GILEAD BALM
"It's a foolish piece of idealism," said Ralph. "But she's had her way
so long I suppose it's impossible now to check her."
The Colonel's irritation exploded. White-haired, hawk-nosed and eyed, a
little stooped now, a good deal shrunken in his black, old-fashioned,
aristocratic clothes, he lifted a bloodless hand and made emphasis
with a long forefinger. "Precisely so! One world mistake lay in ever
giving property unqualifiedly into a woman's hands, and another in
ever encouraging occupations outside the household, and so breeding
this independent attitude--an attitude which I for one find the
most intolerable feature of this intolerable latter age! I opposed
the Married Woman's Property Act in this state, but the people were
infatuated and passed it. Married or single, the principle is the same.
It is folly to give woman control of any considerable sum of money--"
Mrs. LeGrand, entering the Gilead Balm library, caught the last three
sentences. She smiled on the two gentlemen and took her seat upon the
sofa. "Money and women are you talking about? Where money comes in,"
said Mrs. LeGrand, "I always act under advice. Women know very little
about finance, and their judgment is rarely to be trusted."
"Just so, my dear friend! It is not in the least," spoke the Colonel,
"that I am acquisitive or that it will make any great difference to
me personally if Medway's wealth stays in the family or no. What I am
commenting upon is the folly of giving a woman power to do so foolish
a thing."
"Hagar always _could_ do foolish things," said Miss Serena, looking up
from her Mexican drawnwork.
"I don't quite understand yet," said Mrs. LeGrand. "Mrs. Ashendyne was
telling me in the big room yesterday evening, and then some one came
in--dear Medway's will left her without proviso all that he had--"
"As was quite proper," said Ralph, "the Colonel to the contrary. Well,
the principal comes to considerably over a million dollars--the cool
million his second wife left him by her will and the settlement she
had already made upon their marriage. The investment is gilt-edged.
Altogether it would make Hagar not an extremely rich woman as riches
are counted nowadays, but--yes, certainly for the South--a very rich
woman. But now comes in your feminine tender conscience--"
"Hagar refuses to put on black," said Miss Serena. "I don't see that
she's got a tender conscience--"
"The entire amount--everything that came from the fortune--she turns
back to the fund which the second wife established for workingmen's
housing. She states that she agrees with her stepmother's views as
to how the fortune was made, and that she does not care to be a
beneficiary. She says that her stepmother had evidently given thought
to the matter and preferred that form of 'restitution' and that her
only duty is simply to return this million and more to the fund already
erected, and from which it was diverted for Cousin Medway's benefit."
"Duty!" exclaimed Mrs. LeGrand. "I don't see where 'duty' comes in. Her
'duty' is to see that her father was wise for her. If he was content
there's surely no reason why she should not be so!"
"Hagar," said Miss Serena, "never could see proper distinctions between
people. I don't see that working-people are housed so badly--"
Ralph laughed mirthlessly. "Yes, they are, Cousin Serena! Scarcely any
of them have tiled bathrooms and the best type of porcelain-lined tub,
and very few have libraries that'll accommodate more than a thousand
volumes, and quite a number do without nurseries papered with scenes
from Mother Goose. And as they're all for that kind of housing, they're
preparing to move in--just a little preliminary ousting of a few people
with more brains and money and in they go!--cuckoos laying their eggs
in abler folks' nests! This is the age of the cuckoo."
"How absurd," said Miss Serena, "Gilead Balm hasn't a tiled bathroom,
nor an extremely large library, and when I was a child the nursery
wasn't papered at all. But we are perfectly comfortable at Gilead Balm.
It's a heinous sin--discontent with your lot in life."
"Do you mean," asked Mrs. LeGrand, "that, against your counsel and
advice, Hagar is really going headstrongly on to do this silly thing?"
"Apparently so. She is," said the Colonel, "of age. There again was a
mistake--to let women come of age. Perpetual minors--"
Mrs. LeGrand laughed. "Colonel, you are not very gallant!"
The Colonel turned to her. "Oh, my dear friend, you're not the modern,
unwomanly type that professes to see something degrading in the
subordination that God and Nature have decreed for woman! Gallant!
That's just what I am. Knights and gallantry were for the type that's
vanishing, though"--he bowed to Mrs. LeGrand, who had not a little of
her old beauty left--"though here and there is left a shining example!"
Mrs. LeGrand used her fan. "Oh, Colonel, there are many of us who like
the old ways best."
