CHAPTER XVIII
A TELEGRAM
The next day she went down to the Settlement.
Elizabeth was at home. "Yes, I could give you a list of books onSocialism. I read a good deal along those lines myself. I am glad youare interested."
"I am interested," answered Hagar. "I cannot get any of these booksnow, but I am looking for fifty dollars, and when it comes, I will."
"But I can lend you two or three," said Elizabeth. "Won't you takethem--dear Hagar?"
She regarded the younger woman with her steady, friendly eyes, herstrong lips just parting in a smile. There was perhaps nine years'difference in their ages, but mentally they came nearer. It was thefirst time that she had dropped the formal address.
Hagar answered with a warm colour and a tremulous light from brow tochin. "Yes, if you'll be so good--Elizabeth!"
She crossed the floor with the other to the long, low, bookcase.Elizabeth drew out a couple of volumes. "These are good to beginwith--and this." She stood a moment in thought, her back to the case,her elbow resting on its polished top and her head upon her hand.On a shelf behind her stood a small bronze Psyche, a photograph ofBotticelli's Judith, a drawing of Florence Nightingale. "Hagar," saidElizabeth, "if I give you two or three books upon the position ofwoman in the past and to-day, will you read them?"
"I will read anything you give me, Elizabeth."
She took her parcel of books and went back to the Maines'. She readwith great rapidity. Her memory was not a verbal one, but her verytissues seemed to absorb the sense of what she read. Much in thesebooks simply formulated for her with clearness what was already insolution in her mind. Here and there she was conscious of lines ofdifference, of inward criticism, but in the main they but enlarged acontent already there, but brought above the threshold, named and fedwhat she was already thinking. Her mind went back to Eglantine andRoger Michael's talk. "No. It did not begin even here. It was in me. Ithad been in me a long time, only I didn't know it, or called it othernames."
Before these books were finished she got her fifty dollars from themagazine, and the magazine itself was sent her with her story in it.She sat and read the story, and it seemed strange and new in its robeof print. The magazine had provided an illustration--and how strangeit was to see her figures (or rather _not_ her figures) moving andlaughing there! Again and again, after the first time, she openedthe magazine and in part or whole read the story and gazed upon theillustration--half a dozen or more times during the first twenty-fourhours, then with dwindling frequency day after day, for a week orso. After that her appetite for her own completed work flagged. Shelaid the magazine away, and it was years before she read that storyagain. The fifty dollars--She put thirty-five away to go toward hersummer clothes and wrote to her grandmother that she had done so. Theremaining fifteen she expended on books, taking starred titles fromElizabeth's list. In January she wrote "The Lame Duck." She sent itto one of the great monthlies. It was accepted, she was paid a fairprice, and the monthly gave her to understand that it should like tosee _Hagar Ashendyne's_ next story.
The letter came as she was leaving the house for a walk in the Park.There was no great distance to go before you came to an entrance,and she often went alone and wandered here and there by herself. Thecountry was in her veins; not to see trees and grass very often wasvery bad. She opened the letter, saw what it was, then walked on in arosy mist. After a while, out under the branched grey trees, she founda bench, sat down, and read it again and yet again. Her soul passionedto do this thing; to write, to write well, to give out wonderfully,beautifully. A letter that told her it was so, that she was doing thatwhich, with the strongest longing, she longed to do, must be to hergolden as a love letter. With it open on her lap, with her eyes on theserene, pearl-grey meadow on the edge of which she sat, she stayed along time, dreaming. A young man and woman, lovers evidently, slowlypassed her bench beneath the trees. She watched them with tranquileyes. "They're lovers," and she felt a reflex of their bliss. Theypassed, and she watched as happily the grey spaces where a few sheepstirred, and the edge of trees beyond, dream trees in the mist.
Quite simply she fell to thinking of "the boy." He had been oftenin her mind since the evening of that meeting; she wondered abouthim a good deal. She did not know his name; she had no idea where helived; he might be in New York now, or he might not be; she mightpass him in the street and not know--though, indeed, now she kept alookout. He did not know her name; she was to him "the little girl"as he was to her "the boy." They might never meet again, but she hada faith that it would not be so. What she felt toward him was butfriendliness, concern, and some admiration; but the feeling had a softglow and pulse. The most marked thing was the consciousness that sheknew him truly; reasoning did not come into it; she could have toldherself a dozen times how little she did know, and it would have madeno difference. It was as though the boy and she had seen each other'sessential self through a clear pane of glass.
