The Debatable Land Part 10

Chapter X

Of Spring in Hamilton--Of Thaddeus's Opportunity to be Candid

In the open country the seasons are free, and work their will with s.p.a.cious confidence. There is room between heaven and earth. Spring runs down the back of the mountain forest, and races the river; the heat of summer has reason, leisure, and is motherly of green things; autumn has its cornfields, leagues of yellow landscape, and the progress in cool order of harvest and death; winter its distances and long-drawn breath from the pole. Their functions there are customary, familiar, old. They can swing at large. They need not hesitate. But in city streets they go timidly, as if they fancied something in man and his civil doings not in the original regulations. They are conservative. An innovation was made, not so long ago, in their ancient memories; a creature containing an unknown chemical was developed and introduced. They seem to remember that objections were made at the time. It was said, "You never can tell what will come of it." And you never could. They never became used to or at ease with it. The innovation was even dissatisfied with nature, the ground-plan and mother of them all. He laid out cities to contradict her. He questioned, too, the wisdom of his creation, noted his own discordance, and went on to call his discontent divine.

And spring entered Hamilton. One felt something moist, warm, and sticky in the air, and knew what she was about, trying to make civil kisses out of her fructifying young enthusiasm, her tidal tenderness, and feeling embarra.s.sed so that she made something moist, warm, and sticky. Baby green leaves were on the maples of Shannon Street and on the elms of the Common; rain was on the roofs at dawn, and the gutters flowed all day; busy citizen birds were notable on lawns, strayed songsters gurgling with happiness, or voicing spring longing in plaintive "pee-wees."

And Hamilton cared little about it. The Third Volunteers and a troop of militia cavalry were camped in the Fair grounds by the end of May, and people sat in the grand stands to see them drill. There were rows of neat, new tents, lines of men trying to keep step to a drum, bugle calls, cavalry charges, and turf cut to mud or dust. A blue sky was overhead whose peace was too deep and distant to be known, but one could infer it from the nearer peace of the white, drifting clouds. There was Lieutenant Map, with straps, visored cap, and sword, which Thaddeus thought should have been a club or javelin. "He'll not be suitably dressed till he's tattooed." Thaddeus even pursued and caught happiness in the situation, the changing pulse of the times. There were advantages to society in this panoply and thrill of war, which filled the eye and ear, entertained the thoughts, stirred the feelings to an interested activity. Society became more united, the units more sympathetic with each other. It was not good for banking; but for society, really, to sit in a grand-stand and watch extraordinary affairs go on in which society had such share and interest, was for society in the highest degree, in point of fact, inspiring. How brutal, how degrading, how primitive the Roman arenas! But here the higher feelings were enlisted. One saw battle-grounds imaginatively--their blood and dust idealized, made symbolic.

Rachel and Helen agreed with him without difficulty. It seemed to Helen quite splendid and natural for Morgan to go to the war. And both thought the cavalry and the bugles made everything real. It was not so long before that one heard there was such a place as Sumter, and even yet the objections made to anybody's firing at it seemed a little difficult to grasp with sympathy. Was not a fort made to be fired at? A little while before they had been told to dislike abolitionists, and had done so. Now they were told to dislike secessionists, and did so; but both were abstract. But here, on the familiar Fair grounds, were visible men in earnest, who were to be shot at and possibly hit by individuals. It was another matter than abstract secessionists shooting at a fort that was not interesting in itself. So that Rachel and Helen waved their handkerchiefs, and Thaddeus rapped with his cane, while the dark-blue lines broke and reformed, the bugles sounded, drums beat, troops of hors.e.m.e.n swept by, and overhead the sky possessed another blue and the drifting clouds a different movement.

They came home by Philip's road. The maples on Philip's road spread leaves that had pa.s.sed from babyhood into youth in the sunlight and soft, damp air. They found Gard sitting disconsolately on Mrs.

Mavering's steps, in blue uniform. Thaddeus said, "There's another patriot whose clothes don't fit."

"I was afraid I'd have to leave before you came," Gard explained. "I've had a rapid day. Decided at one o'clock to enlist; enlisted at two; told the rector at three I wouldn't play his old organ a day longer; drew this outfit at four. It's five now. But the rector was game. He said if he was twenty years younger he wouldn't preach in his old pulpit any more. May I come in half an hour, Mrs. Mavering?"

Thaddeus settled his gla.s.ses. "Young man. I should have said you were too wise for a warrior. Are you aware that cold lead, taken suddenly in any quant.i.ty, is injurious to the system?"

"What system?"

"The physical system of the--a--person taking it."

"Is it?" said Gard. "But it might be a mental tonic."

They all went in except Thaddeus, who walked down the street, scenting the air with delicate nostril.

"I don't--that one--I don't seem to make him out."

"You see, Mrs. Mavering," said Gard, "there are only a few people I want to tell about anything I do--you and Helen, and Fritz Moselle, and some of the brothers. Now, Fritz Moselle will say, 'Vat for a fool of a musician! Aber, you nefer get so fat as me if you don' be contented.'

Brother Francis will quote the Anabasis, and Andrew will give it up, and the Superior act like the Apocalypse. Now, what do you say?"

"I don't know. Every one else is thinking about one thing now. I should have said you would think about something different."

Gard kindled with the eagerness peculiar to him when on the track of an idea, or trying to state one that was clear to him but seemed to struggle against statement--a kind of tension and nervous thrill, like that of a hunting dog when the trail is hot.

