CHAPTER XI
THE LETTERS
Miss Serena was playing "Silvery Waves." Hagar, kneeling on thehearth-rug, warmed her hands at the fire and studied the illuminatedtext over the mantel. "Silvery Waves" came to an end, and Miss Serenaopened the green music-book at "Santa Anna's March."
"Has Isham gone for the mail?" asked Hagar.
"Yes. He went an hour ago.--You're hoping, I suppose, for a letter fromthat dreadful man?"
"You know as well as I do," said Hagar, "that I gave my word and hegave his to write only once a month. And he isn't a dreadful man. He'sjust like everybody else."
"Ha!" said Miss Serena, and brought her hands down upon the openingchord. Hagar, her elbows on her knees, hid her eyes in her hands.Within her consciousness Juliet was speaking as she had spoken thatnight upon the stage--spoken in the book--spoken in immortal life,youth, love. Not so, she knew with a suddenness and clangour as ofa falling city, not so could Juliet have spoken! "Like everybodyelse"--Was Laydon, then, truly, like everybody else?--A horror ofweakness and fickleness came over her. Was there something direfullywrong with her nature, or was it possible for people simply to bemistaken in such a matter? Her head grew tired; she was so unhappy thatshe wished to creep away and weep and weep.... Miss Serena, havingmarched with Santa Anna, turned a dozen pages and began "The MockingBird. With Variations."
Old Miss's step was heard in the hall, very firm and authoritative. Ina moment she entered the room, portly, not perceptibly aged, her hair,beneath her cap, hardly more than powdered with grey, still wearingblack stuff gowns and white aprons and heelless low shoes over whitestockings. Hagar rose from the rug and pushed the big chair toward thefire.
Old Miss dropped into it--no, not "dropped"--lowered herself withdignity. "Has Isham brought the mail?"
"No, not yet."
"I dreamed last night that there was a letter from Medway. Serena!"
"Yes, mother?"
"The next text you paint I want you to do one for me. _Honour thyfather and mother that thy days may be long_--"
Miss Serena turned on the piano-stool. "I'll do it right away, mother.It would be lovely in blue and gold.... You can't say that I haven'thonoured father and mother."
Old Miss had drawn out her knitting and now her needles clicked. "Noone honours them as they used to be honoured. No one obeys them as theyused to obey. To-day children think that they are wiser than theirfathers. They set up to use their own judgment until it's a scandal....It's true you've been better than most, Serena. Taking you year in andyear out, you've obeyed the commandment. It's more than many daughtersand grand-daughters that I know have done." Her needles clicked again."Yes, Serena, you haven't given us much trouble. You were easy to makemind from the beginning." She gave the due praise, but her tone wasnot without acerbity. It might almost have seemed that such forthrightductility and keeping of the commandment as had been Miss Serena's hadits side of annoyance and satiety.
Hagar spoke from the window where she stood, her forehead pressedagainst the glass. "I see Isham down the road, by the Half-Mile Cedar."
Old Miss turned the heel of the Colonel's sock she was knitting."Things that from the newspaper and my personal observation happen nowin the world could not possibly have occurred when I was young. Peopledefying their betters, women deserting their natural sphere, atheistsdenying hell and saying that the world wasn't made in six days, younggirls talking about independence and their own lives--their own lives!Ha!"
Miss Serena began to play "The Sea in the Shell." "We all know howHagar came by her disposition, but I must say it is an unfortunate one!When I was her age, no money could have made me act as she has done."
"No money could have made me, either," spoke Hagar at the window.
"Money has nothing to do with it!" said Old Miss. "At least as far asHagar is concerned, nothing! But fitness, propriety, meekness, andmodesty, consultation with those to whom she owes duty, and bowing towhat they say--all those have something to do with it! But what couldyou expect? It was bound to come out some day. From a bush with thornswill come a bush with thorns."
"Here is Isham," said Hagar. "If you've said enough for to-day,grandmother, shall I get the mail?"