Ralph drummed with his fingers upon the table. "To come back to Hagar--"
Hagar herself entered the room.
She was dressed in white; she was a little thin and pale, for the
last weeks had been trying ones. Habitually she had a glancing way of
ranging from an appearance of youth almost girlish to a noble look of
young maturity. To-day she looked her thirty-one years, but looked them
regally.
Once the Colonel would not have hesitated to hector her, Miss Serena
peevishly to blame what she could not understand, Mrs. LeGrand to
attempt smoothly to put her down. All that seemed impossible now. There
was about her the glamour of successful work, of a known person. Mrs.
LeGrand had recently purchased a "Who's Who," and had found her there.
_Ashendyne, Hagar, author; b. Gilead Balm, in Virginia_, and so on.
From various chronicles of the realm of contemporary literature she
had gathered that Hagar's name would be found in yet more exclusive
lists than "Who's Who." Of course, all in the room had read much of
what she had written, and equally, of course, each of the four had,
for temperamental reasons, spokenly or unspokenly depreciated it. But
all knew that she had--though they could not see the justice of her
having--that standing in the world. Mrs. LeGrand always, with patrons,
smoothly brought it in that she had been a pupil at Eglantine. None
of them knew how much she made by her writing; it was to be supposed
it was something, seeing that she was coolly throwing away a million
dollars. There was likewise the glamour of much absence in foreign
lands; the undefined feeling that here were novelties of experience and
adventure, ground with which she was familiar and they were not. Of
experience and adventure in psychical lands they took no account. But
it was undeniable that her knowing Europe and Asia and Africa added to
the already considerable difficulty in properly expressing to Hagar how
criminally foolish she was being. Added to that, there was something in
herself that prevented it.
Ralph spoke first. "We were talking, Hagar, about your idea of what
to do with Cousin Medway's money. Here are only kinspeople and old
friends, and we all wish that you wouldn't do it, and think that
there'll come a day when you'll be sorry--"
The Colonel, leaning back in his chair, stroked his white imperial.
"I should never have said, Gipsy, that you were the sentimental,
beggar-tending kind--"
Hagar's kindly eyes that had travelled from her cousin to her
grandfather, now went on to Mrs. LeGrand. "And you?" they seemed to say.
"Why couldn't you," said Mrs. LeGrand, "do both? Why couldn't you give
a handsome donation--give a really large amount to this charity? And
then why not feel that you had, so to speak, the rest in trust, and
give liberally, so much a year, to all kinds of worthy enterprises? I
don't believe the most benevolent heart could find anything to complain
of in that--"
Hagar's eyes went to Miss Serena.
"You ought to take advice," said Miss Serena. "How can you know that
your judgment is good?"
Hagar gave her eyes to all in company. "It is right that you should say
what you think. We are all too bound together for one not to be ready
to listen and give weight to what the others think. But having done
it, our own judgment has to determine at last, hasn't it? It seems to
me that it is right to do what I am doing--what I have done, for it is
practically accomplished. I saw all necessary lawyers and people last
week in New York. Of course, I hope that you'll come to see it as I do,
but if you do not, still I'll hope that you'll believe that I am right
in doing what I hold to be right. And now don't let's talk of that any
more."
"What I want to know," said Miss Serena, "is how you're going to live,
if you don't take your dead father's support--"
Hagar looked at her in surprise. "Live? Why, live as I have lived for
years--upon what I earn."
"I didn't suppose you could do that.--What _do_ you earn?"
"It depends. Some years more, some years less. I have published a good
deal and there is a continuing sale. England and America together, I am
good for something more than ten thousand a year."
Miss Serena stared at her. A film seemed to come over her eyes, the
muscles of her face slightly worked. "Somewhere about thirty years
ago," she said painfully, "I thought I'd write a book. I'd thought
of a pretty story. I wrote to a printing and publishing company in
Richmond about it, but they wrote back that I'd have to _pay_ to have
it printed."
That night in her bedroom, plethoric with small products of needle,
crochet-needle, and paint-box, Miss Serena drew down the shades of
all four windows preparatory to undressing. She was upstairs, there
was a thick screen of cedars and no house or hill or person who could
possibly command her windows, but she would have been horribly uneasy
with undrawn shades. Ready for bed, she always blew out the lamp before
she again bared the windows.
Some one knocked at the door. "Who is it?" called Miss Serena, her hand
upon her dress-waist.
