The Centaur | Page 8

of knowing where to go
and being actually en route,--all these, he felt, grew from the same
hidden cause whereof they were symptoms. It was this hidden thing in
the man that had reached out invisibly and fired his own consciousness
as their gaze met in that brief instant. And it had disturbed him so
profoundly because the very same lost thing lay buried in himself. The
man knew, whereas he anticipated merely--as yet. What was it? Why
came there with it both happiness and fear?
The word that kept chasing itself in a circle like a kitten after its own
tail, yet bringing no explanation, was Loneliness--a loneliness that must
be whispered. For it was loneliness on the verge of finding relief. And
if proclaimed too loud, there might come those who would interfere
and prevent relief. The man, and the boy too for that matter, were

escaping. They had found the way back, were ready and eager,
moreover, to show it to other prisoners.
And this was as near as O'Malley could come to explanation. 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 humor 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 stateroom, occupying the upper berth, was a little
round-bodied, red-faced Canadian drummer, "traveling" 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 traveler," 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