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_ 'The authorities were evidently of the same opinion. The inquiry
was not adjourned. It was held on the appointed day to satisfy the
law, and it was well attended because of its human interest, no
doubt. There was no incertitude as to facts--as to the one material
fact, I mean. How the Patna came by her hurt it was impossible to
find out; the court did not expect to find out; and in the whole
audience there was not a man who cared. Yet, as I've told you, all
the sailors in the port attended, and the waterside business was fully
represented. Whether they knew it or not, the interest that drew
them here was purely psychological--the expectation of some
essential disclosure as to the strength, the power, the horror, of
human emotions. Naturally nothing of the kind could be disclosed.
The examination of the only man able and willing to face it was
beating futilely round the well-known fact, and the play of questions
upon it was as instructive as the tapping with a hammer on an iron
box, were the object to find out what's inside. However, an official
inquiry could not be any other thing. Its object was not the fundamental
why, but the superficial how, of this affair.
'The young chap could have told them, and, though that very
thing was the thing that interested the audience, the questions put
to him necessarily led him away from what to me, for instance,
would have been the only truth worth knowing. You can't expect
the constituted authorities to inquire into the state of a man's soul--
or is it only of his liver? Their business was to come down upon
the consequences, and frankly, a casual police magistrate and two
nautical assessors are not much good for anything else. I don't mean
to imply these fellows were stupid. The magistrate was very patient.
One of the assessors was a sailing-ship skipper with a reddish beard,
and of a pious disposition. Brierly was the other. Big Brierly. Some
of you must have heard of Big Brierly--the captain of the crack
ship of the Blue Star line. That's the man.
'He seemed consumedly bored by the honour thrust upon him.
He had never in his life made a mistake, never had an accident,
never a mishap, never a check in his steady rise, and he seemed to
be one of those lucky fellows who know nothing of indecision, much
less of self-mistrust. At thirty-two he had one of the best commands
going in the Eastern trade--and, what's more, he thought a lot of
what he had. There was nothing like it in the world, and I suppose
if you had asked him point-blank he would have confessed that in
his opinion there was not such another commander. The choice
had fallen upon the right man. The rest of mankind that did not
command the sixteen-knot steel steamer Ossa were rather poor creatures.
He had saved lives at sea, had rescued ships in distress, had
a gold chronometer presented to him by the underwriters, and a
pair of binoculars with a suitable inscription from some foreign
Government, in commemoration of these services. He was acutely
aware of his merits and of his rewards. I liked him well enough,
though some I know--meek, friendly men at that--couldn't stand
him at any price. I haven't the slightest doubt he considered himself
vastly my superior--indeed, had you been Emperor of East and
West, you could not have ignored your inferiority in his presence--
but I couldn't get up any real sentiment of offence. He did not
despise me for anything I could help, for anything I was--don't
you know? I was a negligible quantity simply because I was not _the_
fortunate man of the earth, not Montague Brierly in command of
the Ossa, not the owner of an inscribed gold chronometer and of
silver-mounted binoculars testifying to the excellence of my seamanship
and to my indomitable pluck; not possessed of an acute sense of
my merits and of my rewards, besides the love and worship of a
black retriever, the most wonderful of its kind--for never was
such a man loved thus by such a dog. No doubt, to have all this
forced upon you was exasperating enough; but when I reflected that
I was associated in these fatal disadvantages with twelve hundred
millions of other more or less human beings, I found I could bear
my share of his good-natured and contemptuous pity for the sake
of something indefinite and attractive in the man. I have never
defined to myself this attraction, but there were moments when I
envied him. The sting of life could do no more to his complacent
soul than the scratch of a pin to the smooth face of a rock. This was
enviable. As I looked at him, flanking on one side the unassuming
pale-faced magistrate who presided at the inquiry, his self-satisfaction
presented to me and to the world a surface as hard as granite.
He committed suicide very soon after.
