CHAPTER XXIV
DENNY GAYDE
A few days after this she grew tired one morning of working. At teno'clock she put away paper and pencil, pen and ink, letters andmanuscript, and went out, first into the garden, and then throughthe gate in the wall into the high white light of the street andthe pale-coloured town. Few were abroad in this section; she gave afriendly nod to those she met, but they were not many--an old negresscarrying chickens, a few slow wagons, a priest, a young girl and boy,white-clad, with tennis rackets; two or three others. The street swamin light, the blue vault above sprang intense, there was just enoughair to keep away languor. She turned into the grounds of the old,closed Royal Victoria Hotel. Here was shade and greater freshness. Shesat down on the rock coping of the driveway; then, as there was no oneabout, lay down upon it pillowing her head on her arms. Above her wasa tall, tall tree, and between the branches the deep and vivid blue.It seemed so near, it was as though with a little upward effort youmight touch a sapphire roof. Between the leaves the sun scattered goldsequins. They lay upon her white skirt, the hat she had discarded, herarms, her hair. She looked sideways watching a chameleon, burnished andslender, upon the wall below her. It saw her at last and with a jerk ofits head scuttled away. Hagar laughed, sat up and stretched her arms.Some neighbouring, one-storey house, buried in foliage, possessed aparrot or cockatoo. She watched it now, on some hidden perch, a vividsplash of colour in the enfolding green, dancing about, chattering andscreaming. Some curious, exotic fragrance came to her; she could nottrace its source. "It's a morning for the gods!" she said, and walkedslowly by winding paths downward through the garden to the street.Before her, seen through foliage, rose the curiously shaped buildingwith a history where now was lodged the public library. She had visitedit several times; she liked the place, which had a quaintness, andliked the way the air blew in through its deep windows; and where bookswere she was at home. She crossed the white street, entered and wentup the stair past dusty casts, pieces of coral and sea-curios, andinto the round room where English and American papers and magazineswere spread upon a table. From this centre sprang, like short spokes,alcoves made by the book-stacks. Each of these divisions had its chairor two and its open window. The air came in coolly, deliciously. Therewere the librarian and two or three people standing or seated about thecentral table,--no one else in the cool, quiet place. Hagar, too, stoodby the table for a while, turning over the January magazines, lookingat the table of contents or glancing at some article or illustration.Catholicism versus Ultramontanism--Why Ireland is Disloyal--Dramaof the Future--The Coal Strike and its Lessons--Labour and theTrusts--Labour and Capital--Municipalization of Public Services--TheBattleship of the Future--The War against Disease--Tschaikowsky andTolstoy--Mankind in the Making--Mendel's Law--The Advancement ofWoman--The Woman who Toils--Variation in Man and Woman--Genesis of the?sthetic Categories--New Metaphysical Movement--Inversion of Ideas asto the Structure of the Universe--The World and the Individual.--Aftera while she left these and the table and moved to one of the alcoves.It was not a day somehow for magazines. The rows of books! Her gazelingered with fondness upon them--this familiar title, this loved oldfriend and that. Finally she drew forth a volume of Keats, and with itsat down in the sweet air from the window.
"No, no! go not to Lethe, neither twist Wolf'sbane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine--"
An hour passed. A man, who had come into the room a few minutes before,was standing, looking about him--evidently the first time he had beenin the building.
The librarian joined him. "It's a pleasant old place, isn't it?" shesaid politely.
"It certainly is," answered the man. "But it's so curious with thatnarrow stair and these deep-set windows."
"Yes. You see it's the old jail. Once they kept men here instead ofbooks."
There was a pause. Then the man said, "This is the nobler use, don'tyou think?"
"Oh," said the librarian; "but of course they were wicked men--that is,most of them. There wasn't anything else to do with them."
"I see," said the man. He looked about him. "Well, it's sweet and cleanand useful now at last!"
Some one called the librarian and she went away. The man moved on withslow steps from alcove to alcove. Hagar, from her recess, watched him,fascinated. Her book had fallen upon the floor. With half of her mindshe was again in a poor hall in New York on a winter night.... Fiveor six people entered the library together. They came between her andthe man she was following with her eyes. When at last they moved frombefore her alcove, she saw him leaving the place. Before she couldhastily rise and come out into the wider space he was out of the roomupon the landing--he was going downstairs. She caught up the book fromthe floor, thrust it hurriedly into its place, and with a light andrapid step followed. He was at the foot of the stair when she reachedthe head.
"Oh," she called, "will you stop--will you wait?"
He stopped short, turned. She was halfway down the stair, which was notlong. "I beg your pardon. Was it to me you were speaking?"
"Yes!" She came up with him--they stood together in the light-washeddoorway. "I--You do not remember me." She put up her hand and took offher wide hat of straw and lace. "Do you, now?"
He gazed. "No--Yes! Wait.... Oh--h! You are the little girl again!"
They both laughed with pure pleasure. A soft, bright swirl of feelingenfolded the ancient doorway.
"Oh," she said, "I have so often thought of you!"
"Not oftener than I have thought of you.... You've always been like aquaint, bright picture and a piece of music in my mind.--I don't knowyour name."
"Hagar Ashendyne.--And I don't know yours."
"Denny Gayde.... I tried to find you in the crowd that night--thenight of the meeting, you remember--but you were gone."
"Yes. And for weeks after that night I used to think that perhaps Imight meet you on the street any day. And then I went away."
The sun was dazzling where they stood. People, too, were coming downthe stairs behind them.
