NEW YORK
In August--the Ashendynes being back at Gilead Balm--the "Young
People's Home Magazine" published Hagar's fairy story. Gilead Balm was
impressed, but not greatly impressed. It had the aristocratic tradition
as to writers; no Ashendyne had ever needed to be one. There had been
editor Ashendynes, in the old fiery, early, and mid-century times,
but editorship came out naturally from the political stream, and the
political, with law, planting, and soldiery, had been the Ashendyne
stream. The Ashendyne mind harked back to Early Georgian, even to
Stuart times; when you said "writer" it saw something Grub Streetish.
In addition, Hagar's was, of course, only a child's story.
The two hundred dollars shrank in impressiveness from being known of
after and not before Medway Ashendyne's letter. But to the eyes of
her grandmother and her Aunt Serena the two hundred dollars was the
impressive, the only really impressive, thing. Her grandmother advised
that it be put in bank. Miss Serena said that, when she was Hagar's
age, she had had a watch and chain for more than two years. "What would
you like to do with it, Gipsy?" asked Captain Bob.
The colour came into Hagar's cheeks. "With one half I want to get my
two winter dresses and my coat and hat, and with the other half I want
to get books."
"Books!" exclaimed the Ashendynes--the Colonel was not present. "Why,
aren't there books enough here?"
"They are not the kind of books I need."
"Nonsense!" said Old Miss. "Get your winter clothes if you
wish,--though I am sure that Medway means now to send the Colonel money
for you,--but save the rest. It will come in useful some day. Some day,
child, you'll be thinking about your marriage clothes."
"Luna and I came over the hill just now with Ralph Coltsworth,"
remarked Captain Bob cheerfully, apropos of nothing. "He says he's
studying hard--means to catch up at the University and be a credit to
the family."
Miss Serena was talented in taking offence at small things. She had
evolved the watch-and-chain idea and she thought it should have
received more consideration. In addition she had the kind of memory
that always holds the wrong things. "Books! I suppose you mean a kind
of books that we certainly don't have many of here!--French novels and
Darwin and the kind of books those two Northern women were reading this
summer! Even when you were a child--don't you remember, mother?--you
had a perfect talent for getting your hands on debasing literature! I
supposed you had outgrown it. I'm sure Mrs. LeGrand never encouraged
it. A hundred dollars worth of books!--and I suppose you are to choose
them! Well, if I were father, I'd look over the list first."
"Aunt Serena," said Hagar, with a Spanish gravity and courtesy, "there
are times when I understand the most violent crimes.... Yes; I know you
don't know what I mean."
That was in August. September passed and part of October, and then,
late in that month, Hagar went to New York.
Medway Ashendyne and his wife were travelling in the East. Next year
or the year after, they might, Medway wrote, be in America. In the
meantime, Hagar must have advantages. He had not the least idea, he
wrote his father, what kind of a person she was. Her letters were
formal, toneless and colourless to a degree. He hoped she had not
inherited--But whatever she had inherited, she was, of course, his
daughter, and he must take care of her, being now in a position
properly to do so. His wife suggested, for the moment, a winter in
New York, properly chaperoned. The money would be forthcoming (there
followed a memorandum of a handsome sum placed in bank to the Colonel's
credit). He could, he knew, leave it to his father and mother to see
that she _was_ properly chaperoned. His wife had thought of making
certain suggestions, but upon talking it over together, they had come
to the conclusion that, at the moment, at least, it would be wisest
not to interfere with the Gilead Balm order and way of life. It was
admirably suited, he judged, for a young girl's bringing up--much
better than the modern American way of doing things. Only in France--or
the Orient--was the _jeune fille_ really preserved.