Her mind did not dwell long upon him to-day. She sat with her handscrossed above the letter, and her eyes, half-veiled, upon the farhorizon. To write--to write--to produce, to lead forth, to give birth,to push out and farther on forever, to make a beautiful thing, andalways a more beautiful thing--always--always.... She was more mindthan body as she sat there; she saw her thought-children going up toheaven before her.
There came an impulse to look on beauty that other minds had sentforth. She rose and walked, with her light, rhythmic swiftness,northward toward the Metropolitan. When she passed the turnstile therelacked less than an hour of closing time. She went at once toward therooms where were the casts. There was hardly a moving figure besidesherself; there were only the still, white giants. She entered an alcovewhere there was a seat drawn before a cast of the tomb of Lorenzo de'Medici. She sat down and gazed upon Michael Angelo's Thinker. After awhile her eyes moved to the great figures of Twilight and Dawn, andthen, rising, she crossed to Guliano's Tomb and stood before Day andNight. Presently she left the alcove, and crossing by the models ofthe Parthenon and of Notre Dame came into the Hall of the Antique andinto the presence of the great Venus. Here she stayed until a man camethrough the place and said it was closing time.
In February she sent to the same monthly "The Mortal." It passed fromhand to hand until in due time it reached the editor. He read it, thenstrolled into the assistant editor's room:--"New star in the sky." Butbefore Hagar could hear from the monthly, another moment in her lifewas here.
A week after she had mailed this story, she and Rachel were togetherone evening in the latter's room. It was pouring rain, and there wouldbe no company. Supper was just over,--the Maines clung to supper,--andthe children had not been put to bed. Nightgowned, they made excursionsand alarms from their nursery into their mother's room and out againand in again. Then Rachel turned out the gas, and they all sat in thelight of the coal fire, and first Rachel told a story, and then Bettytold one, and then Hagar, and then Charley. They were all storiesout of Mother Goose, so no one had to wait long for their turn. ThenHagar had to tell about Bouncing Bet and Creeping Charley, which was acontinued story with wonderful adventures, an adventure a night. Thenthe clock struck eight with a leaden sound, and Mammy appeared in thenursery door. "You carry me!" cried Bouncing Bet, and "You carry me!"cried Creeping Charley. So Rachel took one and Hagar took the other,mounted them like papooses, and in the nursery shot each into theappropriate small, white bed.
Back before the fire, with the lights still out, the two sat for atime in silence. Hagar had a story in mind. She was musing it out,seeing the figures come true in the lit hollows. Rachel had a habitof crooning to herself. She went on now with one of the children'srhymes:--
"Baa, baa, Black Sheep, Have you any wool?" "Yes, sir, yes, sir, three bags full-- One for my master and one for my dame, And one for the little boy that lives in the lane!"
Hagar stirred, lifted her arms, and clasped her hands behind her head."How the rain pours! The winter is nearly over. It has been a wonderfulwi
nter."
"I'm glad you've found it so," said Rachel. "You've got a wonder-worldof your own, behind your eyes. Everything spins out for good for yousooner or later and somehow or other. You're lucky!"
"Aren't you lucky, too? Haven't you liked this winter?"
"Oh, I've liked it so-so! I've liked you."
"Rachel, I wish you'd be happy. You've got those darling children."
"I am happy where the children touch. And, oh, yes, they touch a longway round! But there's a gap in the circle where you go out lonely andcome in lonely."
"That's true of everybody's circle:--mine, yours, everybody's. But youchafe so. You blow the coals with your breath."
"I don't need to blow the coal. It burns without that.... Let me tellyou, Hagar. There are two kinds of people in the world. The people whoare half or maybe two thirds the way out of the pit and the mire andthe slough and the shadow so thick you can cut it! They are risingstill, and their garments are getting clean and white, and they cansee the wonderful round landscape, and they look at it with calm,wide eyes. They're nearly out; they're more or less spectators. Theother kind--they're the poor, dull, infuriated actors. They're stillin; they can hardly see even the rim of the pit. The first kind wantsto help and does help. It's willing for the others to lay hold ofits hands, its skirts, to drag out by. It's willing as an angel, andoften the others wouldn't get out at all if it didn't give aid. Butit's seen, of course, and it's away beyond.... People like ElizabethEden, for instance.... But the other kind--my kind.--It's all personalwith us yet--we're fighting and loving and hating, down here in themuck and turmoil--all of us who are yet devils, and those who arehalf-devils, and those of us who are just getting vision and findingthe stepping-stones--the animal and the half-animal, and those who'veonly got pointed ears--all resenting and striking out and trampling oneanother, knowing, some of us, that there are better things and yet notknowing how to get the shining garments; others not caring--Oh, I tellyou, life's a bubbling cauldron!"