She brought the bag to her grandmother. When the Colonel was athome, no one else opened the small leather pouch and distributed itscontents; when he was away Old Miss performed the ceremony. To-day hehad mounted Selim and ridden to the meeting in the neighbouring town.Mrs. Ashendyne opened the bag and sorted the mail. There was no greatamount of it, but--"I said so! I dreamed it. My dreams often come true.There it is!" "It" was a square letter, quite thick, addressed in arather striking hand and bearing a foreign stamp and postmark. It wasaddressed to the Colonel, and Mrs. Ashendyne never opened the Colonel'sletters--not even when they were from Medway. They were not from himvery often. The last, and that thin between the fingers, had been inSeptember. This one was so much thicker than that one! Old Miss gazedat it with greedy eyes.
Miss Serena, too, leaving the piano-stool, came to her mother's sideand fingered the letter. "He must have had a lot to write about. FromParis.... I used to want to go to Paris so much!"
"Put it on the mantelpiece," said Old Miss. "It can't be long beforethe Colonel's home." Even when it was on the mantel-shelf she still satlooking at it with devouring eyes. "I dreamed it was coming--and thereit is!" The remainder of the mail waited under her wrinkled hand.
Miss Serena grew mildly impatient. "What else is there, mother? I'mlooking for a letter about those embroidery silks. There it is now,I think!" She drew from her mother's lap an envelope with a printedreturn address in the upper left-hand corner. "No, it isn't it. 'YoungPeople's Home Magazine.' Some advertisement or other--people pay a lotto tell people about things they don't want! _Miss Hagar Ashendyne._Here, Hagar! It evidently doesn't know that you are grown up--or thinkyou are! There's my letter, mother,--under the 'Dispatch.'"
Hagar went away with the communication from the "Young People's HomeMagazine" in her hand. She went upstairs to her own room. It had beenher mother's room. She slept in the four-poster bed on which Mariahad died, and she curled herself with a book in the corner of theflowered chintz sofa as Maria had done before her. She curled herselfhere to-day, though with the letter, not with a book. The letter layupon her knees. She looked at it with a fixed countenance, hardlybreathing. She had thought herself out of a deal of the conventionaland materialized religious ideas of her world--not out of religion butout of conventional religion. She did not often pray now for rewards orbenefits, or hiatuses in the common law, or for a salvation external toher own being. But at this moment the past reasserted itself. Her lipsmoved. "O God, let it have been taken! O God, let it have been taken!Let me have won the fifty dollars! Let me have won the third prize. OGod, let it have been taken!"
At last, her courage at the sticking-point, she opened the envelope,and unfolded the letter within. The typewritten words swam beforeher eyes, the "Dear Madam," the page or two that followed, the "WithCongratulations, we are faithfully yours." There was an enclosure--acheque. She touched it with trembling fingers. It said: "Pay to MissHagar Ashendyne the Sum of Two Hundred Dollars."
An hour later, the dinner-bell sounding, she went downstairs. TheColonel and Captain Bob were yet at the meeting of Democrats. Therewas to be a public dinner; they would not be home before dusk. Thethree women ate alone, Dilsey waiting. Old Miss was preoccupied; theletter on the parlour mantelpiece filled her mind. "From Paris. InSeptember he was at a place called Dinard." Miss Serena had her mindupon a panel--calla lilies and mignonette--which she was painting forthe rectory parlour. As for Hagar, she did not talk much, nowadays,at Gilead Balm. If she were more silent than usual to-day, it passedwithout notice.
Only once Old Miss remarked upon her appearance. "Hagar, you've got adazed look about the eyes. Are you feeling badly?"
"No, grandmother."
"You're not to get ill, child. I shall make a bottle of tansy bittersto-morrow morning. We've trouble e
nough in this family without yourlosing colour and getting circles round your eyes."
That was love and kindness from Old Miss. The water came into Hagar'seyes. She felt a desire to tell her grandmother and Aunt Serena aboutthe letter, but in another moment it was gone. Her whole inner life wasby now secret from them, and this seemed of the inner life. Presently,of course, she would deliberately tell them all; she had thought it outand determined that it would be after supper, before Uncle Bob wentto bed and grandfather told her to get the chess-table. It seemed sowonderful a thing to her; she was so awed by it that she could not helpthe feeling that it would be wonderful to them, too.
