"I thought you might know, and if you did you'd be sure to tell me."
"So!" Moselle's face, when it dropped vivacity and took on gravity, fell into rugged, powerful lines. "Got no money?"
"No."
"Nor clothes of a human too much, nor plans, nor friends but old Fritz, nor knowledge of perversity? Good! All good! You will stay mit old Fritz some veek or more, und I vill get you a church-organ to play somevere. Good! Hein? Shplendid! Shack!"—gesticulating over Gard—"look you at his head, his eyelid, his shape of der hair-line. Vat? It is super-sensuous Florentine, und de back of his head is Yankee, und so hard you not break him mit an axe. I say in all human variety is law, und device, und chain of causes, und you are mitout science to know not music itself haf more severe und mathematic system. Dat boy is at de end of his shtring of causes—at de end of his shtring. Ha!"
"End of his rope is the idiom," said Mavering, in solemn bass. "It means he's down on his uppers. You'd better attend to me and learn pure English. Your English is composite, mistaken, and slangy, and you are, in body and mind, an epitome of gross fatness, whom no science of human variety could classify."
The depth and solemnity of his voice, the funereal gravity of his long face, seemed burlesquely classical. His speech was flowing, and composed of structural sentences. Moselle waved his pipe joyously.
"Continuez, Shack! Heet her up! Advance! Boy, I gif you a lil' pipe and a lil' beer, but not much, um so you be not sick. My friend Shack is eloquent und foolish. Und ve tree vill talk now till to-morrow is gray."
The talk ran on. Already Gard seemed to himself not merely an hour, but days, weeks—a period which the clock could not understand or measure—away from the brotherhood. The country of ideas into which he had come was a loose republic, where no man knew the limits of his personality or his daring. He might loosen his belt and shout, if he chose. Here conversation was erratic and glancing, not necessarily an exchange of what one really thought; and yet, however obliquely from his meaning one spoke, there seemed to be less misunderstanding than among the brothers, with whom the guiding of the tongue to simple truth was a matter of searching conscience. And again, at times, both Moselle and Mavering would say things that seemed to Gard to meet the fact or question before them with a sharper recognition, a more instant candor. He admired and laughed in pure joy of the brave, new world that had such creatures in it, with unstraightened ideas that were free to dance in the sunbeam or dig in the mine, and forget whether they had or had not any connection with the soul's salvation. It was a kind of renaissance for him, a discovery of humanism and the pagan pleasure of mere living with vivacity of body and mind. Here on the threshold of his new life were two to greet him who were witty, kind, ironical, experienced, and seemed to be without care or fear. If, as Moselle had implied, there were something hard and critical in the back of his head, some reserve of judgment, something not plastic and receptive, but resistent and decisive, it did not trouble him now with criticisms or decisions, but let him bask and admire.
"Dey want an organist in Hamilton. It is Saint Mary's, a church Protestant Episcopal, called High Church, videlicet, protesting mit apologies, und cultured to beat de band, vich is an idiom obscure, my friend Shack. Vat band?"