"I know it is--deep above and deep below. But--"
Rachel rose, went to the window, and stood, brow against the pane,looking out. The rain dashed against the glass; all the street lightswere blurred; the gusty wind shook the bare boughs of the one tree uponthe block, "You don't know anything about my married life. Well, I'mgoing to tell you."
She came back to the fire, pushed a footstool upon the hearth, andsat down, crouching close to the flame. "I'm not yet twenty-six. Iwas married to Julian Bolt when I was eighteen. I'd known him--or Ithought I'd known him--for years. His mother and sisters went in summerto the place in the mountains where we always went. They had money,though less than people supposed. Julian spent two weeks with them eachsummer. He was older than I, of course,--years older. But he used torow us girls upon the lake, and to play tennis with us, and we thoughthim wonderful. We called him 'The Prince.' As I got older, he rowedme sometimes alone on the lake, and now and then we went for a walktogether. He was good-looking, and he dressed and talked well, and hespent money. I had heard somebody call him 'a man-about-town'--but Ididn't know what 'a man-about-town' meant. There were two or threefamilies in the place with daughters out or about to come out, and theymade Julian Bolt very welcome. I never heard a father or mother theresay a word against him. Mine didn't.
"Well, I came out very early, and the summer after, when I went toVirginia, to the White with my aunt, and that winter when I stayed withsome army people at Old Point, he came to both places, and I knew thathe came to see me. He told me so.... Of course, though I would havedied rather than say it, even to myself, of course, I was expectingmen to fall in love with me and ask me to marry them--and expectingto choose one, having first, of course, fallen in love with him, andbe married in white satin and old lace, and be romantically happyand provided for ever after! Isn't that the thinking r?le for everyproperly brought-up girl? The funny thing is that I'd rather die thansee Betty come upon that treadmill they've built for a girl's mind!...Well, I was on it all right....
"Julian had money, and he spent it recklessly. I didn't see howrecklessly; I didn't see anything except that he liked me; for he sentme the most beautiful flowers, the most expensive bon-bons and booksand magazines. It was a gay winter. Looking back, it seems to me thateverybody was eating and drinking, for to-morrow we die. I knew I mustfall in love--that had been suggested to me, suggested for years,just as regularly and powerfully as any hypnotist could do it. Thewhole world was bent on suggesting it to every young girl. You see,the world's selfish. It wants to live, and it can't live unless theyoung girl says Yea. And it can't leave it, or it thinks it can't, toNature working in a certain number in her own good time. It must cheatand beguile and train the girl--every girl--every girl! I tell you,I didn't know any more about marriage than I did about life on theplanet Mars! I was packing my trunks for a voyage--and I didn't knowwhere I was going. I didn't know anything about it. No one offered mea Baedeker.... It was orange blossoms and a veil and a ring--and Ididn't know what either meant--and felicitations and presents and 'Hearthe golden wedding-bells!' and 'They lived happily ever after.' Julianwas handsome and lavish and popular, and his family were all right,and if he had been gay he would now settle down; and father and motherwere satisfied, and people said I was to be envied.... I married ateighteen. I hadn't read much. I didn't know anything. No one told meanything. Maybe the world thinks that if it tells, the young girl wouldsay No.
"We went on a wedding-trip. I suppose sometimes a wedding-trip isn't amockery. I'm not so bitter as not to know that often it isn't so--thatoften it is all right. I'm not denying love, and clean men andconsiderate. I'm not denying hosts of marriages that without any veryhigh ideal are fit and decent enough. I'm not denying noble lovers--menand women--and noble marriages. I'm only saying that the other kind,the kind that's not fit nor clean nor decent and anything but noble,is so frequent and commonplace that it is rather laughable andaltogether sardonic and devilish to kneel down and worship as we do theInstitution of Staying Together--Staying Together at any price, evenwhen evidently the only clean thing to do would be to Stay Apart....My wedding-trip lasted four months. I went eighteen, and I came backold as I am now--older than I am now; for I have grown younger theselast two years. My marriage wasn't the noble kind. It was the kind youcouldn't make noble. It wasn't even the decent, low-order type. It wasa sink and a pit and a horror."
