Hagar. Mary Johnston

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СКАЧАТЬ course it is," said Mrs. Green cheerfully. She sat down on an overturned bucket between the green rows of pease, and pushed back her sunbonnet from her kind, old wrinkled face. "I remember when yo' ma came here jest as well. She was jest the loveliest thing!—But of course all her own people were a good long way off, and she was a seafarer herself, and she couldn't somehow get used to the hills. I've heard her say they jest shut her in like a prison. … But then, after a while, you came, an' I reckon, though she says things sometimes, wherever you are she feels to be home. When it comes to being a woman, the good Lord has to get in com-pensation somewhere, or I don't reckon none of us could stand it.—I'm glad she's better."

      "I'm glad," said Hagar. "Can I help you pick the pease, Mrs. Green?"

      "Thank you, child, but I've about picked the mess. You goin' to play on the ridge? I wish Thomasine and Maggie and Corker were here to play with you."

      "I wish they were," said Hagar. Her eyes filled. "It's a very lonesome day. Yesterday was lonesome and to-morrow's going to be lonesome—"

      "Haven't you got a good book? I never see such a child for books."

      Two tears came out of Hagar's eyes. "I was reading a book Aunt Serena told me not to read.—And now I'm not to read anything for a whole week."

      "Sho!" exclaimed Mrs. Green. "What did you do that for? Don't you know that little girls ought to mind?"

      Hagar sighed. "Yes, I suppose they ought. … I wish I had now. … It's so lonesome not to read when your mother's sick and grandmother won't let me go into the room only just a little while morning and evening."

      "Haven't you got any pretty patchwork nor nothin'?"

      Hagar standing among the blush roses, looked at her with sombre eyes. "Mrs. Green, I hate to sew."

      "Oh!" exclaimed Mrs. Green. "That's an awful thing to say!"

      She sat on the overturned bucket, between the pale-green, shiny-podded peavines, her friendly old face, knobbed and wrinkled like a Japanese carving, gleaming from between the faded blue slats of her sunbonnet, and she regarded the child before her with real concern. "I wonder now," she said, "if you're goin' to grow up a rebel? Look-a-here, honey, there ain't a mite of ease and comfort on that road."

      "That's what the Yankees called us all," said Hagar. 'Rebels.'"

      "Ah, I don't mean 'rebel' that-er-way," said Mrs. Green. "There's lonelier and deeper ways of rebellin'. You don't get killed with an army cheerin' you, and newspapers goin' into black, and a state full of people, that were 'rebels' too, keepin' your memory green—what happens, happens just to you, by yourself without any company, and no wreaths of flowers and farewell speeches. They just open the door and put you out."

      "Out where?"

      "Out by yourself. Out of this earth's favour. And, though we mayn't think it," said Mrs. Green, "this earth's favour is our sunshine. It's right hard to go where there isn't any sunshine. … I don't know why I'm talking like this to you—but you're a strange child and always were, and I reckon you come by it honest!" She rose from among the peavines. "Well, I've been baking apple turnovers, and they ain't bad to picnic on! Suppose you take a couple up on the ridge with you."

      There grew, on the very top of the ridge, a cucumber tree that Hagar loved. Underneath was a little fine, sparse grass and enough pennyroyal to make the place aromatic when the sunshine drew out all its essence, as was the case to-day. Over the light soil, between the sprigs of pennyroyal, went a line of ants carrying grains of some pale, amber-clear substance. Hagar watched them to their hill. When, one by one, they had entered, a second line of foragers emerged and went off to the right through the grass. In a little time these, too, reappeared, each carrying before her a tiny bead of the amber stuff. Hagar watched, elbows on ground and chin on hands. She had a feeling that they were people, and she tried giving them names, but they were so bewilderingly alike that in a moment she could not tell which was "Brownie" and which "Pixie" and which "Slim." She turned upon her back and lying in the grass and pennyroyal saw above her only blue sky and blue sky. She stared into it. "If the angels were sailing like the birds up there and looking down—and looking down—we people might seem all alike to them—all alike and not doing things that were very different—all alike. … Only there are our clothes. Pink ones and blue ones and white ones and black ones and plaid ones and striped ones—" She stared at the blue until she seemed to see step after step of blue, a great ladder leading up, and then she turned on her side and gazed at Gilead Balm and, a mile away, the canal and the shining river.

      She could see many windows, but not her mother's window. She had to imagine that. Lonesomeness and ennui, that had gone away for a bit in the interest of watching the ants, returned full force. She stood up and cast about for something to break the spell.

      The apple turnovers wrapped in a turkey-red, fringed napkin, rested in a small willow basket upon the grass. Hagar was not hungry, but she considered that she might as well eat a turnover, and then that she might as well have a party and ask a dozen flower dolls. Her twelve years were as a moving plateau—one side a misty looming landscape of the mind, older and higher than her age would forecast; on the other, green, hollow, daisy-starred meadows of sheer childhood. Her attention passed from side to side, and now it settled in the meadows.

      She considered the grass beneath the cucumber tree for a dining-room, and then she grew aware that she was thirsty, and so came to the conclusion that she would descend the back side of the ridge to the spring and have the party there. Crossing the hand's breadth of level ground she began to climb down the long shady slope toward a stream that trickled through a bit of wood and a thicket, and a small, ice-cold spring in a ferny hollow. The sun-bathed landscape, river and canal and fields and red-brick Gilead Balm with its cedars, and the garden and orchard, and the overseer's house sank from view. There was only the broad-leaved cucumber tree against the deep blue sky. The trunk of the cucumber tree disappeared, and then the greater branches, and then the lesser branches toward the top, and then the bushy green top itself. When Hagar and the other children played on the ridge, they followed her lead and called this side "the far country." To them—or perhaps only to Hagar—it had a clime, an atmosphere quite different from the homeward-facing side.

      When she came to the spring at the foot of the ridge she was very thirsty. She knelt on a great sunken rock, and, taking off her sunbonnet, leaned forward between the fern and mint, made a cup of her hands and drank the sparkling water. When she had had all she wished, she settled back and regarded the green, flowering thicket. It came close to the spring, filling the space between the water and the wood, and it was a wild, luxuriant tangle. Hagar's fancy began to play with it. Now it was a fairy wood for Thumbelina—now Titania and Oberon danced there in the moonlight—now her mind gave it height and hugeness, and it was the wood around the Sleeping Beauty. The light-winged minutes went by and then she remembered the apple turnovers. … Here was the slab of rock for the table. She spread the turkey-red napkin for cloth, and she laid blackberry leaves for plates, and put the apple turnovers grandly in the middle. Then she moved about the hollow and gathered her guests. Wild rose, ox-eye daisy, Black-eyed Susan, elder, white clover, and columbine—quite a good party. … She set each with due ceremony on the flat rock, before a blackberry-leaf plate, and then she took her own place facing the thicket, and after a polite little pause, folded her hands and closed her eyes. "We will say," she said, "a silent Grace."

      When she opened her eyes, she opened them full upon other eyes—haggard, wolfishly hungry eyes, looking at her from out the thicket, behind them a body striped like a wasp. …

      "I didn't mean to scare you," said the boy, "but if you ever went most of two days and a night without anything to eat, you'd know СКАЧАТЬ