HAGAR AND LAYDON
This is what they did. The next day was soft as balm. To Hagar, sitting
in the sun on the step of the west porch, came the sound of steps
over the fallen leaves of what was called at Eglantine the Syringa
Alley--sycamore boughs above and syringa bushes thickly planted and
grown tall, making winding walls for a winding path. The red surged
over Hagar, her eyes, dark-ringed, half-closed. Laydon, emerging
from the alley, came straight toward her, over a space of gravel and
wind-brought leaves. It was mid-morning, the place open and sunny, to
be viewed from more windows than one, with the servants, moreover,
going to and fro on their morning business, apt to pass this gable end.
Aunt Dorinda, for instance, the old, turbaned cook, passed, but she saw
nothing but one of the teachers stopping to say, "Merry Christmas!" to
Miss Hagar. All the servants liked Miss Hagar.
What Laydon said was not "Merry Christmas!" but, "Hagar, Hagar! that
was Love came to us last night! I have not slept. I have been like a
madman all night! I did not know there was such a force in the world."
"I did not sleep either," answered Hagar. "I did not sleep at all."
"Every one can see us here. Let us walk toward the gate, through the
alley."
She rose from the step and went with him. Well in the shelter of the
syringa, hidden from the house, he stopped, and laid his hands lightly
upon her shoulders, then, as she did not resist, drew her to him. They
kissed, they clung together in a long embrace, they uttered love's
immemorial words, smothering each with each, then they fell apart; and
Hagar first buried her face in her hands, then, uncovering it, broke
into tremulous laughter, laughter that had a sobbing note.
"What will they say at Gilead Balm--oh, what will they say at Gilead
Balm?"
"Say!" answered Laydon. "They'll say that they wish your happiness!
Hagar, how old are you?"
"I'm nearly eighteen."
"And old for your years. And I--I am twenty-eight, and young for my
years." Laydon laughed, too. He was giddy with happiness. "Gilead Balm!
What a strange name for a place--and you've lived there always--"
"Always."
They were moving now down the alley toward a gate that gave upon the
highroad. Near by lay an open field seized upon, at Christmas, by a mob
of small boys with squibs and torpedoes and cannon crackers. They had
a bonfire, and the wood smoke drifted across, together with the odour
of burning powder. The boys were shouting like Liliputian soldiery, and
the squibs and giant crackers shook the air as with a continuous elfin
bombardment. The nearest church was ringing its bells. Laydon and Hagar
came to the gate--not the main but a lesser entrance to Eglantine. No
one was in view; hand in hand they leaned against the wooden palings.
Before them stretched the road, an old, country pike going on and on
between cedar and locust and thorn until it dropped into the violet
distance.
"I wish we were out upon it," said Hagar; "I wish we were out upon it,
going on and on through the world, travelling like gipsies!"
"You look like a gipsy," he said. "Have you got gipsy blood in you?"
"No.... Yes. Just to go on and on. The open road--and a clear fire at
night--and to see all things--"
"Hagar--Why did they call you Hagar?"
"I don't know. My mother named me."
"Hagar, we've got to think a little.... It took us so by surprise....
We had best, I think, just quietly say nothing to anybody for a
while.... Don't you think so?"
"I had not thought about it, but I will," said Hagar. She gazed
down the road, her brows knit. The Christmas cannonading went on, a
continuous miniature tearing and shaking of the air, with a dwarf
shouting and laughing, and small coalescing clouds of powder smoke. The
road ran, a quiet, sunny streak, past this small bedlam, into the still
distance. "I won't tell any one at Eglantine," she said at last, "until
Mrs. LeGrand comes back. She will be back in a week. But I'll write to
grandmother to-night."
Laydon measured the gate with his hand. "I had rather not tell my
mother at once. She is very delicate and nervous, and perhaps she has
grown a little selfish in her love for me. Besides, she had set her
heart on--" He threw that matter aside, it being a young and attractive
kinswoman with money. "I had rather not tell her just now. Then, as
to Mrs. LeGrand.... Of course, I suppose, as I am a teacher here, and
you are a pupil ... but there, too, had we not best delay a little? It
will make a confusion--things will be said--my position will become
an embarrassing one. And you, too, Hagar,--it won't be pleasant for
you either. Isn't it better just to keep our own concerns to ourselves
for a while? And your people up the river--why not _not_ tell them
until summer-time? Then, when you go home,--and when I have finished
my engagement here, for I don't propose to come back to Eglantine next
year,--then you can tell them, and so much better than you could write
it! I could follow you to Gilead Balm--we could tell them together.
Then we could discuss matters and our future intelligently--and that
is impossible at the moment. Let us just quietly keep our happiness to
ourselves for a while! Why should the world pry into it?" He seized her
hands and pressed his face against them. "Let us be happy and silent."
