THE LETTERS
Miss Serena was playing "Silvery Waves." Hagar, kneeling on the
hearth-rug, warmed her hands at the fire and studied the illuminated
text over the mantel. "Silvery Waves" came to an end, and Miss Serena
opened the green music-book at "Santa Anna's March."
"Has Isham gone for the mail?" asked Hagar.
"Yes. He went an hour ago.--You're hoping, I suppose, for a letter from
that dreadful man?"
"You know as well as I do," said Hagar, "that I gave my word and he
gave his to write only once a month. And he isn't a dreadful man. He's
just like everybody else."
"Ha!" said Miss Serena, and brought her hands down upon the opening
chord. Hagar, her elbows on her knees, hid her eyes in her hands.
Within her consciousness Juliet was speaking as she had spoken that
night upon the stage--spoken in the book--spoken in immortal life,
youth, love. Not so, she knew with a suddenness and clangour as of
a falling city, not so could Juliet have spoken! "Like everybody
else"--Was Laydon, then, truly, like everybody else?--A horror of
weakness and fickleness came over her. Was there something direfully
wrong with her nature, or was it possible for people simply to be
mistaken in such a matter? Her head grew tired; she was so unhappy that
she wished to creep away and weep and weep.... Miss Serena, having
marched with Santa Anna, turned a dozen pages and began "The Mocking
Bird. With Variations."
Old Miss's step was heard in the hall, very firm and authoritative. In
a moment she entered the room, portly, not perceptibly aged, her hair,
beneath her cap, hardly more than powdered with grey, still wearing
black stuff gowns and white aprons and heelless low shoes over white
stockings. Hagar rose from the rug and pushed the big chair toward the
fire.
Old Miss dropped into it--no, not "dropped"--lowered herself with
dignity. "Has Isham brought the mail?"
"No, not yet."
"I dreamed last night that there was a letter from Medway. Serena!"
"Yes, mother?"
"The next text you paint I want you to do one for me. _Honour thy
father and mother that thy days may be long_--"
Miss Serena turned on the piano-stool. "I'll do it right away, mother.
It would be lovely in blue and gold.... You can't say that I haven't
honoured father and mother."
Old Miss had drawn out her knitting and now her needles clicked. "No
one honours them as they used to be honoured. No one obeys them as they
used to obey. To-day children think that they are wiser than their
fathers. They set up to use their own judgment until it's a scandal....
It's true you've been better than most, Serena. Taking you year in and
year out, you've obeyed the commandment. It's more than many daughters
and grand-daughters that I know have done." Her needles clicked again.
"Yes, Serena, you haven't given us much trouble. You were easy to make
mind from the beginning." She gave the due praise, but her tone was
not without acerbity. It might almost have seemed that such forthright
ductility and keeping of the commandment as had been Miss Serena's had
its side of annoyance and satiety.
Hagar spoke from the window where she stood, her forehead pressed
against the glass. "I see Isham down the road, by the Half-Mile Cedar."
Old Miss turned the heel of the Colonel's sock she was knitting.
"Things that from the newspaper and my personal observation happen now
in the world could not possibly have occurred when I was young. People
defying their betters, women deserting their natural sphere, atheists
denying hell and saying that the world wasn't made in six days, young
girls talking about independence and their own lives--their own lives!
Ha!"
Miss Serena began to play "The Sea in the Shell." "We all know how
Hagar came by her disposition, but I must say it is an unfortunate one!
When I was her age, no money could have made me act as she has done."
"No money could have made me, either," spoke Hagar at the window.
"Money has nothing to do with it!" said Old Miss. "At least as far as
Hagar is concerned, nothing! But fitness, propriety, meekness, and
modesty, consultation with those to whom she owes duty, and bowing to
what they say--all those have something to do with it! But what could
you expect? It was bound to come out some day. From a bush with thorns
will come a bush with thorns."
"Here is Isham," said Hagar. "If you've said enough for to-day,
grandmother, shall I get the mail?"
She brought the bag to her grandmother. When the Colonel was at
home, no one else opened the small leather pouch and distributed its
contents; when he was away Old Miss performed the ceremony. To-day he
had mounted Selim and ridden to the meeting in the neighbouring town.
Mrs. Ashendyne opened the bag and sorted the mail. There was no great
amount of it, but--"I said so! I dreamed it. My dreams often come true.
