MR. LAYDON
The winter was so open, so mild and warm, that a few pale roses clung
to their stems through half of December. Christmas proved a green
Christmas; neither snow nor ice, but soft, Indian summer weather.
Eglantine always gave two weeks' holiday at Christmas. It was a great
place for holidays. Right and left went the girls. Those whose own
homes were too far away went with roommates or bosom friends to theirs;
hardly a pupil was left to mope in the rooms that grew so still. Most
of the teachers went away. The scattering was general.
But Hagar remained at Eglantine. Gilead Balm was a good long way off.
She had gone home last Christmas and the Christmas before, but this
year--she hardly knew how--she had missed it. In the most recently
received of his rare letters her grandfather had explicitly stated
that, though he was prepared to pay for her schooling and to support
her until she married, she must, on her side, get along with as little
money as possible. It was criminal that he had so little nowadays, but
such was the melancholy fact. The whole world was going to the dogs. He
sometimes felt a cold doubt as to whether he could hold Gilead Balm.
He wished to die there, at any rate. Hagar had been very unhappy over
that letter, and it set her to wondering more strongly than ever about
money, and to longing to make it. In her return letters he suggested
that she stay at Eglantine this Christmas, and so save travelling
expenses. And in order that Gilead Balm might not feel that she would
be too dreadfully disappointed, she said that it was very pleasant
at Eglantine, and that several of the girls were going to stay, and
that she would be quite happy and wouldn't mind it much, though of
course she wanted to see them all at Gilead Balm. The plan was of her
suggesting, but she had not realized that they might fall in with it.
When her grandmother answered at length, explaining losses that the
Colonel had sustained, and agreeing that this year it might be best for
her to stay at Eglantine, she tried not to feel desperately hurt and
despondent. She loved Gilead Balm, loved it as much as her mother had
hated it. Old Miss's letter had shown her own disappointment, but--"You
are getting to be a woman and must consider the family. Ashendyne and
Coltsworth women, I am glad to say, have always known their duty to the
family and have lived up to it." The last half of the letter had a good
deal to say of Ralph Coltsworth who was at the University.
Hagar was here at Eglantine, and it was two days before Christmas, and
most of the girls were gone. Sylvie was gone. The teacher whom she
liked best--Miss Gage--was gone. Mrs. LeGrand, who liked holidays, too,
was going. Mrs. Lane and Miss Bedford and the housekeeper were not
going, and they and the servants would look after Eglantine. Besides
these there would be left the books in the book-room, and Hagar would
have leave to be out of doors, in the winding walks and beneath the
trees, alone and whenever she pleased. The weather was dreamy still;
everywhere a warm amethyst haze.
This morning had come a box from Gilead Balm. Her grandmother had
filled it with good things to eat and the Colonel sent his love and
a small gold-piece. There was a pretty belt from Captain Bob and a
hand-painted plate and a soft pink wool, shell-pattern, crocheted
"fascinator" from Miss Serena. Mrs. Green sent a hemstitched
handkerchief, and the servants sent a Christmas card. Through the box
were scattered little sprays from the Gilead Balm cedars, and there was
a bunch of white and red and button chrysanthemums. Hagar, sitting on
the hearth-rug, unpacked everything; then went off into a brown study,
the chrysanthemums in her lap.
Later in the morning she arranged upon the hand-painted plate some
pieces of home-made candy, several slices of fruitcake, three or four
lady apples, and a number of Old Miss's exquisitely thin and crisp
wafers, and with it in her hand went downstairs to Mrs. LeGrand's room,
knocked at the door, and was bidden to enter. Mrs. LeGrand half-raised
herself from a flowery couch near the fire, put the novel that she
was reading behind her pillow, and stretched out her hand. "Ah,
Hagar!--Goodies from Gilead Balm? How nice! Thank you, my dear!" She
took a piece of cocoanut candy, then waved the hand-painted plate to
the round table. "Put it there, dear child! Now sit down for a minute
and keep me company."
