CHAPTER XIII
THE NEW SPRINGS
Laydon's three days spun themselves out to five with a fine smoothness.Colonel Ashendyne's tone was balm itself to what it might have been.Miss Serena was willing to discuss with him "In Memoriam" and thenovels of Miss Broughton, and Ralph Coltsworth who was also at the NewSprings walked with him over the place. Laydon was keen enough to seethat Hagar had appealed to her family, and that Ashendyne breedinghad rallied to her support. He was at once provoked and soothed; nowconscious only of the injury to his healthy self-love, and now of avague relief that, young as he still was, and with that wonderfulfuture all to make, he really was not tied down. His very vanity wouldnot agree but that the woman with whom he had thought himself in lovemust be of a superior type and an undeniable charm, but the same vanityconceded gently that to err was mortal, and that there were as goodfish in the sea as ever came out of it, and that he certainly hadnot been fatally smitten--on the whole, she, poor little thing! hadprobably suffered the most of the two. Charming as she was, the glamourfor him, he conceded, was gone. _He had come off pretty well, afterall._
When the five days were up, he felt positive regret at having to go,and his good-bye to all the Ashendynes was cordial. He had alreadywritten to Mrs. LeGrand, and, of course, to his mother. He went; thestage took him up the mountain....
"For all I could see--and I watched pretty closely--there didn'tanything come of it," remarked Marie Caton. "On the whole, I am ratherglad. Now you can't hear the rumble of the stage any longer. He's goneout of the picture.--Betsy, stop writing and look at the robin and thechipmunk--"
They had the tiniest cottage to themselves--Elizabeth's brother beingan old-timer here, and his letter to the proprietor procuring themgreat consideration. There were but two rooms in the cottage. Roofand porch, it was sunk in traveller's-joy, and in front sprang a vastwalnut tree, and beyond the walnut a span-wide stream purled betweenmint over a slaty bed. From the porch you looked southward overmountains and mountains, and every evening Antares looked redly back atyou. Now it was morning, and wrens and robins and cat-birds all weresinging.
Elizabeth looked up from the table where she was working. "If I watchchipmunks all morning, I'll never get these textile figures done.--Mrs.Josslyn said at breakfast that it wasn't a good day for fishing, andthat she might wander by."
"She's coming now. I see her in the distance. I like Molly Josslyn."
"So do I.--We haven't been here a week and yet we talk as though we hadknown these people always!"
"Well, the fact that quite a number knew your brother made for therebeing no ice to break. And it would be so absurd not to know oneanother at the New Springs! as absurd as if a shipload of people caston a desert island--Here she is. Come in, Mrs. Josslyn!"
"Thank you, I don't want a chair," said Molly Josslyn. "You don't mindif I sit on the edge of the porch and dangle my feet, do you? Nor if Itake off my hat and roll up my sleeves so that I can feel the air on myarms?"
"Not a bit. Take the hairpins out of your hair and let it fly."
"I wish that I could cut it off!" said Molly viciously. "I will someday! Pretty nearly a whole three-quarters of an hour out of everytwenty-four gone in brushing and combing and doing up hair! You haveto do it in the morning and the middle of the day and the evening. Atwentieth part of your whole waking existence!... Oh, me!"
"What a sigh!"
"I've been in rocking-chair-and-gossip land over on the big porch. I'veheard everybody--in a petticoat--who wasn't there hanged, drawn, andquartered. Of course, I knew they were eager to get at me, and so I wasobliging and came away."
Marie Caton laughed. "Miss Eden here is an optimist of the first water.If you ask her she'll tell you that women are growing beyond that sortof thing--that they don't sting one another half as much as they usedto!"
"No, I don't think they do," said Mrs. Josslyn. "I think that's gettingapparent nowadays. Speaking for myself, fresh air and out of doors andswinging off by one's self seem to make a body more or less charitable.But some of us have got the habit yet. Gnat or wasp or hornet or snake,on they go!" she laughed. "Over on the porch it wasn't anything buta little cloud of gnats. They weren't really stinging--just gettingbetween your eyes and the blue sky."
"But it is growing better--it is, it is!" said Elizabeth. "I wouldn'tgive up that belief for anything."
"No, don't!" said Molly Josslyn. "I like women and like to think wellof them."
A strong, rosy blonde, she stood up and stretched her arms aboveher head. "I wish there were a pool somewhere, deep enough to swimin! I'd like to cross the Hellespont this morning--swim it and swimback.--Christopher is coming to-morrow."
"Christopher?"
"My husband--Christopher Josslyn. They don't," said Mrs. Josslyn, "makethem any nicer than Christopher! Christopher was my born mate." Andwent away with a beamy look, over the grass.