She looked at him with her candid eyes. "No, we shouldn't be happy that
way. I'll write to grandmother to-night."
They gazed at each other, the gate between them. The strong
enchantment held, but a momentary perplexity crossed it, and the
never long-laid dust of pain was stirred. "I am not asking anything
wrong," said Laydon, a hurt note in his voice. "I only see certain
embarrassments--difficulties that may arise. But, darling, darling! it
shall be just as you please! 'I'd crowns resign to call you mine'--and
so I reckon I can face mother and Mrs. LeGrand and Colonel Ashendyne!"
A flush came into his cheek. "I've been so foolish, too, as to--as to
pay a little attention to Miss Bedford. But she is too sensible a
woman to think that I meant anything seriously--"
"Did you?"
"Not in the least," said Laydon truthfully. "A man gets lonely, and
he craves affection and understanding, and he's in a muddle before he
knows it. There isn't anything else there, and I never said a word of
_love_ to her. Darling, darling! I never loved any one until last night
by the fire, and you looked up at me with those wonderful eyes, and I
looked down, and our eyes met and held, and it was like a fine flame
all over--and now I'm yours till death--and I'll run any gauntlet you
tell me to run! If you write to your people to-night, so will I. I'll
write to Colonel Ashendyne."
They left the gate and again pursued the syringa alley. The sound of
the Christmas bombardment drifted away. When they reached the shadow of
the great bushes, he kissed her again. All the air was blue and hazy
and the church bells were ringing, ringing. "I haven't any money," said
Laydon. "Mother has a very little, but I've never been able, somehow,
to lay by. I'll begin now, though, and then, as I told you, I expect
next year to have a much better situation. Dr. ---- at ---- thinks he
may get me in there. It would be delightful--a real field at last,
the best of surroundings and a tolerable salary. If I were fortunate
there, we could marry very soon, darling, darling! But as it is--It is
wretched that Eglantine pays so little, and that there is so little
recognition here of ability--no career--no opportunity! But just you
wait and see--you one bright spot here!"
Hagar gazed at the winding path, strewn with bronze leaves, and at
the syringa bushes, later to be laden with fragrant bloom, and at the
great white sycamore boughs against the pallid blue, and at the roof
and chimneys of Eglantine, now apparent behind the fretwork of trees.
The inner eye saw the house within, the three-years-familiar rooms,
her "tower room"--and all the human life, the girls, the teachers, the
servants. Bright drops came to her eyes. "I've been unhappy here, too,
sometimes. But I couldn't stay three years in a place and not love
something about it."
"That is because you are a woman," said the lover. "With a man it is
different. If a place isn't right, it isn't right.--If I had but five
thousand dollars! Then we might marry in a month's time. As it is,
we'll have to wait and wait and wait--"
"I am going to work, too," said Hagar. "I am going to try somehow to
make money."
He laughed. "You dear gipsy! You just keep your beautiful, large eyes,
and those dusky warm waves of hair, and your long slim fingers, and the
way you hold yourself, and let 'trying to earn money' go hang! That's
my part. Too many women are trying to earn money, anyhow--competing
with us.--You've got just to be your beautiful self, and keep on loving
me." He drew a long breath. "Jove! I can see you now, in a parlour
that's our own at ----, receiving guests--famous guests, maybe, after
a while; people who will come distances to see me! For I don't mean to
remain unknown. I know I've got ability."
Before they left the alley they settled that both should write that
night to Gilead Balm. Laydon found the idea distasteful enough;
older and more worldly-wise than the other, he knew that there
would probably ensue a tempest, and he was constitutionally averse
to tempests. He was well enough in family, but no great things;
he had a good education, but so had others; he could give a good
character--already he was running over in mind a list of clergymen,
educators, prominent citizens, and Confederate veterans to whom
he could refer Colonel Ashendyne. He had some doubt, however, as
to whether comparative spotlessness of character would have with
Colonel Ashendyne the predominant and overweening value that it
should have. Money--he had no means; position--he had as yet an
uncertain foothold in the world, and no powerful relatives to push
him. Unbounded confidence he had in himself, but the point was to
create that confidence in Hagar's people. Of course, they would say
that she was too young, and that he had taken advantage. His skirts
were clear there; both had truthfully been taken prisoners, fallen
into an ambuscade of ancient instinct; there hadn't been the slightest
premeditation. But how to convey that fact to the old Bourbon up the
river? Laydon had once been introduced to Colonel Ashendyne upon one of
the latter's rare visits to the neighbouring city and to Eglantine. He
remembered stingingly the Colonel's calm and gentlemanly willingness
immediately to forget the existence of a teacher of Belles-Lettres
in a Young Ladies' School. The letter to Gilead Balm. He didn't want
to write it, but he was going to--oh! he was going to.... Women were
curiously selfish about some things.... Mrs. LeGrand, too; he thought
that he would write about it to Mrs. LeGrand. He could imagine what she
would say, and he didn't want to hear it. He was in love, and he was
going to do the honourable thing, of course; he had no idea otherwise.
