HAGAR IN LONDON
"I have been re-reading Humboldt," said Medway Ashendyne. "What
do you say, Gipsy, to risking a South American Revolution?
Venezuela--Colombia--Sail from New York in September--and if you wanted
ten days at Gilead Balm--"
Their drawing-room looked pleasantly out over gardens; indeed, so
closely came the trees, there was a green and shimmering light in
the room. It was May, and the sounds of the London streets floated
pleasantly in at the open windows with the pleasant morning breeze.
The waiter had taken away Medway's breakfast paraphernalia. Hagar
had breakfasted much earlier. Thomson stood at the back of the room
arranging upon a small table, which presently would be moved within
reach of Medway's hand, smoking apparatus, papers, magazines, and what
not. That eight-years-past prolonged sojourn and convalescence in Egypt
had produced a liking for Mahomet, and Medway had annexed him as he
annexed all possible things that he liked and that could serve him.
Mahomet, speaking English now, but still in the costume of the East,
had just brought in a pannier of flowers. They were all over the room,
in tall vases. "Too many," said Hagar's eyes; but Medway who, when he
was in search of the rarefied pleasure of adventure and novelty in
strange and barbarous places, could be as ascetic as a red Indian on
the warpath, loved, when he rocked in the trough of the waves, to rock
in a bower.
"Cartagena would be our port. There's a railroad, I believe, to
Calamar. Then up the Magdalena by some kind of a steamboat to Giradot.
Then get to Bogotá as best we might. There's an interesting life there,
eight thousand feet above the sea, with schools and letters, and
governments in and governments out, and cool mountain water running
downwards through the city, and the houses built low because of the
earthquakes. Let us go up the Magdalena and across to Bogotá, Gipsy!"
He sat in the wheel-chair he had himself designed, a wonderfully light
and graceful affair,--considering,--with wonderful places alongside and
beneath for wonderful things. His crutches were there, slung alongside,
ready to his hand, and wicker detachable receptacles for writing-things
and sketching-block and pencils and the book he was reading and so
forth. Where he travelled now, the wheel-chair must travel. He was good
with crutches for a hundred paces or two; then he must sit down and
gather force for the next hundred. He suffered at times--not at all
constantly--a good deal of pain. But with all of this understood, he
yet looked a vigorous person,--fresh, hale, well-favoured, with not a
grey hair,--a young man still.
"Bogotá," he said, "An archiepiscopal see--universities, libraries, and
a botanic garden. Shut-in and in-growing meridional culture, tempered
by revolutions. By all means let us go to Bogotá, Gipsy!"
Hagar smiled, sat without speaking, waiting, her eyes upon Thomson
putting the last touches to the table, and Mahomet thrusting
long-stemmed irises into the vases, the faces of both discreetly
masking whatever interest they might feel in the proposed itinerary.
When, after another minute or two, they were gone from the room, "Were
you waiting for them to go? Why, who keeps anything from Thomson? He
knows my innermost soul. I told him this morning I was thinking of
South America."
Hagar rose, and with her hands behind her head, began slowly to pace
the large room. "Bogotá _qua_ Bogotá is all right. You've the surest
instinct, of course, when it comes to matching your mood with your
place. You're a marvel there, as you are in so many ways, father! And
Thomson and Mahomet would like it, too, I think."
"Do you mean that you won't like it?"
"No. I should like it very much. But I am not going, father."
Medway made an impatient movement, "We have had this before--"
"Yes, but not so determinedly.... Why not agree that the battle is
over? It _is_ over."
"And you rest the conqueror?"
"In this--yes."
"I could see," said Medway, "some point in it if the existence you lead
with me made the fulfilment of your undoubted talent--your genius,
perhaps--impossible. But you write wherever we go. You work steadily."
"Yes," said Hagar, "but the work by which you live is not all of life."
"It seems to me that you have touched life at a good many points in
these eight years."