'No wonder Jim's case bored him, and while I thought with
something akin to fear of the immensity of his contempt for the
young man under examination, he was probably holding silent
inquiry into his own case. The verdict must have been of unmitigated
guilt, and he took the secret of the evidence with him in that
leap into the sea. If I understand anything of men, the matter was
no doubt of the gravest import, one of those trifles that awaken
ideas--start into life some thought with which a man unused to
such a companionship finds it impossible to live. I am in a position
to know that it wasn't money, and it wasn't drink, and it wasn't
woman. He jumped overboard at sea barely a week after the end of
the inquiry, and less than three days after leaving port on his outward
passage; as though on that exact spot in the midst of waters he
had suddenly perceived the gates of the other world flung open
wide for his reception.
'Yet it was not a sudden impulse. His grey-headed mate, a first-rate
sailor and a nice old chap with strangers, but in his relations
with his commander the surliest chief officer I've ever seen, would
tell the story with tears in his eyes. It appears that when he came
on deck in the morning Brierly had been writing in the chart-room.
"It was ten minutes to four," he said, "and the middle watch was
not relieved yet of course. He heard my voice on the bridge speaking
to the second mate, and called me in. I was loth to go, and that's
the truth, Captain Marlow--I couldn't stand poor Captain Brierly,
I tell you with shame; we never know what a man is made of. He
had been promoted over too many heads, not counting my own,
and he had a damnable trick of making you feel small, nothing but
by the way he said 'Good morning.' I never addressed him, sir, but
on matters of duty, and then it was as much as I could do to keep
a civil tongue in my head." (He flattered himself there. I often
wondered how Brierly could put up with his manners for more than
half a voyage.) "I've a wife and children," he went on, "and I
had been ten years in the Company, always expecting the next
command--more fool I. Says he, just like this: 'Come in here, Mr.
Jones,' in that swagger voice of his--'Come in here, Mr. Jones.' In
I went. 'We'll lay down her position,' says he, stooping over the
chart, a pair of dividers in hand. By the standing orders, the officer
going off duty would have done that at the end of his watch. However,
I said nothing, and looked on while he marked off the ship's
position with a tiny cross and wrote the date and the time. I can see
him this moment writing his neat figures: seventeen, eight, four
A.M. The year would be written in red ink at the top of the chart. He
never used his charts more than a year, Captain Brierly didn't. I've
the chart now. When he had done he stands looking down at the
mark he had made and smiling to himself, then looks up at me.
'Thirty-two miles more as she goes,' says he, 'and then we shall be
clear, and you may alter the course twenty degrees to the southward.'
' "We were passing to the north of the Hector Bank that voyage.
I said, 'All right, sir,' wondering what he was fussing about, since
I had to call him before altering the course anyhow. lust then eight
bells were struck: we came out on the bridge, and the second mate
before going off mentions in the usual way--'Seventy-one on the
log.' Captain Brierly looks at the compass and then all round. It
was dark and clear, and all the stars were out as plain as on a frosty
night in high latitudes. Suddenly he says with a sort of a little sigh:
'I am going aft, and shall set the log at zero for you myself, so that
there can be no mistake. Thirty-two miles more on this course and
then you are safe. Let's see--the correction on the log is six per
cent. additive; say, then, thirty by the dial to run, and you may
come twenty degrees to starboard at once. No use losing any distance--is
there?' I had never heard him talk so much at a stretch, and to
no purpose as it seemed to me. I said nothing. He went down the
ladder, and the dog, that was always at his heels whenever he
moved, night or day, followed, sliding nose first, after him. I heard
his boot-heels tap, tap on the after-deck, then he stopped and spoke
to the dog--'Go back, Rover. On the bridge, boy! Go on--get.'
Then he calls out to me from the dark, 'Shut that dog up in the
chart-room, Mr. Jones--will you?'
' "This was the last time I heard his voice, Captain Marlow.