But he certainly entertained the wish that Hagar could see how entirely
honourable, as well as discreet, would be silence for a while.
Hagar never thought of it in terms of "honour." She had no adequate
idea of his reluctance. It might be said that she knew already the
arching of Mrs. LeGrand's brows and the lightning and thunder that
might issue from Gilead Balm. Grandfather and grandmother, Aunt Serena
and Uncle Bob looked upon her as nothing but a child. She wasn't a
child; she was eighteen. She felt no need to vindicate herself, nor to
apologize. She was moving through what was still almost pure bliss,
moving with a dreamlike tolerance of difficulties. What did it matter,
all those things? They were so little. The air was wine and velvet,
colours were at once soft and clear, sound was golden. In the general
transfiguration the man by her side appeared much like a demigod. Her
wings were fairly caught and held by the honey. It was natural for her
to act straightforwardly, and when she must propose that she act so
still, it was simply a putting forward, an unveiling of the mass of her
nature. She showed herself thus and so, and then went on in her happy
dream. Had he been able to make her realize his great magnanimity in
giving up his point of view to hers, perhaps she might have striven
for magnanimity, too, and acquiesced in a temporary secrecy, perhaps
not--on the whole, perhaps not. Had she deeply felt the secrecy to be
necessary, had they paced the earth in another time and amid actual
dangers, wild beasts could not have torn from her a relation of their
case.
But Laydon thought that she was thinking in terms of "honour." Pure
women were naturally up in arms at the suggestion of secrecy. Their
delicate minds had at once a vision of deception, desertion, all kinds
of horrors. He acknowledged that men had given them reason for the
vision; they could not be blamed if they saw it even when an entirely
honourable and devoted man was at their feet. He smiled at what he
supposed Hagar thought; his warm sense of natural supremacy became
rich and deep; he felt like an Eastern king unfolding a generous and
noble nature to some suppliant who had reason to doubt those qualities
in Eastern kings at large--he experienced a sumptuous, Oriental,
Ahasuerus-and-Esther feeling. Poor little girl! If she had any absurd
fear like that--He began to be eager to get to the letter to Colonel
Ashendyne. He could see his own strong black handwriting on a large
sheet of bond paper. _My dear Colonel Ashendyne:--You will doubtless be
surprised at the nature and contents of this letter, but I beg of you
to_--
The syringa alley ended, and the west wing of the house, beyond which
stretched the offices, opened upon them. Zinia, the mulatto maid, and
old Daniel, the gardener, watched them from a doorway. "My Lord!" said
Zinia. "Dey's walkin' right far apart, but I knows a co'tin' air when
I sees it! Miss Sarah better come back here!"
Daniel frowned. He had been born on the Eglantine place and the majesty
and honour and glory of Eglantine were his. "Shet yo' mouf, gal! Don't
no co'tin' occur at Eglantine. Hit's Christmas an' everybody looks
good an' shinin' lak de angels. Dey two jes' been listenin' to de
'lumination an' talkin' jography an' Greek!"
As the two stepped upon the west porch, the door opened and Miss
Bedford came out--Miss Bedford in a very pretty red hood and a
Connemara cloak. Miss Bedford had a sharp look. "Where did you two find
each other?" she asked; then, without waiting for an answer, "Hagar!
Mrs. Lane has been looking for you. She wants you to help her do up
parcels for her mission children. I've been tying up things until I am
tired, and now I am going to walk down the avenue for a breath of air.
Hurry in, dear; she needs you.--Oh, Mr. Laydon! there's a passage in
'The Ring and the Book' that I've been wanting to ask you to explain--"
Hagar went in and tied up parcels in coloured tissue paper. The day
went by as in a dream. There was a Christmas dinner, with holly on the
table, and little red candles, and in the afternoon she went with Mrs.
Lane to a Christmas tree for poor children in the Sunday-School room of
a neighbouring church. The tree blazed with an unearthly splendour, the
star in the top seemed effulgent, the "Ohs!" and "Ahs!" and laughter
of the circling children, fell into a rhythm like sweet, low, distant
thunder.
That night she wrote both to her grandmother and her grandfather.
When she had made an end of doing so, she kneeled upon the braided
rug before the fire in her tower room, loosed her dark hair,
shook it around her, and sat as in a tent, her arms clasping her
knees, her head bowed upon them. "_Carcassonne--Aigues-Mortes.
Carcassonne--Aigues-Mortes._ I can't send a letter to father, for I
don't know where to address it. Mother--mother--mother! I can't send a
letter to you either...."