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."