RALPH
Fay stayed. Lily's farewell note to Hagar merely said that after all
he was not sailing with her and that she hoped Hagar would let him
be among her friends. He made a good friend. Fay himself wrote to
her, stating that he would be much in New York that autumn and winter
and asking if he might come to see her. She answered yes, but that
she herself was often away; he would have to take the chance of not
finding her. He came, and she was away, came again, and she was away;
then she wrote and asked him to dine with her on such an evening. He
went, and it was an evening to mark with a white stone, to keep a lamp
burning before in the mind. He asked how he could find out where she
would be, since it was evident that she was speaking here and there.
She nodded; she was working hard that autumn, oftenest in company with
Rose Darragh, but often, too, with Elizabeth Eden and Marie Caton, with
Rachel and Molly Josslyn. She showed him a list of meetings.
He thanked her and copied it down. "I see that your book will presently
be out."
"Yes. I hope that you will like it."
"I think that I shall. How hard you work!"
"Not harder than others. The secret is to learn concentration and to
fill all the interstices with the balm of leisure. And to work with
love of the World to Be."
That November, together with Rose Darragh and Denny and Elizabeth, she
was often speaking in the poor and crowded sections of the great city.
Sometimes they talked to the people in dim, small halls, sometimes in
larger, brighter places, sometimes there were street meetings. She grew
aware that often Fay was present. Sometimes, when the meeting was over,
he joined her; it began to be no infrequent thing his going uptown upon
the car with her. She began to wonder.... Once in a street meeting she
saw him near her as she spoke. It was a good crowd and interested.
As she brought her brief, straight talk to a conclusion, Elizabeth
whispered to her, "Lucien couldn't come. Is there any one else who
could speak?" Hagar's eyes met John Fay's. "We lack a speaker," she
said. "Couldn't you--won't you?" He nodded, stepped upon the box,
and made a good speech. His drawling, telling periods, his smiling,
sea-blue eyes, a story that he told and a blow or two out from the
shoulder caught the fancy and then the good-will of the crowd.
An old woman, Irish, wrinkled, her hands on her hips, called out to
him. "Be yez the new man? If yez are, I loike yez foine!"
He laughed at and with her. "Do you? Then you'll have to become a new
woman to match me!"
The November dusk was closing in when the crowd dispersed. Elizabeth
with the other woman speaker faced toward the Settlement. "Can't you
come with me, Hagar?"
"No, not to-night. There are letters and letters--"
Fay asked if he might go uptown with her.
She nodded. "Yes, if you like. Good-night, Elizabeth--good-night, Mary
Ware; good-night, good-night!"
They took a surface car. She sat for a minute with her eyes shut.
"Are you very tired?"
She smiled. "No, I am not tired. After all, why should it fatigue more
than standing in cathedrals, walking through art galleries? But I was
thinking of something.... Let us sit quietly for a while."
The minutes went by. At last she spoke. "I liked what you said, and the
way you said it. Thank you."
"You do not need to thank me. Had I been less convinced, I might have
spoken because you asked me to. As it is, I was willing to serve the
truth."
"Ah, good!..."
There was another silence; then she began to speak of the light and
thunder of the city about them, and then of a book she was reading.
When they left the car it was dark--they walked westward together.
"Have you heard from Lily?"
"Yes. She and Robert are going first to the Riviera, then to Sicily."
"Both are very lovely. Why do you not change your mind and go?"
"I like it better here."
The evening was dark, clear and windy, with the stars trooping out.
"When," asked Hagar, "are you going to build another bridge?"
He pondered it. "I've been building for a long time and I'm going
to build for another long time. Do you grudge me this half-year in
between?"
"I do not. I was only wondering--" She broke off and began to talk
about the Josslyns whom, it had turned out, he knew and liked. Two
weeks ago she had dined there with him, and Christopher had taken
occasion to tell her that John Fay was about the rightest all right he
knew.... She had not really needed the telling. She had a good deal of
insight herself.
They came to the great arched door of the apartment house, and there
she told Fay good-night. When he was gone, she stood for a moment in
the paved lobby with its palm or two, her eyes upon the clear darkness
without; then she turned to the elevator.
Upstairs, within her own doors, Thomasine met her. "Oh, Hagar! It's Mr.
Ralph--"
"Ralph!"
Ralph had been abroad, and she had not seen him for a long time.
"Yes!" said Thomasine. "His boat came in yesterday evening. And awhile
ago he telephoned to ask you if he might come to dinner with you, and I
didn't know what to say, and I told him you wouldn't be in till late;
and he said did I think you'd mind his coming, and I didn't know what
to say, so I said, 'No,' I couldn't think so; and he asked what time
you dined--and it's nearly seven now--"
"Well, you couldn't say anything else," said Hagar. "Only I devoutly
hope--" She moved toward her own room. "I'll dress quickly."
"And don't you think," said Thomasine, "that I'd better not dine with
you--"
"I think just the contrary," answered Hagar, and vanished.