There it is!" "It" was a square letter, quite thick, addressed in a
rather striking hand and bearing a foreign stamp and postmark. It was
addressed to the Colonel, and Mrs. Ashendyne never opened the Colonel's
letters--not even when they were from Medway. They were not from him
very often. The last, and that thin between the fingers, had been in
September. This one was so much thicker than that one! Old Miss gazed
at it with greedy eyes.
Miss Serena, too, leaving the piano-stool, came to her mother's side
and fingered the letter. "He must have had a lot to write about. From
Paris.... I used to want to go to Paris so much!"
"Put it on the mantelpiece," said Old Miss. "It can't be long before
the Colonel's home." Even when it was on the mantel-shelf she still sat
looking at it with devouring eyes. "I dreamed it was coming--and there
it is!" The remainder of the mail waited under her wrinkled hand.
Miss Serena grew mildly impatient. "What else is there, mother? I'm
looking for a letter about those embroidery silks. There it is now,
I think!" She drew from her mother's lap an envelope with a printed
return address in the upper left-hand corner. "No, it isn't it. 'Young
People's Home Magazine.' Some advertisement or other--people pay a lot
to tell people about things they don't want! _Miss Hagar Ashendyne._
Here, Hagar! It evidently doesn't know that you are grown up--or think
you are! There's my letter, mother,--under the 'Dispatch.'"
Hagar went away with the communication from the "Young People's Home
Magazine" in her hand. She went upstairs to her own room. It had been
her mother's room. She slept in the four-poster bed on which Maria
had died, and she curled herself with a book in the corner of the
flowered chintz sofa as Maria had done before her. She curled herself
here to-day, though with the letter, not with a book. The letter lay
upon her knees. She looked at it with a fixed countenance, hardly
breathing. She had thought herself out of a deal of the conventional
and materialized religious ideas of her world--not out of religion but
out of conventional religion. She did not often pray now for rewards or
benefits, or hiatuses in the common law, or for a salvation external to
her own being. But at this moment the past reasserted itself. Her lips
moved. "O God, let it have been taken! O God, let it have been taken!
Let me have won the fifty dollars! Let me have won the third prize. O
God, let it have been taken!"
At last, her courage at the sticking-point, she opened the envelope,
and unfolded the letter within. The typewritten words swam before
her eyes, the "Dear Madam," the page or two that followed, the "With
Congratulations, we are faithfully yours." There was an enclosure--a
cheque. She touched it with trembling fingers. It said: "Pay to Miss
Hagar Ashendyne the Sum of Two Hundred Dollars."
An hour later, the dinner-bell sounding, she went downstairs. The
Colonel and Captain Bob were yet at the meeting of Democrats. There
was to be a public dinner; they would not be home before dusk. The
three women ate alone, Dilsey waiting. Old Miss was preoccupied; the
letter on the parlour mantelpiece filled her mind. "From Paris. In
September he was at a place called Dinard." Miss Serena had her mind
upon a panel--calla lilies and mignonette--which she was painting for
the rectory parlour. As for Hagar, she did not talk much, nowadays,
at Gilead Balm. If she were more silent than usual to-day, it passed
without notice.
Only once Old Miss remarked upon her appearance. "Hagar, you've got a
dazed look about the eyes. Are you feeling badly?"
"No, grandmother."
"You're not to get ill, child. I shall make a bottle of tansy bitters
to-morrow morning. We've trouble enough in this family without your
losing colour and getting circles round your eyes."
That was love and kindness from Old Miss. The water came into Hagar's
eyes. She felt a desire to tell her grandmother and Aunt Serena about
the letter, but in another moment it was gone. Her whole inner life was
by now secret from them, and this seemed of the inner life. Presently,
of course, she would deliberately tell them all; she had thought it out
and determined that it would be after supper, before Uncle Bob went
to bed and grandfather told her to get the chess-table. It seemed so
wonderful a thing to her; she was so awed by it that she could not help
the feeling that it would be wonderful to them, too.