Hagar took the straight chair on the other side of the hearth. The
bright, leaping flame was between the two. It made a kind of softer
daylight, and full in the heart of it showed Mrs. LeGrand's handsome,
not yet elderly countenance, the ripe fullness of her bust, covered
by a figured silk dressing-sacque, and her smooth, well-shaped,
carefully tended hands. Hagar conceived that it was her duty to think
well and highly of Mrs. LeGrand, who was such an old friend of the
family, and who, she knew, out of these same friendly considerations,
was keeping her at Eglantine on the easiest of terms. Yes, it was
certainly her duty to love and admire Mrs. LeGrand. That she did not
do so caused her qualms of conscience. Many of the girls raved about
Mrs. LeGrand, and so did Miss Carlisle and Miss Bedford. Hagar supposed
with a sigh that there was something wrong with her own heart. To-day,
as she sat in the straight chair, her hands folded in her lap, she
experienced a resurgence of an old childhood dislike. She saw again
the Gilead Balm library, and the pool of sunlight on the floor and the
"Descent of Man," and heard again Mrs. LeGrand telling the Bishop that
she--Hagar--was reading an improper book. Time between then and now
simply took itself away like a painted drop-scene. Six years rolled
themselves up as with a spring, and that hour seamlessly adjoined this
hour.
"I'm afraid," said Mrs. LeGrand, "that you'll be a little lonely, dear
child, but it won't be for long. Time flies so!"
"I don't exactly get lonely," said Hagar gravely. "You are going down
the river, aren't you?"
"Yes, for ten days. My dear friends at Idlewood won't hear of my not
coming. They were my dear husband's dearest cousins. Mrs. Lane and Miss
Bedford, together with Mrs. Brown, will take, I am sure, the best of
care of things here."
"Yes, of course. We'll get on beautifully," said Hagar. "Mr. Laydon is
not going away either. His mother is ill and he will not leave her. He
says that if we like to listen, he will come over in the evenings and
read aloud to us."
Mr. Laydon was teacher of Belles-Lettres at Eglantine, a well-looking
young gentleman, with a good voice, and apparently a sincere devotion
to the best literature. Eglantine and Mr. Laydon alike believed in
the future of Mr. Laydon. It was understood that his acceptance of a
position here was of the nature of a makeshift, a mere pot-boiler on
his road to high places. He and his mother were domiciled with a cousin
from whose doorstep you might toss a pebble into the Eglantine grounds.
In the past few years the neighbouring town had begun to grow; it had
thrown out a street which all but touched the osage-orange hedge.
Mrs. LeGrand made a slight motion with her hand on which was her
wedding-ring, with an old pearl ring for guard. "I shall tell Mrs. Lane
not to let him do that too often. I have a great esteem for Mr. Laydon,
but Eglantine cannot be too careful. No one with girls in their charge
can be too careful!--What is the Gilead Balm news?"
"The letter was from grandmother. She is well, and so is grandfather.
They have had a great deal of company. Uncle Bob has had rheumatism,
but he goes hunting just the same. The Hawk Nest Coltsworths are coming
for Christmas--all except Ralph. He is going home with a classmate.
Grandmother says he is the handsomest man at the University, and that
if I hear tales of his wildness I am not to believe them. She says
all men are a little wild at first. Aunt Serena is learning how to
illuminate texts. Mrs. Green has gone to see her daughter, who has
something the matter with her spine. Thomasine's uncle in New York is
going to have her visit him, and grandmother thinks he means to get
Thomasine a place in a store. Grandmother says no girl ought to work
in a store, but Thomasine's people are very poor, and I don't see what
she can do. She's got to live. Corker has a place, but he isn't doing
very well. Car'line and Isham have put a porch to their cabin, and Mary
Magazine has gotten religion."
"Girls of Thomasine's station," said Mrs. LeGrand, "are beginning
more and more, I'm sorry to see, to leave home to work for pay. It's
spreading, too; it's not confined to girls of her class. Only yesterday
I heard that a bright, pretty girl that I used to know at the White had
gone to Philadelphia to study to be a nurse, and there's Nellie Wynne
trying to be a journalist! A journalist! There isn't the least excuse
for either of those cases. One of those girls has a brother and the
other a father quite able to support them."