Ralph came. He was the Ralph of three years ago, of that last autumn
week at Gilead Balm, only with certain things accentuated. He was
richer, he had more and more a name in finance; his state was now
loudly and perpetually proud of him. There was an indefinable
hardening.... He was very handsome, Thomasine thought; he looked
tremendously Somebody. He had been around the world--his physician had
sent him off because of a threatened breaking-down. Apparently that
had been staved off, pushed at least into a closet to stay there a few
years. He talked well, with vigorous, clipped sentences, of Australia
and China and India. Hagar, sitting opposite him in a filmy black gown,
kept the talk upon travel. She had not seen him for eighteen months,
and before then, for a long while, their meetings had been casual, cold
and stiff enough, with upon his side an absurd hauteur. The eighteen
months had at least dissipated that.... Dinner over, they went for
coffee back to the apartment, and Thomasine determinedly disappeared.
Old Gilead Balm talk was in Thomasine's mind. Ralph Coltsworth and
Hagar Ashendyne were to mate--Old Miss had somehow kept that in the
air, even so long, long ago.
In the grave and restful room with its shaded lights Hagar poured a cup
of coffee for her cousin and gave it to him.
Taking it, he took for a moment also her two hands, long, slender, and
very finely made. "Ringless!" he said.
Hagar, withdrawing them, poured her own coffee. "I have never cared to
wear jewels. A necklace and an old brooch or two of my mother's are
almost the only things I have."
Ralph looked about the room. The bough of flaming maple was gone and
in its place rested a great branch of cone-bearing white pine.
Her eyes followed his. "I can see the forest through it. Do you
remember the great pine above the spring?"
His gaze still roamed. "And you call this home?"
"Yes, it is home."
"Without a man?"
She smiled. "Do you think there can be no home without a man?"
He drank his coffee; then, putting down the cup, rose and moved about
the deep and wide place. She watched him from her armchair, long and
slim as Diana in her black robe. He looked at the walls with their rows
of cabined thought and the pictures above, at the great library table
with its tokens of work, and then, standing before the wide, clear
windows, at the multitudinous lights of the world without. A sound as
of a distant sea came through the glass. "And without a child?"
Her clear voice sounded behind him. "You are mistaken," she said. "My
work is my child. One human being serves and expresses in one way and
one in another, and I think it is not the office which is higher or
lower, but only the mind with which the office is performed. Did I ever
meet a man whom I loved and who was my comrade, and who loved me and
saw in me his comrade, my home would probably open to that man. And
we two might say, 'Now in cleanliness and joy and awe will we bring
a child into our home.' ... I think that would be a happy thing to
happen. But if it does not happen, none the less will I have my earthly
home as I have my unearthly, and be happy in it, and none the less will
I do world-work and rejoice in the doing. And if it happened, it would
be but added bliss--it would be by no means all the bliss, or all the
world, nor should it be. We grow larger than that.... And now, having
answered your question, come! let us sit down and talk about what you
are doing and when you are going down to Hawk Nest. I had a letter from
Gilead Balm last week--from Aunt Serena."
He came and sat down. "The last time I was at Gilead Balm--two years
and a half ago--they said they had ceased to write to you."
"They have begun again," said Hagar calmly. "Dear Ralph, we live in the
twentieth century. You yourself are here to-night, eating my bread and
salt."
"Have you been to Gilead Balm?"
"Yes, I went last summer, and again the summer before. Not for long,
for a little while. Grandfather and grandmother and Aunt Serena said
some hard things, but I think they enjoyed saying them, and I could
ramble over the old place, and, indeed, I think, though they would
never have said so, that they were glad to have me there. I will not
quarrel. They are so feeble--the Colonel and Old Miss. I do not think
they can live many years longer."
"Are you going again this summer?"
"Yes."
They talked again of his journey and recovered health, of New York,
of the political and financial condition of the country; or rather
he gave his view upon this and she sat studying him, her fine, long
hands folded in her lap. What with question and remark she kept him
for a long time upon general topics, or upon his increasing part in
the subtle machinery behind so much that made general talk;--but at
last, skilfully as she fenced, he came back to personal life and to
his resentment of all her attitude.... He had thought that time and
absence had cured his passion for her. Even a month ago he had told
himself that there was left only family interest, old boyish memories.
He disapproved intensely of the way she thought of things; she was not
at all the wife for him. Sylvie Carter was--he would go to see Sylvie
just as soon as he reached New York.... And then, upon the boat, coming
over, it was of Hagar that he dreamed all the time. Like a gathering
thunderstorm it was all coming back. Landing in New York he had only
thought of her, all last night and to-day. It was an obsession, he told
himself that--he could see that once he had her, possessed her, owned
her, he would fight her through life ... or she would fight him ... and
all the same the obsession had him, whirling him like a leaf in storm.
He spoke with a suddenness startling to himself. "What is between us
is all this fog of damnable ideas that has arisen in the last twenty
years! If it wasn't for that you would marry me."
Hagar took the jade Buddha from the table and weighed it in her hands.
"Oh, give me patience--" she murmured.