"Being with you," said Hagar, "has been a liberal education." She
laughed with soft, deliberate merriment, but she meant what she
said. From a slender green vase she took an iris, and coming to the
wheel-chair knelt down and drew the long stalk through the appropriate
buttonhole. "You must have as large a bouquet as that!" she said. "Yes,
a university and a training-ship! I can never be sufficiently grateful!"
They both laughed. "Well, you've paid your way!" he said; "literally
and metaphorically. I suppose two gratitudes cancel each other--"
"Leaving an understanding friendship." She grew graver. "A good deal of
love, too. I want you to realize that." She laughed again. "I do not
always approve you, you know, but, thank God! I can love without always
approving!"
Medway nodded. "I like a tolerant woman."
She rose and stood, regarding him with a twisted smile, affectionate
and pitying. "I think that you are a fearfully selfish man--to quote
Stevenson, quoted by Henley, 'an unconscious, easy, selfish person.'
And I think that, of your own brand, you have grit and pluck and
stamina for twenty men. There's no malice or envy in you, and you're
intellectually honest, and you can be the best company in the world. I
am very fond of you."
"Aren't you the selfish person not to be willing to go to Bogotá?"
"Perhaps--perhaps--" said Hagar Ashendyne, "but I am not willing."
"What is it that you do want?"
"That is the first time you have asked me that.... Wandering is good,
but it is not good for all of life. I want to return to my own country
and to live there. I want to grow in my native forest and serve in my
own place."
"To live at Gilead Balm with Bob and Serena?"
"No; I do not mean that precisely." Hagar pushed back her heavy hair.
"I haven't thought it out perfectly. But it has grown to be wrong to
me, personally, to wander, wander forever like this--irresponsible,
brushing life with moth wings.... If I saw any end to it ... but I do
not--"
"And you wish to cut the painter? This comes," said Medway, "of the
damned modern independence of women. If you couldn't write--couldn't
earn--you'd trot along quietly enough! The pivotal mistake was letting
women learn the alphabet."
"I could always have taken a position as housemaid," said Hagar
serenely. "You can't make me angry, and so get the best of me. And
you like me better, knowing the alphabet, and there's no use in your
denying it.... If only you would conceive that it were possible for you
to return to America, to take a house, to _live_ there. And still you
could travel--sometimes with me, sometimes without me--travel often if
you pleased and far and wide.... Would it be so distasteful?"
"Profoundly so," said Medway. "It is idle to talk of it. I should be
bored to extinction.--What is your alternative?"
"I shall be glad to spend three months out of every year with you."
"Is that your last word?"
"Yes."
"Suppose you do not begin the arrangement until next year? Then we can
still go to Bogotá."
"Are you so wild to go to Bogotá?"
"All life," said Medway, "is based upon compromise."
Hagar, pacing to and fro, in her soft dull-green cotton with its
fine deep collar of valenciennes, stopped now before the purple
irises and now before the white. "Had I not appeared by your bedside
in Alexandria, eight years ago, had I not been at hand during that
convalescence for you to grow a little fond of, you would have, all
these years, taken Thomson and Mahomet and gone to every place where
we have gone, just the same,--just the same,--and with, I hardly
doubt, just as full enjoyment. If you had not liked me, you would,
with the entirest equanimity, have bidden me good-bye and seen me
return with grandfather to Gilead Balm, and you would have travelled
on, finding and making friends, acquaintances, and servants as you do
to so remarkable a degree, missing not one station or event. If I died
to-day, you would do every proper thing--and in the autumn proceed to
Bogotá."
"Granting all that," said Medway, "it remains that I find and have
found in the past a pleasure in your company.--I am going to remind you
again, Gipsy, that all life is compromise."
Hagar, at the window, in the green and shimmering light like the bottom
of the sea, leaned her forehead against the sash and looked across into
the leafy gardens. Children were there, playing and calling. A young
girl passed, carrying smart bandboxes; then an old woman, stooping,
using a cane, with her a great dog and a young woman in the dress of a
nurse. The soft rumble and crying of the city droned in together with
a bee that made for the nearest flower. Hagar turned. "I will go with
you for another year, father, but after that, I will go home."
