The two weeks passed. Indian summer held throughout November. "This dreamy place makes you disinclined to vigorous planning," said Medway. "I think, Gipsy, that we will drift on down through Florida, and cross to Cuba."
This year there were evidently cross-winds. At Palm Beach, Medway came upon an old acquaintance, associate of ancient days in Paris, an artist with whom he had rambled through Fontainebleau forest and drunk good wine in Barbizon. For years each had been to the other a thin memory; now, almost with violence, the attraction renewed itself. But the artist was not going to Cuba; he was going to the Bahamas. He had a commission to paint a portrait, and his subject, who was a Chicago multi-millionaire, had elected to winter at Nassau and to give the sittings there. Commissions evidently did not come every day to the artist, who was post-post-impressionist, and he was quite willing to go to Nassau, jubilantly so, in fact. He said that, for once, light was going to be thrown upon the multi-millionaire.
Medway strove to persuade him to forfeit the commission and go to Cuba; and he was even, it was evident, prepared to make the proceeding no financial loss. But the artist stated explicitly that he had a sense of honour and could not leave the Chicagoan in the lurch; besides he wanted to paint that portrait. "Come and see me do it, old fellow! I'm going to take a reasonable small house with a garden, knock out partitions and make a studio. One commission leads to another:—Light on the whole bunch.—Oh, I'm told that you've got a million, too! How the devil did you get into that galley?" In the end, rather than part with the old companion, Medway exchanged Cuba for the Bahamas.
Thomson found a house that he thought would answer. Hagar went with him to see it, and agreed that it would. Both spoke entirely with reference to Medway. Back at the great hotel, she explained its advantages. "There's a pleasing, tangled garden, palms and orange trees and hibiscus, and a high garden wall. The verandahs, upper and lower, are wide. You get the air, and you have, besides the town, a great sweep of this turquoise sea. There's only a short, quiet, easy street between the house and Mr. Greer's studio. I think that it will answer."
It answered very well as Medway granted. He and Greer were much together. The Chicagoan, when he arrived, proved to be a good fellow, too, earnest in his endeavour to play blotting-paper to culture. Greer gathered from the hotel several congenial Americans. Medway, who always had the best of letters, provided an Englishman or two from the more or less stationary Government set. The studio became practically his and Greer's in common; they were extraordinarily good talkers and they rolled wonderful cigarettes and Mahomet made café fort. A violinist of some note was stopping at the hotel, and he and his violin added themselves to the company. When a traveller who knew Lhasa, Bangkok, and Baalbek, Knossos and Kairwan and Kandy, was joined to the others, it became evident that Medway had made his circle and found the winter's entertainment.
He had never made greatly too large demand upon Hagar's hours. He was full of resources, supple in turning from person to person of all his varied acquaintance in varied lands, moderately appreciative, too, of the value of solitude. On her side she would have stood, had there been need, for time to herself. It was to her the very breath of life. But there was never extreme need. She was within call when he wanted to turn to her, and that was sufficient. But this winter, it was evident, she would have her days to a greater extent than usual in her own hand. There was never any accounting to him for her days apart from him; almost from the first there had obtained that relation of personal liberty. To do him justice he felt no desire to exact such an accounting, and had he tried to do so he would have failed.
Hagar saw that she was going to have time, time this winter; and, what she liked, they would be long enough in one place to allow her to work with advantage. There would be visitors, invitations—already they had begun:—Medway would wish to give, now and then, a garden-party, a dinner-party. But life would by no means run to an exchange of visits and entertainments. Father and daughter had alike, in this direction, the art of sufficient but not too much. Anything beyond a certain, not-great amount wearied and exasperated him, wearied and saddened her. All that would be kept in bounds. Hagar, pacing the garden, saw quiet days, surcharged with light.
She was thinking out her half-year's work. A volume of stories, eight or ten in all—such a subject and such a subject; such or such an incident, situation, value; such a man, such a woman. She knew that her work was good, that it was counted very good, counted to her for name and fame. All that was something to her; rather, it was much to her; but only positively so, not relatively. It could by no means fill her universe. For years she had taken now this, now that filament-like value and with skill and power had enlarged, coloured, and arranged it so that her great audience might also see; and she had done, she thought, service thereby; had, in her place, served beauty and knowledge. But the hunger grew to serve more fully. Knowledge, knowledge—wisdom, wisdom—action....
Hagar moved to a stone seat that commanded an opening in the garden wall. She looked out, down and over a short, steep, dazzling white street and a swarm of low, pale-coloured, chimneyless houses, with the green between of tropic trees, to the surf upon the coral shore and the opaque, marvellous blue of the surrounding sea. The creative passion was upon her, but it moved nowadays as it had moved with many an idealist-realist before.... To mould living material, to deal with the objective, to deal with the living world, not the world of bright-hued shadows; to see the living world lighten to the dawn, see the dull hues brighten, see the beautyless become beauty and beauty grow vivid, to see all the world lift, lift toward the golden day, to see the race become the over-race.... She would have died for that and died to help. She laid her arms along the stone and her head upon them. "And yet I do not help, or not with all that is in me. I sit here to one side and spin fancies."
She rose, and put on a shady hat, and going out into the dazzling white street moved down it, and then by another across for some distance to the white road by the sea. Her back to the town, she walked on. A few scattered palms, the sea-wall; then where it ended, an edging tangle of the hard green leaves of the sea-grape; outside of that, low fantastically worn coral rock and the white dash and spray of the water. Though the sun was high and the sky intense and cloudless, a wind blew always; the air was dry and the day not too warm. There was hardly anyone upon the road. She met a cluster of negro children and talked with them a little. A surrey, of the type that waited on the street near the great hotels, passed her, driven sleepily by a sleepy negro, within it a large man in white. When it was gone in a little cloud of white dust there was only the long road, and the unyielding monotonous green of the sea-grape, and the water thundering in an undertone. Hagar turned aside, broke through the grape, and came down to the edge of the surf. There was a rock hollowed until it made a rude chair. She sat down and looked out to sea. On one hand, across the harbour mouth, rose from a finger-narrow sliver of land, a squat white lighthouse; but turn a little and look away and there was only the open sea, unimaginably blue, azure as the sky. The soft wind blew, the surf broke in low thunder. Hagar, her chin upon her hand, sat for a long time, very still.