“Listen. Don’t interrupt me once. Ferguson told me that, when the
explosion came, he looked round--considered, for fully a minute, his
duty. He never lost control of himself once, he said, and I believe him.
The _Argentina_ was a small boat, making a winter passage. There were
very few cabin passengers. No second cabin, but plenty of steerage. She
sailed, you remember, from Naples. He had been doing work, some very
important work, in the Aquarium. The only other person of consequence--I
am speaking in the most literal and unsnobbish sense--in the first
cabin, was Benson. No” (with a lifted hand), “_don’t interrupt me_.
Benson, as we all know, was an international figure. But Benson was
getting old. His son could be trusted to carry on the House of Benson.
In fact, every one suspected that the son had become more important than
the old man. He had put through the last big loan while his father was
taking a rest-cure in Italy. That is how Benson _père_ happened to be on
the _Argentina_. The newspapers never sufficiently accounted for that. A
private deck on the _Schrecklichkeit_ would have been more his size.
Ferguson made it out: the old man got wild, suddenly, at the notion of
their putting anything through without him. He trusted his gouty bones
to the _Argentina_.”
“Sounds plausible, but--” Chantry broke in.
“If you interrupt again,” said Havelock, “I’ll hit you, with all the
strength I’ve got.”
Chantry grunted. You had to take Havelock the Dane as you found him.
“Ferguson saw the whole thing clear. Old Benson had just gone into the
smoking-room. Ferguson was on the deck outside his own stateroom. The
only person on board who could possibly be considered as important as
Ferguson was Benson; and he had good reason to believe that every one
would get on well enough without Benson. He had just time, then, to put
on a life-preserver, melt into his stateroom and get a little pile of
notes, very important ones, and drop into a boat. No, don’t interrupt. I
know what you are going to say. ‘Women and children.’ What do you
suppose a lot of Neapolitan peasants meant to Ferguson--or to you, and
me, either? He didn’t do anything outrageous; he just dropped into a
boat. As a result, we had a big book a year later. No” (again crushing
down a gesture of Chantry’s), “don’t say anything about the instincts of
a gentleman. If Ferguson hadn’t been perfectly cool, his instincts
would have governed him. He would have dashed about trying to save
people, and then met the waves with a noble gesture. He had time to be
reasonable; not instinctive. The world was the gainer, as he jolly well
knew it would be--or where would have been the reasonableness? I don’t
believe Ferguson cared a hang about keeping his individual machine going
for its own sake. But he knew he was a valuable person. His mind was a
Kohinoor among minds. It stands to reason that you save the Kohinoor and
let the little stones go. Well, that’s not the story. Only I wanted to
get that out of the way first, or the story wouldn’t have meant
anything. Did you wish,” he finished graciously, “to ask a question?”
Chantry made a violent gesture of denial. “Ask a question about a hog
like that? God forbid!”
“Um-m-m.” Havelock seemed to muse within himself. “You will admit that
if a jury of impartial men of sense could have sat, just then, on that
slanting deck, they would have agreed that Ferguson’s life was worth
more to the world than all the rest of the boiling put together?”
“Yes, but----”
“Well, there wasn’t any jury. Ferguson had to be it. I am perfectly sure
that if there had been a super-Ferguson on board, our Ferguson would
have turned his hand to saving him first. In fact, I honestly believe he
was sorry there hadn’t been a super-Ferguson. For he had all the
instincts of a gentleman; and it’s never a pleasant job making your
reason inhibit your instincts. You can’t look at this thing perfectly
straight, probably. But if you can’t, who can? I don’t happen to want an
enlightened opinion: I’ve got one, right here at home. You don’t care
about the State: you want to put it into white petticoats and see it
cross a muddy street.”
“I don’t wonder the socialists won’t have anything to do with you.”
“Because I’m not a feminist? I know. Just as the feminists won’t have
anything to do with you because you’re so reactionary. We’re both out of
it. Fifty years ago, either of us could have been a real prophet, for
the price of a hall and cleaning the rotten eggs off our clothes. Now
we’re too timid for any use. But this is a digression.”
“Distinctly. Is there anything more about Ferguson?”
“I should say there was. About a year ago, he became engaged. She’s a
very nice girl, and I am sure you never heard of her. The engagement
wasn’t to be announced until just before the marriage, for family
reasons of some sort--cockering the older generation somehow. I’ve
forgotten; it’s not important. But they would have been married by now,
if Ferguson hadn’t stepped out.”
