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."