Homo 1909

Dinner was over, and Mme. Constantin and her guests were seated under the lighted candles in her cosey salon.

With the serving of the coffee and cigarettes, pillows had been adjusted to bare shoulders, stools moved under slippered feet, and easy lounges pushed nearer the fire. Greenough, his long body aslant, his head on the edge of a chair, his feet on the hearth rug, was blowing rings to the ceiling. Bayard, the African explorer, and the young Russian Secretary, Ivan Petrovski, had each the end of a long sofa, with pretty Mme. Petrovski and old Baron Sleyde between them, while Mme. Constantin lay nestled like a kitten among the big and little cushions of a divan.

The dinner had been a merry one, with every brain at its best; this restful silence was but another luxury. Only the Baron rattled on. A duel of unusual ferocity had startled Paris, and the old fellow knew its every detail. Mme. Petrovski was listening in a languid way:

“Dead, isn’t he?” she asked in an indifferent tone, as being the better way to change the subject. Duels did not interest the young bride.

“No,” answered the Baron, flicking the ashes from his cigarette--“going to get well, so Mercier, who operated, told a friend of mine to-day.”

“Where did they fight?” she asked, as she took a fresh cigarette from her case. “Ivan told me, but I forgot.”

“At Surenne, above the bridge. You know the row of trees by the water; we walked there the day we dined at the Cycle.”

“Both of them fools!” cried the Russian from the depths of his seat. “La Clou wasn’t worth it--she’s getting fat.”

Greenough drew his long legs back from the fender and, looking toward the young Secretary, said in a decided tone:--

“I don’t agree with you, Ivan. Served the beggar right; the only pity is that he’s going to get well.”

“But she wasn’t his wife,” remarked Mme. Petrovski with increased interest, as she lighted her cigarette.

“No matter, he loved her,” returned the Englishman, straightening in his seat and squaring his broad shoulders.

“And so did the poor devil whom Mercier sewed up,” laughed the old Baron, his eyes twinkling.

Mme. Constantin raised her blonde head from the edge of the divan.

“Is there any wrong, you dear Greenough, you would forgive where a woman is concerned?”

“Plenty. Any wrong that you would commit, my dear lady, for instance; but not the kind the Baron refers to.”

“But why do you Englishmen always insist on an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth? Can’t you make some allowance for the weakness of human nature?” she asked, smiling.

“But why only Englishmen?” demanded Greenough. “All nationalities feel alike where a man’s honor and the honor of his home are concerned. It is only the punishment that differs. The Turk, for instance, bowstrings you or tries to, for peeping under his wife’s veil; the American shoots you at sight for speaking slightingly of his daughter. Both are right in a way. I am not brutal; I am only just, and I tell you there is only one way of treating a man who has robbed you dishonestly of the woman you love, and that is to finish him so completely that the first man called in will be the undertaker--not the surgeon. I am not talking at random--I know a case in point, which always sets me blazing when I think of it. He was at the time attached to our embassy at Berlin. I hear now that he has returned to England and is dying--dying, remember, of a broken heart--won’t live the year out. He ought to have shot the scoundrel when he had a chance. Not her fault, perhaps--not his fault--fault of a man he trusted--that both trusted, that’s the worst of it.”

Bayard sat gazing into the fire, its glow deepening the color of his bronze cheek and bringing into high relief a body so strong and well knit that it was difficult to believe that scarcely a year had passed since he dragged himself, starving and half dead, from the depths of an African jungle.

So far he had taken no part in the discussion. Mme. Constantin, who knew his every mood, had seen his face grow grave, his lips straighten, and a certain subdued impatience express itself in the opening and shutting of his hands, but no word of comment had followed.

“Come, we are waiting, Bayard,” she said at last, with a smile. “What do you think of Greenough’s theory?”

The traveller pushed his cup from him, shook the ashes from his cigar, and answered slowly:--

“That there is something stronger than vengeance, Louise--something higher.”

“You mean mercy?”

“Something infinitely more powerful--the Primeval.”

The Baron twisted his short neck and faced the speaker. Greenough rose to his feet, relighted his cigar at the silver lamp, and said with some impatience:--

“I don’t understand your meaning, Bayard; make it clear, will you?”

