GILEAD BALM
The second letter from Old Miss came in February. The Colonel had
suddenly failed and taken to his bed. Old Miss believed that he would
get up again,--there was, she said, no reason why he shouldn't,--but in
the mean time there he lay. He was a little wandering in his mind, and
he had taken to thinking that Hagar was in the house, and a little girl
still, and demanding to see her. Old Miss suggested that she should
come to Gilead Balm.
She went at once. On the train, thundering south through a snowy
night, she lay awake until half of her journey was over. Scenes and
moments, occurrences of the outer and inner life, went by her mind
like some endless, shifting tapestry. Childhood, girlhood, womanhood,
work and play, the daily, material task and the inner lift, lift, and
ever-strengthening knowledge of the impalpable--that last was not
tapestry; it was height and breadth and depth, and something more. The
old, wide travel came back to her; shifting gleams of Eastern cities,
deserts, time-broken temples, mountains, vineyards, haunted groves,
endless surrounding, azure, murmuring seas.... Medway, white-clothed
and helmeted, in his rolling chair.... The whistle shrieked; the
train stopped with a jar at some lighted station, then, regathering
its forces, rushed and roared on through the February night. Now it
was the last three years and more: they passed in panorama before
her. Stages and stairways and scaffoldings by which the world-spirit
might mount an inch: ferments and leavens: voices telling of democracy
and fair play and care for your neighbour's freedom as for your own,
your woman-neighbour and your man-neighbour. Through her mind ran all
the enormous detail of the work being pursued over all the country;
countless meetings, speeches, appeals, talks to a dozen gathered
together or to two or three; letters and letters and letters, press
and magazine utterances, organization, the difficult raising of money,
legislative work, petitions, canvassing; drudgery in myriad detail,
letters and letters, voice and pen.... And all the opposition--blind
bigotry to be met, and a maniac fear of change, inertia, tradition,
habit, the dead past's hand, cold and heavy--and all the interested
opposition, the things whose book the movement did not suit--and all
the lethargy of womankind itself.... And in the very camp, in the huge,
chaotic movement itself, as in all the past's vast human movements,
recurring frictions, antagonisms, small jealousies, flags set up
by individuals, pacifications and smoothings, bringing compatibles
together, keeping incompatibles apart.... A contending with outer
oppositions and inner weaknesses, resisting discouragement, fighting
cynicism, acknowledging the vast road to travel, keeping on.... She
knew nothing that was at once so weak and so mighty as the Woman
Movement. One who was deep within it might feel at times a vast
weariness, impatience, and despair ... but deep within it you never
left it. Here you dealt with clay that was so cold and lumpish it
seemed that no generous idea could germinate within; here you dealt
with stuff so friable, light, and disintegrative that the thought
would come that it were better to cast it to the winds ... but you did
not; you comforted your soul with the very much that was noble, and you
hoped for the other that was not yet noble, and you went on--went on.
It was all you yourself--you had within you the intractable clay and
the stuff light as chaff, inconsequent; but you went on transmuting,
lifting.... There was no other hope, no other course, deep down no
other wish. So with the Woman Movement.... Another station. Hagar
looked out at the lights and the hurrying forms; then, as the train
roared into the white countryside, at what could be seen of the fields
and hills and storm-bent trees. She was thinking now of Gilead Balm and
her childhood and her mother. She seemed to lie again, close beside
Maria, on the big, chintz-covered sofa. At last she slept, lying so.
Captain Bob and Lisa met her at the station, three miles from Gilead
Balm. Captain Bob had a doleful mien. "Oh, yes, the Colonel's
better--but I don't think he's so much better. He's getting old--and
Lisa and I are getting old, too, aren't we old girl?--old like Luna
and going away pretty soon like Luna. Well, Gipsy, you're looking
natural--No, it's been an open winter down here--not much snow." He put
her in the carriage, and they drove slowly to Gilead Balm, over the
heavy country road.
Old Miss was well; Serena was well; Captain Bob himself had had
rheumatism, but he was better.--The Colonel didn't look badly; it was
only that he didn't seem to want to get out of bed, and that every
little while he set the clock back and rambled on about things and
people--"It's creepy to hear him," said Captain Bob. "He thinks young
Dr. Bude is old Dr. Bude, and he thinks that Maria is alive, and that
she won't let you come into the room. And then it'll change like that,
and he's just as much himself as he ever was--more so, in fact.--Hi,
Li-sa! let that rooster alone--"
The house cedars showed over the brown hills. "Dr. Bude wanted Old
Miss to get a trained nurse because somebody's got more or less to
watch at night. But Old Miss wouldn't hear to it. She don't approve of
women training for nurses, so she's got young Phoebe and Isham's second
wife--and I think myself," said Captain Bob, "that I wouldn't want a
young white woman that I couldn't order round."
