CHAPTER XXVII
A DIFFERENCE OF OPINION
But the great Gilead Balm explosion came three days later.
It was nearly sunset, and they were all upon the wide, front porch--theColonel, Old Miss, Miss Serena, Captain Bob, Mrs. LeGrand, Hagar.Ralph was not there, he had ridden to Hawk Nest, but would returnto-night. It had been a beautiful, early September day, the sky highand blue, the air all sunny vigour. Gilead Balm sat and enjoyed thecool, golden, winey afternoon, the shadows lengthening over the hills,the swallows overhead, the tinkle of the cow-bells. It was not oneof your families that were always chattering. The porch held rathersilent than otherwise. Mrs. LeGrand could, indeed, keep up a smooth,slow flow of talk, but Mrs. LeGrand had been packing to return toEglantine which would "open" in another week, and she was somewhatfatigued. The Colonel, pending the arrival of yesterday's newspaper,was reviewing that of the day before yesterday. Captain Bob and Lisacommuned together. Old Miss knitted. Miss Serena ran a strawberry emerybag through and through with her embroidery needle. Hagar had a book,but she was not reading. It lay face down in her lap; she was hardlythinking; she was dreaming with her eyes upon a vast pearly, cumuluscloud, coming up between the spires of the cedars. A mulatto boyappeared with the mail-bag. "Ha!" said the Colonel, and stretched outhis hand.
There was a small table beside him. He opened the bag and turned thecontents out upon this, then began to sort them. No one--it was aGilead Balm way--claimed letter or paper until the Colonel had made asmany little heaps as there were individuals and had placed every jotand tittle of mail accruing, ending by shaking out the empty bag. Hedid all this to-day. Captain Bob had only a county paper--no lettersfor Old Miss--a good deal of forwarded mail for Mrs. LeGrand--theColonel's own--letters and papers for Hagar. The Colonel handled eachpiece, glanced at the superscription, put it in the proper heap.He shook out the bag; then, gathering up Mrs. LeGrand's mail, gaveit to her with a smile and a small courtly bow. Miss Serena rose,work in hand, and took hers from the table. Lisa walked gravely up,then returned to Captain Bob with the county paper in her mouth. TheColonel's shrunken long fingers took up Hagar's rather large amount andheld it out to her. "Here, Gipsy"--the last time for many a day thathe called her Gipsy. A letter slipped from the packet to the floor.Bending, the Colonel picked it up, and in doing so for the first timeregarded the printing on the upper left-hand corner--_Return in fivedays to the ---- Equal Suffrage League_. The envelope turned in hishand. On its reverse, across the flap, was boldly stamped--VOTES FORWOMEN.
Colonel Argall Ashendyne straightened himself with a jerk."Hagar!--What is that? How do you happen to get letters likethat?--Answer!"
His granddaughter, who had risen to take her mail, regarded first theletter and then the Colonel with some astonishment. "What do you mean,grandfather? The letter's from my friend, Elizabeth Eden. I wonder ifyou don't remember her, that summer long ago at the New Springs?"
The Colonel's forefinger stabbed the three words on the back of theenvelope. "You don't have friends and correspondents who are workingfor _that_?"
"Why not? I propose presently actively to work for it myself."
Apoplectic silence on the part of the Colonel. The suddenly arisenstorm darted an electric feeler from one to the other upon the porch.
"What's the matter?" demanded Captain Bob. "Something's the matter!"
Old Miss, who had not clearly caught the Colonel's words, yet felt thetension and put in an authoritative foot. "What have you done now,Hagar? Who's been writing to you? What is it, Colonel?"
Ralph, in his riding-clothes, coming through the hall from the backwhere he had just dismounted, felt the sultry hush. "What's happened?What's the matter, Hagar?"
"Get me a glass of water, Serena!" breathed the Colonel. He still heldthe letter.
"My dear friend, let me fan you!" exclaimed Mrs. LeGrand, and moved towhere she could see the offending epistle. "VOTES FOR--oh, Hagar, yousurely aren't one of _those_ women!"
Miss Serena, who had flown for the water, returned. The Colonel drankand the blood receded from his face. The physical shock passed, therecould be seen gathering the mental lightning. Miss Serena, too, readover his shoulder "VOTES-- ... Oh, _Hagar_!"
