The Debatable Land Part 2

"Aren't you as sure of me, Nellie? You used to be. Well," he said, slowly, "you see, if Thaddeus Bourn tried to take a fall out of me, he'd want to be subtle, and then it would be all up with him, for I shouldn't understand it."

"Why should he want to take a fall out of you?"

"If he doesn't, why should I mind his disliking me?"

"Wouldn't you mind being disliked by anybody, until they did something, really?"

"Not much."

"Oh! Not by me?"

"I'd rather be disliked by the United States. Besides, that's foolish."

"Oh, I don't know. It's funny, I have an opinion of you that's miles long. It isn't exactly an opinion, either."

Morgan smiled again with approval on Windless Mountain.

"If you're going to be subtle I sha'n't understand it," meaning possibly it was the privilege of girls to have half-grown ideas that they could not describe. A man had business with only such as he could handle, put to the use of resolve, statement, or persuasion. If he was unable to express his mind completely, it was because there was rubbish in his mind. But between himself and Windless Mountain, he did not object to Helen's having an opinion of him that was not exactly an opinion.

Any one could have an understanding with Windless, that eclectic philosopher, with his feet deep in the earth, fertile loins, jovial belly, the chest of a wrestler, and the gray, scarred head of a prophet.

On his flanks were chuckling little rivulets, nesting birds, and all kinds of flitting incident. From a distance you might see his forehead lifted to abstractions, pale-blue, spiritual things. Whatever you said to him, he had an answer to your liking. Whatever your philosophy, somewhere about him he felt much the same. If you hated an enemy, there was a trifle of ice, a certain ambient glacier that once ground him badly, of whom he had no loving remembrance and the grooves whereof were on his bones. He was no moralist. The liar and the thief could find companions.h.i.+p there, the outcast existences more deserted, the murderer note the hawk risen red and screaming from the thicket, and admit a spirit that bettered his own. Only if you were not content in finding a likeness in detail, and wished to look straight to his scarred forehead, you would probably do well to be candid and take your time. What you got from him would be no special advice, but an a.s.surance that he understood you, and there would be something in his manner of understanding that would meet the case and be enough. If it was a moral influence, it lay in bringing you to see the relations of things in size and quality, and in making your own directions more evident.

"I like Windless best," said Helen, dreamily. "He's the nicest person there is."

"It would be no joke to have him in your way."

They turned into the garden and up the path between brown, withered flower-beds.

"I jumped the fence, anyway, Morgan. It would be idiotic to hurt myself.

I won't do it again."

"The point was, you didn't mind the colonel."

"I'm on a furlough. Take me up Windless again."

"Not if you're on a furlough."

Chapter IV

In which Thaddeus uses the term "Moral Justification"

In the early days of Squire Map's seclusion he had not yet made the hermit of himself that Hagar was familiar with later. Men have said that he never went outside the village after the fall of '58, at least never to Hamilton. The grooves where his bitterness ran plainly deepened as the stream wore them year by year; possibly the gradual noting how his withdrawal made no empty place among busy men, how feigning friends who had turned enemies and rebellious sons went their way and prospered, helped to widen and darken the shadow of his misanthropy. He had been a lawyer, a politician, and made his stir in his day. In 1860 he was a gray, grim gentleman in a long coat and tall, black hat, with a caverned, bony face and large frame, whom it was not considered wisdom to address without good reason, but who was seen often enough about the village.

And it was not so strange as to startle Widow Bourn in her halcyon calm when he knocked at her door one afternoon, and entered, doffing his tall hat.

"I hope I don't disturb you, Mrs. Bourn." The widow signified her unruffled comfort and hoped he would sit down.

"With your permission, I will do so."

Followed a pause while the widow pursued her knitting, and the squire's reddish, bushy eyebrows drooped and gathered, while he studied a patch of sunlight on the floor.

"I recollect that my son Morgan and your daughter Nellie were once quite inseparable, a companions.h.i.+p regarded as singular, considering the difference in ages, not common between a young man, approximately, and a child. It was, however, I believe, a fact."

"Morgan was always fond of Nellie."

The widow hoped secretly that, whatever he intended to say, he would continue to put it in the form of statements with which it was no trouble to agree.

"I am told he has been here of late--in fact, frequently."

That also was true. The widow wondered why people were afraid of Squire Map. He was a very comfortable person to talk with.

"Sickness or misfortune is not, if I understand his character, a thing that ordinarily interests my son Morgan. I need not point out to you that young people of a certain age are apt to give much attention to the subject of marriage."

The widow felt a twinge of discomfort. It was but slight. She objected that Nellie was young, hardly more than a child.

"In apprehension of the future, then, Mrs. Bourn, I have to say that I doubt whether any young woman will find the happiness that is due her in such an intimate relation with my son Morgan. I more than doubt it."

The widow dropped her knitting and stared helplessly.

"That is perhaps all I have to say, Mrs. Bourn. I apprehend something of the character of your daughter Nellie. Her good looks are remarkable, her disposition and intelligence even more interesting. That may not be my only motive in coming here. Whatever the motive, I beg you to believe the warning is entirely candid."

The widow felt herself in the shadow of a vague distress, painfully called upon to say something appropriate. She murmured that Nellie was going to live with her uncle that winter. The squire raised his hedge of eyebrows suddenly.

"In Hamilton?"

With her uncle Thaddeus, the elder brother of Simon. He had taken so much interest in Nellie.

The squire mused. Yes. Could Mrs. Bourn, if Mr. Thaddeus Bourn again visited Hagar, contrive to suggest to him personally that his former friend, Gerald Map, remembered him with pleasure and would be under obligation to Mr. Bourn if he, Mr. Thaddeus Bourn, would call upon him, Gerald Map?

The squire then took his leave. He came upon Morgan himself crossing the green with his gun and hunting-dog. They faced each other and stopped.

Mr. Paulus from the post-office below the hill observed them.

"Resemblin'," he remarked, "two rams that's goin' to b.u.t.t lightnin' out of themselves in a minute."

"You still visit Hagar, then?" said the squire, his voice muttering thunder.

"Quite often."

The trick of the gathered eyebrows was curiously common to both. The squire took his time.

"You intend to marry Miss Helen Bourn?"

"I've been figuring on that for seven years. You haven't found me changing my mind. I intend to do it."