Gradually the congregation dropped into the melody, all singing softly.
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, thread-bare 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."
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."
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, black-leg, 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 white-washed 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.
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 tomorrow 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."
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."