In the afternoon she put a cape around her, left the home hill and
went down the lane, skirted a ploughed field, and, crossing the river
road, came immediately to the fringe of sycamores and willows upon the
river bank. It was warmer and stiller than it had been in the morning,
for the voice of the wind there sounded now the voice of the river;
the many boughs above were still against the sky. She made for a great
sycamore that she had known from childhood; it had a vast protuberant
curving root in whose embrace you could sit as in an armchair. She
sat there now and looked at the river that went so swiftly by. It
was swollen with the spring rains; it made a deep noise, going by to
the distant sea. To Hagar its voice to-day was at once solemn and
jubilant, strong and stirred from depth to surface. She had with her
the letter; how many times she had read it she could not have told.
She could have said it by heart, but still she wanted to read it,
to touch it, to become aware of meaning under meaning.... She could
write, she could tell stories, she could write books.... She could earn
money. It was one of the moments of her life: the moment when she knew
of her mother's death--the moment when she changed Gilead Balm for
Eglantine--the moment by the fire, Christmas eve--this moment. She was
but eighteen; the right-angled turns in her road of this life had not
been many; this was one and a main one. Suddenly, to herself, her life
achieved purpose, direction. It was as though a rudderless boat had
been suddenly mended, or a bewildered helmsman had seen the pole star.
She sat in the embrace of the sycamore, her feet lightly resting on
the spring earth, her shoulders just touching the pale bark of the
tree, her arms folded, her eyes level; poised, recollected as a young
Brahman, conscious of an expanded space, a deeper time. How long she
sat there she did not know; the sun slipped lower, touched her knees
with gold. She sighed at last, raised her hands and turned her body.
What, perhaps, had roused her was the sound of a horse's hoofs upon the
river road. At any rate, she now marked a black horse coming in the
distance, down the road, by the speckled sycamores. It came on with a
gay sound upon the wind-dried earth, and in its rider she presently
recognized her cousin, Ralph Coltsworth.
"What are you doing here?" she asked when he reined in the black horse
beside her. "Why aren't you at the University with Blackstone under
your arm?"
He dismounted, fastened his horse, and came across to the sycamore
root. "It's big enough for two, isn't it?" he asked, and sat down
facing her. "You mentioned the University? The University, bless its
old heart! doesn't appreciate me."
"Ralph! Have you been expelled?"
"Suspended." Hands behind head, he regarded first the blue sky behind
the interlaced bare branches, then the tall and great gnarled trunk,
then the brown-clad figure of his cousin, enthroned before him. "The
suspense," he said, "is exquisite."
"What did you do?"
He grimaced. "I don't remember. Why talk about it? It wasn't much.
Cakes and ale--_joie de vivre_--chimes at midnight--same old song." He
laughed. "I gather that you've been rusticated, too."
Hagar winced. "Don't!... Let's laugh about other things. You'll break
your family's hearts at Hawk Nest."
"Old Miss said in a letter which mother showed me that you were
breaking hers. What kind of a fellow is he, Hagar?--Like me?"
Hagar looked at him gravely. "Not in the least. How long are you going
to stay at Hawk Nest?"
"Oh, a month! I'm coming to see you every other day."
"Are you?"
"I am. If I could draw I'd like to draw you just as you look now--half
marquise, half dryad--sitting before your own front door!"
"Well, you can't draw," said Hagar. "And it's getting cold, and the
dryad is going home."
"All right," said Ralph. "I'm going, too. I've come to spend the night."
Leading his horse, he walked beside her. In the green lane, a wintry
sunset glory over every slope and distant wood, the house between its
black cedars rising before them, he halted a moment. "I haven't seen
you since August when I rode over to tell Gilead Balm good-bye. You've
changed. You've 'done growed.'"
"That may be. I've grown to-day."
"Since I came?"
"No. Before you came. For the first time I suppose in your life,
grandmother is going to be sorry to see you. She worships you."
"She was sorry to see you, too, wasn't she? It's rather nice to be
companions out of favour."
"Oh!" cried Hagar. "You are and always were the most provoking twister
of the truth! I want to say to you that I do not consider that ours
are similar cases! And now, if you please, that is the last word I am
going to say to you on such a matter."
"All right!" said Ralph. "I was curious, of course. But I acknowledge
your right to shut me up."
They passed through the home gate,--where a boy took his horse,--and
went up the hill together. Dilsey was lighting the lamps. As they
entered the hall Miss Serena came out of the library--Miss Serena
looking curiously agitated. "Dilsey, hasn't Miss Hagar come in yet?...
