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_ 'He came in at last; but I believe it was mostly the rain that did
it; it was falling just then with a devastating violence which quieted
down gradually while we talked. His manner was very sober and
set; his bearing was that of a naturally taciturn man possessed by
an idea. My talk was of the material aspect of his position; it had
the sole aim of saving him from the degradation, ruin, and despair
that out there close so swiftly upon a friendless, homeless man; I
pleaded with him to accept my help; I argued reasonably: and every
time I looked up at that absorbed smooth face, so grave and youthful,
I had a disturbing sense of being no help but rather an obstacle
to some mysterious, inexplicable, impalpable striving of his
wounded spirit.
' "I suppose you intend to eat and drink and to sleep under
shelter in the usual way," I remember saying with irritation. "You
say you won't touch the money that is due to you." . . . He came
as near as his sort can to making a gesture of horror. (There were
three weeks and five days' pay owing him as mate of the Patna.)
"Well, that's too little to matter anyhow; but what will you do
to-morrow? Where will you turn? You must live . . ." "That isn't
the thing," was the comment that escaped him under his breath. I
ignored it, and went on combating what I assumed to be the scruples
of an exaggerated delicacy. "On every conceivable ground," I
concluded, "you must let me help you." "You can't," he said very
simply and gently, and holding fast to some deep idea which I could
detect shimmering like a pool of water in the dark, but which I
despaired of ever approaching near enough to fathom. I surveyed
his well-proportioned bulk. "At any rate," I said, "I am able to
help what I can see of you. I don't pretend to do more." He shook
his head sceptically without looking at me. I got very warm. "But
I can," I insisted. "I can do even more. I _am_ doing more. I am
trusting you . . ." "The money . . ." he began. "Upon my word
you deserve being told to go to the devil," I cried, forcing the note
of indignation. He was startled, smiled, and I pressed my attack
home. "It isn't a question of money at all. You are too superficial,"
I said (and at the same time I was thinking to myself: Well, here
goes! And perhaps he is, after all). "Look at the letter I want you
to take. I am writing to a man of whom I've never asked a favour,
and I am writing about you in terms that one only ventures to use
when speaking of an intimate friend. I make myself unreservedly
responsible for you. That's what I am doing. And really if you will
only reflect a little what that means . . ."
'He lifted his head. The rain had passed away; only the water-pipe
went on shedding tears with an absurd drip, drip outside the
window. It was very quiet in the room, whose shadows huddled
together in corners, away from the still flame of the candle flaring
upright in the shape of a dagger; his face after a while seemed
suffused by a reflection of a soft light as if the dawn had broken
already.
' "Jove!" he gasped out. "It is noble of you!"
'Had he suddenly put out his tongue at me in derision, I could
not have felt more humiliated. I thought to myself--Serve me right
for a sneaking humbug. . . . His eyes shone straight into my face,
but I perceived it was not a mocking brightness. All at once he
sprang into jerky agitation, like one of those flat wooden figures
that are worked by a string. His arms went up, then came down
with a slap. He became another man altogether. "And I had never
seen," he shouted; then suddenly bit his lip and frowned. "What a
bally ass I've been," he said very slow in an awed tone. . . . "You
are a brick! " he cried next in a muffled voice. He snatched my hand
as though he had just then seen it for the first time, and dropped it
at once. "Why! this is what I--you--I . . ." he stammered, and
then with a return of his old stolid, I may say mulish, manner he
began heavily, "I would be a brute now if I . . ." and then his voice
seemed to break. "That's all right," I said. I was almost alarmed
by this display of feeling, through which pierced a strange elation.
I had pulled the string accidentally, as it were; I did not fully
understand the working of the toy. "I must go now," he said. "Jove! You
_have_ helped me. Can't sit still. The very thing . . ." He looked at
me with puzzled admiration. "The very thing . . ."
'Of course it was the thing. It was ten to one that I had saved him
from starvation--of that peculiar sort that is almost invariably
associated with drink. This was all. I had not a single illusion on
that score, but looking at him, I allowed myself to wonder at the
nature of the one he had, within the last three minutes, so evidently
taken into his bosom. I had forced into his hand the means to carry
on decently the serious business of life, to get food, drink, and
shelter of the customary kind while his wounded spirit, like a bird
with a broken wing, might hop and flutter into some hole to die
quietly of inanition there. This is what I had thrust upon him: a
definitely small thing; and--behold!--by the manner of its reception
it loomed in the dim light of the candle like a big, indistinct, perhaps
a dangerous shadow. "You don't mind me not saying anything
appropriate," he burst out. "There isn't anything one could say.
Last night already you had done me no end of good. Listening to
me--you know. I give you my word I've thought more than once
the top of my head would fly off. . ." He darted--positively
darted--here and there, rammed his hands into his pockets, jerked
them out again, flung his cap on his head. I had no idea it was in
him to be so airily brisk. I thought of a dry leaf imprisoned in an
eddy of wind, while a mysterious apprehension, a load of indefinite
doubt, weighed me down in my chair. He stood stock-still, as if
struck motionless by a discovery. "You have given me confidence,"
he declared, soberly. "Oh! for God's sake, my dear fellow--don't!"
I entreated, as though he had hurt me. "All right. I'll shut up
now and henceforth. Can't prevent me thinking though. . . . Never
mind! . . . I'll show yet . . ." He went to the door in a hurry,
paused with his head down, and came back, stepping deliberately.
"I always thought that if a fellow could begin with a clean slate . . .
And now you . . . in a measure . . . yes . . . clean slate." I waved
my hand, and he marched out without looking back; the sound
of his footfalls died out gradually behind the closed door--the
unhesitating tread of a man walking in broad daylight.
'But as to me, left alone with the solitary candle, I remained
strangely unenlightened. I was no longer young enough to behold
at every turn the magnificence that besets our insignificant footsteps
in good and in evil. I smiled to think that, after all, it was yet he,
of us two, who had the light. And I felt sad. A clean slate, did he
say? As if the initial word of each our destiny were not graven in
imperishable characters upon the face of a rock.' _
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