In the afternoon she put a cape around her, left the home hill andwent down the lane, skirted a ploughed field, and, crossing the riverroad, came immediately to the fringe of sycamores and willows upon theriver bank. It was warmer and stiller than it had been in the morning,for the voice of the wind there sounded now the voice of the river;the many boughs above were still against the sky. She made for a greatsycamore that she had known from childhood; it had a vast protuberantcurving root in whose embrace you could sit as in an armchair. Shesat there now and looked at the river that went so swiftly by. Itwas swollen with the spring rains; it made a deep noise, going by tothe distant sea. To Hagar its voice to-day was at once solemn andjubilant, strong and stirred from depth to surface. She had with herthe letter; how many times she had read it she could not have told.She could have said it by heart, but still she wanted to read it,to touch it, to become aware of meaning under meaning.... She couldwrite, she could tell stories, she could write books.... She could earnmoney. It was one of the moments of her life: the moment when she knewof her mother's death--the moment when she changed Gilead Balm forEglantine--the moment by the fire, Christmas eve--this moment. She wasbut eighteen; the right-angled turns in her road of this life had notbeen many; this was one and a main one. Suddenly, to herself, her lifeachieved purpose, direction. It was as though a rudderless boat hadbeen suddenly mended, or a bewildered helmsman had seen the pole star.
She sat in the embrace of the sycamore, her feet lightly resting onthe spring earth, her shoulders just touching the pale bark of thetree, her arms folded, her eyes level; poised, recollected as a youngBrahman, conscious of an expanded space, a deeper time. How long shesat there she did not know; the sun slipped lower, touched her kneeswith gold. She sighed at last, raised her hands and turned her body.
What, perhaps, had roused her was the sound of a horse's hoofs upon theriver road. At any rate, she now marked a black horse coming in thedistance, down the road, by the speckled sycamores. It came on with agay sound upon the wind-dried earth, and in its rider she presentlyrecognized her cousin, Ralph Coltsworth.
"What are you doing here?" she asked when he reined in the black horsebeside her. "Why aren't you at the University with Blackstone underyour arm?"
He dismounted, fastened his horse, and came across to the sycamoreroot. "It's big enough for two, isn't it?" he asked, and sat downfacing her. "You mentioned the University? The University, bless itsold heart! doesn't appreciate me."
"Ralph! Have you been expelled?"
"Suspended." Hands behind head, he regarded first the blue sky behindthe interlaced bare branches, then the tall and great gnarled trunk,then the brown-clad figure of his cousin, enthroned before him. "Thesuspense," he said, "is exquisite."
"What did you do?"
He grimaced. "I don't remember. Why talk about it? It wasn't much.Cakes and ale--_joie de vivre_--chimes at midnight--same old song." Helaughed. "I gather that you've been rusticated, too."
Hagar winced. "Don't!... Let's laugh about other things. You'll breakyour family's hearts at Hawk Nest."
"Old Miss said in a letter which mother showed me that you werebreaking hers. What kind of a fellow is he, Hagar?--Like me?"
Hagar looked at him gravely. "Not in the least. How long are you goingto stay at Hawk Nest?"
"Oh, a month! I'm coming to see you every other day."
"Are you?"
"I am. If I could draw I'd like to draw you just as you look now--halfmarquise, half dryad--sitting before your own front door!"
"Well, you can't draw," said Hagar. "And it's getting cold, and thedryad is going home."
"All right," said Ralph. "I'm going, too. I've come to spend the night."
Leading his horse, he walked beside her. In the green lane, a wintrysunset glory over every slope and distant wood, the house between itsblack cedars rising before them, he halted a moment. "I haven't seenyou since August when I rode over to tell Gilead Balm good-bye. You'vechanged. You've 'done growed.'"
"That may be. I've grown to-day."
"Since I came?"
"No. Before you came. For the first time I suppose in your life,grandmother is going to be sorry to see you. She worships you."
"She was sorry to see you, too, wasn't she? It's rather nice to becompanions out of favour."
"Oh!" cried Hagar. "You are and always were the most provoking twisterof the truth! I want to say to you that I do not consider that oursare similar cases! And now, if you please, that is the last word I amgoing to say to you on such a matter."
"All right!" said Ralph. "I was curious, of course. But I acknowledgeyour right to shut me up."