These are the last words he spoke in the hearing of any living human
being, sir." At this point the old chap's voice got quite unsteady.
"He was afraid the poor brute would jump after him, don't you
see?" he pursued with a quaver. "Yes, Captain Marlow. He set the
log for me; he--would you believe it?--he put a drop of oil in it
too. There was the oil-feeder where he left it near by. The boat--
swain's mate got the hose along aft to wash down at half-past five;
by-and-by he knocks off and runs up on the bridge--'Will you
please come aft, Mr. Jones,' he says. 'There's a funny thing. I don't
like to touch it.' It was Captain Brierly's gold chronometer watch
carefully hung under the rail by its chain.
' "As soon as my eyes fell on it something struck me, and I knew,
sir. My legs got soft under me. It was as if I had seen him go over;
and I could tell how far behind he was left too. The taffrail-log
marked eighteen miles and three-quarters, and four iron belaying-pins
were missing round the mainmast. Put them in his pockets to help
him down, I suppose; but, Lord! what's four iron pins to a powerful
man like Captain Brierly. Maybe his confidence in himself was
just shook a bit at the last. That's the only sign of fluster he
gave in his whole life, I should think; but I am ready to answer for
him, that once over he did not try to swim a stroke, the same as he
would have had pluck enough to keep up all day long on the bare
chance had he fallen overboard accidentally. Yes, sir. He was
second to none--if he said so himself, as I heard him once. He had
written two letters in the middle watch, one to the Company and
the other to me. He gave me a lot of instructions as to the passage--
I had been in the trade before he was out of his time--and no end
of hints as to my conduct with our people in Shanghai, so that I
should keep the command of the Ossa. He wrote like a father would
to a favourite son, Captain Marlow, and I was five-and-twenty years
his senior and had tasted salt water before he was fairly breeched.
In his letter to the owners--it was left open for me to see--he said
that he had always done his duty by them--up to that moment--
and even now he was not betraying their confidence, since he was
leaving the ship to as competent a seaman as could be found--
meaning me, sir, meaning me! He told them that if the last act of
his life didn't take away all his credit with them, they would give
weight to my faithful service and to his warm recommendation,
when about to fill the vacancy made by his death. And much more
like this, sir. I couldn't believe my eyes. It made me feel queer all
over," went on the old chap, in great perturbation, and squashing
something in the corner of his eye with the end of a thumb as broad
as a spatula. "You would think, sir, he had jumped overboard only
to give an unlucky man a last show to get on. What with the shock
of him going in this awful rash way, and thinking myself a made
man by that chance, I was nearly off my chump for a week. But no
fear. The captain of the Pelion was shifted into the Ossa--came
aboard in Shanghai--a little popinjay, sir, in a grey check suit, with
his hair parted in the middle. 'Aw--I am--aw--your new captain,
Mister--Mister--aw--Jones.' He was drowned in scent--fairly
stunk with it, Captain Marlow. I dare say it was the look I gave him
that made him stammer. He mumbled something about my natural
disappointment--I had better know at once that his chief officer
got the promotion to the Pelion--he had nothing to do with it, of
course--supposed the office knew best--sorry. . . . Says I, 'Don't
you mind old Jones, sir; dam' his soul, he's used to it.' I could see
directly I had shocked his delicate ear, and while we sat at our first
tiffin together he began to find fault in a nasty manner with this and
that in the ship. I never heard such a voice out of a Punch and Judy
show. I set my teeth hard, and glued my eyes to my plate, and held
my peace as long as I could; but at last I had to say something.
Up he jumps tiptoeing, ruffling all his pretty plumes, like a little
fighting-cock. 'You'll find you have a different person to deal with
than the late Captain Brierly.' 'I've found it,' says I, very glum, but
pretending to be mighty busy with my steak. 'You are an old ruffian,
Mister--aw--Jones; and what's more, you are known for an old
ruffian in the employ,' he squeaks at me. The damned bottle-washers
stood about listening with their mouths stretched from ear to
ear. 'I may be a hard case,' answers I, 'but I ain't so far gone as
to put up with the sight of you sitting in Captain Brierly's chair.'
