The Debatable Land Part 27

"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 role 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 ma.s.sive 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 a.s.syrian 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 G.o.d! 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 d.a.m.ned 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 h.e.l.l. 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. G.o.ds! 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 sh.e.l.l 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 G.o.d! 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?"

"G.o.ds!" murmured Mavering, in deprecation. "This race of women! About six miles back of the Creek landing."

"The steamer goes out at ten. Pack a basket, Rachel."

Helen left the room with a rush. Mavering looked after her with wakened interest. "Who and what is this?" Rachel came to him and pleaded.

"I owe her everything. You left me so desperate--"

"I left you? I seem to have forgotten that."

"I thought there was nothing more for me. She brought me to life again.

Help her, Jack. I think we can neither of us change. I think it will be the old story again. But I'll try."

Mavering looked down and felt a touch of compunction curious to himself.

"I suppose the anchorite was correct--problematical, but accurate. I don't carry your price. You're too expensive for me. As to the anchorite. I'll find him and bring him back, dead or alive. That's cheap, but the rest of it is expensive."

A half hour later the white steamer was ploughing down the river.

Mavering, in the long, nearly empty cabin, stretched himself on a sofa, denounced the execrable taste of steamboat furnishing, and went philosophically to sleep. Helen, on the upper deck, stared at the starlit Virginia sh.o.r.e.

Chapter XXI

In Which We Go Down the River and Return

A loud wind blew up the river, cold, sombre, insistent. The river seemed to tremble in waves and shiver in wrinkles under the monotonous threatening of the wind, the stars to be fretful in their bleak s.p.a.ces.

"Forever is a long time." Helen wrapped her cloak more closely.

"Dead!" The wind stated it coldly, insistently, and did not mind how fiercely she denied it. It was only the surface of the river that trembled and glimmered so. The inevitable reality was the current below--dark, steady, and leading downward to that sea from which the cold wind came with insistent statement. If men and women were incidents to powers beneath and influences over them, like the myriad tiny flickers born of coincidences between the divinity of the stars and the toil of the river; if one only carried for a short time this little torch of courage in a night without horizon; and behind the surface of things "their substance and third dimension," in Gard's phrase, stretched away into a ghostly distance; yet it was inborn in Helen to carry her torch high, to lay lance in rest and challenge the ghostliest shadow in sight, to be herself personal and definite, to accuse even abstractions of personality, to make a vivid world of nearby things and live vividly within it.

In that world, life had seemed mainly to consist of purpose and achievement; but on the wide river between the crouching sh.o.r.es that night--with the wind calling continually. "Dead, dead"--wishes, resolves, and actions to follow them, how shrunken and chilled they seemed, if one were only an accidental wrinkle on the river, possibly a glimmer if a star happened to look that way!