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Page 100
His mind was being washed in that wondrous sunlight.
He was himself an upstart. No doubt about it. But what of it? Here were
columns and arches to commemorate the most egregious of all upstarts.
Upstarts were men who believed in themselves.
He retraced his steps from the arch.
Curious thing that scoundrel Watkins had kept saying on the boat. "As a
man thinketh in his own heart, so is he." Must mean something. What?
Far down that wide avenue he came to a bridge of striking magnificence,
beset with golden sculpture. He supposed it to be one more tribute to
the sublime Corsican who had thought in his heart, and _was_.
He had the meaning of those words now.
He, Bunker Bean, had believed himself to be mean, insignificant. And so
he had been that. Then he had come to believe himself a king, and
straightway had he been kingly. The Corsican, detecting the falsity of
some Ram-tah, would have gone on believing in himself none the less. It
was all that mattered. "As a man thinketh--" If you came down to that,
nobody needed a Ram-tah at all.
From the centre of the bridge he raised his eyes and there, far off,
high above all those gray buildings, was the golden cross that he knew
to surmount the tomb. Sharply it glittered against the blue of the sky.
"Be upstart enough," it seemed to say, "and all things are yours.
Believe yourself kingly, though your Ram-tah come from Hartford."
He walked vigorously toward that cross. It often eluded him as he
puzzled a way through the winding gray-walled streets. More than once he
was forced to turn back, to make laborious circuits. But never for long
was the cross out of sight.
Constantly as he walked that new truth ran in his mind, molten,
luminous. Who knew of Ram-tah's fictive origin, or even of Ram-tah at
all? No one but a witty scoundrel calling himself Balthasar.
Bean had become some one through a belief in himself. Ram-tah had been a
crude bit of scaffolding, and was well out of the way. The confidence he
had helped to build would now endure without his help. Be an upstart. A
convinced upstart. Such the world accepts.
Then he issued from the maze of narrow streets and confronted the tomb.
Through the open door, even at this early hour, people went and came.
The Corsican's magnetism prevailed. And he, Bunker Bean, the lowly, had
that same power to magnetize, to charm, to affront the world and yet
evoke monuments--if he could only believe it.
He went quickly through the iron gateway, up the long walk and took the
imposing stairway in leaps. Then, standing uncovered in that wonderfully
lit room, he gazed down at the upstart's mighty urn.
Long he stood under that spell of line and colour and magnitude, lost in
the spaciousness of it. No Balthasar had cheated here. There lay the
mighty and little man who had never lost belief in himself--who had been
only a little chastened by an adversity due to the craven world's fear
of his prowess.
He was quite unconscious of others beside him who paid tribute there. He
thought of those last sad days on that lonely island, the spirit still
unbroken. His emotion surged to his eyes, threatening to overwhelm him.
He gulped twice and angrily brushed away some surprising tears.
By his side stood a white-faced young Frenchman with a flowing brown
beard. He became infected with Bean's emotion. He made no pretence of
brushing his tears aside. He frankly wept.
Beyond this man a stout motherly woman, with two children in hand, was
flooded by the current. She sobbed comfortably and companionably. The
two children widened their eyes at her a moment, then fell to weeping
noisily.
Farther around the railing a distinguished looking old gentleman of
soldierly bearing, who wore a tiny red ribbon in the lapel of his frock
coat, loudly blew his nose and pressed a kerchief of delicate weave to
his brimming eyes.
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