Mary Johnston

“ Medway lay and looked at her, coolly, as long as he pleased. "You are not at all what is called beautiful. We'll dismiss that from mind. But the people who give us our terms are mostly idiots anyhow! Beauty in the eye of the beholder—but what bats are the beholders! No, you haven't beauty, as they say, but there's something left.... I like the way you sit there, Gipsy." ”

“ She heard again Roger Michael speaking. "We met him at Carcassonne, and afterwards at Aigues-Mortes. He was sketching most wonderfully." She saw him, moving lightly, from stone to stone in old half-ruined cities. The dandelion day and the blossoming orchard came back to her; she felt again beneath her his half-dancing motion as he carried her under the boughs where the bees were humming. Her pity, her comprehension, put the anger down.
Medway was watching her curiously. "You have a most expressive face," he said. "I do not remember you well as a child. ”

“ Roll of wheel and slow thud of hoofs they went dreamily back toward Nassau. The walls on 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 am going home."
"Home to—to Gilead Balm?"
"At first, yes, I think ... then, I do not know. I have been away so long. 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 said abruptly, "I want you to know Rose Darragh."
"Yes, I want to," said Hagar simply. ”

“ Five minutes passed. "Haven't you any other name than Hagar?" said Medway. "Are they always going to call you that?"
"Grandfather calls me Gipsy—except when he doesn't like what I do."
"Does that happen often? Are you wilful?"
"I do not know," said Hagar. "I am like my mother."
When she had spoken, she repented it with a pang of fear. He was in no condition, of course, to have waked old, disturbing thoughts.
But Medway had depth on depth of sang-froid. "You look like her and you don't look like her," he murmured. "You may be like her within, but you can't be all like her. ”

“ Mrs. LeGrand experienced from head to foot a soft and amiable glow.
For ten minutes longer she lay in an atmosphere of balm, then she opened her eyes, drew her watch from her white-ribbon belt, and glancing at it surmised that by now the Bishop might have finished his letters. Upon this thought she rose, and paced across the bright June grass to the house. "Pearls and Roses" floated from the parlour. Her hand on the doorknob, Mrs. LeGrand paused irresolutely for a moment, then lightly took it away and crossed the hall to the library. ”

“ Hagar laughed. "If you meant that at eighteen I sincerely thought I loved Mr. Laydon—and that he, as sincerely, I do believe, thought that he loved me—yes, there was that in it! But we found out with fair promptness that it was false fire.—I have not seen nor heard of him for many years. He taught at Eglantine for a while, and then he went, I believe, to some Western school.... Lily, Lily! I have had a long life!"
"I have had as long a one in years," said Lily. "But yours has been the fuller. You have a wonderful life."
"We all have wonderful lives," answered Hagar. ”

“ So they played down by the branch where the willows grew, or in the old, disused tobacco-house, or in the orchard, or about a haystack on a hillside. Corker wanted always to play robbers or going to sea. Maggie liked to jump from the haystack or to swing, swing, swing, holding to the long, pendant green withes of the weeping willow, or to climb the apple trees. Thomasine liked to make dams across the streamlet below the tobacco-house. ”

“ Men and women were out in the twilight, and children calling to one another and playing. The vivid lights had faded from sky and from wet sand and rock, shoal and lagoon, but colour was left, though it was the ghost of itself. It swam in the air, it gleamed from the earth. Warmth was there, too, and languor, and the melancholy of the gathering night. A dreamlike quality came into things—the children's voices sounded faint and far; only there were waves of some faint odour, coming now it seemed from gardens.... ”

“ And Powhatan had as nearly thundered as was in his nature to do. Rachel shrugged her shoulders and desisted, but she had gone about all day with defiance written in her small, sombre face. Now to-night, the street, the broad stripes of blackness, the thin stripes of gold light, the sound of voices and of many footfalls, the faces when the light fell upon them and the brushing by of half-seen forms suited her [196] raised, angry, and mutinous mood. As for Hagar, the street and its movement simply became herself. She never lost the child's and the poet's power of coalescence. ”

“ The inner eye saw the house within, the three-years-familiar rooms, her "tower room"—and all the human life, the girls, the teachers, the servants. Bright drops came to her eyes. "I've been unhappy here, too, sometimes. But I couldn't stay three years in a place and not love something about it."
"That is because you are a woman," said the lover. "With a man it is different. If a place isn't right, it isn't right.—If I had but five thousand dollars! Then we might marry in a month's time. As it is, we'll have to wait and wait and wait—"
"I am going to work, too," said Hagar. ”

“ Now in her small, distinguished house, with its atmosphere of plain living and high thinking, fragrant and sunny with kindliness and good will, she set her table often for her friends and drew them together in her simple, old-fashioned, book-overflowing drawing-room. Her friends were scholars, writing and thinking people, and simply good people, and any one who was in trouble and came to her, and many reformers. ”

“ A vireo was singing in a walnut tree, a chipmunk ran along a bit of old rail fence. A zephyr brought an odour dank and rich, from the aged forest that hung above.
"I think," said Laydon, "that you are treating me very badly."
"Am I? I am sorry.... You mustn't think that I haven't been wretched over all this. But it would be treating you badly, indeed, if I were such a coward as to let it go on." She looked at him oddly. "Will you be—Are you much hurt?"
"I—I—" said Laydon. "I do not think you quite conceive what you are saying, nor what such a cool pronunciamento must mean to a man! Hurt? ”

“ She saw again the Gilead Balm library, and the pool of sunlight on the floor and the "Descent of Man," and heard again Mrs. LeGrand telling the Bishop that she—Hagar—was reading an improper book. Time between then and now simply took itself away like a painted drop-scene. Six years rolled themselves up as with a spring, and that hour seamlessly adjoined this hour.
"I'm afraid," said Mrs. LeGrand, "that you'll be a little lonely, dear child, but it won't be for long. Time flies so!"
"I don't exactly get lonely," said Hagar gravely. "You are going down the river, aren't you?" ”

“ I had to think away from the idea of a sacrosanct Past and the virtue of Immobility;—not the true idea of the mighty Past as our present body which we are to lift and ennoble, and not Immobility as the supreme refusal to be diverted from that purpose,—but the Past, that is made up of steps forward, set and stubborn against another step, and Immobility blind to any virtue in Change. I had to think away from a concept of woman that the future can surely only sadly laugh at. ”