The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Debatable Land, by Arthur Colton
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Title: The Debatable Land
Author: Arthur Colton
Release Date: February 1, 2013 [EBook #41963]
Language: English
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[Illustration: Front Cover]
THE FOLLOWING IS A LIST OF TWELVE AMERICAN NOVELS PUBLISHED BY HARPER &
BROTHERS DURING 1901, WRITTEN FOR THE MOST PART BY NEW AMERICAN WRITERS,
AND DEALING WITH DIFFERENT PHASES OF CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN LIFE.
"EASTOVER COURT HOUSE." By HENRY BURNHAM BOONE and KENNETH BROWN.
"THE SENTIMENTALISTS." By Arthur Stanwood Pier.
"MARTIN BROOK." By MORGAN BATES.
"A VICTIM OF CIRCUMSTANCES." By GERALDINE ANTHONY.
"DAYS LIKE THESE." By EDWARD W. TOWNSEND.
"WESTERFELT." By WILL N. HARBEN.
"THE MANAGER OF THE B & A." By VAUGHAN KESTER.
"THE SUPREME SURRENDER." By A. MAURICE LOW.
"THE STRENGTH OF THE HILLS." By FLORENCE WILKINSON.
"LET NOT MAN PUT ASUNDER." By BASIL KING.
"WHEN LOVE IS YOUNG." By Roy ROLFE GILSON.
"THE DEBATABLE LAND." By ARTHUR COLTON.
"THE
DEBATABLE
LAND"
A Novel
_By
Arthur Colton_
[Illustration]
New York and London
Harper & Brothers Publishers
1901
Copyright, 1901, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
_All rights reserved._
TO
R.H. LOINES
"For the Debatable Land, being that portion of ground which, lying
between two countries, belongeth to neither, does of all regions abound
most in disturbance, adventures, even legends, and, as men say, in
warlocks and witches. Thus the astute German, Hermantius, significantly
calleth the region of youth a debatable land, and seeketh to illustrate
time by space."--_The Dictionary of Devices_.
Contents
PART I
CHAPTER PAGE
I. "_Hinter die Kirche blühe die blaue Blume
der Zufriedenheit_" 3
II. _Of Thaddeus Bourn and his Purposes_ 11
III. _Of Morgan Map and his Purposes_ 24
IV. _In which Thaddeus uses the term "Moral
Justification"_ 32
V. _Introducing Hamilton and Saint Mary's
Organ_ 41
VI. _Introducing Gard Windham and the Brotherhood
of Consolation_ 56
VII. _Introducing Moselle and Mavering_ 71
VIII. _Of Mrs. Mavering, and of the Philosophy of
the Individual_ 85
IX. _Of Estates in Happiness_ 99
X. _Of Spring in Hamilton--Of Thaddeus's
Opportunity to be Candid_ 118
XI. _The Whirlpool--Mr. Paulus's Reminiscences
of Women_ 135
PART II
XII. _Antietam_ 149
XIII. _In which Appears a General of Division,
and one of "the Brethren"_ 164
XIV. _In which Mavering Concludes that Cavalry
Officers as a Class are Eccentric and
Deep_ 181
XV. _Treats of the Distribution of Tracts in the
Valley of the Shenandoah_ 192
XVI. _Which Discloses one Daddy Joe, and Disposes
of an Evangelist_ 207
XVII. _On the Question of the Exact Location of
the Divinity which is Ultimately Called
Worth While_ 223
XVIII. _In which there is Discovered a Compunction_ 235
XIX. _In which Windham Drops Out of the Fight--and
Mavering Remarks on Human
Adaptability_ 253
XX. _Treats of Further Incidents in the House
with the White Door_ 264
XXI. _In which We Go Down the River and Return_ 274
XXII. _Of Mavering, who Disappears--Of the
Gray Poet--Of Morgan, Who Appears
Once More_ 286
XXIII. _The End_ 307
Part I
"The Debatable Land"
Chapter I
"Hinter die Kirche blühe die blaue Blume der
Zufriedenheit."--MEISTER ECKHART.
Widow Bourn's house stood behind the church, and blue flowers grew
contentedly on the sloping green, shy fancies of a maiden spring that
never lasted out a summer's experience. New England churches have not
that air of nestling comfort which seemed to Meister Eckhart so sweet a
symbol. They crown the hills with square frames and sharpened steeples,
churches militant, plate-mailed in clapboards, with weather-vane aimed
defiantly into the wind. Their doors are closed, their windows shuttered
against all days of the week saving one. But Widow Bourn found the
proximity comfortable. The church militant faced the issues of the
spirit for her, and subdued them. She plodded through her Bible, drawing
contentment from texts that meant no such matter, seeing in the
ecclesiast's despondency only reflections connected here and there with
sermons. "It is a pleasant thing to stand on the shore when other people
are in the floods," the melancholy Roman poet remarked, meaning that it
_would be_, because it was something his ever-journeying spirit in the
waste seas of thought rendered impracticable for himself.
A gate opened from the widow's garden on the sloping green.
Heavy-scented lilacs, purple and white, hung over it, and followed the
fence at fragrant intervals. Lilacs crowded along the garden walls,
pushed against green pillars of the porch and drooped luxurious heads at
the windows. Lilacs are tropical and anti-puritan; they belong with the
chuckle of lutes over low casements, and liquid voices speaking a
vowelled tongue. Widow Bourn was pleasant-tempered, placid, possessed of
a stillness, a certain dignity, and a frame not overpadded, but
comfortable.
The Bourns were early settlers in Hagar. The settlers were still feeling
their way in the wilderness beyond the Connecticut, sensible farmers who
bargained for whole mountain ranges and valleys of the magnificent
savage, and recorded the transaction in minutes of the town-meeting.
The magnificent savage commonly declared that his heart was great; he
would sell the lands from the crooked lake to the joining of swift
rivers to his white brothers, who marked the boundaries inferred from
the sachem's oratory, and omitted to comment on the humor of it in
minutes of the town-meeting. When the first Simon Bourn piled hewn beams
for his cabin and ran his plough around stumps of trees that had
furnished the beams there were few cabins in the neighborhood, and the
town-meeting was held fifteen miles away. The last Simon Bourn ran his
plough along the same hill-side, not dodging the same stumps, but the
hill-side still drew up stones out of its inner perversity to check his
plough. He found the slope of his life, like the slope of his ancestral
fields, unfertile, shallow-soiled. The five generations of Bourns had
accumulated and transmitted this opinion of their lives and hilly
fields, that on the whole they were not justified.
Simon died in the early fifties and was buried in Hagar's hemlocked
graveyard. Oddly enough, he seemed to regret it. Widow Bourn associated
herself with this regret, but regret has commonly an element of
interrupted possibilities in it, and these must have lain the rather in
Nellie, a yellow-headed, long-limbed, swift-footed maiden whose level
gray eyes had in them a certain challenge and accusation, and whose
years were ten.
"Don't let Nellie forget me," he said, and the graver carved on his
tombstone, "Remember Me." Simon perhaps intended it only for Nellie, but
that did not prevent its forcing the passer to "remember" him, who never
knew him and did not care about it. "Simon Bourn--Born ----, Died ----.
Remember," in raised letters on a white tombstone, stared out of the
green gloom of the hemlocks. So the Elder Hamlet desired, "Remember Me."
"Remember thee, poor ghost?" Why remember? Go your ways, Simon Bourn,
and trouble us not. It might have struck the public as egotistic, which
was only a pathetic impulse pointing to Nellie, if the public had not
been in the habit of accepting epitaphs of all kinds with a tolerance
born of experience.
One could understand the exception Simon made in favor of Helen from his
opinion and feeling about the world he left--that it was not on the
whole justified--could understand it in this way, that there was
something in her young gravity and impetuous faith which seemed to
isolate whatever she looked at. To be considered and remembered by her
seemed important. It lifted one out of triviality. In Hagar she was a
pronounced, a separate person. Hagar itself was compact of varieties,
but Helen was intense in conception and direct in action to surprise
Hagar. She ran away with Morgan Map to the Hamilton County Fair, and
came back in the gray dawn, white-lipped with weariness. A neighbor or
two had sat up with Widow Bourn to prevent her worrying. It was a
gratifying success. The widow slept by the fire. Morgan was eighteen
then, but the Maps were somewhat out of the reach of Hagar's opinion.
She smote Mr. Paulus with a paint-brush across the face for interfering
with her painting designs on cows and cats. They were not his cows and
cats. That question in ethics threw Hagar into excited division, and it
was not remembered whose cows and cats they were. She was sent to Miss
Savage's School in Wimberton; muttering rumors of her crossed the Cattle
Ridge. At sixteen she was thrown by one of the Sanderson horses, a
red-eyed, ugly breed of racers; and Joe Sanderson, then aged nine, ran
at the horse and shot a barbed arrow into its hide, out of his bitter
wrath and love of Nellie; and Nellie lay a twelvemonth and more on her
back to cure her spine. These are but instances of enterprise. Whatever
stood the challenge or test of worth and reality in her eyes was apt to
be a cause of sudden valor or unreckoned devotion.
The accident was in 1858, the year after Squire Map's wife died, whose
name was once Edith Lorn. There was a great funeral in Hagar, and
carriages from down the Wyantenaug Valley as far as Hamilton. There was
an explosion then, too, in the Map family regarding property. Gerald and
Morgan were supposed to have announced their independence on the
strength of their majority and inheritance. The squire took to himself a
grudge against the world where sons are unfilial, friends betray, and
love falls from negation to negation, and began that lonely life which
lasted twenty years, shut in and brooding in the square house on the
hill half a mile out on the Cattle Ridge road. Gerald Map came no more
to Hagar, but Morgan was seen at times. He rode up from Hamilton the
day after Helen's fall, talked with the doctor, went up-stairs and
kissed her cheek, and departed, silent to Widow Bourn's murmured
remonstrance. "He shouldn't do that!"
Helen said: "Oh, that's all right," indifferently, and Widow Bourn fell
to extracting comfort from the situation. If a honey-bee extracts
anything from anywhere, it is honey; she may not extract anything. There
was a comfort in knowing where Helen was the day long; not that the
widow's comfort had ever been seriously long disturbed, but Helen
quiescent was more comfortable than Helen active, in process of silent
loading or sudden discharge. One could consider her clothes at leisure,
not in heated endeavor to have one dress for Sunday without a lateral or
perpendicular rip. Everything in the balm of the widow's temperament
took the soft flow of slow waters, as Simon's plaintive discontent had
long before to her ears come to resemble Ecclesiastes. Helen was more
difficult to adapt herself to, because Helen grew and changed. Now, the
growth and change seemed for the time to have ceased. She was no less
mysterious; but a mystery which is constant and presents the same
inscrutable face, and not always another and another, is more
comfortable. Helen's life, after cataracts and restless seeking, seemed
to have flowed into a dark pool, and lay there reflecting clouds,
patches of stars, and the edges of dim forests.
The similitudes of young maidens and varied flowers, the happy
possibilities in that comparison, were discovered of earliest poets. Out
of the best of intentions there has come to us so far only the
conviction that Helen did not resemble the blue violets growing behind
the church in Hagar. As for Simon's epitaph, it outlasts the story and
is still to be read. One may lean over the wall of the cemetery, say, at
twilight, when the shadow of Windless Mountain is wide over Hagar, and
read it to-day, note its stiff insistence, and suit one's self with
reflections on man and nature and the purport of things. An issue will
be observed to lie between Simon's epitaph and the solemn, fading
mountain, an issue distinct and inclusive.
Chapter II
Of Thaddeus Bourn and his Purposes
There was given to the Bourns, then, of old, natures sloping to the
Northern side, or they had taken that tendency from experience. Thaddeus
Bourn, that elder brother of Simon, who left Hagar so long ago as when
Quincy Adams was President, and became a civil flower of society in the
city of Hamilton, was a spontaneous variation or reaction from the type.
One heard that he had made a fortune airily, and lost it. He surely
married another, lost part of that, and his wife of a year or two, who
died and surprised him into regretting her with some sincerity. He
became an official of the Hamilton County Bank, and floated on in middle
life, buoyant, carrying an aroma of old fashions, a flower in his
buttonhole, a tall hat, a silver-headed cane. His eyes had wrinkles
about them, his cheeks were thin, his foot light. All these were evident
elements in the total of Thaddeus, but the total itself was not a sum,
but a harmony. To keep the seamy side of life turned down, and its sheen
always in the sun, not only was Thaddeus's practice and theory, but he
belonged to a distinct school in the practice of the art, which might be
called the pseudo-classic.
He sat by Helen's bed half a day, and talked to her as to a grown lady,
and was gracious and fluent. He brought the best flowers of his
worldliness, and jingled all his silver bells to please her.
"Not a finer pair of eyes in Hamilton!" he said to the widow.
"Positively she must not have a crick in her back. On my word,
impossible."
"We are taught to submit," said the widow, perhaps placidly, at any rate
patiently. Thaddeus mounted the stairs with a wrinkled smile.
"Sheep! That woman is a sheep! Helen, my dear, your back will be as
straight as my cane, I give you my word."
Nellie's lean hands, on the coverlet, and face, with its bacchante
spread of hair above her head on the pillow, were losing their brown tan
in the passage of slow weeks. The delicate creeping pallor and
helplessness beckoned Thaddeus to something tender, but he took council
with wisdom.
"Uncle Tad," she said, "why do you about always feel good?"
"Well, well, I haven't cracked my spine. Never cracked anything but my
heart and reputation--a--both of them like old varnish, on my word. Very
good, varnish them again. I have"--Thaddeus used his gold eye-glasses
gracefully to punctuate, emphasize, distinguish, for illustration, for
ornament--"I have the opinion that to feel agreeable and to be agreeable
are two habits that one cultivates like a garden. The first is a
vegetable, the second a flower. You see? Exactly. In point of fact they
are the fruit and flower of the same plant. A--a figure of speech,
Nellie. If you kindly wouldn't look at me like the Angel of Judgment.
A--look at the ceiling. Thank you."
Thaddeus delicately unfolded his theory of the conduct of life, Nellie's
grave eyes now and then confusing him with mute challenge.
To his experience, then, there were two classes of people--those who
were more or less pleased with the world, and those who more or less
were not. Both personally and morally it was better to be in the former
class. Personally, for instance, one lived longer; morally, one, for
instance, in point of fact, kept in better relations with Providence.
Now this satisfaction was to be compassed partly by a certain inward
insistence on feeling agreeable--"When I buy a pair of glasses of a
seller of glasses, personally, I buy a pair that--a--slightly
idealize"--partly by surrounding one's self by, in point of fact, a
judicious selection of circumstances. Circumstances were, in the main,
people. One surrounded one's self with--that is, one sought and lived
among--agreeable people, and these were found commonly among such as had
circumstances already agreeable. Selfishness was a word to keep on good
terms with by understanding its nature, and making one's own share of it
intelligent. Enlightened selfishness was the root of society. Good
society really consisted of people who had the time and took the pains
to be pleasant and entertaining, in order to have pleasure and
entertainment about them. This was the sensible and experienced thing in
the matter of the pursuit of happiness.
"Nellie"--Thaddeus's voice took a note of gravity--"you'll let me have
an interest in your pursuit. Some time"--the wrinkles of his smile shot
out around his eyes--"I'll explain to you how it is a case of
enlightened selfishness. Between you and me, I'm growing old, but
ordinarily I deny it."
It is possible that Nellie understood very little of Thaddeus's
doctrine, saw no distinct consequences whatever, and was only caught by
little gleaming points of illustration. The charm of Thaddeus's talk lay
in its opalescent effect, and this had much to do with gesture and
expression; so that "good society" may have been to her a phrase of the
haziest quality, except as it might mean a pair of slightly idealized
eye-glasses, rimmed with gold, and pointed at one in a manner to absorb
attention; "happiness," a certain wrinkled smile; and the "pursuit" of
it an endeavor to smile in that way. Thaddeus thought his doctrine
likely to suffer much translation. He could not follow its vanishing nor
guess what would happen to it.
It was a period of brooding and slow change for Helen. At such times,
one remembers, the soul was a highway for processional shadows. They
have no names in language. Only here and there one finds a thing said
of them that is touched with recollection; their voices are heard at
times in blown drifts of music; hints are given that it is not a
solitary experience.
Monthly or even more often thereafter Thaddeus left his club and
familiar pavements behind him, and travelled up the Wyantenaug Valley in
a dull, noisy train, even through that winter when the cold wind swept
down from Windless Mountain under the pines and piled drifts more than
commonly along the Windless Mountain road. "Personally" he took no
interest in the columned avenues of pines, the deep white ravine, the
black, tinkling stream, the groined architecture of ice. He liked well
enough the scents and balm of the country spring, the lilacs and the
hill winds in summer, but he liked better his pavements and club. It
argued a highly enlightened selfishness, a refined nicety of
calculation, such pains to be agreeable. If we charge him with
calculation, it is only to admire the refinement of it, and refer the
charge to his doctrine. For if the confession that he was secretly
growing old meant that he foresaw life would come presently to seem a
little vacant, without the intimate interest it once had, and his house
on Shannon Street be visited perhaps by ghosts that would not always
take pains to be agreeable, it would seem to show a skill in the pursuit
of happiness, an eye for a blind trail, not unworthy of the doctrine. To
foresee coming changes, what provision the soul would need in a year or
two more when middle life was past and the strong pull of the ebbing
tide beginning to be felt, to disguise from it the consequences of sixty
years, and so to persuade it gently, without force or argument, to
continue to idealize and feel agreeable, were a fine bit of diplomacy.
For it was not merely a matter of carrying Helen away to Shannon Street
to start there a fresh stream of interest, but Helen must take an
interest in him; they were to find each other lovable, if the choicest
result were to come; and Helen was here somewhat difficult. The stream
of interest was started for him. He felt it strongly when the first year
was gone and Hamilton was at its wintry busiest. But it was difficult to
be seen that she would pursue happiness with consistency.
It was the spring of the year '60 when she saw the green world once
more, and summer before she walked free of the garden. The lilacs hung
heavily and seemed almost to drip with thick perfume. Thrush, oriole,
and bobolink were pursuing happiness and warbling their success.
Thaddeus was there, and chirped in rivalry.
"But your mother would rather have something to submit to."
"Oh no, Thaddeus," protested the widow, mildly.
"You like the Lord to do you an injury. It makes a pretty item on the
balance-sheet."
"How can you say so?"
"My good sister!" Thaddeus raised despairing hands. "You consist
entirely of negatives. There is no positive opinion that can be
attributed to you. I give you a character and you deny it. You escape
definition. Personally, I doubt your existence. I believe you're a
myth."
Still the widow murmured, peacefully, "Oh no, Thaddeus," knitting and
rocking.
Thaddeus watched Nellie's face for signs of happiness, and the widow
denied with safety and assurance. It was no trouble, except to fit her
denials to the form of the attack. Thaddeus saw the loss of his rapier
thrusts of fine casuistry sometimes with passing irritation.
He went down to the post-office after supper, to Mr. Paulus, the
postmaster, one with whom he had gone forth on such balmy evenings, more
than forty years past, and done things from which their elders had
inferred disastrous careers. The postmaster was stout now, with grizzled
hair cut Quakerly, ponderously grave, except that his left eyelid
drooped and twitched. It was the one place on his wide face where the
old spirit of demonry hinted of itself, and spoke of the days of the
consulship of Tad and Pete. Without doubt the world was degenerate, and
had lost its breed of noble bloods. Alas, Tad and Pete, once sworn and
faithful, of one ideal together; now each in the eyes of the other was
an exquisite absurdity, and all the young were degenerate, except
Nellie. "Pete, she's doing well, poor little ghost, on my word."
"She'll bust out pretty soon then. Been loadin' up now goin' on two
year."
"I shall take her to Hamilton. She's a racer, boy. Smacked you with a
paint-brush! God bless her! I should think she did. In point of fact, it
served you right. You roasted Starr Atherton's litter of pigs yourself,
I recollect distinctly, and turned out a postmaster. Respectable
profession. I've nothing against it."
"I didn't mean to."
"Didn't mean to which? Fatheaded thing to try to do anyhow. I told
you--I precisely stated the probable result. I said, any pig of that
size would squeal loud enough to wake a congregation. And Starr Atherton
was out in the yard before he saw the fire, with a picture in his mind
already of himself pursuing Peter Paulus, pig-stealer."
Mr. Paulus twitched his eyelid and reverted to the other subject.
"Hamilton! Well--maybe she won't. She might remember your position in
society now. She might gunpowder the mayor an' let it go at that. What's
in will out, that's what I say--what's in will out. Now, as to paintin'
cats--"
"I beg your pardon! It is even said they were not your cats."
"As to smackin' faces with paint-brushes--anybody say it wasn't my
face?"
Thaddeus leaned forward eagerly.
"What was the color?"
"Well--the paint was green, but there must've been some white on the
brush. It appeared to be streaked."
Thaddeus settled his glasses, rested his chin on his cane, and studied
the postmaster's face. There were vast vacant spaces on it, where, it
seemed, one could keep on smacking green paint a long while and not lose
interest.
"What's in will out," repeated Mr. Paulus, heavily. "What's in will
out."
Up the hill as far as the church Thaddeus thought of the post-office as
compared to the Wyantenaug Club, in what respects the post-office had
good points; from the church across the sloping green, where in the dusk
the pale flowers glimmered against the grass, he thought of Mr. Paulus's
face smitten with paint; and so of Nellie, a slim, white ghost, with
eyes that sometimes looked wistfulness after nameless things, and
sometimes seemed to watch only the slow march of dreams. At the lilac
gate he stopped. Some one stood a moment squarely in the little doorway,
filling it with his shoulders, then turned half back and leaned against
the jamb.
"Morgan Map, by--a-mm." The light shone across the profile in the door.
The Maps were men of shoulders and stature, Morgan the largest of the
three; hair and brows of a Celtic yellow with a glint of red in them, a
face of cliffs and caverns, bones of length and massiveness. "Picts,
Scots, Caractacus. Vercingetorix," Thaddeus murmured. "My education was
faulty. It seems to me he should be painted blue and carry a club."
He plucked a lilac and sniffed it, leaning on the gate, looking at
Morgan contemplatively and at the placid knitting widow beyond.
"If I let that damned brute jockey me, it's funny."
The militant church with its starward steeple and weather-vane telling
confidently to all men which way the night winds of heaven blew, the
shining windows and doorways, the scent of lilacs and the glimmer of
white flowers on the grass, the rounded billows of the hills, Windless
Mountain and the Cattle Ridge dark against southern and northern skies,
the Four Roads, the meadows east where one knew the Mill Stream was
crooning to itself--Hagar, by dusk at least, was much the same as in the
consulship of Tad and Pete, now forty years later when Tad and Pete had
come to consider each other exquisite absurdities. Even after another
forty years, is there any change in Hagar at dusk? You cannot see how
the charcoal-burners have cut along the Cattle Ridge. Tad and Pete have
gone where one hopes for their sakes everything is not a solemnity. But
we were speaking of Hagar when the night drops low, when the hills seem
to draw near and listen, and something is said to the stars, which they
admit, about past and future being foolish endeavors of language to say
"now." There seems to be a background and foreground everywhere. And in
the foreground things appear to be hourly critical and important.
Morgan turned into the room and shut the door. Thaddeus dropped the
lilac promptly and opened the gate.
"I seem to object to his shutting that door." He walked up the garden
path, tapping the ground briskly with his cane, seeming to have in mind
things critical and important.
Chapter III
Of Morgan Map and his Purposes
Early frosts in October turned the maples into pillars of fire; followed
a long Indian summer, hazy, even-footed, thoughtful days; as if after
making ready this ceremonial purple and red and gold, gold brown of the
meadows, blue and gold of aster and golden-rod by roadsides and meadow
edges, veiled purple of the sweet fern in high pastures, the year
remembered that it was not a pageantry of entry and advance, but of
departure, and walked after the banners in recessional mood. In November
red and yellow leaves had flickered past the windows and were raked into
heaps on the village green.
Helen kicked through the leaves, scattering them with a dry rustle. "I'm
as fit as can be, Morgan."
"Don't jump the fence."
"I hadn't thought of it. It's the very thing."
"Wait."
She stopped and looked at him.
"Better not," said Morgan, dryly. Helen made a face, put one foot on the
low rail of the picket fence, jumped and plunged through the lilacs,
picked up her hat and swung into the path. Morgan stood still outside
the gate. "Then you'll have to come out again and go through."
His yellow eyebrows met over his eyes. Helen flushed, hesitated--"Don't
be an idiot," and then laughed. "I'll come if you don't mind my thinking
you're an idiot."
"I don't mind your saying you think so."
She came outside the gate, looking interested. Morgan leaned his back to
its post and smiled approval on Windless Mountain.
"Why not?"
"Oh, because you don't think so. You think I want you to do what I tell
you. That's very true; I do. Why shouldn't you?"
The question involved a series of other questions, linked and secret.
Helen fell to looking, too, at Windless Mountain, which seemed to be
brooding as well over its constitutional phenomena, whose causes were
ages ago and deep in the earth, its relations with other creatures such
as winds, clouds, the regular and the drifting stars.
She did do as Morgan said, whenever he said anything; at least, she had
almost always. When one was Morgan and not a girl, and seven years
older, and able to dare all things and do them--(to carry a person on
his shoulder miles, for instance, across the Cattle Ridge, together with
the game-bag, when a person was tired, and begging not to be disgraced
for a baby, and would not have shed a tear for a gold crown and a bushel
of diamonds)--of course it was right and necessary that such a one
should be worshipped and obeyed. Morgan broke into her thoughts.
"Is it fixed when you go to Hamilton?"
"After Christmas. Do you know, I believe uncle doesn't like you."
"Oh, well, that's all right. I'll forgive him till he feels better."
To fear nothing, to count no costs, to be unlimited! The two years
seemed as long as lifetimes, since that summer when things happened; and
Morgan was still Morgan. He had never cared who was angry with him, or
who liked or disliked him. Helen had longed not to care and been
bitterly driven to do so always. She struggled to imitate him. In the
face of sudden danger, attack of angry game-preserver or owner of posted
stream, or any crisis of the woods when the partridge whirred or the fox
broke into the open, Morgan's face would not flush nor his hand tremble;
but he only seemed to gather his brows and centre himself on the
subject, while little Nellie wondered and worshipped. So he stood for an
ideal of effectiveness and freedom from the tyranny of circumstances,
which to her small experience and large deduction seemed visibly to bend
aside before and around him, from the tyranny of other people's
opinions, which he cared so little about that they turned into harmless
murmurs behind him instead of planting themselves monumentally in front.
For at times this world appeared to exist for opposition only, in iron
battle order, bristling with spears, stolid, reasonless, forbidding. It
was a caste system, a privileged aristocracy of one's elders, the
dead-line of an old régime. Morgan walked through it promptly. "People,"
he said, "pretend a lot more than they are, most of 'em. My dad doesn't
so much."
But freedom seems not to be an end in itself, only an opportunity to do
things differently. It has its own régime, its tyranny of devotions,
heroisms, and heroes, military, imperial.
That Morgan proposed a Napoleonic career for himself--reasonably such,
for he was no dreamer--that he proposed to dominate, to break through
limits and oppositions, to drive a path through the jam of men wide
enough for his shoulder muscles to work in, was merely his own candid
statement. And regarding Thaddeus, his expression sprang equally from
candor. A man's dislike for him was a poor reason for disliking that
man. To carry malice was to carry a load. A man was an engine for
covering ground and arriving at ends, and malice was burned-out slack.
Resentments of old hostilities and memories of old loves were slack,
likes and dislikes mostly whims. Mankind was various and whimsical, and
few were such as discarded futilities and went on, which was lucky for
the few.
"You're very sure of yourself, Morgan."
"Aren't you as sure of me, Nellie? You used to be. Well," he said,
slowly, "you see, if Thaddeus Bourn tried to take a fall out of me, he'd
want to be subtle, and then it would be all up with him, for I shouldn't
understand it."
"Why should he want to take a fall out of you?"
"If he doesn't, why should I mind his disliking me?"
"Wouldn't you mind being disliked by anybody, until they did something,
really?"
"Not much."
"Oh! Not by me?"
"I'd rather be disliked by the United States. Besides, that's foolish."
"Oh, I don't know. It's funny, I have an opinion of you that's miles
long. It isn't exactly an opinion, either."
Morgan smiled again with approval on Windless Mountain.
"If you're going to be subtle I sha'n't understand it," meaning possibly
it was the privilege of girls to have half-grown ideas that they could
not describe. A man had business with only such as he could handle, put
to the use of resolve, statement, or persuasion. If he was unable to
express his mind completely, it was because there was rubbish in his
mind. But between himself and Windless Mountain, he did not object to
Helen's having an opinion of him that was not exactly an opinion.
Any one could have an understanding with Windless, that eclectic
philosopher, with his feet deep in the earth, fertile loins, jovial
belly, the chest of a wrestler, and the gray, scarred head of a prophet.
On his flanks were chuckling little rivulets, nesting birds, and all
kinds of flitting incident. From a distance you might see his forehead
lifted to abstractions, pale-blue, spiritual things. Whatever you said
to him, he had an answer to your liking. Whatever your philosophy,
somewhere about him he felt much the same. If you hated an enemy, there
was a trifle of ice, a certain ambient glacier that once ground him
badly, of whom he had no loving remembrance and the grooves whereof were
on his bones. He was no moralist. The liar and the thief could find
companionship there, the outcast existences more deserted, the murderer
note the hawk risen red and screaming from the thicket, and admit a
spirit that bettered his own. Only if you were not content in finding a
likeness in detail, and wished to look straight to his scarred forehead,
you would probably do well to be candid and take your time. What you got
from him would be no special advice, but an assurance that he understood
you, and there would be something in his manner of understanding that
would meet the case and be enough. If it was a moral influence, it lay
in bringing you to see the relations of things in size and quality, and
in making your own directions more evident.
* * * * *
"I like Windless best," said Helen, dreamily. "He's the nicest person
there is."
"It would be no joke to have him in your way."
They turned into the garden and up the path between brown, withered
flower-beds.
"I jumped the fence, anyway, Morgan. It would be idiotic to hurt myself.
I won't do it again."
"The point was, you didn't mind the colonel."
"I'm on a furlough. Take me up Windless again."
"Not if you're on a furlough."
Chapter IV
In which Thaddeus uses the term "Moral Justification"
In the early days of Squire Map's seclusion he had not yet made the
hermit of himself that Hagar was familiar with later. Men have said that
he never went outside the village after the fall of '58, at least never
to Hamilton. The grooves where his bitterness ran plainly deepened as
the stream wore them year by year; possibly the gradual noting how his
withdrawal made no empty place among busy men, how feigning friends who
had turned enemies and rebellious sons went their way and prospered,
helped to widen and darken the shadow of his misanthropy. He had been a
lawyer, a politician, and made his stir in his day. In 1860 he was a
gray, grim gentleman in a long coat and tall, black hat, with a
caverned, bony face and large frame, whom it was not considered wisdom
to address without good reason, but who was seen often enough about the
village.
And it was not so strange as to startle Widow Bourn in her halcyon calm
when he knocked at her door one afternoon, and entered, doffing his tall
hat.
"I hope I don't disturb you, Mrs. Bourn." The widow signified her
unruffled comfort and hoped he would sit down.
"With your permission, I will do so."
Followed a pause while the widow pursued her knitting, and the squire's
reddish, bushy eyebrows drooped and gathered, while he studied a patch
of sunlight on the floor.
"I recollect that my son Morgan and your daughter Nellie were once quite
inseparable, a companionship regarded as singular, considering the
difference in ages, not common between a young man, approximately, and a
child. It was, however, I believe, a fact."
"Morgan was always fond of Nellie."
The widow hoped secretly that, whatever he intended to say, he would
continue to put it in the form of statements with which it was no
trouble to agree.
"I am told he has been here of late--in fact, frequently."
That also was true. The widow wondered why people were afraid of Squire
Map. He was a very comfortable person to talk with.
"Sickness or misfortune is not, if I understand his character, a thing
that ordinarily interests my son Morgan. I need not point out to you
that young people of a certain age are apt to give much attention to the
subject of marriage."
The widow felt a twinge of discomfort. It was but slight. She objected
that Nellie was young, hardly more than a child.
"In apprehension of the future, then, Mrs. Bourn, I have to say that I
doubt whether any young woman will find the happiness that is due her in
such an intimate relation with my son Morgan. I more than doubt it."
The widow dropped her knitting and stared helplessly.
"That is perhaps all I have to say, Mrs. Bourn. I apprehend something of
the character of your daughter Nellie. Her good looks are remarkable,
her disposition and intelligence even more interesting. That may not be
my only motive in coming here. Whatever the motive, I beg you to believe
the warning is entirely candid."
The widow felt herself in the shadow of a vague distress, painfully
called upon to say something appropriate. She murmured that Nellie was
going to live with her uncle that winter. The squire raised his hedge of
eyebrows suddenly.
"In Hamilton?"
With her uncle Thaddeus, the elder brother of Simon. He had taken so
much interest in Nellie.
The squire mused. Yes. Could Mrs. Bourn, if Mr. Thaddeus Bourn again
visited Hagar, contrive to suggest to him personally that his former
friend, Gerald Map, remembered him with pleasure and would be under
obligation to Mr. Bourn if he, Mr. Thaddeus Bourn, would call upon him,
Gerald Map?
The squire then took his leave. He came upon Morgan himself crossing the
green with his gun and hunting-dog. They faced each other and stopped.
Mr. Paulus from the post-office below the hill observed them.
"Resemblin'," he remarked, "two rams that's goin' to butt lightnin' out
of themselves in a minute."
"You still visit Hagar, then?" said the squire, his voice muttering
thunder.
"Quite often."
The trick of the gathered eyebrows was curiously common to both. The
squire took his time.
"You intend to marry Miss Helen Bourn?"
"I've been figuring on that for seven years. You haven't found me
changing my mind. I intend to do it."
"I intend to prevent it, Morgan."
"In Nellie's interest, sir?"
"I regard it as in her interest."
"I mean, is that your interest in it?"
"I shall not say."
"I didn't feel encouraged to think it was an interest in me. But it's
natural to ask."
"Quite natural."
The squire walked a few steps, stopped and looked back, his eyebrows
drooping over their melancholy caves. "I take no interest in your
success in any direction. I shall be measurably interested in your
failures. Whenever you have a failure to report, and are inclined to
report it personally, I shall be glad to see you."
"That's an odd offer, sir." Morgan swung his gun over his shoulder. "I
never saw any real need of a row, and I don't yet. And I don't pretend
to understand the mixture now."
The squire went his way without answering. Morgan looked after him, then
at his hunting-dog sniffing among the heaps of fallen leaves, at
Windless Mountain, and found nothing suggestive. He walked slowly
towards the Bourn house.
Ordinarily a man spent his time better in understanding his own purposes
than the purposes of other men. On the whole, they were more easily
thrust aside than understood. That was Morgan's settled conviction or
characteristic. He did not mean to make an exception in favor of the
squire. At the same time, "take an interest in your failures" had an odd
sound, and inviting him to come and report them was a bit cool, if he
only wanted to gloat over them. Hardly in "dad's" style, anyway.
"Gloating" was a futile occupation. The way the squire had taken that
row had been futile enough. But the question was whether he could really
do anything to make a nuisance of himself. It not appearing how he
could, Morgan concluded to shake off the subject, quickened his pace,
and whistled to his dog.
Mr. Paulus remarked, despondently, from his philosophic distance, "I
most thought they'd do some buttin'."
His despondency led to reminiscence. "Seems to me folks ain't so lively
as when I was a boy. The town's runnin' down."
He stood in his shirt-sleeves, though there was a bleakness in the wind
that hinted of December. The bare branches of the maples creaked, and
the dead leaves fled up the road in a whirl of dust.
* * * * *
It was late in December when Thaddeus came to Hagar again, a Hagar of
gray, frozen roads, little patches of dry, drifted snow, and nights
falling early. Mr. Paulus sat by a lamp in the rear of the half-lit
store, out of sorts with rheumatism and by reason of human nature. It
was five o'clock. Thaddeus entered with an air of happy secrecy, planted
himself, white-skinned, wrinkled, smiling, before Mr. Paulus's
red-and-round-faced gloom.
"Pete, I've been to see Gerald Map. Upon my word! Singular interview,
which I shall not tell you anything about."
"Ain't no need," grumbled Mr. Paulus. "Been agreein' on your epitaphs,
an' it's about time. Like to make epitaphs for all the danged fools in
town myself, an' fit the corpses to the dates."