"But if there really isn't any one?" said Hagar wistfully. "And if you
feel that you are costing a lot--" Her dreams at night were beginning
to be shot with a vague but insistent "If I could write--if I could
paint or teach--if I could earn money--"
"There is almost always some one," answered Mrs. LeGrand. "And if a
girl knows how to make the best of herself, there inevitably arrives
her own establishment and the right man to take care of her. If"--she
shrugged--"if she doesn't know how to make the best of herself, she
might as well go work in a store. No one would especially object. That
is, they would not object except that when that kind of thing creeps
up higher in the scale of society, and girls who can perfectly well be
supported at home go out and work for pay, it makes an unfortunate kind
of precedent and reacts and reflects upon those who do know how to
make the best of themselves."
Hagar spoke diffidently. "But a lot of women had to work after the war.
Mrs. Lane and General ----'s daughters, and you yourself--"
"That is quite different," said Mrs. LeGrand. "Gentlewomen in reduced
circumstances may have to battle alone with the world, but they do not
like it, and it is only hard fate that has put them in that position.
It's an unnatural one, and they feel it as such. What I am talking
of is that nowadays you see women--young women--actually choosing to
stand alone, actually declining support, and--er--refusing generally to
make the best of themselves. It's part of the degeneracy of the times
that you begin to see women--women of breeding--in all kinds of public
places, working for their living. It's positively shocking! It opens
the gate to all kinds of things."
"Wrong things?"
"Ideas, notions. Roger Michael's ideas, for instance,--which I must
say are extremely wrong-headed. I regretted that I had asked her here.
She was hardly feminine." Mrs. LeGrand stretched herself, rubbed her
plump, firm arms, from which the figured silk had fallen back, and rose
from the couch. "I hope that Eglantine girls will always think of these
things as ladies should. And now, my dear, will you tell Mrs. Lane that
I want to see her?"
Mrs. LeGrand went away from Eglantine for ten days. Of the women
teachers living in the house, all went but Mrs. Lane and Miss Bedford.
All the girls went but three, and they were, first, Hagar Ashendyne;
second, a pale thin girl from the Far South, a martyr to sick
headaches; and third, Francie Smythe, a girl apparently without many
home people. Francie was sweetly dull, with small eyes and a perpetual
smile.
How quiet seemed the great house with its many rooms! They closed the
large dining-room and used the small room where Roger Michael had
supped. They shut the classrooms and the study-hall and the book-room,
and sat in the evenings in the bowery, flowery parlour. Here, the very
first evening, and the second, came Mr. Laydon with Browning in one
pocket and Tennyson in the other.
Mrs. Lane was knitting an afghan of a complicated pattern. Her lips
moved softly, continuously, counting. Mr. Laydon, making an eloquent
pause midway of "Tithonous" caught this _One--two--three--four_--and
had a fleeting expression of pain. Mrs. Lane saw the depth to which she
had sunk in his esteem and flushed over her delicate, pensive face. For
the remainder of the hour she sat with her knitting in her lap. But
really the afghan must be finished, and so, the second evening, she
placed her chair so as to face not the reader but a shadowy corner, and
so knit and counted in peace. Miss Bedford neither knit nor counted;
she said that she adored poetry and sighed rapturously where something
seemed to be indicated. She also adored conversation and argumentation
as to this or that nice point. What did Mr. Laydon think Browning
really meant in "Childe Roland," and was Porphyria's lover really mad?
Was Amy really to blame in "Locksley Hall"? Miss Bedford made play with
her rather fine eyes and teased the fringe of the table-cover. The pale
girl from the Far South--Lily was her name--sat by the fire and now
rubbed her forehead with a menthol pencil and now stroked Tipsy Parson,
Mrs. LeGrand's big black cat. Francie Smythe had a muslin apron full
of coloured silks and was embroidering a centre-piece--yellow roses
with leaves and thorns. Francie was a great embroiderer. Hagar sat
upon a low stool by the hearth, over against Lily, close to the slowly
burning logs. She was a Fire-Worshipper. The flames were better to her
than jewels, and the glowing alleys and caverns below were treasure
caves and temples. She sat listening in the rosy light, her chin in her
hands. She thought that Mr. Laydon read very well--very well, indeed.
"'Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles,
Miles and miles,
On the solitary pastures--'"
Midway of the poem she turned a little so that she could see the reader.
