'In the bath-room there never seemed to be enough water. I want to try a bath with plenty of water. But I am afraid it may be with me as it would have been with Macbeth or Lady Macbeth. Those red hands of murder could not be washed white by the ocean, they could only "the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red." What if I cannot be decolorized by any sea? What if my flesh only pollutes the sea, when I plunge, and makes all black? God help me!!! You are a negrophile and don't half understand.
'Yours truly,
'J. CARRAWAY.'
I questioned the steward. He had found the letter in my place at table.
Sure enough there was a third-class passenger missing. I suppose Carraway had slipped off quietly in the moonlight to try his desperate experiment. It was a cruel business his monomania.
If I had broken my promise and called the doctor earlier, could he have been cured? Or would he have lingered in an asylum shuddering over the fictitious glooming of his nails and skin, shaking in a long ague of negrophoby.
Anyhow, I'm sorry I didn't do more for him, didn't walk him round the deck the last night at least, and try my best to cheer him. Yes, I blame myself badly for not doing that.
May God who allowed his delusion pardon that last maneuver of his! I do not think Carraway had any clear wish to take his own life.
I can imagine the scene so convincingly Carraway pausing, hesitating, then plunging into the moon-blanched water from the dizzy height above, eager to find which the multitudinous seas would do would they change his imagined color, or would they suddenly darken, matching in their tints his own discoloration?