CHAPTER XXV
HAGAR AND DENNY
The afternoon sun yet made a dazzle of the white road. Infrequent treescast infrequent shadows. It was warm, but not too warm, with an endlesslow wind. The tide was going out; there spread an expanse of iridescentshallows, and beyond a line of water so blue that it was unearthly.There was a tonic smell of salt and marsh. The wheels of the surrey,the horse's hoofs, brought a pleasant, monotonous, rhythmic sense ofsound and motion.
"That is the shell house," said Hagar, breaking a long silence; "thatsmall, small house with the boat behind. There you can buy throngs ofthings that come out of the sea--coral and sponges and purple sea-fansand wonderful shells."
"I walked out here last week. There's a sick child I know--a littlecripple. I am going to take her a great box of the prettiest shells.She'll lie there and play with them in her dingy corner of the dingyroom where all the others work, and maybe they'll bring her a little ofall this.... God knows!"
The wheels went on. They passed the small house with a great lump ofcoral on one side of the door, and a tall purple sea-fan upon the other.
"I sometimes think," said Hagar, "that the trouble with me is that Iam too general. My own sharp inner struggle was for intellectual andspiritual freedom. I had to think away from concepts with which theatmosphere in which I was raised was saturated. I had to think awayfrom creeds and dogmas and affirmations made for me by my ancestors.I had to think away from the idea of a sacrosanct Past and the virtueof Immobility;--not the true idea of the mighty Past as our presentbody which we are to lift and ennoble, and not Immobility as thesupreme refusal to be diverted from that purpose,--but the Past, thatis made up of steps forward, set and stubborn against another step,and Immobility blind to any virtue in Change. I had to think away froma concept of woman that the future can surely only sadly laugh at. Ihad to think away from Sanctions and Authorities and Taboos and DivineRights--and when I had done so, I had to go back with the lamp ofwider knowledge, deeper feeling, and find how organic and on the wholevirtuous in its day was each husk and shell. The trouble was that inlove with the lesser we would keep out the stronger day ... and therewas everywhere a sickness of conflict. I had to think away from myown dogmatisms and intolerances. I'm still engaged in doing that....What has come of it all is a certain universal feeling.... I'm notexplaining very well what I mean, but--though I want to be able to doit--it is difficult for me to drive the lightning in a narrow track toa definite end. It's playing over everything."
"I see what you mean. You're more the philosopher than the crusader.Well, we need philosophers, too!... I'm more, I think, the type thatis sharpened to a point, that couches its lance for one Promised Land,which it believes is the key to many another. But I hold that it isbetter to move full-orbed, if you can."
"I do not know--I do not know," said Hagar. "I try to plunge with mywhole mind into some political or social theory, but I fail. Even theslow drawing-up of the submerged capacities in woman, even the helpingin that,--which is greater than would be the discovery of Atlantis,which is greater than almost anything else,--cannot bring the endstogether. Name everything and there is so much besides!"
"There is such a thing," said Denny, "as going to the stake for whatyou know to be partial, only factors, scaffoldings, stairs to mountby.... Stairs and scaffoldings are necessary; therefore, die for themif need be."
"I agree there," answered Hagar.
The surrey had left the sight of the sea. The pale road stretchedstraight before them, going on until it touched the cobalt sky. Oneither hand stood growing walls, dense and thorny as those about theSleeping Beauty's palace--all manner of trees, silver palm and thatchpalm, tamarind, poison-wood and plum, ink-berry and jack-bush, boundall together with smilax and many another vine. At long intervalsoccurred an opening, a ragged space and a hut or cabin, with an odour,too languid-sweet, of orange blossoms, and a vision of black children.The walls closed in again sombrely. The road would have been a littledreary but for the sky and the sun and the jewel-fine air.
"I suppose," said Hagar, "that there is a certain Brahmin-like attitudeto be overcome. I suppose that to take wallet and staff and go withthe mass upon the day's march, encouraging, lifting, helping, pointingforward, bearing with the others, is a nobler thing than to run aheadupon your own path and cry back to the throng, 'Why are you not hereas well?' I suppose that ... and yet there are times when I amNietzschean, too. I can be opposites."
"Yes; that is what bewilders," said Denny. "To include contradictoriesand irreconcilables--to be both centripetal and centrifugal--to bein one brain Socialist and Individualist!... But the greatest amongmankind have found themselves able. They have been farthest ahead, andyet they have always seemed to be in the midst."