“You don’t understand, Greenough, because you have not suffered--not as some men I know, not as one man I have in mind.”

Mme. Constantin slipped from her cushions, crossed to where Bayard sat, and nestled on a low ottoman beside him.

“Is it something you haven’t told me, Bayard?” she asked, looking up into his face. These two had been friends for years. Sometimes in his wanderings the letters came in bunches; at other times the silence continued for months.

“Yes, something I haven’t told you, Louise--not all of it. I remember writing you about his arrival at Babohunga, and what a delightful fellow he was, but I couldn’t tell you the rest of it. I will now, and I want Greenough to listen.

“He was, I think, the handsomest young fellow that I ever saw--tall, broad shouldered, well built, curly hair cut close to his head, light, upturned mustache, white teeth, clear, fair skin--really you’d hardly meet another such young fellow anywhere. He had come up from Zanzibar and had pushed on to my camp, hoping, he said, to join some caravan going into the interior. He explained that he was an officer in the Belgian army, that he had friends further up, near Lake Mantumba, and that he came for sport alone. I, of course, was glad to take him in--glad that year to take anybody in who was white, especially this young fellow, who was such a contrast to the customary straggler--escaped convict, broken-down gambler, disgraced officer, Arab trader, and other riffraff that occasionally passed my way.

“And then, again, his manners, his smile, the easy grace of his movements--even his linen, bearing his initials and a crown--something he never referred to--all showed him to be a man accustomed to the refinements of society. Another reason was his evident inexperience with the life about him. His ten days’ march from the landing below to my camp had been a singularly lucky one. They generally plunge into the forest in perfect health, only to crawl back to the river--those who live to crawl--their bones picked clean by its merciless fingers. To push on now, with the rainy season setting in, meant certain death.

“The second day he paid the price and fell ill. He complained of his feet--the tramp had knocked him out, he said. I examined his toes, cut out some poisonous wood ticks that had buried themselves under the skin, and put him to bed. Fever then set in, and for two days and nights I thought he would go under. During the delirium he kept repeating a woman’s name, begging her to give him a drink, to lift his head so he could look into her eyes. Once I had to hold him by main force to keep him from following this fancy of his brain into the forest. When he began to hobble about once more he again wanted to push on, but I determined to hold onto him. I was alone at the time--that is, without a white companion, Judson having gone down to Zanzibar with some despatches for the company--and his companionship was a godsend.

“What seemed to worry him most after he got well was his enforced use of my wardrobe and outfit. He had brought little of his own except his clothes and some blankets, and no arms of any kind but the revolver he carried around his waist in a holster. All his heavier luggage, he explained, was at a landing below. This objection I met by promising to send for it by the first band of carriers after the rainy season was over. In the meantime he must, I insisted, use my own guns and ammunition, or anything else that my kit afforded.

“Up to this time he had never mentioned his home or the names of any of his people, nor had he offered any explanation of his choice of Africa as a hunting ground, nor did he ever seek to learn my own impressions regarding his self-imposed exile (it was really exile, for he never hunted a single day while he was with me), except to ask me one morning in a casual way, whether anything he had said in his delirium had made me think the less of him--all of which I laughed at, never mentioning, of course, what I had been obliged to hear.

“One night, when a tropical storm of unusual severity was passing, I found him sealing a letter at my table with the aid of a lantern held close. Presently he got up and began pacing the floor, seemingly in great agitation; then he reached over, picked up the letter from the table, lighted one end of it in the blaze of the lantern, dropped it to the floor, waited until it was entirely consumed, and then put his foot on the ashes.

“‘Rather a waste of time, wasn’t it?’ I said with a laugh.

“‘Yes, all of it has been a waste of time--and my life with it. Now and then I write these letters. They’re always burned in the end. No use--nothing to gain. Yes, waste of time. There are some things in the world that no man ought ever to ask forgiveness for.’ He threw himself into a chair and went on:--

“‘You never went crazy mad over a woman, did you? No--you’re not built that way. I am. She was different from the women I had met. She was not of my people--she was English. We met first in Brussels; then I followed her to Vienna. For six months she was free to do as she pleased. We lived the life--well, you know! Then her husband returned.’