“No, no—I know it,” said the youth; “but her name is so beautiful.”
“Everything about her is beautiful,” said Senhouse, “therefore see that you go to her cleansed and sweetened. Now, when you have found her you shall beg her pardon on your knees—”
“Never!” said Glyde, grittily in his teeth.
“On your heart's knees, you fool,” cried Senhouse, with a roar which rolled about the hills. “On the knees of your rat's heart. You shall beg her pardon on your knees for your beastly interference, presumption, mulishness, and graceless manhood; and then you shall leave her immediately, and thank God for the breath of her forgiveness. This also is important. You are not to name me who have sent you.” His eyes shone with the gleam of tears. “Never name me to her, young Glyde, for I'll tell you now that for every stripe I've dusted your jacket with you owe me forty—and you can lay on when you please.”
“For I,” he continued, after a pause for breath, while Glyde stared fearfully upon him, “for I, too, have betrayed her.”
They said no more at that time, but all day Glyde followed Senhouse about like a dog.
In the evening of what to the undrilled youth was a hard-spent day, Senhouse unfolded his heart and talked long and eloquently of love and other mysteries of our immortal life.
“The attainment of our desires,” he said, “appears to every one of us to be a Law of Nature, and so, no doubt, it is. But that is equally valid which says, 'To every man that which he is fit to enjoy.' The task of men is to reconcile the two. That once done you are whole—nay, you are holy.”
“I believe that I am in the way of that salvation, look you, for I know now that there is hardly a thing upon the earth which I cannot do without. That being so, and all things of equal value, or of no value, I have them all. They are at the disposal of that part of myself which enters no markets and cannot be chaffered away. Wind, rain, and sun have bleached me; dinners of herbs have reduced my flesh to obedience; incessant toil, with meditation under the stars, have driven my thoughts along channels graved deep by patient plodding of the field. I am become one with Nature. I have watched the wheeling of the seasons until, to escape vertigo, I picture myself as a fixed point, and see the spheres in their courses revolve about me.”
Mystic sayings, aphorisms oozed from him like resin from a pine.