The sun sank low, the white road grew pallid. "Better turn presently,"said Hagar.
"When we get to that palm. How wonderful it stands against the sky!--Inever thought that I should see palm trees."
When they came to it, the negro driver turned the horse. Roll of wheeland slow thud of hoofs they went dreamily back toward Nassau. The wallson either hand were darkening; the sky was putting on a splendid dress.
"Years and years now I have been away," said Hagar. "In the spring I amgoing home."
"Home to--to Gilead Balm?"
"At first, yes, I think ... then, I do not know. I have been away solong. There are people in New York I want to see--old friends--women.Do you chance to know Elizabeth Eden?"
"Yes, I know her. She's one of the blessed." After a moment he saidabruptly, "I want you to know Rose Darragh."
"Yes, I want to," said Hagar simply.
They came before long to the shell house. "Let us stop and get someshells."
Inside they had the place, save for the merchant of shells, tothemselves. Right and left and all around were strewn the pearl andpink and purply spoils. All the sunset tints were here, and thebeauty of delicate form--grotesqueries, too; nature in queer moods.It was pleasant to run the hands through the myriad small shellsheaped in baskets, to weigh the sea-cushions and sea-stars and goldenseafeathers, to admire rose coral and brain coral and finger coral,and hold the conch shells to the ear. Through the open door, too, camethe smell and murmur of the near-by sea, and on the floor lay one lastsplash of sunlight. "Give me a shell," said Hagar, "and I will give youone. Then each of us will have something to remember the other by."
They gravely picked them out, and it took some minutes to do it.Then in turn each crossed to the merchant in his corner and paid thepurchase price, then came back to the light in the doorway.
Denny held out a delicate, translucent, rosy shell. "It won't hold mygratitude," he said. "You'll never know.... I used to see you in themoonlight, between me and the bars.... Somebody had cried for me, ...wept passionately. It helped to keep me human. I've always seen youwith a light about you. This is your shell."
"Thank you. I shall keep your kind gift always," said Hagar. Shespoke in a child's lyric voice, quaintly and properly, so preciselyas she might have spoken at twelve years old that, startled herself,she laughed, and Denny, with a catch in his voice, laughed too. "Oh,"she cried with something like a sob, "sixteen years to slip from onelike that!" She held out a small purple shell. "This is yours, DennyGayde.... And I've thought of you often, and wished you well. If I didyou, unknowing, a service, so you, unknowing, have done me a service,too. That summer morning, long ago--it shocked me awake. The worldsince then has been different always, more pitiful and nearer. Here'syour shell. It won't hold my gratitude and well-wishing either."
They passed out between the coral and the sea-fans, entered the surrey,and it drove on. Now they were back by the sea. The tide was far out,the expanse of shallows vaster. The salt pools had been fired by thetorch of the sky; they lay in reds and purples, wonderful. The smellof the sea impregnated the air and there blew a whispering wind. Thetown began to appear, straggling out to meet them, low chimneylesshouses of the poorer sort. Men and women were out in the twilight, andchil
dren calling to one another and playing. The vivid lights had fadedfrom sky and from wet sand and rock, shoal and lagoon, but colour wasleft, though it was the ghost of itself. It swam in the air, it gleamedfrom the earth. Warmth was there, too, and languor, and the melancholyof the gathering night. A dreamlike quality came into things--thechildren's voices sounded faint and far; only there were waves of somefaint odour, coming now it seemed from gardens.... Now they were in thetown and the sea was shut away.
"One half of my fairy month is gone."
"You are sleeping better?"
"Yes--much better.... Where shall we go to-morrow?"
"Leave it to to-morrow. Look at the star ... oh, beauty!"
When to-morrow was here they walked inland to Fort Fincastle, and thento the Queen's Staircase. Negro children raced after them with somesweet-smelling yellow flower in their hands. "Penny, Boss!--Penny,Boss!--Penny, Boss!" When they were gone, and when two surreys filledwith white-dressed hotel people vanished likewise, they had the Queen'sStaircase to themselves. Broad-stepped, cut in the living rock, itplunged downward to the green bottom of the seventy-foot deep ancientquarry. Trees overhung it and yellow flowers, and there was a rich,green light like the bottom of the sea. Denny and Hagar sat upon a stepa quarter of the way down.
