“Then I’d better go.”
He looked about him helplessly till his eyes fell on the old felt hat hanging on a peg. I watched him as he took it down and crammed it on his head. There was another helpless searching as if he didn’t know what he was looking for before he spied an old gnarled stick in a corner. Taking that in his hand, he fumbled his way into the living-room.
By the time I had followed him I was beginning to relent. I had not really meant to have him go, but I was not ready as yet to call him back. What Cantyre must have thought of me, what Regina must have thought of me, in egging so poor a creature on to say what I wouldn’t say myself, roused me as to a more intense degree I used to be roused on hearing of Belgian women treated with the last indignities, and Canadian soldiers crucified. Had I stopped to consider I would have seen that Regina didn’t believe it, and that Cantyre believed it only as far as it gave an outlet to his complicated inward sufferings; but I didn’t stop to consider. Perhaps I, too, was seeking an outlet for something repressed. At any rate, I let the poor old fellow go.
“What about your things?” I asked, before he had reached the door.
He turned with a certain dignity. “I sha’n’t want no things.” He added, however, “Ye do mean me to get out, Slim?”
I didn’t—but I didn’t want to tell him so. Fury had cooled down without leaving me ready to retract what I had said. I meant to go after him—when he had got as far as the lift—but I meant, too, that he should take those few bleeding steps of anguish.
He took them—not to the lift, but out into the vestibule. Then I heard a faint moan; then a sound as if something broke; and then a soft tumbling to the floor.
When I got out he was lying all in a little huddled, senseless heap, with a cut on his forehead where he had struck the key or the door-knob as he fell.
It was more than an hour before Cantyre got him back to consciousness; but it was early morning before he spoke. We had stayed with him through the night, as he had shown all the signs of passing out. His recovery of speech somewhere about dawn came as a surprise to us.
To Cantyre I had given but the slightest explanation of the accident, being sure, however, that he guessed at what I didn’t say.