Thaddeus sat down carefully, and wiped his glasses with snowy
handkerchief, leaning forward to the light; adjusted them, leaned back,
and rubbed his hands softly.
"Pete, when you've made up your mind about something, it's a
satisfaction to happen on--a--unexpectedly--a moral justification of it.
It really is."
"Don't want one. Wouldn't have no use for it. After those folks'd seen
their epitaphs I'd writ 'em, if they didn't do what was decent--"
"A--I was referring," Thaddeus insinuated, "to myself."
"You were!" Mr. Paulus reflected, dropped his eyelid, and grew a shade
more cheerful. "Moral justification! Well--I caught Cummings's boy
stealin' plug tobacco th' other day. An' he said he wanted it for
Halligan. Guess he did. Likely Halligan give him three cents for a
five-cent plug. He looked the picture of virtue, anyhow; said he never
chawed: he wa'n't up to no such viciousness. Moral justification! It's a
good thing."
Thaddeus smiled absently, pursed his lips, and was silent.
"Pete," he said at last, "how does green paint feel?"
Mr. Paulus's gloom faded away, and his interest, his love of life, came
gently back.
"Wet," he said, thoughtfully. "Gets stiff after dryin'."
"Ah," murmured Thaddeus, "exactly."
* * * * *
A few days later Helen and Thaddeus took their way down the Wyantenaug
Valley to Hamilton, and left Hagar to the wintry hills and Widow Bourn
to her own manner of content.
Chapter V
Introducing Hamilton and Saint Mary's Organ
Hamilton took its name from a little English hamlet. The statesman was a
coincidence. It lies in a bend of the Wyantenaug River, which hardly
ripples on the piers of its docks, ten miles from the sea and at the
head-water of the river's navigation. Its colonial memories gather about
the Common where the first settlers built their church and cluster of
shingled houses, and about the docks where ships from the South Seas
used to come in at flood-tide, from the capes and the Indian Ocean, from
the West Indies and from England, whalers, too, and many fishing-smacks.
The Common is half a mile from the docks. The old church stands in the
centre of it. Century elms and oaks are scattered about, not planted in
regular rows; but wherever it had seemed to be a good place for a tree,
there the tree had grown. On the south side, or Main Street, are the
courthouse and city hall; on the east side, or Charles Street, are the
Constitution and Wyantenaug clubs and a church with twin steeples; on
the north side, or James Street, square brick and stuccoed residences,
with lawns, and sometimes a silent fountain or solitary marble statue,
such as that dancing faun which appears to dislike its occupation; on
the west side, or Academy Street, there are stores and a hotel, but
farther up Academy Street are the law-school buildings, farther still
the academy itself, founded in the reign of William and Mary, where from
of old the Latin declensions were learned with the aid of a ferule and
curiously called "humane letters."
All the flat, green meadows that once stretched west and south from near
by the Common as far as the river are filled with brick blocks and
industry now--stores, factories, and tenements. Two railroads run in
subways to the station and bridge at the bend in the river. Jamaica,
India, and Academy streets follow the old meadow roads, along which
merchants in tie-wigs used to drive leisurely to the docks, where a
leisurely ship or two would be lying, and there examine their
consignments. North and east of the Common in the angle between Main and
Academy streets lies the section in which those for the most part used
to live who maintained mahogany tables and were able to exercise choice
as to where they would live. Shannon Street runs from the northwest
corner of the Common diagonally northeastward, crossing three irregular
openings, miscalled squares, where muddles of streets came together, and
monuments have been erected to commemorate two wars and a distinguished
judge. It ends in Temple Square, which marks its exclusiveness, and at
the same time admits the aristocracy of Shannon Street by having no
other entrance than Shannon Street. The houses about the square are much
alike, stuccoed, severe, with small porches, pillars, and iron fences
close to the sidewalk. The centre of the square has a high iron fence
about it, gates with scrollwork, which are commonly shut.
* * * * *
The house of Thaddeus faced on Philip's Road and Shannon Street, not far
from the monument to the War of 1812, the two streets meeting at dull
angles in front. There was more of it on Philip's Road, but it was
numbered with Shannon Street, because to live on Shannon Street was a
better principle. The street signs of Philip's Road at different times
had been changed to "Pequot Avenue," with a view to euphony and a
securer social position, but the commissioners were not persistent
enough, and nature was against them. The name hinted it once to have
been an Indian trail, or at least that some person had said so; and
whether this person was truthful and informed was forgotten, too. The
chronicles but mentioned the tradition. The road showed a certain
furtive vagrancy, running from the theatre at the corner of the fair
grounds barbarously and disorderly through two blocks, otherwise of a
shape without reproach, and shying away from the law school--an instinct
of untamed nature. It approached Shannon Street gradually with sullen
suspicion, caught sight of the monument of 1812, plunged suddenly
across, ran riot through a number of blocks, and escaped into the open
country. So that Thaddeus's house was numbered on Shannon Street.
Charles Street ran by it on the west, and so past Saint Mary's Church
directly to the Common. Helen looked first from the west window of her
room on Charles Street and saw bare boughs of maple-trees shining in the
cold moonlight, and across the way a long row of glimmering vestibules
and curtains; then from the south window, and saw a house with a large,
glowing window beyond a vacant space of lawn, over it the apse at the
rear of a church, with two small steeples, and farther on and up the big
steeple and gilded cross glittering in the mist of the moon. A lady
walked past and past the glowing window. The room within looked warm,
mellow, peaceful, but she seemed restless. Once she stopped and even
seemed to gaze up at Helen, but her face was in shadow. Helen thought
she was tall and had thick hair.
Some one was playing the organ in Saint Mary's, a sombre mutter and deep
breathing underneath, wild voices calling and crying above. More voices
gathered; they struggled, strained, shrieked reproach, and wailed for
pity, till one by one they were hushed and only the measured breathing
went on.
In the morning Thaddeus said: "You've done very well. I've heard that
the two things most worth while in Hamilton now are to see Mrs. Mavering
and hear Gard Windham's playing. Personally--" Thaddeus poised his
coffee-cup, "as regards Mrs. Mavering, I believe that to be correct. As
regards the other, it has sometimes seemed to me that it was not
exactly--a--civilized; that, in point of fact, it appeared to be at
times--it might be said to be at times--a kind of description of society
among the fallen angels--an objectionable subject for comment so public,
I should say, distinctly. It appears, I might say, to lack
restraint--a--good taste. I seem to see a person in impossible garments
dancing on the roof of Saint Mary's with great impatience, and stating
his distress in strong language. Personally, therefore, I wish Gard
Windham would keep his spectres out of my back yard, and--my dear Helen!
I beg of you, don't look at me in such a--a--vast manner. Mr. Windham is
considered a remarkable musician."
"I saw him too, Uncle Tad."
"On my word! Where?"
"On the roof. He was acting that way you said."
"Well, bless my soul!"
Thaddeus walked down-town thoughtfully. "She'll run off after one of
Gard Windham's ghosts the next thing. No more than likely. She has an
imagination that's as honest as the bank and the finest pair of eyes,
my word, in Hamilton."
In the afternoon Morgan came with his trotting stallion, Consul, and
drove her by Philip's Road to the fair grounds to show his paces on the
track. The day was cold, dry, blue, and still, but on the track the
speed made a rush of air against her face. The fair grounds were empty,
the track with a patch of snow here and there, the stands staring from
thousands of empty seats.
The great horse lengthened his stride. He was all power and ease. Such
controlled crescendo of speed seemed to mean deep reserves. There was a
thrill in the sense of those reserves.
"Do you like it, Nellie?"
"It's glorious!"
"Of course you like it. Hold hard."
"You're the right stuff, Nell," he said at Thaddeus's door.
Morgan's commendations of her had always been rare enough to be
thrilling. Her head sang with "Morgan, Morgan," the victorious, the
controlling. The sound of Consul's hoofs, the rush of wind in her face,
the flying objects, had been only expressions of the beat and rush of
his will. The sense of him was overwhelming. It surprised her to find
that Thaddeus appeared smaller than ordinary, more frail and artificial.
He seemed to be chattering things without significance. It was the
contrast with Morgan's immense genuineness and direct speech, and
because to have one's mind filled with Morgan was to be forced
imperiously to look at things in Morgan's way, which was an absolute
way. It brought one to despise decorations, mannerisms, whatever did not
come to the point and justify itself; to summon all vague emotion and
half-formed ideas of one's own to pay their way or admit bankruptcy and
disappear; to expect other people to meet one with the same solidity of
surface. Conversation, according to Morgan, which consisted of an
exchange of intuitions, was a kind of inflated currency; the bulk of it
was irredeemable; there might be a bullion fact or two behind, but to
try to do business on the basis of it was futile. A man might either pay
good coin or counterfeit for purposes of his own, but why play ducks and
drakes with himself? Thaddeus Bourn, by an odd inconsistency, was a
business man of some acumen, who outside of that chose to pretend to be
a child with strings of beads, and had nothing visible to gain by it. A
sentimentalist was the most irritating of men, who wasted his time
pretending to be more of a fool than he was.
So that Helen became engaged in judging Thaddeus severely, silently,
under Morgan's principles.
"Helen," said Thaddeus, using an interpretative eye-glass, "permit me to
say you're exceedingly young, delightfully young. I am pleased that you
enjoyed your drive. Our friend Morgan is an interesting barbarian. In
course of time, no doubt, you will see the advantages of civilization."
"What do you mean, Uncle Tad?" she said, pursuing cash values.
"There is a kind of barbarism," continued Thaddeus, "which refuses to be
civilized, and, in point of fact, eats the missionary. It finds the
missionary in that capacity good, and goes its way with--with
congratulation. It is striking; really, there is an impressive
simplicity about it; but, dear me, you know it will never do. It's a
little--isn't it a little obtuse? At least, my dear--at least, one might
be allowed to doubt whether--it does not seem so, personally, to the
missionary."
Thaddeus could hardly have hoped to dissipate any dominant sense of
Morgan from Helen's mind with such fugitive sayings. He was probably
testing, considering. "We are all egoists, my dear, except a few women.
Morgan is the primitive and aboriginal egoist. He is--a--aggressive,
carnivorous. I am a social egoist; your father, who wished, with
emphasis, to be remembered, was, pardon me, a regretful egoist; your
mother is a contented and unaggressive egoist. And so every one has, so
to speak, a class. It is no reproach; it is nature, my dear--law. Why
pretend to escape? But," he concluded, with grace and precision, "there
is a choice, and in matters of choice I always take pleasure in pointing
out to you the advantages of civilization."
Morgan still headed the march of Helen's dreams. The same moon, a little
fuller than the night before, laying a thicker wash of silver, hung over
the apse of Saint Mary's. She looked from her window at the roofs where
the organ player's spectre had seemed to be dancing then, mistily,
wildly, to the storm of sound below. The friendly window was dim, which
the lady had walked past and past, restless, tall, thick-haired.
How strong and wonderful was Morgan! What more could there be under the
moon and stars than the will to dare and the power to do? Helen had no
name for the spell. Only of late had she thought of it in detail. In old
times the word "Morgan" itself expressed the whole subject. It described
the beginning and the end of things.
The organ began to breathe somewhere behind the stained windows that
were just glimmering. It seemed to be laying the foundations of its
temple of sound on the undermost bed-rock. Now it was lifting the walls,
and one gathered and knew gradually how vast was the weight of the
masonry; how the power beneath that raised it foot by foot was vaster
still; how sure of itself was the power beneath, for certainly it only
used one hand to force that steady climb of masonry; the other ran
along, chiselling designs, gargoyles, pale statues in niches, sweeping a
series of half-circles and filling them with deep-sea and warmest sunset
color till, lo! it was a rose window.
Helen breathed fast, pressing her face to the cold pane. Something here,
too, was strong!
She snatched a cloak, sped through halls, down stairs, through more
halls and a back door, out into the moonlit yard. There was only a low
iron fence to jump, and she was under the curve of the apse. A door
stood half open in the corner where it joined the main building, and
within was a swing-door which yielded noiselessly. It was quite dark
there under the gallery, but a few gas-lights flickered in the chancel
and shone on lower ranges of gilded organ-pipes, banked away beyond in a
kind of transept, and on a choir screen that hid the organist. A few
dusky figures could be made out sitting in pews here and there in the
nave. Helen crept into a seat next a stone pillar that felt rugged and
cool, and was pushed forward partly into the pew.
The building of the temple had ceased, its visionary masonry, carvings,
and rose window vanished at a touch withdrawn. The organ was murmuring
down among the old foundations of the world, communing with the
beginnings of time, meditating to rise out of the deep with a new
creation. Otherwise the church was so still that the air seemed heavy
with the stillness.
A multitude of fleeting, flickering sounds broke out, like a burst of
fireworks, the air full of shooting-stars, blown bubbles, and tinsel.
There was a piping and dancing in the sunlight on delicate meadow grass,
by pipers and dancers who could not conceivably grow old. Then a voice
spoke suddenly among them. One could not tell where it came from or what
it said. It was cold, sombre, indifferent. But it ceased and the dancing
went on, more bacchanal now. There were perfumes, garlands on hot
foreheads, shrieking and whirring of stringed instruments, high
laughter, and swinging in circles. The loud, cold voice spoke again, and
left no echoes or after-murmurs. Something more quiet followed, as if
the memory of fear could not be quite put away, or remained in the form
of an altered mood. People walked hand-in-hand. There was warm twilight
and the ripple of a flowing river. After all, life was sweeter for
seriousness, love best in the stillness and twilight. The cold,
insistent voice rose, a stone pillar of sound, and all these things
became complaining ghosts before its weightier reality. So that at
length and in the end it remained alone, except for the mutter in the
pit below, and there was no triumph in its victory, but it continued
cold, sombre, indifferent, monotonous, heavy.
Some one beyond the pillar sighed in the darkness, and a hand fell on
Helen's hand which gripped the edge of the seat. Helen started and
whispered, "Oh, that was hateful!"
"I beg your pardon."
"He plays like anything, but--" She came out of her absorption to know
that she had been whispering her thoughts into the darkness, and that
the darkness had given forth an apology. A shadow the other side of the
little stone pillar seemed to be leaning forward now and looking at her.
A dress rustled.
"The music was sad, was it not?" and Helen whispered again:
"They tried all sorts of ways, and tried and tried, but it never was any
use, and they gave up and died."
"Did it seem so clear? He's beginning again."
It was a kind of nocturne or slumber song, a rocking movement with a
flute tone moving through a dimmer mist of harmonies, soothing here and
there a restless chord. "Has He not made the night for your slumber, and
darkened the earth for your sleep, and lit the earth softly with stars,
and moved it among them as a child's cradle is rocked? Wake, then, if
you may not sleep, but only to watch the moon rising and hear the croon
of the sea. Murmur and motion, motion and murmur; but remember wonder,
remember beauty, and let not anything persuade you from them. A moon and
a sea be in your heart, a hush of an inner place. _Ora pro nobis_, and
for the growth of flowers on ancient graves. _Requiescant in pace_,
souls stately and dead. If the truth is a dream, then the dream is true,
and therefore He made the night for your slumber, and darkened and lit
the earth and moved it softly among stars, and gave to the moon its
rising and to the sea its motion and murmur."
* * * * *
They went out by the swing-door together, passed from the shadow of the
apse to the level yard, and stopped.
"I think your name is Helen Bourn," said the other. "Mine is Rachel
Mavering. You will come to see me often. We are so near."
Chapter VI
Introducing Gard Windham and the Brotherhood of Consolation
One warm, rainy evening in the year '44, and in the great city that is
flanked on either side by a river and a strait, Father Andrew plodded
along an avenue of small shops, whose windows rested their chins on the
wet sidewalk and blinked through steaming panes. His dingy umbrella
dripped in the rain, and the skirts of his robe flapped against his
white stockings. He had in his mind no more than presently the opening
of the door in the brick wall of a cloister court, the sleepy roll of
the vesper service, refection, complines, a little private,
companionable prayer, such as ever seems to be heard kindly if one is
trustful, and then the sleep which comes to tired saint and sinner alike
with singular tolerance. Alas! one's fat legs became tired enough with
climbing stairways, and the soul sore with its strained sympathies.
A lean, wet-haired boy, plodding past him, glanced up with large,
drowsy-lidded eyes, and slid under his broad umbrella, making no
comment. Father Andrew chuckled and sighed. Giving and taking were a
simple incident, if giving were merely to carry an umbrella for two,
taking merely to step under it, and charity were not charity but
companionship.
"Where are you going?"
"I guess I'll go with you," after hesitating.
"But where did you come from?"
"Lappo's."
"And where's Lappo?"
"I don' know. He's dead."
Father Andrew chuckled and sighed again. Very likely he could not have
decided himself, from any earthly information, where Lappo was. "Was it
Lappo the fruit-seller? Yes, yes. And what is your name?"
"Gard Windham."
"Good--Well, well! A--mm--And Lappo wasn't your father? Who was?"
"I don' know."
"Anybody know?"
"I guess they don't."
"Well, what--that is, dear me! You don't say so! I mean, where'd he get
you?"
"Got me to the Foundlings. Lappo"--speaking in the way of quiet
conversation--"Lappo had fits."
"Yes, yes. Ga--"
"Gard Windham."
Father Andrew fell to patting one fat hand on the back of the other,
which gripped the umbrella. It was his habit to pat one hand softly over
the other whenever he was giving himself advice, or found himself driven
to some conclusion which could not be soothed or softened by any more
logical method. "Yes, yes. Dear me!" A life probably of unsanctioned
origin. It was apt to be the reason for the closed door and the lost
key.
They came to the door in the brick wall, and went from the street that
murmured sadly with the rain, into the little paved court that murmured
sadly with the rain.
Then Father Andrew sat down before the Father Superior, whose black eyes
glowed and dreamed, and felt himself like a small particle of dust,
happy in its humility.
"It is as you say," said the Superior. "A door is closed behind it.
Consecration is sometimes the more complete."
Father Andrew murmured that it was, and thought of the refectory and a
salad he knew of with peppers in it. He was used to thinking of salads
when he should not be thinking of them. He was sorry for it, and knew
that he had no claim to anything but humility.
"The face promises and threatens," mused the Superior. "How often is it
that the highest that is spiritual is based on the strongest that is
worldly."
The Superior was a man of symbols and analogies, swarthy of skin and
large of frame, one whose conceptions came red from their furnace.
Father Andrew's mind was nestled the rather in a certain padded
placidity. Moreover, there was the salad, with its peppers. No doubt, if
the Superior saw promises of a more than common consecration, and
threatenings of peculiar importance in this young person without origin,
it was a thing to be expected of the Superior's holy and profound
discernment. The Superior's spiritual enterprise was ever extraordinary.
He was of such as had from the beginning fought in the vanguard of the
Church, and been her glory and adornment. For himself, Father Andrew
discerned little further than to feel that his duty of distributing the
brotherhood's charities would be easier if every one had the young
person's native assurance. He felt that Providence, clearly with a
purpose, had bestowed upon himself such limited insight wherewith to be
content. It enabled him at least to admire the Superior without limit.
He went his way to the salad and the peppers, and Gard remained in the
house of the Brotherhood of Consolation.
* * * * *
It was a Catholic order, somewhat quiet in its ways. Not many of the
brothers were like the Superior, whose faith was a yearning in the blood
as fiery as young love, and for whom night-long struggles of prayer
appeared to be a normal way of living. For the most part they seemed to
be elderly men, keeping the rule without any apparent effort, but rather
as something it would be an effort to vary from. Probably they were
happier than most, in the shuffle of fate, manage to be. It would be
difficult to show they were not. The monastery bell clinked at small
intervals of the day and night, and slippered feet were ever going
whispering down the corridors on the heels of the sliding moment, to
place some office of performance or prayer accurately in its little
division of time. And this method and regulation of hours, so old, so
grown from measureless experience and minute knowledge of humanity,
seemed to be a kind of setting or framework to keep in place, till their
times came, the souls for whom atonement was accomplished; or for the
others, to keep the saving of their souls in orderly process of
accomplishment. The faces of all except the Superior looked something
alike. They broke easily into smiles, but laughter seldom went beyond a
happy chuckle.
The window of Gard's little cell looked over the court against the face
of a dead wall that ended a block of uniform houses. The cloister
covered two of the remaining sides, a brick wall ten feet high the
fourth, and a thick wooden door led through this into the street. The
court was asphalted, except for a strip under the dead wall, where one
Brother Francis planted things hopefully every spring, and found
entertainment all summer in the ill-advised efforts they made to grow.
It was Francis who taught Gard his Latin accidents, and later the
writings of those dignified heathen, Cæsar and Tullius Cicero; later
still his Greek, in which language appeared the writings of one
Herodotus, and of others called "Fathers of the Church," of whom he
might disbelieve Herodotus if he chose--an unnecessary distinction; he
believed them all fervently. One of his vivid memories was the
delivering before brothers Francis and Andrew, with violence and tears,
the oration, "Tandem aliquando, Quirites," with indignation because both
chuckled without intermission, and would not see the importance of
condemning Catiline. Francis had general charge of the monastery school,
which was filled and emptied daily through a special door on the avenue.
But the scholars seldom went further than reading and writing, sums and
fractions, and the lives of those saints who had had the more
interesting adventures; so that, under the Superior's permission, to
lead Gard into these high places of learning was a pleasure to which
Francis surrendered himself, he feared, with sinful abandonment.
Music, Gard studied with one Brother Johannes, who played the little
organ in the whitewashed chapel, all white except by the altar, where
there was a distinction of gilded woodwork, silver candlesticks, and
purple cloths, and so cold in winter that one's fingers were numb on
the keys. He was an old, bowed-over man, Johannes, with frail, waxen
hands, absent-minded, apt to forget his rule and be late, and not
understand why the Superior persisted in modifying his discipline. He
feared the Superior estimated his sins too lightly, and died in the year
'52, when Gard was seventeen. Gard had to play the organ at offices
after that, and to go daily three blocks up the avenue to the church of
the Sacred Trinity, and take his lesson from Fritz Moselle, a mighty
German from Strassburg, near the Rhine. He learned many things besides
harmony and counterpoint of Fritz, who was a cosmopolitan, and believed
not in the faith of man or woman; but he believed that art was the one
country of the soul, and that in conduct it was the duty of every one to
"do as he _verdammt_ please."
"Look you, _kleiner_! In de mass--yes. Some monk he haf art in
him--Gott, yes! He found a place for his soul to live in. He know diese
vorldt was a circus, und he vas a lil' boy und can't go. He mus' stay to
home. Ach! he feel sad. Und by-and-by he compose music to a circus in
hefen, vich vas de mass you play yesterday. Aber you mus' play de Bach
fugue severe. Maybe you make a good monk, but you haf too much luxury
in your bones to play de Bach fugue, _hein_? No? Play den, p'tit
anchorite, und let each of your fingers be von of de Ten Commandments,
or Gott! you don' play him not any." The organ at Trinity was quite
another matter than the little one which wheezed plaintively in the
brotherhood's whitewashed chapel.
Once a week he had to go to the Superior and be examined, and probably
read a chapter of St. Augustine. It was a ceremony of indefinite length,
for the Superior sometimes fell into a monologue, fervid as St.
Augustine's, while walking to and fro; and Gard used to imagine the room
full of spirits and misty angels, listening--all of them--breathless,
astonished, and a little frightened; for there could not be any one who
was not afraid of the Superior, unless it were the _bonus Deus_, and
even He must be astonished. At length the great, swarthy man would lay
his hand on Gard's head--a large hand, lean and strong, and vibrating
with the throb and blast of the furnace that was in him.
"Oh, Infinite and Tender, if it is needed for the saving of this young
soul, send him sorrow and pain, and let his grief be deep." And Gard
would come away tingling like the bells of Trinity, which had a chime of
twenty, and it made the bell-tower rock to play them hard. He never
after lost the impression that those interviews, of all kinds of human
experience, probably most resembled death and resurrection, and things
likely to happen at the gate of the celestial city. He grew to something
over a medium, slim height at this time, had drowsy eyelids, and wakeful
gray eyes under them. He laughed with a bass voice, liked brothers
Francis and Andrews, and Fritz Moselle, and worshipped the Superior, but
preferred to dodge him. The preference was probably a sin, one which
Brother Francis claimed to have prayed for in himself some twenty years
without effecting. He discovered that the Superior, Francis, and Fritz
Moselle had each severally a distinct point of view, and that you could
tell beforehand in what direction their interpretations of anything
would point. He found that he liked the organ in Trinity better than
Cicero, and watching the throng of men and women, with bright colors in
their hats, as he went to and from the brotherhood and Trinity, if not
better, at least differently, than either. And in the year '55 he
discovered that he was expected presently to take the vows, and awoke
to the further fact that the idea filled him with melancholy. It
resembled to him a sandy desert, with not an oasis in sight, not a
palm-tree against the sky.
The children who followed the piper of Hamelin, the mariners of Odysseus
who cocked their ears to the sirens, and other harkers to such
instrumental enchantment, have reported experiences that are much alike.
They heard, it seems, a high, thin fluting, ineffably sweet, which
seemed to imply that just beyond those blue hills, or those white
breakers, or a few turns of the next street, there lay an extraordinary
region overrun with smiling probabilities; for there, whatever one
dreamed of most was more than likely to be found, whether it was
sugar-plums, or a girl in the brake with sunny hair, or a sword and
shield, and a banner to follow withal.
But when Gard told Father Andrew that he would not take the vows, Father
Andrew acted as if it were a new thing, and lifted his fat hands
helplessly.
"Good--A--Dear me! That is, I mean why not?"
Then he patted Gard's hand with his soft palm, and chuckled and sighed.
"But it's true," Gard said. "I'll tell you why."
"The blessed--I mean, don't! Tell the Superior." And he scuttled away in
alarm, murmuring, "I wish that boy didn't surprise me so."
It had not occurred to Gard, but evidently he must tell the Superior;
and how could the Superior be made to understand about the high fluting,
and that it said "Follow, follow," so that one needs must go; and all
about the sugar-plums and the girl in the brake, and the banner and
sword and shield? And, if not, what was there to tell the Superior, more
than to make a bare statement of his rooted ingratitude, his
incorrigibly evil nature, and his resolve to go? Probably there was not
another such case in the history of orders, and he would be
excommunicated. He knew the Superior had meant him to be peculiarly
consecrated, and, because he had no origin back of the Foundlings'
Hospital, had thought him a soul only the better fitted to be seized and
sent heavenward powerfully. What right had he to interfere with the
Superior's great purpose? Nevertheless, he set his mouth and knocked on
the familiar door.
The Superior was pacing the room, as his habit was. It was a long,
gray-walled room, containing a few chairs, a picture of the
Annunciation, a writing-table with a crucifix over it, a bookcase with,
by Gard's frequent counting, one hundred and twelve books, leaving out
the controversial pamphlets. It was flooded with light from three large
windows. The floor was uncarpeted.
Gard entered on the subject promptly.
"I've found I can't take the vows, father. I'm afraid you'll never
forgive me."
The Superior stopped short; a spasm of pain crossed his face. Gard
thought, "Now it's coming."
"Do I seem to you unforgiving?" he said, sadly. "Do you know, that sin
of mine was pointed out to me thirty years ago, when I was your age. I
imagined it was conquered. I'm afraid I have not watched for it of late
years."
Gard was dumb with surprise. The Superior resumed his pacing.
"I have been hoping that you would come to me in this way of your own
will. You will think it best, then, to leave the brotherhood--at least
for a time? Have you any plans?"
"I would play in some church, father. There is Fritz Moselle."
"Moselle? Yes, your teacher. A curious instance. I remember him. Made up
of a thousand fragments, shivered pieces of glass, from what have been
faiths and systems of philosophy, and have had, perhaps, in their time a
certain fragile beauty. He probably uses such terms as 'art' and
'cosmopolitanism' in connection with it. A curious, modern type. You
will learn by observing such." There was a pause. Gard began to collect
himself.
"When I said for a time," went on the Superior. "I meant that my hopes
and your issues are in His hands, where they belong. You will write to
me if you are in need."
He stood still a moment.
"There is one result of experience for one soul and another for another.
'As often as I have gone forth among men I have returned home less a
man,' saith St. Thomas à Kempis; but the spirit of our time does not
speak in this way. I suppose"--smiling--"it is only the young men who
really hear what the spirit of the time says."
He put his hands on Gard's bowed head, and there was a long silence.
Then Gard stammered something, and presently--somehow--got away and
stood in the corridor alone. His eyes were full of blinding tears, and
yet there was a sense of wild relief. The interview was over, and he had
never seen the Superior so mild, so politely talkative.
The parting with the rest of the brotherhood was more of an ordeal.
Brothers Andrew and Francis kissed his cheek and turned away. It seemed
to him they looked suddenly old, and gray, and broken.
The cold, white corridor was full of ghosts of his own past hours and
days staring reproachfully. He passed out through the cloister court,
carrying his little bundle under his arm. The asphalt was wet with the
mist. Francis's flower-bed had only a few crooked, brown,
uncannily-shaped stalks, like dry mummies' hands thrust through the
mould and clutching blindly. He opened the door in the brick wall of the
court. The hinge was worn and the gate had been sagging lately. It
grated as he closed it behind him.
Chapter VII
Introducing Moselle and Mavering
It was yet early in the afternoon. There was a hint of the sun overhead,
a semi-luminous space in the thin mist, though the pavements were still
wet. The two opposite currents of flowing humanity on the avenue mingled
and jostled and dodged, with haste and with leisure, with good-humor and
petulance.
The avenue as far as Trinity, and Gard in his black robe, knew each
other very well. The policeman had nodded to him kindly for years, and
of late had taken to touching his helmet. The avenue did not appear to
see anything peculiar about him now, but it came to him with a shock, so
that he knew of a certainty that the relations between them were quite
changed. The policeman touched his helmet, the man at the newspaper
booth his hat, but that was a mistake. Properly, he ought to stop and
tell them it was a mistake, that he had put off consecration, declined
reverence, and cast his lot with them and the avenue's democracy.
The sexton of Trinity was sweeping the steps. He took off his cap when
Gard stopped to ask him where Moselle lived. "Two streets up,
riverence," he said, "an' turn to your left; number sixty-siven, on'y
it's rubbed out, riverence. Is it a bit o' music you're carryin', sor?"
Gard found where sixty-seven was rubbed out on a street door, and under
direction climbed three narrow flights, to a narrow, top-story hall,
with a skylight overhead and several doors, one with the grimy card of
Fritz Moselle tacked upon it. He knocked. "_Herein!_ Come! Veil, _du
lieber Himmel_! It's de lil' anchorite!"
The room which Moselle came storming across seemed to have been
originally three rooms, but the partitions had been mainly cut away.
There were two pianos, and two grates for coal fires. Floor and chairs
and tables were a welter of sheet-music, beer-bottles, steins, books,
flower-pots, cats, pipes, newspapers, and rumpled rugs. Moselle came
through it like a loose meteor, bent on breaking chaos into smaller
fragments; hair brushed back and yellowish, dingy with age, eyebrows
and mustache that swelled and dropped like cataracts, weight to threaten
floors, huge, fat fist, and porcelain pipe in mouth. He hugged Gard to
his mighty belly, muttered and puffed hoarsely, and pulled him across
the room to where a man in black had risen from his chair, who had a
long jaw and aggressive chin, shaven bluish, a slouched hat on his head,
a frock-coat, and was tall, gaunt and bony. He held out his hand.
"I'm glad to know you, Mr. Windham," he said, in a deep, drawling voice,
with a certain winningness of smile.
"'Tis Shack Mavering. He knows about you, _kleiner_," cried Moselle,
boisterous, explanatory. "'Tis a friend of Mephisto, der Faust-devil,
und of me. Ha! Sit down. Vat iss dat?" pointing to Gard's bundle.
Gard dropped his bundle beside his chair. At the brotherhood was orderly
calm, thoughtful silence, cool, clear walls, and whispering sound of
slippered feet. Moselle at organ lessons in Trinity had never seemed so
loose and free, broad, joyous, unlimited. Somehow Gard felt as if vacant
spaces about his soul were growing warm and inhabited. He laughed, and
knew no reason for it.
"I've left the brotherhood. I'm going to be--"
"Gott! Vat you going to be?"
Gard laughed again.
"I thought you might know, and if you did you'd be sure to tell me."
"So!" Moselle's face, when it dropped vivacity and took on gravity, fell
into rugged, powerful lines. "Got no money?"
"No."
"Nor clothes of a human too much, nor plans, nor friends but old Fritz,
nor knowledge of perversity? Good! All good! You will stay mit old Fritz
some veek or more, und I vill get you a church-organ to play somevere.
Good! _Hein?_ Shplendid! Shack!"--gesticulating over Gard--"look you at
his head, his eyelid, his shape of der hair-line. Vat? It is
super-sensuous Florentine, und de back of his head is Yankee, und so
hard you not break him mit an axe. I say in all human variety is law,
und device, und chain of causes, und you are mitout science to know not
music itself haf more severe und mathematic system. Dat boy is at de end
of his shtring of causes--at de end of his shtring. Ha!"
"End of his rope is the idiom," said Mavering, in solemn bass. "It
means he's down on his uppers. You'd better attend to me and learn pure
English. Your English is composite, mistaken, and slangy, and you are,
in body and mind, an epitome of gross fatness, whom no science of human
variety could classify."
The depth and solemnity of his voice, the funereal gravity of his long
face, seemed burlesquely classical. His speech was flowing, and composed
of structural sentences. Moselle waved his pipe joyously.
"_Continuez_, Shack! Heet her up! Advance! Boy, I gif you a lil' pipe
and a lil' beer, but not much, um so you be not sick. My friend Shack is
eloquent und foolish. Und ve tree vill talk now till to-morrow is gray."
The talk ran on. Already Gard seemed to himself not merely an hour, but
days, weeks--a period which the clock could not understand or
measure--away from the brotherhood. The country of ideas into which he
had come was a loose republic, where no man knew the limits of his
personality or his daring. He might loosen his belt and shout, if he
chose. Here conversation was erratic and glancing, not necessarily an
exchange of what one really thought; and yet, however obliquely from
his meaning one spoke, there seemed to be less misunderstanding than
among the brothers, with whom the guiding of the tongue to simple truth
was a matter of searching conscience. And again, at times, both Moselle
and Mavering would say things that seemed to Gard to meet the fact or
question before them with a sharper recognition, a more instant candor.
He admired and laughed in pure joy of the brave, new world that had such
creatures in it, with unstraightened ideas that were free to dance in
the sunbeam or dig in the mine, and forget whether they had or had not
any connection with the soul's salvation. It was a kind of renaissance
for him, a discovery of humanism and the pagan pleasure of mere living
with vivacity of body and mind. Here on the threshold of his new life
were two to greet him who were witty, kind, ironical, experienced, and
seemed to be without care or fear. If, as Moselle had implied, there
were something hard and critical in the back of his head, some reserve
of judgment, something not plastic and receptive, but resistent and
decisive, it did not trouble him now with criticisms or decisions, but
let him bask and admire.
"Dey want an organist in Hamilton. It is Saint Mary's, a church
Protestant Episcopal, called High Church, _videlicet_, protesting mit
apologies, und cultured to beat de band, vich is an idiom obscure, my
friend Shack. Vat band?"
"Brass band."
"Ach so! Vell, vat did I mean?"
"Your German mind was headed right, but went astray on a by-path of
idiom. Saint Mary's culture is not in competition with a brass band in
blue uniform, but aims at the highest orchestral and surpliced effects."
"Vell, a choir committee wrote me, anyhow, und I loss de letter.
_Helas!_ I loss everyt'ing--my reputation, my bes' friends! I put 'em
somevere und forget 'em. Vat did I do mit my letter?"
"I suppose it's in your pocket."
"Gott! So it is! Vell, dey vant an organist, und Saint Mary's--"
"Has a three-banked organ, and Hamilton is a sleepy place, good for your
neophyte to sit down in and learn the alphabet of humanity. I know Saint
Mary's."
"Ach! Plazes! So you do!" Moselle stopped short and looked at Mavering
under overhanging, yellowish eyebrows. "Am I intruding--roping in your
domestic circle, Shack?"
"I think likely. It's no circle. It's an incommensurable ratio. You know
that."
"I know no more than you like, Shack," said Moselle, gently. "You haf no
objections?"
"None at all."
"Vell," said Moselle, after a pause, "so it is."