Hagar laughed--a cool, gay, rippling sound. "Why, how round-eyed youall are! It isn't murder and forgery. Is the word 'rebellion' sostrange to you? May I have my letter, grandfather?"
The Colonel released the letter, but not the situation. "Either youretire from such a position and such activities, or you cease to begranddaughter of mine--"
Old Miss, enlightened by an aside from Mrs. LeGrand, came into action."She doesn't mean that she's friends with those brazen women who wantto be men? What's that? She says she's going to work with them? I don'tbelieve it! I don't believe that even of Maria's daughter. Going aroundspeaking and screaming and tying themselves to Houses of Parliament andinterrupting policemen! If I believed it, I don't think I'd ever speakto her again in this life! Women Righters and Abolitionists!--doingtheir best to drench the country with blood, kill our people and bringthe carpetbaggers upon us! Wearing bloomers and cutting their hairshort and speaking in town-halls and wanting to change the marriageservice!--Yes, they do wear bloomers! I saw one doing it in New York in1885, when I was there with your grandfather. And she had short hair--"
Mrs. LeGrand, as the principal of a School for Young Ladies, alwaysrecognized her responsibility to truth. She stood up for veracity."Dear Mrs. Ashendyne, it is not just like that now. There are a greatmany more suffragists now--so many that society has agreed not toostracize them. Some of them are pretty and dress well and have a goodposition. I was at a tea in Baltimore and there were several there.I've even heard women in Virginia--women that you'd think ought toknow better--say that they believed in it and that sooner or later we'dhave a movement here. Of course, you don't hear that kind of talk, butI can assure you there's a good deal of it. Of course, I myself thinkit is perfectly dreadful. Woman's place is the home. And we can surelytrust _everything_ to the chivalry of our Southern men. I am sure Hagarhas only to think a little--The whole thing seems to me so--so--so_vulgar_!"
Miss Serena broke out passionately. "It's against the Bible! I don'tsee how any _religious_ woman--"
Hagar, who had gone back to her chair, turned her eyes toward CaptainBob.
"Confound it, Gipsy! What do you want to put your feet on the table andsmoke cigars for?"
Hagar looked at Ralph.
He was gazing at her with eyes that were burning and yet sullen andangry. "Women, I suppose, have got to have follies and fads to amusethemselves with. At any rate, they have them. Suffrage or bridge, itdoesn't much matter, so long as it's not let really to interfere. If itbegins to do that, we'll have to put a stop to it. Woman, I take it,was made for man, and she'll have to continue to recognize that fact.Good Lord! It seems to me that if we give her our love and pay herbills, she might be satisfied!"
All having spoken, Hagar spoke. "I should like, if I may, to tell youquietly and reasonably why--" her eyes were upon her grandfather.
"I wish to hear neither your excuses nor your reasons," said theColonel. "I want to hear a retraction and a promise."
Hagar turned slightly, "Grandmother--"
"Don't," said Old Miss, "talk to me! When you're wrong, you're wrong,and that's all there is to it! Maria used to try to explain, and thenshe stopped and I was glad of it."
Hagar leaned back in her chair and regarded the circle of herrelatives. She felt for a moment more like Maria than Hagar. She felttrapped. Then she realized that she was not trapped, and she smiled.Thanks to the evolving whole, thanks to the years and to her eternalself pacing now through a larger moment than those moments of old,she was not by position Maria, she was not by position Miss Serena.Before her, quiet and fair, opened her Fourth Dimension. Inner freedom,ability to work, personal independence, courage and sense of humour anda sanguine mind, breadth and height of vision, tenderness and hope,her waiting friends, Elizabeth, Marie, Rachel, Mo
lly and Christopher,Denny, Rose Darragh, many another--her work, the story now hoveringin her brain, what other and different work might rise above thehorizon--the passion to help, help largely, lift without thinking if itwere or were not her share of the weight--the universe of the mind, thegrowing spirit and the wings of the morning ... there was her land ofescape, real as the hills of Gilead Balm. She crossed the border withease; she was not trapped. Even now her subtle self was serenely over.And the Hagar Ashendyne appearing to others upon this porch was notchained there, was not riveted to Gilead Balm. Next week, indeed, shewould be gone.
A tenderness came over Hagar for her people. All her childhood wassurrounded by them; they were dear, deep among the roots of things. Shewanted to talk to them; she longed that they should understand. "Ifyou'd listen," she said, "perhaps you'd see it a little differently--"
The Colonel spoke with harshness. "There is no need to see itdifferently. It is you who should see it differently."