"Let us go somewhere where we can talk," said Hagar; "the gardens overthere--have you time?"
"I'm here on a holiday. I came yesterday. I don't know a soul and I waslonely. I've all the time there is."
They crossed the street, passed under an arch of blossoming vines, andentered the Royal Victoria's garden--deserted, cool, and silent aswhen Hagar had quitted it earlier in the morning. Built high above theground, about the vast trunk of a vast silk-cotton tree was a square,railed platform reached by a flight of steps. A bench ran around it; itwas a cool and airy perch, chequered with shadows of leaf and twig andwith a sight of the azure sea. The two mounted the steps, and movingaround the trunk to a well-shaded angle, sat down. No one at all seemednear; for solitude it was much like a tree house which, shipwrecked,they might have built on a desert island.
"Life's the most curious thing!" said Gayde.
"Isn't it? 'Curiouser and curiouser!' said Alice. I was twelve yearsold that summer we shared the apple turnovers."
"We didn't share them. You gave me all.--I was nineteen."
"And then--how many years?--Nine, isn't it?--that night at thatSocialist meeting, when you spoke--"
"What were you doing there? I asked about you--I got to know well manyof the people who were there that night--but no one could identify you.And though I kept you in mind, and looked for you, too, I could neverfind you again."
"I was spending the winter in New York. That night we had missed thetheatre. We walked down Fourth Avenue and across--we were seeing NewYork at night. A crowd was going into that hall, and we went in too--"
"I see."
"Not until I got home that night did I remember that I did not knowyour name.... And in a month I was upon the ocean, and I have been inAmerica very little in all the years since. I am here this winter withmy father.... And you?"
She regarded him with dark eyes, simple and serious and interested asthe eyes with which as a child she had regarded him above her flowerdolls. He was no
t hungry and haggard and fear-ridden as then, norwas he as he had been the night of the Socialist meeting, somewhatembarrassed and stumbling, strong, but piteous, too.... He was alittle thin and worn, and looked as though he had been ill, she noted,but he was quiet, at ease, and assured. There needed no elaborateprocess in telling her things; to intuition she added a considerableknowledge of the world and of ways and means; to heart, intellect. Onecould do much in nine years; she knew that from personal experience.This man had added to native strength education, experience, poise,and significance. She might have said culture, only she had grownto dislike the word. He had not, evidently, attained to wealth aswealth is counted. In a region where the male visitor, though he mightarrive in winter garments, promptly sloughed them off for fine whiteflannels, he had not followed custom. It was true that he was notwearing a winter suit, but what was probably a last summer's one. Itwas not white--only a grey, light-weight business suit, ready-made andsomewhat worn. His straw hat looked new. He was clean-shaven. His facewas at once the face of the boy in the thicket, and the face of theworkman talking out of bitter experience to other workmen, and a newface, too,--a judging face, ascetic rather than not, with eyes thatcarried a passion for something vaster than the flesh. "And you?" askedHagar again.
But he had fallen into a brown study. "_Hagar Ashendyne_--You can'tbe--do you mean that you are--Hagar Ashendyne, the writer?"
"Yes, Hagar Ashendyne, the writer." She smiled. "It never occurred tome that you might read what I have written. Have you?"
"Yes, I have read what you have written--read it and cared for itgreatly.... Well, all life's a strange encounter!"
"And that's true enough. And now will you tell me about yourself?"
His eyes smiled back at her. "Let me see--what is there to tell? Thatnight in New York.... Well, after that night ... I was fortunate inthe work I got, and I rose from grade to grade. I studied hard, everymoment I could get. I read and read and read. I became secretary to acertain Socialist organization. I have been for some years a Socialistorganizer, lecturer, and occasional writer. In the summer I am to takethe editorship of a Socialist paper. Behold the short and simple annalsof the poor!"
"How long are you going to be in Nassau?"
"A whole month. These last two years have been years of exacting,constant work, and there's a prospect of the same continuing. I thoughtI'd got my second wind--and then I came down suddenly. The doctor saidthat if I wanted to do the paper justice--and I do--I'd have to give itan editor who could sleep. So he and Rose packed me off."
"Rose?"
"My wife--Rose Darragh."
He spoke as though she would know the name. Indeed, it seemed to havefor her some association; but it wavered like a dream; she could notfix it. She seemed to feel how long she had been away from America--outof touch--not knowing things, events, trendings. "Nine years," she saidagain, uncertainly; "so much happens in nine years."
"Yes," he said. "Personal life changes rapidly to-day--with everythingmore flexible, with horizons growing wider--and the age follows andchanges and changes--changes and mounts. We are in for a great century.I'm glad to be alive!"
"Yes, I am, too." Presently she looked at her watch. It wasluncheon-time. Would he not take it with her father and herself? No;he would not do that to-day; but leaving the great tree and the gardenthey walked together to the house. At the gate in the wall she said,"Come to see me here to-morrow morning, if you will. I should like youto come and go as you please."
"Thank you," he said, then, with emphasis, "_friend_.... That is what,when I was nineteen and afterwards, I called you in my mind."
"It's a good word--'friend.' Let us use it still."
"With all the will in the world. You are wonderful to me--HagarAshendyne."
"I am glad to have found you again, Denny Gayde."
That night, suddenly, before she slept, she placed the name RoseDarragh.... A feminist--A Socialist agitator and leader--a writer ofvigorous prose--sociology--economics.... She seemed to see her picturein some magazine of current life--a face rich, alert, and daring,rising on a strong throat from a blouse like a peasant's.