With that I lay down my knife and fork. 'You would like to sit in it
yourself--that's where the shoe pinches,' he sneers. I left the
saloon, got my rags together, and was on the quay with all my dunnage
about my feet before the stevedores had turned to again. Yes.
Adrift--on shore--after ten years' service--and with a poor woman
and four children six thousand miles off depending on my half-pay
for every mouthful they ate. Yes, sir! I chucked it rather than hear
Captain Brierly abused. He left me his night-glasses--here they are;
and he wished me to take care of the dog--here he is. Hallo, Rover,
poor boy. Where's the captain, Rover?" The dog looked up at us
with mournful yellow eyes, gave one desolate bark, and crept under
the table.
'All this was taking place, more than two years afterwards, on
board that nautical ruin the Fire-Queen this Jones had got charge
of--quite by a funny accident, too--from Matherson--mad Matherson
they generally called him--the same who used to hang out in
Hai-phong, you know, before the occupation days. The old chap
snuffled on--
' "Ay, sir, Captain Brierly will be remembered here, if there's no
other place on earth. I wrote fully to his father and did not get a
word in reply--neither Thank you, nor Go to the devil!--nothing!
Perhaps they did not want to know."
'The sight of that watery-eyed old Jones mopping his bald head
with a red cotton handkerchief, the sorrowing yelp of the dog, the
squalor of that fly-blown cuddy which was the only shrine of his
memory, threw a veil of inexpressibly mean pathos over Brierly's
remembered figure, the posthumous revenge of fate for that belief
in his own splendour which had almost cheated his life of its legitimate
terrors. Almost! Perhaps wholly. Who can tell what flattering
view he had induced himself to take of his own suicide?
' "Why did he commit the rash act, Captain Marlow--can you
think?" asked Jones, pressing his palms together. "Why? It beats
me! Why?" He slapped his low and wrinkled forehead. "If he had
been poor and old and in debt--and never a show--or else mad.
But he wasn't of the kind that goes mad, not he. You trust me.
What a mate don't know about his skipper isn't worth knowing.
Young, healthy, well off, no cares. . . . I sit here sometimes thinking,
thinking, till my head fairly begins to buzz. There was some reason."
' "You may depend on it, Captain Jones," said I, "it wasn't
anything that would have disturbed much either of us two," I said;
and then, as if a light had been flashed into the muddle of his brain,
poor old Jones found a last word of amazing profundity. He blew
his nose, nodding at me dolefully: "Ay, ay! neither you nor I, sir,
had ever thought so much of ourselves."
'Of course the recollection of my last conversation with Brierly
is tinged with the knowledge of his end that followed so close upon
it. I spoke with him for the last time during the progress of the
inquiry. It was after the first adjournment, and he came up with me
in the street. He was in a state of irritation, which I noticed with
surprise, his usual behaviour when he condescended to converse
being perfectly cool, with a trace of amused tolerance, as if the
existence of his interlocutor had been a rather good joke. "They
caught me for that inquiry, you see," he began, and for a while
enlarged complainingly upon the inconveniences of daily attendance
in court. "And goodness knows how long it will last. Three days,
I suppose." I heard him out in silence; in my then opinion it
was a way as good as another of putting on side. "What's the use
of it? It is the stupidest set-out you can imagine," he pursued hotly.
I remarked that there was no option. He interrupted me with a sort
of pent-up violence. "I feel like a fool all the time." I looked up at
him. This was going very far--for Brierly--when talking of Brierly.
He stopped short, and seizing the lapel of my coat, gave it a slight
tug. "Why are we tormenting that young chap?" he asked. This
question chimed in so well to the tolling of a certain thought of
mine that, with the image of the absconding renegade in my eye, I
answered at once, "Hanged if I know, unless it be that he lets you."
