"Wherever I went that day over the hills, behind the guns I saw that cornfield, or else where the cornfield was underneath and not to be seen itself on account of lying in the middle of explosion, with wickedness and confusion on one side, and sin and the reward thereof on the other, all blackguarding each other across it, so that it was covered with their blasphemous breath; till I had a superstition about that cornfield, and said, 'If corn could be gathered therefrom, and corn whiskey made thereof, it would be a chemical anarchy of the choicest, a combative distillation unexcelled, a superior brand of whiskey.' It was dusk when I came to the cornfield at last, and the battle had gone to sleep in its cradle. The stretcher-men were in the corn, and they told me to ride around the edge where the mess wasn't so thick. Their idea seemed to be good. So that I never went into that cornfield, though it was probably different from all the other cornfields, but came around into a road beyond it. There were men burning rails for camp-fires, and the woods were black, and the anchorite was strolling along, looking up at the young moon, same way he always did."
Mavering paused a moment and puffed his cigar, took it out and looked at it, and deepened his deep voice. "I search in vain among the sere and yellow leaves of memory, whether it was ever in me to suck the end of a moonbeam in place of a cigar."
He appealed to Rachel, who answered cheerfully and surprised him again:
"Oh yes, it was, and so it must be still."
"He's a hollow fraud, you know," Gard said. "He sucks moonbeams through his cigar, and puffs them out of his mouth." And Helen gasped.
"It's tremendous!"
But it seemed to her, putting together the two narratives, that she might make a parable. For in Mavering's story she seemed to see colored lights flashed skilfully on a stage with curious effect, a search-light swinging its glare so that one scene after another leaped out of the dark and vanished again, a pleasure taken in the mere shift and play, the change and tumult. The narrator walked in the midst, approving of the noise, patronizing heroism and sudden death, admiring the scenic effect of the fire that splashed and scattered around him. It was all color and sound, and no real interpretation beneath. It meant nothing in the end. In Gard's story, though the tumult was great and the dangers greater, the scenes painted clearly though more coldly, and with fewer details; yet he seemed not to care about them so, but to be looking wistfully beyond for an interpretation and not able to find it—not sure that there was one; fancying there must be, somewhere, something to make it worth while.
She sat in her old place at Mrs. Mavering's feet and turned the matter over, and thought it strange.
It surprised Gard, in watching her, that he remembered so much, so many little shining points of detail about her—as she had looked in the house, under the apse of Saint Mary's, sitting so, in a white dress, a blue ribbon at her throat, and the firelight shining on her yellow hair. And Mrs. Mavering used to wear dark-red dresses always, and suggest tragedy without being aware of it. They both wore black now, and starched, white aprons. Mrs. Mavering, in some inward way, seemed more cheerful, more like one gifted with health and humorous philosophy. She was astonishingly beautiful. Helen had grown white and thin. How delicate and slim the hands looked that were clasped around her knee! She used to have a sinewy grip for a girl. Everything about her declared personality. It always had, and still did. Only, something or other seemed pathetic now. Morgan Map was said to be engaged to her, and would probably boil down badly. There was pathos there. That vast primeval brute had run his neck into a noose, by-the-way, only it would not do to string him up if she cared for him, though it might be a blessing to her in the long run. Mrs. Mavering might have an opinion on that. What Map's grudge may have been did not seem to Gard of any great interest. He had had trouble with him once about some commissary. Morgan had looked murder, and uttered white-hot language, and Gard had "corralled" the commissary. The man must have a grisly disposition if that were his "grudge."
Thinking of Map, then, his big, harsh-boned face, mighty hands, massiveness, and "grisly disposition," he glanced at Helen again, winced, and started.