She bent and stirred the fire. Outside the gusty wind went by and therain beat upon the windows. "I know that there are marriages wherewoman is the ruiner. There are women who are wreckers. They fastenthemselves on a man's life and drain it dry. They are devil-fish. Theyhold him in their arms and break his bones. They're among the worst ofus struggling here in the pit. They're wicked women. They may be fewerthan wicked men, or they may be equal in number, I don't know. I'm nottalking of wicked men or wicked women in that sense. I'm talking of menwhom the world does not call wicked, and of a great army of women likemyself, an army that stretches round the world and through hundreds ofyears.... An army? It isn't an army. We never had any weapons. We werenever taught to fight. We were never allowed to ask questions. We weretold there were no questions to ask. We were young girls, dreaming,dropped into the wolf pack ... and it goes on all the time. It is goingon now. It may be going on when Betty grows up--though I'll tell her!You needn't be afraid. I'll tell her....
"That wedding trip--that honeymoon. I had married a handsome beast--acruel one, too. He treated me like a slave, bought for one purpose,wanted for one purpose, kept for one purpose. I wasn't enough forhim--I found that out very soon. But those others were freer than I.They made him pay them.... He would have said that he paid me, too;that he supported me. Perhaps it's true. I only know that I am going tohave Betty taught to support herself."
"You should have left him."
"We were in Europe. I hadn't any money. I was beaten down and stunned.When I tried to write to father and mother, I couldn't. They would havesaid that I was hysterical, and for God's sake to consider the familyname
!... I have been a woman slow to develop mentally. What poise I'vegot, what reading, what knowledge, what everything, has come to mesince that time. Then I didn't know how to hold my head up and marchout. Then I only wanted to die.... We came home, and it was to findfather with a desperate illness. I couldn't tell mother then. I doubtif I could ever have told her. I doubt if it would have done any goodif I had.... We went to live in a house up on the Sound. Julian saidhis fortune was getting low, and that it would be cheaper there. But hehimself came into town and stayed when he wished. He spent a great dealof money. I do not know what he did with it. He threw away all thathe had.... I knew by now that Betty was coming. She was born before Iwas nineteen. And Charley was born a year afterward--born blind, andI knew why. I loved my children. But my marriage remained what it hadalways been. When Charley was nearly a year old, I couldn't stand itany longer. If I could stand it for myself, I saw that I couldn't standit for them. I couldn't let them grow up having that kind of a mother,the kind that would stand it.... Julian went away. Every two or threemonths he took all the money he could lay his hands on and disappeared.I knew that he had dived into all that goes on here, in some places, inthis city. He would be gone sometimes two weeks, sometimes longer....Well, this time I took Betty and Charley and came home, came here--andthey tried to persuade me to go back. The Bishop was here, visiting hisnephew, and he came and tried to persuade me to go back. But I wouldn't... and there was no need. Within the week Julian was killed in a frayin a house a mile, I suppose, from where we sit. That was two yearsago."
She rose and moved about the firelit room. "Yes, I've got the twochildren, and life's healing over. I don't call myself unhappy now.At times I'm quite gay--and you don't know how eerie it feels! Buthappy or not, Hagar, I'll never forget--I'll never forget--I'll neverforget! They talk about the end of the century, and about our seeingthe beginning of better things. They say the twentieth century will bean age of clearer Thinking and greater Courage, and they talk aboutthe coming great Movements.--There's one Movement that I want to see,and that's the Movement to tell the young girl. If I were the world Iwouldn't have my dishonoured life as it gets it now.... And now let'stalk about something else."
Hagar crossed to her, took her in her arms, and kissed her lips andforehead. "I love you, Rachel. Come, let's look at the rain, how itstreams! Listen! Isn't that thunder?"
They stood at the window and looked out upon the slanting lines and theglistening asphalt. The doorbell rang.
"Who on earth can that be?" Rachel went to the door, opened it, andstood listening. "A telegram. Dicey is bringing it up. It's for you,Hagar."
She struck a match and lit the gas. Hagar opened the brown envelope andunfolded the sheet within. The telegram was from Gilead Balm, from hergrandfather:--
_Cables from physician and Consul at Alexandria. Terrible accident.Yacht on which were Medway and his wife wrecked. His wife drowned, bodynot recovered. Medway seriously injured. Life not despaired of, butbelieve it will leave him crippled. Ill in hotel there. Unconsciousat present. Every attention. Your grandmother will fret herself illunless I go. Insists that you accompany me. Have telegraphed forpassage on boat sailing Saturday. Arrive in New York Friday morning.Get ready.--Argall Ashendyne._