I was astonished to see him fall into line, so to speak, with that
utterance, which ought to have been tolerably cryptic. He said
angrily, "Why, yes. Can't he see that wretched skipper of his has
cleared out? What does he expect to happen? Nothing can save him.
He's done for." We walked on in silence a few steps. "Why eat all
that dirt?" he exclaimed, with an oriental energy of expression--
about the only sort of energy you can find a trace of east of the fiftieth
meridian. I wondered greatly at the direction of his thoughts, but
now I strongly suspect it was strictly in character: at bottom poor
Brierly must have been thinking of himself. I pointed out to him
that the skipper of the Patna was known to have feathered his
nest pretty well, and could procure almost anywhere the means
of getting away. With Jim it was otherwise: the Government was
keeping him in the Sailors' Home for the time being, and probably
he hadn't a penny in his pocket to bless himself with. It costs some
money to run away. "Does it? Not always," he said, with a bitter
laugh, and to some further remark of mine--"Well, then, let him
creep twenty feet underground and stay there! By heavens! _I_
would." I don't know why his tone provoked me, and I said, "There
is a kind of courage in facing it out as he does, knowing very well
that if he went away nobody would trouble to run after hmm."
"Courage be hanged!" growled Brierly. "That sort of courage is of
no use to keep a man straight, and I don't care a snap for such
courage. If you were to say it was a kind of cowardice now--of
softness. I tell you what, I will put up two hundred rupees if you
put up another hundred and undertake to make the beggar clear
out early to-morrow morning. The fellow's a gentleman if he ain't
fit to be touched--he will understand. He must! This infernal
publicity is too shocking: there he sits while all these confounded
natives, serangs, lascars, quartermasters, are giving evidence that's
enough to burn a man to ashes with shame. This is abominable.
Why, Marlow, don't you think, don't you feel, that this is abominable;
don't you now--come--as a seaman? If he went away all this would
stop at once." Brierly said these words with a most unusual
animation, and made as if to reach after his pocket-book. I
restrained him, and declared coldly that the cowardice of these four
men did not seem to me a matter of such great importance. "And
you call yourself a seaman, I suppose," he pronounced angrily. I
said that's what I called myself, and I hoped I was too. He heard
me out, and made a gesture with his big arm that seemed to deprive
me of my individuality, to push me away into the crowd. "The
worst of it," he said, "is that all you fellows have no sense of dignity;
you don't think enough of what you are supposed to be."
'We had been walking slowly meantime, and now stopped
opposite the harbour office, in sight of the very spot from which
the immense captain of the Patna had vanished as utterly as a tiny
feather blown away in a hurricane. I smiled. Brierly went on: "This
is a disgrace. We've got all kinds amongst us--some anointed scoundrels
in the lot; but, hang it, we must preserve professional decency
or we become no better than so many tinkers going about loose. We
are trusted. Do you understand?--trusted! Frankly, I don't care a
snap for all the pilgrims that ever came out of Asia, but a decent
man would not have behaved like this to a full cargo of old rags in
bales. We aren't an organised body of men, and the only thing that
holds us together is just the name for that kind of decency. Such an
affair destroys one's confidence. A man may go pretty near through
his whole sea-life without any call to show a stiff upper lip. But
when the call comes . . . Aha! . . . If I . . ."
'He broke off, and in a changed tone, "I'll give you two hundred
rupees now, Marlow, and you just talk to that chap. Confound him!
I wish he had never come out here. Fact is, I rather think some of
my people know his. The old man's a parson, and I remember now
I met him once when staying with my cousin in Essex last year. If
I am not mistaken, the old chap seemed rather to fancy his sailor
son. Horrible. I can't do it myself--but you . . ."