"Mr. Windham," said Mavering, flowingly, "nature cast me for the part of
the villain. She gave me the countenance of one reflecting darkness, a
voice unfit for lighter remarks than 'I will be revenged!'--made me a
lean and hungry Cassius, and bid me assassinate and betray. The inspired
text has it that 'All the world's a stage.' It follows that every man is
cast for a rôle, and if he tries to introduce anything not in character
he appears to make a mess of it, the management docks his salary, and
the public blights his career. I once tried to play a hero and a lover,
and invited the conjunction of happy stars. It was no good. The notion
of it, as you see, is causing this German monster to make a braying ass
of himself."
"Ho! Ho!" Moselle chuckled, and puffed. "Der _kleiner_ don' know your
stage und your Shakespeare. He shtare like a house afire."
"Oh, that's it."
"Vat is dat, Shack, a house afire? An idiom extravagant, confusing."
"It means he stares with breathless expectancy, with bewilderment and
fear. I don't recommend the figure to your use. The conception of red
conflagration and fire-bells is a Shakespearean flight, and you can't
handle combination figures. You stick to a simple retail line of
business for cash or you'll bust. You can't take risks and thirty days'
credit for a meaning. The English language has no confidence in you. You
aren't sound for the market. Mr. Windham, you will probably meet in
Hamilton a Mrs. Mavering, who lives close by Saint Mary's, and who will
say nothing whatever of me. If I were you I would cultivate her
acquaintance, but imitate that particular reserve."
"Vell," said Moselle, gently, "das iss good, but don't fill de _kleiner_
mit bevilderment. He don' understand, und he take indigestion. Go buy de
grocery und de beer, Shack, und ve make a dinner here, und to-morrow de
_kleiner_ shall haf human clothes, und go to the theatre und see friend
Shack arrested for his vickedness in de fif' act."
After a while the dusk began falling. When Mavering came back with
bundles and a basket containing a hot shoulder of meat from the baker's,
the long room was lit glimmeringly by a lamp or two. And Moselle
declared finally, and referred especially to the beer and seasoned
cheese, that he was in favor of the animal half of man.
"He develope his soul too fast. Let him vait, let him vait. For his
shtomach und feet haf stood by him, his friends from old, so old, und
maybe his soul don' do so. She act frisky, _hein_?"
Mavering said, "I'm something of a conservative myself. Man ate before
he prayed and loved the way he ate, but we live in a radical age."
Then Moselle played dream music, with fluffy, floating things in it, on
one of the pianos, as though he never ate anything heavier than lettuce,
and was, in the verity of music, a fair maiden who walked in a
green-and-white garden and was pure and slim as the lilies; a woodthrush
in the distance sang a love song that was like a hymn, but never came
into the garden, and finally each lily became the spirit of a lily, the
woodthrush the memory of a song, and garden, maiden and all went up a
silver moonbeam to the moon.
Moselle played on through the evening, and towards twelve Mavering rose
and left. Half an hour later Moselle swung around on his piano-stool.
"Shack gone? _Kleiner, kleiner!_ your eyes are full mit damp shleep;"
and he looked at Gard with his own eyes, grave and old and calm. "I
denke you are more lofable als lofing, _kleiner_, an' for an artist de
first's nodding, de last is all. '_Geliebt und gelebet_.' Aber one must
_lieben_ in order to _leben_. '_Geliebt und gelebet_.' Ach! I haf so."
Gard slept in a room at the end of the hall, woke in the dawn, and lay
waiting for the bell before matins. Then he remembered, and laughed
aloud. But a throng of memories rose reproachfully. The chapel organ
would be played badly now; Francis would drone all day in the
schoolroom, but there would be no one for him to talk with about
Cicero's beautiful adjectives; Brother Andrew would pat himself on the
back of the hand, look wistfully down the corridor, trot away to the
refectory, and find the salad uninteresting.
* * * * *
So Gard became organist at Saint Mary's in Hamilton, in the fall of '55,
and in time a noted young person. In the immediate years that followed,
the old life came to seem hardly more than a vivid dream, or a story
told him by another man who had never left the brothers, but was still
playing for offices and hurrying along white corridors. He had time on
his hands, and read eagerly, and his rooms grew littered like Fritz
Moselle's. He hardly knew what he was himself, except a kind of highway,
along which the thoughts of other men, and emotions that he might claim
his own since they came from nowhere in particular, travelled hastily.
It was something additional to that sense common to humanity of
existence as a hurried journey from the unknown to the unknown, his
ignorance of his antecedents back of the Foundlings' Hospital. Yet he
seemed to feel no curiosity about them. They had no claim upon him,
those antecedents, and he had none to them that he cared to put forward.
The past might bury its wrecks if it could. His name might be a clue, or
it might be the effort of an inventive or reminiscent nurse. He never
inquired and never knew, then or thereafter, but was content to have and
possess it, as something that had floated ashore with him and served
well the purposes of a name. After all, the mortal millions have their
severance from each other ruled with not so great a difference in point
of isolation, and with the same "salt, estranging sea." Each is for
himself the centre of things; the currents of the deep swing round him;
he is alone with his main issues.
Gard saw a place and repute slowly forming for him, and had almost come
to see himself a citizen of Hamilton, the straight road of a quiet life
stretching before him under a cool gray sky. Moselle, whom he went down
into the greater city to see now and then, doubted that outcome.
One night in January he came down Charles Street towards the church. He
had fallen into the habit of playing an hour or two in the latter part
of the evening, and people in the neighborhood had accepted the custom.
Some formed habits of their own to meet it, and went to their windows
regularly about nine to hark whether he played that night. It was not
an agreement, but the silent adaptation in close communities of habit
to habit.
The snow was falling, blown by a keen wind, and the great side window of
Mrs. Mavering's house glowed warmly through the sharp, slanting lines of
the snow. It occurred to him that he would rather talk to Mrs. Mavering
that night than summon only spectral visitations from Saint Mary's
organ. At that moment Helen clung with warm fingers to Mrs. Mavering's
hand, saying, "I shall call you Lady Rachel, because you're beautiful."
Chapter VIII
Of Mrs. Mavering, and of the Philosophy of the Individual
Helen put her forehead against the cold window.
"It's snowing. Do you think he'll play to-night? But he would if he knew
we wanted to hear him, wouldn't he?"
"If he knew that we knew he knew it, he probably would."
The fire glowed and snapped, and reflected its varying mood on the
andirons and the red-and-white tiles of the fireplace. Mrs. Mavering,
garmented in black and dusky red, lay back in a deep chair, and the
firelight played across her face and dress in a more subdued manner than
on the tiles and andirons, as if it felt that was not the right place to
be familiar and reckless.
"Why?"
"Men take great pains to be nice to us if they see their sacrifice is in
the way to be appreciated. They would rather have the sacrifice
appreciated than the service. Oh, it isn't like that, dear eyes!--not
nearly so solemn!" Helen had come and curled herself at Mrs. Mavering's
feet to consider this proposition. "If you always look at me so you'll
frighten me out of all my little cynicisms, and I think them pretty."
Mrs. Mavering reminded one of something costly, like a vase upon which
some master-workman had spent himself, careless of time, considering
only line and curve, and how it might be made to glow from within and be
more than worthy of the palace of the king; and as if afterwards, when
the palace had been sacked, and fallen with ruin and wailing, and the
vase had somehow escaped destruction, it had come to stand in the
guarded corner of a museum. In this meaning Thaddeus had spoken of her
as something to be seen rather than some one to know. Thaddeus's social
instinct was quick, and sometimes accurate. He need not have been so
mistaken, understood as implying the general facts of a period in Mrs.
Mavering's life.
Helen demanded personality even of things. She inveterately accused
persons of being persons, and brought them to her judgment bar to
account for themselves. Thaddeus thought Mrs. Mavering should be looked
at for art's sake, for the improvement of the tone of society; that an
official sign, so to speak, was somewhere at hand, warning that no one
was permitted to touch her humanly.
Helen had not seen the sign. They had met first in the dark and had been
introduced by a sigh, and she had never been aware of the barrier with
which Mrs. Mavering was observed to be surrounded. Only Mrs. Mavering
was given to riddling. She acknowledged herself a person to Helen,
stormed by her headlong admiration, but she never accounted for herself
at the bar, or, as Helen stated it. "Whenever you say something, and I
ask what you mean, you always act as if you didn't like what you meant,
but you never say what it was." So far as our sayings come out of
ourselves and ourselves out of our experience, if part of the experience
were such that we wished to fly from that part of ourselves and could
only flutter the more about it, supposing this to be Mrs. Mavering's
case, her impulse to dodge Helen's bar of equity might be
understood--and the fact, too, that she found herself ever provoking an
arraignment. Helen had to dismiss case after case for lack of evidence,
and because the defendant wanted to play something else. So that she
only wondered now what Mrs. Mavering meant by "Men would rather have the
sacrifice appreciated than the service," and whether one would naturally
become difficult by being ten years older.
"I shall call you Lady Rachel, because you're beautiful," she said, and
the organist of Saint Mary's stood outside the while and thought he
would rather talk to Mrs. Mavering than call spectres from the peaks of
his gilded organ-pipes that blown, desolate night.
Of course, one could not become beautiful like Mrs. Mavering--not in a
hundred years. One's nose would not become straight, one's hair black
and heapy, nor eyes change from gray to amber and brown; and in order to
become as difficult it would be necessary to be married and have one's
husband become unapparent without becoming dead. Mrs. Mavering was an
arduous ideal. Helen doubted that she would ever achieve it.
"Then I must call you Sir Helen, because you're such a valiant knight,
and always charging something, and driving a spear into the middle of
an idea, as if it were a dragon. But my ideas are not honest, so they
have no middles, and it only makes them look mussy."
"Then," said Helen, quickly, "if I'm a knight I choose to be in love
with you. You're locked in a tower and I'm after an ogre, only I don't
make out very well what he's doing. Of course, he growls and rages."
"I dare say he does."
"Well, then, Saint Denis Montjoie! It is a beautiful fight."
Gard was announced and presently came in. Mrs. Mavering said:
"Can you play a game? You haven't met Miss Bourn? She is pursuing an
ogre around a tower. I am locked in the tower. She doesn't care whether
I like being rescued or not. She isn't sure yet about the ogre, but
thinks she needs one."
"I am a humble person; so is an ogre, isn't he?" said Gard. "Maybe I'd
do. An ogre ought not to be proud."
"But he always is," said Helen, eagerly. "He keeps a tower to be proud
in."
"Where is my tower, then?"
Helen hesitated. She had never seen him near before. He looked a little
singular, not quite like other people, a little weary and very
white-faced, a little impenetrable. She remembered all he had said to
her through Saint Mary's organ, things sensitive and intimate.
The process of putting together two groups of impressions to make one
personality is difficult, and one ought to have time. But he insisted on
knowing where the tower was. "I don't know how to be an ogre without
it," so that she said, hastily, "You must have one in the organ-loft,"
and was not at all sure that it meant anything, if it were not an entire
mistake, and was glad when they sat down without calling for more
explanations. She slid down to her old place by Mrs. Mavering and half
listened to them, and half studied a problem, to see what was honestly
true about it, or whether it had any middle.
When Helen was little, she used to compose parables and sermons, and
sometimes wept to think how beautiful they were, and declaimed them to
her mother, who had only one comment to make. It was, "Why, Helen!" Such
was the parable of the Perfect Cat, who lived a life of absolute
sinlessness. There was a sermon on David and Absalom--"Oh, Absalom, my
son!" It was tearful at that point. But the moral was that Absalom was
hung by his hair--a sorrowful incident. People should not make their
children have long hair. "And I have asked you three times to-day,
'Mother, please, may I cut it off?' and you just said, 'Why, Helen!' and
I'm not going to ask again. I'm going to put you in the closing prayer."
So that now she put her conclusion into a sermon, to the effect that
every one had a tower in which part of himself or herself was a proud
ogre, and another part was a valiant knight who ought to eventually
thrust a lance into the middle of the ogre to make him humble and
social, or else dead, so that both together might become a perfect
character before the benediction. Because a proper sermon was like a
story, inasmuch as in the first part you made things look as badly as
possible and talked about wickedness, so that everybody might become
interested; and in the last part you talked about goodness and made
goodness succeed after difficulty, so that everybody might become calm;
and in the benediction you told everybody to be happy ever after.
"Do you read Emerson," Gard was saying to Mrs. Mavering--"the
Massachusetts lecturer? He says, 'The Eden of God is bare and grand';
but I don't see anything more than a personal fancy in that. Anyway, the
poets would be wrong in putting music in such an Eden. An organ is full
of sin and sorrow. The pipes always seem to me to hold so many human
emotions compressed and stowed away, like the genius in Solomon's
bottle. Say one of them is a pure aspiration and one of them a snarling
desire. You set the snarling desire chasing the pure aspiration, and you
have one of the simple formulæ for expressing humanity. It isn't Eden."
"Oh, that's like my knight and ogre!" cried Helen. "Do you do sermons
and parables? But you have the wrong one running away."
Gard looked surprised, and then laughed. "It was all going on round and
round a tower, wasn't it? And if the tower were small you couldn't tell
which was running away."
"But _they_ would know!" said Helen, triumphantly.
"But they might differ, or they might forget, on account of going so
fast. Then they'd have to stop and ask the lady in the tower to
straighten them out."
Helen looked puzzled, felt that the parable was too mixed to mean
anything now, and suspected Gard of mixing it frivolously.
"The lady in the tower is too dizzy, you both run about so fast," said
Mrs. Mavering. "But she thinks Helen would never run away."
"There's no chance for me to be proud in this tower," said Gard, and
Helen murmured:
"It's all mixed up."
"Music, after all," said Gard, breaking a few moments' silence, "leaves
you unsatisfied at your strongest. It is misty emotion. It has wings,
but no feet. You seem to want something that has more grip and bite."
"That is heresy from you," said Mrs. Mavering.
"I've made a creed of heresy, you know. That Massachusetts lecturer
preaches the creed, 'Every man his own issue, for conformity is death.'
But I don't know whether he has said that conformity to the forms you
have made yourself is as much death as conformity to those made by other
men. I call myself a musician, and something keeps asking me, 'Is that
all?' It seems to think it time I called myself something else."
"Then why not call yourself a still better musician?"
"Of course, one needn't stand still altogether. You become more skilful
with your fingers and feet, and learn better how to render and interpret
the emotions, musical ideas, more or less eccentric crotchets, of other
men, the best of them dead. Their emotions are not so important, are
they? Haven't we eyes of our own to see that grass is green? Oh yes, we
compose. Have you seen my new book? It consists of a prelude, that is
very bad, and highly praised by competent critics in journals; an
offertory, in which Charity appears as despondent of the results of the
collection--I'm conceited about that piece--and a symphony in five
movements, which is a padded invalid. Room enough for improvement, you
see. I might learn to symbolize a mood more accurately. It wouldn't make
the mood any less futile. The point is really that it doesn't get you
out of a rut, if you make the rut even a very good rut of its kind. The
more you dig at it the deeper it grows. There is too much that you never
see and never know. You take the shape of your mould. Do you know Dr.
Holmes' 'Chambered Nautilus'? The nautilus made a larger shell for
himself every time he changed, but the poet didn't comment on his
making each shell of the same shape as the last. He was a stale
conformer after all, that nautilus."
"Do you think he would have done better if he had tried to make a shell
for himself like an oyster's or a crab's?"
"He wouldn't have done better in the matter of shells. But personally he
would have gone up the scale of intelligence."
"He would have been very uncomfortable."
"Oh, it wasn't claimed that conformity was not comfortable. It was only
said to be death."
"Didn't the nautilus have a very beautiful shell?" Mrs. Mavering spoke
in a low voice. "If you ask me, I don't think human life is better than
music. I think music is the better of the two." Gard seemed mutely to
understand her, and was silent a moment as if to let the shadow pass,
then said:
"Music is a little like the nautilus-shell, isn't it?--the venturous
bark that flings its purple wings in gulfs enchanted, and all that. But
isn't 'all that' rather a foolish thing to do forever? Purple wings in
enchanted gulfs--it's a narrow experience when you come to think of it."
Gard rose to go, but stood a moment looking at the two, as if he wanted
to fix the picture of them and carry it away; of the woman with heavy
hair, in a black-and-red dress, who gave the impression of wearing
jewelry and really wore none, and the girl in white with a blue band at
her throat, slim hands that somehow looked so strong, and gray eyes that
demanded candor and offered imaginations. The firelight played over them
as if it were trying to illustrate the subject, saying, "This is worth
while to understand."
"Do you know there's a war coming?" said Gard. "Trumpets and drums are
in the air."
After that he went away, and through the blowing storm along Philip's
road to his rooms, which looked out on the law school square. The front
room was full of the traces and tokens of the six years past, indicating
what the mental life then had been, but not very clearly what result had
come out of it all. There were books in number and confusion, as if he
did not care for them in a bookish way, but only as mines, clefts, or
fissures where metals are sometimes to be found--and if found and dug
out, the source has no more personal value. There were some
lounging-chairs, a desk with a litter of sheet-music and scored
manuscript.
Gard's face was whiter and thinner than of old. It was noticeably white,
with heavy eyelids, and the peculiar curve of hair-line that Moselle
once noticed. One might fancy a trace of the cloister in it, not in
anything that could be called clerical, but in something that could be
called isolated. If there is manifestation in all faces of the spirit
within, it would have seemed to manifest a certain separateness; as if,
having learned in the cloister, at the age when one takes fundamental
impressions, that a man is nothing else noticeable than a soul alone,
with the eternities watching and the one issue of its salvation before
it, he had never been rid of that sense of things, but had only altered
his conception of the issue, and so the terms of description and the
method of pursuit. This sense of things, of life as a kind of personal
adventure, a kind of fortune-hunting after an ideal of self-culture, an
ambition for a mental career rather than one apparent outwardly to men,
may have sprung from far back in his nature and been of precloistral
origin, come slowly of late years to a theory. The peculiarity of his
coming, as one dropped out of a darker cloud than most men come from
into the light of consciousness, may have added to this dim sense of
isolation, of adventure, of destiny experimenting more definitely with
him, of eternities more watchful. Not that he compared himself in that
way with other men. The comparison, if it had occurred to him, would not
have seemed interesting, or bearing on the issue. To each belonged his
independent adventure; each was at the same time an end to himself and a
means to other people.
Such progress and pilgrimage had its own perils, excitements, and new
landscapes opening unexpectedly.
The picture that remained in Gard's mind of Mrs. Mavering and Helen
seemed to him significant of something--Helen looking up with question
and appeal to the older woman, the coloring, the firelight. She had
brave eyes, that girl. One ought to see more of women. Mrs. Mavering
looked like a kind of imperial exile. He sat down at the piano and
touched a key thoughtfully. They signified something, surely, if one
could put it into form. He wondered what had become of Mavering. Fritz
Moselle was growing apoplectic, and people were talking about war. If
old orders were changing, it was probably time they changed.
Chapter IX
Of Estates in Happiness
"In point of fact," said Thaddeus, "I am proposing a partnership, to be
entitled 'The Helen Banking and Brokerage Company,' organized to do
business for a commission."
"I don't know that I understand," said Mrs. Mavering, slowly.
"We make investments at interest, speculate in futures, examine
securities." He paused, seeking precision of phrase. "It is in terms of
happiness. One pursues it--happiness. One sees fortunes in it lost and
fortunes won. I find I have spent my own capital. I have to be content
with a commission."
But then it was not evident that Mrs. Mavering need be in the same case.
It would be poor taste to seem to assume it. "In point of fact," she
suggested a hoarded wealth, an unknown, mysterious sum in reserve,
rather than even poverty in respect to a future. But she might be
allowed to express for herself the terms of her profit.
"I think I understand now," she said.
Her veil had little beads of moisture on it from the damp March wind
that blew down Shannon Street in their faces. The gutters were slushy
running streams, the elms shook their branches restlessly, as if full of
the sweet pains of stirring sap and the coming birth of leaves.
"Acting," continued Thaddeus, "in behalf of the Helen estate, which I
believe, I trust, will prove large, but is, I think, I fear--"
"You think uncertain?"
"Doubtless uncertain. There are elements of uncertainty. And in this
matter I must confess myself only a man, a sad limitation. Mrs.
Mavering; somewhat elderly, too; and so, one who feels he must husband
his slender resources. I fear I depend very much on that commission. I
fear the bankruptcy of that estate would be disastrous for me."
Mrs. Mavering drew her veil closer, and they walked on a few moments in
silence. Then she ventured:
"Uncertain, of course; but you spoke of elements."
"I might mention, in regard to the nature of it at present, a certain
impetuosity, a determination, a loyalty perhaps a little too inflexible.
Flexibility is, so to speak, to have a good portion of one's capital
near by for emergencies. I might mention, to speak technically, as a
liability, a certain Morgan Map."
"But that," said she, hurriedly--"I mean. I know him only slightly, but
Helen said--"
"You would wish me to convince you that he is liability rather than an
asset."
"Why not convince her?"
"Ah, but there! Might it not--I have tested, I fear it would, I ask your
better intuition--might not the attempt, if made seriously, defeat its
end by rousing that loyalty, giving perhaps direction and opportunity to
that--that inflexibility?"
"It might."
Thaddeus lifted a neatly gloved hand, and cane swinging between the
fingers.
"To be flexible, to adapt oneself. There are so many doors, it is well
not to be too absolutely one kind of key. I have heard a phrase, which
appears to be a recent discovery--this phrase, 'The survival of the
fittest.' It was explained to me, who am not profound, I confess. Dear
me, no; nor a reader of new books. But I understood it to mean the
survival of that which fits, the introduction of order by the
elimination of the disorderly, of the--a--antagonistic, and so the final
result of a race and a world to fit each other like hand and glove. A
happy consummation."
"But Helen--"
"Exactly. Helen's ancestors--my own, too; how singular! They cultivated
a characteristic--a tendency to martyrdom. I believe a certain Bourn was
put to death in the sixteenth century for obdurate persistence in a
proscribed opinion. Probably later, in New England, some of them were by
their neighbors said to be 'sot.' My brother was an obdurately unhappy
person."
"But this Morgan Map?"
"An aboriginal, an anachronism. He belongs in the primeval wilderness
with other--pardon me--brutes. His father had a singular opinion of
him--a--that reminds me; he had a very singular opinion, very singular."
Thaddeus mused a moment.
"Mrs. Mavering, will you dine with us on Wednesday?"
They came to the corner of Charles Street, and parted at Mrs. Mavering's
door.
To obtain a small measure of happiness as a commission for managing
another person's estate in the same kind of property! She wondered if
Thaddeus were not really a wise man, who made a pretext of frivolity. He
seemed to have definite theories of things. It might be his rapid and
light manner was part of his wisdom and his theory, as if he had found
it the part of wisdom not to look gravely and long at any phase of human
life. Who knows what might be disclosed, for all depths are black and
threatening. One should touch surfaces and slip away before the depths
boil up. If Thaddeus had really attained skill and success, it was
something to admire. For herself, she seemed to have failed. She had
stirred the depths and had not found them on the whole pleasant.
Thaddeus's house was four-square, of a yellowish stucco, with a raised
entrance and a windowed cupola. They built so, and so decorated within,
when they endeavored to build decoratively, a half century or more ago;
they impressed a generation following with a hunted, persistent sense
that in some manner a marble mantel, a plaster ornament on the ceiling,
an ormolu clock, a flowered carpet, and china figurines with neat
stockings, were the types and accepted symbols of earthly splendor.
Plush upholstery was a proper thing in Thaddeus's day, and Thaddeus had
it. He desired the presence of that which was fit, accepted, not
provocative of dispute.
And so his little dinner of five passed fitly. He manipulated Gard to
the piano, Helen near by, Morgan in position to observe her, and Mrs.
Mavering in position to observe all. He drew his chair near Mrs.
Mavering and smiled a wrinkled smile of content. He felt creative with
respect to the situation, a strategist who had securely arranged how the
enemy should act.
"He will growl," he said to Mrs. Mavering, softly; "the bristles will
rise on his spine. My dear Mrs. Mavering, a primary egotist is an
impossible person out of the jungle."
Mrs. Mavering thought she could see why Morgan suggested to Thaddeus
such terms as "primitive," "aboriginal." There was something rugged and
rough-hewn evident in the first place, a massiveness of antediluvian
bone, such as they dig from the clay banks of rivers. "We are all
egotists," was Thaddeus's theory, "but the primary won't do." He is
savage and solitary, too direct, too elemental. He jumps to his aim. He
does not care, so he gets it, what happens in between. He does not care
for minor points. But civilization is a system of minor points. He has
no sympathy, cannot move from his footing an inch to take another point
of view. Doubtless he will lie and betray, for they are minor points of
method, and faith and truth are social products. At least, he will not
notice what he may happen incidentally to step on, or what becomes of an
opposition after it is sufficiently smashed. "Why," he asked,
primitively, "why should I?"
But Mrs. Mavering thought all this seemed an airy structure, built on a
theory which was very likely a prejudice.
Gard was playing something martial, with the shrilling of fifes, the
mutter of drums in it, and the measured tramp of feet. He was looking at
Helen to see if she knew what he meant, because one liked to look at
her, no doubt; it seemed to justify itself; but more particularly
because he had fancied of late that her face was a kind of magic mirror,
such as enchanters used to raise upon by incantation their pictured
prophecies, and that he was become able to summon to it the shadows and
counterparts of his moods, and watch the brightening and darkening of
himself in reflection.
When he would come from the organ-loft, find her with Mrs. Mavering in
the dark under the gallery by the stone pillar, and the three go out
across the yard to Mrs. Mavering's house, he always found that Helen's
interpretations, however wide they might be from his own in point of
verbal symbols and form of allegory, followed the mood with accurate
detail. Only the mirror tended to add moral judgments, or to substitute
the terms, right and wrong, for beautiful and ugly, for harmony and
discord, and in that respect appeared to be inaccurate. Still, it
enabled him to realize himself with curious vividness.
Helen's face was flushed. Presently Gard became absorbed and looked at
it no longer. He was trying to get not merely the sound of the marching,
the ripple of the flags, and the elation of the crowds, but something
about devotion and the spirit of the nation shining like the sun on the
faces of its soldiers. Mrs. Mavering, too, turned from Helen, and
noticed how thickly Morgan's yellow eyebrows were knit above his eyes,
which seemed to have a kind of green glare in them. They were fixed on
Helen. A sudden memory shot through Mrs. Mavering's mind like a sharp
pain--she shivered. Thaddeus noted it.
"Exactly," he murmured to her; "quite so."
Gard found his theme and began weaving it in among the drums and fifes,
increasing it until drums, fifes, and flags seemed only like the surface
ripple of a deep stream, so grave it was, so large and resolute, so
brimmed with its purpose. Helen saw the success and bent forward. Morgan
made a slight choking noise in his throat.
"Exactly," murmured Thaddeus; "quite so."
Gard finished abruptly and turned to Helen. "I don't suppose it's half
true." He appeared to be continuing the subject, secure of her
understanding it up to that point.
"Oh, why not?"
"It doesn't read like it in the newspapers," he said, and rose presently
to go. Thaddeus, too, must run down to his club; would Mrs. Mavering
forgive him and stay with Helen till he came back? Morgan took his leave
with conventional phrases. And the three having each taken himself and
his egoism away, Helen and Mrs. Mavering were left with Thaddeus's trim
sea-coal fire, marble mantle, china figurines of the neat ankles, gilt
chandeliers, and flowered carpet.
Helen took her favorite place at Mrs. Mavering's feet, and said, "Uncle
Tad's fires always have company manners."
As for Morgan, Mrs. Mavering thought, he did not like to see that Helen
could be moved by powers that he could not himself attain; perhaps
neither knew nor cared what those powers were, only knew that he could
not attain them. But Thaddeus's airy structure, his theory of the
primitive, did not follow necessarily. Yet she felt that a certain
atmosphere of animosity surrounded Morgan; he was either aggressively or
indifferently hostile; or else it was because one felt his intention to
dominate, and indifference whether the dominance were admitted with
peace or in process of war.
"Don't you want to confess, Helen?"
"I'm always confessing, Lady Rachel."
"But about Morgan Map?"
"Oh, why, Morgan is--just Morgan, don't you see?"
"That sounds like a whole dictionary, but the words don't seem to be
arranged."
"It's arranged by the alphabet," Helen laughed. "It begins with A, when
I was born."
"I was wondering if it went through to Z."
"Oh! But, Lady Rachel, I don't think I know what you mean."
"Has he asked you to marry him?"
"Not that, of course not. But he said he was going to marry me."
"When? How long ago?"
"Oh, I don't remember."
"But what did you think about it?"
"Well, you see, Lady Rachel, I suppose I thought it was too good of him
to believe, and I suppose I wondered if he wouldn't forget about it
by-and-by. And do you know, he didn't--that is, I don't think so."
"But, you funny child, you don't tell me at all. Did you promise to
marry him?"
"Promise! He never asked me to do that."
"Do you love him, dear?"
"Never asked me to do that, either."
"But, Helen, you dodge like a wild thing. If you don't love him and he
expects you to marry him, you must tell him you won't."
"Why?" Helen rumpled her hair with swift hand. "There'd be a frightful
fight. You see, Lady Rachel"--plaintively--"whenever I fight with
Morgan I get so--so smashed. Don't you know, it makes your bones sore,
and gives you a headache. Besides, Morgan always does what he means to
do, and he knows all sorts of things, and if he means to marry me I
suppose he will, and I suppose he knows--well, whether I love him or
not. 'My word!' says Uncle Tad, 'I don't.'"
"Don't what?"
"Don't know, Lady Rachel. Suppose I said 'Morgan Map, I don't love you,
there!' then he'd say, 'You do, too,' or else, 'That's my lookout,' or
something, and what would I do then? Oh, yes, I'd say, 'Well, then, I
won't marry you,' and he'd say, 'Much you know about it,' or if he was
cross there'd be a fight, and I never get anything out of that. Isn't it
funny, Uncle Tad doesn't like Morgan at all."
"I don't think," said Mrs. Mavering, slowly, "that I do, either, but it
looks as if I ought not to say so. Do you mind?"
"Of course not. Morgan doesn't care who dislikes him, except me; and if
I did, don't you see, it would be only one of the words in the
dictionary."
"I think I begin to see. But I'm still wondering if there isn't one word
left out."
"Why--But I don't know what you mean. What makes you so solemn, Lady
Rachel? You bother and bother about Morgan, and he's not so worth while,
not so--around in the dark as Gard Windham, who says things out of the
middle of himself without talking at all, and you understand him, you
don't know how, and it makes your hair tingle. Lady Rachel, listen!
Let's go to the war."
"The war!"
"Didn't you know there is to be one? And Morgan's going to be a captain,
or colonel, or something. He wouldn't let me, but we'd wait till he was
gone, and then I'd only have to fight with Uncle Tad, and I wouldn't
mind that."
Mrs. Mavering fell to wondering if there had ever been a time when she
was like this herself, as bright and fearless; as little conscious or
afraid of looming shadows. She thought she had not been quite like this.
There must have been less will and more desire of ease. She thought she
had loved a better man than Morgan Map, at least one more varied and
peculiar, if not so poised and secure of himself; a strange man,
restless and reckless. The two did not look alike; Jack was dark,
long-jawed, and lean; but when she had noted Morgan knitting his yellow
brows, and imagined there was an odd glint in his eyes, she had thought
of one of Jack's moods, and shivered. Jack was never jealous. But there
was some mark, something common to them both, that sent a searching
chill, that seemed like a denial of all close comforts and small loving
things. Or was it only her own weakness and fanciful fears, born of
those past times when she had learned to be afraid of the next day?
Thaddeus was an airy theorist. Besides, he seemed to be mainly
interested in his commission, which perhaps would not accrue if Helen
went off with her capital of happiness independently. Searching through
her experience, she was not sure how much that she found bore on the
subject. It had not seemed a question of courage when she had first
girded up her garments and followed where she was led. It had seemed
inevitable. Jack's name was the whole dictionary, and there appeared to
be no word entirely outside of it. And then the awakening; a series of
chasms opening, the bright world breaking up, and sections of it
tumbling down the black chasms. She seemed to see his face, with its
large, mobile mouth, painted against Thaddeus's fireplace, as he had
looked when he had left her that last day in the early morning; heard
his laugh, and the echo in the empty hall of the door that had closed
behind him.
"I'm afraid I have had almost enough of adventures. When I came back to
live here I was very tired."
"Are you going to tell me?" said Helen, in an awed tone.
"Perhaps not everything. But you know I was born here, and my name was
Ulic, and all that, till I was married. Mr. Mavering came to Hamilton
when I was about your age, and I think he was looking for anything that
would interest him, but not expecting it would interest him very long.
He had a great deal of money then, but he has done all sorts of things
with it, and I don't know that he has any now. I suppose he was engaged
in what your uncle calls 'the pursuit of happiness,' and he seemed to be
successful. He got so much amusement wherever he went, and his way of
doing it was--some of it--expensive. But perhaps it cost me more than
any one else, unless--but I don't know about that. He was very clever,
and I thought him wonderful. I think he must have been a little
extraordinary. I thought no one else had a lover who paid such
compliments. He used to say, 'Life is a joke between God and the devil.
You are a bright remark by the former, Rachel, and I am the latter's
repartee.' He never tried to conceal anything about himself. Then we
went adventuring. You see, my story turns on Jack's being so queer--at
least, his coming to seems so to me. I couldn't like things and people
that were evil and coarse, or like being always dragged into the danger
of some kind of disgrace. You can't, if you have been taught to be
scrupulous. But he did not seem to see differences between good and bad,
and refined and coarse, or else he thought them petty differences. He
liked almost anything except being dull. We went from place to place,
and across the sea and back again. He was restless--and reckless. I
think he was too reckless of me. Once we had a house at New Orleans,
where the planters used to come and play cards, and there were queer
women with very dark eyes, and some of the planters were quite old men.
But one night one of the women killed a planter with a knife, on the
stairs. Then we got out of a window on a back roof, and through alleys
to the levee, and went up the river in the morning on a steamer. I don't
know what it was all about--quite. But there were things that happened
which I minded more than that. I used to be so tired, so afraid. Then I
grew to be afraid of Jack, because I couldn't understand him, because
whenever things were very black and horrible, or seemed so to me, he
acted more amused and queer, as if it were all a kind of play in the
theatre. And he did not grow worse through all this; he did not change
at all; but I grew worse. I tried to be like him, but I couldn't. Of
course, we knew a great many people, and sometimes were fashionable.
Once in London we went to great balls and receptions. But Jack saw some
Hindoo snake-charmers, and wanted to be one, and travel about in turbans
and yellow cloth. I don't know why we didn't do that, but we came home
soon after. And we quarrelled very miserably--that is, I did. Then the
Ulics became excited about it. One night, or early in the morning, I
woke up and heard some one very angry in the next room. Jack never
became angry. It was another man. I don't know who it was. There was a
struggle. I suppose Jack struck him, and he fell. I crept and opened
the door. The window was open and Jack was dropping the man out of it
into the area. Then he laughed to himself, and turned around and saw
me." Mrs. Mavering's voice faltered, and she paused.
"It wasn't so much of an incident, only it was the last. After he left I
began to shiver and sob, and I crept to the window and closed it. I
thought he had killed him, but of course he hadn't. It was winter, and
the snow was deep in the area. He dragged the man up the steps, held him
by the collar against the railing, and brushed him and laughed. Then he
took him away, holding him up by the arm. It was characteristic, for he
never bore any person a grudge for any harm he may have done that
person. Most people do. He doesn't bear me any grudge. I came back to
Hamilton then.
"Forgive me for telling you my poor story. I thought when I began there
might be something in it to tell you particularly, but I see there
wasn't. And really it isn't much of a story, only a quantity of details.
"I suppose," she continued, slowly, after another pause, "that your
uncle would class Jack with the half civilized, or belonging really to
a past time, when everything was unsettled and everybody was
adventurous. He calls Morgan Map a primary, or aboriginal. I suppose he
would call Jack a secondary, or nomadic, and perhaps," with a little
laugh, "he calls himself a tertiary. I wonder if there are any more
degrees."
Helen sat very quietly, drooping her head, and did not smile. Without
understanding, she felt as if a hand in the darkness had struck her, as
if a vista had opened, and all along it were crouching melancholy shapes
and strange fears with faces hidden.
When Thaddeus came back he stood a moment in the doorway, and smiled
with wrinkled cheeks.
"You look," he said, "like Israel by the waters of Babylon."