Oh, Hagar! I've been searching the place for you--Why, Ralph! Where on
earth did you come from? Has the University burned down? Have you got
a holiday?"
The library door was ajar. The Colonel's voice made itself heard from
within. "Serena! Is that Hagar? Tell her to come here."
The three entered the room together. There was a slight clamour of
surprise and greeting from its occupants for Ralph, but it died down in
the face, as it were, of things of greater importance.
"What's the matter?" he asked, bringing up at last by Captain Bob in
the background.
"A letter from Medway," answered the other. "_Shh!_"
The evenings falling cold, there was a fire upon the hearth. The
reading-lamp was lit; all the room was in a glow that caressed the
stiff portraits, the old mahogany and horsehair furniture, the
bookcases and the books within. In the smaller of the two great chairs
by the hearth sat Old Miss, preternaturally straight, her hands folded
on the black silk apron which she donned in the evening, her still
comely face and head rising from the narrow, very fine embroidered
collar fastened by an oval brooch in which, in a complicated pattern,
was wrought the hair of dead Coltsworths and Hardens. Her face wore
a look at once softened and fixed. Across from her, in the big chair
by the leaf-table, sat Colonel Ashendyne, a little greyer, a little
more hawklike of nose, a little sparer in frame as the years went
by, but emphatically not a person to whom could be applied the term
"old." There breathed from him still an insolent, determined prime, a
timelessness, a pictorial quality as of some gallery masterpiece. With
the greyish-amber of his yet plentiful hair, his mustache and imperial,
the racer set of his head, his well-shaped jaw and long nervous hands,
his fine, long, spare figure and his eye in which a certain bladelike
keenness and cynicism warred with native sensuousness, he stayed in
the memory like such a canvas. His mood always showed through him,
though somewhat cloudily like light through a Venetian glass. That it
was a mixed and curious mood to-night, Hagar felt the moment she was
in the room. She did not always like her grandfather, but she usually
understood him. She saw the letter that had rested on the mantelpiece,
the letter from Paris, in his hand, and at once there came over her a
curious foreboding, she did not know whether of good or evil.
"Sit down," said the Colonel. "I have something to read to you."
For two months and more he had not looked at her without anger in his
eyes. To-night the cloud seemed at least partly to have gone by. There
was even in the Colonel's tone a touch of blandness, of enjoyment of
the situation. She sat down, wondering, her eyes upon the letter.
On occasion, when she searched her heart through, she found but a
shrivelled love for her father. Except that he had had half-share in
giving her life, she really did not know what she had to love him for.
Now, however, what power of growth there was in the winter-wrapped root
broke the soil. She began to tremble. "What is the matter? Is father
ill? Is he coming home?"
"Not immediately," said the Colonel. "No, he is not ill. He appears
to be in his usual health and to exhibit his usual good spirits. Your
grandmother and I were fortunate in having a son of a disposition so
happy that he left all clouds and difficulties, including his own, to
other people. At the proper moment he has always been able to find
a burden-bearer. No, Medway is well, and apparently happy. He has
remarried."
"Remarried!..."
It was the Colonel's intention to read her the letter--indeed, it
carried an inclosure for her--as he had already read it, twice, with
varying comment, to the others assembled. But he chose to make first,
his own introduction. "You've heard of the cat that always falls on
its feet? Well, that's your father, Gipsy!"--Even in the whirl of the
moment Hagar could not but note that he called her "Gipsy."--"That's
Medway! Here's a careless, ungrateful, disobedient son, utterly
reckless of his obligations. Is he hanged or struck by lightning? Not
he! He goes happily along--Master Lucky-Dog! He makes a disastrous
marriage with a penniless remnant of a broken-down family on some lost
coast or other and brings her home, and presently there's a child.
Does he undertake to support them, stay by his bargain, however poor
a one? Not he! He's got a tiny income in his own right, left him by
his maternal grandfather--just enough, with care, for one! Off he goes
with that in his pocket and a wealthy friend and, from that day to
this, we haven't laid eyes on Prince Fortunatus! Well, what happens?
Does he come to eating husks with the swine and so at last slink back!
Not he! He enjoys life; he's free and footloose; he's put his burden
on other folk's backs! Death comes along and unmakes his marriage. His
doting mother and his weak father apparently are prepared to charge
themselves with the maintenance of his child. Why should he trouble?