'Thus, apropos of Jim, I had a glimpse of the real Brierly a few
days before he committed his reality and his sham together to the
keeping of the sea. Of course I declined to meddle. The tone of this
last "but you" (poor Brierly couldn't help it), that seemed to imply
I was no more noticeable than an insect, caused me to look at the
proposal with indignation, and on account of that provocation, or
for some other reason, I became positive in my mind that the inquiry
was a severe punishment to that Jim, and that his facing it--
practically of his own free will--was a redeeming feature in his abominable
case. I hadn't been so sure of it before. Brierly went off in a huff.
At the time his state of mind was more of a mystery to me than it
is now.
'Next day, coming into court late, I sat by myself. Of course I
could not forget the conversation I had with Brierly, and now I had
them both under my eyes. The demeanour of one suggested gloomy
impudence and of the other a contemptuous boredom; yet one attitude
might not have been truer than the other, and I was aware that
one was not true. Brierly was not bored--he was exasperated; and
if so, then Jim might not have been impudent. According to my
theory he was not. I imagined he was hopeless. Then it was that our
glances met. They met, and the look he gave me was discouraging
of any intention I might have had to speak to him. Upon either
hypothesis--insolence or despair--I felt I could be of no use to
him. This was the second day of the proceedings. Very soon after
that exchange of glances the inquiry was adjourned again to the
next day. The white men began to troop out at once. Jim had been
told to stand down some time before, and was able to leave amongst
the first. I saw his broad shoulders and his head outlined in the light
of the door, and while I made my way slowly out talking with some
one--some stranger who had addressed me casually--I could see
him from within the court-room resting both elbows on the balustrade
of the verandah and turning his back on the small stream of people
trickling down the few steps. There was a murmur of voices and
a shuffle of boots.
'The next case was that of assault and battery committed upon a
money-lender, I believe; and the defendant--a venerable villager
with a straight white beard--sat on a mat just outside the door with
his sons, daughters, sons-in-law, their wives, and, I should think,
half the population of his village besides, squatting or standing
around him. A slim dark woman, with part of her back and one
black shoulder bared, and with a thin gold ring in her nose, suddenly
began to talk in a high-pitched, shrewish tone. The man with
me instinctively looked up at her. We were then just through the
door, passing behind Jim's burly back.
'Whether those villagers had brought the yellow dog with them,
I don't know. Anyhow, a dog was there, weaving himself in and
out amongst people's legs in that mute stealthy way native dogs
have, and my companion stumbled over him. The dog leaped away
without a sound; the man, raising his voice a little, said with a
slow laugh, "Look at that wretched cur," and directly afterwards we
became separated by a lot of people pushing in. I stood back for
a moment against the wall while the stranger managed to get down
the steps and disappeared. I saw Jim spin round. He made a step
forward and barred my way. We were alone; he glared at me with
an air of stubborn resolution. I became aware I was being held up,
so to speak, as if in a wood. The verandah was empty by then, the
noise and movement in court had ceased: a great silence fell upon
the building, in which, somewhere far within, an oriental voice
began to whine abjectly. The dog, in the very act of trying to sneak
in at the door, sat down hurriedly to hunt for fleas.
' "Did you speak to me?" asked Jim very low, and bending forward,
not so much towards me but at me, if you know what I mean. I said
"No" at once. Something in the sound of that quiet tone of his
warned me to be on my defence. I watched him. It was very much
like a meeting in a wood, only more uncertain in its issue,
since he could possibly want neither my money nor my life--nothing
that I could simply give up or defend with a clear conscience. "You
say you didn't," he said, very sombre. "But I heard." "Some mistake,"
I protested, utterly at a loss, and never taking my eyes off
him. To watch his face was like watching a darkening sky before a
clap of thunder, shade upon shade imperceptibly coming on, the
doom growing mysteriously intense in the calm of maturing violence.
' "As far as I know, I haven't opened my lips in your hearing,"
I affirmed with perfect truth. I was getting a little angry, too, at the
absurdity of this encounter. It strikes me now I have never in my
life been so near a beating--I mean it literally; a beating with fists.
