"It's very good of you to say that; but--I've placed myself as well as
you in a false position. I ask you to believe that I'm not the sort of
man who is 'wanted' or ever was 'wanted' by the police. I should be
bowed out of any police-station at which I gave myself up. I'm not a
murderer in any bald sense of the word. No."
My face must have perceptibly brightened, for, "Ah," he said, "don't
imagine I'm not a murderer at all. Morally, I am." He looked at the
clock. I pointed out that the night was young. He assured me that his
story was not a long one. I assured him that I hoped it was. He said
I was very kind. I denied this. He warned me that what he had to tell
might rather tend to stiffen my unwilling faith in palmistry, and to
shake my opposite and cherished faith in free will. I said, "Never
mind." He stretched his hands pensively toward the fire. I settled
myself back in my chair.
"My hands," he said, staring at the backs of them, "are the hands of a
very weak man. I dare say you know enough of palmistry to see that for
yourself. You notice the slightness of the thumbs and of he two
'little' fingers. They are the hands of a weak and over-sensitive
man--a man without confidence, a man who would certainly waver in an
emergency. Rather Hamletish hands," he mused. "And I'm like Hamlet in
other respects, too: I'm no fool, and I've rather a noble disposition,
and I'm unlucky. But Hamlet was luckier than I in one thing: he was a
murderer by accident, whereas the murders that I committed one day
fourteen years ago--for I must tell you it wasn't one murder, but many
murders that I committed--were all of them due to the wretched inherent
weakness of my own wretched self.
"I was twenty-six--no, twenty-seven years old, and rather a nondescript
person, as I am now. I was supposed to have been called to the bar.
In fact, I believe I HAD been called to the bar. I hadn't listened to
the call. I never intended to practise, and I never did practise. I
only wanted an excuse in the eyes of the world for existing. I suppose
the nearest I have ever come to practicing is now at this moment: I am
defending a murderer. My father had left me well enough provided with
money. I was able to go my own desultory way, riding my hobbies where
I would. I had a good stableful of hobbies. Palmistry was one of
them. I was rather ashamed of this one. It seemed to me absurd, as it
seems to you. Like you, though, I believed in it. Unlike you, I had
done more than merely read a book about it. I had read innumerable
books about it. I had taken casts of all my friends' hands. I had
tested and tested again the points at which Desbarolles dissented from
the Gipsies, and--well, enough that I had gone into it all rather
thoroughly, and was as sound a palmist, as a man may be without giving
his whole life to palmistry.
"One of the first things I had seen in my own hand, as soon as I had
learned to read it, was that at about the age of twenty-six I should
have a narrow escape from death--from a violent death. There was a
clean break in the life-line, and a square joining it--the protective
square, you know. The markings were precisely the same in both hands.
It was to be the narrowest escape possible. And I wasn't going to
escape without injury, either. That is what bothered me. There was a
faint line connecting the break in the lifeline with a star on the line
of health. Against that star was another square. I was to recover
from the injury, whatever it might be. Still, I didn't exactly look
forward to it. Soon after I had reached the age of twenty-five, I
began to feel uncomfortable. The thing might be going to happen at any
moment. In palmistry, you know, it is impossible to pin an event down
hard and fast to one year. This particular event was to be when I was
ABOUT twenty-six; it mightn't be till I was twenty-seven; it might be
while I was only twenty-five.
"And I used to tell myself it mightn't be at all. My reason rebelled
against the whole notion of palmistry, just as yours does. I despised
my faith in the thing, just as you despise yours. I used to try not to
be so ridiculously careful as I was whenever I crossed a street. I
lived in London at that time. Motor-cars had not yet come in,
but--what hours, all told, I must have spent standing on curbs, very
circumspect, very lamentable! It was a pity, I suppose, that I had no
definite occupation--something to take me out of myself. I was one of
the victims of private means. There came a time when I drove in
four-wheelers rather than in hansoms, and was doubtful of
four-wheelers. Oh, I assure you, I was very lamentable indeed.
