar, you tell a story, and
Jinnie, you tell a story!"
Hagar told about the Snow Queen and Kay and Gerda, and they liked that
very well. All the cow-house was dark as the little robber girl's hut
in the night-time when all were asleep save Gerda and the little
robber girl and the reindeer. When they came to the reindeer, Corker
said he heard him moving behind them in a corner, and Maggie said she
heard him, too, and Jinnie called out, "Whoa, dere, Mr. Reindeer! You
des er stay still till we's ready fer you!"--and they all drew closer
together with a shudder of delight.
The clouds were breaking--the lines of rain were silver instead
of leaden. Even the cow-house was lighter inside. There was no
reindeer, after all; there were only brown logs and trampled earth and
mud-daubers' nests and a big spider's web. "Now, Jinnie," said Corker,
"you tell a ghost story."
Thomasine objected. "I don't like ghost stories. Hagar doesn't either."
"I don't mind them much," said Hagar. "I don't have to believe them."
But Jinnie chose to become indignant. "You jes' hab to believe dem.
Dey're true! My lan'! Goin' ter church an' readin' de Bible an' den
doubtin' erbout ghosts! I'se gwine tell you er story you's got ter
believe, 'cause hit's done happen! Hit's gwine ter scare you, too! Dey
tell me hit scare a young girl down in de Hollow inter fits. Hit's
gwine ter mek yo' flesh crawl. Sayin' ghos' stories ain't true, when
everybody knows dey's true!"
The piece of ancient African imagination, traveller of ten thousand
years through heated forests, was fearsome enough. "Ugh!" said the
children and shivered and stared.--It took the sun, indeed, to drive
the creeping, mistlike thoughts away.
Going home through the rain-soaked woodland, Hagar began to gather
flowers. Her bucket of berries on her arm, she stepped aside for this
bloom and that, gathering with long stems, making a sheaf of blossoms.
"What you doin' dat for?" queried Jinnie. "Dey's all wet. You'll jes'
ruin dat gingham dress!" But Hagar kept on plucking Black-eyed Susans,
and cardinal flowers, and purple clover and lady's-lace.
They came, in the afternoon glow, in sight of Gilead Balm. They came
closer until the house was large, standing between its dark, funereal
cedars, with a rosy cloud behind.
"All the blinds are closed as though we'd gone away!" said Hagar. "I
never saw it that way before."
Mrs. Green was at the lower gate, waiting for them. Her old, kind,
wrinkled face was pale between the slats of her sunbonnet, but her
eyelids were reddened as though she had been weeping. "Yes, yes,
children, I'm glad you got a lot of berries!--Corker and Maggie and
Thomasine, you go with Jinnie. Mind me and go.--Hagar, child, you and
me are goin' to come on behind.... You and me are goin' to sit here
a bit on the summer-house step.... The Colonel said I was the best
one after all to do it, and I'm going to do it, but I'd rather take a
killing! ... Yes, sit right here, with my arm about you. Hagar, child,
I've got something to tell you, honey."
Hagar looked at her with large, dark eyes. "Mrs. Green, why are all the
shutters closed?"