"No end of things," said Medway, "can happen in a year. I never cross a
bridge that's three hundred and sixty-five days away.--I'd advise you,
if you haven't already done so, to read Humboldt."
He had a luncheon engagement, and at twelve vanished, Thomson and
Mahomet in attendance. This drawing-room, his large chamber and bath,
an adjoining room with its own entrance for Thomson, quarters somewhere
for Mahomet, were his; he paid for them. Hagar had two rooms, her
bedroom, and a much smaller drawing-room. They were hers; she paid
for them. After the first two years she had assumed utterly her own
support. Medway had shrugged. "As you choose--"
Now, in her own rooms, she wrote through the early afternoon, then,
rising, weighted the sheets of manuscript with a jade Buddha, put on
a street dress, and went out into the divine, mild May weather. She
knew people in London; she had acquaintances, engagements; but to-day
was free. She walked a long way, the air was so sweet, and at last she
found herself before Westminster Abbey. After a moment's hesitation she
went in. The great, crowded place was empty, almost, of the living; a
few tourist figures flitted vaguely. She moved slowly, over the dust
of the dead, between the dull, encumbering marbles, until she reached
a corner that she liked. Sitting here, her head a little thrown back
against the stone, her soul opened the gates of Quiet. Rose and purple
light sifted down from the great windows; all about was the dim thought
of dead kings and queens, soldiers, poets, men of the state. In the
organ loft some one touched the organ keys. A few chords were sounded,
then the vibration ceased.
Hagar sat very still, her eyes closed. Her soul was searching,
searching, not tumultuously, but quietly, quietly. It touched the past,
here and there, and lighted it up; days and nights, dreams, ambitions,
aspirations. Some dreams, some ambitions were in the way of fulfilment.
Medway Ashendyne was within her; she, too, knew _Wanderlust_--"for
to admire an' for to see." She had wandered and had seen. She would
always love to wander, crave for to see and to admire.... To write--to
earn--to write.... Her lips curved into the slightest smile. The old
days and nights when she had wondered, wondered if that would ever come
to pass, if it ever _could_ come to pass! It had come to pass. To do
better work, and always better work--that was a continuing impulse; but
it was still and steady now, not fevered.... Her mind swept with wider
wings. To know, to learn, to gain in content and in fineness, to gather
being, knowledge, wisdom, bliss--to gather, and then from her granary
to give the increase, that was the containing, the undying desire. She
had a strange passion for the future, for all that might become. She
was sensitive to the wild and scattered motion within the Whole, atom
colliding with atom, blind-man's-buff--all looking for the outlet into
freedom, power, glory; all groping, beating the air with unclutching
hands, missing the outlet, it was perhaps so small. She thought of
an expression of George Meredith's, "To see the lynx that sees the
light." To see it--to follow--to help find the opening.... What was
needed was direction, and then unity of movement, the atoms in one
stream, resistless. That, when the lightning bolt went across the sky,
was what happened; corpuscles streaming freely, going side by side,
not face against face, not energy dashing itself endlessly against
energy. It was all one, physical and psychic; power lay in community
of understanding.... Public Opinion, community of understanding, minds
moving in a like direction, power resulting, power to accomplish mighty
and mightier things.... Then do your best to ennoble Public Opinion. Do
not think whether your best is little or great; do your best....
She opened her eyes upon the light sifting down from the rose windows.
It was shortening, the shaft; evening was at hand in the church of the
great dead. Many who lay there had had within them a lynx that saw
the light and had tried to bring the mass of their being to follow;
many had ennobled the world-mind, one this way and one that; each had
brought to the vast granary his handful of wheat. Ruby and amethyst,
the light lay athwart the pillars like an ethereal stair. The organist
touched the organ again. A verger came down the aisle; it was closing
time. Hagar rose and went out into what sunshine lay over London.