Part 22 (1/2)

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 splas.h.i.+ng 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 cla.s.s, 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 G.o.d 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 mult.i.tudinous 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?

G.o.d 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-cla.s.s pa.s.senger 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 fict.i.tious 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 G.o.d 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 mult.i.tudinous seas would do would they change his imagined color, or would they suddenly darken, matching in their tints his own discoloration?

AN OLD-WORLD SCRUPLE

'If you come back, which Heaven ordain, you'll be all the more use to the priesthood,' the Superintendent of Missions said. 'Go and serve with our fearless and faithful, approach as an acolyte the altar of freedom. Supposing you don't see your way to go, I would remind you of a certain pa.s.sage about ”Curse ye Meroz!” I need not insult your knowledge of the Scriptures by finis.h.i.+ng my quotation.'