He sat in the circle of lamplight, a presentable man, well-formed,
dark-eyed, and enthusiastic; fairly presentable within, too, very
fairly clean, a good son, filled with not unhonourable ambitions; good,
average, human stuff with an individual touch of impressionability
and a strong desire to be liked, as he expressed it, "for himself";
young still, with the momentum and emanation of youth. The lamp had
a rose and amber shade. It threw a softened, coloured, dreamy light.
Everything within its range was subtly altered and enriched.
"'And I knew--while thus the quiet-coloured eve
Smiles to leave
To their folding, all our many tinkling fleece
In such peace,
And the slopes and rills in undistinguished grey
Melt away--'"
Hagar sat in her corner, upon the low stool, in the firelight, as
motionless as though she were in a trance. Her eyes, large, of a
marvellous hazel, beneath straight, well-pencilled brows of deepest
brown, were fixed steadily upon the man reading. Slowly, tentatively,
something rich and delicate seemed to rise within her, something that
clung to soul and body, something strange, sweet and painful, something
that, spreading and deepening with great swiftness, suffused her being
and made her heart at once ecstatic and sorrowful. She blushed deeply,
felt the crimsoning, and wished to drop her head upon her arms and
be alone in a balmy darkness. It was as though she were in a strange
dream, or in one of her long romances come real.
"'In one year they sent a million fighters forth,
South and North,--
And they built their gods a brazen pillar high
As the sky-- ...
... Love is best.'"
Laydon put the book down upon the table. While he read, one of the
maids, Zinia, had brought a note to Miss Bedford, and that lady had
gone away to answer it. Mrs. Lane knitted on, her lips moving, her
back to the table and the hearth. Francie Smythe was sorting silks.
"That was a lovely piece," she said unemotionally, and went on
dividing orange from lemon. The girl with the menthol pencil was more
appreciative. "Once, when I was a little girl I went with my father
and mother to Rome. We went out on the Campagna. I remember now how it
was all green and flat and wide as the sea and still, and there were
great arches running away--away--and a mist that they said was fever."
Her voice sank. She sighed and rubbed her forehead with the menthol.
Her eyes closed.
Edgar Laydon rose and came into the circle of firelight. He was moved
by his own reading, shaken with the impulse and rhythm of the poem. He
stood by the mantel and faced Hagar. She was one of his pupils, she
recited well; of the essays, the "compositions," which were produced
under his direction, hers were the best; he had told her more than once
that her work was good; in short, he was kindly disposed toward her. To
this instant that was all; he was scrupulously correct in his attitude
toward the young ladies whom he taught. He had for his work a kind of
unnecessary scorn; he felt that he ought to be teaching men, or at
the very least should hold a chair in some actual college for women.
Eglantine was nothing but a Young Ladies' Seminary. He felt quite an
enormous gulf between himself and those around him, and, as a weakness
will sometimes quaintly do, this feeling kept him steady. Until this
moment he was as indifferent to Hagar Ashendyne, as to any one of the
fifty whom he taught, and he was indifferent to them all. He had a
picture in his mind of the woman whom some day he meant to find and
woo, but she wasn't in the least like any one at Eglantine.
Now, in an instant, came a change. Hagar's eyes, very quiet and limpid,
were upon him. Perhaps, deep down, far distant from her conscious self,
she willed and exercised an ancient power of her sex and charmed him
to her; perhaps--in his lifted mood, the great, sensuous swing of the
verse still with him, the written cry of passion faintly drumming
within his veins--he would have suddenly linked that diffused emotion
to whatever presence, young and far from unpleasing, might have risen
at this moment to confront him. However that may be, Laydon's eyes and
those of Hagar met. Each gaze held the other for a breathless moment,
then the lids fell, the heart beat violently, a colour surged over
the face and receded, leaving each face pale. A log, burned through,
parted, striking the hearth with a sound like the click of a closing
trap.
Mrs. Lane, having come to an easy part in the pattern, turned her face
to the rest of the room. "Aren't we going to have some more poetry?
Read us some more, Mr. Laydon."
The girl with the menthol pencil spoke dreamily. "Isn't there another
piece about the Campagna? I can see it plain--green like the sea and
arches and tombs and a mist hanging over it, and a road going on--a
road going on--a road going on."