The Debatable Land Part 24

"This sort of thing is no great success. There must be something wrong with me. I think I'll go to Italy. Rhymes! What, ho! I will be a poet.

Let the Campbells come, let the Campbells go. It's a foolish tune." Why so enthusiastic at bowling over one's inoffensive brethren in mortality?

That sounded like Jack Mavering, another homeless adventurer and piece of fragmentary pottery, who did not care, either, about the commander of the Army of the Potomac, and might be taking lunch now in that restaurant with the gilt sign, the resort of correspondents and small officers. Italy! The _Citronen bluhen_ there, and one was either a monk or an artist, or in love with an almond-eyed shepherdess--was something with a denomination, at least, and an ideal for a perquisite. He would go and tell Helen and Mrs. Mavering. Helen would dislike his not caring, and say so, in fact, with vigor. He might omit it and enlarge on Italy.

"I wonder what she'll say? I shouldn't like it if she looked disappointed."

Chapter XVIII

In which there is Discovered a Compunction

The iron-gray horse--the former property of one "Miss Meely," an existence in rumor, suspected of being quick-tempered--turned into an alley that led past the windows of the restaurant with the gilt sign to a livery stable.

The restaurant was full of the bustle of hurrying waiters and the hum of conversation. Mavering sat half-way down the line of tables, the remains of his meal before him. He was leaning back, looking peacefully at the ceiling, when Gard came, sat down at the other side of the table, and held out his hand. Mavering took his eyes from the ceiling and said, mildly. "Angel and ministers of grace! I prepared an obituary for you a month ago." He drew a thin, bony hand from his pocket and stretched it across the table. Gard gave his order to the waiter before he commented.

"Why did you do that?"

"Ah! Why? If I remember the circ.u.mstances correctly they were these."

Gard listened silently while Mavering told the story with niceties of detail. Finally he said:

"I don't see what Map did that for."

"Don't you? Then neither do I, but in the highway of interpretation I should say he doesn't like you to be alive--possibly has a grudge."

"He must have, but I didn't know it before."

And later, when they were in the street that climbed to the capitol, and seemed to come to an end there, finally, in adoration of its sunlit dome, Gard asked:

"Do you know where I'm going?"

"The question offers unlimited interest. I take it to be rhetorical. I do not."

"I'm going to look for Mrs. Mavering and a young lady who is with her.

They're nursing in one of the hospitals, or were last winter. Did you know it?"

"I did not."

"Going with me?"

"I'll walk along and make up my mind."

After a few moments' silence:

"It was hard luck for Mrs. Mavering to marry you."

"You speak truth."

"You didn't boil down to much."

"Blanked little. What's your intricate meaning?"

"I was thinking of Map."

They did not find them till the next day. There were ten or twelve hospitals in and about the city, some of them in the suburbs and far apart. Certain doctors knew the two nurses, and one directed them to a hospital which turned out to be a kind of military city with streets and sentries; but they were not there. The hospitals were all working smoothly at the time. There had been no large battle since Antietam, and there were few of those grim, dreary, and confused scenes which at times made the hospitals seem sterner battle-fields than any at the front.

Nevertheless Mavering felt and expressed a sense of injury.

"You don't mean to say I'm as tough as all this!"

"I haven't said anything about your toughness. Maybe you are. We'll try Mount Pleasant now. That will be the last to-night." And they rode away from the military city.

"You know her," continued Mavering. "She is what you would call, after duly considering the adjective, select. She doesn't like realism, raw humanity, and irregular event. She desires humanity to be cooked and served in courses, even to be ordered up to the rules of art. By which figurative language I mean to say that I don't see, that no ready interpretation presents itself, that I'm interested to know who persuaded her to take a ticket to the suburbs of h.e.l.l."

"You'll know if we find them."

"It was, then, this Miss?--"

"Bourn."

"Bourn. Exactly. Of that undiscovered country. Having discovered who induced the buying of the ticket aforesaid, there remains how she did it, this Miss--a--Bourn."

Late the following day they came to a hospital that had been a warehouse and stood on rising ground, a little back from the river, where a white steamer was lying at the wharf. There were sheds around the building, and new wooden steps built up to the door where the freight had once been discharged.

A man at the door said Mrs. Mavering and Miss Bourn were within, and took their names. Beyond him they saw accurately straight rows of cots, each with a head at one end. In a few moments he came back and said the two nurses would be off duty in an hour.

They walked to and fro, past their horses fastened in one of the sheds, till the dusk grew around them. The hospital windows were lit. Lights began to gleam beyond the river and the flat lands. A mist rose and clung to the water, crouched and ghostly. There was no moon, but the stars were out, and one could hear the lapping of the cold water among the reeds. They did not see Rachel and Helen come from the wide door down the new wooden steps, or notice them till they were near, coming hooded and cloaked through the dusk.

Mavering admitted to himself a personal and direct surprise. His last memories of Rachel were of tears, and then pale dignity and a kind of fine repellence. But she did not betray the past in manner. He could not see her face.

She said:

"There will be scallops for supper, gentlemen, and then may we have your adventures?"

Mavering found himself walking beside her, and admitting his surprise to be personal and direct. Presently he picked up his fluency.

"I judge you would like to avoid reminiscence. In the interests of clarity and calm weather, however, allow me to say that I don't intend to bother you; I'm a statue personifying resignation."

"Thank you, Jack. There is where we live. Helen and I."

It was a brick house with a white door, two slender pillars before the door, and low, pleasant windows. It overlooked the river, on which a gray layer of mist now brooded. Only a few houses were near, and a grove of trees lay beyond.

"We were in the city last winter and spring, and in another hospital, till a doctor who had charge sent us out here, in July, and found this for us. Helen looked so badly. She sympathizes so tremendously. She grew very thin and white. They don't bring them here directly from the fields, you know. Most of them here are getting better. He said we would be quite as much use. Do you know, it is very nice to be of use."

"Do I gather that, apart from the charm of utility--a thing that never appealed to me by its own virtue--do I correctly infer that you like it?"

Mrs. Mavering opened the door. The lamp in the hall shone across her face as she turned with a curious smile.