"If a railway-journey could be avoided, I avoided it. My uncle had a
place in Hampshire. I was very fond of him and of his wife. Theirs
was the only house I ever went to stay in now. I was there for a week
in November, not long after my twenty-seventh birthday. There were
other people staying there, and at the end of the week we all traveled
back to London together. There were six of us in the carriage: Colonel
Elbourn and his wife and their daughter, a girl of seventeen; and
another married couple, the Bretts. I had been at Winchester with
Brett, but had hardly seen him since that time. He was in the Indian
Civil, and was home on leave. He was sailing for India next week. His
wife was to remain in England for some months, and then join him out
there. They had been married five years. She was now just twenty-four
years old. He told me that this was her age. The Elbourns I had never
met before. They were charming people. We had all been very happy
together. The only trouble had been that on the last night, at dinner,
my uncle asked me if I still went in for 'the Gipsy business,' as he
always called it; and of course the three ladies were immensely
excited, and implored me to 'do' their hands. I told them it was all
nonsense, I said I had forgotten all I once knew, I made various
excuses; and the matter dropped. It was quite true that I had given up
reading hands. I avoided anything that might remind me of what was in
my own hands. And so, next morning, it was a great bore to me when,
soon after the train started, Mrs. Elbourn said it would be 'too cruel'
of me if I refused to do their hands now. Her daughter and Mrs. Brett
also said it would be 'brutal'; and they were all taking off their
gloves, and--well, of course I had to give in.
"I went to work methodically on Mrs. Elbourn's hands, in the usual way,
you know, first sketching the character from the backs of them; and
there was the usual hush, broken by the usual little noises--grunts of
assent from the husband, cooings of recognition from the daughter.
Presently I asked to see the palms, and from them I filled in the
details of Mrs. Elbourn's character before going on to the events in
her life. But while I talked I was calculating how old Mrs. Elbourn
might be. In my first glance at her palms I had seen that she could
not have been less than twenty-five when she married. The daughter was
seventeen. Suppose the daughter had been born a year later--how old
would the mother be? Forty-three, yes. Not less than that, poor
woman!"
Laider looked at me.
"Why 'poor woman!' you wonder? Well, in that first glance I had seen
other things than her marriage-line. I had seen a very complete break
in the lines of life and of fate. I had seen violent death there. At
what age? Not later, not possibly LATER, than forty-three. While I
talked to her about the things that had happened in her girlhood, the
back of my brain was hard at work on those marks of catastrophe. I was
horribly wondering that she was still alive. It was impossible that
between her and that catastrophe there could be more than a few short
months. And all the time I was talking; and I suppose I acquitted
myself well, for I remember that when I ceased I had a sort of ovation
from the Elbourns.
"It was a relief to turn to another pair of hands. Mrs. Brett was an
amusing young creature, and her hands were very characteristic, and
prettily odd in form. I allowed myself to be rather whimsical about
her nature, and having begun in that vein, I went on in it, somehow,
even after she had turned her palms. In those palms were reduplicated
the signs I had seen in Mrs. Elbourn's. It was as though they had been
copied neatly out. The only difference was in the placing of them; and
it was this difference that was the most horrible point. The fatal age
in Mrs. Brett's hands was--not past, no, for here SHE was. But she
might have died when she was twenty-one. Twenty-three seemed to be the
utmost span. She was twenty-four, you know.
"I have said that I am a weak man. And you will have good proof of
that directly. Yet I showed a certain amount of strength that
day--yes, even on that day which has humiliated and saddened the rest
of my life. Neither my face nor my voice betrayed me when in the palms
of Dorothy Elbourn I was again confronted with those same signs. She
was all for knowing the future, poor child! I believe I told her all
manner of things that were to be. And she had no future--none, none in
THIS world--except--
"And then, while I talked, there came to me suddenly a suspicion. I
wondered it hadn't come before. You guess what it was? It made me
feel very cold and strange. I went on talking. But, also, I went
on--quite separately--thinking. The suspicion wasn't a certainty.
This mother and daughter were always together. What was to befall the
one might anywhere--anywhere--befall the other. But a like fate, in an
equally near future, was in store for that other lady. The coincidence
was curious, very. Here we all were together--here, they and I--I who
was narrowly to escape, so soon now, what they, so soon now, were to
suffer. Oh, there was an inference to be drawn. Not a sure inference,
I told myself. And always I was talking, talking, and the train was
swinging and swaying noisily along--to what? It was a fast train. Our
carriage was near the engine. I was talking loudly. Full well I had
known what I should see in the colonel's hands. I told myself I had
not known. I told myself that even now the thing I dreaded was not
sure to be. Don't think I was dreading it for myself. I wasn't so
'lamentable' as all that--now. It was only of them that I
thought--only for them. I hurried over the colonel's character and
career; I was perfunctory. It was Brett's hands that I wanted. THEY
were the hands that mattered. If THEY had the marks-- Remember, Brett
was to start for India in the coming week, his wife was to remain in
England. They would be apart. Therefore--
"And the marks were there. And I did nothing--nothing but hold forth
on the subtleties of Brett's character. There was a thing for me to
do. I wanted to do it. I wanted to spring to the window and pull the
communication-cord. Quite a simple thing to do. Nothing easier than
to stop a train. You just give a sharp pull, and the train slows down,
comes to a standstill. And the guard appears at your window. You
explain to the guard.
