I cannot think that the sum of these depressions alone
would have been enough to overshadow so buoyant a soul
as Lorne Murchison's. The characteristics of him I have
tried to convey were grafted on an excellent fund of
common sense. He was well aware of the proportions of
things; he had no despair of the Idea, nor would he
despair should the Idea etherealize and fly away. Neither
had he, for his personal honour, any morbid desires toward
White Clam Shell or Finnigan's cat. His luck had been a
good deal better than it might have been; he recognized
that as fully as any sensible young man could, and as
for the Great Chance, and the queer grip it had on him,
he would have argued that too if anyone had approached
him curiously about it. There I think we might doubt his
conclusions. There is nothing subtler, more elusive to
trace than the intercurrents of the emotions. Politics
and love are thought of at opposite poles, and Wallingham
perhaps would have laughed to know that he owed an exalted
allegiance in part to a half-broken heart. Yet the impulse
that is beyond our calculation, the thing we know potential
in the blood but not to be summoned or conditioned, lies
always in the shadow of the ideal; and who can analyse
that, and say, "Of this class is the will to believe in
the integrity of the beloved and false; of that is the
desire to lift a nation to the level of its mountain-
ranges"? Both dispositions have a tendency to overwork
the heart; and it is easy to imagine that they might
interact.
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