“You seem to have been very intimate with Ferguson.”
“He talked to me once--just once. The girl was a distant connection of
my own. I think that was why. Now I’ve got some more things to tell you.
I’ve let you interrupt a good lot, and if you’re through, I’d like to
start in on the next lap. It isn’t easy for me to tell this thing in
bits. It’s an effort.”
Havelock the Dane set down his second emptied glass and drew a long
breath. He proceeded, with quickened pace.
“He didn’t see the girl very often. She lives at some little distance.
He was busy--you know how he worked--and she was chained at home, more
or less. Occasionally he slipped away for a week-end, to see her. One
time--the last time, about two months ago--he managed to get in a whole
week. It was as near happiness as Ferguson ever got, I imagine; for they
were able to fix a date. Good heaven, how he loved that girl! Just
before he went, he told me of the engagement. I barely knew her, but, as
I said, she’s some sort of kin. Then, after he came back, he sent for me
to come and see him. I didn’t like his cheek, but I went as though I had
been a laboratory boy. I’m not like you. Ferguson always did get me. He
wanted the greatest good of the greatest number. Nothing petty about
him. He was a big man.
“I went, as I say. And Ferguson told me, the very first thing, that the
engagement was off. He began by cocking his hair a good deal. But he
almost lost control of himself. He didn’t cock it long: he ruffled it
instead, with his hands. I thought he was in a queer state, for he
seemed to want to give me, with his beautiful scientific precision--as
if he’d been preparing a slide--the details of a country walk he and she
had taken the day before he left. It began with grade crossings, and I
simply couldn’t imagine what he was getting at. It wasn’t his business
to fight grade crossings--though they might be a very pretty symbol for
the kind of thing he was fighting, tooth and nail, all the time. I
couldn’t seem to see it, at first; but finally it came out. There was a
grade crossing, with a ‘Look out for the Engine’ sign, and there was a
towheaded infant in rags. They had noticed the infant before. It had
bandy legs and granulated eyelids, and seemed to be dumb. It had started
them off on eugenics. She was very keen on the subject; Ferguson, being
a big scientist, had some reserves. It was a real argument.
“Then everything happened at once. Towhead with the sore eyes rocked on
to the track simultaneously with the whistle. They were about fifty
yards off. Ferguson sprinted back down the hill, the girl screaming
pointlessly meanwhile. There was just time--you’ll have to take my word
for this; Ferguson explained it all to me in the most meticulous detail,
but I can’t repeat that masterpiece of exposition--for Ferguson to
decide. To decide again, you understand, precisely as he had decided on
the _Argentina_. Rotten luck, wasn’t it? He could just have flung
towhead out of the way by getting under the engine himself. He grabbed
for towhead, but he didn’t roll on to the track. So towhead was killed.
If he had got there ten seconds earlier, he could have done the trick.
He was ten seconds too late to save both Ferguson and towhead. So--once
more--he saved Ferguson. Do you get the situation?”
“I should say I did!” shouted Chantry. “Twice in a man’s life--good
Lord! I hope you walked out of his house at that point.”
“I didn’t. I was very much interested. And by the way, Chantry, if
Ferguson had given his life for towhead, you would have been the first
man to write a pleasant little article for some damned highbrow review,
to prove that it was utterly wrong that Ferguson should have exchanged
his life for that of a little Polish defective. I can even see you
talking about the greatest good of the greatest number. You would have
loved the paradox of it: the mistaken martyr, self-preservation the
greatest altruism, and all the rest of it. But because Ferguson did
exactly what you would have said in your article that he ought to have
done, you are in a state of virtuous chill.”
“I should have written no such article. I don’t see how you can be so
flippant.”
“Flippant--I? Have I the figure of a flippant man? Can’t you
see--honestly, now, can’t you see?--that it was a hideous misfortune for
that situation to come to Ferguson twice? Can’t you see that it was
about as hard luck as a man ever had? Look at it just once from his
point of view.”
“I can’t,” said Chantry frankly. “I can understand a man’s being a
coward, saving his own skin because he wants to. But to save his own
skin on principle--humph! Talk of paradoxes: there’s one for you.
