That Eurasian

by Aleph Bey

I took my departure. Dine! Take dinner! I felt as if I never wanted to eat again. I had rather gone to death. I wandered towards the railway station. I almost cursed my insatiable curiosity for leading me to that wretched place, of which I always had such a dread of seeing. We can see evil enough, and misery to the full, as we pass along, without rummaging around to find it. I had taken the bit in my teeth in spite of my reason, of my good sense, and I was wilfully making my own evil destiny. We are all mostly fools at times, and most of us all the time. I was bewildered, weary, sick in my very soul. I tried to think of other things, but the black nightmare that had come, would not away. “What next? What next?” some coco demon kept torturing me in asking. I had so much of the past, not of the remote, but of the recent past, to think of, rather to feel, that I could take no thought of the future.

I was in a condition of a traveler, who, after a toilsome journey of months comes to an immense stream, where there is neither bridge, nor boats, nor ferryman. He can neither retrace his steps, or go forward, and sits down in abject despair. I reached home, and hardly knew how I passed the next few days.

I took to my books, but my old friends were either very dull, or sleeping, or dreaming, and failed to take any interest in me. I rode out to my villages, on my fresh horses, and they gave me a good shaking up. The villagers failed to please me, as they formerly did. Evidently the times were out of joint, or I was, or something. We’ll leave it at the latter. Would you believe it, that in a few days, when I was just recovering from that fearful wide awake dream, and had called myself a fool a score of times for ever venturing to that place in Lucknow, that had been the dread of my life; that one morning the question came right to me, “Why not go again, and find out all about that Mr. Smith?”

I was in the garden at the time, and I must have called out something terrible at myself, for all the malies came running to know what I wanted. I concluded I must be going daft, and to save appearances, told them that they must keep the walks cleaner, or I would cut their wages. I saw the nonsense of this, for there was not a weed or a blade of grass to be seen, and the paths were as smooth as a bald man’s head. But I was ready to break or cut something, I could not tell what or where.

The question came again and again, and would not down, and the result was that I was on my way again to Lucknow. I knew what I was going for. I was Japhet in search of his father. But why? Yes, why? I have often wondered why people do certain things, even to their own hurt. I have put the question to them, and the answer was: “They couldn’t help it.” There seems to be a tide in the affairs of men, and often a big flood tide that carries them whether they will or not. Good, old Æneas was impelled by fate, and so it seems are all other men. I was going, I knew that, impelled to go, and all the time calling myself a fool. I might be going to my degradation, my death, my damnation, yet I must go. Men will worry their lives away in trying to invent some powder to blow other men to bits, yet knowing all the time, ten chances to one, they may blow their own heads off first, yet they keep on trying. But what is the use of any further explanation when everybody knows what I mean, that when the devil of curiosity takes possession of us, as it did of our mother Eve, as the story goes, we do not think of consequences.

I went directly to the bungalow of M. Le Maistre, and he received me most cordially. I told him that I came to look up the record of that Mr. Smith, as every one ought to have some interest in his paternal parent. He looked at me with a peculiar expression on his face, showing that he thought me a queer lot, but it was not in his French blood to say anything to hurt my feelings.

He suggested we go to the cutchery, court house, which we did at once. He knew the head clerks, and they would tell us everything. And they did. I often think these natives know especially what they ought not to know. I went on purpose to learn something, but in my secret soul I wished they were as ignorant as mules, and could tell me nothing.

Smith Sahib, they said, had gone home, to Wilayat, from Lucknow, on furlough, had married, and returning had been assistant at some place, and then magistrate at, alas! my station, and then commissioner at Jalalpur.

The whole story came out in a sentence. I then knew too much. I restrained my feelings as I was becoming hardened as a criminal who commits crime upon crime.

I did not care to think, and if I was ever thankful for a man who could talk, I was then. My friend was a whole mill stream of talk. The gate once opened, on he went. It was not idle or dull chatter either, but a flood of good things, interesting and amusing. I yielded entirely to his good humor, and the blue devils had no chance of attacking me. I dined with him, as my reason told me that this was the best thing I could do, and so it was.