BY THE SEA
But after all they did not go to Bogotá. That autumn a revolution
flared up in Colombia. Medway considered the matter, but finally
shrugged and shook his head. His point gained and Bogotá prepared for,
he gave the idea up "for this time" with entire nonchalance. But they
were in New York by now, and something must be done. He went with Hagar
to Gilead Balm for two weeks--going home for the second time in eight
years. The first time had been perhaps two years after his accident.
Old Miss had cried out so to him to come, had so passionately besought
him to let her see him again, and Hagar had so steadfastly supported
her claim, that at last he gave in and went. He spent two months at
Gilead Balm, and he had been gracious and considerate to all the family
with an extra touch for his mother. But when he went away he evidently
considered that he had done all that mortal could ask, and though Old
Miss continued to write to him every three months, and though she
always said, "And when are you coming home?" she never so urged the
matter again.
Now he went with Hagar down through the late autumn country to his
birthplace, and stayed for a fortnight, as unruffled, debonair, and
dominant as before. The Colonel and Old Miss had each of them years
enough now; as age is counted they were old. But each came of a
long-lived stock, and they held their own to a marvel. Hagar could
see the difference the years had made, but there was no overwhelming
difference. The Colonel did not ride so far, and Old Miss, though
she jealously guarded her key-basket and abated authority not a jot,
was less active than of old. She had grown rather deaf, and Medway
avoided much conversation with her. Captain Bob was more broken; he
looked older than the elder brother. Luna was dead long ago, and he had
another hound, Lisa. He was fond of Lisa and Lisa of him, but Lisa was
not Luna, and he was very faithful to Luna's memory and always telling
stories of her intelligence and exploits. Miss Serena had changed very
little. Mrs. Green was dead, and the overseer's house at the moment
stood empty. Car'line was dead, too, but Mary Magazine kept house
for Isham. Hagar walked down to the ferry, and she and Mary Magazine
talked about the old flower dolls and the hayloft, and the cavern by
the spring. She walked by herself upon the ridge, and sat under the
cucumber tree, and went to the north side, and, leaning against the
beech, which had grown to be a good-sized tree, looked down the long
slope to the hollow and streamlet, the sunken boulder and thicket.
The two weeks passed. Indian summer held throughout November. "This
dreamy place makes you disinclined to vigorous planning," said Medway.
"I think, Gipsy, that we will drift on down through Florida, and cross
to Cuba."
This year there were evidently cross-winds. At Palm Beach, Medway
came upon an old acquaintance, associate of ancient days in Paris, an
artist with whom he had rambled through Fontainebleau forest and drunk
good wine in Barbizon. For years each had been to the other a thin
memory; now, almost with violence, the attraction renewed itself. But
the artist was not going to Cuba; he was going to the Bahamas. He had
a commission to paint a portrait, and his subject, who was a Chicago
multi-millionaire, had elected to winter at Nassau and to give the
sittings there. Commissions evidently did not come every day to the
artist, who was post-post-impressionist, and he was quite willing to go
to Nassau, jubilantly so, in fact. He said that, for once, light was
going to be thrown upon the multi-millionaire.
Medway strove to persuade him to forfeit the commission and go to Cuba;
and he was even, it was evident, prepared to make the proceeding no
financial loss. But the artist stated explicitly that he had a sense
of honour and could not leave the Chicagoan in the lurch; besides he
wanted to paint that portrait. "Come and see me do it, old fellow!
I'm going to take a reasonable small house with a garden, knock out
partitions and make a studio. One commission leads to another:--Light
on the whole bunch.--Oh, I'm told that you've got a million, too! How
the devil did you get into that galley?" In the end, rather than part
with the old companion, Medway exchanged Cuba for the Bahamas.
Thomson found a house that he thought would answer. Hagar went with him
to see it, and agreed that it would. Both spoke entirely with reference
to Medway. Back at the great hotel, she explained its advantages.
