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for that kind of thing. What kind of thing, you ask? Why, the inquiry
thing, the yellow-dog thing--you wouldn't think a mangy, native tyke
would be allowed to trip up people in the verandah of a magistrate's
court, would you?--the kind of thing that by devious, unexpected, truly
diabolical ways causes me to run up against men with soft spots, with
hard spots, with hidden plague spots, by Jove! and loosens their tongues
at the sight of me for their infernal confidences; as though, forsooth,
I had no confidences to make to myself, as though--God help me!--I
didn't have enough confidential information about myself to harrow my
own soul till the end of my appointed time. And what I have done to be
thus favoured I want to know. I declare I am as full of my own concerns
as the next man, and I have as much memory as the average pilgrim in
this valley, so you see I am not particularly fit to be a receptacle of
confessions. Then why? Can't tell--unless it be to make time pass away
after dinner. Charley, my dear chap, your dinner was extremely good, and
in consequence these men here look upon a quiet rubber as a tumultuous
occupation. They wallow in your good chairs and think to themselves,
"Hang exertion. Let that Marlow talk."
'Talk? So be it. And it's easy enough to talk of Master Jim, after a
good spread, two hundred feet above the sea-level, with a box of decent
cigars handy, on a blessed evening of freshness and starlight that would
make the best of us forget we are only on sufferance here and got to
pick our way in cross lights, watching every precious minute and every
irremediable step, trusting we shall manage yet to go out decently in
the end--but not so sure of it after all--and with dashed little help to
expect from those we touch elbows with right and left. Of course there
are men here and there to whom the whole of life is like an after-dinner
hour with a cigar; easy, pleasant, empty, perhaps enlivened by some
fable of strife to be forgotten before the end is told--before the end
is told--even if there happens to be any end to it.
'My eyes met his for the first time at that inquiry. You must know
that everybody connected in any way with the sea was there, because the
affair had been notorious for days, ever since that mysterious cable
message came from Aden to start us all cackling. I say mysterious,
because it was so in a sense though it contained a naked fact, about
as naked and ugly as a fact can well be. The whole waterside talked
of nothing else. First thing in the morning as I was dressing in my
state-room, I would hear through the bulkhead my Parsee Dubash jabbering
about the Patna with the steward, while he drank a cup of tea,
by favour, in the pantry. No sooner on shore I would meet some
acquaintance, and the first remark would be, "Did you ever hear of
anything to beat this?" and according to his kind the man would smile
cynically, or look sad, or let out a swear or two. Complete strangers
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