Уильям Моэм - The Narrow Corner

“But that cable,” said the doctor. “How did they manage to get the death certificate?”

“I know no more than you do. I’ve been trying to puzzle it out. I didn’t enter the hospital as myself, I was told to call myself Blake. I’ve been asking myself if someone else didn’t go in as me. They’d done all they could in the papers to pretend there wasn’t an epidemic, but there was, and the hospital was crowded. The nurses were just run off their feet, and there was a lot of confusion. It’s pretty clear that someone died and was buried in my place. Father’s clever, you know, and he wouldn’t stick at much.”

“I think I should like to meet your father,” said Dr. Saunders.

“It’s struck me that perhaps people got suspicious. After all we must have been seen about together, and they may have started asking questions. I expect the police went into it all pretty thoroughly. I daresay father thought it safer to have me die. I expect he got a lot of sympathy.”

“It may be that’s why she hanged herself,” said the doctor.

Fred started violently.

“How did you know that?”

“I read it in the paper Erik Christessen brought the other night from Frith’s.”

“Did you know it was anything to do with me?”

“No, not till you began to tell me. Then I remembered the name.”

“It gave me an awful turn when I read it.”

“Why d’you think she did it?”

“It said in the paper she’d been worried by malicious gossip. I don’t think father would be satisfied till he got even with her. D’you know, I think the thing that made him see red was that she’d wanted to marry into his family. He must have got a lot of pleasure when he told her I was dead. She was horrible, and I hated her, but, by God, she must have loved me to do that.” Fred hesitated for a moment reflectively. “Father knew the whole story. I shouldn’t put it past him to tell her that I’d confessed before my death and the police were going to arrest her.”

Dr. Saunders slowly nodded. It seemed to him a pretty device. He only wondered that the woman had adopted such an unpleasant means of death as hanging. Of course it looked as though she were in a hurry to do what she intended. Fred’s supposition seemed very plausible.

“Anyway, she’s out of it,” said Fred. “And I’ve got to go on.”

“You surely don’t regret her?”

“Regret her? She’s ruined my life. And the rotten thing is that the whole thing happened by the merest chance. I never intended to have an affair with her. I wouldn’t have touched her if I’d known she was going to take it seriously. If father had let me go out fishing that Sunday, I shouldn’t even have met her. I don’t know what to make of anything. And except for that I should never have come to this blasted island. I seem to bring misfortune wherever I go.”

“You should put a little vitriol on your handsome face,” said the doctor. “You are certainly a public danger.”

“Oh, don’t sneer at me. I’m so awfully unhappy. I’ve never cared for a chap like I cared for Erik. I shall never forgive myself for his death.”

“Don’t think he killed himself on your account. You had very little to do with that. Unless I’m greatly mistaken, he killed himself because he couldn’t survive the shock of finding out that the person whom he’d endowed with every quality and every virtue was, after all, but human. It was madness on his part. That’s the worst of being an idealist; you won’t accept people as they are. Wasn’t it Christ who said, ‘Forgive them, for they know not what they do’?”

Fred stared at him with perplexed and haggard eyes.

“But you’re not a religious man, are you?”

“Sensible men are all of the same religion. And what is that? Sensible men never tell.”

“My father wouldn’t say that. He’d say that sensible men don’t go out of their way to give offence. He’d say, it looks well to go to church and you must respect the prejudices of your neighbours. He’d say, what is the good of getting off the fence when you can sit on it very comfortably? Nichols and I have talked about it all. You wouldn’t believe it, but he can talk about religion by the hour. It’s funny, I’ve never met a meaner crook, or a man who had less idea of decency, and yet he honestly believes in God. And hell, too. But it never strikes him that he may go there. Other people are going to suffer for their sins and serve ’em damn well right. But he’s a stout fellow, he’s all right, and when he does the dirty on a friend it isn’t of any importance; it’s what anyone would do under the circumstances, and God isn’t going to hold that up against him. At first I thought he was just a hypocrite. But he isn’t. That’s the odd thing about it.”

“It shouldn’t make you angry. The contrast between a man’s professions and his actions is one of the most diverting spectacles that life offers.”

“You look at it from the outside and you can laugh, but I look at it from the in, and I’m a ship that’s lost its bearings. What does it all mean? Why are we here? Where are we going? What can we do?”

“My dear boy, you don’t expect me to answer, do you? Ever since men picked up a glimmer of intelligence in the primeval forests, they’ve been asking those questions.”

“What do you believe?”

“Do you really want to know? I believe in nothing but myself and my experience. The world consists of me and my thoughts and my feelings; and everything else is mere fancy. Life is a dream in which I create the objects that come before me. Everything knowable, every object of experience, is an idea in my mind, and without my mind it does not exist. There is no possibility and no necessity to postulate anything outside myself. Dream and reality are one. Life is a connected and consistent dream, and when I cease to dream, the world, with its beauty, its pain and sorrow, its unimaginable variety, will cease to be.”

“But that’s quite incredible,” cried Fred.

“That is no reason for me to hesitate to believe it,” smiled the doctor.

“Well, I’m not prepared to be made a fool of. If life won’t fulfil the demands I make on it, then I have no use for it. It’s a dull and stupid play, and it’s only waste of time to sit it out.”

The doctor’s eyes twinkled and a grin puckered his ugly little face.

“Oh, my dear boy, what perfect nonsense you talk. Youth, youth! You’re a stranger in the world yet. Presently, like a man on a desert island, you’ll learn to do without what you can’t get and make the most of what you can. A little common–sense, a little tolerance, a little good humour, and you don’t know how comfortable you can make yourself on this planet.”

“By giving up all that makes life worth while. Like you. I want life to be fair. I want life to be brave and honest. I want men to be decent and things to come right in the end. Surely that’s not asking too much, is it?”

“I don’t know. It’s asking more than life can give.”

“Don’t you mind?”

“Not much.”

“You’re content to wallow in the gutter.”

“I get a certain amount of fun from watching the antics of the other creatures that dwell there.”

Fred gave his shoulder an angry shrug and a sigh was wrung from him.

“You believe nothing. You respect nobody. You expect man to be vile. You’re a cripple chained to a bath–chair and you think it’s just stuff and nonsense that anyone should walk or run.”

“I’m afraid you don’t very much approve of me,” the doctor suggested mildly.

“You’ve lost heart, hope, faith and awe. What in God’s name have you got left?”

“Resignation.”

The young man jumped to his feet.