'What God hath divided let no man unite,' said Carraway,
improving the occasion. 'I don't uphold Kaffirs. The white man
must always be top dog,' etc., etc.
Carraway grew greasily fluent on rather well-worn lines. I smoked
my pipe and made no comment. By-and-bye he tired of his
monologue.
He gave me no further confidences till the night after we left
Madeira.
Then he came to me suddenly about eleven o'clock as I stood on
the well-deck, smoking a pipe before turning in.
'Come and have a walk,' he said, in a breathless sort of way.
We climbed some steps and paced the upper deck towards the
wheel-house. There were few electric lights burning now. After
a turn or two he drew up under one of them, and looked round to
see whether anyone listened.
'Don't give me away for God's sake,' he said. He held up a hand
towards the light pathetically. 'It's showing,' he said. 'God
knows why. God knows what I've done to bring it.'
I said nothing, but looked at him and considered him carefully.
He certainly did not seem to be drunk.
Then I examined the hand he gave me.
'I don't see anything particular,' I said. 'What's wrong?'
'Good Lord! The nails.'
But the nails looked to me pink and healthy.
'Tell me,' I said, 'What you think's wrong.'
Yet he could not tell me that night. He tried to tell me. He was
just like a little boy in most awful trepidation, trying to
confess some big transgression. He gasped and spluttered, but he
never got it out that night. I couldn't make head nor tail of
what he said. After he was gone to bed it is true I put two and
two together and guessed something. But I was fairly puzzled at
the time.
'You're a bit upset to-night,' I said. 'You're not quite
yourself, it's the sea I suppose, or something. Come to bed and
get a good night.' His teeth chattered as he came down the
ladder. I got him down to his cabin.
'Thanks!' he said. 'Good night! I may come all right in the
morning. Anyhow I'll have a bath and try.'
He said it so naively that I could not help laughing.
'Yes, have a sea-water-bath, a jolly good idea,' I said. 'You'll
have to be up early. There's only one and there's a run on it
before breakfast. Goodnight!'
I saw him again in the morning outside the bathroom. He came out
in his pink-and-white pyjamas; the pink was aggressive and fought
with the tint of his moustache. He looked very blue and wretched.
'Well,' I asked, 'Have you slept it off whatever it was?'
'No,' he said, 'let me tell you about it.' He began to gasp and
splutter.
Just then another postulant came up, making for the bath-room
door.
'Afterwards!' I said, 'After breakfast.' And I vanished into the
bath-room. It was probably Carraway, I thought, that had left a
little collection of soaps in that bath-room. He had brought a
bucket of fresh water with him apparently to give them a fair
trial. There was yellow soap, a pumice stone, and carbolic soap,
and scented soap. 'I'll keep them for him,' I thought. 'Somebody
may jump them if I leave them here. I wonder why in the world
he's so distrait.' I had my suspicions as to the reason, and I
laughed softly to myself.
After breakfast he invited me back to the bathroom; there was no
run on it then.
'It's quiet,' he said. Then after many gasps and splutters he
enlightened me. His nails were turning color, he told me.
'Anyone would think I had Kaffir blood in me,' he said.
Also his skin was giving him grave cause for solicitude. I did
not resist the temptation to take him rather seriously. I
administered philosophic consolation. I reminded him of Dumas and
other serviceable colored people. I rather enjoyed his misery;
poetic justice seemed to me to need some satisfaction. He, the
negrophobe, who was so ultra-keen on drawing the line was now
enjoying imaginative experiences on the far side of it.
'It seems then,' I remarked, 'That you are now a person of
color.'
He nearly fainted. He did not swear. He seemed to have lost all
his old truculence. He began to whimper like a child.
'After all, I never shared your prejudices.' I said. 'Cheer up,
old man, I won't drop you like a hot potato even if you have a
touch of the tar brush.'
He cried as if his heart would break. I saw I had gone too far.
If was like dancing on a trodden worm.
'Carraway,' I said, 'It's a pure delusion. Your nails are all
right, and so's your skin. You're dreaming, man. You've got
nerves or indigestion, or something. It's something inside you
that's wrong. There's nothing outside for anyone to see.'
His eyes gleamed. He shook my hand feebly. Then he held up his
own hand to the light.
