Except a Man Be Born Again He Cannot See

  A. V. Laider

By MAX BEERBOHM

Writer of "Enoch Soames," "Zuleika Dobson," etc.

I UNPACKED my things and went downwardly to expect luncheon.

It was expert to be here again in this trivial erstwhile sleepy hostel by the bounding main. Hostel I say, though it spelt itself without an "s" and even placed a circumflex in a higher place the "o." It made no other pretension. It was very cozy indeed.

I had been here just a year earlier, in mid-Feb, afterwards an attack of influenza. And now I had returned, afterward an set on of influenza. Nothing was changed. Information technology had been raining when I left, and the waiter-- in that location was but a single, a very old waiter--had told me it was just a shower. That waiter was still here, not a day older. And the shower had not ceased.

Steadfastly it fell on to the sands, steadfastly into the iron-gray sea. I stood looking out at it from the windows of the hall, admiring it very much. There seemed to be little else to practice. What trivial at that place was I did. I mastered the contents of a bluish hand-nib which, pinned to the wall just beneath the framed engraving of Queen Victoria's Coronation, gave token of a concert that was to be held--or, rather, was to have been held some weeks ago--in the town hall for the benefit of the Life-Gunkhole Fund. I looked at the barometer, tapped it, was not the wiser. I wandered to the letter-board.

These letter-boards always fascinate me. Unremarkably some two or three of the envelops stuck into the cross-garterings take a sure newness and freshness. They seem certain they volition all the same exist claimed. Why not? Why shouldn't John Doe, Esq., or Mrs. Richard Roe turn upwardly at whatsoever moment? I exercise non know. I can but say that cipher in the world seems to me more than unlikely. Thus it is that these young bright envelops impact my eye fifty-fifty more than do their dusty and sallowed seniors. Sour resignation is less touching than impatience for what will non exist, than the eagerness that has to wane and wither. Soured across measure these quondam envelops are. They are not well-nigh and then nice as they should exist to the young ones. They lose no risk of sneering and discouraging. Such dialogues every bit this are only too frequent:

A Very Young Envelop: Something in me whispers that he will come to-day!

A Very Sometime Envelop: He? Well, that'southward skilful! Ha, ha, ha! Why didn't he come up last week, when you came? What reason have you for supposing he'll ever come now? It isn't as if he were a frequenter of the place. He's never been here. His name is utterly unknown here. Y'all don't suppose he's coming on the chance of finding you?

A. Five. Y. E.: Information technology may seem silly, only--something in me whispers--

A. V. O. Due east.: Something in yous? 1 has only to await at you to see there'southward null in you merely a note scribbled to him by a cousin. Expect at me! At that place are three sheets, closely written, in me. The lady to whom I am addressed--

A. V. Y. E.: Yes, sir, yes; yous told me all nigh her yesterday.

A. V. O. East.: And I shall practise so to-day and to-morrow and every day and all day long. That young lady was a widow. She stayed hither many times. She was delicate, and the air suited her. She was poor, and the tariff was just within her means. She was lone, and had need of love. I accept in me for her a passionate avowal and strictly honorable proposal, written to her, after many crude copies, past a admirer who had made her acquaintance under this very roof. He was rich, he was charming, he was in the prime of life. He had asked if he might write to her. She had flutteringly granted his request. He posted me to her the day later on his return to London. I looked forward to being torn open by her. I was very sure she would vesture me and my contents next to her bust. She was gone. She had left no address. She never returned. This I tell you, and shall go on to tell you, not considering I desire whatever of your callow sympathy,--no, thank you!--but that you may estimate how much less than slight are the probabilities that you lot yourself--

But my reader has overheard these dialogues as often as I. He wants to know what was odd about this item letter-lath before which I was continuing. At kickoff glance I saw nothing odd about it. Only presently I distinguished a handwriting that was vaguely familiar. It was mine. I stared, I wondered. At that place is ever a slight shock in seeing an envelop of one'due south own afterwards it has gone through the mail. It looks as if it had gone through then much. But this was the first time I had ever seen an envelop of mine eating its middle out in chains on a letter-board. This was outrageous. This was hardly to be believed. Sheer kindness had impelled me to write to "A. V. Laider, Esq.," and this was the result! I hadn't minded receiving no answer. Only now, indeed, did I remember that I hadn't received one. In multitudinous London the retention of A. 5. Laider and his trouble had soon passed from my mind. But--well, what a lesson non to go out of ane's way to write to casual acquaintances!