"I do not know why," said Denny, "there should be so deadly a fearof upheaval. All growth comes with upheaval--surely all spiritualgrowth comes so. Growth by accretion means little. Growth from withincomes with upheaval--what you have been transformed or discarded.A little higher, a little finer breaks the sod and grows forthso. The deadly fear should be of down-sinking--from the stagnantgrow-no-farther-than-our-fathers-grew down--down.... Of course, theWoman Movement means upheaval and great upheaval--but that is apoor reason for condemnation.... As far as its political aspect isconcerned, most open-minded men, Socialists and others, with whom Icome into contact, admit the right and the need. Unless a man is verystupid he can see what a farce it is to talk of a democracy--governmentof the people, for the people, by the people--when one out of everytwo human beings is notoriously living under an aristocracy. And, ofcourse, we who want an associative gain of livelihood, no less than anassociative form of government, stand for her equality there.... But tome there is something other than all that in this upheaval. I cannotexpress it. I do not know what it is, unless it is some faint, supernalpromise.... It is as though the Spirit were again working upon the faceof the waters." He paused, gazing upward at the sky above the wall ofrock. "We are in for a deep change."
"Yes, I think so. A lift of mind and a change of heart, on which tobase a chance for a deep change, indeed. A richer, deeper life.... Oh,there will be dross enough for a time, tares, detritus, heat and dustand wounds of conflict, Babel, cries and counter-cries! and some willthink they lose...."
"They'll only think so for a while. Nothing can be lost."
"No--only transmuted.... But I hate the tumult and the shouting whilethe people are yet bewildered. If that's the Brahmin in me, I am goingto sacrifice him. I am going where the battle is."
"I do not doubt that."
More white-suited people appeared, at their heels the black children."Penny, Boss!--Penny, Boss!--Penny, Boss!" Hagar and Denny rose andwalked back to town through the warm, fragrant ways. He left her atGreer's studio--she had promised to come look at the portrait. As theystood a moment in the verandah, Medway's golden drawl was heard fromwithin. "Well, I've known a good many philosophers--but none that wereirreducible. Every heroic, every transcendental treads at last thesame pavement. 'I love and seek the street called pleasure. I abhorand avoid the street called pain.' Therefore the _summum bonum_--" Thedoor opened to Hagar. She smiled and waved her hand, and the studioswallowed her up.
Some days after this they drove one afternoon over the Blue Hillsto the southern beach. Long white road--long white road--and oneither hand pine and scrub, pine and scrub, and over all a vault ofsky achingly blue. It was a lonely road, a road untravelled to-day,and the wind shook in the palmetto scrub. Small grey birds flittedbefore them, or cheeped from the tangled wood. It was a day forsilence and they stayed silent so long that the negro driving, whowas afraid of silence, broke it himself. He told them about things,and when they awoke and genially answered, he was happy and talkedon to himself until they, too, were talking, when he lapsed intosilence and contentment. The wind blew, the scrub rustled, the sky wassapphire--oh, sapphire!
When they came after a good while to the South Beach, they left thesurrey and the horse and the driver, in the shade of the trees thatfringed the beach, and walked slowly a long way, over the firm sand. Itstretched, a silver shore; the sun was westering, the great sea makinga hoarse, profound murmur. They walked in silence, thinking their ownthoughts. Before them, half-sunken in the sand, lay an old boat. Whenthey came to it, they sat down upon its shattered, sun-dried boards,with the sand at their feet and the grave evening light stealing up andMother Ocean speaking, speaking....
"In the last analysis it is," said Hagar, "a metaphysical adventure--alove-quest if you will. There is a passion of the mind, there is thequesting soul, there is the desire that will have union with nothingless than the whole. I will think freely, and largely, and doing that,under pain of being false, I must act freely and largely, live freelyand largely. Nor must I think one thing and speak another, nor must Ibe silent when silence betrays the whole.... And so woman no less thanman comes into the open."
"There is something that broods in this time," said Denny. "I do notknow what it will hatch. But something vaster, something nobler...."
