The Debatable Land Part 25

"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 ident.i.ty. 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 cla.s.sical 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, blackleg, 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 inst.i.tution, 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 s.p.a.ces, 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 superst.i.tion 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 ap.r.o.ns. 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, ma.s.siveness, 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 sh.e.l.l 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 whitewashed chapel, at whose tender feet men poured out daily the pa.s.sion 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 n.o.bis_, 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?"