The Colonel wrote to Mrs. LeGrand. Mrs. LeGrand returned one of her
long, fluent letters. First of all, congratulations that Hagar had come
to her senses about Mr. Laydon, then--"Now as to New York--"
Sylvie was going to New York too,--going to have singing lessons,
for she had a very sweet voice, and every one agreed that it would
be a mistake not to give it the best training. The problem of how to
manage for Sylvie had received the following solution, and Mrs. LeGrand
proffered it as a possible way to manage for Hagar also. There was
Powhatan Maine's family in New York--Powhatan himself and Bessie and
their widowed daughter, Mrs. Bolt, with her two children. They lived
well, "in our quiet, homelike, Southern fashion, of course." Powhatan
was a solid lawyer in a solid firm. Sylvie had paid them a visit once
before, but of course this year it was a question of her being in New
York for months and months. Now, ordinarily, the Maines would not
have heard of such a thing, but this disastrous year, with everybody
failing, Powhatan had lost heavily in stocks and apparently they were
having to economize. At any rate, Bessie was willing, just for this
year, to take Sylvie under her wing and to let her pay for her room
and board. The Maines' house was a good, big one, and Mrs. LeGrand
had very little doubt that, just as a family favour, Bessie would be
willing to receive Hagar on similar terms. Bessie would certainly
stipulate that the arrangement should be a quiet one, just between
themselves, and that Hagar, no less than Sylvie, should be regarded
merely as a young friend and connection, visiting her that winter.
This understood, Bessie would look after the two as if they were her
own. It was fortunate that neither Sylvie nor Hagar was "out," for the
Maines were in mourning. But Powhatan and Bessie knew a great many
people, and the two girls would probably see company enough. "You
remember Bessie, don't you? Good-nature itself! Nothing pleases her
so much as having people happy about her." Then, too, there would be
Rachel Bolt. She could take Hagar to the theatre and to concerts and
the picture galleries and where not. "The Maines are all members of
St. Timothy's--the Bishop's nephew's church, you know."--In fine, Mrs.
LeGrand advised that the Ashendynes write at once to Mrs. Maine. It was
done and Hagar's winter soon arranged for.
New York!... She had dreamed of great cities, but she had never
seen one. The night on the sleeping-car--her first night on any
sleeping-car--she stayed awake and watched through the window the
flying clouds and the moon and stars between, and, underneath, the
fugitive landscape. There was a sense of exaltation, of rushing on
with the rushing world. Now and again, as the train creaked and swung,
and once, as another roared past, there came moments of fascinated
terror. Rushing train and rushing world, all galloping wildly through
the night, and in front, surely some bottomless precipice!... She and
Sylvie had a section, and though Hagar had offered to take the upper
berth, it had ended in their having it put back and sleeping together.
Now Hagar sat up in bed, and looked at the sleeping Sylvie. There was a
dim, blended light, coming from the lamp above and the moonlight night
without. Sylvie lay, half-uncovered, fast asleep, her hair in glossy
braids, her pretty face, shell-tinted, sunk in the pillow, her breast
quietly rising and falling. Hagar had an intense, impersonal, abstract
passion for beauty wherever and in whatever form it resided. Now, limbs
beneath her, her arms nursing each other, she sat and regarded the
sleeping Sylvie with a pure, detached admiration. The train roared into
a station; she drew the window curtain until it roared out again, then
bared the window, and sat and watched the flying dark woods and the
silver surface of some wide water. New York--New York--New York....
Sylvie was a travelled lady. Sylvie had been to New York before. She
had been to Florida and New Orleans and Niagara and Saratoga. She
could play sweetly, not arrogantly,--Sylvie was not arrogant, except,
perhaps, a little when it came to good looks,--the part of guide and
mentor to Hagar. In the Jersey City station she kept a reassuring touch
upon Hagar's arm down the long platform to the gate. "The New York
Ferry has a sign over it. Even if they don't meet us, I know how to
manage--Oh, there's Cousin Powhatan!"
It was a pearl-grey morning, going over, with a mist that was almost
a fog hanging upon the water and making unearthly and like a mirage
the strange sky-line before them. There were not so many huge, tall
buildings as there would be in after years, but they were beginning.
The mist drifted, opening and closing, and to the mist was added the
fairy garlands and pennants of white steam. Out of the luminous haze
grew white ferryboats and low barges, and here passed an opalescent
shape like a vast moth wing. "A sailboat," said Hagar under her breath.
The air was chill and clinging. Sylvie and Captain Powhatan Maine
preferred to sit and talk within the cabin, but Hagar remained outside.
She stood with her hands lightly touching the rail, her eyes wide.
Another sailboat slipped past. She turned and looked along the widening
water, oceanward, and in a rift of the grey pearl clouds she seemed to
see, at a great distance, a looming woman shape. A salt odour filled
her nostrils. "Oh, the sea! I smell the sea!"