There’s not a principle on earth that tells you to save your own life at
someone’s else expense. If he thought it was principle, he was the
bigger defective of the two. Of course it would have been a pity; of
course we should all have regretted it; but there’s not a human being in
this town, high or low, who wouldn’t have applauded, with whatever
regret--who wouldn’t have said he did the only thing a self-respecting
man could do. Of course it’s a shame; but that is the only way the race
has ever got on: by the strong, because they were strong, going under
for the weak, because they were weak. Otherwise we’d all be living, to
this day, in hell.”
“I know; I know.” Havelock’s voice was touched with emotion. “That’s the
convention--invented by individualists, for individualists. All sorts of
people would see it that way, still. But you’ve got more sense than
most; and I will make you at least see the other point of view. Suppose
Ferguson to have been a good Catholic--or a soldier in the ranks. If his
confessor or his commanding officer had told him to save his own skin,
you’d consider Ferguson justified; you might even consider the priest or
the officer justified. The one thing you can’t stand is the man’s
giving himself those orders. But let’s not argue over it now--let’s go
back to the story. I’ll make you ‘get’ Ferguson anyhow--even if I can’t
make him ‘get’ you.
“Well, here comes in the girl.”
“And you said there was no girl in it!”
Chantry could not resist that. He believed that Havelock’s assertion had
been made only because he didn’t want the girl in it--resented her being
there.
“There isn’t, as I see it,” replied Havelock the Dane quietly. “From my
point of view, the story is over. Ferguson’s decision: that is the whole
thing--made more interesting, more valuable, because the repetition of
the thing proves beyond a doubt that he acted on principle, not on
impulse. If he had flung himself into the life-boat because he was a
coward, he would have been ashamed of it; and whatever he might have
done afterwards, he would never have done that thing again. He would
have been sensitive: not saving his own life would have turned into an
obsession with him. But there is left, I admit, the murder. And murders
always take the public. So I’ll give you the murder--though it throws no
light on Ferguson, who is the only thing in the whole accursed affair
that really counts.”
“The murder? I don’t see--unless you mean the murdering of the towheaded
child.”
“I mean the murder of Ferguson by the girl he loved.”
“You said ‘suicide’ a little while ago,” panted Chantry.
“Technically, yes. She was a hundred miles away when it happened. But
she did it just the same. Oh, I suppose I’ve got to tell you, as
Ferguson told me.”
“Did he tell you he was going to kill himself?” Chantry’s voice was
sharp.
“He did not. Ferguson wasn’t a fool. But it was plain as day to me after
it happened, that he had done it himself.”
“How--”
“I’m telling you this, am I not? Let me tell it, then. The thing
happened in no time, of course. The girl got over screaming, and ran
down to the track, frightened out of her wits. The train managed to
stop, about twice its own length farther down, round a bend in the
track, and the conductor and brakeman came running back. The mother came
out of her hovel, carrying twins. The--the--thing was on the track,
across the rails. It was a beastly mess, and Ferguson got the girl away;
set her down to cry in a pasture, and then went back and helped out, and
gave his testimony, and left money, a lot of it, with the mother,
and--all the rest. You can imagine it. No one there considered that
Ferguson ought to have saved the child; no one but Ferguson dreamed that
he could have. Indeed, an ordinary man, in Ferguson’s place, wouldn’t
have supposed he could. It was only that brain, working like lightning,
working as no plain man’s could, that had made the calculation and
_seen_. There were no preliminary seconds lost in surprise or shock, you
see. Ferguson’s mind hadn’t been jarred from its pace for an instant.
The thing had happened too quickly for any one--except Ferguson--to
understand what was going on. Therefore he ought to have laid that
super-normal brain under the wheels, of course!
“Ferguson was so sane, himself, that he couldn’t understand, even after
he had been engaged six months, our little every-day madnesses. It never
occurred to him, when he got back to the girl and she began all sorts
of hysterical questions, not to answer them straight. It was by way of
describing the event simply, that he informed her that he would just
have had time to pull the creature out, but not enough to pull himself
back afterwards. Ferguson was used to calculating things in millionths
of an inch; she wasn’t. I dare say the single second that had given
Ferguson time to turn round in his mind, she conceived of as a minute at
least. It would have taken her a week to turn round in her own mind, no
doubt--a month, a year, perhaps. How do I know? But she got the
essential fact: that Ferguson had made a choice. Then she rounded on
him. It would have killed her to lose him, but she would rather have
lost him than to see him standing before her, etc., etc. Ferguson quoted
a lot of her talk straight to me, and I can remember it; but you needn’t
ask me to soil my mouth with it. ‘And half an hour before, she had been
saying with a good deal of heat that that little runt ought never to
have been born, and that if we had decent laws it never would have been
allowed to live.’ Ferguson said that to me, with a kind of bewilderment.
