The Debatable Land Part 4

"Do you like it, Nellie?"

"It's glorious!"

"Of course you like it. Hold hard."

"You're the right stuff, Nell," he said at Thaddeus's door.

Morgan's commendations of her had always been rare enough to be thrilling. Her head sang with "Morgan, Morgan," the victorious, the controlling. The sound of Consul's hoofs, the rush of wind in her face, the flying objects, had been only expressions of the beat and rush of his will. The sense of him was overwhelming. It surprised her to find that Thaddeus appeared smaller than ordinary, more frail and artificial.

He seemed to be chattering things without significance. It was the contrast with Morgan's immense genuineness and direct speech, and because to have one's mind filled with Morgan was to be forced imperiously to look at things in Morgan's way, which was an absolute way. It brought one to despise decorations, mannerisms, whatever did not come to the point and justify itself; to summon all vague emotion and half-formed ideas of one's own to pay their way or admit bankruptcy and disappear; to expect other people to meet one with the same solidity of surface. Conversation, according to Morgan, which consisted of an exchange of intuitions, was a kind of inflated currency; the bulk of it was irredeemable; there might be a bullion fact or two behind, but to try to do business on the basis of it was futile. A man might either pay good coin or counterfeit for purposes of his own, but why play ducks and drakes with himself? Thaddeus Bourn, by an odd inconsistency, was a business man of some ac.u.men, who outside of that chose to pretend to be a child with strings of beads, and had nothing visible to gain by it. A sentimentalist was the most irritating of men, who wasted his time pretending to be more of a fool than he was.

So that Helen became engaged in judging Thaddeus severely, silently, under Morgan's principles.

"Helen," said Thaddeus, using an interpretative eye-gla.s.s, "permit me to say you're exceedingly young, delightfully young. I am pleased that you enjoyed your drive. Our friend Morgan is an interesting barbarian. In course of time, no doubt, you will see the advantages of civilization."

"What do you mean, Uncle Tad?" she said, pursuing cash values.

"There is a kind of barbarism," continued Thaddeus, "which refuses to be civilized, and, in point of fact, eats the missionary. It finds the missionary in that capacity good, and goes its way with--with congratulation. It is striking; really, there is an impressive simplicity about it; but, dear me, you know it will never do. It's a little--isn't it a little obtuse? At least, my dear--at least, one might be allowed to doubt whether--it does not seem so, personally, to the missionary."

Thaddeus could hardly have hoped to dissipate any dominant sense of Morgan from Helen's mind with such fugitive sayings. He was probably testing, considering. "We are all egoists, my dear, except a few women.

Morgan is the primitive and aboriginal egoist. He is--a--aggressive, carnivorous. I am a social egoist; your father, who wished, with emphasis, to be remembered, was, pardon me, a regretful egoist; your mother is a contented and unaggressive egoist. And so every one has, so to speak, a cla.s.s. It is no reproach; it is nature, my dear--law. Why pretend to escape? But," he concluded, with grace and precision, "there is a choice, and in matters of choice I always take pleasure in pointing out to you the advantages of civilization."

Morgan still headed the march of Helen's dreams. The same moon, a little fuller than the night before, laying a thicker wash of silver, hung over the apse of Saint Mary's. She looked from her window at the roofs where the organ player's spectre had seemed to be dancing then, mistily, wildly, to the storm of sound below. The friendly window was dim, which the lady had walked past and past, restless, tall, thick-haired.

How strong and wonderful was Morgan! What more could there be under the moon and stars than the will to dare and the power to do? Helen had no name for the spell. Only of late had she thought of it in detail. In old times the word "Morgan" itself expressed the whole subject. It described the beginning and the end of things.

The organ began to breathe somewhere behind the stained windows that were just glimmering. It seemed to be laying the foundations of its temple of sound on the undermost bed-rock. Now it was lifting the walls, and one gathered and knew gradually how vast was the weight of the masonry; how the power beneath that raised it foot by foot was vaster still; how sure of itself was the power beneath, for certainly it only used one hand to force that steady climb of masonry; the other ran along, chiselling designs, gargoyles, pale statues in niches, sweeping a series of half-circles and filling them with deep-sea and warmest sunset color till, lo! it was a rose window.

Helen breathed fast, pressing her face to the cold pane. Something here, too, was strong!

She s.n.a.t.c.hed a cloak, sped through halls, down stairs, through more halls and a back door, out into the moonlit yard. There was only a low iron fence to jump, and she was under the curve of the apse. A door stood half open in the corner where it joined the main building, and within was a swing-door which yielded noiselessly. It was quite dark there under the gallery, but a few gas-lights flickered in the chancel and shone on lower ranges of gilded organ-pipes, banked away beyond in a kind of transept, and on a choir screen that hid the organist. A few dusky figures could be made out sitting in pews here and there in the nave. Helen crept into a seat next a stone pillar that felt rugged and cool, and was pushed forward partly into the pew.