The ferryboat glided into its slip, the bell rang, the chains rattled;
out resonantly, from the lower deck, passed the great dray horses and
heavy wagons; the passengers disembarked; a crowd hurried, in column,
toward the Elevated. Half-bewildered, Hagar found herself mounting long
flights of steps, passing through a gateway, entering a train, which
at once, with a shriek, began to run upon a level with second-story
windows. She saw dingy red-brick factory and tenement buildings close,
close to her face; fire-escapes and staring windows with squalid or
horribly tawdry rooms beyond; on the window-sills spindling, starved
plants in ancient, battered tin cans, children's faces, women leaning
out, children, children, children--"We have to go quite far uptown,"
said Captain Maine. "Well, and what do you girls want to see first?"
He was a short, stout, gallant gentleman with a fierce grey mustache.
Sylvie talked for both. Hagar nodded her head or commanded a smile
when manners seemed to indicate it, but her mind was dealing with a
nightmare. "Was this--was this New York?" Once she turned her head
toward their escort, but something told her that if, indeed, she asked
the absurd question, he would say, "Why, yes! Don't you like it?"
Where were the domes and colonnades? Where the cleanness and
fairness--where the order and beauty? Where was the noble, great city?
Where were the happy people? She tried to tell herself, first, that all
these were there, that this was but a chance ugly street the train was
going through ... but they went through it for miles, and she caught
glimpses of so many other streets that seemed no better! And then she
tried to tell herself, that, after all, she must have known it would be
something like this. She had seen before, on a small scale, in a small
city, decrepit buildings and decrepit people of all ages. Poverty,
dirt, and disease.... One city would be like another, only larger....
She must have known. But knowing did not seem to have helped--or
perhaps she had never really seen, nor thought it out. She was tired
and overstrained; a horror came upon her. She looked through a window
into a room hung with a ghastly green, torn, and soiled paper. Men and
women were working in it, bent over a long table, working haggardly
and fast, the shirts of the men, the bodices of the women, open at
the throat. Another window--a wretched, blowsy woman and a young man
with a bloated, unwholesome face;--another, and an old, old woman with
a crying child, whom she struck;--then mere blank windows or windows
with starveling geraniums in broken pots; and beneath and around and
everywhere voices and heavy wheels, and the train rushing on upon its
trestle high in the air. Something black and cold and hopeless rolled
over Hagar's soul. It was as though the train were droning, droning, a
melancholy text.
"Hagar! What is the matter? You looked as though you were going to
faint!"
But Hagar wasn't going to faint. She pulled herself together. "No, no!
It isn't anything! I was tired, I suppose--"
"Mustn't faint in New York," said Captain Maine genially. "You'll get
run over if you do."
On went the Elevated, and the walls of windows grew vaguely better--or
the shock of surprise was over--or the armoured being within
shouldered away a hampering unhappiness. _New York--New York--New
York!_ Hope and vision sprang afresh. The windows and the houses in
which they were set decidedly bettered. There were distant glimpses of
fine buildings, spires of churches, trees that must be in a park. The
sun, which had been all morning hidden by clouds, came suddenly forth
and flooded the world with October gold. The gulf between what she had
dreamed and what she saw perceptibly narrowed, though it was still
there and though it still ached. "Here we are!" said Captain Maine,
and folded his newspaper. Out of the train upon a platform--then more
stairs, this time running downward--then a block or two of walking, in
the crisp air, then a very different street from those the train had
rushed through and very different houses. "Here we are!" said their
host again, and they mounted a brownstone stoop. A coloured maid opened
the door--they passed into a narrow reception hall with the Maines'
ancestral tall clock standing by the stair and on the opposing walls
engravings of Southern generals; thence, through folding doors, into a
cool, deep parlour and the embrace of Mrs. Maine.
Mrs. Maine was large and sleepy and quiet and dark, with a nebulous
personality. Everybody who knew her said that she was extremely
good-natured, while a few added that she was too indolent to be
irascible, and a fair number called it native kindliness and
adduced a range of respectable incidents. No one ever hinted at
intellectuality, and she certainly did not shine in conversation; she
was not, apparently, socially ambitious, and nobody could be said to
take less trouble--and yet a number of people--chiefly Southerners
dwelling in New York, the more decorative and prosperous of St.
