Уильям Моэм - The Narrow Corner

With a deft movement of his lower lip Frith sucked the remains of his soup off his little grey moustache.

“It’s a matter of temperament, I suppose. Compromise has never appealed to me. I have had other fish to fry.”

“Someone else caught ’em for you, I bet,” said old Swan, with a little snicker of senile glee. “Bone–idle, that’s what you are, George. Had a dozen jobs in your time and never kept one of them.”

Frith gave Dr. Saunders an indulgent smile. It said as clearly as if he had spoken that it was mightily absurd to hurl such charges at a man who had spent twenty years in the study of the highly metaphysical thought of the Hindus and in whom in all probability dwelt the spirit of a celebrated Portuguese poet.

“My life has been a journey in search of truth and there can be no compromise with truth. The Europeans ask what is the use of truth, but for the thinkers of India it is not a means but an end. Truth is the goal of life. Years ago I used sometimes to hanker for the world I had left behind me. I would go down to the Dutch club and look at the illustrated papers, and when I saw pictures of London my heart ached. But now I know that it is only the recluse who enjoys the civilisation of cities to the full. At long last I have learnt that it is we exiles from life who get most value from it. For the way of knowledge is the true way and that way passes every door.”

But at that moment, three chickens, the scrawny, pallid, tasteless chickens of the East, were set before him. He rose from his chair and seized a carving knife.

“Ah, the duties and ceremonies of the householder,” he said cheerfully.

Old Swan had been sitting silent, hunched up in his chair like a little gnome. He ate his soup greedily. Suddenly, in his thin cracked voice, he began to speak:

“I spent seven years in New Guinea, I did. I spoke every language they spoke in New Guinea. You go to Port Moresby and ask ’em about Jack Swan. They remember me. I was the first white man ever walked across the island. Moreton did it afterwards, unarmed, with a walking stick, but he had his police with him. I did it by meself. Everyone thought I was dead, and when I walked into town they thought I was a ghost. Been shooting birds of paradise, we had, my mate and me, a New Zealander he was, been a bank–manager and got into some mess–up, we had our own cutter and we sailed along the coast from Merauke. Got a lot of birds. Worth a mint of money they was then. We was very friendly with the natives, used to give them a drink now and then, and a stick of tobacco. One day I’d been out shooting by myself and I was coming back to the cutter, I was just going to give my mate a shout to come and fetch me in the dinghy when I see some natives on it. We never allowed them to come on board, and I thought something was up. So I just hid myself and stood there looking. I didn’t half like the look of it. I crept along very quiet and I saw the dinghy pulled up on the beach. I thought my mate had come ashore and some of them natives had swum out to the cutter. I thought I wouldn’t half give them what for. And then I bumped against something. My God, it did give me a turn. D’you know what it was? It was my mate’s body, with the head cut off, and all a mass of blood from the wounds in his back. I didn’t wait to see no more. I knew I’d go the same way if they caught me. They was waiting for me on the cutter, that’s what they was doing. I’d got to get away and I’d got to get away damned quick. Rare time I had getting across. The things that happened to me! You could write a book about it. One old fellow, chief of a big village he was, took quite a fancy to me, wanted to adopt me and give me a couple of wives, said I’d be chief after him. I was nippy with my hands when I was a young fellow, having been a sailor and all that. I knew a lot. Nothing I couldn’t do. Three months I stayed there. If I hadn’t been a young fool I’d have stayed for good. Powerful chief he was. I might have been a king, I might. King of the Cannibal Islands.”

He ended with his high–pitched cackle and relapsed into silence; but it was a strange silence, for he seemed to notice everything that was going on around him, and yet live his own life apart. The sudden burst of reminiscence, which had no connection with anything that had been said, had a sort of automatic effect as though a machine controlled by an unseen clock at intervals uncannily shot forth a stream of patter. Dr. Saunders was puzzled by Frith. What he said was on occasion not without interest; to the doctor, indeed, sometimes striking; and yet his manner and appearance predisposed you to listen to him warily. He seemed sincere, his attitude had even nobility, but there was something in him that the doctor found disconcerting. It was odd that these two men, old Swan and Frith, the man of action and the man who had devoted his life to speculation, should have ended up there, together, on this lonely island. It looked as though it all came to very much the same in the end. The end of all the adventurer’s hazards, like the end of the philosopher’s high thoughts, was a comfortable respectability.

Frith, having to his satisfaction divided three birds among seven people, sat down again and helped himself to boiled potatoes.

“I have always been attracted by the idea of the Brahmans, that a man should devote his youth to study,” he said, turning to Dr. Saunders, “his maturity to the duties and ceremonies of a householder, and his age to abstract thought and meditation of the Absolute.”

He glanced at old Swan, hunched up in his chair and laboriously gnawing a drumstick, and then at Louise.

“It will not be very long now before I am liberated from the obligations of my maturity. Then I shall take my staff and journey out into the world in search of the knowledge which passeth all understanding.”

The doctor’s eyes had followed Frith’s, and they rested for a while on Louise. She sat at the end of the table between the two young men. Fred, as a rule, tongue–tied, was talking nineteen to the dozen. He had lost the slight sulkiness of expression that his features bore in repose and looked frank, care–free and boyish. His face was lit up by the play of his words and his desire to please lent a soft and engaging lustre to his fine eyes. Dr. Saunders, smiling, saw how taking was his charm. He was not shy with women. He knew how to amuse them and you had only to see the girl’s easy gaiety, and her animation, to know that she was happy and interested. The doctor caught snatches of his conversation; it was about the races at Randwick, bathing at Manley Beach, the cinema, the amusements of Sydney; the sort of things that young people talk to one another about and because all experience is fresh to them find so absorbing. Erik, with his great clumsy size and his massive square head, a kindly smile on his pleasantly ugly face, sat watching Fred quietly. You could see that he was glad the boy he had brought to the house was going down well. It gave him a little warm feeling of self–satisfaction that he was so charming.

When dinner was finished, Louise went up to old Swan and put her hand on his shoulder.

“Now, grandpa, you must go to bed.”

“Not before I’ve had me tot of rum, Louise.”

“Well, drink it up quick.”

She poured him out the considerable amount he wanted, while he watched the glass with cunning, rheumy eyes, and added a little water.

“Put a tune on the gramophone, Erik,” she said.

The Dane did as he was bid.

“Can you dance, Fred?” he asked.

“Can’t you?”

“No.”

Fred rose to his feet, and looking at Louise outlined a gesture of invitation. She smiled. He took her hand and put his arm round her waist. They began to dance. They made a lovely couple. Dr. Saunders, standing with Erik by the gramophone, saw to his surprise that Fred was an exquisite dancer. He had an unimaginable grace. He made his partner, not more than competent, appear to dance as well as he did. He had the gift of being able to absorb her movements into his so that she was instinctively responsive to the notions as they formed themselves in his brain. He made the fox–trot they danced a thing of the most delicate beauty.