"It comes of the kind of things you've always read!" cried Miss Serena."Books that I wouldn't touch!"
"Yes, Maria was always reading, too," said Old Miss. For her it _was_less Hagar than Maria sitting there....
"If it was anything we didn't know, we would, of course, listen toyou, Hagar dear," said Mrs. LeGrand. "I should be glad to listenanyhow, just as I listened to those two women in Baltimore. But I mustsay their arguments sounded to me very foolish. Ladies in the Southcertainly don't need to come into contact with the horrors they talkedabout. And I cannot consider the discussion of such subjects delicate.I should certainly consider it disastrous if my girls at Eglantinegained any such knowledge. To talk about their being white slaves andthings like that--it was nauseating!"
"Would you listen, Ralph?" asked Hagar.
"I'll listen to you, Hagar, on any other subject but this."
Mrs. LeGrand's voice came in again. She was fluttering her fan. "Allthese theories that you women are advancing nowadays--if they _paid_,if you stood to gain anything by them, if by advancing them youdidn't, so it seems to me, always come out at the little end of thehorn--people ridiculing you, society raising its eyebrows, men afraidto marry you--! My dear Hagar, men, collectively speaking--men don'twant women to exhibit mind in all directions. They don't object totheir showing it in certain directions, but when it comes to womenshowing it all around the circle they do object, and from my pointof view quite properly! Men naturally require a certain complaisanceand deference from women. There's no need to overdo it, but a certainamount of physical and mental dependence they certainly do want!Well, what's the use of a woman quarrelling with the world as it'smade? Between doing without independent thinking and doing without anestablishment and someone to provide for you--! So you see," said Mrs.LeGrand, smoothly argumentative, "what's the use of stirring up thebottoms of things? And it isn't as though we weren't really fond ofthe men. We are. I've always been fonder of a man, every time, thanof a woman. I must confess I can't see any reason at all for all thisstrenuous crying out against good old usage! Of course a woman withconsiderable mental power may find it a little limiting, but thereare a lot of women, I assure you, who never think of it. If there'sa little humbug and if some women suffer, why those things are inthe dish, that's all! The dish isn't all poisoned, and a woman whoknows what she is about can pick and choose and turn everything toaccount. I wouldn't know what to do," said Mrs. LeGrand, "with the dishthat people like you would set before us. All this crying out aboutevolution and development and higher forms doesn't touch me in theleast! I like the forms we've got. Perhaps they're imperfect, but thething is, I feel at home with imperfection."
She leaned back, in good humour. Hagar had given her an opportunity toexpress herself very well. "Don't you, too," she asked, "feel at homewith the dear old imperfection?"
Hagar met her eyes. "No," she said.
Mrs. LeGrand shrugged. "Oh, well!" she said, "I suppose each will fightfor the place that is home."
Hagar looked beyond her, to her kindred. "You're all opponents," shesaid. "Alike you worship God as Man, and you worship a static God,never to be questioned nor surpassed. You have shut an iron door uponyourselves.... One day you who shut it, you alone--you will open it,you alone. But I see that the day is somewhat far."
She rose. "I was going anyhow you know, grandfather, in four days. ButI can take the morning train if you'd rather?"
But Colonel Ashendyne said stiffly that if she had forgotten her duty,he had not his, and that the hospitality of Gilead Balm would be hers,of course, for the four days.
Hagar listened to him, and then she looked once more around the circle.A smile hovered on her lips and in her eyes. It broadened, becamewarm and sweet. "I'll accept for a time the partial estrangement, butI don't ever mean that it shall be complete! It takes two to make anestrangement." She went up to her grandmother and kissed her, then saidthat she was going for a walk.--"No, Ralph, you are not coming with me!"
She went down the porch steps, and moved away in the evening glow. Theblack cedars swallowed her up; then upon the other side, beyond thegate, she was seen mounting the hill to the right. The sun was down,but the hilltop rested against rose-suffused air, and above it swam theevening star.
Ralph spoke with a certain grim fury. "I wish the old times were back!Then a man could do what he wished! Then you didn't feel yourselfcaught in a net like a cobweb that you couldn't break--"
Mrs. LeGrand again opened her fan. "I am very fond, of course, of dearHagar, but I must say that she seems to me intensely unwomanly!"