DENNY GAYDE
A few days after this she grew tired one morning of working. At ten
o'clock she put away paper and pencil, pen and ink, letters and
manuscript, and went out, first into the garden, and then through
the gate in the wall into the high white light of the street and
the pale-coloured town. Few were abroad in this section; she gave a
friendly nod to those she met, but they were not many--an old negress
carrying chickens, a few slow wagons, a priest, a young girl and boy,
white-clad, with tennis rackets; two or three others. The street swam
in light, the blue vault above sprang intense, there was just enough
air to keep away languor. She turned into the grounds of the old,
closed Royal Victoria Hotel. Here was shade and greater freshness. She
sat down on the rock coping of the driveway; then, as there was no one
about, lay down upon it pillowing her head on her arms. Above her was
a tall, tall tree, and between the branches the deep and vivid blue.
It seemed so near, it was as though with a little upward effort you
might touch a sapphire roof. Between the leaves the sun scattered gold
sequins. They lay upon her white skirt, the hat she had discarded, her
arms, her hair. She looked sideways watching a chameleon, burnished and
slender, upon the wall below her. It saw her at last and with a jerk of
its head scuttled away. Hagar laughed, sat up and stretched her arms.
Some neighbouring, one-storey house, buried in foliage, possessed a
parrot or cockatoo. She watched it now, on some hidden perch, a vivid
splash of colour in the enfolding green, dancing about, chattering and
screaming. Some curious, exotic fragrance came to her; she could not
trace its source. "It's a morning for the gods!" she said, and walked
slowly by winding paths downward through the garden to the street.
Before her, seen through foliage, rose the curiously shaped building
with a history where now was lodged the public library. She had visited
it several times; she liked the place, which had a quaintness, and
liked the way the air blew in through its deep windows; and where books
were she was at home. She crossed the white street, entered and went
up the stair past dusty casts, pieces of coral and sea-curios, and
into the round room where English and American papers and magazines
were spread upon a table. From this centre sprang, like short spokes,
alcoves made by the book-stacks. Each of these divisions had its chair
or two and its open window. The air came in coolly, deliciously. There
were the librarian and two or three people standing or seated about the
central table,--no one else in the cool, quiet place. Hagar, too, stood
by the table for a while, turning over the January magazines, looking
at the table of contents or glancing at some article or illustration.
Catholicism versus Ultramontanism--Why Ireland is Disloyal--Drama
of the Future--The Coal Strike and its Lessons--Labour and the
Trusts--Labour and Capital--Municipalization of Public Services--The
Battleship of the Future--The War against Disease--Tschaikowsky and
Tolstoy--Mankind in the Making--Mendel's Law--The Advancement of
Woman--The Woman who Toils--Variation in Man and Woman--Genesis of the
Æsthetic Categories--New Metaphysical Movement--Inversion of Ideas as
to the Structure of the Universe--The World and the Individual.--After
a while she left these and the table and moved to one of the alcoves.
It was not a day somehow for magazines. The rows of books! Her gaze
lingered with fondness upon them--this familiar title, this loved old
friend and that. Finally she drew forth a volume of Keats, and with it
sat down in the sweet air from the window.
"No, no! go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolf'sbane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine--"
An hour passed. A man, who had come into the room a few minutes before,
was standing, looking about him--evidently the first time he had been
in the building.
The librarian joined him. "It's a pleasant old place, isn't it?" she
said politely.
"It certainly is," answered the man. "But it's so curious with that
narrow stair and these deep-set windows."
"Yes. You see it's the old jail. Once they kept men here instead of
books."
There was a pause. Then the man said, "This is the nobler use, don't
you think?"
"Oh," said the librarian; "but of course they were wicked men--that is,
most of them. There wasn't anything else to do with them."
"I see," said the man. He looked about him. "Well, it's sweet and clean
and useful now at last!"
Some one called the librarian and she went away. The man moved on with
slow steps from alcove to alcove. Hagar, from her recess, watched him,
fascinated. Her book had fallen upon the floor. With half of her mind
she was again in a poor hall in New York on a winter night.... Five
or six people entered the library together. They came between her and
the man she was following with her eyes. When at last they moved from
before her alcove, she saw him leaving the place. Before she could
hastily rise and come out into the wider space he was out of the room
upon the landing--he was going downstairs. She caught up the book from
the floor, thrust it hurriedly into its place, and with a light and
rapid step followed. He was at the foot of the stair when she reached
the head.
"Oh," she called, "will you stop--will you wait?"
He stopped short, turned. She was halfway down the stair, which was not
long. "I beg your pardon. Was it to me you were speaking?"
"Yes!" She came up with him--they stood together in the light-washed
doorway. "I--You do not remember me." She put up her hand and took off
her wide hat of straw and lace. "Do you, now?"
He gazed. "No--Yes! Wait.... Oh--h! You are the little girl again!"
They both laughed with pure pleasure. A soft, bright swirl of feeling
enfolded the ancient doorway.
"Oh," she said, "I have so often thought of you!"
"Not oftener than I have thought of you.... You've always been like a
quaint, bright picture and a piece of music in my mind.--I don't know
your name."
"Hagar Ashendyne.--And I don't know yours."
"Denny Gayde.... I tried to find you in the crowd that night--the
night of the meeting, you remember--but you were gone."
"Yes. And for weeks after that night I used to think that perhaps I
might meet you on the street any day. And then I went away."
The sun was dazzling where they stood. People, too, were coming down
the stairs behind them.