My envelop seemed not to recognize me as its writer. Its gaze was the more piteous for being bare. However had I once been gazed at past a domestic dog that I had lost and, later many days, establish in the Battersea Home. "I don't know who you are, but, whoever you are, claim me, take me out of this!" That was my dog's entreatment. This was the appeal of my envelop.

I raised my hand to the letter-board, meaning to effect a swift and lawless rescue, but paused at sound of a step behind me. The quondam waiter had come to tell me that my dejeuner was fix. I followed him out of the hall, not, however, without a bright glance across my shoulder to reassure the piffling captive that I should come back.

I had the precipitous appetite of the convalescent, and this the sea air had whetted already to a effectively border. In touch with a dozen oysters, and with stout, I soon shed abroad the unreasoning anger I had felt against A. V. Laider. I became just deplorable for him that he had not received a letter which might peradventure have comforted him. In impact with cutlets, I felt how sorely he had needed comfort. And anon, by the large brilliant fireside of that minor dark smoking-room where, a year ago, on the last evening of my stay here, he and I had at length spoken to each other, I reviewed in detail the tragic experience he had told me; and I simply reveled in reminiscent sympathy with him.

A. 5. LAIDER--I had looked him up in the visitors'-book on the night of his inflow. I myself had arrived the day before, and had been rather deplorable there was no one else staying here. A convalescent past the sea likes to have some i to observe, to wonder about, at meal-time. I was glad when, on my second evening, I found seated at the tabular array opposite to mine another guest. I was the gladder because he was but the right kind of guest. He was enigmatic. By this I hateful that he did not look soldierly or financial or artistic or anything definite at all. He offered a clean slate for speculation. And, give thanks heaven! he evidently wasn't going to spoil the fun by engaging me in conversation later on. A decently unsociable man, anxious to be left alone.

The heartiness of his ambition, in dissimilarity with his farthermost fragility of aspect and limpness of demeanor, assured me that he, also, had just had influenza. I liked him for that. Now and once again our optics met and were instantly parted. Nosotros managed, as a rule, to detect each other indirectly. I was sure it was non only because he had been sick that he looked interesting. Nor did information technology seem to me that a spiritual melancholy, though I imagined him sad at the all-time of times, was his sole asset. I conjectured that he was clever. I thought he might too be imaginative. At first glance I had mistrusted him. A shock of white hair, combined with a young face and dark eyebrows, does somehow make a man look like a charlatan. But information technology is foolish to be guided by an blow of color. I had presently rejected my start impression of my young man-diner. I institute him very sympathetic.

Anywhere but in England information technology would exist incommunicable for two solitary men, howsoever much reduced by influenza, to spend five or six days in the same hostel and not substitution a single give-and-take. That is one of the charms of England. Had Laider and I been built-in and bred in whatsoever other land than Eng we should have become acquainted earlier the terminate of our first evening in the small smoking-room, and have found ourselves irrevocably committed to continue talking to each other throughout the rest of our visit. Nosotros migh

t, it is truthful, have happened to like each other more whatsoever ane we had ever met. This off chance may take occurred to us both. Merely it counted for nothing against the sure surrender of quietude and liberty. We slightly bowed to each other every bit nosotros entered or left the dining-room or smoking-room, and as nosotros met on the wide-spread sands or in the shop that had a small and faded circulating library. That was all. Our mutual aloofness was a positive bond betwixt u.s..

Had he been much older than I, the responsibility for our silence would of course have been his lonely. Merely he was not, I judged, more than than 5 or half dozen years ahead of me, and thus I might without impropriety have taken it on myself to perform that hard and perilous feat which English people call, with a shiver, "breaking the ice." He had reason, therefore, to be as grateful to me every bit I to him. Each of the states, not the less frankly because silently, recognized his obligation to the other. And when, on the terminal evening of my stay, the ice actually was cleaved there was no sick-will between us: neither of united states was to blame.