Chapter X
Of Spring in Hamilton--Of Thaddeus's Opportunity to be Candid
In the open country the seasons are free, and work their will with
spacious confidence. There is room between heaven and earth. Spring runs
down the back of the mountain forest, and races the river; the heat of
summer has reason, leisure, and is motherly of green things; autumn has
its cornfields, leagues of yellow landscape, and the progress in cool
order of harvest and death; winter its distances and long-drawn breath
from the pole. Their functions there are customary, familiar, old. They
can swing at large. They need not hesitate. But in city streets they go
timidly, as if they fancied something in man and his civil doings not in
the original regulations. They are conservative. An innovation was made,
not so long ago, in their ancient memories; a creature containing an
unknown chemical was developed and introduced. They seem to remember
that objections were made at the time. It was said, "You never can tell
what will come of it." And you never could. They never became used to or
at ease with it. The innovation was even dissatisfied with nature, the
ground-plan and mother of them all. He laid out cities to contradict
her. He questioned, too, the wisdom of his creation, noted his own
discordance, and went on to call his discontent divine.
And spring entered Hamilton. One felt something moist, warm, and sticky
in the air, and knew what she was about, trying to make civil kisses out
of her fructifying young enthusiasm, her tidal tenderness, and feeling
embarrassed so that she made something moist, warm, and sticky. Baby
green leaves were on the maples of Shannon Street and on the elms of the
Common; rain was on the roofs at dawn, and the gutters flowed all day;
busy citizen birds were notable on lawns, strayed songsters gurgling
with happiness, or voicing spring longing in plaintive "pee-wees."
And Hamilton cared little about it. The Third Volunteers and a troop of
militia cavalry were camped in the Fair grounds by the end of May, and
people sat in the grand stands to see them drill. There were rows of
neat, new tents, lines of men trying to keep step to a drum, bugle
calls, cavalry charges, and turf cut to mud or dust. A blue sky was
overhead whose peace was too deep and distant to be known, but one could
infer it from the nearer peace of the white, drifting clouds. There was
Lieutenant Map, with straps, visored cap, and sword, which Thaddeus
thought should have been a club or javelin. "He'll not be suitably
dressed till he's tattooed." Thaddeus even pursued and caught happiness
in the situation, the changing pulse of the times. There were advantages
to society in this panoply and thrill of war, which filled the eye and
ear, entertained the thoughts, stirred the feelings to an interested
activity. Society became more united, the units more sympathetic with
each other. It was not good for banking; but for society, really, to sit
in a grand-stand and watch extraordinary affairs go on in which society
had such share and interest, was for society in the highest degree, in
point of fact, inspiring. How brutal, how degrading, how primitive the
Roman arenas! But here the higher feelings were enlisted. One saw
battle-grounds imaginatively--their blood and dust idealized, made
symbolic.
Rachel and Helen agreed with him without difficulty. It seemed to Helen
quite splendid and natural for Morgan to go to the war. And both thought
the cavalry and the bugles made everything real. It was not so long
before that one heard there was such a place as Sumter, and even yet the
objections made to anybody's firing at it seemed a little difficult to
grasp with sympathy. Was not a fort made to be fired at? A little while
before they had been told to dislike abolitionists, and had done so. Now
they were told to dislike secessionists, and did so; but both were
abstract. But here, on the familiar Fair grounds, were visible men in
earnest, who were to be shot at and possibly hit by individuals. It was
another matter than abstract secessionists shooting at a fort that was
not interesting in itself. So that Rachel and Helen waved their
handkerchiefs, and Thaddeus rapped with his cane, while the dark-blue
lines broke and reformed, the bugles sounded, drums beat, troops of
horsemen swept by, and overhead the sky possessed another blue and the
drifting clouds a different movement.
They came home by Philip's road. The maples on Philip's road spread
leaves that had passed from babyhood into youth in the sunlight and
soft, damp air. They found Gard sitting disconsolately on Mrs.
Mavering's steps, in blue uniform. Thaddeus said, "There's another
patriot whose clothes don't fit."
"I was afraid I'd have to leave before you came," Gard explained. "I've
had a rapid day. Decided at one o'clock to enlist; enlisted at two; told
the rector at three I wouldn't play his old organ a day longer; drew
this outfit at four. It's five now. But the rector was game. He said if
he was twenty years younger he wouldn't preach in his old pulpit any
more. May I come in half an hour, Mrs. Mavering?"
Thaddeus settled his glasses. "Young man. I should have said you were
too wise for a warrior. Are you aware that cold lead, taken suddenly in
any quantity, is injurious to the system?"
"What system?"
"The physical system of the--a--person taking it."
"Is it?" said Gard. "But it might be a mental tonic."
They all went in except Thaddeus, who walked down the street, scenting
the air with delicate nostril.
"I don't--that one--I don't seem to make him out."
"You see, Mrs. Mavering," said Gard, "there are only a few people I want
to tell about anything I do--you and Helen, and Fritz Moselle, and some
of the brothers. Now, Fritz Moselle will say, 'Vat for a fool of a
musician! Aber, you nefer get so fat as me if you don' be contented.'
Brother Francis will quote the Anabasis, and Andrew will give it up, and
the Superior act like the Apocalypse. Now, what do you say?"
"I don't know. Every one else is thinking about one thing now. I should
have said you would think about something different."
Gard kindled with the eagerness peculiar to him when on the track of an
idea, or trying to state one that was clear to him but seemed to
struggle against statement--a kind of tension and nervous thrill, like
that of a hunting dog when the trail is hot.
"But going with the crowd is all right if it's going the way you want to
go. And the more undistinguished from the mass you appear to be, the
more you can keep a unit to yourself. I shouldn't like to be an officer,
for then I'd be responsible for other men. But a private marches where
he's ordered, and shoots according to prescription. So he can watch the
big phenomenon all around him and feel it racing through his blood.
Can't he? I can feel it already. Can't you? Of course. But I want to
look it in the face. If a man had a chance to be a crusader in his time
he'd be foolish to miss it. He'd miss the flavor of his time. I'd sooner
decline the acquaintance of a Shakespeare."
He looked at Helen eagerly. She stood among the potted plants in the bay
window, looking out. He had thought she would seem more interested. She
must be interested. Any one who had seen her eyes light up suddenly and
often would know that. He wondered what clue to some unexpected
significance she was following now, that she seemed absent-minded among
the potted plants. Every one had his or her personal solitary adventure.
Helen, of course, had hers. One had to remember that.
"I play to-night the last time. Will you be under the gallery?"
Then he went away. And Helen, among the potted plants, followed a clue
to this unexpected significance, that it did not seem to her splendid
and natural for Gard, too, to go to the war. It seemed like the hand in
the darkness from Rachel's story, the vista where melancholy shapes and
fears crouched and hid their faces. She watched him go down Queen Mary
Street towards the Common. Morgan Map, striding down from Philip's road,
saw him come out, said to himself, referring to the uniform. "It's that
organ player! Who next?"--looked up and saw Helen's profile above the
plants in the window, and stopped. A moment later he turned and walked
back.
In Saint Mary's, that night, the music did not seem to Helen to come
down from choir loft as usual, and talk to her familiarly. She could not
make it say anything. It stayed up among the organ-pipes; and below,
among the pillars and aisles instead, the wind of a coming storm blowing
in through the vestibule doors, half open--for the night was heavy and
close--took its place, whispered, moaned, and wailed: "You've no idea
how black it's growing. Shut the doors and hide." At least, she was only
able to make the music say something about going away, and that "if
people never meet again, never is a long, long time." She was glad when
it was over, and Gard came around and under the gallery. They walked
across the yard silently. The night had grown black, the branches
tossed, and the leaves fluttered audibly in the darkness over them. They
found Morgan walking to and fro in the edge of the light from Mrs.
Mavering's window.
"Why, Morgan!"
And Gard saluted, "Lieutenant."
"I want to see you, Nellie. Are you going home?" Then to Gard and his
uniform. "Isn't that rather sudden?"
"It's the latest fashion. I report at nine, they say. Good-night."
And Mrs. Mavering, mounting her steps, turned to watch Morgan and Helen,
and noted that they, too, walked quite silently still, till they turned
the corner in front of Thaddeus's house and disappeared.
Thaddeus sat in the little room behind the drawing-room. At the sound of
the rising wind he went to the window, looked out uneasily, and
listened. The wind was too loud for him to hear the organ, even if it
still were going. But he heard the hall-door open, and so went back
contentedly to his newspaper, in which it was stated that a certain
officer, in bringing a Confederate flag from a hotel roof in
Alexandria, was shot by the hotel-keeper, who in turn was shot by a
person accompanying the said officer. Really, people acted with singular
earnestness and energy nowadays. He laid down the paper. On the wall
opposite, in the gilded oval frame, was the picture of Mrs. Thaddeus
Bourn, not in reality a mythical person at all, and yet there was a
certain indistinctness in Thaddeus's memory of her--a certain absence of
salient points. She had not, perhaps, been characterized by earnestness
and energy. But nowadays--
"Don't bother me, Morgan," said Helen, impatiently. They were in the
drawing-room, not far from the curtained door.
"But we start next week--"
"That," murmured Thaddeus, "is not, in point of fact, such a bad idea."
"And now, Nellie, I think it would be better if every one knew what you
are to me before I left. I'll tell you why I didn't want it before--"
"It's funny, but you never take the trouble to ask what you are to me."
There was a silence that suggested threats. As far as Thaddeus could
make out she had seemed to speak quite coolly. "She won't lose her
head. God bless her!" he thought; "but--a--I think I'll step into this."
"If you're going to be subtle," said Morgan, at last, with a new
harshness and blare in his voice, "I sha'n't understand it. It's
perfectly simple. I want you to tell your uncle--Well, then, I will."
Thaddeus pulled the curtain and went through.
"I beg pardon. I seem to be referred to."
Morgan turned where he stood. Helen sat in a low chair before the
sea-coal fire, and did not look up or turn her head.
"I should have--if I had supposed the conversation was to be of such a
private nature--I should have--a--signified my presence before. As it
is, I take the opportunity to observe that your--a--importunity appears
to be unpleasant to Helen, to request that you--a--leave her alone, and
to state that--a--no engagement between you will ever exist with my
consent or her mother's."
"It does exist."
"I doubt it. Have you, then, ever promised to marry him, Helen?"
"I don't remember I was ever asked to."
Something like a flame went across Morgan's face, left red spots on it,
and a glare in his eyes.
"Helen!" The chandelier shook with his voice and step. Helen did not
move or look at him. Thaddeus raised a deprecating hand. "I must beg you
not to shout in my house." Morgan paused and concentrated. The natural
thing to do, the simple instinct, would be, with one hand to crumple up
this grinning old idiot--tall stock and curled hair and all--stuff him
away somewhere, and carry off Helen into the windy night, with her white
dress and blue ribbon around the throat. It seemed impossible, even in
an artificial age, that slim creatures should dare to balk him. She
stood up quickly, and he caught her closely about the shoulders with his
arm.
"It's absolute nonsense--"
"Please let me go, Morgan. I don't want to fight."
"Tell your uncle you belong to me."
"No!"
"Helen, do as I say!"
"No!"
Thaddeus pointed at Morgan's arm.
"Will you kindly--thank you."
Helen fled, through hall and up the stairs, a shimmer of white skirts
past the hall lamp; and in her room she leaned from the window and let
the rain drive against her face. Mrs. Mavering's window threw a great
bar into the night. Morgan's voice below seemed to fill the
drawing-room, the hall, and came rolling up the stair after her, in
muttering pursuit. She gave a half sob, listened a moment, and began to
laugh.
"I'm glad Uncle Tad has that row."
"I remember," said Thaddeus, amiably, "I remember being--a--rejected
once myself. It was unpleasant, very unpleasant."
"Do you think a thing of seven years is going to be thrown out like
this? Do you think I'm a man to put up with this kind of business? Do
you think I don't know Helen?"
"I think," said Thaddeus, "that you don't. My dear fellow, you have made
a curious mistake, and yet--and yet quite logical. I am charmed to say,
quite such as I should have predicted. You have treated a woman with a
certain contempt. You couldn't help it. It expressed, if I may say so,
the degree of your culture. Nevertheless, a mistake. Deference,
deference--they like it. It belongs to them. It is--a--their accumulated
inheritance. Seven years--at thirteen--but, my dear fellow, a child!
You announce your intention to a growing girl, by whose--a--admiring
worship it is received with awe. You suppose she continues to worship
you in the same primitive manner. You suppose your ownership and
property established, that it merely remains to dictate and receive. How
simple, how--pardon me--characteristic! By the way, your father. I
recollect, had a singular opinion of you. I am candid, you see. It
appears to be your faculty--remarkably so--to invite candor. If I
recollect, he thought, supposing you were in some way blown up or ground
up into small fragments--some accident, some catastrophe--and then
fitted together carefully--supposing, if I understood him, this process
repeated sufficiently--you might--but I doubt it--a--paternal
weakness. But as to the situation at present, I cannot conceal
my--a--satisfaction."
Morgan glowered under reddish-yellow brows, and Thaddeus talked on with
persistent amiability. So grim and forcible looked Morgan, so likely to
be summary or primitive inaction, that it seemed to argue for Thaddeus a
fine trust in the strength of social restraint, his continuing that
airy, provocative speech.
"A distinction arises--a child, a woman. It arose in Helen, no doubt,
during her sickness. You observed the distinction, I presume, but only
from its effect on you. But, really, you know, it must have affected
her. I have, in my time, studied the sex--a subject of delightful
interest."
"I don't pretend to take interest in your delights." Morgan had grown
cool.
"Quite so," murmured Thaddeus.
"Go ahead, and enjoy them. I suggest you don't interfere with me. I want
Helen and will have her. There is a bond--"
"Allow me. Has been, perhaps, an understanding assumed."
"I'm not going to quibble with words."
"Exactly. Whatever there has been, or been assumed to be, quite clear,
no longer is--is no longer assumed. I believe I speak with authority."
"I'm not going to quibble about your authority, either. You can flutter
it as much as you please. I'll see Helen alone."
"Not to-night. A--a little flutter of authority. You leave next week? I
shall not, perhaps, take the trouble to prevent your seeing Helen. I
shall take the trouble to see that nothing comes of it. My dear boy,
I'm extremely sorry. I don't like you. Your invitation to candor is
irresistible."
Morgan laughed shortly, turned, and went into the hall. Thaddeus
followed.
"Really, it's raining. Let me lend you--but a soldier, of course--what a
blessing is youth! Exit!"--to the now closed outer door--"exit the
primitive."
And so spring came to an end, with a warm rain murmuring on the roofs
all night, soaking down the roots of the maples, driving part of the
Third Regiment to sleep in the grand-stands. As in sleeping Hamilton no
one knew another's dream, so almost as little by lamp-light or at dawn
did any watcher truly imagine another's thought. Who shall escape the
dungeon of himself? The policeman on the corner of Shannon Street and
Philip's road, when Morgan rushed by him, sympathized with an apparent
hurry to get out of the comfortless rain. Thaddeus, before his sea-coal
fire, plotted such happy paths for Helen to walk in as an enlightened
egoism showed would be best for Thaddeus. Helen let the rain drive in
her face, and thought that, "if people never meet again, never will be a
long, long time." Gard stood in the middle of his study, looked around
him, whistled "The Campbells Are Coming," and called it clearing up.
Books, music, piano, chairs, and memories of meditations--he thought he
did not care much what became of them. There was a new time coming, and
time it came. "This is no world to play with mammets and to tilt with
lips. We must have bloody noses and cracked crowns." "The Campbells are
coming--trala! trala!" Mrs. Mavering drew the rope of her long black
hair over her shoulder, smoothed it on her knee, and thought of the
terms "commission" and "estates in happiness." The braid was thick and
glossy. It seemed hard if her own play were quite ended and story told.
What, nothing more! Restlessness must come from overbrooding, or the new
stir of the times. A woman's story ended too soon. What a melancholy
noise the rain made!
Who shall escape the dungeon of himself, or look from its clouded
windows through the clouded windows even of that one which lies nearest,
where another prisoner strains to see?
Chapter XI
The Whirlpool.--Mr. Paulus's Reminiscences of Women.
The Third Regiment went its way. Visibly, it resembled swarms of bees
when last seen clinging to the freight cars, or an excited picnic with
ornamental bayonets, but to a larger contemplation rather a stream of
sea-drift drawn into the suck and roar of a growing whirlpool. Men are
noisy and cheerful, and seldom know their own pathos. But the streets of
Hamilton seemed empty, though hardly fewer people went to and fro; in
the faces of women here and there, there was a certain premonitory
desolation.
Helen felt the emptiness to be extraordinary--unexpected; an emptiness
between her and the sky; rooms mysteriously disfurnished; things that
people said sounding hollow, as if the meaning of words had fallen away
from beneath them; Saint Mary's at night became silent and dark, except
for now and then a droning service without palaces or towers of sound.
"To what end," reflected Thaddeus, "am I a student of human nature in
the subtle sex? If she doesn't miss that antediluvian brute. I'm an
addled egg."
"We're dreadfully dull, Lady Rachel, aren't we?" said Helen. "Let's be
Knights Hospitallers."
"What do you mean?"
"All the rest do is to scrape lint and read newspapers and potter. Why
couldn't we enlist and be nurses?"
"I dare say we could."
"With white caps and big cuffs? Could we?"
Mrs. Mavering wondered at Helen's influence over her. She had watched it
grow, with a half-amused curiosity. She had thought to be the girl's
guide and helper, and that this new interest would be her reward upon
Thaddeus's theory of commissions. But she had seemed more and more to be
following, not leading; as if, in the actual onward game of life,
experience, instead of a lamp before, were a lamp behind, darkening the
path with the shadow of ourselves. To remember only made one irresolute.
It was necessary to be young, or else to forget--at any rate, to be
valiant. But had she not had enough of excitement, adventure, the
ragged seams of things, variety and burlesque, and been soul-sick
through it all, and fled at last from its noise and passions? She shook
her head, not so much at Helen as at the other side of her own inner
argument.
"Collars and cuffs, Lady Rachel! But you'd look beautiful!"
"That isn't what people want in nurses."
"It isn't? But it is! Why, if I were a man, and had you around looking
like a remorseful queen who had just hung up her robe and crown on the
hat-rack, and was trying to be humble with collars and cuffs, and all
that, I'd get well if I were shot criss-cross. I'd say, 'This world is
too fine to leave.'"
"How should you know what you would do?"
"Oh!" She hesitated, and drooped a little. "I think it was Gard said
that." Then, with returned animation: "He was so funny, Lady Rachel. I
asked him if he didn't think you were all that, and he only said, 'This
world is too fine to leave; I think I'll stay quite a while.'"
It did not all seem to Mrs. Mavering a direct argument to go
hospitalling; only it seemed to fall in line with other questionings
about the fallen curtain, and whether it might not again be raised. One
might be content with a minor part.
They went up to Hagar at the end of June, and spent the blue-and-green
summer together in the widow's house behind the militant church.
Thaddeus came every Saturday, invented new paradoxes, to watch them fall
helplessly on the widow's comprehension, and went down the hill after
tea in the wide sunset--an immaculate gentleman, with eye-glass, cane,
and smooth-shouldered coat--to talk with Mr. Paulus.
"Ain't goin' to get married again, are ye?"
"To whom, Peter? To whom?"
"Mrs. M--Mav--the one that looks like she cost a dollar an inch."
"Mrs. Mavering is, unfortunately, not as yet a widow."
"He gone to the war? 'Tain't any more'n reasonable she might get to be.
Fine-lookin' woman--looks expensive. Well, I done it three times, an'
then guessed I'd quit. I got too fat--don't figure as well at weddin's
as I once did. But--Well, I don' no'--the women's got in the habit of
marryin' me."
"Pete," said Thaddeus, softly, "was not the first time, in fact, the
best? When one is young!"
"Umm--She was--well, I'll tell ye. Old Parson Gerry was here then, an'
the candidest man in Hamilton County, an' I went to him. 'Who is she?'
says he. I says, 'Hilda Armitage.' 'Shucks!' says he, 'she won't have
you.' 'She will, too,' says I, pretty mad. 'Well, well, I'll marry you,
but she ought've done a sight better'n that.' But by-and-by the parson
and me was both widowers, an' I went to him again. 'Who is she?' says
he. 'Esther Allen.' 'Good land alive!' says he, 'I was going to ask her
myself next week!' An' he appeared to think Essie's bad luck was
odd--remarkable odd."
"I was asking, Peter, for reminiscences of your young romance, tending
on to your--a--doctrine of practical matrimony, and so to your theory
of--of woman. We were at the point of young romance. May I suggest--the
clergyman appears to take up too much room. Hilda Armitage--"
"Well, she was roomy, too. She began to lay on flesh after we was
married on credit of a hundred acres of Wyantenaug Valley land, came to
her from Patton Armitage, till she took a six-by-four coffin, she did,
by--"
"Pass on, Pete, pass on. Esther Allen--a--the minister's preference
would seem to have argued in her a certain superior attractiveness, a
certain--"
"Jus' so. She argued it that way. She'd never believe but what I knew
the week the parson had his eye on, an' sort of hurried up and got in
underhand. 'Twan't so," said Mr. Paulus, earnestly. "'Twan't so. Didn't
know a thing about it till he--"
Thaddeus raised a white hand.
"I beg of you, no more."
In the matter of light on the "subtle sex," what opportunities for study
had not Pete Paulus thrown away! Mr. Paulus's drooping left eyelid
drooped lower. He heaved with a rumbling chuckle.
* * * * *
It would be not so evil a fate to come to Hagar for the first time,
bringing inward wounds to its peculiar balsams. The blue flowers on the
green, the lilacs in Widow Bourn's garden. Windless Mountain, that
eclectic philosopher, the deep wood avenues, the league length of the
Cattle Ridge, the eastern hills where the church spire of Salem village
might be seen--one runs easily into cataloguing details, but how
convince the inexperienced of their significance, their speech, their
daily conversations? Could the children of Hagar tell a stranger the
meaning of the mill stream, or ever really explain the moral of the Four
Roads? They were not mere objects. They were tangled with living years.
One must have seen visions and heard messages. One must have dropped a
salt tear by the road-side and sailed that stream to the Celestial City.
And yet it was Mrs. Mavering who seemed to hear the conversations, the
meanings, the messages, and not Thaddeus or Helen. Thaddeus was never an
instance in point, and Helen was restless. Thaddeus speculated and
commented on that restlessness to Mrs. Mavering, who offered few
opinions. The impulse and daring which Mrs. Mavering knew as
characteristic of Helen's speech seemed to have turned from mental to
physical energy, to climbing cliffs instead of merely precipitous ideas.
It was as if speech were no longer expressive of facts; as if both were
learning an unsyllabled language which the other knew before--Mrs.
Mavering learning the language of the rocks and the soil, of growing
and flowing things, and Helen the language of human living at a point in
its syntax which deals with the more searching idioms, the peculiar
question at which point is not merely, "What does this obscure passage
mean?" but, "What does it mean to me?" The summer days went like
water-drops from the eaves after a rain, that gather and shine and fall
swiftly, incessantly. September came, where the green garment of the
season runs into embroidery of purple and gold.
The wood-path that runs west from the Cattle Ridge road beyond Job
Mather's mill goes by a damp hollow where spotted fungi grow, climbs
past bramble patches, clearings, and a bold strip or two of cliff, turns
south around a lonely pine-tree, the last of its fellows, down through
woods noted for lady-slippers in June, and comes out on the hill meadows
along the Red Rock road. You can look south from this wood's edge past
the west shoulder of Windless down the Wyantenaug, and to the east see
the range of the Great South woods, and near by the spire of the
militant church. But Helen and Rachel came there, as a rule, for the
sake of the dominance and conversations of Windless.
Helen lay on her back, with her hands under her head and knees in the
air. Mrs. Mavering's book was thrown aside.
"Do you really want to go?"
"Yes."
"I don't know but I do. What will your mother say?"
"'Why, Helen!'"
"And Mr. Bourn?"
"Oh, he'll sputter some. I don't mind."
Windless lay in the sunlight, genial, wise, sincere, with the girth of
high living and the forehead of high thought. One did not have to
specify in the presence of Windless. Everything was understood. Yet Mrs.
Mavering asked. "I suppose it isn't Morgan Map at all?"
Helen answered "No," promptly enough, and fell into sombre silence. The
eastern slope of Windless darkened in the shadow of the lessening
afternoon, while the western only seemed to glimmer the more genially;
there was that advantage in being large. "You see," she went on, "it
suits Morgan, fighting and ordering and doing things. Nothing ever hurts
him. I don't see why I should bother about him when he's having a good
time."
"It's enough if you don't."
"Well, Lady Rachel, then that's it. I don't."
"Then we won't say what it is?"
"No, please."
"But I suppose we can know?"
Helen rolled over with a laugh, and hid her mouth a moment in the stubby
grass.
"Let's go home."
Widow Bourn said, "Why, Helen!" immediately. Thaddeus went with Rachel
into the garden, and walked beside her up and down the path between the
porch and the lilac gate.
"It isn't Morgan Map. She doesn't bother about him at all."
"She doesn't? Dear me!"
"But I think it might be better, after all."
"What is it, then? Why can't she be contented? My dear lady, my poor
intelligence struggles with the subject, but you and Helen--hospitals,
drudgery, dirt, pah! vermin. I knew she had the notion. I labelled it
properly, 'Notion.' I was aware the Helen estate was not returning
the--a--interest it should. I admit my commission from it has in
consequence this summer been very meagre--most irregular. I believe I
appreciate, I strive to understand, your difficult sex--my lifelong
endeavor--but at present, so to speak, if I may say so, it 'gets me.'"
"Helen has perhaps more nervous energy than is common."
"Nervous! But might we not almost say, of late, feverish?"
"Perhaps we might."
"Then what--or rather, why?"
"If Helen had her secrets it would not follow that she would confess
them to me, and surely you would know as quickly as I if she had any.
But if I have any intimation you must let me keep it, and only say that,
perhaps, it would be good for her."
Thaddeus shrugged his shoulders, and went down, immaculately, to the
post-office to consult.
"Pete, the opportunities you've lost to study women! But you might,
possibly, say something at random. What's all this for?"
Mr. Paulus's face was like the Sphinx's for extent massiveness and lack
of expression, but his left eyelid was variable. He pondered some
moments. "What did you an' me steal pigs for? Did we want the pigs? No.
Did we want to see Starr Atherton in his nightshirt? Some--not much.
Well, it was a way we had of puttin' what was in our minds. What's in
will out. That girl'd bust out somewhere. If it ain't measles, it's
boils. That's what I say. What's in will out."
* * * * *
Whatsoever supplication or remonstrance Thaddeus may have sent up by
himself, he took council of some inward monitor, and did not "sputter."
He had his reward from Helen, who fell into a mood of tentative
caressing.
In October they went to Washington. Thaddeus sniffed a few weeks about
the streets of the capital, and returned to Hamilton, his bank and club
and lonely house, in a state of mind to be expressed by a shrug and the
lifting of a white hand in deprecation. In his pursuit of happiness the
scent seemed to be lost, the hunt all astray. He realized more than ever
how much of his fortune in that commodity he had staked on one issue. He
doubted, after all, the wisdom of it, but could not find a way, nor in
himself any impulse, to draw back. "The new generation, these new times!
They are strenuous, and one grows old." The air was full of the war; the
suck of the whirlpool was felt in every corner.
Part II
Chapter XII
Antietam.
A big gun boomed far away in the dark. From nearer came the snip-snap of
picket-shooting, which increased to a rattle and settled into volleying.
On the hill to the right some one climbed on a gun-carriage and stood
vaguely against the sky.
Shadows came running from the door of a barn into the grass. A sleeper
cried out and sat up at their feet, rubbing his trodden hand.
"What do you make it?"
"We have no troops over there. They're shooting each other."
"Shooting their midnight dreams."
"Midnight! It's past three."
"How should I know? I was king of the Pleiades five minutes ago."
"Time for trouble to begin?"
"It won't be light for an hour."
"No. Turn in, gentlemen."
Shadows sat upright in the grass and muttered to each other.
"What's the Pleiades, Jimmie?"
"Do' know. Wa'n't any at home as I know of."
"Stars, you galoop."
"That's what the Johnnies were shooting at."
"Hey! He must 'a' been jokin'," from the shadow called Jimmie.
"Who?"
"The cap'n said he was king of 'em, he did."
"Oh, go to--"
"Can't see any stars to-night."
The distant volleying died down to a rattle--to the crack of a single
rifle far away, lonely in the immense night, the encircling silence.
The woods went around behind the hill on the right. On the left a grassy
field stretched off in the dark. One knew by remembrance that it sloped
down a gradual mile, till it came somewhere to a slow creek with a mud
bottom. Outposts lay forward in a thin line of woods. Some one said that
the pickets were in an open field beyond, and that some of them belonged
to the other side. In that tense, visionary hour one did not conceive of
an enemy as of separate men, watchful in fields, sleeping in distant
woods, but of a creature, a thing of folded miles, crouching, sinister,
hostile, with red tongue and bitter fangs, waiting for the dawn.
Some of the dark lumps in the grass were motionless, some stirred and
muttered. Through the open door of the barn a group of men could be seen
around a lantern and leaning forward. One of them marked and pointed
with his finger. A horse kicked and squealed on the hill among the guns.
A dog howled in some indefinite distance and direction. The birds began
to twitter in the trees of the beetling woods. A creeping wind chilled
the dew on the faces of sleepers and watchers in the open. The blackness
grew conscious--dimly gray.
Two or three came out of the barn and ran behind it. In a moment there
was a cluttered thudding of horses' feet, which died away down the
field. Pickets began shooting in front. Little things whimpered and
whined overhead. An officer, by the glimmer of his straps, went forward
and shouted in the woods. The near firing stopped, or most of it, but
the things overhead continued to whimper and whine. The lumps on the
grass began to sit up and strip off blankets.
"What's he stopping 'em for?"
"Nothing in it."
"The Johnnies keep it up."
"They're firing high."
Fires of gathered dead-wood sprang up on the woods' edge--a score in
sight, then a hundred, smoking and crackling. A low murmur, a sense of
multitude, grew as the darkness lifted its oppression. Men sipped and
munched by the fires. Some one shouted, "Get ready, men!" A cannon
belched and bellowed on the hill to the right, then another and another,
to a passionate, throbbing roar.
"Company B, forward! Halt here!"
Men poured around in crowds and formed in triple lines. A shell dropped
through the roof of the empty barn and splintered some of the boards
outward with its burst.
The misty sky was breaking for a clear day. Red clouds of sunrise
streamed like pennants in the southwest. A man in the front line pitched
forward and lay still.
"Who's that?"
"I do' know."
"Aiken, I guess."
"There, now! You jabbed me twice. Hold up your bayonet."
Men panted as if they had already been running, and shifted their feet
nervously.
"To-day's my birthday."
"Going to celebrate it all right."
Several laughed in high, strained cackles.
"What we waiting for, cap'n?"
"Don't know. Here. Where's your cartridge-belt? Stay where you are.
Who's that down? Hand up his belt."
A shout came up the line, like the ripple of a shaken rope. They were
suddenly in the woods. Men jumped from the ground and joined. They were
in another field of grass. One heard nothing more but the thump of his
own feet and the singing blood in his ears; not the throb of the
artillery; not the cry of the man who threw up his arms and fell against
him; not the discharge of his own rifle, though he saw the smoke, and
with the next stride his face went through the smoke.
It was easy running in the grass, the long, level fields, a fence now
and then, a stone wall; but then came a slope and ploughed ground, where
one stumbled and fell with his face in the brown dirt, and fancied
himself hit in the pit of the stomach--only, why not dead?--saw the
lines gone on; got up, and ran after to the edge of a field of standing
corn. A fenced road was beyond, a white building with a central, squat
chimney, overhung by heavy woods full of smoke. The lower part of the
smoke bellied forward, jumped, and trembled at the edge.
There seemed to be singularly few in the running line now. One seemed,
in fact, to be running back unaccountably, down the slope and the
ploughed ground, into another triple line, a surf of guns, caps, hot
faces, and innumerable legs. One seemed to be caught up and rushed back,
ploughed ground and slope, and lined up at the top, there loading and
firing across the corn. Comparatively it was restful, mechanical. To
find one's cartridge-belt empty at last was a disappointment. It seemed
to imply the need of doing something else, something new and untried.
The smoke in the woods ahead was thinner.
"I guess Johnnie's belt's empty, too."
"I guess we're going in to see. Here we go!"
They ran into the corn. One did not feel military--rather,
happy-go-lucky. The enemy behind the fence and in the road all ran away
to the woods, where there seemed nothing much going on. It looked like a
gaping mouth, the tree-trunks like black teeth, and the smoke from the
blacker throat drifted between the teeth. It seemed to have sucked in
its hot breath and red tongue--to be waiting. The fence was nearly
reached when it let go a thousand red tongues, a voice that crashed, a
breath that was hot and smoky, that jumped and trembled. One dropped
behind the fence and felt for cartridges.
"Hi, Jimmie! Going to get out o' this."
"Close up, men. Steady there."
"That's the colonel."
"Yep."
"Draw them off, now. Steady. Close up."
"Belts, boys--look for belts."
They went back slowly, stripping the cartridge-belts from men fallen
between the corn-hills, and firing at the smoke; into the grass, at
length, and at length to a halt in cover of broken fence and line of
weeds, hard by the woods they had left at dawn. The enemy spread over
the cornfield. One seemed to resent it on account of owning that
cornfield with a more than ancestral heritage. There were fresh columns
coming up on the right. The broken brigades in the grass watched them
pass. Their line mounted and stood still on the ridge, outlined against
the woods and volleying evenly. Gaps opened and closed. Some one said,
"They're old troops." They went into the corn with a rush. Whatever
happened, it sounded like an explosion of a half-hour's length, and
after it the cornfield and ploughed land were empty, except for the
smoke, and the wounded and dead, some hidden in the corn, some seen
against the brown fallow.
The mouth of the black woods gaped; there were its black teeth and
drifting breath. Fragments of the columns were drawing off to the covert
of a bulge of woods on the right. That part of the battle stood still.
The sun was half-way up the sky.
* * * * *
"I fought, cap'n! I wasn't afraid!"
He had red, downy cheeks, an indistinct nose, and white eyelashes.
"Terrible warrior you are, Jimmie. Your fingers are dripping."
Jimmie looked at his hand. A little red brook ran down the palm. He
turned white and sick.
"Scratched, Jimmie. Tie it up for him."
"I never seen it," in an awed voice.
The officer went on.
"Get your breath. See your guns are all right. What's that?"
The man sat staring at his wrecked and twisted rifle. Another man
laughed hoarsely.
"Scrap-iron he picked up."
"'Tain't, either"--angrily. "It's my rifle. Been holding it all day.
What's gone with it? Something hit it."
It had been shattered in his hands by a flying missile.
Some one rode up whom the captain saluted.
"How many left here?"
"About forty."
"Colonel Morley?"
"In the cornfield."
"Major Cutting?"
"All right, sir, over there."
"How are your men?"
"Pretty fair, sir. They'll go in again."
A mile down the valley the fight was growing hotter; a ravine was full
of smoke, a jam around a bridge, a line of blue hills beyond; up nearer,
columns were massing by a sunken road, under batteries playing from
opposite hills across the creek; a village lay to the west. The sun
made another jump up the sky. The fields around were empty, except for
the lines in covert behind the fences, and here and there a horseman
galloping, here and there a horse but no horseman. The enemy were in the
corn again, shooting intermittently. Smoke drifted up and turned white
against the glistening blue. The batteries beyond the woods on the right
broke out again. New clouds of smoke floated overhead and dimmed the
sun. In the grass-fields still the crouched lines waited in covert of
weeds and fences. Hours that had shot past in the charge, the struggle
and retreat, now stretched like sleepless nights. Company B muttered and
swore.
"What's the use of waiting?"
"Le's go in!"
The captain and lieutenant lay at a distance on the grass. Neither of
them answered. Jimmie felt around his belt.
"I got fifteen cartridges."
"How's your scratch, Jimmie?"
"Ho, I don' care for that. Why don' we fight some more?"
The captain said, "Do you hear those minie-balls?"
The lieutenant, "What of them?"
"The pitch, of course; they go from E flat to F, and then drop to D.
That's a very pretty interval."
"You've got an ear! They do sort of go up and down."
"Le's fight some more."
"Oh, Jimmie, dry up!"
High noon over the corn, and the woods, and the white building with the
squat chimney.
Jimmie again. "Le's fight so--Oh!"