"Let us go somewhere where we can talk," said Hagar; "the gardens over
there--have you time?"
"I'm here on a holiday. I came yesterday. I don't know a soul and I was
lonely. I've all the time there is."
They crossed the street, passed under an arch of blossoming vines, and
entered the Royal Victoria's garden--deserted, cool, and silent as
when Hagar had quitted it earlier in the morning. Built high above the
ground, about the vast trunk of a vast silk-cotton tree was a square,
railed platform reached by a flight of steps. A bench ran around it; it
was a cool and airy perch, chequered with shadows of leaf and twig and
with a sight of the azure sea. The two mounted the steps, and moving
around the trunk to a well-shaded angle, sat down. No one at all seemed
near; for solitude it was much like a tree house which, shipwrecked,
they might have built on a desert island.
"Life's the most curious thing!" said Gayde.
"Isn't it? 'Curiouser and curiouser!' said Alice. I was twelve years
old that summer we shared the apple turnovers."
"We didn't share them. You gave me all.--I was nineteen."
"And then--how many years?--Nine, isn't it?--that night at that
Socialist meeting, when you spoke--"
"What were you doing there? I asked about you--I got to know well many
of the people who were there that night--but no one could identify you.
And though I kept you in mind, and looked for you, too, I could never
find you again."
"I was spending the winter in New York. That night we had missed the
theatre. We walked down Fourth Avenue and across--we were seeing New
York at night. A crowd was going into that hall, and we went in too--"
"I see."
"Not until I got home that night did I remember that I did not know
your name.... And in a month I was upon the ocean, and I have been in
America very little in all the years since. I am here this winter with
my father.... And you?"
She regarded him with dark eyes, simple and serious and interested as
the eyes with which as a child she had regarded him above her flower
dolls. He was not hungry and haggard and fear-ridden as then, nor
was he as he had been the night of the Socialist meeting, somewhat
embarrassed and stumbling, strong, but piteous, too.... He was a
little thin and worn, and looked as though he had been ill, she noted,
but he was quiet, at ease, and assured. There needed no elaborate
process in telling her things; to intuition she added a considerable
knowledge of the world and of ways and means; to heart, intellect. One
could do much in nine years; she knew that from personal experience.
This man had added to native strength education, experience, poise,
and significance. She might have said culture, only she had grown
to dislike the word. He had not, evidently, attained to wealth as
wealth is counted. In a region where the male visitor, though he might
arrive in winter garments, promptly sloughed them off for fine white
flannels, he had not followed custom. It was true that he was not
wearing a winter suit, but what was probably a last summer's one. It
was not white--only a grey, light-weight business suit, ready-made and
somewhat worn. His straw hat looked new. He was clean-shaven. His face
was at once the face of the boy in the thicket, and the face of the
workman talking out of bitter experience to other workmen, and a new
face, too,--a judging face, ascetic rather than not, with eyes that
carried a passion for something vaster than the flesh. "And you?" asked
Hagar again.
But he had fallen into a brown study. "_Hagar Ashendyne_--You can't
be--do you mean that you are--Hagar Ashendyne, the writer?"
"Yes, Hagar Ashendyne, the writer." She smiled. "It never occurred to
me that you might read what I have written. Have you?"
"Yes, I have read what you have written--read it and cared for it
greatly.... Well, all life's a strange encounter!"
"And that's true enough. And now will you tell me about yourself?"
His eyes smiled back at her. "Let me see--what is there to tell? That
night in New York.... Well, after that night ... I was fortunate in
the work I got, and I rose from grade to grade. I studied hard, every
moment I could get. I read and read and read. I became secretary to a
certain Socialist organization. I have been for some years a Socialist
organizer, lecturer, and occasional writer. In the summer I am to take
the editorship of a Socialist paper. Behold the short and simple annals
of the poor!"
"How long are you going to be in Nassau?"
"A whole month. These last two years have been years of exacting,
constant work, and there's a prospect of the same continuing. I thought
I'd got my second wind--and then I came down suddenly. The doctor said
that if I wanted to do the paper justice--and I do--I'd have to give it
an editor who could sleep. So he and Rose packed me off."
"Rose?"
"My wife--Rose Darragh."
He spoke as though she would know the name. Indeed, it seemed to have
for her some association; but it wavered like a dream; she could not
fix it. She seemed to feel how long she had been away from America--out
of touch--not knowing things, events, trendings. "Nine years," she said
again, uncertainly; "so much happens in nine years."
"Yes," he said. "Personal life changes rapidly to-day--with everything
more flexible, with horizons growing wider--and the age follows and
changes and changes--changes and mounts. We are in for a great century.
I'm glad to be alive!"
"Yes, I am, too." Presently she looked at her watch. It was
luncheon-time. Would he not take it with her father and herself? No;
he would not do that to-day; but leaving the great tree and the garden
they walked together to the house. At the gate in the wall she said,
"Come to see me here to-morrow morning, if you will. I should like you
to come and go as you please."
"Thank you," he said, then, with emphasis, "_friend_.... That is what,
when I was nineteen and afterwards, I called you in my mind."
"It's a good word--'friend.' Let us use it still."
"With all the will in the world. You are wonderful to me--Hagar
Ashendyne."
"I am glad to have found you again, Denny Gayde."
That night, suddenly, before she slept, she placed the name Rose
Darragh.... A feminist--A Socialist agitator and leader--a writer of
vigorous prose--sociology--economics.... She seemed to see her picture
in some magazine of current life--a face rich, alert, and daring,
rising on a strong throat from a blouse like a peasant's.