You see, he had made the mistake of taking that little fool seriously.
Well, he loved her. You can’t go below that: that’s rock-bottom.
Ferguson couldn’t dig any deeper down for his way out. There _was_ no
deeper down.
“Apparently Ferguson still thought he could argue it out with her. She
so believed in eugenics, you see--a very radical, compared with
Ferguson. It was she who had had no doubt about towhead. And the love
part of it seemed to him fixed: it didn’t occur to him that that was
debatable. So he stuck to something that could be discussed. Then--and
this was his moment of exceeding folly--he caught at the old episode of
the _Argentina_. _That_ had nothing to do with her present state of
shock. She had seen towhead; but she hadn’t seen the sprinkled
Mediterranean. And she had accepted that. At least, she had spoken of
his survival as though it had been one of the few times when God had
done precisely the right thing. So he took that to explain with. The
fool! The reasonable fool!
“Then--oh, then she went wild. (Yet she must have known there were a
thousand chances on the _Argentina_ for him to throw his life away, and
precious few to save it.) She backed up against a tree and stretched her
arms out like this”--Havelock made a clumsy stage-gesture of aversion
from Chantry, the villain. “And for an instant he thought she was afraid
of a Jersey cow that had come up to take part in the discussion. So he
threw a twig at its nose.”
Chantry’s wonder grew, swelled, and burst.
“Do you mean to say that that safety-deposit vault of a Ferguson told
you all this?”
“As I am telling it to you. Only much more detail, of course--and much,
much faster. It wasn’t like a story at all: it was like--like a
hemorrhage. I didn’t interrupt him as you’ve been interrupting me. Well,
the upshot of it was that she spurned him quite in the grand manner. She
found the opposites of all the nice things she had been saying for six
months, and said them. And Ferguson--your cocky Ferguson--stood and
listened, until she had talked herself out, and then went away. He never
saw her again; and when he sent for me, he had made up his mind that she
never intended to take any of it back. So he stepped out, I tell you.”
“As hard hit as that,” Chantry mused.
“Just as hard hit as that. Ferguson had had no previous affairs; she was
very literally the one woman; and he managed, at forty, to combine the
illusions of the boy of twenty and the man of sixty.”
“But if he thought he was so precious to the world, wasn’t it more than
ever his duty to preserve his existence? He could see other people die
in his place, but he couldn’t see himself bucking up against a broken
heart. Isn’t that what the strong man does? Lives out his life when he
doesn’t at all like the look of it? Say what you like, he was a coward,
Havelock--at the last, anyhow.”
“I won’t ask for your opinion just yet, thank you. Perhaps if Ferguson
had been sure he would ever do good work again, he wouldn’t have taken
himself off. That might have held him. He might have stuck by on the
chance. But I doubt it. Don’t you see? He loved the girl too much.”
“Thought he couldn’t live without her,” snorted Chantry.
“Oh, no--not that. But if she was right, he was the meanest skunk alive.
He owed the world at least two deaths, so to speak. The only approach
you can make to dying twice is to die in your prime, of your own
volition.” Havelock spoke very slowly. “At least, that’s the way I’ve
worked it out. He didn’t say so. He was careful as a cat.”
“You think”--Chantry leaned forward, very eager at last--“that he
decided she was right? That I’m right--that we’re all of us right?”
Havelock the Dane bowed his head in his huge hands. “No. If you ask me,
I think he kept his own opinion untarnished to the end. When I told him
I thought he was right, he just nodded, as if one took that for
granted. But it didn’t matter to him. I am pretty sure that he cared
only what _she_ thought.”
“If he didn’t agree with her? And if she had treated him like a
criminal? He must have despised her, in that case.”
“He never said one word of her--bar quoting some of _her_ words--that
wasn’t utterly gentle. You could see that he loved her with his whole
soul. And--it’s my belief--he gave her the benefit of the doubt. In
killing himself, he acted on the hypothesis that she had been right. It
was the one thing he could do for her.”
