The Debatable Land Part 30

"I suppose there might be a sort of public duty involved," he said, "which interests me just now about to the extent of an empty medicine bottle. I flung the last one at Mrs. Mavering's black cook. You remember Sabrina? You couldn't even break gla.s.s on her. Do you think of taking up regularly with--I beg your pardon--with a criminal career?"

"Criminal! A criminal's a fool. I'm no fool, or never was before. I lost my head. That's only once. Criminal! Why, look here! What do you make out of this world you and I have been shovelling dirt in now some years?

Isn't every man in it for himself and against his neighbor, if his neighbor's in his way--which he partly is, always? Do people go into society to amuse themselves or each other? Themselves, of course. And business is compet.i.tion, and compet.i.tion's private war according to rules of custom. I'm supposed to be a lawyer. That's a succession of jobs at beating somebody else and getting paid for it. This civil war is one collection of private interests against another collection. The South was getting beaten in business--held a losing hand--wanted to break up the game. That meant a fight. Take you and me. You wouldn't let me out of this if you saw anything more in it. You don't see anything more in it. I don't, either. I'd do exactly the same, for the same reason. Never shove a man farther than you need to make your point. I don't compete with you any more in anything. I keep out of your way and avoid offence. For the rest, I compete. The law is an artificial line.

The line is moved now and then. At one time it's criminal to lend money at interest and innocent to fight a duel. Another, it's the other way.

That's all right. But a man's a fool not to fight inside the line as it happens to stand. There's room enough."

Gard thought he saw some of his own philosophies in caricature. They looked unlovely enough in caricature. Map was an interesting man. If peculiar, it was rather that his mind was so sharp-edged, unqualifying, absolute. It refused to see shades. It saw hard outlines and felt the impact of surfaces. Gard thought that at one time he would have found him still more interesting and would not have felt this repulsion from him. Probably convalescence was a fastidious state. He turned away to the window. There was a domed mountain in sight, its spurs thrust forward into the valley, sides covered partly with a young-leaved forest, partly with pine and hemlock, and its bald, rocky head bare in the sunlight. The train stopped at a little station by the river. The old, battered stage rolled them away slumberously over an echoing covered bridge, across the valley bottom lands, where the zigzag fences and the calling of the ploughman to his team, the bluebird on the zigzag fence, and the slim white birches along the mountain spurs all seemed in the same concord with the ancient earth and childlike sky.

The silent, misanthropic stage-driver looked the kin of the country-side's slow vegetation.

The road swung around the mountain and went up through a dim green avenue of pines and hemlocks, and below, in its bowldered crypts and gorges, poured a stream with white foam and mysterious song, or sometimes lay still in black pools. The steep slope of the mountain was on the left. The road climbed steadily, and came out of the woods at last not a mile from the village in a cup of the hills of Hagar.

At the cross-roads Morgan stepped out and Gard followed.

"The house is behind the church there." Morgan said, shortly, and moved to walk away, but stopped and turned half around when Gard spoke, listening with his mouth set and yellow brows drawn low.

"I dare say you'll succeed, you and your philosophy," said Gard, slowly, looking towards the church and the house behind it. "I dare say I sha'n't, in that way--or care to, very much. Compet.i.tion doesn't seem to me worth while."

Morgan was silent. The battered stage had rolled away down the hill to the post-office, where Mr. Paulus came out for the mail, and Thaddeus Bourn followed after him. Thaddeus looked up the hill, dropped the iron point of his cane on the stone step with a click, and stared blankly.

Mr. Paulus, mail-bag in hand, stopped and followed the direction of Thaddeus's eyes. The stage-driver climbed down from his seat and joined them.

"I don't care," Gard continued, "a blank cartridge what you did or tried to do. There's no stipulation except that we keep out of each other's way. Is that satisfactory?"

"That's all right." Morgan hesitated, and brought out with apparent effort: "You'd better look in the cemetery first; I saw something there," went his way with long strides, and disappeared down the first dip on the Cattle Ridge road.

"There's a cemetery, very true," Gard thought, and went towards it, past the minister's picket fence and neat gate to where the mournful hemlocks stood in meditation. And there some one in a black dress was kneeling and planting flowers over a new grave, and near by was a tall, gray stone, and thereon, graven in large letters:

"SIMON BOURN,

"BORN ---- DIED ----

"REMEMBER ME."

Morgan swung along, and looked not to right or left, nor cared if any villager speculated on the singular sight of "one of the Map boys"

observably bound for the square house on the hill; past the mill where Job Mather watched his slow millstones, past the mill-pond, the blacksmith's, and the rambling, low farm-house that hived innumerable Durfeys, through the stone pillars of Squire Map's gate, up to the square house on the hill.

The door was locked. He rang the bell, and waited some time. The place seemed half deserted, unkept, the walks littered with last year's rotting leaves.

The door opened suddenly and Squire Map nearly filled it with broad, bowed shoulders.

"I've lost her, dad."

"Come in, Morgan."

The latter followed into the dining-room and they sat down. Opposite him on the wall was the portrait of his mother in her bridal-dress. A stately lady always, somewhat cold. She seemed to wear her bridal-veil as a kind of drapery for her pride. Morgan spread his large hands on the table and looked at them.

"I played like h.e.l.l for it."

"No doubt. Go on."

He told his story coolly and without omission.

"I suppose you are a worse man than your brother," said the squire at last. "He is more scrupulous. I liked you better. You have more candor, carry more weight. I have not been a scrupulous man."

Morgan was looking at the portrait.

"What did you want me to lose for? You won."

"Won! No, I lost. So will you, soon or late. Better soon than late." He followed Morgan's eyes. "Your mother--I'd as lief she'd have died twenty years earlier."

"This sort of thing is futile, dad. Why don't you come out of your sh.e.l.l? Come and get into the push again."

"What for? From my standpoint and my age, Morgan, ask yourself--What for?"

Morgan laughed, lifted his fists, and let them fall with a crash on the table.

"I'm young yet."

"Oh, there's a great deal in that. But one draws no interest from time.

You live on your capital. But there's much in being at the beginning instead of at the end--a great deal in that."

Chapter XXIII

The End

"It is this way," said Thaddeus, "to speak from a--a--personal standpoint. If Morgan Map goes to the cemetery I shall not wait for my mail, but go and--a--accidentally interrupt. If he goes north, the other man may go there, if he chooses. I shall wait for my mail."

"Your standpoint!" said Mr. Paulus, heavily. "Well--speakin' from young Map's, what might he want in the cemetery? Speakin' from mine, I'd rather he'd go there and stay."

"My niece Helen is at present planting flowers in the cemetery--in point of fact, roots."

Mr. Paulus was aroused. "They might do some b.u.t.tin'--think?"

"Gals! Shucks!" The stage-driver climbed back to his seat and drove away. Mr. Paulus looked after him, musingly.

"Willard Sickles," he said, "never would have nothin' to do with women.

He was born drivin' mails!"

"Pun?" asked Thaddeus, delicately, with his eyes on the Four Corners.

"Pun, Peter?"

"Hey?" Mr. Paulus was still thoughtful--abstracted. "Lonesome and disgusted. Born so. It's his nature."

The two at the Four Corners separated. Morgan went north, Gard towards the cemetery.