He leaped, flung up his hands and fell--his rifle clattering behind--his
head rolled over once and lay still. The man next him lifted Jimmie's
head, laid it down gently and turned away. Some one farther along said,
"Pshaw!" One still farther, "Who's that?"--"Jimmie"--"Oh!"
The captain took the rifle and belt with fifteen counted cartridges and
walked down the line to the man with the shattered rifle.
"Here you are."
Company B was silent, and crouched more closely. The sun slipped down
perceptibly and burned red in the smoke. The throb of the unseen guns
grew Quicker. From woods' edge and cornfield, from covered lines in the
weeds by zigzag fences, the smoke was living and leaping, Company B busy
and interested. A horseman clattered by. "Get ready!"
"Bayonets?"
"All right. Get into it now!"
Grass-fields, fences, and ploughed ground; all voices of the
battle-field awake; yelling and cheering, crash of musketry, crack of
rifles, roar of guns, shells that whooped in flight and burst into a
score of individual screams. Beneath all, an undertone, a rumbling,
grinding, splintering sound, the organ bass of the field; into the corn,
that rustled as before, that brushed in turn against Northern and
Southern faces, that sheltered alike from the slant sun all still faces
in the furrows, pale and ghastly and grimed, thick together, piled dead
over dead. Then came the fence, the road, the squat-chimneyed building,
the gaping woods with black teeth and white breath; and Company B. Reg.
Third, went into the wished-for woods at last, with empty belts and
point-on bayonets; went through them, and saw the sun beyond, and broken
lines running across open fields. Some thirty of them came back and sat
down by the white building gloomily. The captain looked them over and
hummed. "The Campbells are coming--trala, trala." The sun dropped low.
The throb of the guns down the valley grew slower, duller, fainter.
Sanitary men with stretchers pushed to and fro in the corn. The woods
grew dark, the fields dusky. Campfires crackled beside the road, Company
B's by the white building. Tin cups were poked into the coals.
Conversation was grumbling, fragmentary.
"Jimmie's shut down on pretty sudden."
"Jimmie! There's fifty better men out of this company dropped in their
tracks! I don't see why you're so cut on Jimmie."
"I wished it was some one else." The speaker's voice broke. "He was such
a damn fool."
"Oh, I see."
"Know the name of that creek?"
"No."
"It's the Antietam."
"What of it? It ain't the Wyantenaug, that's all I care."
"And this thing's a Dunker church."
"You got more useless information 'n would set up a college."
"Pennsylvania fellow told me over there Dunkers are sort of Dutch
Baptists."
"Oh, go get some wood!"
The captain was in the road. He walked over and leaned on the splintered
fence and watched the red lights of a hundred little fires play ghostly
games with black shadows in the foliage of the woods. Men were pushing
about in the corn, rustling the blades. The stars were out, the young
moon setting slim and lovely with the old moon on her arm. The distant
crackle of rifles, belated fragments of the battle, seemed futile,
isolated, mistaken and sad in the light of the drooping, withdrawing
moon.
Fifty feet away was a large camp-fire of fence rails. Of the men about
it, one had lean, long limbs and face, wore a long black coat and black
slouched hat, and talked continuously in solemn, flowing bass. The rest
listened, absorbed. Now and then one of them laughed.
The captain drew near. The lean talker unfolded his legs and rose.
"Gods! The anchorite? Gentlemen, who might this be?"
"Cap'n Windham, Company B," said some one.
"He hath grown a beard! In complete steel, revisits the glimpses of the
moon! A Hotspur of the North, will kill him six or seven dozen
Confederates before breakfast and say, 'Fie on this quiet life!' Will
tootle a reed no more! Will dive into the bottom of the deep, pluck up
drowned honor by the locks, and call it vanity! Vat for a fool of a
musician!"
"How are you, Jack?"
"A war correspondent I, John Roland Mavering, who will celebrate you, a
Homer to Achilles, who wants to know for his invocation how you happen
not to be dead."
They locked arms and sauntered along the road in leisurely pursuit of
the moon.
Chapter XIII
In Which Appears a General of Division, and One of "the Brethren."
If Gard entered the war, as he claimed, in the theory of a spiritual
adventure, it must be hinted that he had sometimes lost sight of his
theory. Outside events had shown a tendency to usurp and absorb in the
process of the happening. It was not so noticeable during the first nine
months. He marched, drilled, felt the rain and the cold wind at night in
the open, heard the enemy's guns, saw bleeding men carried by from the
distant field, and shared in what was called "the defence of
Washington," a matter that did not seem difficult or exciting beyond
reason. He was made a sergeant--a purely outside event. There was
leisure to watch the scene, to keep one's poise, to experiment with
existence. If at times his old sense of separateness, of isolation among
objects, scenes, and persons whose importance to him was only in their
inner effect upon him--if this sense at times seemed less vivid than
before, and the movements of men in masses, the common enthusiasms, made
him feel that his solitary journeying was in some mystical way
accompanied by watching myriads with the same forward step and shadowy
goal, it was rather a passing, a recurrent sensation.
But with the middle of spring came three months of storm and
stress in the Virginia peninsula. He came out of the ranks by
reason of some inscrutable opinion of him conceived and reported to
authorities--something connected with an expedition through a swamp--was
promoted because there were no other officers to speak of in the company
when the army reached its new base at last on the James River.
He looked back curiously now to the tumult of those weeks, a period when
he could not remember to have remembered himself, a long night of
irrelevant dreams, the sense of identity lost in the dull confusion,
himself going and coming, ordering and obeying, seeing difficulties and
finding solutions with a set of surface faculties, the soul within him
torpid, at least taciturn. The experience had left him with a sense of
distaste and humiliation, with a certain troubled doubt. Was a man
captain of himself, if he could be seized, stunned, drowned in
circumstance, lost like a drop of water in a flood, rendered indistinct
to his own consciousness from the flowing, pouring mass around him?
Gard did not suppose himself to be unique. He supposed other men had
similar paths to walk in, pilgrim fashion; that every man owned merely
himself and his destiny, his issue in the nature of things his own; that
to every man there was but one great distinction, it lying between
himself and what was not himself. In his own age, at least, he supposed
it a growing tendency for men to look within their own souls for the
infinite which they could not find without.
There was no doubt the peninsular campaign had been an experience
affecting him profoundly. It had shown him what a pit of danger lay on
the side of such absorption; that to plunge into affairs so intense, so
physical, so powerful in their sweep and pull, was for the individualist
numbing, miasmic, clouding the eye whose function should be to see one
path clearly. It had given him a new sense and a certain dread of the
strength of what lay on the other side of that distinction between
himself and the not himself. It had left in him, he fancied, a kind of
sediment, an element in respect to which it became illustrated that what
a man has experienced is a part of him. It had made him perhaps more
consciously watchful of his poise, his mental erectness and control. But
the main result so far had been that sense of uncertainty and troubled
doubt, as if he had lost the trail, as if much had grown dim that was
once definite and guiding. Mavering's appearance seemed to suggest
something, a clew or an omen. Jack, at least, was individual, nomadic,
and distinct. He never let his surroundings grow into him.
Thursday, the day after the battle, the hills, woods, and fields were
quiet except for stray picket shooting. The two armies could feel each
other. Why they lay all day so near, so quiet, was no business of
either's subordinate atoms. Gard felt that he but barely cared, if no
more was asked of him and his remnant of thirty than to stay where they
were. No doubt they also serve who wait. He could stretch in the
sunlight, listen to Mavering's home despatches, choice, flowing,
vehement, and supply him with technical language.
Farmers drove in on the road during the day, and distributed apples from
their wagons, or peddled home-made bread. A number of them wore
singular, broad-brimmed hats, smooth hair, long, and parted in the
middle, shaven lips and long beards below, and some spoke broken English
with an odd, German dialect. They were said to be the Dunkers of the
squat-chimneyed church, now spotted with bullet-holes, one casement
blown in. To Gard they seemed to illustrate grimly the shaping power of
externals, these men whose mouths were set to the line of their wide
hats, hair plastered smoothly to mark the even tenor of their peace.
They called themselves "The Brethren." There was something in their
faces at once a reminder of and a contrast to the faces he remembered in
the Brotherhood of Consolation.
The camp-fires flickered once more at night against the black foliage.
Company B, in a new manner, admired its captain and the extraordinary
correspondent, while they recited Brutus and Cassius with mellow
mouthings, and after gave impromptu dialogues between a Dunker
advocating the use of apples with Biblical extracts, and the general of
division, explosive, impatient, dropping oaths like solid round shot.
Other men left their own camp-fires and crowded the road. Some officers
sat on the fence and applauded. The distant crack of the pickets' rifles
was sometimes heard, stabbing blindly at the night. The stars were
brilliant and the slim moon was in the south.
Friday morning it was rumored that the enemy had slipped away in the
night, and gone across the Potomac again; that the general of division
had been heard putting violent terms to the name of his chief for
committing all the sins of omission which man could commit, seeing his
aides' enjoyment of which language he had reddened and set his grim
mouth. The fields beyond the wood, at least, were empty, and the village
among the hills. One could walk abroad without being shot at from the
bushes where those scarlet berries grew.
The crippled Third, with its odds and ends of companies, moved as far as
the village, now turned a bustling hospital, and heard big guns booming
again south of the Potomac. There it was that Mavering wrote that sketch
of red death and amputation which his paper expurgated before
publishing, to Mavering's disgust. "As fine a bit of realism as was
ever done! And look at it, butchered to make a civilian holiday!" He
read the first draft to Gard.
"I'll trade my job for yours, Jack."
"Quite the contrary"--Mavering altered an adjective in his copy--"you
will not."
A messenger rode into the camp of the crippled Third with a led horse.
"Captain Windham?"
"Here."
"Order of ----; relieved indefinitely. Will take this horse--report at
division headquarters," and the messenger clattered away. Mavering
jumped to his feet.
"I'll trade you."
"Quite the contrary, you will not."
Mavering grumbled and went back to his copy.
"It's that elegant comedy last night. Poor boy! Ruined! Ruined!"
Gard rode down the road that led from the village to the creek. The
centre of Wednesday's fight had been here, but the fighting must have
been mainly on the wings. There were signs of heavy artillery work, but
little else. Beyond the bridge was a large house on the hill, with a
white picket fence around it. From the hill he could look up the winding
creek, and see the bluffs, the sloped fields and ploughed ground of
Wednesday's charges and retreats, the Dunker church against the woods.
Some men in front of the house directed him to take the right fork of
the road. The sun was low, the day-moon like a white scallop of cloud.
He found the headquarters a half-mile beyond, a small brick house,
distinguished by the number of saddled horses fastened at the fence, and
within the general, a familiar figure enough, with his red face and
white whiskers, a hot-tempered man and well beloved, now puffing a cigar
and quite self-controlled.
"Captain Windham."
"Gentlemen!" cried the general, "will you allow me--I want to see this
man," and they were presently alone.
The general leaned back and looked at Gard critically. He began:
"Captain Windham--mm--these theatrical performances by officers for the
entertainment of privates--umm--this disgraceful mimicry
of--mm--myself--this disrespect leading to insubordination--"
"I beg your pardon, sir. It was not intended--"
"I was about to say," thundered the general, "when you interrupted me,
that I don't believe the commander-in-chief would approve. Personally.
I'd have given something to be there. I have about me, I believe,
another cigar. Sit down."
He spoke in a jerky way, coming down on selected words with emphasis.
"I have need of a particular kind of a man. It occurs to me you may be
that kind--mm--a certain _variety_, perhaps, of talent. It's a bit of
secret service. _Well_, now look here. It is this. The War Department
wants private information about the actual effective _numbers_--if
possible--and _condition_, of the enemy--at present. I will tell you
more. The estimates that come to it from the commander-in-chief are--I
quote the word--'_contradictory_.' It is _suspected_ that those
estimates depend--I still quote--'on the _impression_ that gentleman
wishes to make on the department or the public.' The suspicion may be
wrong; or it may be that a change is going to be made in commanders; or,
at _any rate_, 'before issuing a definite order to the present
commander'--it needs information independent of the regular source.
_Do_ you understand?"
"So far as you've gone, sir."
"Oh--mm--exactly. That's right. No doubt it is procuring other sources.
That's no business of ours. I've been asked--_confidentially_--to
furnish one source--mm--The impersonation of Dunker elders and generals
of divisions implies--mm--also I know your record--mm--_Captain
Windham_, I am at the present moment guilty of insubordination and
treachery to my superior officer. I am also giving away what amounts
perhaps to a state secret. I am doing so--for the reason--that your
discretion must be relied on, anyway, and you cannot understand too
clearly the point to be gained. This information must reach either _me_,
or the _department_ directly--preferably the latter--and _no one else_.
You see the point?"
"Yes, sir."
"Preferably the latter. I needn't be connected with it hereafter--would
rather not be."
"I see."
"Very good. This information should be had as soon as possible. In case
you have to send a _message_, this paper contains a code, simple
enough. The meaning depends on the position of the words. You can
apparently mean anything you choose. Learn, and destroy paper. So much
for _that_. Your name will be known at the department. You are at your
own disposition till the thing is done. There are no directions.
Now--one moment--this map. Lee and Longstreet are probably here.
Somebody is, anyway. Jackson is God knows where--possibly there. If so,
he'll be somewhere else to-morrow. Here's your pass. Any questions?"
"No, sir."
"That's all, then. You may go--mm--Captain Windham--some time I should
like to see the impersonation of a general of division in a state of
excitement. Hem! hem! Good-day, sir."
Gard galloped through the little village in the dusk, looking for
Mavering, and found the fields beyond empty. The brigade was gone, the
Third gone with it.
"I can't chase after him all night," he thought, impatiently. "Why
doesn't he stay where he'd be useful?"
He caught sight of a horse fastened to a maple-tree up the road.
Mavering lay on his back under the maple, smoking.
"Get up. Come along."
"This cigar is the worst--"
"Get on your horse. I want you."
"What do I care what you want? I was about to say, this cigar is the--"
"Throw it away, then."
Mavering unfolded his legs and mounted, grumbling.
"You're the blankedest, most egotistic anchorite that ever petted his
soul, not to say dosed it allopathically with wars and red rebellions.
One question: Is there any copy in this?"
"Not a word."
"Just what I thought. Wherever a man goes he finds selfishness."
They turned into the northern road, clattered past the cornfield and the
church. Gard continued: "One of those Dunker farmers lives up here half
a mile. I want his clothes, his expression, and his language, and his
theology--the whole outfit."
"Going to steal his most intimate properties. Blanked immoral thing to
do. All right, go on."
"About copy. Anything that goes south of the Potomac will be apt to
mean a rope for me, and New York papers go south of the Potomac."
"Egotistic still, but perspicuous. I see."
"It's between me and you and the Dunker."
"And that's a pretty combination!"
"Not a sign, Jack."
"Not a misplaced comma, not an agitated phrase shall betray the mystery
of this night. Now, then. Why?"
"Oh, you! You'll have to make me up."
"And the Dunker?"
"They're all anti-slavery and non-combatant. Besides, I picked an
acquaintance with this one yesterday."
The small, plain, whitewashed house, with its whitewashed barn, stood
close to the road and shining in the moonlit dusk. An elderly man, with
smooth, gray hair falling to his collar, shaven lips, and spade-shaped
beard, came to the door and stood there, mild, quiet, round-shouldered.
"Can we put up our horses here and pass the night?"
He nodded and turned back into the room without speaking, but left the
door open.
They spent the evening talking with him, studying the while his outward
make-up, his manner and language, critically. He had a certain gentle
suggestiveness of his own, and before they parted for the night brought
out a pair of saddle-bags and a large bundle of printed sheets.
"De is tracts," he said, gently, "of religion."
"Good," said Mavering. "An ungodly army, no doubt. Oh, I beg pardon!"
"De is not of de doctrine of the bruderen only. De is Christian."
"Oh, well, Captain Windham was bred a Catholic. He'll distribute them,
and read some himself."
The quiet elder seemed to have taken a shy liking for Gard. He touched
him softly on the back of the hand.
"I hope you are a good man. I hope you are not to die in what you do."
At daybreak they rode away westward, making a wide circuit of the
village, Gard with his lips shaven, hair parted and plastered down, and
wearing the gentle old brother's waistcoat that buttoned to the throat,
his dingy black coat and wide-brimmed hat. His saddle was primitive, his
bridle-bit rusty. Mavering's experienced eye judged that he looked his
part. Even the whiteness of his lips, where the razor had gone, added to
the impression of calm and austere withdrawal. Was it some lingering
touch of the monastery? One does not live without result during the
formative years, secluded between cool, white walls, among unworldly
lives. Mavering called him "the anchorite," and swore the phrase still
truthful.
A glimpse of the Potomac between the hills; a troop of Union cavalry
breaking camp in a meadow; clank and rattle of side-arms; men gathering
and packing kit; men sitting listlessly in their saddles; a mounted
officer in the middle of the road, looking down towards the
Potomac--large, square-shouldered, and massive. He turned in his saddle.
"Hold on here! Halt!"
Gard pulled up and looked at him under drooped eyelids.
Mavering pushed between.
"Without circumlocution, Captain Map, you're precisely what I'm looking
for. Cavalry's the thing for a correspondent. I have an unsubstantial
vision I used to know you in Hamilton."
"That's all right. Who's this?"
"Oh, that's a Dunker brother. Got some blanked tracts in his
saddle-bags. Let me join you?"
"Is--is he?" His horse blocked the road aggressively. He kept his eyes
on Gard.
"Well"--Mavering turned and surveyed the "make-up" critically,
complacently--"I slept with him at his old man's last night. If a
twenty-minute Dutch prayer is any proof, he's still in the faith of his
fathers. I'm leaving you here, brother."
Gard nodded, rode into the ditch with a face conscientiously blank,
mild, non-combatant, and passed the obstacle. Morgan watched him ambling
leisurely away in the sunlight and the dust. Mavering waited some time.
"Look here, captain. Did I understand you laconically to insinuate I
might accompany and chronicle your glories?"
Morgan wheeled his horse slowly.
"I guess so. Yes, you may."
The road went around a sandy hummock and disappeared. Gard did not look
back. Beyond the strip of the Potomac the Virginia hills were blue and
cool and peaceful.
Mavering meditated a disclosure. Still, whether Morgan had recognized
Gard, or for a time had suspected it was he, or had only acted on
constitutional aggressiveness, it did not seem likely in any case that
he would chatter about the matter. He could hold his tongue without
being warned. "It's none of my funeral." Gard had precisely stated what
he wanted. Mavering remarked:
"That Dunker had a pass, if you'd asked for it--permit to scatter his
tracts wherever he liked."
But Morgan did not comment. Mavering thought him likely to be dull
company, and set himself to making other acquaintance and finding
entertainment with experienced skill.
The troop filed out, formed loosely, and clattered south. It occurred to
Mavering that they might overtake Gard. Down through the narrow valleys
they came at length to the willow-fringed bank of the river, but he saw
the broad-brimmed hat nowhere. It seemed to have vanished from the
earth. Mavering concluded his connection with it over. New pastures of
interest were before him. The nomad owns no real estate in any one else.
His soul knows not title or tenure. He will be folding his tent at
daybreak and leaving the night's oasis, and the sands drift over his
footprints.
Chapter XIV
In which Mavering Concludes that Cavalry Officers as a Class Are
Eccentric and Deep
The war suited Morgan. It was action in simple terms of purpose and
accomplishment. It was sensible and genuine. There no man's complicated
trivial tastes and instincts needed to be bothered about; he carried
them at his own risk and exercise; they were not in the army lists.
Orders were not disguised in requests and reasons. The gradations and
shades, the cautions and compunctions, the ten thousand odds and ends of
ten thousand years' accumulation for the most part were swept away in
bulk. Men battled with men and threw off their shamming benevolences,
showed what they were, and enjoyed themselves in the burly lust of
struggle. The life satisfied at least half of him to completion.
A fortnight before the late battle he had seen Helen on the steps of the
wooden warehouse, that they used as a hospital and filled from wall to
wall with blanketed cots. She had looked pale, tired, and smiling. After
a moment she had flushed and broken away angrily. And that night he had
lain twenty miles off with his troop in the open, a lot of blinking,
idiotic stars over him, and could not sleep, and damned in disciplined
order the ways of woman and the impalpable barriers around
them--Thaddeus Bourn, for keeping his skinny corpse unburied beyond the
limit of reason or utility; and Gard Windham to the discomfort of the
blistered stars.
There appeared to be another part of him unsatisfied--hungry, rather,
and hot on the scent.
Had he not picked out Nellie long ago for her pluck and sense, and a
certain tingling challenge in her--a girl fit for his hand to hold? She
suited him, fitted one part as a cavalry raid fitted another. Very well.
He would take her. Any one that stood in the way would be hurt, very
likely; at any rate, taught better. The squire and Thaddeus Bourn might
be as futile as they chose, it being no business of his. They had had
their day. Let them keep out of the path of men who had still to live.
It was no great matter what they did. But when it came to Nell's
mooning about the organ-player, with his theories and whining tunes, and
getting sick in hospitals--She said that she hadn't seen him since
winter, which wasn't likely. She had turned red, and broken away at
that. Hospital nurse! What a fool thing for Nell to do! Mrs. Mavering
was with her, and Jack Mavering travelled with Windham. The Maverings
might have made up. Ten to one there was a game on, and they fancied
Morgan Map was that kind of a fool.
The war filled a man's hands. Morgan felt that the germ of his own
career lay in these days, and other business ought to wait if it could.
Windham must be off scouting in that Dunker outfit, and might by good
luck get himself hung, only he was too clever.
Morgan turned in his saddle and looked back for Mavering, who rode in
the middle of the cantering troop, and seemed to enjoy himself.
* * * * *
On Saturday, the end of the week after Antietam, the troop rode westward
along the line of a railroad. The Confederates had been at it, some of
them within a day or two, for the burned ties were still smoking. They
had bent the rails by heating them in the middle and twisting them
around the trees. At regular intervals were black circles of the fires
and charred ends of ties. It was too systematic for guerillas.
"There," said a lieutenant to Mavering, "you can write your papers there
are twenty or thirty miles of this, all done under the nose of the
chief."
"A vigilant, aggressive man, the latter, I infer, is your matured
opinion," said Mavering; and the lieutenant replied, dryly, "Something
like that."
The sandy road-bed curved through woods that must have been straggling
and discouraged in their green days, and now were black and smoking, for
the abandoned fires had spread. The wind mourned through the desolation,
and blew thin veils and streamers of smoke overhead.
"And no doubt Captain Map's opinion coincides with yours in favor of
activity and vigilance."
"He's a hot-and-cool man to ride with. You might write that we're on a
line which was burned through yesterday or the day before, and just now
a lot of hostile cavalry are cavorting round the neighborhood
somewhere, likely to drop on us any moment. We're out to find about this
line and that cavalry, and get back if we can."
"I notice--a point that strikes an artist in realistic description
inevitably--that Captain Map is calmly reading something as he rides.
Such things illustrate."
"His nerve? Oh, that's all right."
"But the artist's imagination proceeds. Reading what? A newspaper? No, a
written sheet, which the wind blows about in his hands. Perhaps
instructions--or, better, a love letter."
"Likely enough."
"They do more than illustrate. They fill in the foreground with humanity
against the background of nature and event. You are an army officer,
lieutenant, unlessoned, uninspired, unreflective, and may take the word
of one old in variety, that the gist of life lies in men and women
rather than in event, and that men and women are more worthy of
consideration in persons than in masses. The play is played in the
foreground, and there is the plot and the crisis and the solution; there
the action lies; practicable scenery left and right, practicable mob of
courtiers, soldiers, or peasants in the rear--and--"
Morgan pulled in his horse and flung up his hand, the white paper
fluttering in it. The troop halted short, plunging and scattering sand.
"Enter," observed Mavering, "a practicable enemy, lieutenant, from a
practicable wood."
A quarter of a mile away the sandy road-bed curved and disappeared. A
large body of cavalry swung around it. Morgan shaded his eyes with his
hand and the fluttering paper. The troops sat stiff and intent. He
shouted and wheeled his horse.
"Left wheel! Hard!"
Whirl, plunge, and shout. Mavering's horse slipped on the sand-bank,
lost footing, and fell headlong into the ditch. Mavering struck the
opposite bank in a heap, unlimbered, and came down with his feet across
the horse's neck. He seized the bridle, jumped, and tugged. The troop
was two hundred feet away, the squadron a thousand. A white paper, blown
by the wind, danced and twinkled along in the sand. He tugged harder,
leaning forward, and caught the paper, thinking, "That's Map's
love-letter," heaved and shouted. The horse half rose; something went
"thud" in his neck; he screamed and dropped again. Another bullet whined
by Mavering's ear. He dropped the bridle--"I'm done, then"--and saw
Morgan two hundred feet away, his horse halted and half turned, lifting
his revolver again. Mavering dove down the sand, lay still in the ditch,
and heard the third bullet whine close by, an inch from his ear, then
the swift flight of Morgan's horse and the coming thunder of the
squadron.
"Blanked if I don't read his blanked letter! What in--'Pass man wearing
loose black clothes, broad, stiff-brimmed hat, shaven lips, black beard,
smooth hair, of sect called Dunkers, carrying saddle-bags, riding bay
horse with white forefoot, through all Union lines--bears important
information, give all facilities, forward to Washington, signed--' And
no signature."
But the rattle and roar were at hand, and the sense of a thousand
horsemen about to charge into the small of his back. He thought, "I'll
be searched in a minute," swept a handful of sand over the paper,
clambered up the bank and sat on the burned turf above, hugging his
angular knees. The head horseman pulled to the right and shouted.
"Follow 'em half a mile, Cary, and wait there."
The bulk of the squadron swept on.
"Search that man, you there! Pull that paper out of the sand."
Mavering groaned disgustedly. Two men were up the bank, feeling him all
over with skilled precision. The colonel pulled his chin-whisker over
the mysterious writing. "What's all this?" Mavering sat down again and
brushed the sand from his trousers and long black coat-tails. His hat
lay in the ditch. The troop remaining gathered in a semicircle, the
colonel and Mavering in the centre, with ditch and the prostrate kicking
horse between, practicable scenery of a September sky and burned woods
around.
"I don't know, colonel," said Mavering, in solemn and rhythmic bass,
"but I judge it's a job put up on you by the recondite and taciturn
captain of the troop lately departed. He appeared to drop it with a
policy and plugged at me with a revolver when I picked it up."
"You hid it, sir"--sharply.
"So I did. The truth is ever beautiful. He plugged my horse. Supposing
he meant that for you, I'm not backing his game to-day. It's too deep
for me, anyhow."
A young officer broke in at the colonel's elbow.
"Dunker? We passed that man Monday up by the river, colonel. He was
scattering tracts."
"Did? Here, then--Martinsburg, or further up! Go hard. Now, then, who
are you?"
"Correspondent. You've got my credentials with the rest of the loot, of
which you might lend me a dollar and a half and return the note-book
containing a half-written but masterly article on--"
"Note-book? Article? Very good. Do for a Richmond paper. Credentials?
Where--Oh!"
"Sign it J.R. Mavering, and tell 'em the price is forty dollars."
The colonel was a small man, high-voiced, quick-eyed, but not without a
certain cheerfulness. He glanced up from the papers with an appreciative
twinkle. The men slouched easily in their saddles. The horses stamped
and shifted.
"Here! Give these back to him."
"Don't we take him, colonel?"
"No. What for? Give him back everything. All ready! Forward! Wait!" He
pulled up suddenly.
"Mr. Mavering." The little colonel was dignified.
Mavering pocketed his property calmly, as if in the common flux of
things, the flowing change of time, scene, and event, it was not
strange, whatever went and came, or however suddenly. Anyway, this world
was a fleeting show, an incessant comedy without plot.
"Sir."
"Such Northern newspapers as yours, which have--in the past, at
least--been inclined to criticise the unprovoked invasion of Virginia,
it is desired by the authorities that such newspapers should be treated
with consideration. You follow me, sir?"
"With strict attention." Mavering leaned forward, his hands on the
burned turf. His feet dangled against the bank.
"Distinguished consideration. You will mention that attitude, no doubt."
"No doubt at all."
"Good-morning, sir."
"Good-morning, colonel."
The troop departed with crowded thud of hoofs and scatter of sand.
Mavering watched them out of sight, then slid down the bank and picked
up his hat. He lifted the head of the prostrate horse, but the eyes were
dull, the throat full of blood; unbuckled the bridle and slung it over
his arm. The long, yellow level of the road-bed to the nearest curves
was empty in both directions. He was quite alone in the desolation. He
muttered and hummed in profoundest bass. "Singular game--'Plaidie to the
angry airt'--recondite, astrological. Make a note of it; cavalry
officers as a class are eccentric and deep. It's not my funeral. It
appears to be the anchorite's. 'The brightest jewel in my crown'"--He
crossed the road-bed, picked his way eastward into the woods,
long-stepping, bridle on arm, gaunt and black, over the black ground
among the gaunt, black stumps of the charred trees--"Wad be my queen."
Chapter XV
Treats of the Distribution of Tracts in the Valley of the Shenandoah.
The Shenandoah goes by the eastern edge of the wide valley, murmuring
its own musical name, "Shenandoah," as if it knew the word's
significance in glory, tumult, and pain, but had taught all three to
march to a quiet requiem; "Shenandoah"--old, unhappy, far-off things,
under the lulling and palliation now of many years.
Gard rode directly south, through plodding, dusty lines of haggard-eyed
men, and came to it a few miles above the junction and the famous Ferry.
The cannon boomed all day on his left over by the larger river. He rode
by daylight and openly and none seemed to doubt him; his dress and
little printed tracts were passports enough for the time. He fell into
the habit, first by impulse and then by policy, of carrying a tract in
his hand, using its subject and phraseology for the next conversation
and entering on the subject promptly.
It gave him a sense of detachment and isolation of a peculiar kind, this
urging on some weary and hurrying group a doctrine of peace, compassion,
and humility, as if the manner and language were working inward and
growing less alien to him, and he really were a mysterious evangelist--a
messenger with spiritual tidings and council. He noticed--and it seemed
from its recurrence to have a certain pathos--that, after the laughter
which rose around him in most cases had subsided, the faces would lose
their weariness and strain, and seem to express another side of their
humanity. They reminded him, then, of the fruit-seller and the policeman
on the avenue, where he used to go to and from the Brotherhood of
Consolation and the Church of the Trinity, who recognized in him some
one apart and remote from the current of events--the river of humanity
on the avenue.
It was even a more turbulent river that was pouring west and southwest
along the two railroads leading from the Ferry. They were beginning to
tear up and burn the northern line, but along the other the trains still
moved in puffing succession. To Gard the sense of the part he played
was strong almost to reality. The quaint, biblical, old-world phrases
which he ever kept reading and repeating reacted upon him. He seemed,
even to himself, to become intangible and apart.
"What shall a man take in exchange for his soul?" halting his horse and
taking out the little white tract.
"I don't know. If you've got a plug of tobacco I might trade."
"If I had any, friend, I would give it to you freely."
The man looked at him curiously.
"I reckon you would now. This the best you know how, ain't it?"
Others who had stopped laughed and swarmed around. "Give me one!" "Me
one!"
"There are more who need them."
"Oh, all right."
"No hogs here."
"Good-luck to you, elder."
The stream flowed on, some chuckling over their tracts, some silent. An
officer said:
"You ought to get a pass, elder." So he came to where the Shenandoah
murmured its musical name. A range of blue mountains rose beyond it.
There seemed to be little going on by the river. The retreat had shifted
to the west along the railroads into the Opequan valley, and he turned
and rode west among low, wooded hills. It was Wednesday. They were
tearing and burning the southern of the two railroads now--an endless
row of bonfires of the ties, the iron rails laid across them to be
heated for bending.
"'Let not your hearts be troubled.'"
A man bending over a rail drew his hand back, swore lustily, and
straightened up.
"What's that? Oh!" He took the tract.
"That's what it says, sure enough. Maybe you don't know that rail was
hot." The tract was passed around. One read aloud, "He hath taken charge
and command. He hath established His law."
Gard sat motionless on his horse, looking placidly over their heads to
the pale-blue horizon.
"Who is the one greatest in authority here?"
"This side of God Almighty and Winchester. I reckon you mean the old
man. Hi, lieutenant!" The cantering officer pulled up. "He wants the
general."
"Does, does he? What for?"
A pause. Gard dropped his eyes to the officer who was reading the tract.
"It is said to be best that I should have his permission to--"
"Oh, I see. Come along, then."
They rode beside the track through strata of heat and smoke from the
fires, Gard following. It occurred to him that he had given his name on
an impulse the day before as Moselle, and would possibly need it now.
They came to a group of horsemen, talking, except one in front of them,
who watched the toiling squads silently. He wore a full black beard, and
sat his horse awkwardly.
"This seems to be some kind of a missionary, general. He wants to see
you."
The general glanced up under the brim of his slouched hat; then suddenly
flung back his head, so that his big beard stood out from his chest, and
said, simply:
"What do you want?"
"I am directed by a Session of the Brethren to distribute these."
"Who are you?"
"Of a congregation in Maryland."
"What is your name?"
"Moselle."
"Who are the Brethren?"
"We are called Dunkers by those not of our communion. We do not use the
name."
"There was a church of that sect near Sharpsburg."
"It is our church."
"They seemed to be German. You have no accent."
"It was said to be the reason I was chosen--the speaking freely the
language. It was said at the Session."
"Very well."
He dropped his eyes to the tract in his hand.
Gard remained placid, persistent.
"It was said a permission might be written."
"Very well."
He wrote a few words on a scrap of paper and handed it to Gard.
"May I keep this tract in exchange?"
"It is not exchanged. It is given."
Gard turned his horse. The general looked up.
"You are a young man"--silence--"But your sect takes no part in wars."
Gard waited. "Do you know the subject of this tract?"
"It is on the text, 'I must be about my Father's business.'"
The general seemed to have in mind to say more. He looked at Gard
peculiarly--not quite as the others had seemed to do, half suspecting,
half recognizing an alien being, a moral and mental unknown at some
withdrawn height, but as if recognizing one like himself in isolation
and pilgrimage, and so understanding his bearing and capacity for
silence.
The horsemen behind whispered and smiled.
"Very well." The general turned again to the working squads, and Gard
rode away in the smoke that drifted from the fires across the track. He
had a sense, too, of some flash of recognition that had gone below the
part he was playing, and seemed to involve a salutation and question of
other import and circumstance, a recognition of kinship in the knowledge
of other realities than the feet walk upon or the eyes see; knowledge of
the silence out of which one is born, of the flux of his present, of
destiny in ambush, of the "stream of the flying constellations," and the
steady pour of time, "inhaled as a vapor;" knowledge of the individual's
own lonely issue in the midst of these. But the turning again to his
working squads seemed to have been the general's solution--or, at least,
conclusion. "Very well;" one must be about the business set him to do.
"He must work in his garden," had been more than one sage's conclusion.
Gard did not entirely wish to work his way back to the point of view
that once had been his, of a spectator of events, who only acted in them
in order to appreciate them vividly. He wished to regain his old
enthusiasm, the poise and the clear sense of things, the interest,
dulled since the Peninsular campaign; and for the rest, to go on to
positions requiring new definitions. So far as the general had served as
a councillor, he had seemed to advise attention to business, to imply
that there was personal value in simple and direct doing.
During the two following days Gard rode along the railroad to
Winchester, and up and down the Opequan valley, picking up information
and asking such questions as he could make bear on the distribution of
tracts. Once or twice he thought he recognized a face he had seen across
the road by the Dunker church. It was not impossible. But one could not
identify from such smoky glimpses.
On Saturday he left Winchester and went eastward, crossing the Opequan
where the turnpike led by a shallow, rippling ford, and the flat-fenced
meadows of the bottom lands were all about. His saddle-bags were nearly
empty, and beyond the Blue Ridge he might find means to send a message
north.
A horseman was watering his horse at the ford, his hat tipped back, a
bandage around his head. They greeted, and Gard handed him a tract.
"Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown." It was one of the faces he
seemed to have seen.
"Oh, you're that missionary they call 'Abstract Piety.' Well, look
here!"