“But if no one except you thinks it was suicide--and you can’t prove
it--”
“Oh, he had to take that chance--the chance of her never knowing--or
else create a scandal. And that would have been very hard on her and on
his family. But there were straws she could easily clutch at--as I have
clutched at them. The perfect order in which everything happened to be
left--even the last notes he had made. His laboratory was a scientist’s
paradise, they tell me. And the will, made after she threw him over,
leaving everything to her. Not a letter unanswered, all little bills
paid, and little debts liquidated. He came as near suggesting it as he
could, in decency. But I dare say she will never guess it.”
“Then what did it profit him?”
“It didn’t profit him, in your sense. He took a very long chance on her
guessing. That wasn’t what concerned him.”
“I hope she will never guess, anyhow. It would ruin her life, to no good
end.”
“Oh, no.” Havelock was firm. “I doubt if she would take it that way. If
she grasped it at all, she’d believe he thought her right. And if he
thought her right, of course he wouldn’t want to live, would he? She
would never think he killed himself simply for love of her.”
“Why not?”
“Well, she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t be able to conceive of Ferguson’s
killing himself for merely that--with _his_ notions about survival.”
“As he did.”
“As he did--and didn’t.”
“Ah, she’d scarcely refine on it as you are doing, Havelock. You’re
amazing.”
“Well, he certainly never expected her to know that he did it himself.
If he had been the sort of weakling that dies because he can’t have a
particular woman, he’d have been also the sort of weakling that leaves a
letter explaining.”
“What then did he die for? You’ll have to explain to me. Not because he
couldn’t have her; not because he felt guilty. Why, then? You haven’t
left him a motive.”
“Oh, haven’t I? The most beautiful motive in the whole world, my dear
fellow. A motive that puts all your little simple motives in the shade.”
“Well, what?”
“Don’t you see? Why, I told you. He simply assumed, for all practical
purposes, that she had been right. He gave himself the fate he knew she
considered him to deserve. He preferred--loving her as he did--to do
what she would have had him do. He knew she was wrong; but he knew also
that she was made that way, that she would never be right. And he took
her for what she was, and loved her as she was. His love--don’t you
see?--was too big. He couldn’t revolt from her: she had the whole of
him--except, perhaps, his excellent judgment. He couldn’t drag on a
life which she felt that was about. He destroyed it, as he would have
destroyed anything she found loathsome. He was merely justifying himself
to his love. He couldn’t hope she would know. Nor, I believe, could he
have lied to her. That is, he couldn’t have admitted in words that she
was right, when he felt her so absolutely wrong; but he could make that
magnificent silent act of faith.”
Chantry still held out. “I don’t believe he did it. I hold with the
coroner.”
“I don’t. He came as near telling me as he could without making me an
accessory before the fact. There were none of the loose ends that the
most orderly man would leave if he died suddenly. Take my word for it,
old man.”
A long look passed between them. Each seemed to be trying to find out
with his eyes something that words had not helped him to.
Finally Chantry protested once more. “But Ferguson couldn’t love like
that.”
Havelock the Dane laid one hand on the arm of Chantry’s chair and spoke
sternly. “He not only could, but did. And there I am a better authority
than you. Think what you please, but I will not have that fact
challenged. Perhaps you could count upon your fingers the women who are
loved like that; but, anyhow, she was. My second cousin once removed,
damn her!” He ended with a vicious twang.
“And now”--Havelock rose--“I’d like your opinion.”
“About what?”
“Well, can’t you see the beautiful sanity of Ferguson?”
“No, I can’t,” snapped Chantry. “I think he was wrong, both in the
beginning and in the end. But I will admit he was not a coward. I
respect him, but I do not think, at any point, he was right--except
perhaps in ‘doing’ the coroner.”
“That settles it, then,” said Havelock. And he started towards the door.
“Settles what, in heaven’s name?”
“What I came to have settled. I shan’t tell her. If I could have got one
other decent citizen--and I confess you were my only chance--to agree
with me that Ferguson was right--right about his fellow-passengers on
the _Argentina_, right about towhead on the track--I’d have gone to her,
I think. I’d rather like to ruin her life, if I could.”
A great conviction approached Chantry just then. He felt the rush of it
through his brain.
“No,” he cried. “Ferguson loved her too much. He wouldn’t like that--not
as you’d put it to her.”