"It is an amiable but disastrous illusion on the part of thewestern nations that they have created a monopoly in freedom andtruth and the right conduct of life."—Mr. Spenlove
DEDICATORY
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
There is an hour or so before the train comes puffing round the curve ofthe Gulf from Cordelio, and you are gone down into the garden for awhile because the mosquitoes become tiresome later, and the greatshadows of the cypresses are vanishing as the sun sinks behind thepurple islands beyond the headlands. You will stay there for a whileamong the roses and jasmine, and then you will come in and say: "Thereit is!" And together we will slip and stumble and trot down the steephillside to the level-crossing, and we will run along to the littlestation, so like ours in America. And when the train is come creakingand groaning and squealing to a standstill, I shall climb in, while youwill stand for a moment looking.... You will wave as we start with theusual prodigious jerk, and then you will run back and climb up to thehouse again, banging the big iron gate securely shut....
All just as before.
But this time there is this difference, that I am not coming back. I amordered to return to England, and I am to sail to-morrow morning. Now,as I have told you more than once, it is very difficult to know just howanything takes you because you have at your command an alluringimmobility, a sort of sudden static receptiveness which is, to anEnglishman, a Westerner that is, at once familiar and enigmatic. Andwhen one has informed you, distinctly if ungrammatically, in threelanguages, that one is going away for good, and you assume for a momentthat aforementioned immobility, and murmur "C'est la guerre," I askyou, what is one to think?
And perhaps you will recall that you then went on brushing your hairprecisely as though I had made some banal remark about the weather. Adetached observer would say—"This woman has no heart. She is too stupidto understand." However, as I am something more than a detachedobserver, I know that in spite of that gruff, laconic attitude of yours,that enigmatic immobility, you realize what this means to us, to me, toyou.
So, while you are down in the garden, and the light is still quite goodby this western window, I am writing this for you. As we say over inAmerica, "Let me tell you something." I have written a book, and I amdedicating it to you. As you are aware, I have written books before.When I explained this to you you were stricken with that suddensilence, that attentive seriousness, if you remember, and re