'It's there,' he said wearily, after a while. 'You want to be
kind, but you can't make black white. That's what I've always
said. It's the Will of God, and there's nothing to gain by
fighting it. Black will be black, and white will be white till
crack of doom.'
I told him sternly that I was going to fetch the doctor to him.
He sprang at me and gripped my arm.
'I trusted you,' he said. 'I needn't have told you. You
promised.'
So I had like a simpleton.
'Only give me two days,' he said, 'then I'll go to the doctor
myself, if nothing works in all that time.'
So I said I would respect my promise loyally for those two days.
'I only told you,' he said, 'because my head was splitting with
keeping it in. It's awful to me. I thought you were a negrophile
and wouldn't think so much of it as other fellows. But for God's
sake don't give me away to them. There's lots of things to try
yet. By the way, ask that parson to pray for one afflicted and
distressed in mind, body, and estate.'
He did try many sorts of things, poor fellow. He was in and out
of that bath-room a good share of both days. He also tried drugs
and patent medicines. I saw his cabin littered with them. He
would sneak into meals those two days when people had almost
finished, and gobble his food furtively.
I caught him once or twice smoking his pipe in the bath-room or
the bath-room passage. He would not venture amid the crowd on
deck. Only when many of the passengers were in bed would he come
up with me, and take my arm and walk up and down. That was on the
Wednesday night.
Wednesday night came, then Thursday morning. Thursday forenoon
was long, and Thursday afternoon longer.
At last the sun was low, and I began to count the hours to the
time when I might consult the doctor.
I secured an interview with Carraway in the bathroom soon after
sunset.
'Any better?' I asked for about the twentieth time.
He shook his head dejectedly.
'All right. We must go to the doctor to-morrow morning. But, O
Carraway, do go to him to-night, don't be afraid. It's only
imagination. Do go.'
'I'll see,' he said in a dazed, dreary sort of way, 'I'll see,
but I want to play the last card I have in my hand before I go.
It's a trump card perhaps.'
'On my honor,' I said, 'You're tormenting yourself for nothing.
You're as white as ever you were.'
Then I said 'Good-night.' I stopped for a moment outside the
door, and heard him begin splashing and scrubbing. The thing was
getting on my own nerves.
I went off up on deck, and smoked hard, then I read, and wrote
letters, and smoked again, and went to bed very late. I had
steered clear of the bathroom and all Carraway's haunts so far as
I could. Yes, and I had gone over to the second class, and I had
asked the parson to do as he wanted. I had asked him the day
before. Now I asked him over again.
The steward handed me a letter when he brought me my coffee in
the morning. I opened it and read:
DEAR SIR, Perhaps my negrophoby is wrong. Anyhow, it's real to
me. I had and have it, and see no way to get rid of it properly
here on earth. Now God has touched me, me the negrophobe, and
colored me. And to me the thing seems very hard to bear.
Therefore I am trying the sea to-night.
'In the bath-room there never seemed to be enough water. I want
to try a bath with plenty of water. But I am afraid it may be
with me as it would have been with Macbeth or Lady Macbeth. Those
red hands of murder could not be washed white by the ocean, they
could only "the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green
one red." What if I cannot be decolorized by any sea? What if my
flesh only pollutes the sea, when I plunge, and makes all black?
God help me!!! You are a negrophile and don't half understand.
'Yours truly,
'J. CARRAWAY.'
I questioned the steward. He had found the letter in my place at
table.
Sure enough there was a third-class passenger missing. I suppose
Carraway had slipped off quietly in the moonlight to try his
desperate experiment. It was a cruel business his monomania.
If I had broken my promise and called the doctor earlier, could
he have been cured? Or would he have lingered in an asylum
shuddering over the fictitious glooming of his nails and skin,
shaking in a long ague of negrophoby.
Anyhow, I'm sorry I didn't do more for him, didn't walk him round
the deck the last night at least, and try my best to cheer him.
Yes, I blame myself badly for not doing that.
May God who allowed his delusion pardon that last maneuver of
his! I do not think Carraway had any clear wish to take his own
life.
I can imagine the scene so convincingly Carraway pausing,
hesitating, then plunging into the moon-blanched water from the
dizzy height above, eager to find which the multitudinous seas
would do would they change his imagined color, or would they
suddenly darken, matching in their tints his own discoloration?