The Debatable Land Part 23

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 pa.s.sionate in fragrance, and cardinal flowers are along their sh.o.r.es; 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sume 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 pa.s.sage, 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 s.p.a.ce merely where forms flitted through and singing gusts of wind pa.s.sed, 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-G.o.d 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 c.u.mber 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 pa.s.sage and left echoes behind them--some sandy sediment, perhaps--some changes in the mould or sh.e.l.l.

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 s.p.a.ce? 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 circ.u.mstance."

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.