"It's Hagar. May I come in?"
It seemed that Hagar just wanted to talk. And she talked, with charm,
of twenty things. Mostly of happenings about the old place. She asked
about the latest panel of garden lilies and cat-tails, and she took the
wonderfully embroidered pincushion from the bureau and admired it. "I
think that I'm going to have an apartment in New York this winter, and
if I do, won't you make me a pincushion? And, Aunt Serena, you must
come sometimes to see me."
"You'll be marrying. You ought to marry Ralph."
"Even so, you could come to see me, couldn't you? But I am not going to
marry Ralph."
Miss Serena stiffened. "The whole family wants you to--" She was upon
family authority, and the wooing had to be done all over again....
"I saw Thomasine in New York. She's going to live with me as my
secretary. You know that she has been a typewriter and stenographer
for a long time, and they say she is an excellent one. She has been
studying, too, other things at night, after her long hours. She is
as pretty and sweet as ever. When you come, the three of us will do
wonderful things together--"
Miss Serena's bosom swelled. "I wonder when Ashendynes and Dales and
Greens began to 'do things'--by which I suppose you mean going to
theatres and concerts and stores and such things--together! The bottom
rail's on top with a vengeance in these days! But your mother before
you had no sense of blood."
Hagar sat silent, with a feeling of despair. Then she began again, her
subject the flower garden, and then, at last--"Aunt Serena, tell me
about the story _you_ wanted to write...."
Ralph--Ralph was too insistent, she thought. He found her the next
morning, under the old sycamore by the river, and he proceeded again to
be insistent.
She stopped him impatiently. "Ralph, do you wish still to be friends,
or do you wish me to put you one side of the Equator and myself on the
other? I can do it."
"The Equator's an imaginary line."
"You'll find that an imaginary line can change you into a stranger."
"Hagar, I'm used to getting what I set my heart and brain upon."
"So was a gentleman named Napoleon Bonaparte. He got it--up to a
certain limit."
"I don't believe you are in earnest. I don't believe you have ever
really considered--And I intend one day to make you see--"
"See what? See my enormous advantage in marrying you? Oh, you--man!"
"See that you love me."
"How, you mean, can I help it? Oh, you--featherless biped!"
Ralph broke in two the bit of stick in his hands with a snapping sound.
"I'm mad for you, and I'd like to pay you out--"
"You are more remotely ancestral than almost any man I know!--Come,
come! let us stop this and talk as cousins and old playmates. There's
Wall Street left, and who is going to be President, and what are you
going to do with Hawk Nest."
"What I wanted to do with Hawk Nest was to fix it up for you."
"Oh, Ralph, Ralph! I should laugh at you, but I feel more like crying.
The pattern is so criss-cross!" She rose from beneath the sycamore.
"I'm going back to the house now."
He walked beside her. "Do you remember once I told you I was going to
make a great fortune, and you made light of it? Well, I'm a wealthy man
to-day and I shall be a much wealthier one. It grows now automatically.
And that I would be powerful. Well, I am powerful to-day, and that,
too, grows."
"Oh, Ralph, I wish you well! And if we don't define wealth and power
alike, still your definition is your definition. And if that's
your heart's desire, and I think it is, be happy in your heart's
desire--until it changes, and then be happier in the change!"
"I have told you what is my heart's desire."
"I will _not_ go back to that. Look! the sumach is turning red."
"Yes, it is very pretty.... You didn't see Sylvie Maine--Sylvie
Carter--when you were in New York?"
"No. I haven't seen Sylvie since that one first winter there. I wrote
to her when I heard of Jack Carter's death."
"That has been three years ago now. She is a very beautiful woman and
much sought after. I saw a good deal of her last winter.... Yes, that
sumach is getting red. Autumn's coming.... Hagar! I'm not in the least
going to give up."
"Ralph, I'm going to advise you to use your business acumen and
recognize an unprofitable enterprise when you see it.... Look at the
painted ladies on that thistle!"
"I'm old-fashioned enough to believe that a man can _make_ a woman love
him--"
"Are you? Be so good as to let me know when you succeed.--I warn you
that the Equator is getting ready to drop between."
When they passed the cedars and came to the porch steps, it was to find
Old Miss sitting in the large chair, her white-stockinged feet firmly
planted, her key-basket beside her, and her knitting-needles glinting.
"Did you have a pleasant walk?" she asked, and looked at them with a
certain massive eagerness.
