Max only stared palely at Mr. Cato. The irony was too great for laughter. He saw a man putting to sea on a plank, unconscious of the deep voice of the gathering tornado; a child going out with a wooden gun to make sport of an angry crowd of sans-culottes.
‘Can I get a copy of the corrected map anywhere?’ asked the Child.
‘Gif him de map, Max,’ said the Baron, with a short, indulgent laugh. ‘My secret achents haf brepared it, Mr. Cato. Gif him de figures, all de papers. Let him haf efferyting. Goot-bye, Mr. Cato. See him to de carriage, Max.’
‘I’ll walk, thank you.’
‘Better drive. Goot-bye.’
‘Good-bye.’
‘You will haf deeficulties, Mr. Cato.’
Mr. Cato went home by omnibus. His heart sank as he looked at the map, divorced from the purple finger.
There is lightheartedness in great conflict: we see the larger outline; our forces are fed by the consciousness of it. A field of gold, still in possession; a thing still to sell, if need be: it was an impregnable position. But courage is needed after the battle; we see partially, at short range. To have rejected a magnificent offer, to have so little in its place—some papers, an idea, a consciousness that needed an atlas to explain it. To have rejected the proposals of confident authority creates a helpless mid-air terror; that is the power of religions. Mr. Cato felt like a heretic of the Middle Ages, wondering, on the way to the stake, if after all the Pope were not right.
He went straight to his bedroom; walked up and down in his slippers, lay awake for hours in long moods of elation and depression, and fell asleep at last very cold.