Timothy's congregation, and Powhatan Maine's legal associates and
acquaintances--exhibited a certain partiality for the Maine house.
Powhatan told good war stories and darky stories; almost always there
appeared something good to eat, with a Southern name and flavour; and
Mrs. Maine was as unobtrusive and comfortable to get on with as the
all-pervasive ether. There was nothing riotous nor especially buoyant
in the house; it was rather dim and dull and staid; but people who had
begun to visit the Maines twenty years before visited still. Perhaps
most of them were dim and dull and staid themselves. Others, perhaps,
liked the occasional salt of an environment which was not habitually
theirs. The house itself was deep and for a New York dwelling
wide, cool, high-ceilinged, and dark, with a gleam of white marble
mantel-pieces and antiquated crystal chandeliers, with some ancient
Virginia furniture and some ebony and walnut abominations of the
'seventies. Everything was a little worn, tending toward shabbiness;
but a shabbiness not extreme, as yet only comfortable, though with a
glance toward a more helpless old age. There were a fair number of
books, some portraits and good, time-yellowed engravings. There were
four coloured servants beside the nurse for Mrs. Bolt's children. The
children, Charley and Betty, were pudgy, quaint elves of three and
five. Charley, the younger, had been blind from birth.
That evening, Rachel Bolt came before bedtime into Hagar's room. "May
I sit and talk a little while? Sylvie and mother and father and Dick
Dabney, who came in a little while ago, are playing duplicate whist."
"Of course you may. It's such a pleasant room you've given me."
Rachel turned in her chair and regarded it from wall to wall somewhat
cynically. "Well, I suppose at the first blush it may seem so. It is,
however, rather shabby. We meant to do it over again this year, but
times are so tremendously hard that we gave it up with a lot of other
things.--What I really came in for was to ask what kind of things and
places and people you'd like to see this winter. It's agreed with your
grandfather that I'm to take you around."
"It is good of you to be willing to do it--"
"Oh, I'm to be paid for doing it! I'll be spinning my spring
outfit and Betty's and Charley's while we gallivant. But I do not
mean"--she laughed--"that it is going to be hard or disagreeable work,
unless"--she ended coolly--"you want to go to places where I don't want
to go."
"To those places," said Hagar seriously, "I will go alone."
"Then," said Rachel, "we will get along very well.... What do you want
to do anyhow?"
"I want to feel around for a while. And I'd like to be shown how to go
and how to manage, just at first. But after that I hope you won't mind
if I just wander about by myself." She lifted her long arms above her
head in a gesture, harassed and restless. "I think there are people to
whom solitude means as much as food or sleep."
"Do you want me to get up and say good-night?" asked Rachel promptly.
Hagar gave a warm little laugh. "Not yet awhile. I'm not that greedy
and sleepy. I strive to be temperate.... What I want to see first
are pictures. I have never seen any--barring those at home and at
Eglantine."
"Well, we can go to the Metropolitan to-morrow."
"I should like that. Then I want to hear music. I have never heard any
to count."
"There'll be concerts and the opera later. The opera is, of course,
very expensive, but I understand that your father wants you to do
pretty well what you wish. If you don't mind being high up, we can do
a good deal of it reasonably."
"Then let us go high up."
"At the moment there aren't even concerts. We might find an organ
recital, and on Sundays there is music in the park."
"Day after to-morrow is Sunday. I'll go and hear that. Then I want to
go to the theatre."
"Most of that will come later, too. Are you fond of the theatre?"
"I don't know. That is why I want to go--to find out. I have never seen
but three plays."
"What an awfully lucky person! What were they?"
"One--I was a little girl and I went to Richmond for two days--was
'Maria Stuart.' Janauschek played it. The next was in the small town
near where I live. It was rather terribly done, I believe, and it kept
me awake for a week afterward. I was fifteen. It was 'The Corsican
Brothers.' Then"--said Hagar, "last winter I saw 'Romeo and Juliet.'...
They didn't seem like plays. They seemed like life,--sometimes terrible
and sometimes beautiful. I want to go to find out if it is always so."
"It isn't," said Rachel. "You are inexperienced."
"There is a natural history museum here, isn't there?"
"Yes, a large one."