"Nothing easier than to tell him there is going to be a collision.
Nothing easier than to insist that you and your friends and every other
passenger in the train must get out at once. There ARE easier things
than this? Things that need less courage than this? Some of THEM I
could have done, I dare say. This thing I was going to do. Oh, I was
determined that I would do it--directly.
"I had said all I had to say about Brett's hands. I had brought my
entertainment to an end. I had been thanked and complimented all
round. I was quite at liberty. I was going to do what I had to do. I
was determined, yes.
"We were near the outskirts of London. The air was gray, thickening;
and Dorothy Elbourn had said: 'Oh, this horrible old London! I suppose
there's the same old fog!' And presently I heard her father saying
something about 'prevention' and 'a short act of Parliament' and
'anthracite.' And I sat and listened and agreed and--"
Laider closed his eyes. He passed his hand slowly through the air.
"I had a racking headache. And when I said so, I was told not to talk.
I was in bed, and the nurses were always telling me not to talk. I was
in a hospital. I knew that; but I didn't know why I was there. One
day I thought I should like to know why, and so I asked. I was feeling
much better now. They told me by degrees that I had had concussion of
the brain. I had been brought there unconscious, and had remained
unconscious for forty-eight hours. I had been in an accident--a
railway-accident. This seemed to me odd. I had arrived quite safely
at my uncle's place, and I had no memory of any journey since that. In
cases of concussion, you know, it's not uncommon for the patient to
forget all that happened just before the accident; there may be a blank
for several hours. So it was in my case. One day my uncle was allowed
to come and see me. And somehow, suddenly, at sight of him, the blank
was filled in. I remembered, in a flash, everything. I was quite
calm, though. Or I made myself seem so, for I wanted to know how the
collision had happened. My uncle told me that the engine-driver had
failed to see a signal because of the fog, and our train had crashed
into a goods-train.
"I didn't ask him about the people who were with me. You see, there
was no need to ask.
"Very gently my uncle began to tell me, but--I had begun to talk
strangely, I suppose. I remember the frightened look of my uncle's
face, and the nurse scolding him in whispers.
"After that, all a blur. It seems that I became very ill indeed,
wasn't expected to live.
"However, I live."
There was a long silence. Laider did not look at me, nor I at him.
The fire was burning low, and he watched it.
At length he spoke:
"You despise me. Naturally. I despise myself."
"No, I don't despise you; but--"
"You blame me." I did not meet his gaze. "You blame me," he repeated.
"Yes."
"And there, if I may say so, you are a little unjust. It isn't my
fault that I was born weak."
"But a man may conquer his weakness."
"Yes, if he is endowed with the strength for that."
His fatalism drew from me a gesture of disgust.
"Do you really mean," I asked, "that because you didn't pull that cord,
you COULDN'T have pulled it?"
"Yes."
"And it's written in your hands that you couldn't?"
He looked at the palms of his hands.
"They are the hands of a very weak man," he said.
"A man so weak that he cannot believe in the possibility of free will
for himself or for any one?"
"They are the hands of an intelligent man, who can weigh evidence and
see things as they are."
"But answer me: Was it foreordained that you should not pull that cord?"
"It was foreordained."
"And was it actually marked in your hands that you were not going to
pull it?"
"Ah, well, you see, it is rather the things one IS going to do that are
actually marked. The things one isn't going to do,--the innumerable
negative things,--how could one expect THEM to be marked?"
"But the consequences of what one leaves undone may be positive?"
"Horribly positive. My hand is the hand of a man who has suffered a
great deal in later life."
"And was it the hand of a man DESTINED to suffer?"
"Oh, yes. I thought I told you that."
There was a pause.
"Well," I said, with awkward sympathy, "I suppose all hands are the
hands of people destined to suffer."
"Not of people destined to suffer so much as _I_ have suffered--as I
still suffer."
The insistence of his self-pity chilled me, and I harked back to a
question he had not straightly answered.
"Tell me: Was it marked in your hands that you were not going to pull
that cord?"
Again he looked at his hands, and then, having pressed them for a
moment to his face, "It was marked very clearly," he answered, "in
THEIR hands."
