The Debatable Land Part 17

"About copy. Anything that goes south of the Potomac will be apt to mean a rope for me, and New York papers go south of the Potomac."

"Egotistic still, but perspicuous. I see."

"It's between me and you and the Dunker."

"And that's a pretty combination!"

"Not a sign, Jack."

"Not a misplaced comma, not an agitated phrase shall betray the mystery of this night. Now, then. Why?"

"Oh, you! You'll have to make me up."

"And the Dunker?"

"They're all anti-slavery and non-combatant. Besides, I picked an acquaintance with this one yesterday."

The small, plain, whitewashed house, with its whitewashed barn, stood close to the road and shining in the moonlit dusk. An elderly man, with smooth, gray hair falling to his collar, shaven lips, and spade-shaped beard, came to the door and stood there, mild, quiet, round-shouldered.

"Can we put up our horses here and pa.s.s the night?"

He nodded and turned back into the room without speaking, but left the door open.

They spent the evening talking with him, studying the while his outward make-up, his manner and language, critically. He had a certain gentle suggestiveness of his own, and before they parted for the night brought out a pair of saddle-bags and a large bundle of printed sheets.

"De is tracts," he said, gently, "of religion."

"Good," said Mavering. "An unG.o.dly army, no doubt. Oh, I beg pardon!"

"De is not of de doctrine of the bruderen only. De is Christian."

"Oh, well, Captain Windham was bred a Catholic. He'll distribute them, and read some himself."

The quiet elder seemed to have taken a shy liking for Gard. He touched him softly on the back of the hand.

"I hope you are a good man. I hope you are not to die in what you do."

At daybreak they rode away westward, making a wide circuit of the village, Gard with his lips shaven, hair parted and plastered down, and wearing the gentle old brother's waistcoat that b.u.t.toned to the throat, his dingy black coat and wide-brimmed hat. His saddle was primitive, his bridle-bit rusty. Mavering's experienced eye judged that he looked his part. Even the whiteness of his lips, where the razor had gone, added to the impression of calm and austere withdrawal. Was it some lingering touch of the monastery? One does not live without result during the formative years, secluded between cool, white walls, among unworldly lives. Mavering called him "the anchorite," and swore the phrase still truthful.

A glimpse of the Potomac between the hills; a troop of Union cavalry breaking camp in a meadow; clank and rattle of side-arms; men gathering and packing kit; men sitting listlessly in their saddles; a mounted officer in the middle of the road, looking down towards the Potomac--large, square-shouldered, and ma.s.sive. He turned in his saddle.

"Hold on here! Halt!"

Gard pulled up and looked at him under drooped eyelids.

Mavering pushed between.

"Without circ.u.mlocution, Captain Map, you're precisely what I'm looking for. Cavalry's the thing for a correspondent. I have an unsubstantial vision I used to know you in Hamilton."

"That's all right. Who's this?"

"Oh, that's a Dunker brother. Got some blanked tracts in his saddle-bags. Let me join you?"

"Is--is he?" His horse blocked the road aggressively. He kept his eyes on Gard.

"Well"--Mavering turned and surveyed the "make-up" critically, complacently--"I slept with him at his old man's last night. If a twenty-minute Dutch prayer is any proof, he's still in the faith of his fathers. I'm leaving you here, brother."

Gard nodded, rode into the ditch with a face conscientiously blank, mild, non-combatant, and pa.s.sed the obstacle. Morgan watched him ambling leisurely away in the sunlight and the dust. Mavering waited some time.

"Look here, captain. Did I understand you laconically to insinuate I might accompany and chronicle your glories?"

Morgan wheeled his horse slowly.

"I guess so. Yes, you may."

The road went around a sandy hummock and disappeared. Gard did not look back. Beyond the strip of the Potomac the Virginia hills were blue and cool and peaceful.

Mavering meditated a disclosure. Still, whether Morgan had recognized Gard, or for a time had suspected it was he, or had only acted on const.i.tutional aggressiveness, it did not seem likely in any case that he would chatter about the matter. He could hold his tongue without being warned. "It's none of my funeral." Gard had precisely stated what he wanted. Mavering remarked:

"That Dunker had a pa.s.s, if you'd asked for it--permit to scatter his tracts wherever he liked."

But Morgan did not comment. Mavering thought him likely to be dull company, and set himself to making other acquaintance and finding entertainment with experienced skill.

The troop filed out, formed loosely, and clattered south. It occurred to Mavering that they might overtake Gard. Down through the narrow valleys they came at length to the willow-fringed bank of the river, but he saw the broad-brimmed hat nowhere. It seemed to have vanished from the earth. Mavering concluded his connection with it over. New pastures of interest were before him. The nomad owns no real estate in any one else.

His soul knows not t.i.tle or tenure. He will be folding his tent at daybreak and leaving the night's oasis, and the sands drift over his footprints.

Chapter XIV

In which Mavering Concludes that Cavalry Officers as a Cla.s.s Are Eccentric and Deep

The war suited Morgan. It was action in simple terms of purpose and accomplishment. It was sensible and genuine. There no man's complicated trivial tastes and instincts needed to be bothered about; he carried them at his own risk and exercise; they were not in the army lists.

Orders were not disguised in requests and reasons. The gradations and shades, the cautions and compunctions, the ten thousand odds and ends of ten thousand years' acc.u.mulation for the most part were swept away in bulk. Men battled with men and threw off their shamming benevolences, showed what they were, and enjoyed themselves in the burly l.u.s.t of struggle. The life satisfied at least half of him to completion.

A fortnight before the late battle he had seen Helen on the steps of the wooden warehouse, that they used as a hospital and filled from wall to wall with blanketed cots. She had looked pale, tired, and smiling. After a moment she had flushed and broken away angrily. And that night he had lain twenty miles off with his troop in the open, a lot of blinking, idiotic stars over him, and could not sleep, and d.a.m.ned in disciplined order the ways of woman and the impalpable barriers around them--Thaddeus Bourn, for keeping his skinny corpse unburied beyond the limit of reason or utility; and Gard Windham to the discomfort of the blistered stars.

There appeared to be another part of him unsatisfied--hungry, rather, and hot on the scent.

Had he not picked out Nellie long ago for her pluck and sense, and a certain tingling challenge in her--a girl fit for his hand to hold? She suited him, fitted one part as a cavalry raid fitted another. Very well.

He would take her. Any one that stood in the way would be hurt, very likely; at any rate, taught better. The squire and Thaddeus Bourn might be as futile as they chose, it being no business of his. They had had their day. Let them keep out of the path of men who had still to live.

It was no great matter what they did. But when it came to Nell's mooning about the organ-player, with his theories and whining tunes, and getting sick in hospitals--She said that she hadn't seen him since winter, which wasn't likely. She had turned red, and broken away at that. Hospital nurse! What a fool thing for Nell to do! Mrs. Mavering was with her, and Jack Mavering travelled with Windham. The Maverings might have made up. Ten to one there was a game on, and they fancied Morgan Map was that kind of a fool.

The war filled a man's hands. Morgan felt that the germ of his own career lay in these days, and other business ought to wait if it could.

Windham must be off scouting in that Dunker outfit, and might by good luck get himself hung, only he was too clever.

Morgan turned in his saddle and looked back for Mavering, who rode in the middle of the cantering troop, and seemed to enjoy himself.