Marie spoke thoughtfully. "Yesterday I heard one of the gnats singing.It sang, 'Yes, rather handsome, but don't you find her dreadfullyunfeminine?'"
"Oh, 'feminine'!" said Elizabeth, and went on adding figures.
Marie Caton took a book from the generous number ranged around a jarof Black-eyed Susans on the rustic table in the middle of the porch,but "The chipmunks and the robins get so in the way," she presentlydreamily murmured, and then, "You had just as well put up your work.Here's Judge Black and General Argyle!"
Judge Black was sixty-two, rather lean than stout, rather short thantall, clean-shaven, with a good-looking countenance below grizzled,close-clipped hair, with a bald spot at the top like a monk'stonsure. General Argyle was a much larger and taller man, big-framed,wide-girthed, with a well-set head framed about with shaggy white hair.His countenance was rubicund, his voice mellow. He was sixty-seven,in some respects very old, and in others quite young. Usually, atthe New Springs, Colonel Ashendyne marched in company, but thismorning--"Ashendyne's got some family conference or other on hand. It'sa day off for fishing, and nobody seems to have a mind for whist orpoker, and the papers haven't come. Argyle and I are floating aroundlike two lost corks or the Babes in the Wood--"
"So I said," said General Argyle richly, "let's stroll over there andsay good-morning to Tom Eden's sister and her attractive friend.--No,no; no chairs! We'll sit here on the steps. As soon as Ashendyneappears, we're going after young Coltsworth and have a turn in thebowling-alley. Must exercise!--that's what I'm always telling Blackhere--"
"As if I didn't exercise," said Judge Black, "more in a day than hedoes in a week.--What a pretty little porch you've got! Books, flowers,needlework--"
The General surveyed it, too. "It _is_ pretty. Woman's touch--woman'stouch!"
"That isn't needlework in the basket," said Marie demurely. "It'sapples. Will you have one?"
"No, thanks, Mistress Eve--or yes, on second thoughts, I will! What areyou reading?--'The Doll's House.' Ibsen!"
"Yes."
"I do not know," said the Judge, "what young ladies are coming to! Ihave never had time, nor, I may say, inclination, to read Ibsen myself,but of course I know the kind of thing he's responsible for. And,frankly, I should not permit my daughter to read that book!"
"Oh," said Marie, "I don't think myself it is a book for a child!"
"She's not a child. She's twenty-six. I should dissuade my wife, too,from reading it."
"Then your wife," answered Marie, "would miss an illuminating piece ofliterature."
Elizabeth came in with her serene voice. "Don't you think, Judge Black,that we all acquire a habit of judging a writer, whom we haven't yethad time to study for ourselves, too much in terms of some review orother, or of the mere unthinking, current talk? I think we all do it.I believe when you read Ibsen you will feel differently about him."
"Not I!" said the Judge. "I have seen extracts enough. I tell you, MissEden, the age is reading too much of such decadent stuff--"
"Oh, 'decadent'!"
"And it is read, amazingly, by women. I would rather see my wife ordaughter with
the old dramatists at their worst in their hands thanwith stuff like that--! Overturning all our concepts, criticizingsupremacies--I beg your pardon, Miss Caton, but if you knew how women,nowadays, amaze me--"
"Stop hectoring, Black," said the General mellowly. "She's not in thedock. Just so that women stay women, they can fill their heads withwhat stuff they will--"
"Exactly!" said Judge Black. "Do you see them staying women?"
"Women of the past," said Elizabeth.
"That is woman,--the women of the past. There isn't any other. Theeternal feminine--"
"I think you are limiting the eternal and denying the universe power toevolve," said Elizabeth. "Why not eternally the man of the past? Whynot 'There isn't any other'? Why not 'The eternal masculine'? Why doyou change and grow from age to age?"
"I'm not so sure that they do," said Marie _sotto voce_.
"Yes, they do! They grow and become freer always; though I think,"said Elizabeth painfully, "that they lag in the way they look atwomen.--Well, if you grow, being one half, do you suppose that weare not going to grow, being the other half? And if you think thatthe principle of growth is not in us, still I shouldn't worry! If wecan't grow, we won't grow, and you needn't fash yourselves. On theother hand, if we can, we will--and that is all there is about it. Andit wouldn't do you the least harm to read Ibsen--nor to get anotherdefinition of 'decadent.'"
She leaned forward in her chair. "Do you see that strip of blanchedgrass there?--or rather it was blanched yesterday when that board overthere was lying upon it and had lain, I don't know how long!--blanchedand bent and sicklied over. Now look! It is getting colour and standingstraight--only beginning, but it is beginning--beginning to be on termswith the sun! Well, that grass is woman to-day! The heavy board isbeing lifted, and that's the change and all the change--and you find it'pernicious'!"