He stopped and stared. Gard leaned forward to let his horse drink, saw
his own face in the stream, and wondered what it might mean to the man
with the bandage who watched him, and whom he had somewhere seen. It
might be a critical question, what his face meant to the man with the
bandage. Crises! As one went on, every step was a crisis between the
moment past and the moment in front. The current streaked the
reflections in the water, and there were little brown minnows holding
their heads up-stream. He noticed his own expression in the
reflection--the impassive mask that he had come to wear without effort,
the spade-shaped beard, the lips whiter than the rest of the tanned
skin, which might suggest to the acute that the shaving of them was
recent, the swift curve of the hair-line, the heavy eyelids over eyes
that looked up dreamily out of the wavering water. He thought that, from
an artistic standpoint, he must look his part, or something like it,
with an emphasis. But every one travels by his own road to his own
conclusions. The man, whose white bandage wavered and gleamed in the
water near his own reflection, reminded him of one from whom he had
taken a pistol in the cornfield by the Dunker church, whose eyes had
been mad and glaring, and his hair soaked in his own blood. In fact,
that was the face. Crises! Did it mean the sudden end of his running
days? Probably either his or the other man's. Their reflections in the
stream seemed to parody them, to watch and mimic. The water chuckled.
There was something ironic in things. One fancied the current of time
itself to be streaming and streaked yellow in the sunlight, and full of
bubbles. The minnows poised and darted against the stream.
Gard's horse flung up his head with a start.
"If the message I have given you is not for you, will you not give it to
another?"
As he left the water he heard the other's horse splashing behind him.
The road turned from the river through a sandy cut in the woods. At the
woods' edge the bandaged head was beside him.
"Stranger, you don't happen to have that gun about you you stole from
me?"
Gard turned and looked into the small, black, fatal circle of a pistol
barrel, like an eye-socket with the ball in ominous retreat.
"I do not carry weapons," he said, quietly.
"You don't! I reckon you do. You ought to have plugged me down at the
ford with one of those weapons you don't carry. We're going back."
"If you wish to take my life--"
"I'd like to, mightily."
"Very well."
"You're a Yankee spy. Wheel around there and keep ahead."
"This mistake delays me. I have permission--"
"Keep your hand out of your pocket."
Gard paused an instant, then said: "Very well," and turned his horse
slowly to the right, shook his left foot from the stirrup, and guided
his horse close in. Their right shoulders almost touched. He gripped
the man's pistol-hand and throat with the same movement. The pistol spat
past his cheek. He heaved, left foot in the saddle, and leaped. The man
gurgled, and they fell over his horse's cruppers heavily in the road,
the man below on his bandaged head. The bandage fell off; his blood
trickled into the dust, and he lay still. The horses had cantered apart.
Gard twisted his head around as he lay athwart, looked an instant, and
loosened his hand from the black-bearded throat. The grip was so hard
and sinewy, it was like untying a knot. It took effort, as if his
muscles had been screwed up and rusted in place. The man was dead or
stunned.
Gard got up with the pistol in his hand. He brushed his own clothes,
caught his horse, sent the other's with a cut from a switch galloping
away into the woods, and came back. He found cartridges and a glass
flask full of whiskey in the man's pockets, and put them in his own. If
not dead, perhaps he had better be; otherwise one must change disguise,
and proper disguises were not easy. He slipped a cartridge and cocked
the trigger.
The sun above the trees shone on the livid face in the dust. It was
about noon, and the hour that Mavering stalked from the sandy road-bed
thirty miles away into the charred forest and murmured: "It's not my
funeral. It appears to be the anchorite's."
On the whole, the neighborhood was too lively for loose pistol-shooting.
Gard lifted the limp body and carried it into a thicket, brought the
bandage and laid it beside, kicked the dust over the blood-pools in the
road, mounted his horse and smoothed his face, trying to settle its
placidity.
He trotted and cantered all the afternoon northeastward among low hills,
passing many untroubled farm-yards, but little soldiery. A couple of
horsemen said, "Howdy, elder," and seemed to have met with him and his
mission before. He gave them one of his few remaining tracts
absent-mindedly, without answering, came when the sun was low to the
Shenandoah, and heard it murmur its musical name.
"Probably he'd been more convenient dead."
The bridge was burned. He swam his horse through the current. The blue
mountains fronted him darkly against the sky. The turnpike led up
through a gap and so over into the elder Virginia. It was dark when he
reached the end of the meadow lands where the upward pitch and the woods
of the mountain road began. "Probably he'd be handier that way."
At the top of the gap were open pastures, a cabin where a dog barked,
but no light shone in the windows. The stars were out innumerably, the
valley behind in the cold, blue vapor of the night.
"But it might be better to change the part, after all," he thought;
"better for luck."
Fortune might grow weary, a good mule be overworked, a good tune sung
too long; for instance, the doxology was a good tune, two-four time, the
measure of the tread of the moral law, a taciturn, single-minded tune,
something like the general who sat his horse awkwardly by the burning
railroad.
The moon that was slender and new at Antietam had grown round as a
shield and rose late. Beyond the pastures on the gap the road led down
through the woods to the elder land asleep in the moonrise.
"_Einst, O Wunder, einst_," the world and the young man, the big wars,
the stir of living! And how wonderful then the moon and the night's
infinite valleys, the glory of being and of loneliness, when to be a
living soul was royal and the splendor of the night was its crown, when
palpable currents, rivers thrilling and divine, poured into it, as the
universe paid homage to its worth. Gard felt that he had somewhere lost
his resonance. He must look for another coat and a happier disposition,
shave his beard and shake dice with chance again. The road plunged down
into the cavern of the woods. He let his horse pick his way, and judged
the character of the road-bed from the sound of his steps below in the
darkness.
Chapter XVI
Which Discloses one Daddy Joe, and Disposes of an Evangelist
It was chilly at that height. Gard rode all night down the
mountain-side, and saw at last the lights of moon and sunrise mingling
over the meadows and cornfields of a plantation close below him. The
forest grew thinner and broke into clearing and pastures. He left the
highway by an old cart-road whose ruts were grass-grown, though its
centre was trodden hard by many human feet, and passed an empty building
of rough boards--a school-house or a negro church. The big chestnuts
hung over it, and underbrush grew up to its windows. The path went to
the door, swerved aside through the thicket, and at last ran into a
little, lonely, hollow pasture, with the sunlight pouring over its edge
as into a cup. He picketed his horse to a thin sapling that would bend
and let the horse eat, and lay down near a bowlder where the sunlight
seemed to be the yellowest, smiling to feel the warmth steal through
him. "There's too much luxury in my bones for an evangelist." Presently
he was asleep. The sun mounted, swung around by the south, and the
shadow of the bowlder went over the sleeper. An old negro, with bowed
head and cane in hand, stumped vigorously along the path towards the
building under the chestnuts. He passed the bowlder on the other side,
and saw neither the sleeper nor the horse picketed among the saplings
and feeding quietly. He wore a suit of fine broadcloth, the coat lined
with silk and stained and threadbare, a white vest, a blue, dotted
cravat, and a soft, gray hat. After that the clearing was silent except
for passing crows and drowsy insects.
Suddenly the woods became choral, a burst of singing from the chestnut
grove. Gard started, sat up, and listened.
"That's no jingle! That's music!"
He jumped to his feet and ran across the pasture, crept hurriedly
through a thicket to a window brushed by leaves of the underwood. He was
absorbed and eager.
"Man there with a voice like a bass viol!" he muttered.
"I wished I didn't wake an' sleep,
I wished I did lay down an' weep,
By Jordan, Jordan.
If I could come to that Dead Sea,
I'd wade up stream to Galilee,
By Jordan."
Each verse boomed up a noble crescendo and fell away in plaintive minor
chords. The preacher in the pulpit, in white vest, dotted cravat, and
fashionably cut coat, cried:
"Mou'n an' pray! Mou'n an' pray!"
"I wished I weep when Jesus weep,
I wished he wash me wid he sheep
In Jordan, Jordan.
I'd drown in Jordan wave and shout--
'Lord Jesus take my white soul out
Of Jordan.'"
"You wa'min, brer'n, you wa'min! Lo'd God! Jordan! Mou'n an' pray!"
"I wished the burden on my soul
Would roll away. Roll, Jordan, roll!
Roll, Jordan, Jordan!
Lord Jesus disher sheep astray,
Ain' You gwine show me yonder way
To Jordan?"
"De tex'," began the preacher, "is 'bout er man what he Lord len' him a
talent--da's a big bit of money, oom!--an' he wrap it in a napkin caze
he skeered of it an' hide it, an' go 'way crackin' he knuckle-bones.
'Hiyi!' An' he Lord say, 'You shif'less brack rascal! Ain' you got sense
to buy er cow what he feed in de pasture, an' bimeby deh's er calf, an'
de cow's good as befo', an' da's de calf, wuf eighteen dollars,
Confed'ate money?' Das' what Mars Ca'leton give Miss Meely fo' de white
yeahlin' what ain' any special so't of er calf. He Lord say, 'Give me
dat talent! You go hoe co'n in de co'nfield. I spec you skeered to tu'n
roun' when you get de end of de row. You ain' got business ent'prise,'
he say. 'You go fin' er slipper-sloppy mud turkle what know how keep he
shirt on he back an' he fingehs an' toes inside he shirt, an' lay down
in de slipper-sloppy mud wid him. Da's de habit an' perfession,' he say,
'ez sholy 'bout right fo' you.' Disher's de sayin' of scripcheh, caze
Miss Meely read it ter me las' night, an' ef it ain' de exac' wo'ds,
da's de efficaciousness. Da's de efficaciousness. Wha's de residuum?
"Ef you kotch a rabbit, an' skin him, an' clean him to he bone meat, an'
bile him till he swim in he own gravy, an' smell, oom! he smell sweeter
'n Miss Meely's flower-gyarden, da's de efficaciousness of de rabbit.
But afteh you done et de rabbit, an' he mek de sunshine inside, an'
de notion how soon you go kotch one mo', da's de residuum. I tell you
fo' sho fac'. Wha's de residuum? Ain' I heah las' week to Leesburg how
de Yankees done mek er Proclamation, an' deh pos' it on de do' of de
Cyounty House up no'th, dat de niggehs gwine all be free? Ain' Brer
Jacob dar skip up f'om de gyarden whar he rakin' weeds an' tell Miss
Meely how he gwine be free? Ain' Miss Meely cuff he yeahs fo' pesterin'
her? Ain' he got no mo' use fo' he freedom 'n ter gallop roun' fo' he
got it, an' pester Miss Meely what been shovin' co'n pone 'n bacon in he
mouf since he been a pickaninny? Oom!
"What you gwine do wid er talent ef you got it? Gwine git so tickle
befo' you know what it is? Gwine git ter de end of de co'n row an' hoe
on out 'n in de swamp caze ain' no man tell you tu'n. Gwine lie in de
roadway for er jumpy-tail wabble-yeah rabbit run down you mouf when
you hungry? Gwine splash in de creek wid de mud turkle wid he fingehs
an' toes wrap in he shirt. Hiyah! Oom! Comin' a day of-er-er-lamentation
an' dry bones, when de whippo'will be cryin' he lonesome lak he lookin'
fo' some one he cyarn fin'; an' ef he lookin' fo' a niggeh wuf len'in'
a talent to, da's some one he cyarn fin'.
"He Lord len' him a talent, say de good book. Oom! De efficaciousness of
de tex' am disher solemn wa'nin'. Don' go roun' ast white folks len' you
money. De borrowin' money's de beginnin' of trouble. Ain' nobody know
when deh gwine ast fo' it again. Mote ast fo' it de day afteh you put in
er pocket wid de hole clean down de groun'. Mote tell you buy er cow an'
wait fo' de calf, what de sojers take it lak deh tuk Miss Meely's ho'ses
'cep de two up in de hill pasture. De efficaciousness of de tex' am
disher solemn wa'nin. Wha's de residuum?"
The preacher swung his arms over his head shouting:
"Jo'dan! Jo'dan! Ain' no shinin', ain' no gladness, on'y 'yond Jo'dan!
Ain' gwine be no free niggeh! Ain' gwine be no slave! Gwine 'yond
Jo'dan!"
The congregation swayed, moaned, shouted:
"Jordan! Jordan!"
"Ain' I hyah de whippo'will cryin' de yevenin', 'Daddy Joe, come 'yond
Jo'dan, Daddy Joe.' Jo'dan Jo'dan!"
"Amen!"
"Now you shoutin'!"
From his ambush Gard could see the preacher plainly through the window
and two or three of the swaying heads nearest the preacher. The service
from now on seemed like an incoherent tumult, the preacher's voice now
and then above it, crying, "Mou'n an' pray!" until, at last, after half
an hour, it all died away, and there was silence except for the sobbing,
moaning, and panting. The preacher had sat down, or was not in sight
from where Gard was hidden. Some one unseen at the other end of the
building began to sing softly:
"There's a little wheel am turning in my heart."
Gradually the congregation dropped into the melody, all singing softly.
"There's a little wheel am turning in my heart,
In my heart, in my heart.
That little wheel am Jesus in my heart,
In my heart, in my heart--
I don' want no deception in my heart."
There was a long prayer in a husky whisper. The preacher seemed
exhausted. The meeting broke up. Gard counted fifty or more as they
came out. They all took the path to the highway, except the preacher,
who stumped away towards the pasture. Gard waited till everything was
still, then stepped into the path and followed him. When he came into
the pasture he saw the old man down by the bunch of saplings, examining
the horse, and joined him promptly.
"Good-morning, friend."
"Mo'nin, sah; disher you ho'se, sah?"
Gard felt in the saddle-bags and found a couple of tracts left.
"You do not know how to read? These are two short sermons upon the
texts, 'Whosoever calleth his brother a fool is in danger of hell-fire,'
and 'He that loseth himself shall find himself.' You live over there, in
a cabin by yourself?"
"Hey! Yes, sah."
"If you like I will go with you and read you these sermons?"
They went up the pasture, and left the horse feeding under the saplings.
The old man seemed awe-struck, as if he thought Gard might be some such
spiritual stranger as visited the prophets of old and the chosen
servants of the Lord. He walked on, looking up shyly at his sudden
guest, who went beside him, straight, slim, and sinewy, with sun-tanned
skin, shaven lips, silky black beard, singular hat, with broad, stiff
brim, and did not, surely, in that garb at least, look like other men.
When they came to where the path passed from the clearing into the
thicket again the negro stepped aside. Gard motioned and said:
"After you, Daddy Joe."
"Ain' he know my name! Ain' he know my name!"
The path led down and came out on the bank of a creek, with old willows
along it and a single little cabin back of the willows in a meadow.
Across the creek were cornfields, and in the distance the chimneys of a
large plantation house.
Gard asked, "Have you something for me to eat?"
"Yes, sah. Yes, sah."
They sat down on a rickety bench at the cabin door, and Gard read the
two tracts while Daddy Joe watched with troubled, pathetic eyes, and
after it brought out corn-bread and bacon sizzling in a pan. The
sunshine was warm. Some bird whistled shrilly in the willows over the
brown, sluggish creek. The smoke of the distant chimneys hung heavily.
Gard felt as if he would like to let his business slide and watch for
hours dreamily the hanging smoke, and gather the sense of contrast
between the tumult of the times and spirit of the settled land brooded
over by memories of generations at peace, of homes and familiar things.
"Daddy Joe," he said, suddenly, "we must work in our garden."
Daddy Joe seemed to think that normal remarks were not to be expected
from a visitant, possibly heavenly, at any rate having intimate
knowledge and a message to deliver.
"Yes, sah. Da's a fac'. We must work in de gyarden, sholy."
"I have something for you to do." He stopped. Daddy Joe's sermon had
seemed to imply an adverse opinion to negro freedom.
"You are wrong, Daddy Joe. It would be better for the slaves to be
free."
"Fo' God!"
"You really think so yourself. This is what you think, that it is meant
they shall be free, but it is right to tell them that their freedom will
be a trial for them and many of them will fail. This is what you
think."
"Da's sholy de efficaciousness."
"You will promise, then, in order to help this forward, to do what I
tell you, and in secret, so that no one here shall know. It is a small
thing, but a help to the cause of the Union armies, which is the cause
of the nation and the negro--you will do this?"
"Yes, sah," in a trembling and awed whisper.
"The promise is upon your conscience as a preacher of the Word."
"Yes, sah," almost inaudibly.
"This is it, then. You will give me the clothes you are wearing, for
which I will pay you twenty dollars, and one of the horses hidden in the
hill pasture."
"Fo' God!"
"You will take my horse in exchange, ride to-morrow morning, before
daybreak, for Leesburg, and take the train to Washington. Have you ever
been in Washington?"
"Yes, sah."
"I will give you a paper which you will show to any soldier about
Washington who stops you, and he will let you pass. In the city you will
find the War Department, and there leave that paper and another I will
give you. The second paper you will not let any one see before you
leave it at the War Department. You will there be given forty dollars.
When you return you will come at night and take the horse up to the hill
pasture. Will you have to account for your absence?"
"Miss Meely done lef' me go preachin' round de cyounty, sah. Miss
Meely"--hesitating--"Miss Meely te'ible sot down on de Yankees, sah."
"Be careful, then. We must work in our garden."
"Sholy."
"And you see that this is your duty."
"Yes, sah."
"To-morrow morning, before daybreak, in the road beyond your church, we
will separate, and you will not see me any more."
Beside Daddy Joe's bowed-down humility and belief Gard had a sensation
that in a measure was new--a sense of ignobleness and triviality. In
some strange way there seemed to rise out of Daddy Joe a certain
spiritual stature and significance. One seemed to discern that nowhere
in his soul did he play a part, or play at anything, or remember
himself. He took Gard to be perhaps, a half-divine evangelist. In Daddy
Joe's primitive faith, Gard fancied, heavenly incarnated messengers
came as easily among men as his ancestral gods had come in the jungle;
spirits, evil or good, still rode the night wind; a magical influence of
benefit or harm was a quality of things, like their color and touch.
It was out of these conditions that the historic faiths had come, with
their deep simplicities. The torch-bearers, with fresh fire, men who
travailed with the secrets of the future, had so sat in doorways, taught
such as Daddy Joe the master words, and forgot the times filled with
wars and policies, while the sunlight was on the grainfields, some brown
creek quiet in its bed, and the hearth smoke hanging in the air. But he
had not any such message for Daddy Joe, and felt trivial in his mask.
Wars and policies, too, were trivial, shadows drifting across the
cornfields, ripples on the slow mass of the creek. It was what occurred
to men in doorways and by roadsides that was of importance, that lit the
torches and determined the massed current.
In the dark of the dawn they separated at the highway. Daddy Joe rode
downward on Gard's horse with the white forefoot. A few hundred feet and
he pulled up, turned in his saddle, and looked back. The horse and man
going up under the pine avenue seemed to loom large and vague in the
gloom.
"Fo' God," he whispered, "ain' gwine see him no mo'."
In the broad daylight on top of the gap Gard examined his clothes,
rubbed the smoothness of his shaven face, and observed that the horse he
rode was an iron-gray. The clothes were a gray felt hat, a long, black
coat, threadbare and lined with silk, a white vest, dotted necktie and
unstarched linen, black trousers, and his own shoes. He thought he might
resemble a seedy Southern gentleman in possession of a whiskey flask and
an eccentric plan for the capture of the city of Washington. He might
imagine a resemblance in spirit to Jack Mavering. It would furnish a
basis and a sequence.
He came to the burned bridge on the Shenandoah. Three or four horsemen
were on the other side who met and greeted him when he had crossed.
"Howdy."
"Howdy."
Gard wrung the water from his wet clothes and waited. One of the
horsemen drew a paper from his pocket.
"Haven't seen a man like this anywhere, have you?" and read from the
paper.
"'Loose, black clothes, broad, stiff-brimmed hat, shaven lips, black
beard, smooth hair, of sect called Dunkers, carrying saddle-bags, riding
bay horse with white forefoot.'"
Gard considered.
"I wouldn't gamble on the fo' foot," he said, slowly, "but there was
an individual resembling otherwise that lucid and cyarefully boiled
description over 'yond the ridge. He gave me a printed little damn
sheet which contained discourteous ref'ences to hell-fire.
But"--thoughtfully--"that ho'se, 'pears to me his feet matched."
"Never mind. That's the man. They said he went over the ridge. Where'd
he go from then?"
"He 'peared to be pointed for Harper's Ferry."
"Well, we've lost him, then."
Gard looked sympathetic and reached down into the tails of his coat.
"There's only one thing, seh, that's equally good for disappointment and
wet feet. This heah whiskey never paid any duty to the United States--I
have my doubts, seh, whether it paid any to the Confed'acy. I should
like to devote a generous percentage to the use of the Confed'acy. You
wouldn't mind assuming charge of that percentage?"
A moment later the other asked, "Have you got the tract that Yankee
scout gave you?"
"Who?"
"The Dunker."
"Oh! ve'y good! As applied to me, I took the ref'ences to be
discourteous. I gave it, seh, to a niggeh."
Chapter XVII
On the Question of the Exact Location of the Divinity which is
Ultimately Called Worth While
There is said to be a divinity in our discontent, the pull of some large
law and onward gravitation such as tends to make vivid rivers, and only
where it fails to influence are stagnant pools. On stagnant pools the
water-lilies float, no doubt, white and passionate in fragrance, and
cardinal flowers are along their shores; but law and divinity seem to be
with the rivers--such rivers as the Shenandoah, which Gard met at
different points, and often enough during October, until it had become a
familiar sight--until the leaves of the oaks had turned a burnished
red-and-bronze, and the Confederate army had moved far up the valley. He
passed through the army, around it, and back again, explained his scheme
for the capture of Washington, collected orders for the delivery of
unlicensed whiskey, and walked in the shadow of his discontent.
In answer to the question, "What am I in my being, my centre and self?"
that centre and self seemed to grow featureless to his questioning. The
continual acting of a part suggested the question--his being able to
assume a character, to fill it out, to mould himself to it, and so to
act it consistently and hardly with conscious effort, emphasized the
question. Had he no shape of his own to protest against the presumption
of other shapes? Was a man no more in reality than a piece of lead pipe
for ideas, impressions, and emotions of unknown origin to run through
for the mere purpose of passage, and finally to wear thin and wear out?
Not altogether, since each experience seemed to leave him not what he
was before. The meeting with Daddy Joe and with the general by the
burning railroad had left persistent memories. These two at least seemed
to him to have centre, character, and anchorage. They stood out in
distinction. They had shape and color and definition, and a certain
inner stature. Together with this distinctness and stature there had
been noticeable in both a singular absorption in something not
themselves. The general had seemed to think there was more point in his
work than in himself, at least to turn to his work as if he thought it
best to act on that belief--Daddy Joe to have given up his soul to
wonder and awe of his visitor. The text of one of the tracts he had
given to Daddy Joe had been, "He that loseth himself shall find
himself," and he remembered noticing Daddy Joe's wonder and troubled
look, and thinking him badly lost. It was a cryptic kind of saying--"He
that loseth himself shall find himself."
This business by the Shenandoah, this close fingering of peril and
card-play between life and death, both parties being sharpers, ought
properly to be absorbing and exciting. To attain distinctness, how could
one be better elsewhere than in the valley of the Shenandoah, in an
isolation so complete from all whom he met from day to day, hostile in
purpose to them all, a single eddy against a wide current? Yet, when he
looked within himself he seemed to see a space merely where forms
flitted through and singing gusts of wind passed, but none found a home.
The general at his work for a cause that was a doomed anachronism was
something. Daddy Joe, in adoration of his hollow demi-god and shamming
evangelist, was something. "Who or what am I? Is there any truth or any
lie that from the bottom of me I believe, any goal I hope for, any man
or woman I cling to?" One pictured the individual to be a kind of
self-fed fire. One denied conventions of the mind and claimed his issue
to be his own, his solitary pilgrimage from one eternity to another; he
would look about him as he went and take note, neither lose himself nor
cloud his eye nor cumber his feet, for the time would be short, and
there would be much to see. Now, what he was doing and had done was
nothing, for he did not care about it; and what he had felt and thought
was little, only those flitting forms and gusts of wind that made a stir
in their passage and left echoes behind them--some sandy sediment,
perhaps--some changes in the mould or shell.
If men, failing to find the infinite and the spirit outside of
themselves--anywhere above or beneath or around--concluded it must be
within, there lay the logic of their introspection. How, then, if in the
centre of that "within" were found only an echoing space? At the touch
of this discovery would not all structured dreams fall suddenly to dust
and ashes, all illumined purposes lose their flush? "Be yourself," cried
the latest seers, rising from the discouragement of faiths faded into
myths, an ancient sun frightened from the eastern skies by their
questioning. "Maintain your poise, look within, for there hides divinity
in that holy of holies of a man of which his body is the temple. A
pilgrim you are, from the darkness behind to the mystery before, and the
universe is a road for your travelling soul." "Be myself! Who or what am
I? The holy of holies appears empty, and no altar is there, either, nor
self-fed fire." Was the universe so mad a joke as to be a road merely
for the travelling of such bubbles, blown spherically with tainted air,
colored with solar fantasies, apt to dissolve suddenly to a drop of
soapy moisture in the dust by some such accident as was probable enough
in the valley of the Shenandoah?
The epochs in life, then, were not its physical events, but crises in
thought, some sudden or gradual conviction or disillusioning. Gard felt
now that this had come upon him gradually, beginning from the Peninsular
campaign.
No doubt, whatever one thought was the dwelling-place of divinity, or
whatever he called the one thing worth while, if it presently appeared
not to be there, there was always a marvellous emptiness in its place,
a world apparently convicted of barrenness, since its growths were
convicted of illusion--a point in experience once called "the
Everlasting No," a period of fretful discontent. It did not seem
probable that the lost law and divinity were at sanctuary in that
discontent.
Meanwhile in the valley of the Shenandoah the oak foliage kindled and
smouldered in dull red, as if its approaching death were a matter of
pride and stately celebration, and Gard led a singular dual existence,
one side of which seemed to be a staring at a topless and bottomless
distaste, and the other to be an argument that good whiskey was cheaply
and secretly distilled in certain portions of western Virginia, to the
discomfiture of the United States--that, if the Confederate army would
purchase and absorb enough of it, the capture of Washington would become
immediately probable.
The behavior, the schemes, inventions and discourses of this secondary
personage of his creating had an objective interest. It seemed to Gard
to be in its way a noteworthy character, judged as a piece of creative
fiction.
It was modelled on Mavering, but gathered details from day to day and
perfected its symmetry. It appeared to have volition, a speech and
individual oddities all its own, which he was hardly aware of having
invented.
Some days after his return he came by the Opequan and the place where he
had fallen headlong in the road with the man of the bandage. He turned
his horse into the bushes. The body lay still in its place. The
"secondary personage" commented aloud in character, and to Gard's
surprise.
"It appears you didn' furnish that cyarfully boiled description."
He broke boughs and threw them over the body, mounted again and rode on.
"That's the injustice of circumstance."
A few hundred yards beyond he met a detail of soldiers, halted them, and
said to the officer:
"Do you see that white birch?"
"Yes."
"Very good. Theah's a co'pse of a day or two no'th of it which I
discove'd accident'ly and threw over it a tributo'y leaf. It looked to
me," with an air of reminiscence and respect, "like a gentleman that
might have known good whiskey in his time."
"I'll look at him. Reckon I know who you are. Haven't captured
Washington yet?"
The men around grinned.
"The difficulty, seh, with the management of this campaign, is its
impe'viousness to ideas. Good-mo'ning, seh."
It was the first week in November when he rode across the Long Bridge
into Washington and fastened his horse to a tree in front of the War
Department.
He sent in his name, and the summons came promptly. He entered an inner
office, and was alone with a thick-set man with a grim mouth, and beard
falling half-way down his chest, who rapidly turned the leaves of a book
of entry.
"Captain Windham?" he said, and went on turning the leaves.
"Yes, sir."
"I have received three despatches from you. September 30th, by an old
negro. Christian name, Joe."
"Daddy Joe," murmured Gard.
"Not at all! Simply Joe."
"Oh! I thought it was Daddy," said Gard, sadly.
"Joe--simply Joe. October 15th, by an officer of General ----'s brigade,
on sick leave; name, Burton. October 24th, by Army Post. Harper's Ferry.
Is that correct?"
"Yes, sir. I'm the fourth. I'm dated November 7th."
"I am aware of the date," said the other, sharply.
He seemed to suspect some frivolous irony in his visitor, a lack of
seriousness and respect, a motion of humor repellent to the
authoritative and downright atmosphere of that office. Then he glanced
suddenly at the calendar and frowned.
"You are mistaken, sir. It is the 6th."
Gard dropped his eyes to his torn and weather-stained old gray hat, and
turned it slowly around his finger.
"It comes from being so long down there," he said, regretfully. "I
thought their calendar was one day ahead of ours. They seemed to get
there about one day ahead."
The other glared at him through his spectacles, then said, shortly:
"I will take your information."
After the questioning and writing were finished he continued:
"I will forward this to the new commander-in-chief, appointed yesterday,
the 5th"--with another glance at the calendar for security--"in place of
the late commander-in-chief, relieved," and looked up quickly as if
expecting to find some revenge or satisfaction in his surprise. But Gard
did not seem to be surprised or interested. He looked at a vigorous
clump of hair at the top of the official's head, then down at his old
hat indifferently.
"I think that I should like a furlough."
The other was irritated, almost fierce.
"Send in your application and I will see that it is granted. That's all.
Good-day. Captain Windham, it remains for me to say that you have done
very well--remarkably well--and appear to be exhausted in proportion. I
repeat, you have done very well."
"I think"--Gard paused at the door--"I think it was Daddy Joe."
"Good-day, sir!"
Gard went down the steps, and wondered at his caring so little whether
he had done well or not. He did not know why he had wanted to irritate
that irritable but powerful official. It had seemed at the time to have
points of interest. Probably if one cared about a military career it
would not be wise to irritate officials, and, if one did not, it lacked
interest.
"He thinks himself something, that one. But"--untying his horse--"I
suppose he is." And he rode down the great avenue, whistling. "The
Campbells are coming--trala!"
Hundreds of flags hung from windows and waved over buildings. The white
dome of the capitol rose up in the distance against the sky. A
regimental band was playing a quickstep somewhere near. Towards the
river the trunk of the half-built monument stood, purposing in time to
commemorate one thought to have been something in his time.
"This sort of thing is no great success. There must be something wrong
with me. I think I'll go to Italy. Rhymes! What, ho! I will be a poet.
Let the Campbells come, let the Campbells go. It's a foolish tune." Why
so enthusiastic at bowling over one's inoffensive brethren in mortality?
That sounded like Jack Mavering, another homeless adventurer and piece
of fragmentary pottery, who did not care, either, about the commander of
the Army of the Potomac, and might be taking lunch now in that
restaurant with the gilt sign, the resort of correspondents and small
officers. Italy! The _Citronen blühen_ there, and one was either a monk
or an artist, or in love with an almond-eyed shepherdess--was something
with a denomination, at least, and an ideal for a perquisite. He would
go and tell Helen and Mrs. Mavering. Helen would dislike his not caring,
and say so, in fact, with vigor. He might omit it and enlarge on Italy.
"I wonder what she'll say? I shouldn't like it if she looked
disappointed."
Chapter XVIII
In which there is Discovered a Compunction
The iron-gray horse--the former property of one "Miss Meely," an
existence in rumor, suspected of being quick-tempered--turned into an
alley that led past the windows of the restaurant with the gilt sign to
a livery stable.
The restaurant was full of the bustle of hurrying waiters and the hum of
conversation. Mavering sat half-way down the line of tables, the remains
of his meal before him. He was leaning back, looking peacefully at the
ceiling, when Gard came, sat down at the other side of the table, and
held out his hand. Mavering took his eyes from the ceiling and said,
mildly. "Angel and ministers of grace! I prepared an obituary for you a
month ago." He drew a thin, bony hand from his pocket and stretched it
across the table. Gard gave his order to the waiter before he commented.
"Why did you do that?"
"Ah! Why? If I remember the circumstances correctly they were these."
Gard listened silently while Mavering told the story with niceties of
detail. Finally he said:
"I don't see what Map did that for."
"Don't you? Then neither do I, but in the highway of interpretation I
should say he doesn't like you to be alive--possibly has a grudge."
"He must have, but I didn't know it before."
And later, when they were in the street that climbed to the capitol, and
seemed to come to an end there, finally, in adoration of its sunlit
dome, Gard asked:
"Do you know where I'm going?"
"The question offers unlimited interest. I take it to be rhetorical. I
do not."
"I'm going to look for Mrs. Mavering and a young lady who is with her.
They're nursing in one of the hospitals, or were last winter. Did you
know it?"
"I did not."
"Going with me?"
"I'll walk along and make up my mind."
After a few moments' silence:
"It was hard luck for Mrs. Mavering to marry you."
"You speak truth."
"You didn't boil down to much."
"Blanked little. What's your intricate meaning?"
"I was thinking of Map."
They did not find them till the next day. There were ten or twelve
hospitals in and about the city, some of them in the suburbs and far
apart. Certain doctors knew the two nurses, and one directed them to a
hospital which turned out to be a kind of military city with streets and
sentries; but they were not there. The hospitals were all working
smoothly at the time. There had been no large battle since Antietam, and
there were few of those grim, dreary, and confused scenes which at times
made the hospitals seem sterner battle-fields than any at the front.
Nevertheless Mavering felt and expressed a sense of injury.
"You don't mean to say I'm as tough as all this!"
"I haven't said anything about your toughness. Maybe you are. We'll try
Mount Pleasant now. That will be the last to-night." And they rode away
from the military city.
"You know her," continued Mavering. "She is what you would call, after
duly considering the adjective, select. She doesn't like realism, raw
humanity, and irregular event. She desires humanity to be cooked and
served in courses, even to be ordered up to the rules of art. By which
figurative language I mean to say that I don't see, that no ready
interpretation presents itself, that I'm interested to know who
persuaded her to take a ticket to the suburbs of hell."
"You'll know if we find them."
"It was, then, this Miss?--"
"Bourn."
"Bourn. Exactly. Of that undiscovered country. Having discovered who
induced the buying of the ticket aforesaid, there remains how she did
it, this Miss--a--Bourn."
Late the following day they came to a hospital that had been a warehouse
and stood on rising ground, a little back from the river, where a white
steamer was lying at the wharf. There were sheds around the building,
and new wooden steps built up to the door where the freight had once
been discharged.
A man at the door said Mrs. Mavering and Miss Bourn were within, and
took their names. Beyond him they saw accurately straight rows of cots,
each with a head at one end. In a few moments he came back and said the
two nurses would be off duty in an hour.
They walked to and fro, past their horses fastened in one of the sheds,
till the dusk grew around them. The hospital windows were lit. Lights
began to gleam beyond the river and the flat lands. A mist rose and
clung to the water, crouched and ghostly. There was no moon, but the
stars were out, and one could hear the lapping of the cold water among
the reeds. They did not see Rachel and Helen come from the wide door
down the new wooden steps, or notice them till they were near, coming
hooded and cloaked through the dusk.
Mavering admitted to himself a personal and direct surprise. His last
memories of Rachel were of tears, and then pale dignity and a kind of
fine repellence. But she did not betray the past in manner. He could not
see her face.
She said:
"There will be scallops for supper, gentlemen, and then may we have your
adventures?"
Mavering found himself walking beside her, and admitting his surprise to
be personal and direct. Presently he picked up his fluency.
"I judge you would like to avoid reminiscence. In the interests of
clarity and calm weather, however, allow me to say that I don't intend
to bother you; I'm a statue personifying resignation."
"Thank you, Jack. There is where we live. Helen and I."
It was a brick house with a white door, two slender pillars before the
door, and low, pleasant windows. It overlooked the river, on which a
gray layer of mist now brooded. Only a few houses were near, and a grove
of trees lay beyond.
"We were in the city last winter and spring, and in another hospital,
till a doctor who had charge sent us out here, in July, and found this
for us. Helen looked so badly. She sympathizes so tremendously. She grew
very thin and white. They don't bring them here directly from the
fields, you know. Most of them here are getting better. He said we would
be quite as much use. Do you know, it is very nice to be of use."
"Do I gather that, apart from the charm of utility--a thing that never
appealed to me by its own virtue--do I correctly infer that you like
it?"
Mrs. Mavering opened the door. The lamp in the hall shone across her
face as she turned with a curious smile.
"You don't change, do you?"
If Helen surprised Gard it was not with change, but with that same
vividness of her personality; the tone of her voice, as definite as a
musical theme; the swift step; the nameless something about her,
impetuous, challenging, demanding, that said, "This is Helen--not a
resemblance or recollection merely, but one who cannot be made another."
He was surprised by the flood of his recollections of her and by the
fact that, tested by the present, they were all found to be true.
"Lady Rachel says there are scallops. It's glorious of you to come. We
know what you did in the spring, and we have a piano, but you ought to
have an organ to tell about it, it's so big. Is it fun to be a hero?"