"I want to go there. I want to see malachite and chrysoprase and jade,
and the large blue butterflies and the apes up to man and the models of
the pterodactyl and dinosaur and a hundred other things."
"Until now," said Rachel, "I have thought that Charley and Betty had
the largest possible appetites. What else?"
"Am I tiring you?"
"Not a bit. Besides, it is business. I came in here to get a _catalogue
raisonné_.--It's rather curious that you should have such a passion for
minerals and species and prehistoric things."
"Is it? Well, I have it," said Hagar. She put her arms again behind and
above her head. "If you want to know All, you must live All--though in
honour preferring one to the other."
Beside her, on the little table by the hearth, was a paper and pencil.
Suddenly she unlocked her hands, bent over and drew a sheet of paper
from under the book with which she had covered it on Rachel's entrance.
"I was trying to write something when you came in. It is rough and
crude,--just the skeleton,--but it's something like what I mean and
what I want." She held it out; then, with a deprecating gesture and a
shy flush, "If it doesn't bore you--"
Rachel took it and read.
"God that am I,
I that am God,
Mass and Motion and Psyche
Inextricably wound!
We began not; we end not;
And a sole purpose have we,--
Intimately to know
And exalted to taste,
In wisdom and beauty
Perpetually heightening,
The Absolute, Infinite,
One Substance Who Is!
In joy to name
In wisdom to know
All flames and all fruits
From that hearth and that tree!
To name infinite modes,
Eternally to name,
To name as we grow,
And grow as we name.
And stars shall arise,
Beyond stars that we see,
And self-knowledge shall come,
To me in God, God in me--"
Rachel put it down. "I'll think that out a little. We've never had any
one in the house just like you."
"I thought," said Hagar, "that Sunday morning I would go to the
Catholic Cathedral. If you tell me the way I can find it--"
"You are not a Catholic?"
"No. But I have always wanted so to smell incense.--
"'When from the censer clouds of fragrance roll--'"
"You are rich in differences," said Rachel. "I hope we'll get along
well together. I think we will. Is there anything else you can think of
at the moment?"
"I want to see the Salvation Army."
"That may be managed, if you are willing to take it in detachments."
"And I want--oh, I want to go somewhere where I can really see the
ocean!"
"I'll get father to take us down to Brighton Beach. It isn't too late,
this mild weather."
"This morning," said Hagar, "we came through--miles, I think--of places
where poor people live. I want to see all that again."
"It isn't very edifying. But we can get under the wing of some
association and do a little mild slumming."
"I want to go down there alone and often--"
"That," said Rachel, "is impossible."
"Why?"
"It is not done. Besides, it would be dangerous."
"Dangerous?"
"You might take any disease--or get into any kind of trouble. There are
all sorts of traps."
"Why should they set traps?"
"Oh, all kinds of horrors happen.--Just look at the newspapers! A
girl--alone--you'd be subjected to insult."
Hagar sighed. "I've always been alone. And I don't see that we are not
subjected to insult everywhere. I could never feel more insulted than,
sometimes, I have been at home."
Rachel, turning in her chair, darted at her a lightning-like glance of
comprehension. "Well, that's true enough, though I never heard it put
into words before! It's true.... But it remains that with our present
conventions, you must have company when you go to see how the other
half lives."
"The other half?"
"It's a term: One half of us doesn't know how the other half lives."
"I see," said Hagar. "Well, I'll be glad when I get out of fractions."
Both laughed. A kind of soft, friendly brightness prevailed in the
third-floor back bedroom. There was no open fire, but they sat on
either side of the little squat table, and the reading-lamp with a
yellowy globe did the job of a common luminary. The light reached
out to each and linked them together. Rachel Bolt was small and dark
and slender. Much of the time she passed for a cynical and rather
melancholy young woman; then, occasionally, sheaths parted like
opening wings and something showed that was vivid and deep and duskily
luminous. The next moment the rift might close, but there had been
received an impression of the inward depths. She had been married at
eighteen, her first child born a year later. She was now twenty-five,
and had been a widow for two years. In worldly wisdom and _savoir
faire_, and in several emotional experiences she was well ahead of
Hagar, but in other respects the brain ways of the younger in years
were deeper and older. Whatever differences, their planes were near
enough for a comprehension that, continually deepening, passed before
long into the country of lasting friendship.