Glowing-cheeked, she ceased speaking. Judge Black's colour, too, hadheightened. "My dear Miss Eden, how did all this begin? I'm the lastperson in the world to deny to woman a proper freedom. I only askthat it shan't go beyond a certain point--that it shan't threaten theunsettling of a certain divine _status quo_--"
"I doubt if a divine _status quo_ is ever unsettled, Judge Black,"said Elizabeth. "But there--but there!" She smiled, and she had a verysweet, sunny smile. "I didn't in the least mean to quarrel! Tom willhave told you that I sometimes use my tongue, and that's the ancientwoman, still, isn't it? You see I care for women--being one--a gooddeal."
"Let us," said Marie Caton, "talk about fishing."
General Argyle chuckled. "Black doesn't think you know anything aboutfishing. He has to acknowledge that Mrs. Josslyn does--but then hethinks that she's a charming _lusus natur?_. I like to hear you give itto Black. Pay him back. He's always giving it to me!"
"That's right!" said Black. "Pitch into me! Cover me with obloquy! Poorhomeless, friendless sailor with the pole star mysteriously shiftedfrom its place--" ...
"The homeless, friendless sailor stayed a long time, even with the polestar shifted," remarked Marie, forty minutes later.
"I certainly didn't mean to be rude," murmured Elizabeth, hereyes upon the disappearing guests, now well on their way to thebowling-alley. "They mean you never to resent a thing which they wouldat once recognize for an impertinence if one of themselves said it toanother--"
"Oh, I shouldn't dub you rude," said the other. "And if he foundyou uncomfortable for a minute, you made up for it afterwards! Youwere charming enough, just as charming as if the pole star had nevershifted. He went off still in mind the Eastern King."
"Ah," said Elizabeth, "that is where all of us are weak. We say thetruth, and then we bring in 'charm' and sandpaper it away again! It'sgoing to take another generation, Marie!"
"Another?" said Marie. "A dozen, more like!--Now I suppose I can read'The Doll's House' in peace.--No, by all that's fated in this place,here comes another guest!"
This was Ralph Coltsworth, but he made no long tarrying; he was astransient as a butterfly. "Have you ladies seen Hagar Ashendyne? I wanther to go to walk with me, and I can't find her anywhere."
"No, we haven't," said Marie. "Judge Black and General Argyle arelooking for you to play tenpins."
Ralph smiled back at her. "Let them look! It will do the old codgersgood. Do you like this place?"
"Yes, very much. Don't you?"
"Oh, I like it so-so!" said Ralph. "It's a good enough lotus land, butthere's a lack somehow of wild, exciting adventure. I've been trying toread on the hotel porch. What do you think they're talking about overthere? Fringed doilies!"
"What do you like to do and to talk about?"
"Live things." He laughed, tossed an apple into the air and caught itagain. "I want first to make fifty millions, and then I want to spendfifty millions!"
"What an admirable American you are!"
"Am I not? And I vary it with just wanting to be a cowboy with asix-shooter on a Western plain--" He tossed the apple into the airagain and, watching it, missed the glimpse of Hagar which the other tworeceived. She appeared around the corner of a neighbouring cottage, herface directed toward the traveller's-joy porch, saw Coltsworth, wheeledand withdrew. He caught the apple, and after gazing meditatively for amoment in the direction of the tenpin-alley, sighed, and said that hesupposed after all he might as well go help the General demolish theArmy of the Potomac. "That's what he calls the pins when they're setup. He takes the biggest bowl and sends it thundering. I believe hethinks for the moment it is a ball from one of his old twenty-pounders.He sees fire and smells smoke. Sometimes he demolishes the Army of thePotomac and sometimes he doesn't; but he never gets discouraged. Thenext cannon ball will surely do the work!"
When he was gone, and had been gone twenty minutes or more, Hagarreappeared. She came swiftly across the grass, mounted the porch steps,and stood, with a little deprecating shake of her head for the offeredchair, by Elizabeth's work-table. "I am not going to stay, thankyou! Miss Eden, somebody told me last night that you had written andpublished books--"
"Only text and reference books--compilations," said Elizabeth. "I onlydo that kind of unoriginal work."
"Yes, but a book is a book," said Hagar. "What I wondered was if youwouldn't be good enough to tell me some things. No one in all myconnection writes--I don't know any one to go to. I only want to knowplain things--A, B, C's of how to manage--"
"About a manuscript, you mean?"
"Yes. I don't know anything. I've read all kinds of useless things andso little useful! For instance," said Hagar, "is it wrong to write onboth sides of the paper?"