"That's an odd idea. I thought you might tell me who I am, or whether
I'm something at all; but I don't recognize that. Can't you do any
better?"
They followed Mavering and Rachel, and came to the white door, that
stood open for them. Helen looked up suddenly, but did not smile, only
said:
"You've changed, haven't you?"
Within he noticed Mrs. Mavering's touch everywhere. Wherever she was,
things about her seemed to alter their practical bearing and take on a
difference. A plain table became luxurious by virtue of something thrown
across it. A tall jar was placed on the painted mantel-piece, and the
mantel-piece itself became reminiscent.
After supper, where the scallops did not fail, the four gathered before
the grate. A fire crackled, and the slender jar stood above, in reminder
of realms where form and color were the only deities. Gard thought Mrs.
Mavering had changed. Helen's pallor and thinness did not touch her
imperative identity. Mrs. Mavering had changed less in looks than in
tone. There was less languor and withdrawal. As to the relations between
her and Jack, they did not seem to be uncomfortable at present, and were
no business of his.
"Helen tells me I'm changed," he said. "Do you remember the night when I
came to see you instead of playing in Saint Mary's, and Helen played she
was a valiant knight and you were a lady hidden in a tower, and I
offered to be the ogre who was said to have a tower of his own somewhere
to be proud in? It was nearly two years ago. I think the knight is still
charging, and wanting to make wrong right by sticking a lance into it.
But the lady has come out of her tower and gone questing with the
knight, and doesn't seem quite the same. And the ogre has found the
'somewhere' of his tower even more vague than it was then, or, if he has
found it, it seems to be empty. Nothing lives there but winds and ghosts
now."
"What have you been doing?" asked Helen. "We hear stories of other
people, but we haven't any to tell. But I don't understand what you
mean."
"What I've been doing hasn't much to do with it. But I'll tell about
that, if you like. You'd better have Mavering's first."
"Singular anchorite!" Mavering murmured. "Why?"
"You'll tell it better."
"Without doubt. But a reason for waiting occurs to me."
"Don't you want to smoke?" asked Rachel, suddenly.
"It is not what I referred to, but it proves your knowledge that my
motives are physical and uninspired."
In Gard's narrative there was no mention of Map, and the discovery of
the first disguise was given to another source. It was told simply,
rather indifferently. When it was finished Mavering remarked:
"The anchorite's style has the classical merits of austerity."
It was part of Mavering's travelling-kit and baggage of the nomad, this
gift of his, to be among tellers of stories, rare and excellent. For
soldiers around camp-fires, old women in doorways, gentlemen at clubs
and dinner-tables, newsboys in the city, school-children in the country
with tin lunch-pails, farmer, tramp, hod-carrier, doctor, clergyman,
blackleg, maiden in silk or gingham--it was all one; they forgot
themselves and country and kin and present purpose till he was through.
The "Ancient Mariner's" spell was not peculiar to that mariner. It is
more ancient than he, older than books, older than written language,
older than any city in pyramid or institution, practised among hunters
of wild beasts on the site of Damascus, and among those who first
scratched the fat soil of the Mesopotamian valley, the spell of the
teller. His method is anything convenient, a ballad chanted to a harp,
or a printed book. He speaks his mind and says what seems good to him as
he goes, for the basis of it is the story, and the force is the force of
the man. Mavering practised the primitive and personal method, and was
heaven-born to it.
His narrative ran from the beginning of the summer, when he had come
south as a correspondent and joined the army in the Peninsula, went on
with easy gait and leaping of spaces, gave glimpses and incidents by the
way, dropped out a month, fell upon the middle of September, and drew to
a close.
"Wherever I went that day over the hills, behind the guns I saw that
cornfield, or else where the cornfield was underneath and not to be seen
itself on account of lying in the middle of explosion, with wickedness
and confusion on one side, and sin and the reward thereof on the other,
all blackguarding each other across it, so that it was covered with
their blasphemous breath; till I had a superstition about that
cornfield, and said, 'If corn could be gathered therefrom, and corn
whiskey made thereof, it would be a chemical anarchy of the choicest, a
combative distillation unexcelled, a superior brand of whiskey.' It was
dusk when I came to the cornfield at last, and the battle had gone to
sleep in its cradle. The stretcher-men were in the corn, and they told
me to ride around the edge where the mess wasn't so thick. Their idea
seemed to be good. So that I never went into that cornfield, though it
was probably different from all the other cornfields, but came around
into a road beyond it. There were men burning rails for camp-fires, and
the woods were black, and the anchorite was strolling along, looking up
at the young moon, same way he always did."
Mavering paused a moment and puffed his cigar, took it out and looked at
it, and deepened his deep voice. "I search in vain among the sere and
yellow leaves of memory, whether it was ever in me to suck the end of a
moonbeam in place of a cigar."
He appealed to Rachel, who answered cheerfully and surprised him again:
"Oh yes, it was, and so it must be still."
"He's a hollow fraud, you know," Gard said. "He sucks moonbeams through
his cigar, and puffs them out of his mouth." And Helen gasped.
"It's tremendous!"
But it seemed to her, putting together the two narratives, that she
might make a parable. For in Mavering's story she seemed to see colored
lights flashed skilfully on a stage with curious effect, a search-light
swinging its glare so that one scene after another leaped out of the
dark and vanished again, a pleasure taken in the mere shift and play,
the change and tumult. The narrator walked in the midst, approving of
the noise, patronizing heroism and sudden death, admiring the scenic
effect of the fire that splashed and scattered around him. It was all
color and sound, and no real interpretation beneath. It meant nothing in
the end. In Gard's story, though the tumult was great and the dangers
greater, the scenes painted clearly though more coldly, and with fewer
details; yet he seemed not to care about them so, but to be looking
wistfully beyond for an interpretation and not able to find it--not sure
that there was one; fancying there must be, somewhere, something to make
it worth while.
She sat in her old place at Mrs. Mavering's feet and turned the matter
over, and thought it strange.
It surprised Gard, in watching her, that he remembered so much, so many
little shining points of detail about her--as she had looked in the
house, under the apse of Saint Mary's, sitting so, in a white dress, a
blue ribbon at her throat, and the firelight shining on her yellow hair.
And Mrs. Mavering used to wear dark-red dresses always, and suggest
tragedy without being aware of it. They both wore black now, and
starched, white aprons. Mrs. Mavering, in some inward way, seemed more
cheerful, more like one gifted with health and humorous philosophy. She
was astonishingly beautiful. Helen had grown white and thin. How
delicate and slim the hands looked that were clasped around her knee!
She used to have a sinewy grip for a girl. Everything about her declared
personality. It always had, and still did. Only, something or other
seemed pathetic now. Morgan Map was said to be engaged to her, and would
probably boil down badly. There was pathos there. That vast primeval
brute had run his neck into a noose, by-the-way, only it would not do to
string him up if she cared for him, though it might be a blessing to
her in the long run. Mrs. Mavering might have an opinion on that. What
Map's grudge may have been did not seem to Gard of any great interest.
He had had trouble with him once about some commissary. Morgan had
looked murder, and uttered white-hot language, and Gard had "corralled"
the commissary. The man must have a grisly disposition if that were his
"grudge."
Thinking of Map, then, his big, harsh-boned face, mighty hands,
massiveness, and "grisly disposition," he glanced at Helen again,
winced, and started.
The shock went shivering through flesh and bone. It hurt. He said,
aloud, "Oh, that won't do!"
He found himself on his feet, and the others looking surprised.
The piano suggested an excuse, and he sprang across the room.
"I haven't touched one in a year."
But his fingers trembled on the keys. He had not seen his nerve shaken
like that since his first battle, which opened for him with a shell
bursting in a mud-bank. It plastered him with mud, stood him on his
head, and shook his nerve admirably.
But this--Morgan Map--Helen--the pathos of it--the hideous
incongruity--the beast and the pit and our Lady of Pity and Purity! Oh,
Madonna, over the altar of a little whitewashed chapel, at whose
tender feet men poured out daily the passion of their souls like water!
Years, years, so many years ago, and one Gard Windham creeping into the
empty chapel at dawn, sobbing for the nameless heartache and the groping
loneliness, and Madonna was over the altar, pale-faced, in
silver-and-blue robe, who whispered to his sobbing prayer. "The organ!
play!" Then he played and forgot in the gray dawn, till the chapel was
full of presences, and the _bonus Deus_ came behind the altar and agreed
with Our Lady to be kind to Gard, and not let his sins frighten him too
badly. How he loved her then--Madonna! _That_ was Gard Windham! He was
real! What was he now? Swept down under the years, the thinking and
working, the flood waves of the big world--and now--Morgan Map! "I
haven't prayed in long, Madonna, but she's too slim and brave and
yellow-haired, and made from the beginning of her days to be blessed and
guarded from the slime and stain, the red-eyed animal and the pitiless
fist." It was worse--why, Mavering had points of decency, and, besides,
Mrs. Mavering was not--"I haven't prayed, Madonna. I don't know where
you are. But call the _bonus Deus_, for the beast climbs the stars. _Ora
pro nobis_, for Helen--for me. Or save the girl, and let me go. It
doesn't matter."
He felt that he had never played before like that night. The piano
seemed to tremble under the fingers, to thud and flash, and the old fire
flooded his nerves.
He stumbled blindly on the way to the shed where the horses were
fastened.
"Do something for me, Jack. Tell Mrs. Mavering about that Map business.
Tell her she must save that girl. It won't do."
"What in--what's your intricate meaning?"
"Map, man! He has a hold on her. You see what he is."
"I do not. But I see--I begin to have a glimmer as to--in fact, I take
it you have an underhold, anchorite. Go in and win."
"I don't know what you mean," said Gard, dully.
"What are you going to do?"
"It doesn't matter. I am going to throw my furlough and join the army."
"When?"
"To-morrow."
Mavering whistled, and then swore softly.
"Why?"
"I'm no better than you are. What business have you and I in heaven with
our damned private job politics? Haven't you learned that yourself?"
They rode away towards the city, and separated at a corner lit dimly by
a street lamp. Gard put his horse to a gallop and clattered away.
Chapter XIX
In which Windham Drops Out of the Fight--and Mavering Remarks on Human
Adaptability
There was a steep hill-side, and below it a swift river, on the left the
little village of Falmouth huddled in a gully, and beyond the village a
higher hill, with a white house on the crest. Across the river, and
farther down, the town of Fredericksburg was on fire in places, ruins
here and there smoking lazily. From the town it was half a mile of
meadow-land, hollowed and hillocked but flat in its main result, to the
line of low hills, where the smoke rested thick and white, and the
artillery did not rest at all, but growled and yelled unpacified.
Certain regiments had watched since noon from this hill, seen column
after column go over the dipping meadows, and sometimes a half,
sometimes a third, come back. About four they marched down through the
huddled village, crossed on a pontoon bridge into Fredericksburg, and
drew up beyond the town. The shells shrieked over them. One exploded
against a little wooden shanty, scattering splinters and dust. Two or
three men dropped. One of them sat up at Gard's feet and rubbed his
face.
"Are you hurt?"
"No, I'm scared."
"That's nothing."
"No, that's nothing."
The little cabin took fire. The flames crept up the dry, worm-eaten
boards. The men turned and watched them.
A young lieutenant, who was small, and had a round, jolly face, came and
walked beside Gard.
"You see, those other fellows seemed to lose about two-thirds; so a
fellow will be pretty apt to go in and stay there. About two to one."
"About that. But the old man might mean somebody to go in and stay there
alive. He might have that idea. Yours isn't inspiring."
"Oh, I only meant--I was thinking you might let my people know if I'm
potted."
"All right."
"I'll do the same if--"
"No matter, Billy. I haven't any. Look out for your end men. They're
nervous."
In a few moments the column was gone, scurrying away over hollows and
flat stretches. Gard lay on his face near the stone foundations and
smoking ashes of a barn in a field. "Out of this fight," he thought, and
turned over. His muscles seemed to have all become dissolved and loose.
He lifted the edge of his coat and looked under. "It looks like a bad
one." The blood did not flow steadily, but leaped and was bright red.
"It ought to be picked up. It is an artery. If I knew how I might pick
it up!" It was a slanting trench, indefinitely deep, and pumping up
blood from the bottom. There must be smashed bone in it somewhere. You
could tell from the slant the direction of the point where the shell had
burst. Two other men lay near by, one of them still living, but with the
top of his head crushed; he was kicking a hole in the ground with his
heel.
"I might try."
He made an effort, and in a moment his hands dropped back on the grass
again, hands red, wet, and feeble. The immense noise of the cannonading
became a hum in his ears and then was silent. A little white cloud in
the sky seemed to spread over the blue and turn gray. He closed his
eyes.
It would be like this, after all. It had always seemed a difficulty, a
knotted problem that speculation could not untie. It did not seem like a
knot or a difficulty now, but more like a solution, a smoothing, a quiet
explanation. One thought life so difficult and death the hardest knot in
its logic, but if one found death to be the answer instead of the worst
difficulty, looked upon in that way it might even seem to be a simple
answer. A gradual oblivion--not exactly that--a blending of noises into
chords and glassy harmonies--it was more like that.
The noises of the field were all gone, and there was no more earth or
sky, no men visible running past with rifles, no roar, echo, concussion,
nor moan of the flying missiles. But the silent vacancy was filling
again with other forms and sounds, whispering voices, faces that leaned
and smiled, others that threatened, some that turned from him and cried
out and fled. One of those that fled was the Father Superior. One of
those that leaned and smiled was Helen. But there did not appear any
reason for either, unless the Father Superior might be frightened at
seeing what a lost soul looked like face to face. Helen wore a broad,
white collar. Afterwards she came again with a blue ribbon around her
neck, dressed in white, looking fragile, and said, "I'll fight for you;
I don't care who they are." Who were "they?" Most of the forms were
strangers, but Fritz Moselle sat at a cloudy organ that pealed with
thunder and shot lightning from the top of its precipice of pipes. And
he played till the yellow stars jumped down and sang anthems, and
Mavering came stalking after them, saying. "They are an interesting and
peculiar people on that secular comet up there, and the best liars I
know; in the pursuit of which interest. O Fritz, I'm going to pick up my
kit and go back." Mrs. Mavering would not go, and Madonna said, "Be kind
to Gard," to the _bonus Deus_, who seemed puzzled. Helen came and sobbed
over him and stretched out her hands. He caught at them, missed, and
fell several years through spaces and spaces. Innumerable faces were
plastered against the sides of the pit, innumerable lips cried to him,
but he thought, "They all have issues of their own." A great voice,
heavy, stolid, and cold, called, "Eternity around, divinity within,"
but no one really agreed with it. A gust of wind drove down the pit and
blew him like a dried leaf, while he cried out helplessly, and fled
another year before the wind, till a slim hand gripped his wrist and
stopped him. The grip was sinewy. The gusts and the stolid voice went
driving past them down the pit. It was useless to count the faces
plastered against the sides. He could not raise his hands; to raise his
eyelids was a dragging effort, sad and slow. It was night. The air was
damp and cold. They were carrying him on a stretcher. Their steps
sounded on the pontoon bridge. The water rippled below, or else it was
the rain beating on the tent, murmuring, murmuring. Helen was saying
"You _must_ stay," and held his wrist, and he said, "I never saw
anything make up its mind the way you do," so that they both laughed,
and the pit echoed like a bass drum which made them laugh more, and then
echoed with infinite thrilling moans which frightened them. And he
whispered in the darkness, "It's fun we're in the same pit," and she
whispered back, "Yes, gorgeous."
* * * * *
"It fills me with benignant admiration"--so reads one of Mavering's
articles, dated "This 21st of December, one mile, possibly two--Heaven
help us and call it three--from the Rappahannock," and entitled
"Illustrated Speculations"--"It fills me with benignant admiration, this
human adaptability. I have seen to-day the troops returning from what
they called, with apparent justice, 'The Mud March,' a futile
procession, with no other result than mud. For all night had the wind
howled, the rain smitten them compositely with sleet and snow; they had
splashed since dawn in profound mud, and are now partially dried and
partially comfortable in ingenious ways, but in the main still wearing
mud, finding themselves adaptable to mud, arguing that mud adds a
certain density to clothing, a casing and protection to the features
against the atmospheric and social hostility of Virginia. I have seen
the author of _Leaves of Grass_ in a brigade hospital camp, holding the
hand of a bearded, piratical-looking stranger from Michigan, who will
die to-night and without doubt adapt himself to whatever shall be his
lot. But this poet and tilter at conventions--what convention he is
tilting at now seems obscure, what poetry he meditates with lines of
ungainly sprawl. I merely record that he sits in a brigade hospital
tent, holding the hand, hour after hour, of one whom he knows not from
mythical Adam, proving himself, I infer, in his own way adaptable. I
have seen one Captain Windham, of the 3d Regiment, ----, a man known to
me these half-dozen years, a suggestive person with a problematical
mind, musician and scout, bred in a monastery, and tending speculatively
God knows where, but likely, from his looks, to be presently disembodied
and 'blown with restless violence about the pendent world,' a condition
to which, I believe profoundly, he will readily adapt himself. He lies
pumped empty of blood, and with a shell wound more or less terrific, in
the tent where sits the author of _Leaves of Grass_. The rain beats
slowly on the tent. I see the dim shining thereof, and of other tents
around it, lantern-lit. Under the high floor of a house-porch I feed a
fire surreptitiously with the lattice-work, and look out into the night,
and consider the life of man, its beautiful inconsequence. It is as good
a place as any other, this sub-portican retreat in the midnight pause of
bellowing war. It serves me and the time. Have I not lived? Have I not
slept in fine linen and stridden a horse, and looked into eyes that
smiled for me, and had a bullet hole through my hat, and bowed from a
platform to a sea of faces? And were they any better, intrinsically,
than this? Why, then, my mud-encased and mud-protected soldiery, my
Michigan pirate, my monastery-bred visionary and scholastic adventurer,
both of the latter now floating on the edge of the downward-and-gone, my
poet of catalogues and statistics in defiant metre, preacher of the
gospel of muscular affection, now practising that gospel--we are all, I
conclude, doing very well where we are. Human adaptability! Or is it in
some measure a fluid type peculiar to this continent?
"Enters here one with shoulder-straps and an ill-conditioned face, which
he pokes in and inquires curiously, 'Why I am burning up a house full of
patients?' In reply, 'If I were burning up a house, without doubt there
would be reasons. But I distinguish, I am not burning up a house, but
lighting a torch of intelligence for a public in the dark. Remarking,
'Oh! You're smoking up through the floor of the porch. Look out!' he
withdraws.
"Which reminds me to go up the river to-morrow and find the end of a
telegraph wire that is approachable and unabsorbed by the military.
"A singular convocation of atoms is this same war, wherein atomic egoism
is at times the more violently asserted, and again disturbed and
modified. The semi-translucent but resisting barrier that separates the
human atom from the human atom is assaulted and impinged against almost
to penetration or shattering. In this upheaval atoms tend back to
inorganic unity. The roots of existence are exposed, the primeval
reappears. Nevertheless I have not seemed anywhere more 'an individual
and an egoist,' to quote the problematical musician, than now, sheltered
here from the sombre rain, burning another man's green lattice-work for
private comfort, and possessed of an occurrent idea or desire, if it
were possible, to inquire of this Windham how fares his individual
egoism, and whether the adventure apparently before him is, in his
opinion, one worthy of a sportsman.
"The scripture of the immortal bard mentions a 'thrilling region of
thick-ribbed ice.' Imagination suggests an acclimatization of the
disembodied essence to Arctic needs, some ingenious utilization of
Northern Lights, and confesses its suggestions feeble. My imagination
is not what it once was. Gray hairs of me display their tenuous
forewarning. 'The times are waxing late.' Without pretending a polemical
interest in this war, I have candidly to state that it looks to me like
both engines in the ditch. 'The jig,' in the stately words of Job, 'is
about up.' The rain echoes that oracular opinion, and the brigade
hospital tents glimmer distantly, where lies that problematical
cross-breed of a monastery and later conditions, where sits the author
of _Leaves of Grass_ hour after hour, holding the hand of a piratical
stranger from Michigan."
Chapter XX
Treats of Further Incidents in the House with the White Door
The mud on the suburban road sucked about the feet of Mavering's horse.
So he came again at night to the hospital above the river and to the
brick house with the white door and pillars. Another horse was fastened
at the gate. A fat, grinning negro woman opened the door, and when he
entered the room, Helen started forward with an exclamation, a red spot
on each cheek that did not belong there; Rachel smiled graciously and
came towards him in the manner of polished and experienced hospitality;
and the man who stood backed against the chimney-piece, his shoulders
covering half of it and looking as massive as the brickwork, was Morgan
Map. He gathered his yellow eyebrows at seeing Mavering, moved, swayed
an instant, then clicked his teeth and waited stiffly with back set to
the brickwork.
"Ah, captain!"
Morgan growled something indistinguishable. Mavering's wide mouth had on
its widest smile, and in his soul was pleasure and appreciation.
"We have here," he thought, "a tidy little game."
He sat down and described the late battle, and considered. Morgan
finally took his hat.
"Are you going into the city, Mavering?"
"Don't wait for me. Oh! It occurs to me--that paper you lost,
containing, you recollect, certain specifications, was captured and went
South." He had the thread of his fluency in hand now. "The object for
which it appeared to have been drawn up was, as perhaps you have
heard"--a pause--"not entirely attained, and I don't know that it may
not itself have been destroyed. Probably not. At any rate, witnesses
could be found down there in time, affidavits and so on, as to what it
contained and the circumstances of its--its loss, which contents and
circumstances and their purport are only known to you, to me, and to the
person to whom the specifications referred. I propose, if you don't
mind, to make Mrs. Mavering a fourth."
"You'd better ride into the city with me."
"I should be pleased to oblige you, but it's not my funeral. I have my
own obsequies in process. Why make myself likely to become a secondary
corpse at another man's?"
"Then I'd like a few minutes' talk."
"Another time. My dear sir, why worry? why be anxious? You can't do
otherwise than exactly as you may be requested."
"That means there must be a deal," said Morgan, simply. "All right."
Mavering thought, "Blanked if I don't admire him!" and said: "Not a
deal--rather, I imagine, a surrender to stated terms."
"Where are you staying?" Morgan asked.
"Oh, never mind about me. I have that singular dislike just mentioned to
the rôle of a secondary corpse. But let me suggest specifically that you
might come out here in the course of your convenience and receive from
Mrs. Mavering what we will call, perhaps, advice. My opinion is that it
will be the--let us say--advice which you'll have to follow; but, of
course, your own judgment, sagacity, talents for strategic
combination--believe me. I have the highest admiration for them--will be
the best of guides."
Morgan said, "All right," quite simply, and Mavering again thought,
"Blanked if I don't admire him!" admiring him, perhaps personally, at
least dramatically, out of his own fund of appreciation for things that
were fit and consistent. The massive simplicity of Morgan, the primitive
unscrupulousness, the bulk and unity of desire in him, the shape and
size and weight of bone, all seemed to fit together. He was not
problematical--at least, not divided--not, in latter-day terms,
"differentiated"--within himself. "I suppose I know what Mrs. Mavering
would say. She needn't bother," Morgan continued, and stooped and kissed
Helen, who seemed to droop under his touch. Mavering admired him without
interruption. "A pyramid, an Assyrian bas-relief, a stately savage
unsophisticated by altruism and the Ten Commandments. I'd give something
to know what he is going to do. What _can_ he do?" He thought he would
take any reasonable odds that Helen loved this one rather than the
problematical anchorite, and would not give him up. In that case what
would Rachel do? The anchorite might be gone on his disembodied
adventure by this time, neither capable of nor interested in doing
anything mundane. But when Morgan was gone, and Helen, looking up
suddenly, asked, "Have you seen Gard?" the progress of his speculation
turned with abrupt angle.
"Good God! I apologize! I've seen him since the battle, Miss Bourn, but
had no conversation."
Helen was silent, and Rachel said:
"But you and Captain Map were very mysterious."
"True, without doubt it seemed so." He paused, studied the ceiling a
moment, and continued: "Map allowed a paper to fall into the hands of
the enemy, which accidentally did no harm, but in which unscrupulous and
self-seeking parties might find opportunity to make him trouble. I
should not say that he was at fault on a point of carelessness. In fact,
the plan, in a way, was admirable. I observe that the night is brilliant
and picturesque. If Mrs. Mavering will walk out with me, whereever the
ground is not intolerably sloppy, I will leave with her a hint which she
may deliver to Map, if he calls for it, and may indicate the substance
of it to Miss Bourn, if she sees fit."
Rachel put her cloak on and the two went out, leaving Helen before the
fire. She leaned her head on one hand so that her fingers were pushed
into her hair; the other hung over the arm of the chair, and looked
slight, listless, and pathetic.
The white steamer lay at the wharf, almost ready for departure. Mavering
broke the silence.
"I endeavor earnestly to become interested in another man's obsequies. I
fail. Do I go back to the city to-night, Rachel, a pariah, settled in my
caste? The question has more to me than an academic interest. If I go,
it will be something in the mood to find satisfaction in meeting and
doing vicious gun practice with Morgan Map, who is presumed to be
waiting in a solitary place a quarter of a mile down the road. Possibly
he is not. I don't know what his game will be."
Rachel had shrunk back when he began, and now stood still.
"You promised me--you said--"
"Very likely; the promise is broken."
A board fence was beside the road; she clung to it and shivered with the
old, half-forgotten terror.
"There was something else you were to tell me," she said at last. He
told her briefly the incident of the dropped paper, and concluded:
"It's no concern of mine, or yours, unless you're interested in this
girl, who appears to be the singularly efficient motive, of the state of
whose affections I am not informed. One of the last things that Windham
said to me was to tell you about it and tell you to save the girl,
meaning, I take it, with more precision of phrase, that you are to shunt
Map into the ditch, which you evidently can do if you want to. No doubt,
it will be my matrimonial duty to help, though the ethical side of
matrimony you wouldn't expect to appeal to me. No more it does. Is there
any side that appeals to you? What are you afraid of?"--with sudden
savageness--"of me? Keep your disgust to yourself, then, till I'm gone.
I'll get Map strung up if you like, or shot, or blotted out by
persuasion. Windham's probably dead, and doesn't care. Map's a damned
scoundrel like me, and a deal more concentrated. As for--"
Rachel caught his arm and stared up at him:
"Gard! What do you mean?"
And Mavering laughed.
"Gard, is it? This little melodrama is well done. Exit John Mavering
into the jaws of hell. What comes next? My pearl of a wife, my gentle
and frightened dove, _will_ you kindly state what you are up to?"
"It's Helen--"
"Helen! Helen, avaunt! I'm done."
"Oh, Jack, it all depends on him! Don't you see?"
"I see you care much for Windham, and perhaps yon girl with the yellow
hair, and have a sensitive dislike for me. Gods! she's pretty, yon girl,
but she ought to be fatter. I don't know whether Windham's dead or not,
but he looked like a consumptive plaster-cast when I saw him--been
ploughed and harrowed by a shell and made ready to be planted for
immortality, I inferred, but didn't inquire. What do I care for him or
the said girl who is pretty but should be fatter? What do I care for
you? I don't know. But if you propose matrimony for the two, I'll go so
far in friendship as to tell him he'd much better be planted. Am I such
slime to your cultured taste? Say so, then, and, by God! you've seen the
last of me."
Rachel recovered herself. She still held his arm. She pressed nearer and
was silent a moment. The steamer below the bank was brightly lit, the
docks bustling and noisy. "You needn't go. Come and help me, and ask
what you like. I think you love me a little. Perhaps I was wrong in the
beginning."
They went back towards the house. Mavering admitted a degree of
bewilderment. When Rachel was in a state of self-possession, it was
difficult not to feel inferior. There were times--moments of
weakness--when Mavering confessed a sensation towards her, never
elsewhere directed, and which might be called respect--a hesitation, a
summons somehow to draw back the great muddy river of event as well as
the confluent stream of his own imperturbable comment, to turn them
aside from pouring over her. It must have cost time and selection to
make Rachel, and the Mississippi lacked discrimination.
Helen sat as before, listlessly. Rachel knelt beside her and whispered.
Helen started; the listless hand gripped the arm of the chair with a
vigor that tore the cushion. She broke from Rachel's arms.
"Where is he?"
"Gods!" murmured Mavering, in deprecation. "This race of women! About
six miles back of the Creek landing."
"The steamer goes out at ten. Pack a basket, Rachel."
Helen left the room with a rush. Mavering looked after her with wakened
interest. "Who and what is this?" Rachel came to him and pleaded.
"I owe her everything. You left me so desperate--"
"I left you? I seem to have forgotten that."
"I thought there was nothing more for me. She brought me to life again.
Help her, Jack. I think we can neither of us change. I think it will be
the old story again. But I'll try."
Mavering looked down and felt a touch of compunction curious to himself.
"I suppose the anchorite was correct--problematical, but accurate. I
don't carry your price. You're too expensive for me. As to the
anchorite. I'll find him and bring him back, dead or alive. That's
cheap, but the rest of it is expensive."
A half hour later the white steamer was ploughing down the river.
Mavering, in the long, nearly empty cabin, stretched himself on a sofa,
denounced the execrable taste of steamboat furnishing, and went
philosophically to sleep. Helen, on the upper deck, stared at the
starlit Virginia shore.
Chapter XXI
In Which We Go Down the River and Return
A loud wind blew up the river, cold, sombre, insistent. The river seemed
to tremble in waves and shiver in wrinkles under the monotonous
threatening of the wind, the stars to be fretful in their bleak spaces.
"Forever is a long time." Helen wrapped her cloak more closely.
"Dead!" The wind stated it coldly, insistently, and did not mind how
fiercely she denied it. It was only the surface of the river that
trembled and glimmered so. The inevitable reality was the current
below--dark, steady, and leading downward to that sea from which the
cold wind came with insistent statement. If men and women were incidents
to powers beneath and influences over them, like the myriad tiny
flickers born of coincidences between the divinity of the stars and the
toil of the river; if one only carried for a short time this little
torch of courage in a night without horizon; and behind the surface of
things "their substance and third dimension," in Gard's phrase,
stretched away into a ghostly distance; yet it was inborn in Helen to
carry her torch high, to lay lance in rest and challenge the ghostliest
shadow in sight, to be herself personal and definite, to accuse even
abstractions of personality, to make a vivid world of nearby things and
live vividly within it.
In that world, life had seemed mainly to consist of purpose and
achievement; but on the wide river between the crouching shores that
night--with the wind calling continually. "Dead, dead"--wishes,
resolves, and actions to follow them, how shrunken and chilled they
seemed, if one were only an accidental wrinkle on the river, possibly a
glimmer if a star happened to look that way!
"It is not true!" She went in and saw lamps swinging the length of the
saloon, where men were asleep on the sofas and the floor.
The engines throbbed and the paddle-wheels creaked and splashed near the
window of her state-room. She lay awake, and yet seemed to hear sounds
like a moaning organ, to see Gard's face floating, white and motionless,
in black water, and moving down seaward with a tide that she tried to
block with her hands. She started up, choking and sobbing, and heard the
engines throb, the paddle-wheel creak and splash.
It was still dark when the steamer drew in to a wharf. Lights were
moving about. There were three or four houses, a flag flapping sulkily
in the wind, a train of cars and a puffing engine, a line of black
bluffs against the sky. It was misty dawn when the train started south,
and full sunrise when she stepped from the train with Mavering and saw a
house with high porch on a hill; below, near a grove, the brigade
hospital tents. The big, hurrying surgeon said: "Move him! Good God!--I
beg your pardon--yes. It's run mighty low. It needs warming and coaxing.
There's da--I beg your pardon--there's very little of either here. This
is the first time in six weeks the army of the Potomac has had any luck,
to my knowledge." He looked at Helen suddenly, dropped his gallantry,
and continued, gravely: "As to the chances, since you ask me, I suspect
there are complications. But as an alternative to nights as cold as
this, I should say, do almost anything." A moment's silence, and he
went on: "They lie around here, about five hundred to an acre, several
acres of them. That's the trouble. However, I knew Captain Windham. I
admired him--this is the tent. I hope you have everything you need. Give
him brandy and milk. The train goes back about eight. Good-bye." The big
surgeon hurried away.
Mavering stepped in behind her, looked around, and said: "Exactly. The
pirate's gone." Helen did not hear him. A pile of straw and some
blankets, a black cloak, the white face against it, like one drowned and
going seaward with a tide. She dropped on her knees and bent over it.
"Will you get the things," she half whispered, looking around--"a
stretcher and some men? Please take my purse and come back in time for
the train."
Mavering went out. In the way of descriptive adjectives he thought
"fierce" was the word. She looked "fierce." "And," he reflected. "I dare
say a man may turn out a domestic cat if he were half drowned and
properly stroked and not too old. _Quien sabe?_ If the anchorite comes
to, I'm gambling my gray hairs he's tamed. Gray hairs are distinctly a
misfortune."
Helen leaned close over. The "must" and "shall" that absorbed her seemed
straining at her eyes and lips. She felt as if she were lifting a
weight. "You _must_, Gard, you _must_ stay"--struggling to keep the
white face from going down in the suck of an undertow, drawn under by
some blind power that knew no measures of values or who loved and
remembered and who forgot.
Measure of values! Your bullet goes forth in a pointed manner, appears
to be determined, purposeful, greatly in earnest, and buries itself in a
sand-bank, or the brain of a scholar--all one to the bullet, all one to
the rifleman who knows nothing of the matter, all one to the per cent.
of averages, to the flowing laws and far-off events of the universe.
"But you _must_, Gard, you _must_ stay." So tiny a torch to shake with
such insistence at the wide night and call on its hurrying storms to
stop! Enter demurral and private petition to those high courts and
abstract legislatures! "The constitution does not provide for you in
person."
"Then amend it. It should. It does me wrong. What are laws for if not
for justice?"
"They are not at the call of human justice."
"Ah, then, not justice! But have pity, or forget and go by! Only let me
keep him. I love him. I will not let him go."
The protest seems almost as persistent as the law. After all, it might
be itself a law or an amendment in process of making, this protest. But
if Gard Windham should not go on that adventure and exploration,
inferred by Mavering to be, perhaps, Arctic in character, and should
linger back to life in the course of event and not by virtue of an
amendment, probably Helen would not care how it came about.
She did not care how the men with the stretcher looked, how they took
off their caps or whispered. The moving train and the steamboat were
vague things aside. Both were crowded, but no one spoke to her. It
seemed to be arranged, recognized, and admitted.
A group gathered about Mavering on deck, who said: "Why, it appears to
me a situation that doesn't admit of remark. It looks like a case of
stand off and clear the road. It has that distinguished appearance." And
there was a murmur of assent.
The wounded, sitting or lying about on both decks and in the cabin, were
wretched and sinister sights. Some babbled in delirium; a few, like
Gard, were sunk in torpor, unconscious of their issues. The steamer
ploughed through splashing and gurgling water. The driven, wintry clouds
streamed across the sky, gray and ragged as battle-torn banners. Hawks
floated over the river, graceful in their savage hunt over the
double-decked steamer loaded with human pain bound for the hospitals.
And Helen noticed and remembered nothing of it. She seemed to herself
more like a ghost alone with Gard, who was another ghost. Empty space
was around them, the existence of both so tenuous that it consisted only
of the faint pulse-beat in his wrist, which she held. This beat was the
measure of the flight of time, and the slender thread that bound the
world together. It used to seem to her that Gard was too intangible,
almost unreal. One could not say what he was like. What did he mean by:
"I don't care whether I'm an admirable person or not; I'm a partially
illuminated point, floating along I don't know where or why. What's the
use of caring? There's too much before and after?" Or: "Every one lives
in a dungeon; he doesn't know any other dungeon than his own?" And when
he used to play the organ in Saint Mary's and fill the great church
with mystical voices, he had seemed to her something not of the daily
world, but of a world partly like the one in which she built her own
fanciful castles; only it was wider and more peculiar, and the powers in
it were strong and strange. However apart from Gard himself her idea of
him may have been, it was one which this long watch beside him, the
touch of the slow pulse, and the knowledge of how closely he now at
least moved along the frontier of shadows, only made more intimate. The
organ was not needed to interpret him. She felt that she knew what he
was like. She thought the pulse-beat spoke, as the organ used to speak,
with the same swift, immediate presence, and that, when she whispered
"You _must_ stay," it throbbed an answer: "You mean, come back. You've
no idea how far it is down here, and very curious. But maybe I can, if
you'll hold your end of whatever it is." And so the crowd and the
murmur, the babbling in delirium of the man on the next stretcher, the
laboring of the steamer ploughing up stream, the passing of hours, all
seemed moved apart from her. Sometimes the distant consciousness would
seem to almost or quite return, and look out at her under wavering
eyelashes. The lips moved, and she fancied they said, "I knew you were
there." She became aware, at the same time, that the steamer had
stopped, that the stretchers were being carried out in procession, and
that over her stood Mavering, Rachel, and Thaddeus Bourn; and of these
she was hardly aware enough to be surprised at Thaddeus. When they came
to the house with the white door, and he drew her aside a moment, she
half resisted in a dazed way, and felt as if not to be close to Gard
were against nature and reason. Thaddeus drew her into the sitting-room.