Red brick and brown fields and the black-green of many cedars--here was
Gilead Balm, looking just as it used to look of a February. The air was
cold and still, the day a grey one, the smoke from the chimneys moving
upward sluggishly. Miss Serena came down the porch steps and greeted
Hagar as she stepped from the carriage.
"Yes, your old room. Did you have a tiresome journey?--Is your trunk
coming? Then I'll send it up as soon as they bring it. Young Phoebe,
you take Miss Hagar's bag up to her room. The fire's lighted, Hagar,
and Mimy shall make you a cup of coffee. We're glad to see you."
The old room, her mother's and her own! Hagar had not been in it in
winter-time for a long while. When Phoebe was gone, she sat in the
winged chair by the fire and regarded the familiar wall-paper and the
old, carved wardrobe and the four-poster bed and the sofa where Maria
had lain, and, between the dimity curtains at the windows, the winter
landscape. The fire was bright and danced in the old mahogany; the old
chintz covers were upon the chair and sofa--the old pattern, only the
hues faded. Hagar rose, took off her travelling dress, bathed and put
on a dark, silken dressing-gown. She took the pins from her hair and
let it stream; it was like Maria's. She stood for a moment, her eyes
upon the pallid day, the rusty cedars without the window, then she went
to the chintz sofa and lay down in the firelight, piling the pillows
behind her head, taking, half-consciously, the posture that oftenest
in her memory she saw Maria take. Her mother was present with her;
there came an expression into her face that was her mother's. Old Miss
knocked at the door, and entered without waiting for the "Come in!"
Hagar rose and embraced her grandmother; then Old Miss sat down in the
winged chair and her granddaughter went back to the sofa. The two gazed
at each other. Hagar did not know that she looked to-day like Maria,
and Old Miss did not examine the springs and sources of a mounting
anger and sense of injury. She sat very straight, with her knitting in
her hand, wearing a cap upon her smoothly parted hair, in which there
were yet strands of brown, wearing a black stuff skirt and low-heeled
shoes over white stockings; comely yet, and as ever, authoritative.
"I am so very sorry about grandfather," said Hagar. "Uncle Bob thinks
he is better--"
"Yes, he is better. He will be well presently. I should not," said Old
Miss coldly, "have written asking you to come but that Dr. Bude advised
it."
"I was very glad to come."
"Dr. Bude is by no means the man his father was. The age is degenerate.
And so"--said Old Miss--"Sylvie Maine has taken the prize right from
under your hand."
"Oh!" said Hagar. The corners of her lips rose; her look that had been
rather still and brooding broke into sunshine. "If you call it that!--I
hope that Ralph and Sylvie will be very happy."
"They will probably be extraordinarily happy. She is not one of your
new women. I detest," said Old Miss grimly, "your new women."
Silence. Hagar lay back against the pillows and she looked more and
more to Old Miss like Maria. Old Miss's needles clicked.
"When may I see grandfather?" asked Hagar, and she kept her voice
friendly and quiet.
"He is sleeping now. When he wakes up, if he asks for you you may go
in. I wouldn't stay long.--And what have you been doing this winter?"
"Various things, grandmother. Thomasine and I have been working pretty
hard. Thomasine sent her regards to every one at Gilead Balm."
"If you hadn't thrown away Medway's million dollars you wouldn't have
had to work," said Old Miss. "Maria was perfectly spendthrift, and of
course you take after her.--What kind of work do you mean you have been
doing?"
"I have been writing, of course. And then other work connected with
movements in which I am interested."
Old Miss's needles clicked again! "Unsexing women and unsettling the
minds of working-people. I saw a piece in a paper. Preposterous! But
it's just what Maria would have liked to have done."
Silence again; then Hagar leaned across and took up her grandmother's
work. "What is it? An afghan? It's lovely soft wool."
"When," asked Old Miss, "are you going to marry--and whom?"
"I do not know, grandmother, that I am going to marry, or whom."
"You should have married Ralph.... All these years have you had any
other offers?"
"Yes, grandmother."