I suppose I had some hazy prescience of that eventuality being in
the air. Not that he was actively threatening me. On the contrary,
he was strangely passive--don't you know? but he was lowering,
and, though not exceptionally big, he looked generally fit to demolish
a wall. The most reassuring symptom I noticed was a kind of
slow and ponderous hesitation, which I took as a tribute to the
evident sincerity of my manner and of my tone. We faced each
other. In the court the assault case was proceeding. I caught the
words: "Well--buffalo--stick--in the greatness of my fear. . . ."
' "What did you mean by staring at me all the morning?" said Jim at
last. He looked up and looked down again. "Did you expect us all to
sit with downcast eyes out of regard for your susceptibilities?"
I retorted sharply. I was not going to submit meekly to any of his
nonsense. He raised his eyes again, and this time continued to
look me straight in the face. "No. That's all right," he pronounced
with an air of deliberating with himself upon the truth of
this statement--"that's all right. I am going through with that.
Only"--and there he spoke a little faster--"I won't let any man
call me names outside this court. There was a fellow with you. You
spoke to him--oh yes--I know; 'tis all very fine. You spoke to him,
but you meant me to hear. . . ."
'I assured him he was under some extraordinary delusion. I had
no conception how it came about. "You thought I would be afraid
to resent this," he said, with just a faint tinge of bitterness. I was
interested enough to discern the slightest shades of expression, but
I was not in the least enlightened; yet I don't know what in these
words, or perhaps just the intonation of that phrase, induced me
suddenly to make all possible allowances for him. I ceased to be
annoyed at my unexpected predicament. It was some mistake on
his part; he was blundering, and I had an intuition that the blunder
was of an odious, of an unfortunate nature. I was anxious to end
this scene on grounds of decency, just as one is anxious to cut short
some unprovoked and abominable confidence. The funniest part
was, that in the midst of all these considerations of the higher order
I was conscious of a certain trepidation as to the possibility--nay,
likelihood--of this encounter ending in some disreputable brawl
which could not possibly be explained, and would make me ridiculous.
I did not hanker after a three days' celebrity as the man who
got a black eye or something of the sort from the mate of the Patna.
He, in all probability, did not care what he did, or at any rate would
be fully justified in his own eyes. It took no magician to see he was
amazingly angry about something, for all his quiet and even torpid
demeanour. I don't deny I was extremely desirous to pacify him at
all costs, had I only known what to do. But I didn't know, as you
may well imagine. It was a blackness without a single gleam. We
confronted each other in silence. He hung fire for about fifteen
seconds, then made a step nearer, and I made ready to ward off a
blow, though I don't think I moved a muscle. "If you were as big
as two men and as strong as six," he said very softly, "I would tell
you what I think of you. You . . ." "Stop!" I exclaimed. This
checked him for a second. "Before you tell me what you think of
me," I went on quickly, "will you kindly tell me what it is I've
said or done?" During the pause that ensued he surveyed me with
indignation, while I made supernatural efforts of memory, in which
I was hindered by the oriental voice within the court-room expostulating
with impassioned volubility against a charge of falsehood. Then
we spoke almost together. "I will soon show you I am not," he said,
in a tone suggestive of a crisis. "I declare I don't know," I
protested earnestly at the same time. He tried to crush me by the
scorn of his glance. "Now that you see I am not afraid you try to
crawl out of it," he said. "Who's a cur now--hey?" Then, at last,
I understood.
'He had been scanning my features as though looking for a place
where he would plant his fist. "I will allow no man," . . . he mumbled
threateningly. It was, indeed, a hideous mistake; he had given
himself away utterly. I can't give you an idea how shocked I was. I
suppose he saw some reflection of my feelings in my face, because
his expression changed just a little. "Good God!" I stammered,
"you don't think I . . ." "But I am sure I've heard," he persisted,
raising his voice for the first time since the beginning of this deplorable
scene. Then with a shade of disdain he added, "It wasn't you, then?