The building of the temple had ceased, its visionary masonry, carvings, and rose window vanished at a touch withdrawn. The organ was murmuring down among the old foundations of the world, communing with the beginnings of time, meditating to rise out of the deep with a new creation. Otherwise the church was so still that the air seemed heavy with the stillness.

A mult.i.tude of fleeting, flickering sounds broke out, like a burst of fireworks, the air full of shooting-stars, blown bubbles, and tinsel.

There was a piping and dancing in the sunlight on delicate meadow gra.s.s, by pipers and dancers who could not conceivably grow old. Then a voice spoke suddenly among them. One could not tell where it came from or what it said. It was cold, sombre, indifferent. But it ceased and the dancing went on, more baccha.n.a.l now. There were perfumes, garlands on hot foreheads, shrieking and whirring of stringed instruments, high laughter, and swinging in circles. The loud, cold voice spoke again, and left no echoes or after-murmurs. Something more quiet followed, as if the memory of fear could not be quite put away, or remained in the form of an altered mood. People walked hand-in-hand. There was warm twilight and the ripple of a flowing river. After all, life was sweeter for seriousness, love best in the stillness and twilight. The cold, insistent voice rose, a stone pillar of sound, and all these things became complaining ghosts before its weightier reality. So that at length and in the end it remained alone, except for the mutter in the pit below, and there was no triumph in its victory, but it continued cold, sombre, indifferent, monotonous, heavy.

Some one beyond the pillar sighed in the darkness, and a hand fell on Helen's hand which gripped the edge of the seat. Helen started and whispered, "Oh, that was hateful!"

"I beg your pardon."

"He plays like anything, but--" She came out of her absorption to know that she had been whispering her thoughts into the darkness, and that the darkness had given forth an apology. A shadow the other side of the little stone pillar seemed to be leaning forward now and looking at her.

A dress rustled.

"The music was sad, was it not?" and Helen whispered again:

"They tried all sorts of ways, and tried and tried, but it never was any use, and they gave up and died."

"Did it seem so clear? He's beginning again."

It was a kind of nocturne or slumber song, a rocking movement with a flute tone moving through a dimmer mist of harmonies, soothing here and there a restless chord. "Has He not made the night for your slumber, and darkened the earth for your sleep, and lit the earth softly with stars, and moved it among them as a child's cradle is rocked? Wake, then, if you may not sleep, but only to watch the moon rising and hear the croon of the sea. Murmur and motion, motion and murmur; but remember wonder, remember beauty, and let not anything persuade you from them. A moon and a sea be in your heart, a hush of an inner place. _Ora pro n.o.bis_, and for the growth of flowers on ancient graves. _Requiescant in pace_, souls stately and dead. If the truth is a dream, then the dream is true, and therefore He made the night for your slumber, and darkened and lit the earth and moved it softly among stars, and gave to the moon its rising and to the sea its motion and murmur."

They went out by the swing-door together, pa.s.sed from the shadow of the apse to the level yard, and stopped.

"I think your name is Helen Bourn," said the other. "Mine is Rachel Mavering. You will come to see me often. We are so near."

Chapter VI

Introducing Gard Windham and the Brotherhood of Consolation

One warm, rainy evening in the year '44, and in the great city that is flanked on either side by a river and a strait, Father Andrew plodded along an avenue of small shops, whose windows rested their chins on the wet sidewalk and blinked through steaming panes. His dingy umbrella dripped in the rain, and the skirts of his robe flapped against his white stockings. He had in his mind no more than presently the opening of the door in the brick wall of a cloister court, the sleepy roll of the vesper service, refection, complines, a little private, companionable prayer, such as ever seems to be heard kindly if one is trustful, and then the sleep which comes to tired saint and sinner alike with singular tolerance. Alas! one's fat legs became tired enough with climbing stairways, and the soul sore with its strained sympathies.

A lean, wet-haired boy, plodding past him, glanced up with large, drowsy-lidded eyes, and slid under his broad umbrella, making no comment. Father Andrew chuckled and sighed. Giving and taking were a simple incident, if giving were merely to carry an umbrella for two, taking merely to step under it, and charity were not charity but companionship.

"Where are you going?"

"I guess I'll go with you," after hesitating.

"But where did you come from?"

"Lappo's."

"And where's Lappo?"

"I don' know. He's dead."

Father Andrew chuckled and sighed again. Very likely he could not have decided himself, from any earthly information, where Lappo was. "Was it Lappo the fruit-seller? Yes, yes. And what is your name?"

"Gard Windham."

"Good--Well, well! A--mm--And Lappo wasn't your father? Who was?"

"I don' know."

"Anybody know?"

"I guess they don't."

"Well, what--that is, dear me! You don't say so! I mean, where'd he get you?"

"Got me to the Foundlings. Lappo"--speaking in the way of quiet conversation--"Lappo had fits."

"Yes, yes. Ga--"