“I wonder, now,” the cat asked, innocently, “if that means anything?”
“Yes, Collyn,” Florian answered: “it means that I shall keep my own probity unstained, keep honor at least, whatever else goes by the board. One must be logical. My quiet unassuming practise of religion and my constant love which once derided time and change—and in fact, the entire code of ideals by which I have lived so comfortably for all of thirty-six years,—appear to have been founded everywhere upon delusion and half-knowledge. Yet Helmas, I find, was truly wise. I also shall keep up my dignity by not letting even fate and chance upset me with their playfulness, and I shall continue to do what was expected of me yesterday. For the code by which I have lived contents me, or, rather, I am subdued to it. So I must go on living by it while living lasts.”
“Yet if this romantic code of yours be based upon nothing—”
“If I have wholly invented it, without the weaving into its fabric of one strand of fact,—why, then, all the more reason for me to be proud of and to cherish what is peculiarly mine. Do my dreams fail me? That is no reason why I should fail my dreams, which indeed, Collyn, have erred solely in contriving a more satisfactory world than Heaven seems able to construct.”
“And does all this, too, mean something?”
“A pest! it seems to mean at least my destruction, since it is an article of my code that a gentleman may not in any circumstances break his word. For the rest, I find that abstract questions of right and wrong are too deep for me, too wholly based upon delusion and half-knowledge, so I shall meddle with them no more. Good and evil must settle their own vaporous battles, with which I am no longer concerned.”
“To fling down your cards in a rage profits nobody.”
“But do I indeed rage? Do I speak bitterly? Well, for thirty-six years I have taken sides, and for thirty-six years I have been the most zealous of churchmen, only to find at the last that not one of my irregularities has been charged off. I can assure you, Collyn, that it is quite vexing to have the business credit of one’s religion thus shaken by the news that so much piety has ended with more debts than assets.”
The small predatory beast still waited warily: and never for an instant did her unwinking tilted yellow eyes leave looking at Florian.
“So many of you I have served! your father, and your grandfather, and all the others that for a brief while were here. And in the end you all come to nothing.”