He

began to understand dimly—and with an extraordinary excitement of

happiness.

“Well—and the bigness?” I asked, seizing on a practical point

after listening to his dreaming, “what do you make of that? It must

have had some definite cause surely?”

He turned and fixed his light blue eyes on mine as we paced beside

the Serpentine that summer afternoon when I first heard the story

told. He was half grave, half laughing.

“The size, the bulk, the bigness,” he replied, “must have been in

reality the expression of some mental quality that reached me

psychically, producing its effect directly on my mind and not upon the

eyes at all.” In telling the story he used a simile omitted in the

writing of it, because his sense of humour perceived that no possible

turn of phrase could save it from grotesqueness when actually it was

far from grotesque— extraordinarily pathetic rather: “As though,” he

said, “the great back and shoulders carried beneath the loose black

cape— humps, projections at least; but projections not ugly in

themselves, comely even in some perfectly natural way, that lent to

his person this idea of giant size. His body, though large, was normal

so far as its proportions were concerned. In his spirit, though, there

hid another shape. An aspect of that other shape somehow reached my

mind.”

Then, seeing that I found nothing at the moment to reply, he

added:

“As an angry man you may picture to yourself as red, or a jealous

man as green!” He laughed aloud. “D’ye see, now? It was not really a

physical business at all!”

IV

“We think with only a small part of the past, but it is with

our entire past, including the original bent of our soul, that

we desire, will, and act.”—HENRI BERGSON.

THE balance of his fellow-passengers were not distinguished. There

was a company of French tourists gong to Naples, and another lot of

Germans bound for Athens, some business folk for Smyrna and

Constantinople, and a sprinkling of Russians going home via Odessa,

Batoum, or Novorossisk.

In his own state-room, occupying the upper berth, was a little

round-bodied, red-faced Canadian drummer, “travelling” in

harvest-machines. The name of the machine, its price, and the terms

of purchase were his universe; he knew them in several languages;

beyond them, nothing. He was good-natured, conceding anything to save

trouble. “D’ye mind the light for a bit while I read in bed?” asked

O’Malley. “Don’t mind anything much,” was the cheery reply. “I’m not

particular; I’m easy-going and you needn’t bother.” He turned over to

sleep. “Old traveller,” he added, his voice muffled by sheets and

blankets, “and take things as they come.” And the only objection

O’Malley found in him was that he took things as they came to the

point of not taking baths at all, and not even taking all his garments

off when he went to bed.

The Captain, whom he knew from previous voyages, a genial,

rough-voiced sailor from Sassnitz, chided him for so nearly missing

the boat—”as usual.”

“You’re too late for a seat at my taple,” he said with his

laughing growl; “it’s a pidy. You should have led me know py

telegram, and I then kepd your place. Now you find room at the

doctor’s taple howefer berhaps … !”

“Steamer’s very crowded this time,” O’Malley replied, shrugging

his shoulders; “but you’ll let me come up sometimes for a smoke with

you on the bridge?”

“Of course, of course.”

“Anybody interesting on board?” he asked after a moment’s pause.

The jolly Captain laughed. “‘Pout the zame as usual, you know.

Nothing to stop ze ship! Ask ze doctor; he knows zooner than me. But,

anyway, the nice ones, they get zeazick always and dizappear. Going

Trebizond this time?” he added.

“No; Batoum.”

“Ach! Oil?”

“Caucasus generally—up in the mountains a bit.”

“God blenty veapons then, I hope. They shoot you for two pfennig

up there!” And he was off with his hearty deep laugh and rather

ponderous briskness towards the bridge.

Thus O’Malley found himself placed for meals at the right hand of

Dr. Stahl; opposite him, on the doctor’s left, a talkative Moscow

fur-merchant who, having come to definite conclusions of his own about

things in general, was persuaded the rest of the world must share

them, and who delivered verbose commonplaces with a kind of pontifical

utterance sometimes amusing, but usually boring; on his right a

gentle-eyed, brown-bearded Armenian priest from the Venice monastery

that had sheltered Byron, a man who ate everything except soup with

his knife, yet with a daintiness that made one marvel, and with hands

so graceful they might almost have replaced the knife without off

offence. Beyond the priest sat the rotund Canadian drummer. He kept

silence, watched the dishes carefully lest anything should escape him,

and—ate.