“You can laugh,” said Corin severely, “but it is very certain that you can bring no arguments to refute mine.”
“My dear man,” responded John, “I could bring twenty million, but it’s like pouring water into a sieve to propound them to you. I believe I have heard a tale of a monk being once sent by a saint to fetch water in a sieve; and when, at the end of several journeys, he ventured to remonstrate at the futility of the journey, it was pointed out to him that at all events the sieve had been cleansed by the process. I don’t know whether my arguments would have a like effect on your mind, but I confess I am too lazy to try.”
“Your simile savours of an insult,” retorted Corin. “But I’ll leave you to your own mode of thought. I know it to be hide-bound, iron-cast. Now, in this man I see plastic material; he needs but careful moulding. I shall pursue my acquaintance with him with interest.”
John laughed a third time. But behind the laughter in his eyes was still that little indefinable note of trouble.
CHAPTER XVII
A RARE ABSURDITY
Now, to your calm, collected, and reasonable individual, John’s little trouble may appear nothing but rank absurdity. It probably will appear nothing but rank absurdity, seeing that it had existence merely in the fact that he had felt a certain attraction towards the man, whom fate had that evening thrown in his path.
And why on earth shouldn’t he feel attraction!—so your reasonable individual may exclaim.
But John was not reasonable. He was one of your ultra-sensitive characters, to whom the merest dust speck may prove, at moments, a source of perpetual annoyance. He desired to feel nothing but a whole-hearted detestation of this interloper.
I am not defending John’s desires,—they certainly cannot be termed precisely Christian,—I merely state them as existing. Their fulfilment would have left him entirely free to draw a line between himself and the one who had arisen to harass the inhabitants of Delancey Castle. He would have felt utterly and entirely established beside them. He was established beside them, yet this tiny attraction sent forth an irritating little lay across the barrier. He felt it, in a measure, disloyal. He disliked it; and yet, for the life of him, he could not prevent its existence.
I am well aware of the absurdity of his annoyance; but it merely characterizes John. It shows him to be what he was,—ultra-quixotic in his friendships, sensitive to a degree of fastidiousness where he fancied his loyalty to be in the smallest measure at fault.