"But going with the crowd is all right if it's going the way you want to go. And the more undistinguished from the ma.s.s you appear to be, the more you can keep a unit to yourself. I shouldn't like to be an officer, for then I'd be responsible for other men. But a private marches where he's ordered, and shoots according to prescription. So he can watch the big phenomenon all around him and feel it racing through his blood.

Can't he? I can feel it already. Can't you? Of course. But I want to look it in the face. If a man had a chance to be a crusader in his time he'd be foolish to miss it. He'd miss the flavor of his time. I'd sooner decline the acquaintance of a Shakespeare."

He looked at Helen eagerly. She stood among the potted plants in the bay window, looking out. He had thought she would seem more interested. She must be interested. Any one who had seen her eyes light up suddenly and often would know that. He wondered what clue to some unexpected significance she was following now, that she seemed absent-minded among the potted plants. Every one had his or her personal solitary adventure.

Helen, of course, had hers. One had to remember that.

"I play to-night the last time. Will you be under the gallery?"

Then he went away. And Helen, among the potted plants, followed a clue to this unexpected significance, that it did not seem to her splendid and natural for Gard, too, to go to the war. It seemed like the hand in the darkness from Rachel's story, the vista where melancholy shapes and fears crouched and hid their faces. She watched him go down Queen Mary Street towards the Common. Morgan Map, striding down from Philip's road, saw him come out, said to himself, referring to the uniform. "It's that organ player! Who next?"--looked up and saw Helen's profile above the plants in the window, and stopped. A moment later he turned and walked back.

In Saint Mary's, that night, the music did not seem to Helen to come down from choir loft as usual, and talk to her familiarly. She could not make it say anything. It stayed up among the organ-pipes; and below, among the pillars and aisles instead, the wind of a coming storm blowing in through the vestibule doors, half open--for the night was heavy and close--took its place, whispered, moaned, and wailed: "You've no idea how black it's growing. Shut the doors and hide." At least, she was only able to make the music say something about going away, and that "if people never meet again, never is a long, long time." She was glad when it was over, and Gard came around and under the gallery. They walked across the yard silently. The night had grown black, the branches tossed, and the leaves fluttered audibly in the darkness over them. They found Morgan walking to and fro in the edge of the light from Mrs.

Mavering's window.

"Why, Morgan!"

And Gard saluted, "Lieutenant."

"I want to see you, Nellie. Are you going home?" Then to Gard and his uniform. "Isn't that rather sudden?"

"It's the latest fashion. I report at nine, they say. Good-night."

And Mrs. Mavering, mounting her steps, turned to watch Morgan and Helen, and noted that they, too, walked quite silently still, till they turned the corner in front of Thaddeus's house and disappeared.

Thaddeus sat in the little room behind the drawing-room. At the sound of the rising wind he went to the window, looked out uneasily, and listened. The wind was too loud for him to hear the organ, even if it still were going. But he heard the hall-door open, and so went back contentedly to his newspaper, in which it was stated that a certain officer, in bringing a Confederate flag from a hotel roof in Alexandria, was shot by the hotel-keeper, who in turn was shot by a person accompanying the said officer. Really, people acted with singular earnestness and energy nowadays. He laid down the paper. On the wall opposite, in the gilded oval frame, was the picture of Mrs. Thaddeus Bourn, not in reality a mythical person at all, and yet there was a certain indistinctness in Thaddeus's memory of her--a certain absence of salient points. She had not, perhaps, been characterized by earnestness and energy. But nowadays--

"Don't bother me, Morgan," said Helen, impatiently. They were in the drawing-room, not far from the curtained door.

"But we start next week--"

"That," murmured Thaddeus, "is not, in point of fact, such a bad idea."

"And now, Nellie, I think it would be better if every one knew what you are to me before I left. I'll tell you why I didn't want it before--"

"It's funny, but you never take the trouble to ask what you are to me."

There was a silence that suggested threats. As far as Thaddeus could make out she had seemed to speak quite coolly. "She won't lose her head. G.o.d bless her!" he thought; "but--a--I think I'll step into this."

"If you're going to be subtle," said Morgan, at last, with a new harshness and blare in his voice, "I sha'n't understand it. It's perfectly simple. I want you to tell your uncle--Well, then, I will."

Thaddeus pulled the curtain and went through.

"I beg pardon. I seem to be referred to."

Morgan turned where he stood. Helen sat in a low chair before the sea-coal fire, and did not look up or turn her head.

"I should have--if I had supposed the conversation was to be of such a private nature--I should have--a--signified my presence before. As it is, I take the opportunity to observe that your--a--importunity appears to be unpleasant to Helen, to request that you--a--leave her alone, and to state that--a--no engagement between you will ever exist with my consent or her mother's."

"It does exist."

"I doubt it. Have you, then, ever promised to marry him, Helen?"

"I don't remember I was ever asked to."

Something like a flame went across Morgan's face, left red spots on it, and a glare in his eyes.

"Helen!" The chandelier shook with his voice and step. Helen did not move or look at him. Thaddeus raised a deprecating hand. "I must beg you not to shout in my house." Morgan paused and concentrated. The natural thing to do, the simple instinct, would be, with one hand to crumple up this grinning old idiot--tall stock and curled hair and all--stuff him away somewhere, and carry off Helen into the windy night, with her white dress and blue ribbon around the throat. It seemed impossible, even in an artificial age, that slim creatures should dare to balk him. She stood up quickly, and he caught her closely about the shoulders with his arm.

"It's absolute nonsense--"

"Please let me go, Morgan. I don't want to fight."