He doesn't--not in the least! He's got just enough in his own right to
let him wander, _en garçon_, over creation. If he took the least care
of another he couldn't wander, and he likes to wander. Ah, I understand
Medway, from hair to heel!--What comes of it all? We used to believe in
Nemesis, but that, like other beliefs, is going by the board. Isn't he
going to suffer? Not at all! He remains the cat that falls, every time,
upon its feet.--This, Gipsy, is the letter."
_My dear Father and Mother:--As well as I can remember, I was
staying at Dinard when I last wrote you. I was there because of
the presence in that charming place of a lady whose acquaintance
I had made, the previous year, at Aix-les-Bains. From Dinard I
followed her, in November, to Nice, and from Nice to Italy. I spent
a portion of February as her guest in her villa near Sorrento, and
there matters were brought to a conclusion. I proposed marriage and
she accepted. We were married a week ago in Rome, in the English
church, before a large company, the American Minister giving her
away. There were matters to be arranged with her banker and lawyer
in Paris, and so, despite the fact that March is a detestable month
in this city, we immediately came on here. Later we shall be in
Brittany, and we talk of Norway for the summer._
_The lady whom I have married was the widow of ---- ----, the noted
financier and railroad magnate. She is something under my own age,
accomplished, attractive, handsome, and possessed of a boundless
good nature and a benevolent heart. We understand each other's
nature and expect to be happy together. I need hardly tell you that
being who she is, she has extreme wealth. If you read the papers--I
do not--you may perhaps recall that ----'s will left his millions
to her absolutely without condition. There were no children. To
close this matter:--she has been generous to a degree in insisting
that certain settlements be made--it leaves me with a personal
financial independence and assurance of which, of course, I never
dreamed.... I have often regretted that I have been able to do so
little for you, or for the upkeep of dear old Gilead Balm. This,
in the future, may be rectified. I understand that you have had to
raise money upon the place, and I wish you would let me know the
amount._
The Colonel's eyes darted cold fire. He let the sheet fall for the
moment and turned upon Hagar, sitting motionless on the ottoman by the
fire. "Damn your father's impertinence, Gipsy!" he said.
Old Miss spoke in a soft and gentle voice. "Why do you call it that,
Colonel? Medway always had a better heart than he's ever been given
credit for. Why shouldn't he help now that he can do so? It's greatly
to his credit that he should write that way."
"Sarah," said the Colonel, "you are a soft-hearted--mother!"
Captain Bob spoke from beyond the table. Captain Bob did not often
speak, nor often with especial weight, but he had been pondering this
matter for three quarters of an hour, and he had a certain kind of
common sense. "I think Sarah's right. Medway's a curiosity to me, but
I've always held that he was born that way. You are, you know; you're
born so or you aren't born so. He's pretty consistent. There never was
a time when I wouldn't have said that he would come to the fore just as
soon as he didn't have to deny himself. Now the time's come, and here
he is. I think Sarah's right. Forgive and forget! If he wants to pay
his debts--and God knows he owes you and Sarah a lot--I'd let him. And
as to Gipsy there--better late than never! Read her what he says."
"I am going to," said the Colonel sardonically. He read the page that
remained, then laid the letter on the table, put his hands behind his
head and regarded his granddaughter. "The benevolent parent arrived at
last upon the scene--a kindly disposed stepmother with millions--and
that teacher of surface culture to young ladies at Eglantine! Among the
three you ought to be quite ideally provided for! I hope Medway will
like the teacher."
Old Miss came, unexpectedly, to her granddaughter's aid. "Don't worry
her, Colonel! I haven't thought her looking well to-day. Give her her
letter, and let her go and think it out quietly by herself.--If you
like, child, Phoebe shall bring you your supper."
Hagar did like--oh, would like that, thank you, grandmother, very
much! She took the letter--it was addressed to her in a woman's
hand--which her father had enclosed and which her grandfather now held
out to her, and went away, feeling somewhat blindly for the door,
leaving the others staring after her. Upstairs she lit her lamp and
placed it on Maria's table, by Maria's couch. Then, curled there,
against the chintz-covered pillows,--they were in a pattern of tulips
and roses,--she read the very kind letter which her stepmother had
written.