And he climbed again into his castle of the air.
Oliver Green stood staring at the crumpled paper and suddenly began to straighten it out.
“Mr. Blair,� he said, “I’m terribly ashamed of myself. When I see you living here like a hermit in the mountains and scrawling your calculations, so to speak, on the rocks of the wilderness, devoted to your great abstract idea, vowed to a great cause, it makes me feel very small to have entangled you and your friends in my small affairs. Of course, the affair isn’t at all small to me; but it must seem very small to you.�
“I don’t know very precisely,� answered Blair, “what was the nature of the affair. But that is emphatically your affair. For the rest, I assure you we’re delighted to have you, apart from your valuable services as a calculating machine.�
Bellew Blair, the last and, in the worldly sense, by far the ablest of the recruits of the Long Bow, was a man in early middle age, square built, but neat in figure and light on his feet, clad in a suit of leather. He mostly moved about so quickly that his figure made more impression than his face; but when he sat down smoking, in one of his rare moments of leisure, as now, it could be remarked that his face was rather calm than vivacious; a short square face with a short resolute nose, but reflective eyes much lighter than his close black hair.
“It’s quite Homeric,� he added, “the two armies fighting for the body of an astronomer. You would be a sort of a symbol anyhow, since they started that insanity of calling you insane. Nobody has any business to bother you about the personal side of the matter.�
Green seemed to be ruminating, and the last phrase awoke him to a decision. He began to talk. Quite straightforwardly, though with a certain schoolboy awkwardness, he proceeded to tell his friend the whole of his uncouth love story—the overturning of his spiritual world to the tune the old cow died of, or rather danced to.
“And I’ve let you in for hiding me like a murderer,� he concluded. “For the sake of something that must seem to you, not even like a cow jumping over the moon, but more like a calf falling over the milking-stool. Perhaps people vowed to a great work like this ought to leave all that sort of thing behind them.�
“Well, I don’t see anything to be ashamed of,� said Blair, “and in this case I don’t agree with what you say about leaving those things behind. Of some sorts of work it’s true; but not this. Shall I tell you a secret?�
“If you don’t mind.