Very well; I'll find the other." "Don't be a fool," I cried in
exasperation; "it wasn't that at all." "I've heard," he said again
with an unshaken and sombre perseverance.
'There may be those who could have laughed at his pertinacity; I didn't.
Oh, I didn't! There had never been a man so mercilessly shown up by his
own natural impulse. A single word had stripped him of his discretion--of
that discretion which is more necessary to the decencies of our inner
being than clothing is to the decorum of our body. "Don't be a fool,"
I repeated. "But the other man said it, you don't deny that?" he
pronounced distinctly, and looking in my face without flinching. "No,
I don't deny," said I, returning his gaze. At last his eyes followed
downwards the direction of my pointing finger. He appeared at first
uncomprehending, then confounded, and at last amazed and scared as
though a dog had been a monster and he had never seen a dog before.
"Nobody dreamt of insulting you," I said.
'He contemplated the wretched animal, that moved no more than
an effigy: it sat with ears pricked and its sharp muzzle pointed
into the doorway, and suddenly snapped at a fly like a piece of
mechanism.
'I looked at him. The red of his fair sunburnt complexion deepened
suddenly under the down of his cheeks, invaded his forehead,
spread to the roots of his curly hair. His ears became intensely
crimson, and even the clear blue of his eyes was darkened many
shades by the rush of blood to his head. His lips pouted a little,
trembling as though he had been on the point of bursting into tears.
I perceived he was incapable of pronouncing a word from the excess
of his humiliation. From disappointment too--who knows? Perhaps
he looked forward to that hammering he was going to give me
for rehabilitation, for appeasement? Who can tell what relief he
expected from this chance of a row? He was naive enough to expect
anything; but he had given himself away for nothing in this case.
He had been frank with himself--let alone with me--in the wild
hope of arriving in that way at some effective refutation, and the
stars had been ironically unpropitious. He made an inarticulate
noise in his throat like a man imperfectly stunned by a blow on the
head. It was pitiful.
'I didn't catch up again with him till well outside the gate. I had
even to trot a bit at the last, but when, out of breath at his elbow,
I taxed him with running away, he said, "Never!" and at once
turned at bay. I explained I never meant to say he was running away
from _me_. "From no man--from not a single man on earth," he
affirmed with a stubborn mien. I forbore to point out the one obvious
exception which would hold good for the bravest of us; I thought
he would find out by himself very soon. He looked at me patiently
while I was thinking of something to say, but I could find
nothing on the spur of the moment, and he began to walk on. I kept
up, and anxious not to lose him, I said hurriedly that I couldn't
think of leaving him under a false impression of my--of my--I
stammered. The stupidity of the phrase appalled me while I was
trying to finish it, but the power of sentences has nothing to do with
their sense or the logic of their construction. My idiotic mumble
seemed to please him. He cut it short by saying, with courteous
placidity that argued an immense power of self-control or else a
wonderful elasticity of spirits--"Altogether my mistake." I marvelled
greatly at this expression: he might have been alluding to
some trifling occurrence. Hadn't he understood its deplorable
meaning? "You may well forgive me," he continued, and went on
a little moodily, "All these staring people in court seemed such fools
that--that it might have been as I supposed."
'This opened suddenly a new view of him to my wonder. I looked
at him curiously and met his unabashed and impenetrable eyes. "I
can't put up with this kind of thing," he said, very simply, "and I
don't mean to. In court it's different; I've got to stand that--and I
can do it too."
'I don't pretend I understood him. The views he let me have of
himself were like those glimpses through the shifting rents in a
thick fog--bits of vivid and vanishing detail, giving no connected
idea of the general aspect of a country. They fed one's curiosity
without satisfying it; they were no good for purposes of orientation.
Upon the whole he was misleading. That's how I summed him up
to myself after he left me late in the evening. I had been staying at
the Malabar House for a few days, and on my pressing invitation
he dined with me there.' _
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