Information technology was a Sunday evening. I had been out for a long last walk and had come in very late to dinner. Laider had left his table almost directly after I sat down to mine. When I entered the smoking-room I found him reading a weekly review which I had bought the day earlier. It was a crunch. He could not silently offer nor could I have silently accustomed, half-dozen-pence. It was a crisis. We faced information technology like men. He made, by word of mouth, a svelte apology. Verbally, not by signs, I besought him to go on reading. Only this, of course, was a vain counsel of perfection. The social code forced us to talk now. We obeyed it similar men. To reassure him that our position was non so desperate as it might seem, I took the earliest opportunity to mention that I was going abroad early adjacent morning time. In the tone of his "Oh, are you?" he tried bravely to imply that he was deplorable, fifty-fifty now, to hear that. In a way, perhaps, he really was deplorable. We had got on so well together, he and I. Nothing could efface the retention of that. Nay, we seemed to be hitting it off even now. Influenza was not our sole theme. We passed from that to the aforesaid weekly review, and to a correspondence that was raging therein on organized religion and reason.

This correspondence had at present reached its fourth and penultimate phase--its Australian stage. It is hard to see why these correspondences spring up; one only knows that they practise spring up, suddenly, similar street crowds. There comes, it would seem, a moment when the whole English language-speaking race is unconsciously bursting to have its say about some i matter--the split infinitive, or the habits of migratory birds, or faith and reason, or what-not. Whatsoever weekly review happens at such a moment to comprise a reference, still remote, to the theme in question reaps the storm. Gusts of letters come in from all corners of the British Isles. These are presently reinforced by Canada in full boom. A few weeks afterwards the Anglo-Indians weigh in. In due form we have the assist of our Australian cousins. By that time, still, we of the female parent country accept got our second current of air, and then determined are nosotros to make the most of it that at concluding even the editor suddenly loses patience and says, "This correspondence must now terminate.--Ed." and wonders why on earth he ever allowed anything so tedious and idiotic to begin.

I pointed out to Laider one of the Australian letters that had especially pleased me in the current issue. It was from "A Melbourne Man," and was of the abrupt kind which declares that "all your correspondents take been groping in the dark" and and then settles the whole matter in one short precipitous flash. The flash in this instance was "Reason is organized religion, religion reason--that is all nosotros know on world and all we demand to know." The writer then inclosed his card and was, etc., "A Melbourne Man." I said to Laider how very restful it was, after influenza, to read anything that meant nothing whatsoever. Laider was inclined to take the letter of the alphabet more seriously than I, and to be mildly metaphysical. I said that for me organized religion and reason were two separate things, and as I am no expert at metaphysics, however balmy, I offered a definite example, to coax the talk on to ground where I should exist safer.

"Palmistry, for example," I said. "Deep downwards in my heart I believe in palmistry."

Laider turned in his chair.

"You lot believe in palmistry?"

I hesitated.

"Yes, somehow I practise. Why? I haven't the slightest notion. I can give myself all sorts of reasons for laughing it to scorn. My common sense utterly rejects information technology. Of form the shape of the hand means something, is more than or less an index of graphic symbol. Simply the idea that my by and future are neatly mapped out on my palms--" I shrugged my shoulders.

"You don't like that idea?" asked Laider in his gentle, rather academic voice.

"I only say it'due south a grotesque idea."

"All the same y'all do believe in it?"

"I've a grotesque belief in it, yep."

"Are y'all sure your reason for calling this idea 'grotesque' isn't merely that you dislike it?"

"Well," I said, with the thrilling hope that he was a companion in applesauce, "doesn't it seem grotesque to yous?"

"It seems strange."

"You believe in it?"

"Oh, admittedly."

"Hurrah!"

He smiled at my pleasure, and I, at the risk of reëntanglement in metaphysics, claimed him equally standing shoulder to shoulder with me against "A Melbourne Man." This claim he gently disputed.

"You may think me very prosaic," he said, "just I can't believe without bear witness."

"Well, I'm as prosaic and equally at a disadvantage: I tin't accept my own belief as evidence, and I've no other bear witness to go on."

He asked me if I had ever made a study of palmistry. I said I had read one of Desbarolles's books years ago, and one of Heron-Allen'due south. But, he asked, had I tried to test them by the lines on my ain easily or on the hands of my friends? I confessed that my actual practice in palmistry had been of a simply passive kind--the prompt extension of my palm to any 1 who would be so good as to "read" information technology and truckle for a few minutes to my egoism. (I hoped Laider might do this.)