They passed through the home gate,--where a boy took his horse,--andwent up the hill together. Dilsey was lighting the lamps. As theyentered the hall Miss Serena came out of the library--Miss Serenalooking curiously agitated. "Dilsey, hasn't Miss Hagar come in yet?...Oh, Hagar! I've been searching the place for you--Why, Ralph! Where onearth did you come from? Has the University burned down? Have you gota holiday?"
The library door was ajar. The Colonel's voice made itself heard fromwithin. "Serena! Is that Hagar? Tell her to come here."
The three entered the room together. There was a slight clamour ofsurprise and greeting from its occupants for Ralph, but it died down inthe face, as it were, of things of greater importance.
"What's the matter?" he asked, bringing up at last by Captain Bob inthe background.
"A letter from Medway," answered the other. "_Shh!_"
The evenings falling cold, there was a fire upon the hearth. Thereading-lamp was lit; all the room was in a glow that caressed thestiff portraits, the old mahogany and horsehair furniture, thebookcases and the books within. In the smaller of the two great chairsby the hearth sat Old Miss, preternaturally straight, her hands foldedon the black silk apron which she donned in the evening, her stillcomely face and head rising from the narrow, very fine embroideredcollar fastened by an oval brooch in which, in a complicated pattern,was wrought the hair of dead Coltsworths and Hardens. Her face worea look at once softened and fixed. Across from her, in the big chairby the leaf-table, sat Colonel Ashendyne, a little greyer, a littlemore hawklike of nose, a little sparer in frame as the years wentby, but emphatically not a person to whom could be applied the term"old." There breathed from him still an insolent, determined prime, atimelessness, a pictorial quality as of some gallery masterpiece. Withthe greyish-amber of his yet plentiful hair, his mustache and imperial,the racer set of his head, his well-shaped jaw and long nervous hands,his fine, long, spare figure and his eye in which a certain bladelikekeenness and cynicism warred with native sensuousness, he stayed inthe memory like such a canvas. His mood always showed through him,though somewhat cloudily like light through a Venetian glass. That itwas a mixed and curious mood to-night, Hagar felt the moment she wasin the room. She did not always like her grandfather, but she usuallyunderstood him. She saw the letter that had rested on the mantelpiece,the letter from Paris, in his hand, and at once there came over her acurious foreboding, she did not know whether of good or evil.
"Sit down," said the Colonel. "I have something to read to you."
For two months and more he had not looked at her without anger in hiseyes. To-night the cloud seemed at least partly to have gone by. Therewas even in the Colonel's tone a touch of blandness, of enjoyment ofthe situation. She sat down
, wondering, her eyes upon the letter.On occasion, when she searched her heart through, she found but ashrivelled love for her father. Except that he had had half-share ingiving her life, she really did not know what she had to love him for.Now, however, what power of growth there was in the winter-wrapped rootbroke the soil. She began to tremble. "What is the matter? Is fatherill? Is he coming home?"
"Not immediately," said the Colonel. "No, he is not ill. He appearsto be in his usual health and to exhibit his usual good spirits. Yourgrandmother and I were fortunate in having a son of a disposition sohappy that he left all clouds and difficulties, including his own, toother people. At the proper moment he has always been able to finda burden-bearer. No, Medway is well, and apparently happy. He hasremarried."
"Remarried!..."
It was the Colonel's intention to read her the letter--indeed, itcarried an inclosure for her--as he had already read it, twice, withvarying comment, to the others assembled. But he chose to make first,his own introduction. "You've heard of the cat that always falls onits feet? Well, that's your father, Gipsy!"--Even in the whirl of themoment Hagar could not but note that he called her "Gipsy."--"That'sMedway! Here's a careless, ungrateful, disobedient son, utterlyreckless of his obligations. Is he hanged or struck by lightning? Nothe! He goes happily along--Master Lucky-Dog! He makes a disastrousmarriage with a penniless remnant of a broken-down family on some lostcoast or other and brings her home, and presently there's a child.Does he undertake to support them, stay by his bargain, however poora one? Not he! He's got a tiny income in his own right, left him byhis maternal grandfather--just enough, with care, for one! Off he goeswith that in his pocket and a wealthy friend and, from that day tothis, we haven't laid eyes on Prince Fortunatus! Well, what happens?Does he come to eating husks with the swine and so at last slink back!Not he! He enjoys life; he's free and footloose; he's put his burdenon other folk's backs! Death comes along and unmakes his marriage. Hisdoting mother and his weak father apparently are prepared to chargethemselves with the maintenance of his child. Why should he trouble?He doesn't--not in the least! He's got just enough in his own right tolet him wander, _en gar?on_, over creation. If he took the least careof another he couldn't wander, and he likes to wander. Ah, I understandMedway, from hair to heel!--What comes of it all? We used to believe inNemesis, but that, like other beliefs, is going by the board. Isn't hegoing to suffer? Not at all! He remains the cat that falls, every time,upon its feet.--This, Gipsy, is the letter."
