"It has been said," he went on, keeping the key, "that I am a man of courage, but I find that I need a good deal of that just now. I have been rude to you, and without warrant, and I offer you my humble apologies." He fumbled with his cravat as if it had suddenly tightened. "Will you accept?"
"Instantly." Elsa understood the quality of courage that had stirred the colonel.
"Thanks."
But ruthlessly: "I should, however, like your point of view in regard to what you consider my conduct."
"Is it necessary?"
"I believe it would be better for my understanding if you made a full confession." She did not mean to be relentless, but her curiosity was too strong not to press her advantage.
"Well, then, over here as elsewhere in the world there are standards by which we judge persons who come under our notice."
"Agreed. Individuality is not generally understandable."
"By the mediocre, you might have added. That"s the difficulty with individuality; it refuses to be harnessed by mediocrity, and mediocrity holds the whip-hand, always. I represent the mediocre."
"Oh, never!" said Elsa animatedly. "Mediocrity is always without courage."
"You are wrong. It has the courage of its convictions."
"Rather is it not stubbornness, wilful refusal to recognize things as they are?"
He countered the question with another. "Supposing we were all individuals, in the sense you mean? Supposing each of us did exactly as he pleased? Can you honestly imagine a more confusing place than this world would be? The Manchurian pony is a wild little beast, an individual if ever there was one; but man tames him and puts to use his energies. And so it is with human individuality. We of the mediocre tame it and harness and make it useful to the general welfare of humanity. And when we encounter the untamable, in order to safeguard ourselves, we must turn it back into the wilderness, an outlaw.
Indeed, I might call individuality an element, like fire and water and air."
"But who conquer fire and water and air?" Elsa demanded, believing she had him pocketed.
"Mediocrity, through the individual of this or that being. Humanity in the bulk is mediocre. And odd as it seems, individuality (which is another word for genius) believes it leads mediocrity. But it can not be made to understand that mediocrity ordains the leadership."
"Then you contend that in the hands of the stupid lies the balance of power?"
"Let us not say stupid, rather the unimaginative, the practical and the plodding. The stubbornest person in the world is one with an idea."
"Do you honestly insist that you are mediocre?"
"No," thoughtfully. "I am one of those stubborn men with ideas. I merely insist that I prefer to accept the tenets of mediocrity for my own peace and the peace of others."
Elsa forgot those about her, forgot her intended humiliation of the man at her side. He denied that he was an individual, but he was one, as interesting a one as she had met in a very long time. She, too, had made a blunder. Quick to form opinions, swift to judge, she stood guilty with the common lot, who permit impressions instead of evidence to sway them. Here was a man.
"We have gone far afield," she said, a tacit admission that she could not refute his dissertations. This knowledge, however, was not irksome.
"Rather have we not come to the bars? Shall we let them down?"
"Proceed."
"In the civil and military life on this side of the world there are many situations which we perforce must tolerate. But these, mind you, are settled conditions. It is upon new ones which arise that we pa.s.s judgment. I knew nothing about you, nothing whatever. So I judged you according to the rules."
Elsa leaned upon her elbows, and she smiled a little as she noted that the purple had gone from his nose and that it had resumed its accustomed rubicundity.
"I go on. A woman who travels alone, who does not present letters of introduction, who . . ."
"Who attends strictly to her own affairs. Go on."
"Who is young and beautiful."
"A sop! Thanks!"
Imperturbably he continued: "Who seeks the acquaintance of men who do not belong, as you Americans say."
"Not men; one man," she corrected.
"A trifling difference. Well, it arouses a disagreeable word, suspicion. For look, there have been examples. It isn"t as if yours were an isolated case. There have been examples, and these we apply to such affairs as come under our notice."
"And it doesn"t matter that you may be totally wrong?"
His prompt answer astonished her. "No, it does not matter in the least. Simmered down, it may be explained in a word, appearances. And I must say, to the normal mind . . ."
"The mediocre mind."
"To the normal and mediocre mind, appearances were against you.
Observe, please, that I did not know I was wrong, that you were a remarkable young woman. My deductions were made from what I saw as an outsider. On the Irrawaddy you made the acquaintance of a man who came out here a fugitive from justice. After you made his acquaintance, you sought none other, in fact, repelled any advances. This alone decided me."
"Then you were decided?" To say that this blunt exposition was not bitter to her taste, that it did not act like acid upon her pride, would not be true. She was hurt, but she did not let the hurt befog her sense of justice. From his point of view the colonel was in no fault. "Let me tell you how very wrong you were indeed."
"Doubtless," he hastily interposed, "you enveloped the man in a cloud of romance."
"On the contrary, I spoke to him and sought his companionship because he was nothing more nor less than a ghost."
"Ah! Is it possible that you knew him in former times?"
"No. But he was so like the man at home; so identical in features and build to the man I expected to go home to marry. . . ."
"My dear young lady, you are right. Mediocrity is without imagination, stupid, and makes the world a dull place indeed. Like the man you expect to marry! What woman in your place would have acted otherwise?
And I have made my statements as bald and brutal as an examining magistrate! Instead of one apology I offer a thousand."
"I accept each and all of them. More, I believe that you and I could get on capitally. I can very well imagine the soldier you used to be.
I am going to ask you what you know about Mr. Warrington."
"This, that he is not a fit companion for a young woman like yourself; that a detractable rumor follows hard upon his heels wherever he goes.
I learned something about him in Rangoon. He is known to the riff-raff as Parrot & Co., and I don"t know what else. All of us on shipboard learned his previous history."
"Ah!" She was quite certain of the historian. "And not from respectable quarters, either."
"If I had been elderly and without physical attractions?" Elsa inquired sarcastically.
"We are dealing with human nature, mediocrity, and not with speculation. It is in the very nature of things to distrust that which we do not understand. You say, old and without physical attractions.
Beauty is of all things most drawing. We crowd about it, we crown it, we flatter it. The old and unattractive we pa.s.s by. If I had not seen you here to-night, heard you talk, saw in a kind of rebellious enchantment over your knowledge of the world and your distinguished acquaintance, I should have gone to my grave believing that my suspicions were correct. I dare say that I shall make the same mistake again."