"And so I almost wonder," he said, with his sad smile, "that you oasis't lost your conventionalities, after all the nonsense you must have heard. There are so many young girls who go in for palmistry. I am sure all the five foolish virgins were 'awfully keen on it' and used to say, 'You tin be led, only not driven,' and, 'You are likely to have a serious illness between the ages of xl and forty-five,' and, 'You are by nature rather lazy, just can be very energetic by fits and starts.' And almost of the professionals, I'chiliad told, are as silly as the young girls."

For the honor of the profession, I named three practitioners whom I had found really expert at reading graphic symbol. He asked whether any of them had been right near past events. I confessed that, as a matter of fact, all three of them had been correct in the primary. This seemed to amuse him. He asked whether any of them had predicted anything which had since come true. I confessed that all three had predicted that I should do several things which I had since washed rather unexpectedly. He asked if I didn't accept this as, at whatsoever rate, a scrap of prove. I said I could only regard it every bit a fluke--a rather remarkable fluke.

The superiority of his sad grin was beginning to go on my nerves. I wanted him to see that he was as absurd as I.

"Suppose," I said--"suppose, for the sake of argument, that you and I are nothing but helpless automata created to do only this and that, and to take just that and this done to us. Suppose, in fact, we oasis't whatsoever free will any. Is it probable or conceivable that the Power which fashioned us would take the problem to jot down in zero on our hands only what was in store for u.s.a.?"

Laider did non answer this question; he did but annoyingly ask me another.

"You believe in free will?"

"Yes, of course. I'll be hanged if I'chiliad an automaton."

"And you believe in costless will just every bit in palmistry--without whatever reason?"

"Oh, no. Everything points to our having free will."

"Everything? What, for instance?"

This rather cornered me. I dodged out, as lightly as I could, by proverb:

"I suppose y'all would say information technology's written in my hand that I should be a believer in gratis will."

"Ah, I've no dubiety it is."

I held out my palms. Simply, to my bang-up disappointment, he looked quickly away from them. He had ceased to smiling. There was agitation in his voice as he explained that he never looked at people's easily now. "Never now--never once more." He shook his caput as though to beat off some retentiveness.

I was much embarrassed by my indiscretion. I hastened to tide over the awkward moment by maxim that if I could read hands I wouldn't, for fright of the awful things I might encounter in that location.

"Awful things, yes," he whispered, nodding at the burn down.

"Not," I said in cocky-defense, "that there's anything very awful, so far as I know, to be read in my hands."

He turned his gaze from the fire to me.

"You aren't a murderer, for example?"

"Oh, no," I replied, with a nervous laugh.

"I am."

This was a more than awkward, information technology was a painful, moment for me; and I am afraid I must have started or winced, for he instantly begged my pardon.

"I don't know," he exclaimed, "why I said it. I'k usually a very reticent man. But sometimes--" He pressed his brow. "What you must call up of me!"

I begged him to dismiss the affair from his listen.

"It'south very good of you to say that; only--I've placed myself as well as you in a false position. I ask you lot to believe that I'm not the sort of man who is 'wanted' or e'er was 'wanted' past the police. I should exist bowed out of any police-station at which I gave myself up. I'k not a murderer in any bald sense of the word. No."

My face must have perceptibly brightened, for, "Ah," he said, "don't imagine I'thousand not a murderer at all. Morally, I am." He looked at the clock. I pointed out that the nighttime was young. He assured me that his story was not a long one. I bodacious him that I hoped it was. He said I was very kind. I denied this. He warned me that what he had to tell might rather tend to stiffen my unwilling faith in palmistry, and to milkshake my reverse and cherished organized religion in gratis will. I said, "Never heed." He stretched his hands pensively toward the fire. I settled myself back in my chair.

"My easily," he said, staring at the backs of them, "are the easily of a very weak human. I dare say y'all know enough of palmistry to see that for yourself. You lot observe the slightness of the thumbs and of he two 'little' fingers. They are the easily of a weak and over-sensitive man--a man without confidence, a man who would certainly waver in an emergency. Rather Hamletish hands," he mused. "And I'm like Hamlet in other respects, too: I'm no fool, and I've rather a noble disposition, and I'1000 unlucky. Just Village was luckier than I in one thing: he was a murderer by accident, whereas the murders that I committed one twenty-four hours fourteen years agone--for I must tell you it wasn't i murder, merely many murders that I committed--were all of them due to the wretched inherent weakness of my own wretched self.

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