Hagar let the warm sand stream through her fingers. "Oh, how blue isthe sea.... ?ons and ?ons and ?ons ago, when slowly, slowly life drewitself forth from such a sea as this into upper air--when Amphibianbegan to know two elements, how much richer was life for Amphibian, howgreat was the gain!... When, after ?ons and ?ons, there was all mannerof warm-blooded life in woods like these behind us, or in richer woods... and one day, dimly, dimly, some primate thought, and her childrenand grandchildren a little, little more consciously thought, and itspread.... To that tribe how strange a dawn! 'We are growing away fromthe four-footed--we are growing away from our sister the gibbon andour brother the chimpanzee--we are growing--we are changing--we feelthe heavens over us and a strange new life within us--we are passingout, we are coming in--we need a new word....' And at last they calledthemselves _human_--?ons ago...."
"And now?"
"And now, on the human plane, it seems to me that we may be immediatelyabove that region." She took a pointed piece of driftwood and drewupon the sand. "Here is the human plane--and here above it is anotherplane." She drew a diagonal line between. "And that is a stairway ofgrowth from one to the other. And we are turning from this plane--thelower plane--and coming upon that stairway, and down it, to meet us,pours like a morning wind, like the first light in the sky, a hintof what may be. Like that ancestral tribe, we are growing, we arechanging--we feel a strange new life within us--we are passing out, weare coming in--we need a new word."
"What would it be?"
"I do not know.... After a while, an age hence maybe, when the lightis stronger, we will coin it. Now there is only intuition of thechange.... There is something in a translation I was reading of oneof the Upanishads, 'But he who discerns all creatures in his Self andhis Self in all creatures, has no disquiet.... What delusion, whatgrief can be with him in whom all creatures have become the very selfof the thinker, discerning their oneness?... He has spread around athing, bright, bodiless, taking no hurt, sinewless, pure, unsmitten byevil.... That might come after a long, long time, after change uponchange."
The great sea murmured on, a wild white bird flew across the round ofvision, melted into the sunset.
"And each change is greater by geometrical progression than was the onebefore?"
"Not the change itself, but that into which the change leads us. Eachtime we depart at right angles.... Yes, I think so."
"And the movement of women toward freedom of field
and towardself-recognition--no less than the general movement towardsocialization--is part of the change?"
"All things are part of it.... Yes, it is part."
She rose from the sand. "The sun is setting." They walked back to thesurrey and took the homeward road. As they came over the Blue Hillsit was first dusk; the town lay, grey-pearl, before them, and above itswam the moon, full and opaline. "How many days have you now?"
"Just seven."
"Have you heard from Rose Darragh?"
"Yes. She's been doing her work and mine, too. She begs me to stayanother two weeks, but I must not. There is no need--I am perfectlywell again--it would only be selfish enjoyment."
"I wish it were possible--but if it's not, it's not.... Oh, how largethe moon is! You can almost see it a globe--it is like a beautiful,lighted Japanese lantern."
"Where will we go to-morrow afternoon?"
"We cannot go anywhere to-morrow afternoon, for, alas! I have to go toa garden-party at Government House. But the next day we might go to OldFort. What is that fragrance--those strange lilies? Look now at theJapanese lantern!"
They went to Old Fort and came back in the warm evening light, drivingclose to the sounding sea. "Five days now," said Denny. "Well, I havebeen so happy."
That night Hagar could not sleep. She rose at last from the bed andpaced her moon-flooded room. All the long windows were wide; the nightair came in and brought a sighing of the trees. After a while shestepped out upon the gallery that ran along the face of the house.Medway's room was down stairs and away from this front; she had thelong silvered pathway to herself. She paced it slowly, up and down,wooing calm. Each time she reached the end of the gallery, she paused amoment and looked across the sleeping town that lay for the most partbelow this house and garden, to where she could guess the roof of thesmall, inexpensive, half hotel, half boarding-house where Denny bided.When after a time she discovered that she was doing this, she shookherself away from the action. "No, Hagar, no!"
Going to the other end of the gallery, she found there a low chairand sat down, leaning her head against the railing. It was the middleof the night. Something in the place and in the balm of the airbrought back to her those days and nights in Alexandria, so long ago.There, too, she had had to make choice.... "I could love him here andnow--love him--love him in the old immemorial way.... Well, I willnot!" She put her elbows on her knees, her chin in her hands. "_RoseDarragh--Rose Darragh--Rose Darragh_"--it struck through her mind,slow and heavily vibrant, like a deep and melancholy music. She roseand paced the gallery again, but when she came to the farther end, sheturned without pause or look over the moonlit town.