The men had carried Gard to the room beyond. They had set down the
stretcher and were moving him.
"In point of fact," began Thaddeus, "I've come to take you home. Your
mother is--a--not so well. I fear it is quite serious. I wrote you, but
it did not at that time seem serious. A woman of astonishing placidity,
my dear, which I have sometimes felt tempted to recommend, in fact, to
your imitation. But the circumstances are such now that it would not. I
might say, be in good taste. Her condition is, I regret to say--seems to
be--but perhaps to-morrow."
He was not sure she heard him.
"Oh yes, to-morrow."
To-morrow might be what it liked if he would let her go now. She slipped
away. The men came out and left the house. Rachel followed with Mavering
and closed the door. After a time Thaddeus said:
"Relative to a certain estate, Mrs. Mavering, in which you and I made
investments, undertook a trusteeship, has it not, in your opinion, been
administered somewhat--a--speculatively? It appears to me to be loaded,
I might say, with liabilities. I do not see that the--a--securities are
ascertained."
"Oh! but I think he will get well."
"Granted--and then?"
"He _must_ care for her."
"Granted--a--it would seem probable, and then?"
He deliberately refrained from looking at Mavering, who was examining
Thaddeus, his gold-rimmed glasses and accurate tailoring, with
speculative interest.
"I doubt whether you can argue from me," said Mavering, serenely. Rachel
flushed and Thaddeus protested.
"Oh, I beg--"
"Not at all. It is admitted that the garb of civil society has never
fitted me. Any coat will go on me, but none will fit to the satisfaction
of fashion. But as to the anchorite, I would not argue a parallel. I
suspect he will cut his coat to newer fashions than mine--possibly than
yours. My dear sir, I'm an egoist and you're an egoist."
"True," murmured Thaddeus, "a social egoist."
Mavering stopped long enough to reflect that he liked this Thaddeus
Bourn, a man apparently with conversations in him.
"Very good. And so it occurs to me in passing that I may be the more
elementary, anterior type; and, say, Morgan Map, a still further
elementary, anterior, antediluvian--"
"Excellent!" cried Thaddeus; "excellent choice of phrase! My idea
exactly! I said a primary, primitive, primordial."
"Good words, all of them--descriptive and discreet."
The two smiled at each other with appreciation.
"Map might do," continued Mavering, "if he had all the room there was.
He needs more room, properly for his state of culture, even than I do.
Now the anchorite--I refer to Captain Windham--is, if an egoist,
possibly a fourth kind; I am inclined to think--to question--whether we
might not argue him even in advance in continuance of this theory,
which. I perceive you agree with me, is not without interest."
"But," said Thaddeus, distinguishing, marking precision with his
eye-glass, held between two fingers, "as regards, now, a definition."
"I leave it to your more discriminating choice. I contribute this
observation, however, that when the anchorite wants more room he is apt
to climb into the air for it, instead of quarrelling with his neighbors
on the earth."
Mavering took his leave. Rachel went to the window and stood looking
after him. Thaddeus polished his glasses, and thought that Mavering was
evidently a man with conversation in him.
Chapter XXII
Of Mavering, Who Disappears--Of the Gray Poet--Of Morgan, Who Appears
Once More
When Gard returned to the knowledge of the light, he brought with him
the impression that Helen was near. It was an irritating shock not to
find her. He remembered a number of widely separated moments when he had
been conscious of physical things--unless all these were vagrant dreams:
the rain on the tent, the surgeon, the bitter cold, and Helen sitting
there holding his wrist. The last was a portrait without surroundings or
background. Her hair was pushed away from her forehead, and her eyes had
seemed to probe and search for him down wherever he was lost.
Mrs. Mavering sat beside him now. She shook her head to signify silence
when he wished to say something, to question her about this doubt; so
that he fell to staring at the ceiling and trying to work his brain, How
slowly the ideas moved, how reluctant they were, how pale and
unsuggestive! To remember something was to pull a long, sagging rope,
until at last the remembrance would emerge from a tideless, flat sea in
a drowned condition. It was exasperating of Helen not to be there. The
exasperation lasted four months.
The days and weeks slipped by, marked less by nights and days than by
bits of information given and assimilated at intervals. He learned where
he was and how he came there, and brooded over the subject, turned it
slowly in his mind, and concluded to go on turning it. It had
innumerable sides, surfaces, depths--some that were astonishing, some
that melted into day dreams. It seemed to him that he was on the way to
recover in time--a doctor, in fact, with side whiskers, gray and
pendent, came periodically, and stated as much in a loud voice, and in
that case he was glad that life looked interesting and came towards him
with shining approach. The winter sunlight falling through clear panes
under white, translucent curtains was as if newly washed.
It is said that the secret of the strong, temperate zones lies in their
winter and spring, the antiseptic storms, the trance, and burial, and
then the cleansed revival, the issues of a fresh seed-time. And there
appear to be certain bitter waters, flowing near the roots of existence,
in which, if it so happens to a man, he may wash his eyes clear of
confusion, and afterwards wonder how it came that he was once weary of
living. So it seemed to Gard that he had gone around a circle and begun
a new season of expectation. He was that black-robed acolyte again, slim
and somewhat pale, who, in breathless eagerness to see and know, had
come out of the door of the brotherhood's brick-walled court-yard into
the hurrying avenue, hearing the high fluting. "Follow, follow," looking
for a banner and sword and shield, possibly for a girl in the brakes
with sunlight on her hair, at least for something he had not tried to
explain to the Father Superior. Whatever his motives and purposes then,
they had become clouded since, and were clear again, and calling, "It is
time to be alive and out among the melodies." It was good--the mere
living; a handsomely furnished world, with a number of things in it.
Mrs. Mavering went away in the late winter. Widow Bourn died in January,
when wild winds and snows were beating against the combative little
church, and Helen was alone in the cottage, except for an elderly woman,
depressed and angular, in the kitchen. Helen refused to go to Thaddeus,
to his bewildered disgust. Mrs. Mavering, for some reason, did not think
the refusal strange, but she became intent for the North as soon as she
heard it.
"May I come, too, Lady Rachel? I mean when this mossy-whiskered
physician unties me."
"May!" she said, scornfully. "You must. Where else should you go?"
"It's queer, but it seems like home, Hagar. I never saw it. Wasn't Hagar
the mother of homeless Ishmaelites?"
So Mrs. Mavering was gone. One Sabrina, a fat negro woman, was left, who
shook the floor with her tread, who wore extraordinary green kerchiefs
on her head, and exploded in a melting gobble of mirth at Gard's every
remark, till humor became a burden and he tried depression. "I shall
die, Sabrina." Sabrina gobbled with joy. He tried wrath. "You're a
galoop, Sabrina, a galoop!"--and Sabrina spilled his coffee over her
billows of delight.
Mavering appeared and disappeared, brought with him once a big,
deep-breathing man, slightly singular in dress, with a blown, gray beard
and hair, soft eyes, and affectionate, impulsive ways. Mavering
introduced him.
"He calls himself a poet, not a Plesiosaurus. His poetry looks as if it
were written, nevertheless, by a saurian with one of his fins. I
recommend you two to mutual and plastic embraces." Afterwards the gray
man came often of himself, and would sit by the bedside, holding Gard's
white, bony fingers, and recite:
"Out of the cradle endlessly rocking--"
* * * * *
"... do I not see my love fluttering out there among the breakers?
What is that little black thing I see there in the white?"
Or, "The Song of Myself"--
"A child said, 'What is the grass?' fetching it to me with full
hands."
They grew suddenly friendly and confident, and talked art and letters.
"Some of that is good stuff," Gard remarked, "and it's all
yeasty--something stirring in it. But I don't see--Here, you're an
egoist, too--you simply whoop with it--and impartially affectionate at
the same time as a self-obliterated Buddhist."
"They are one. The more I love myself, the more I love you."
"But what do you mean by, 'If I worship one thing more than another it
shall be the spread of my own body, translucent mould of me'? Now,
that's belated Greek."
"It's nothing old. It's new and democratic."
Gard grumbled feebly.
"It sounds queer enough for a gospel. It won't do for me now. I shall
have to fat up to it."
The gray man leaned forward with that tremulous, dewy look in his eyes.
He seemed to have an immense capacity of feeling, a physique made large
to endure it.
"You didn't love yourself enough. All that wasn't love. You didn't love
any one. Love inward, love outward, love everywhere, love some one most,
love many much. All empty without that, a drifting boat without anchor.
You look for the boatman. No one there. Drowned? No. Never was there."
After a long silence--"Say that 'Cradle' thing again. It's a man's soul
in the body of a whale. I don't believe it's new and democratic. It
must be old and human. But I know what you mean."
So February and March were gone. Mavering said there was a big fight
coming, went away, and came no more; nor the gray man, either, who was
absorbed in his hospitals and his "average young man," and grown
hollow-eyed with watchings and strenuous sympathy. Everything gone,
nothing coming except spring and letters from Hagar; nothing staying
except Gard himself and Sabrina, who reminded one of melting butter, but
of whom the quantity grew no less. "Hagar! Hagar!" the high fluting
voice seemed now to call continually, till the tension of his longing,
Gard fancied, would pull Hagar to him if he did not go soon.
Late in April they packed him into a night train, and all night, or
whenever he awoke and looked out, the earth seemed to be running away
southward, as if sucked towards the whirlpool of the war, but the stars
to be travelling northward with him. How impatient they were! How they
snapped and danced and quivered! "Hurry, hurry! But you will see how we
will shine over Hagar and forget the bleak laws of our journeyings, and
be nightlamps in Helen's garden."
In the morning the train stood still in the terminal. He had some hours
to wait. He crept through the station. The rattle and roar of the city
met him at the door. The few returning soldiers like himself were lost
in pursuing crowds, the only signs here of the war that to southward had
seemed branded on the soil and written across the street fronts. A
policeman caught sight of his uniform, and added some points to his
rank, out of benevolence.
"What'll you have, colonel?"
"I think I'll have a cab."
The hurrying crowd paused, and cheered huskily when he drove away. He
had the cabman drive across town and down the old avenue. At the
church of the Holy Trinity there was a morning service beginning, and he
climbed the steps. Within, a few hundred people were scattered about.
The only sound was the moaning of the organ. High up at one side he
could see Moselle's hunched shoulders and dingy yellow head, faded with
age, against the blue and gilded pipes. Moselle began to play a prelude,
something stately and stern, like the thousand-century-old front of a
gray crag, that might be well known but never could be familiar. The
dingy old head moved Gard more than the prelude. He went back to the cab
and drove down towards the Brotherhood. There was no flowing river so
strange as the flowing river of the street. Every one was isolated, no
doubt; but, after all, there was a bond. It ought to be celebrated and
sworn to. A truckman on top of a dray looked down and probably caught
him smiling to himself, grinned, and shouted, "How goes it?" Here and
there on the sidewalk, too, men called out to him. Every door and window
here between Trinity and the Brotherhood was familiar, and the brick
walls and shuttered windows of the Brotherhood were eloquent. He
thought. "I'll go in another time, and see Francis and his sick
flower-bed, and the school and Andrew. It would scare me into a relapse
to see the Superior now. Nobody but the _bonus Deus_ ever understood
him, and the _bonus Deus_ is in Hagar."
* * * * *
So he went back to the station. The train ran for an hour or more past
glimpses of the sea, and then turned up the Wyantenaug Valley. At
Hamilton he changed cars. The brave old river sweeps around a curve,
and Hamilton lies in the curve. He could see the tower of the
grand-stand in the Fair grounds, and Saint Mary's among the other
steeples, but he sat still on the station platform, saw his trunk go by
on a hand-truck, and watched beyond the freight-yards the rippling,
glinting river, hurrying, busy, with its myriad little shining points of
happiness. Was it the languor of his weariness or a magic in the river
that flowed down from that promised land of Beulah, the mythical Hagar,
the mother of the homeless--a Mecca, a Bethlehem, an Arden of wise
flowers and musical brooks? The river seemed to gesture, and mutter
syllables and sentences. Some one spoke loudly over his head. He looked
up and saw Morgan Map.
"Going up the valley? So am I," Morgan said, and Gard nodded languidly.
It occurred to him, slowly, that he ought to be surprised. "The train's
ready. Come along."
A practical man, this Map, Gard thought--a very genius of
accomplishment. Why should he go into Beulah, too? Why not? But he must
be doing something here, this forcible schemer, who did nothing
unaccountably. If he meditated violence, it was a poor place for it.
Much better to have set fire to the house near the hospital, or
corrupted Sabrina and poisoned the breakfast. Still--Gard pulled himself
slowly up the car steps. His knees had not yet recovered from their
wavering inadequacy--still, it was what Mavering would have called "a
sportsmanlike situation." Map might try some simple, antique, and
desperate thing. In that case it would be well to get one's gun where it
could be pulled suddenly. Gunpowder was the handicap that made an
invalid even with two hundred pounds and six-feet-two of red-haired,
aggressive health. And all that was nonsense. What a sinewy force it
was--this love of a woman!--that suddenly snapped a man's habits apart,
dragged all his other motives indifferently after it; one of the
universal energies. Joy and desperation, and the beast and the climbing
soul, seemed packed in it more closely side by side than in any other
experience.
Two or three men were in the car at one end. Morgan went to the other
end and pulled over a seat. The two sat down facing each other, and
Morgan produced cigars.
"I'm glad you brought these, however you happen to be here," said Gard.
"The doctor forbids them, so I don't carry any, but accept them from
fate. It's a fine point of casuistry. I disliked that doctor--I disliked
his whiskers, mostly. They used to get twisted up in my feverish
nightmares. _Did_ you happen to be here?"
"No. I found out what time you were going, got leave of absence and came
along."
"To see where I was going? I don't know that I understand why."
"Oh, partly. I had a general plan. I'll explain. I'm a practical man,"
he went on, quietly, after a moment. "I don't believe in loading up with
the past. No scruples and no malice. What's no use to remember I forget.
They're all dead weight. I cut loose. That's the way I'm made. Now, I
don't know how you're made--don't know what kind you are."
"Neither do I. I'm going up to Hagar to find out."
"Well! I said; I'm done, hedged out; hedged in, too. The question is,
Can I cut out--cut loose? It depends on Windham. The more I thought
about it the more I didn't get any definition of you. I concluded to
come along--see what could be done--clear up the ground--know what's to
pay. If you go to Hagar with the purpose supposed, that's all right.
I'm done, anyway. I have an errand of my own there--which doesn't
concern you, however. I throw up my hand. I was in hell and played for
keeps. I say now, a man that's won needn't bear malice. No use in that.
He can call me what he chooses if it eases his mind. That won't hurt me
any, nor him. He's safe. He needn't be dainty. It's a fact. I sent a
tracer after you up the Shenandoah. God knows why it missed, I don't. I
could have sworn there was daylight through Jack Mavering's head. Missed
again. He walked in on me in Mrs. Mavering's sitting-room and made me
feel like a wet hen. I put my head in my pocket and walked out. What
else could I do? You're going to Hagar. All right, I'll show you where
to go. What more can I do? I'm telling you all this now from policy."
"And I'm calling no names," Gard remarked. "Mavering professes to have a
great admiration for you as a practical practitioner. You're probably
right to come along."
"Oh, I figure pretty well. I was a fool--but still, that thing was
figured pretty well. I'd have won out finally all right if--"
"I object to what you have in mind to say--prefer to think you
wouldn't 'have won out finally, if--' Better not speculate. We'll call
that a stipulation."
Map lifted his brows and settled himself more comfortably. A change, an
expression of relief, slipped over his big, harsh-boned face, the only
sign of the tension that he had been under.
"Stipulations--that's what I want. If there's anything to be done to
restore amiability, good God! it's surely my part to do it."
Gard looked out of the window and was silent.
Green meadows and brown fallows moving past, white houses under aged
maples, hills of climbing pasture lands and pale-green forests. Did men
carry any sullen burdens in this valley? Better drop them and go
unburdened into Hagar.
"I suppose there might be a sort of public duty involved," he said,
"which interests me just now about to the extent of an empty medicine
bottle. I flung the last one at Mrs. Mavering's black cook. You remember
Sabrina? You couldn't even break glass on her. Do you think of taking up
regularly with--I beg your pardon--with a criminal career?"
"Criminal! A criminal's a fool. I'm no fool, or never was before. I lost
my head. That's only once. Criminal! Why, look here! What do you make
out of this world you and I have been shovelling dirt in now some years?
Isn't every man in it for himself and against his neighbor, if his
neighbor's in his way--which he partly is, always? Do people go into
society to amuse themselves or each other? Themselves, of course. And
business is competition, and competition's private war according to
rules of custom. I'm supposed to be a lawyer. That's a succession of
jobs at beating somebody else and getting paid for it. This civil war is
one collection of private interests against another collection. The
South was getting beaten in business--held a losing hand--wanted to
break up the game. That meant a fight. Take you and me. You wouldn't let
me out of this if you saw anything more in it. You don't see anything
more in it. I don't, either. I'd do exactly the same, for the same
reason. Never shove a man farther than you need to make your point. I
don't compete with you any more in anything. I keep out of your way and
avoid offence. For the rest, I compete. The law is an artificial line.
The line is moved now and then. At one time it's criminal to lend money
at interest and innocent to fight a duel. Another, it's the other way.
That's all right. But a man's a fool not to fight inside the line as it
happens to stand. There's room enough."
Gard thought he saw some of his own philosophies in caricature. They
looked unlovely enough in caricature. Map was an interesting man. If
peculiar, it was rather that his mind was so sharp-edged, unqualifying,
absolute. It refused to see shades. It saw hard outlines and felt the
impact of surfaces. Gard thought that at one time he would have found
him still more interesting and would not have felt this repulsion from
him. Probably convalescence was a fastidious state. He turned away to
the window. There was a domed mountain in sight, its spurs thrust
forward into the valley, sides covered partly with a young-leaved
forest, partly with pine and hemlock, and its bald, rocky head bare in
the sunlight. The train stopped at a little station by the river. The
old, battered stage rolled them away slumberously over an echoing
covered bridge, across the valley bottom lands, where the zigzag fences
and the calling of the ploughman to his team, the bluebird on the
zigzag fence, and the slim white birches along the mountain spurs all
seemed in the same concord with the ancient earth and childlike sky.
The silent, misanthropic stage-driver looked the kin of the
country-side's slow vegetation.
The road swung around the mountain and went up through a dim green
avenue of pines and hemlocks, and below, in its bowldered crypts and
gorges, poured a stream with white foam and mysterious song, or
sometimes lay still in black pools. The steep slope of the mountain was
on the left. The road climbed steadily, and came out of the woods at
last not a mile from the village in a cup of the hills of Hagar.
At the cross-roads Morgan stepped out and Gard followed.
"The house is behind the church there." Morgan said, shortly, and moved
to walk away, but stopped and turned half around when Gard spoke,
listening with his mouth set and yellow brows drawn low.
"I dare say you'll succeed, you and your philosophy," said Gard, slowly,
looking towards the church and the house behind it. "I dare say I
sha'n't, in that way--or care to, very much. Competition doesn't seem to
me worth while."
Morgan was silent. The battered stage had rolled away down the hill to
the post-office, where Mr. Paulus came out for the mail, and Thaddeus
Bourn followed after him. Thaddeus looked up the hill, dropped the iron
point of his cane on the stone step with a click, and stared blankly.
Mr. Paulus, mail-bag in hand, stopped and followed the direction of
Thaddeus's eyes. The stage-driver climbed down from his seat and joined
them.
"I don't care," Gard continued, "a blank cartridge what you did or tried
to do. There's no stipulation except that we keep out of each other's
way. Is that satisfactory?"
"That's all right." Morgan hesitated, and brought out with apparent
effort: "You'd better look in the cemetery first; I saw something
there," went his way with long strides, and disappeared down the first
dip on the Cattle Ridge road.
"There's a cemetery, very true," Gard thought, and went towards it, past
the minister's picket fence and neat gate to where the mournful hemlocks
stood in meditation. And there some one in a black dress was kneeling
and planting flowers over a new grave, and near by was a tall, gray
stone, and thereon, graven in large letters:
"SIMON BOURN,
"BORN ---- DIED ----
"REMEMBER ME."
Morgan swung along, and looked not to right or left, nor cared if any
villager speculated on the singular sight of "one of the Map boys"
observably bound for the square house on the hill; past the mill where
Job Mather watched his slow millstones, past the mill-pond, the
blacksmith's, and the rambling, low farm-house that hived innumerable
Durfeys, through the stone pillars of Squire Map's gate, up to the
square house on the hill.
The door was locked. He rang the bell, and waited some time. The place
seemed half deserted, unkept, the walks littered with last year's
rotting leaves.
The door opened suddenly and Squire Map nearly filled it with broad,
bowed shoulders.
"I've lost her, dad."
"Come in, Morgan."
The latter followed into the dining-room and they sat down. Opposite him
on the wall was the portrait of his mother in her bridal-dress. A
stately lady always, somewhat cold. She seemed to wear her bridal-veil
as a kind of drapery for her pride. Morgan spread his large hands on the
table and looked at them.
"I played like hell for it."
"No doubt. Go on."
He told his story coolly and without omission.
"I suppose you are a worse man than your brother," said the squire at
last. "He is more scrupulous. I liked you better. You have more candor,
carry more weight. I have not been a scrupulous man."
Morgan was looking at the portrait.
"What did you want me to lose for? You won."
"Won! No, I lost. So will you, soon or late. Better soon than late." He
followed Morgan's eyes. "Your mother--I'd as lief she'd have died twenty
years earlier."
"This sort of thing is futile, dad. Why don't you come out of your
shell? Come and get into the push again."
"What for? From my standpoint and my age, Morgan, ask yourself--What
for?"
Morgan laughed, lifted his fists, and let them fall with a crash on the
table.
"I'm young yet."
"Oh, there's a great deal in that. But one draws no interest from time.
You live on your capital. But there's much in being at the beginning
instead of at the end--a great deal in that."
Chapter XXIII
The End
"It is this way," said Thaddeus, "to speak from a--a--personal
standpoint. If Morgan Map goes to the cemetery I shall not wait for my
mail, but go and--a--accidentally interrupt. If he goes north, the other
man may go there, if he chooses. I shall wait for my mail."
"Your standpoint!" said Mr. Paulus, heavily. "Well--speakin' from young
Map's, what might he want in the cemetery? Speakin' from mine, I'd
rather he'd go there and stay."
"My niece Helen is at present planting flowers in the cemetery--in point
of fact, roots."
Mr. Paulus was aroused. "They might do some buttin'--think?"
"Gals! Shucks!" The stage-driver climbed back to his seat and drove
away. Mr. Paulus looked after him, musingly.
"Willard Sickles," he said, "never would have nothin' to do with women.
He was born drivin' mails!"
"Pun?" asked Thaddeus, delicately, with his eyes on the Four Corners.
"Pun, Peter?"
"Hey?" Mr. Paulus was still thoughtful--abstracted. "Lonesome and
disgusted. Born so. It's his nature."
The two at the Four Corners separated. Morgan went north, Gard towards
the cemetery.
"I thought they might do some buttin'," said Mr. Paulus, as one grown
used to disappointment, and went in with his mail-bags.
Sundry villagers appeared, drifting slowly to the focus of the
post-office. Thaddeus took off his glasses and put them with precision
into their case.
"I wonder if Pete intended a pun? Probably not. Conversation is subject
to accidents. It is a pity that conversation is not--not more secure."
* * * * *
Gard entered the cemetery-gate and went along the shrub-bordered path.
"Every man is the dungeon of himself, but there is a key that unlocks
mine."
He stepped from the path into the grass, and Helen's apron was full of a
mess of brown, earthy roots. She started and cried out, and held up
both hands to him, with the trowel in one of them.
"I don't like my life, Nellie. Won't you let me into yours?" And she
dropped the trowel and said, "Oh--why, yes," in a tone that sounded like
an after-climax, and Gard took apron, yellow head, and all into his
arms, and scattered the roots beside Widow Bourn's placid grave and
Simon's stone, on which was graven insistently, "Remember Me." A
bluebird warbled and cooed to himself on the fence and paid no
attention. The bold head of Windless Mountain glimmered in the sun, that
swung low and near it. Presently the shadow of Windless would sweep over
Hagar with noiseless rush, with silence, or the sleepy twittering of
day-birds.
"It was a long way here, Nellie. I went nearly to the other end of
everything to find the path."
"Do you really love me? How long?"
"Long before I knew it. Do you mean how long am I going to?"
"No, I don't. Look, Gard! These will be blue violets when they grow.
They come from behind the church, and mother liked them. But you belong
to me now, and you mustn't stay here. It's cold under the hemlocks. You
must come out in the sun."
They went back along the path to the gate. Over the fence in his garden
the minister was planting peas, arranging them according to some theory
of fitness, perhaps allegorically, and humming a hymn out of tune.
Knowing that a tune was a spiritual mystery which Providence did not
permit him ever thoroughly to penetrate, he only sang when he thought
himself alone, and in a subdued murmur. The weather-vane of the militant
church pointed southwest at Windless Mountain, which meant always a
benevolent opinion about the weather. The sun slipped behind the
mountain, and the shadow of Windless flowed over Hagar; over Rachel
standing at the lilac gate, waiting for Helen, and liking the impersonal
peace of the hour; over Thaddeus stepping up the hill from the
post-office, and formulating certain reflections on the use and abuse of
accident in the practice of conversation; over Helen and Gard.
"You must learn all about Hagar, Gard. That's the minister. He always
pats his peas on the head when he plants them. And that's Windless."
"Is that Windless? He looks like a gentleman. Let's call the minister
and let him pat us on the head, show him it's a world of kisses so he'll
know what the trouble is, and tell him to ring the bell to-morrow."
"Nonsense. Besides, if you're going to do that, I'd rather only Windless
saw."
"You'll be famous and glorious, won't you? And I'll be proud--"
"Proud in a tower?"
"Oh, anywhere. Properly proud like Windless. But we'll like best to be
in Hagar, because that will be home."
"I'll be something, or try to be, if you want it. I'm a tired soldier
now, Nellie, on sick leave. I told the adjutant I was in love, too, but
he wouldn't put it in the permit. Let's go home."
They went up past the militant church, and Thaddeus and Rachel waited,
smiling, at the gate under the lilacs. Simon's epitaph and the fading
mountain were left facing each other across the dusk. In any issue
between them, the dignity of law and time seemed to be with the mountain
as against the personal claim, yet one did not come to Hagar to learn
among its twilights that humanity was degenerate nature, or that
the instinct of its insistent identity was lawless; it might be an
amendment in the process of making.
"They're coming," said Thaddeus. "The older I grow, Mrs. Mavering, the
more I perceive a certain dexterity in the--in fact, in event; a shell
now, for instance, skilfully exploded."
Rachel only smiled and threw open the gate.
I heard a pilgrim near a temple gate
Crying, "I have no fear if thou art Fate;
Morn, eve, and noon, if I look up to thee,
Wilt thou at night look down, remembering me?
Nay, then, my sins so great, my service small"--
So prayed he at the gate--"forget them all;
Of claims and rights a load the while I keep,
How in thy nights, O God, to smile and sleep?"
"Pilgrim," I said, "hath He, who toils the while,
Bade thee, of burdens free, now sleep and smile?
Who built the hills on high and laid the sea,
Set in thy heart that cry, 'Remember me.'"
From _Persian Moralities_.
THE END
_American Contemporary Novels_
LET NOT MAN PUT ASUNDER
BY BASIL KING
_This is the tenth of the twelve One-a-Month American Novels to be
published during 1901._
"The new volume in the American Novel Series, which will, we doubt not,
more than justify that undertaking in the eyes of American readers. Mr.
King has a firm grasp of character; ... he handles dialogue with
epigrammatic felicity, and he has something to say.... Mr. King's study
of his heroine is an admirable performance.... A novel worthy of the
notice of all thinking and observing Americans. Its qualities as a story
are deepened by its meaning as a study of temperament and changing
social conditions."--Richard Henry Stoddard in _New York Mail and
Express_.
"'Let Not Man Put Asunder' is clever, spicy, absorbing, and
thought-inspiring--a book with many missions.... A novel in which the
problems of unhappy marriage and separation are very seriously and
comprehensively considered."--_New York World_.
"The story moves through unusually brilliant dialogue and a series of
exciting scenes to its swift and inevitable conclusion."--_Public
Opinion_, New York.
"A book that fairly throbs with intense interest from start to
finish.... Its characters are living portraitures. It is thoroughly sane
and sound."--_Philadelphia Item_.
_Comments from various reviewers_:
"Masterfully handled."
"A most powerful drama of life."
"As timely as it is well done."
"A book to be respected."
"Mr. King is a 'coming' man."
_Post 8vo._ _Cloth, Ornamented, $1.50_
EASTOVER COURT HOUSE
BY HENRY BURNHAM BOONE and KENNETH BROWN
_This is the first of the twelve One-a-Month American Novels to be
published during 1901._
"If each of the novels of American life by American authors which
Messrs. Harper & Brothers project for the current year proves as good as
'Eastover Court House,' the twelve volumes will constitute a decided
addition to American fiction."--_Detroit Free Press_.
"Its charm lies in the constant succession of strongly drawn pictures of
life. One chapter after another presents these scenes, as sharply
outlined and deep in shadows as an artistic photograph. The book ... is
absolutely fascinating."--_Louisville Courier-Journal_.
"Set in the midst of the fox-hunting and cross-country regions, there is
the hoof-beat of the galloping hunter all through the story, which is
full of dry humor and vivid pen-pictures of life."--_Horse Show
Monthly_.
"The horse stories are the best since David Harum's, and quite as
laughable as his."--_Chester Times_.
_Comments from various reviewers_
"A good story well told."
"Strong and absorbing."
"Warm with life, with the passions and emotions ... of Virginia."
"Wholesome, true to life."
_Post 8vo._ _Cloth, Ornamented, $1.50_
THE SENTIMENTALISTS
BY ARTHUR STANWOOD PIER
_This is the second of the twelve One-a-Month American Novels to be
published during 1901._
"A novelist who sets out to depict a character like Becky Sharp is
likely to come to grief. Hence it is surprising that Mr. Pier has not
failed in portraying the social exile, Mrs. Kent. The novel is strong
and clever."--_Pittsburg Commercial-Gazette_.
"It is a very clever novel. There is story to it; there is apt phrasing
and clear delineation of character; there is much incisive and
delightful epigram."--_Evening Sun_. New York.
"If the cleverest parts of this work had been entirely cut out, we
should have called it one of the cleverest novels of the
season."--_Brooklyn Daily Eagle_.
"The book is characterised throughout by keen analysis and a delightful
sense of humor."--_Chicago Tribune_.
_Comments from various reviewers_
"Mrs. Kent is distinctly American."
"As interesting and unique as Becky Sharp."
"The book will be a success."
"A rattling good story."
"A vivid study of contemporary social life."
"One of the cleverest novels of the season."
_Post 8vo._ _Cloth, Ornamented, $1.50_
MARTIN BROOK
BY MORGAN BATES
_This is the third of the twelve One-a-Month American Novels to be
published during 1901._
"It is written in a style unknown nowadays, ... with an impressive power
revealed at each crisis of the tale, which makes the pulses stir and the
eye glisten. What a book for the opening of the twentieth
century!"--Julian Hawthorne, in the _Journal_, New York.
"A very striking book, and one that I am quite sure will take an
enviable place in line with record-breakers. It is the third of the
'American Novel Series,' and is entitled 'Martin Brook.' I finished it
at one sitting, so intense was my interest in it."--_Buffalo
Commercial_, N.Y.
"The third of the 'American Novel Series,' 'Martin Brook,' by Morgan
Bates, appeals to the best in man and woman, and is a credit alike to
author and publishers.... 'Martin Brook' is indeed an American novel,
and of the best kind."--Philadelphia _Daily Evening Telegraph_.
"One's interest is caught and held by the hero from the moment of his
first appearance in its pages.... There has not been a stronger scene
[the library scene] written to revive the interest of jaded novel
readers for many a day."--_N.Y. Commercial Advertiser_.
"The story is told in a vigorous manner, and is certainly out of the
common run of fiction as it is told nowadays."--_New York Sun_.
_Comments from various reviewers_:
"One of the most refreshing and natural of novels."
"As good as it is charming."
"A story of depth, color, and action."
"It is refreshing to light upon a story like 'Martin Brook.'"
_Post 8vo._ _Cloth, Ornamented, $1.50_
A VICTIM OF CIRCUMSTANCES
BY GERALDINE ANTHONY
_This is the fourth of the twelve One-a-Month American Novels to be
published during 1901._
"It plunges the reader directly into the social whirl of New York, and
the hand that detains one there all through an intensely interesting
succession of functions, flirtations, and incidents, ... is the hand of
one who has seen something whereof she writes."--_New York World_.
"There is more than one thinly disguised portrait in its pages--so we
are told."--_Mail and Express_, New York.
"Bobby Floyd is probably the most disagreeable and wholly exasperating
cad ever put into an American novel.... There is love-making all through
the book."--_The Times_, Washington, D.C.
"They fall in love amid most delightful surroundings of tennis, boating,
and driving."--_Exchange_.
_Comments from various reviewers_:
"Devoid of problems or mental complications."
"A book for a summer day."
"Has the correct New York social atmosphere."
"Decidedly a fascinating book about attractive people."
"Full of touch-and-go conversation."
"They all revel in smart talk and repartee."
_Post 8vo._ _Cloth, Ornamented, $1.50_
DAYS LIKE THESE
BY EDWARD W. TOWNSEND
_This is the fifth of the twelve One-a-Month American Novels to be
published during 1901._
"Mr. Townsend has given us a novel that is a strong and vigorous picture
of contemporary New York. He tells his story with the gayety and charm
and light-hearted high spirits of one to whom the passing show of life
is still full of interest, and he succeeds in interesting the reader.
There is not a dull line in the book."--_New York Journal_.
"The love story is well told, but the chief interest of the novel lies
in its contrasted pictures of New York life--from Fifth Avenue to Hell's
Kitchen."--_Cleveland Plain-Dealer_.
"Mr. Townsend has made a very striking and daring use of his experience
as a newspaper man.... He has gone about his business with vigor and
decision.... There is hardly a chapter which does not stand out through
sheer force of the author's fund of anecdote and observation and
humor."--_New York Commercial Advertiser_.
"It is an eminent success.... We recall very few novels of the past year
that we have read with such sustained interest."--_The Churchman_, New
York.
_Comments from various reviewers_:
"The book has countless good things."
"'Days Like These' is full of life and New York."
"A kaleidoscopic yet homogeneous picture of modern New York life."
"His pictures are vivid and true."
"Mr. Townsend writes incisively, vigorously."
_Post 8vo._ _Cloth, Ornamented, $1.50_
WESTERFELT
By WILL N. HARBEN
_This is the sixth of the twelve One-a-Month American Novels to be
published during 1901._
"A good, ingenious story, which grows more and more interesting as the
author proceeds."--Richard Henry Stoddard.
"It is a highly dramatic presentation of the warring forces of human
passions, conscience, and distorted religious beliefs. The story from
first page to last is vibrant with sustained power."--_The Outlook_,
N.Y.
"I have only words of praise to write of 'Westerfelt.' It is an
uncommonly good story, wherein is presented a very interesting picture
of American life as known in the author's native state."--_Boston
Times_.
"Mr. Harben has lived among North Georgia people; he has learned their
ways and their life; and, learning this, he has woven these people and
their life into a story full of charm and truth. It has the best claim
on the attention of the public--it is thoroughly readable."--_Atlanta
Journal_.
_Comments from various reviewers_:
"A love story, pure and simple."
"Unusual and unhackneyed."
"Full of dramatic elements."
"One of the best novels."
"Strong throughout."
_Post 8vo._ _Cloth, Ornamented, $1.50_
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
Maintained original spelling and punctuation of the dialect.
Maintained original hyphenation.
Obvious printer errors have been corrected.
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