"While you were with Medway?"
"Yes, grandmother."
"Have you had any since you set up in this remarkable way for yourself?"
Hagar laughed. "No, grandmother--unless you except Ralph."
"Ha!" said Old Miss in grim triumph; "I knew you wouldn't!"
Miss Serena came to the door. "Father's awake and he wants to see
Hagar."
But when Hagar went down and into the big room and up to the great bed,
the Colonel declared her to be Maria, grew excited, and said that she
shouldn't keep his grandchild from him. "I tell you, woman, Medway and
I are going to use authority! The child's Medway's--Medway's next of
kin by every law in the land! He can take her from you, and, by God! he
shall do it!"
"Father," said Miss Serena, "this is Hagar, grown up."
But the Colonel grew violently angry. "You are all lying!--a man's
family conspiring against him! That woman's my daughter-in-law--my
son's wife, dependent on me for her bread and shelter and setting
up her will against mine! And now she's all for keeping from me my
grandchild--she's hiding Gipsy in closets and under the stairs--You
have no right. It's not your child, it's Medway's child! That's law.
You ought to be whipped!"
"Grandfather," said Hagar, "do you remember Alexandria and the mosques
and the Place Mahomet Ali?"
"Why, exactly," said the Colonel. "Well, Gipsy, we always wanted to
travel, didn't we? That dragoman seems to know his business--we're
going down to Cairo to-day and out to see the pyramids. Want to come
along?"
Day followed day at Gilead Balm. Sometimes the Colonel's mind wandered
over the seas of creation, with the pilot asleep at the helm; sometimes
the pilot suddenly awoke, though it was not apt to be for long. It was
eerie when the pilot awoke; when he suddenly sat there, gaunt, with a
parchment face and beak-like nose and straying white hair, and in a
cool, drawling voice asked intelligent questions about the hour and the
season and the plantation happenings.
At such times, if Hagar were not already in the room, he demanded to
see her. She came, sat by him in the great chair, offered to read to
him. He was not infrequently willing for her to do this. She read
both prose and verse to him this winter. Sometimes he did not wish
her to read; he wanted to talk. When this was the case--the pilot
being awake--it was her life away from Gilead Balm that he oftenest
chose to comment upon. That he knew the content of her life hardly
at all mattered, as little to the Colonel as it mattered to Old Miss
and Miss Serena. They were going to let fly their arrows; if there
was no target in the direction in which they shot, at least they
were in sublime ignorance of the fact. Hagar let them talk. Not only
the Colonel--Gilead Balm was dying.... In the middle of a sarcastic
sentence the pilot would drop asleep again; in a moment the barque
was at the mercy of every wandering wind. Hagar became Maria and he
gibbered at her.
Young Dr. Bude came and went. February grew old and passed into March;
March, cold and sunny, with high winds, wheeled by; April came with
tender light, with Judas trees and bloodroot, and the white cherry
trees in a mist of bloom; and still the Colonel lay there, and now the
pilot waked and now the pilot slept.
May came. Dr. Bude stayed in the house. One evening at dusk the
Colonel suddenly opened his eyes upon his family gathered about his
bed. Old Miss was sitting, upright and still, in the great chair at
the bed-head. Miss Serena had a low chair at the foot, and Captain Bob
was near, his old, grey head buried in his hands. There was also an
Ashendyne close kinsman, and a Coltsworth--not Ralph. Dr. Bude waited
in the background. Hagar stood behind Miss Serena.
Colonel Argall Ashendyne looked out from his pillow. "Wasn't the
Canal good enough? Who wants their Railroad--damn them! And after the
Railroad there'll be something else.... Public Schools, too!... This
country's getting too damnably democratic!" His eyes closed, his face
seemed to sink together. Dr. Bude came from the hearth and, bending
over, laid his finger upon the pulse. The Colonel again opened his
eyes. They were fastened now on Hagar, standing behind Miss Serena.
"Well, Gipsy!" he said with cheerfulness, "It's a pretty comfortable
boat, eh? We'll make the voyage before we know it." His hands touched
the bed. "Steamer chairs! I don't think I was ever in one before. Lean
back and see the wide ocean stretch before you! The wide ocean ... the
wide ocean ...
"'Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!'
"That's Byron, you know, Gipsy.... The wide ocean...."
His eyes glazed. He sank back. Dr. Bude touched the wrist again; then,
straightening himself, turned and spoke to Old Miss.