He rose and began to pace the floor. The physical, the passionate side
of him was in storm. He was not for nothing a Coltsworth. Coltsworths
were dominating people, they were masterful. They wished to prevail,
body and point of view, point of view, perhaps, no less than body. They
were not content to have their scheme of life and to allow another
a like liberty; their scheme must lie upon and smother under the
other's. They wished submissiveness of mind--the other person's mind.
They wished it in their relations with men--Ralph himself preferred
subservient officials, subservient secretaries, subservient boards,
subservient legislators. He preferred men to listen in the club, he
liked a deferential murmur from his acquaintance. He had followers whom
he called friends. A certain number of these truly admired him; he was
to them feudal and splendid. He was a Coltsworth and Coltsworths liked
to dominate the minds and fortunes of men. When it came to collective
womankind, they might have said that they had really never considered
the question--naturally men dominated women. To them God was male. They
would have agreed with the Kentucky editor that the feminist movement
was an audacious attempt to change the sex of Deity.... The thing that
angered the Coltsworths through and through was Revolt. Political,
economic, intellectual, spiritual--Revolt was Revolt, whatever
adjective went before! Rage boiled up in the mind of the master. And
when the revolted was not perturbed, or anxious or fluttered, but
stood aloof and was aloof, when the revolt was successful, when the
rebellion had become revolution and the new flag was up and the citadel
impregnable--the sense of wrath and injury overflowed like the waves of
Phlegethon. It overflowed now with Ralph.
He turned from the window. "All this rebellion of women is unthinkable!"
Hagar looked at him somewhat dreamily. "However, it has occurred."
"Things can't change like that--"
"The answer to that is that they have changed."
She sat and smiled at him, quite eluding him, a long way off. "Do you
think that only mind in man rebels? Mind in woman does it too. And
it comes about that there are always more rebels, men and women. We
are quite numerous to-day.... But there are women who do not rebel,
as there are men. There are many women who will grant you your every
premise, who are horrified in company with you, horrified at us
others.... Why do you not wish to mate among your own kind?"
"I wish to mate with _you_!"
She shook her head. "That you cannot do.... There is being drawn a
line. Some men and women are on one side of it, and some men and women
are on the other side of it. There is taking place a sorting-out.... In
the things that make the difference you are where you were when Troy
fell. I cannot go back, down all those slopes of Time."
"I am afire for you."
"You wake in me no answering fire." She rose. "I will talk about much
with you, but I will talk no longer about love. You may take your
choice. Stay and talk as my old playmate and cousin, or say good-night
and good-bye."
"If I go," said Ralph hoarsely, "I shall not come again--I shall not
ask you again--"
"Ralph, Ralph! do you think I shall weep for that?... You do think that
I shall weep for that!... You are mad!"
"By God!" said Ralph, and quivered, "I wish that we were together in a
dark wood--I wish that you were in a captured city, and I was coming
through the broken gate--" Suddenly he crossed the few feet between
them, caught and crushed her in his arms, bruising her lips with his.
"Just be a woman--you dark, rich thing with wings--"
Hagar had a physical strength for which he was unprepared. Exerting
it, she freed herself, and in the same instant and as deliberately as
swiftly, struck him across the face with her open hand. "Good-bye, to
you!" she said in a thrilling voice.
They stared at each other for a moment across space. Then Hagar said
quietly. "You had better go, Ralph...."
He went. When the door had closed behind him, she stood very still
for a few moments, her eyes upon the pine bough. The excess of colour
slowly ebbed from her face, the anger died in her eyes. "Oh, all of
us poor, struggling souls!" she said. Obeying some inner impulse she
first lowered, then extinguished the lights in the room and moved to
one of the windows. She threw up the sash and the keen, autumnal night
streamed in upon her. The window-seat was low and broad. She sat there
with her head thrown back against the frame, and let the night and the
high, starry heaven and the moving air absorb and lift her. It was very
clear and there seemed depths on depths above. Hyades and Pleiades, and
the Charioteer, and Andromeda Bound, and Perseus climbing the steep
sky. "We are all bound and limited--we are all on the lower slopes of
Time--down in the fens with the lower nature. It is only a question
of more or less--Aspiration born and strengthening, or Aspiration yet
in the womb. Then what room for anger because another is where I have
been--because another, coming upward, rests awhile in the dungeon that
was also mine, perhaps it was yesterday, perhaps it was ages ago?...
Where I am to-day will seem dungeon enough to that which one day I
shall be.... And so with him, and so with us all...."
A month after this she found among her letters one morning four
smoothly ecstatic pages from Sylvie Carter. Ralph had asked Sylvie to
marry him, and Sylvie had said Yes. Sylvie wrote that she expected to
be very happy, and that she was going to do her best to make Ralph
so, too. The next day brought a half-page from Ralph. It stated that
something Hagar had said had set him to thinking. She had said that
there was being a line drawn and that some men and some women were
finding themselves together on either side. He thought there was truth
in it, and that, after all, one should marry within one's class;
otherwise a perpetual clash of opinions, fatal to love. There followed
a terse announcement of his engagement to Sylvie, and he signed
himself, "Your affectionate cousin, Ralph Coltsworth."
But it was Old Miss whose letter was wholly aggrieved and indignant....