_My dear Father and Mother:--As well as I can remember, I was staying at Dinard when I last wrote you. I was there because of the presence in that charming place of a lady whose acquaintance I had made, the previous year, at Aix-les-Bains. From Dinard I followed her, in November, to Nice, and from Nice to Italy. I spent a portion of February as her guest in her villa near Sorrento, and there matters were brought to a conclusion. I proposed marriage and she accepted. We were married a week ago in Rome, in the English church, before a large company, the American Minister giving her away. There were matters to be arranged with her banker and lawyer in Paris, and so, despite the fact that March is a detestable month in this city, we immediately came on here. Later we shall be in Brittany, and we talk of Norway for the summer._
_The lady whom I have married was the widow of ---- ----, the noted financier and railroad magnate. She is something under my own age, accomplished, attractive, handsome, and possessed of a boundless good nature and a benevolent heart. We understand each other's nature and expect to be happy together. I need hardly tell you that being who she is, she has extreme wealth. If you read the papers--I do not--you may perhaps recall that ----'s will left his millions to her absolutely without condition. There were no children. To close this matter:--she has been generous to a degree in insisting that certain settlements be made--it leaves me with a personal financial independence and assurance of which, of course, I never dreamed.... I have often regretted that I have been able to do so little for you, or for the upkeep of dear old Gilead Balm. This, in the future, may be rectified. I understand that you have had to raise money upon the place, and I wish you would let me know the amount._
The Colonel's eyes darted cold fire. He let the sheet fall for themoment and turned upon Hagar, sitting motionless on the ottoman by thefire. "Damn your father's impertinence, Gipsy!" he said.
Old Miss spoke in a soft and gentle voice. "Why do you call it that,Colonel? Medway always had a better heart than he's ever been givencredit for. Why shouldn't he help now that he can do so? It's greatlyto his credit that he should write that way."
"Sarah," said the Colonel, "you are a soft-hearted--mother!"
Captain Bob spoke from beyond the table. Captain Bob did not oftenspeak, nor often with especial weight, but he had been pondering thismatter for three quarters of an hour, and he had a certain kind ofcommon sense. "I think Sarah's right. Medway's a curiosity to me, butI've always held that he was born that way. You are, you know; you'reborn so or you aren't born so. He's pretty consistent. There never wasa time when I wouldn't have said that he would come to the fore just assoon as he didn't have to deny himself. Now the time's come, and herehe is. I think Sarah's right. Forgive and forget! If he wants to payhis debts--and God knows he owes you and Sarah a lot--I'd let him. Andas to Gipsy there--better late than never! Read her what he says."
"I am going to," said the Colonel sardonically. He read the page thatremained, then laid the letter on the table, put his hands behind hishead and regarded his granddaughter. "The benevolent parent arrived atlast upon the scene--a kindly disposed stepmother with millions--andthat teacher of surface culture to young ladies at Eglantine! Among thethree you ought to be quite ideally provided for! I hope Medway willlike the teacher."
Old Miss came, unexpectedly, to her granddaughter's aid. "Don't worryher, Colonel! I haven't thought her looking well to-day. Give her herletter, and let her go and think it out quietly by herself.--If youlike, child, Phoebe shall bring you your supper."
Hagar did like--oh, would like that, thank you, grandmother, verymuch! She took the letter--it was addressed to her in a woman'shand--which her father had enclosed and which her grandfather now heldout to her, and went away, feeling somewhat blindly for the door,leaving the others staring after her. Upstairs she lit her lamp andplaced it on Maria's table, by Maria's couch. Then, curled there,against the chintz-covered pillows,--they were in a pattern of tulipsand roses,--she read the very kind letter which her stepmother hadwritten.