Two or three days after this colloquy there had occurred to me in
London an idea--an ingenious and comfortable doubt. How was Laider to
be sure that his brain, recovering from concussion, had REMEMBERED what
happened in the course of that railway-journey? How was he to know
that his brain hadn't simply, in its abeyance, INVENTED all this for
him? It might be that he had never seen those signs in those hands.
Assuredly, here was a bright loophole. I had forthwith written to
Laider, pointing it out.
This was the letter which now, at my second visit, I had found
miserably pent on the letter-board. I remembered my promise to rescue
it. I arose from the retaining fireside, stretched my arms, yawned,
and went forth to fulfil my Christian purpose. There was no one in the
hall. The "shower" had at length ceased. The sun had positively come
out, and the front door had been thrown open in its honor. Everything
along the sea-front was beautifully gleaming, drying, shimmering. But
I was not to be diverted from my purpose. I went to the letter-board.
And--my letter was not there! Resourceful and plucky little thing--it
had escaped! I did hope it would not be captured and brought back.
Perhaps the alarm had already been raised by the tolling of that great
bell which warns the inhabitants for miles around that a letter has
broken loose from the letter-board. I had a vision of my envelop
skimming wildly along the coast-line, pursued by the old, but active,
waiter and a breathless pack of local worthies. I saw it outdistancing
them all, dodging past coast-guards, doubling on its tracks, leaping
breakwaters, unluckily injuring itself, losing speed, and at last, in a
splendor of desperation, taking to the open sea. But suddenly I had
another idea. Perhaps Laider had returned?
He had. I espied afar on the sands a form that was recognizably, by
the listless droop of it, his. I was glad and sorry--rather glad,
because he completed the scene of last year; and very sorry, because
this time we should be at each other's mercy: no restful silence and
liberty for either of us this time. Perhaps he had been told I was
here, and had gone out to avoid me while he yet could. Oh weak, weak!
Why palter? I put on my hat and coat, and marched out to meet him.
"Influenza, of course?" we asked simultaneously.
There is a limit to the time which one man may spend in talking to
another about his own influenza; and presently, as we paced the sands,
I felt that Laider had passed this limit. I wondered that he didn't
break off and thank me now for my letter. He must have read it. He
ought to have thanked me for it at once. It was a very good letter, a
remarkable letter. But surely he wasn't waiting to answer it by post?
His silence about it gave me the absurd sense of having taken a
liberty, confound him! He was evidently ill at ease while he talked.
But it wasn't for me to help him out of his difficulty, whatever that
might be. It was for him to remove the strain imposed on myself.
Abruptly, after a long pause, he did now manage to say:
"It was--very good of you to--to write me that letter." He told me he
had only just got it, and he drifted away into otiose explanations of
this fact. I thought he might at least say it was a remarkable letter;
and you can imagine my annoyance when he said, after another interval,
"I was very much touched indeed." I had wished to be convincing, not
touching. I can't bear to be called touching.
"Don't you," I asked, "think it IS quite possible that your brain
invented all those memories of what--what happened before that
accident?"
He drew a sharp sigh.
"You make me feel very guilty."
"That's exactly what I tried to make you NOT feel!"
"I know, yes. That's why I feel so guilty."
We had paused in our walk. He stood nervously prodding the hard wet
sand with his walking-stick.
"In a way," he said, "your theory was quite right. But--it didn't go
far enough. It's not only possible, it's a fact, that I didn't see
those signs in those hands. I never examined those hands. They
weren't there. _I_ wasn't there. I haven't an uncle in Hampshire,
even. I never had."
I, too, prodded the sand.
"Well," I said at length, "I do feel rather a fool."
"I've no right even to beg your pardon, but--''
"Oh, I'm not vexed. Only--I rather wish you hadn't told me this."
"I wish I hadn't had to. It was your kindness, you see, that forced
me. By trying to take an imaginary load off my conscience, you laid a
very real one on it."
"I'm sorry. But you, of your own free will, you know, exposed your
conscience to me last year. I don't yet quite understand why you did
that."
"No, of course not. I don't deserve that you should. But I think you
will. May I explain? I'm afraid I've talked a great deal already
about my influenza, and I sha'n't be able to keep it out of my
explanation. Well, my weakest point--I told you this last year, but it
happens to be perfectly true that my weakest point--is my will.