"_Rose Darragh--Rose Darragh_"--she made it rhythmic, breathing deeplyand quietly, saying the name inwardly, deeply, but without passion now,saying it like a comrade's name. "_Rose Darragh--Rose Darragh--RoseDarragh--_"
Calm came at last, repose of mind, victory. She sat down again, leanedher arms upon the railing, and followed with her eyes the lonely,silver moon. Work was in the world, the all-friend Work; and Beauty wasin the world, the all-friend Beauty; and one good put out of reach,mind and spirit must make another and were equal to the task. "RoseDarragh--Rose Darragh!--not if I could would I hurt you," said Hagar;and took her attention from that matter and put it first upon thestars, and then upon some lines of Shelley's that she loved, and thenupon the story she had in hand. It was not well to go to bed thinkingof a story, and when at last she left the gallery and laid herselfstraight upon the cool linen, she stilled the waves of the mind-stuffand let the barque of attention drift whither it would. At last sheseemed in a deep forest long ago and far away, and there she went tosleep with a feeling of violets under her hand.
Five days, and Denny left Nassau. "It's not saying good-bye. In May,when you come to New York--"
"Yes, in May I'll see you and Rose Darragh. Until May, then--"
Denny and she clasped hands, both hands. "Thank God for friends!" hesaid with the odd little laugh that she liked, with the catch in thevoice at the end of it as though he had started to laugh and then Lifehad come in. His eyes were misty. He brushed his hand across them. "Youare dancing before me," he said apologetically.
She laughed herself. "And you are dancing before me! Good-bye,good-bye, Denny Gayde! Let's be friends always."
From the garden she watched the Miami steam slowly down the narrowharbour, and, passing the lighthouse, turn to the open sea. She watchedit until it was but a black speck with a dark feather of smoke, andthen until the feather and all had melted into the sky. "Well," shesaid, "there's work and beauty and high cheer, and Time that smoothsaway most violences!"
But she did not see Denny and Rose Darragh in May. That evening atdinner Medway was more than usually good company. He had a high colour;his hair and curling beard had been cut just the length that was mostbecoming; he looked superbly handsome. Often he affected Hagar as woulda very fine canvas, some portrait by Titian. To-night was one of thesenights.
Greer dined with them, and he was urging Medway as he had urged beforeto let him paint him. "Fortune's smiling on us both--on you as well asme. Neither of us may have such a chance again! Let me--ah, let me!"
"What should I do with it when it was done, and if I liked it--whichyou know, Greer, is not dead certain? You can't hang portraits in anomad's tent, and I haven't a soul in the world to give it to,--mymother would like a coloured photograph of me, but she wouldn't likeGreer's picture,--unless Gipsy will take it when she sets up her ownestablishment--"
"I will take it with thanks," said Hagar. "Let Mr. Greer do it."
Medway said he would consider it. Dinner went off gaily with storiesand badinage. Afterwards the traveller from the Colonial came in,and then the violinist. He played for them--played rhapsodies andfantasias. It was after eleven when the three guests departed. Greer'sgay voice could be heard down the street--
"'A Saint-Blaise, ? la Zuecca, Vous ?tiez, vous ?tiez bien aise A Saint-Blaise. A Saint Blaise, ? la Zuecca Nous ?tions bien l?--'"
Thomson appeared, with Mahomet behind him to put out the lights.
"Good-night--sleep right!" said Medway. "Pleasant fellows, aren't they?"
Toward daylight she was awakened by a knock at her door, followed byThomson's voice. "Mr. Ashendyne has had some kind of a stroke, MissHagar--" She sprang up, threw on a kimono, opened the door, and randownstairs with Thomson. "I heard him breathing heavily--I've wakedMahomet and sent the black boy for the doctor--"
It was paralysis. And after months of Nassau, she took him back to themainland and northward by slow stages, not to Gilead Balm, for he madealways "No!" with his head and eyes to that, and not to New York for heseemed impatient of that, too; but at last to Washington. There she andThomson found a pleasant residence to let on a tree-embowered avenue,and there they moved him, and there she stayed with him two years andread a vast number of books aloud, and between the readings cultivateda sunny talkativeness. At the end of the two years there came a secondstroke which killed him.