"There's a pleasing, tangled garden, palms and orange trees and
hibiscus, and a high garden wall. The verandahs, upper and lower, are
wide. You get the air, and you have, besides the town, a great sweep
of this turquoise sea. There's only a short, quiet, easy street between
the house and Mr. Greer's studio. I think that it will answer."
It answered very well as Medway granted. He and Greer were much
together. The Chicagoan, when he arrived, proved to be a good fellow,
too, earnest in his endeavour to play blotting-paper to culture. Greer
gathered from the hotel several congenial Americans. Medway, who always
had the best of letters, provided an Englishman or two from the more
or less stationary Government set. The studio became practically his
and Greer's in common; they were extraordinarily good talkers and they
rolled wonderful cigarettes and Mahomet made _café fort_. A violinist
of some note was stopping at the hotel, and he and his violin added
themselves to the company. When a traveller who knew Lhasa, Bangkok,
and Baalbek, Knossos and Kairwan and Kandy, was joined to the others,
it became evident that Medway had made his circle and found the
winter's entertainment.
He had never made greatly too large demand upon Hagar's hours. He was
full of resources, supple in turning from person to person of all his
varied acquaintance in varied lands, moderately appreciative, too, of
the value of solitude. On her side she would have stood, had there
been need, for time to herself. It was to her the very breath of
life. But there was never extreme need. She was within call when he
wanted to turn to her, and that was sufficient. But this winter, it
was evident, she would have her days to a greater extent than usual in
her own hand. There was never any accounting to him for her days apart
from him; almost from the first there had obtained that relation of
personal liberty. To do him justice he felt no desire to exact such an
accounting, and had he tried to do so he would have failed.
Hagar saw that she was going to have time, time this winter; and, what
she liked, they would be long enough in one place to allow her to work
with advantage. There would be visitors, invitations--already they had
begun:--Medway would wish to give, now and then, a garden-party, a
dinner-party. But life would by no means run to an exchange of visits
and entertainments. Father and daughter had alike, in this direction,
the art of sufficient but not too much. Anything beyond a certain,
not-great amount wearied and exasperated him, wearied and saddened her.
All that would be kept in bounds. Hagar, pacing the garden, saw quiet
days, surcharged with light.
She was thinking out her half-year's work. A volume of stories, eight
or ten in all--such a subject and such a subject; such or such an
incident, situation, value; such a man, such a woman. She knew that
her work was good, that it was counted very good, counted to her
for name and fame. All that was something to her; rather, it was
much to her; but only positively so, not relatively. It could by no
means fill her universe. For years she had taken now this, now that
filament-like value and with skill and power had enlarged, coloured,
and arranged it so that her great audience might also see; and she had
done, she thought, service thereby; had, in her place, served beauty
and knowledge. But the hunger grew to serve more fully. Knowledge,
knowledge--wisdom, wisdom--action....
Hagar moved to a stone seat that commanded an opening in the garden
wall. She looked out, down and over a short, steep, dazzling white
street and a swarm of low, pale-coloured, chimneyless houses, with the
green between of tropic trees, to the surf upon the coral shore and the
opaque, marvellous blue of the surrounding sea. The creative passion
was upon her, but it moved nowadays as it had moved with many an
idealist-realist before.... To mould living material, to deal with the
objective, to deal with the living world, not the world of bright-hued
shadows; to see the living world lighten to the dawn, see the dull hues
brighten, see the beautyless become beauty and beauty grow vivid, to
see all the world lift, lift toward the golden day, to see the race
become the over-race.... She would have died for that and died to help.
She laid her arms along the stone and her head upon them. "And yet I
do not help, or not with all that is in me. I sit here to one side and
spin fancies."
She rose, and put on a shady hat, and going out into the dazzling white
street moved down it, and then by another across for some distance
to the white road by the sea. Her back to the town, she walked on.
