"The act,"I said,"would bring grace,wherever it comes from.""Yes,"he assented."If in the stars and awfulness of space there's nothing,that does not trouble me;for my greater self is inside me,safe.And our country has a greater self somewhere.Think!""I do not have to think,"I replied,"when I know the nobleness we have risen to at times.""And I,"he pursued,"happen to believe it is not all only stars and space;and that God,as much as any ship-builder,rejoices to watch every tiniest boat meet and brave the storm."Out of his troubles he had brought such mood,sweetness instead of bitterness;he was saying as plainly as if his actual words said it,"Misfortune has come to me,and I am going to make the best of it."His nobleness,his moral elegance,compelled him to this,and I envied him,not sure if I myself,thus placed,would acquit myself so well.And there was in his sweetness a contagion that strangely reconciled me to the troubled aspects of our national hour.I thought,"Invisible among our eighty millions there is a quiet legion living untainted in the depths,while the yellow rich,the prismatic scum and bubbles,boil on the surface."Yes,he had accidentally helped me,and I wished doubly that Imight help him.It was well enough he should feel he must not shirk his duty,but how much better if he could be led to see that marrying where he did not love was no duty of his.
I knew what I had to say to him,but lacked the beginning of it;and of this beginning I was in search as we drove up among the live-oaks of Udolpho to the little club-house,or hunting lodge,where a negro and his wife received us,and took the baskets and set about preparing supper.My beginning sat so heavily upon my attention that I took scant notice of Udolpho as we walked about its adjacent grounds in the twilight before supper,and John Mayrant pointed out to me its fine old trees,its placid stream,and bade me admire the snug character of the hunting lodge,buried away for bachelors'delights deep in the heart of the pleasant forest.I heard him indulging in memories and anecdotes of date sittings after long hunts;but I was myself always on a hunt for my beginning,and none of his words clearly reached my intelligence until I was aware of his reciting an excellently pertinent couplet:--"If you would hold your father's land,You must wash your throat before your hand--"and found myself standing by the lodge table,upon which he had set two glasses,containing,I soon ascertained,gin,vermouth,orange bitters,and a cherry at the bottom--all which he had very skillfully mingled himself in the happiest proportions.
"The poetry,"he remarked,"is hereditary in my family;"and setting down the empty glasses we also washed our hands.A moon half-grown looked in at the window from the filmy darkness,and John,catching sight of it,paused with the wet soap in his hand and stared out at the dimly visible trees."Oh,the times,the times!"he murmured to himself,gazing long;and then with a sort of start he returned to the present moment,and rinsed and dried his hands.Presently we were sitting at the table,pledging each other in well-cooled champagne;and it was not long after this that not only the negro who waited on us was plainly reveling in John's remarks,but also the cook,with her bandannaed ebony head poked round the corner of the kitchen door,was doing her utmost to lose no word of this entertainment.For John,taking up the young and the old,the quick and the dead,of masculine Kings Port,proceeded to narrate their private exploits,until by coffee-time he had unrolled for me the richest tapestry of gayeties that I remember,and I sat without breath,tearful and aching,while the two negroes had retired far into the kitchen to muffle their emotions.
"Tom,oh Tom!you Tom!"called John Mayrant;and after the man had come from the kitchen:"You may put the punch-bowl and things on the table,and clear away and go to bed.My Great-uncle Marston Chartain,"he con-tinued to me,"was of eccentric taste,and for the last twenty years of his life never had anybody to dinner but the undertaker."He paused at this point to mix the punch,and then resumed:"But for all that,he appears to have been a lively old gentleman to the end,and left us his version of a saying which is considered by some people an improvement on the original,'Cherchez la femme.'Uncle Marston had it,'Hunt the other woman.'Don't go too fast with that punch;it isn't as gentle as it seems."But John and his Uncle Marston had between them given me my beginning,and,as I sat sippmg my punch,I ceased to hear the anecdotes which followed.I sat sipping and smoking,and was presently aware of the deepening silence of the night,and of John no longer at the table,but by the window,looking out into the forest,and muttering once more,"Oh,the times,the times!""It's always a triangle,"I began.
He turned round from his window."Triangle?"He looked at my glass of punch,and then at me."Go easy with the Bombo,"he repeated.
"Bombo?"I echoed."You call this Bombo?You don't know how remarkable that is,but that's because you don't know Aunt Carola,who is very remarkable,too.Well,never mind her now.Point is,it's always a triangle.""I haven't a doubt of it,"he replied.
"There you're right.And so was your uncle.He knew.Triangle."Here I found myself nodding portentously at John,and beating the table with my finger very solemnly.
He stood by his window seeming to wait for me.And now everything in the universe grew perfectly clear to me;I rose on mastering tides of thought,and all problems lay disposed of at my feet,while delicious strength and calm floated in my brain and being.Nothing was difficult for me.But I was getting away from the triangle,and there was John waiting at the window,and I mustn't say too much,mustn't say too much.
My will reached out and caught the triangle and brought it close,and Isaw it all perfectly clear again.