Influenza, as you know, fastens unerringly on one's weakest point. It
doesn't attempt to undermine my imagination. That would be a forlorn
hope. I have, alas! a very strong imagination. At ordinary times my
imagination allows itself to be governed by my will. My will keeps it
in check by constant nagging. But when my will isn't strong enough
even to nag, then my imagination stampedes. I become even as a little
child. I tell myself the most preposterous fables, and--the trouble
is--I can't help telling them to my friends. Until I've thoroughly
shaken off influenza, I'm not fit company for any one. I perfectly
realize this, and I have the good sense to go right away till I'm quite
well again. I come here usually. It seems absurd, but I must confess
I was sorry last year when we fell into conversation. I knew I should
very soon be letting myself go, or, rather, very soon be swept away.
Perhaps I ought to have warned you; but--I'm a rather shy man. And
then you mentioned the subject of palmistry. You said you believed in
it. I wondered at that. I had once read Desbarolles's book about it,
but I am bound to say I thought the whole thing very great nonsense
indeed."
"Then," I gasped, "it isn't even true that you believe in palmistry?"
"Oh, no. But I wasn't able to tell you that. You had begun by saying
that you believed in palmistry, and then you proceeded to scoff at it.
While you scoffed I saw myself as a man with a terribly good reason for
NOT scoffing; and in a flash I saw the terribly good reason; I had the
whole story--at least I had the broad outlines of it--clear before me."
"You hadn't ever thought of it before?" He shook his head. My eyes
beamed. "The whole thing was a sheer improvisation?"
"Yes," said Laider, humbly, "I am as bad as all that. I don't say that
all the details of the story I told you that evening were filled in at
the very instant of its conception. I was filling them in while we
talked about palmistry in general, and while I was waiting for the
moment when the story would come in most effectively. And I've no
doubt I added some extra touches in the course of the actual telling.
Don't imagine that I took the slightest pleasure in deceiving you.
It's only my will, not my conscience, that is weakened after influenza.
I simply can't help telling what I've made up, and telling it to the
best of my ability. But I'm thoroughly ashamed all the time."
"Not of your ability, surely?"
"Yes, of that, too," he said, with his sad smile. "I always feel that
I'm not doing justice to my idea."
"You are too stern a critic, believe me."
"It is very kind of you to say that. You are very kind altogether.
Had I known that you were so essentially a man of the world, in the
best sense of that term, I shouldn't have so much dreaded seeing you
just now and having to confess to you. But I'm not going to take
advantage of your urbanity and your easy-going ways. I hope that some
day we may meet somewhere when I haven't had influenza and am a not
wholly undesirable acquaintance. As it is, I refuse to let you
associate with me. I am an older man than you, and so I may without
impertinence warn you against having anything to do with me."
I deprecated this advice, of course; but for a man of weakened will he
showed great firmness.
"You," he said, "in your heart of hearts, don't want to have to walk
and talk continually with a person who might at any moment try to
bamboozle you with some ridiculous tale. And I, for my part, don't
want to degrade myself by trying to bamboozle any one, especially one
whom I have taught to see through me. Let the two talks we have had be
as though they had not been. Let us bow to each other, as last year,
but let that be all. Let us follow in all things the precedent of last
year."
With a smile that was almost gay he turned on his heel, and moved away
with a step that was almost brisk. I was a little disconcerted. But I
was also more than a little glad. The restfulness of silence, the
charm of liberty--these things were not, after all, forfeit. My heart
thanked Laider for that; and throughout the week I loyally seconded him
in the system he had laid down for us. All was as it had been last
year. We did not smile to each other, we merely bowed, when we entered
or left the dining-room or smoking-room, and when we met on the
wide-spread sands or in that shop which had a small and faded but
circulating library.
Once or twice in the course of the week it did occur to me that perhaps
Laider had told the simple truth at our first interview and an
ingenious lie at our second. I frowned at this possibility. The idea
of any one wishing to be quit of ME was most distasteful. However, I
was to find reassurance. On the last evening of my stay I suggested,
in the small smoking-room, that he and I should, as sticklers for
precedent, converse. We did so very pleasantly. And after a while I
happened to say that I had seen this afternoon a great number of
sea-gulls flying close to the shore.
"Sea-gulls?" said Laider, turning in his chair.
"Yes. And I don't think I had ever realized how extraordinarily
beautiful they are when their wings catch the light."
Laider threw a quick glance at me and away from me.
"You think them beautiful?"
"Surely."
"Well, perhaps they are, yes; I suppose they are. But--I don't like
seeing them. They always remind me of something--rather an awful
thing--that once happened to me."
IT was a very awful thing indeed.
[Transcriber's Note: I have closed contractions in the text, e.g.,
"does n't" has become "doesn't" etc.; in addition, on page 18,
paragraph 3, line 5, I have changed "Dyott" to "Dyatt".]