A few scattered palms, the sea-wall; then where it ended, an edging
tangle of the hard green leaves of the sea-grape; outside of that,
low fantastically worn coral rock and the white dash and spray of the
water. Though the sun was high and the sky intense and cloudless, a
wind blew always; the air was dry and the day not too warm. There was
hardly anyone upon the road. She met a cluster of negro children and
talked with them a little. A surrey, of the type that waited on the
street near the great hotels, passed her, driven sleepily by a sleepy
negro, within it a large man in white. When it was gone in a little
cloud of white dust there was only the long road, and the unyielding
monotonous green of the sea-grape, and the water thundering in an
undertone. Hagar turned aside, broke through the grape, and came down
to the edge of the surf. There was a rock hollowed until it made a rude
chair. She sat down and looked out to sea. On one hand, across the
harbour mouth, rose from a finger-narrow sliver of land, a squat white
lighthouse; but turn a little and look away and there was only the open
sea, unimaginably blue, azure as the sky. The soft wind blew, the surf
broke in low thunder. Hagar, her chin upon her hand, sat for a long
time, very still.
"How good is man's life, the mere living--"
It seemed true enough, sitting there in the sunshine, in the heart
of so rich a beauty. She agreed. How good it was, how good it often
was!--only, only.... The line was true, perhaps, of all at some time,
of some at all times--though she doubted that--but never of all at all
times. It was true of a host at very few times; it was never so true of
any as it might be.
"How good is man's life, the mere living!--how fit to employ
All the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy!"
Who felt that?--Not even the poets immemorial who so sang--sang often
in sadness of heart! They felt only the promise that the future cast
before her.
Association of ideas was so strong and quick within her that she
was apt to call up images, not singly, but in series and sequences.
Her mind swept away from the West Indian sea. She saw her mother at
Gilead Balm, beating her wings against invisible bars; the woman on
the packet-boat, racked with anxiety, her child in her arms, begging
her way to her sick mate; the figure of the convict at the lock,
Thomasine in the silk mill, Omega Street.... She thought of Rachel and
her married life, of things which she had heard at the Settlement,
and the pain in Elizabeth Eden's eyes as she told them. She thought
of Eglantine and its insidious sapping, sapping ... of Miss Serena
and her stunted, small industries and too-obedient soul. She thought
of Miss Bedford, and of Francie Smythe, and of Mrs. LeGrand. She
seemed again to hear Mrs. LeGrand upon Roger Michael. She thought of
the Bishop and the day he passed sentence upon a child for reading a
great book. She saw the thicket back of the ridge, and dogs set by a
human being upon a human being. She saw winter streets in New York,
and the light shining on the three balls of the pawnbrokers, and a
bread-line, and men and women huddled on park benches while the wind
shook the leafless trees. She saw Wall Street and St. Timothy's. Her
mind passed overseas. Russia--three summers before they had been there.
Medway, though he laughed at her, had agreed to a stepping aside which
she proposed. She wished to see Tolstoy. It was always easy to him
to arrange such things, and it had ended in their being invited for
two days to Yásnaya Polyána. She saw again the old man and heard his
slow words. _Non-resistance_--but his mind, through his pen, was not
non-resistant! It acted, it scourged, it fought, it strove to build
and to clear the ground that it might build. He deceived himself, the
tremendous old man. He thought himself quietist as Lao-Tzu, but there
in that bare, small study he cried, _Allah! Allah!_ and fought like
a Mohammedan. Russia and the burden of Russia ... the world and the
burden of the world. She thought of the East, and now her mind entered
Zenanas--of India, and it was the child marriages; of Turkey, Egypt,
Algeria, Morocco, and it was the veiled women, proclaimed without
souls. She saw the eunuchs at the gate. Away to Europe--and she saw
that concept grading away, but never quite gone, never quite gone.
Woman as mind undying, self-authoritative and unrelated, the arbiter of
her own destiny, the definer of her own powers, with an equal goal and
right-of-way--few were the earthly places where that ray fell!
"How good is man's life, the mere living--"
"With vast modifications and withdrawals, with dross and alloy," said
Hagar. "But it might be--O, God, it might be! Lift all desire and you
lift the whole. Lift the present--steady, steady!--and know that one
day the future will blossom. And a woman's work is now with women.
Solidarity--unification--woman at last for woman."