"Ask Hagar, ma'am. She may have," answered Ralph; and took himself
into the house. They heard his rather heavy footfall upon the stair.
Hagar sat down on the porch step. "Ralph has, doubtless, a great many
good qualities, but he is spoiled."
Now Old Miss had a favourite project or projects, and that was matings
between Coltsworths and Ashendynes. Every few years for perhaps two
centuries such matings had occurred. Many had occurred in her day.
With great intensity she wanted and had wanted for years to see
a match made between her granddaughter and so promising, nay, so
accomplishing, a Coltsworth as Ralph. She was proud of Ralph--proud
of his appearance, of his ability to get on in the world and make
money and restore Hawk Nest, of his judgment and knowledge of public
affairs which seemed to her extraordinary. She wanted him to marry
Hagar, and characteristically she refused to admit the possibility of
defeat. But Ralph was no longer quite a young man--he ought to have
been married years ago. As for Hagar--Old Miss loved her granddaughter,
but she had very little patience with her. She was not patient with
women generally. She thought that, on the whole, women were a poor
lot--_witness Maria_. Maria lived for Old Miss, lived on one side
in space of her own, core of an atmosphere of smouldering, dull
resentment. If Maria had been different, Medway would have lived at
home. If Maria had known her duty, there would have been a brood of
grandchildren to match with broods of Coltsworths and others of rank
just under the first. If Maria had been different, this one grandchild
wouldn't be throwing a million dollars away and failing to love her
cousin! If Maria hadn't been a wilful piece, Hagar might have escaped
being a wilful piece. Old Miss loved her granddaughter, but that was
what she was calling her now in her mind--a wilful piece.
Factors that counted with the others at Gilead Balm, Hagar's very
actual detachment and independence, name and prestige and personality,
failed to count with Old Miss.
Such things counted in other cases; they counted in Ralph's case. But
Hagar was of the younger, therefore rightfully subordinate, generation,
and she was female. Ralph was of the younger generation, also, and
as a boy, while Old Miss spoiled him when he came to Gilead Balm,
she expected to rule him, too. But Ralph had crossed the Rubicon. As
soon as he grew from young boy to man, some mysterious force placed
him without trouble of his own in the conquering superior class whose
dicta must be accepted and whose judgment must be deferred to. The halo
appeared about his head. He came up equal with and passed ahead of old
Miss, elder generation to the contrary. But Hagar--Hagar was yet in the
class that was young and couldn't know; she was in the class of the
"poor lot." She was a wilful piece.
"I do not see that Ralph is spoiled," said Old Miss. "He receives a
natural recognition of his ability and success in life. He is a very
successful man, a very able man. He is giving new weight to the family
name. There was a piece in the paper the other day that said the state
ought to be proud of Ralph. I cut it out," said Old Miss, "and put it
in my scrapbook. I'll show it to you. You ought to read it. I don't see
why you aren't proud of your cousin."
"I hope I may be.--What are you knitting, grandmother?"
"Any woman might be happy to have Ralph propose to her. And any woman
but your mother's daughter might have some care for family happiness
and advantage--"
"Oh, grandmother, would my unhappiness in truth advantage the family?"
"Unhappiness! There's no need for unhappiness. That's your mother
again! Ralph is a splendid man. You ought to feel flattered. I don't
believe in marrying without love, certainly not without respect; but
when you see it is your duty and make your mind submissive you can
manage easily enough to feel both. That's the trouble with you as it
was with your mother before you. You don't see your duty and you don't
make your mind submissive. I've no patience with you."
"Grandmother," said Hagar, "did you ever realize that you yourself only
make your mind submissive when it comes into relation with men, or
with ideas advanced by men? I have never seen you humble-minded with a
woman."
Old Miss appeared to take this as a startling proposition, and to
consider it for a moment; then, "I don't know what you mean."
"I mean that outraged nature must be itself somewhere--else there's
annihilation."
Old Miss's needles clicked. "I don't pretend to be 'literary,' or to
understand literary talk. What Moses and St. Paul said and the way
we've always done in Virginia is good enough for me. You're perverse
and rebellious as Maria was before you. It's simple obstinacy, your not
caring for Ralph--and as for throwing away Medway's million dollars,
there ought to be a law to keep you from doing it!--Are you going
upstairs? My scrapbook is on the fourth shelf of the big closet. Get it
and read that piece about Ralph."