"Singular anchorite!" Mavering murmured. "Why?"
"You'll tell it better."
"Without doubt. But a reason for waiting occurs to me."
"Don't you want to smoke?" asked Rachel, suddenly.
"It is not what I referred to, but it proves your knowledge that my motives are physical and uninspired."
In Gard's narrative there was no mention of Map, and the discovery of the first disguise was given to another source. It was told simply, rather indifferently. When it was finished Mavering remarked:
"The anchorite's style has the classical merits of austerity."
It was part of Mavering's travelling-kit and baggage of the nomad, this gift of his, to be among tellers of stories, rare and excellent. For soldiers around camp-fires, old women in doorways, gentlemen at clubs and dinner-tables, newsboys in the city, school-children in the country with tin lunch-pails, farmer, tramp, hod-carrier, doctor, clergyman, black-leg, maiden in silk or gingham—it was all one; they forgot themselves and country and kin and present purpose till he was through. The "Ancient Mariner's" spell was not peculiar to that mariner. It is more ancient than he, older than books, older than written language, older than any city in pyramid or institution, practised among hunters of wild beasts on the site of Damascus, and among those who first scratched the fat soil of the Mesopotamian valley, the spell of the teller. His method is anything convenient, a ballad chanted to a harp, or a printed book. He speaks his mind and says what seems good to him as he goes, for the basis of it is the story, and the force is the force of the man. Mavering practised the primitive and personal method, and was heaven-born to it.
His narrative ran from the beginning of the summer, when he had come south as a correspondent and joined the army in the Peninsula, went on with easy gait and leaping of spaces, gave glimpses and incidents by the way, dropped out a month, fell upon the middle of September, and drew to a close.