“You ask me how I came by my hurts,” he said. “Well, listen to the story of this most laughable butt of Fortune. It is soon told.”
He passed his hand across his forehead.
“It has been my doom to serve Nature; to worship her through those visible concentrations of her light upon individuals whom we call geniuses. How I discovered too late that her preferences were arbitrary, fanciful, often unworthy; that her signal gifts could be used to stultify her own creed of natural faith, natural justice, natural order, let these witness and call me fool.”
He jerked up his poor stumps so comically that I could not help laughing.
“Ay,” he said, “a tragic prolegomena to the history of a Dutch tumbler, isn’t it? Well, for the text. It was at Oxford that I met and worshipped my first genius. He was a man of great family, an inspired naturalist, an unerring shot and rare sportsman. In those early days we had already planned an expedition together to the unexplored North Western ‘Rockies,’ for the purpose of making such a collection of their flora and fauna as should bring us wealth and reputation. Though the world of Nature seemed even too cramped a stage for my boundless lust of life, the prospect of those unspeakable teeming solitudes, inviting all that was most strenuous in me to conquer, was a certain solace in itself. My soul sought territory; it seeks it still; and, though I be what I am, the stars, this poor earth once subdued, still enter into my plan of campaign.
“I was not rich. When the time came, I had to realise all my capital to sail with my friend. We reached, after considerable hardships, the Athabasca territory, and thence started on our exploration westwards. I soon found that my comrade, though a genius in comparative analysis and definition, lacked the physique necessary to the task we had set ourselves. He was often ailing and querulous, and the gathering of the specimens practically devolved upon me. Still, we had garnered and classified a considerable harvest in one of the little settlements of the Fur Company, before the accident befell which was to deprive me for ever of the fruits of my devotion. We were one day duck-shooting over a lake, when the ice broke and my friend was plunged in frozen water to the knees. His frantic cries brought me hurriedly to his assistance. By the greatest good fortune a little gravelly shallow had received us; but, inasmuch as this shelved away acutely on every side, our desperate scrambles to escape only let us into deeper water. There was nothing for it but to stay where we were till rescue could reach us from the shore, and so we set ourselves to endure. Not long, on my companion’s part. He soon complained that he must die unless relieved. He was frail and spare, and I only something less than a giant. I took him first into my arms, then upon my shoulders, designing to hold him so until succour came. It reached us in the shape of some Indians from the shore, who pushed a canoe towards us over the ice. But by then I was stark frozen, and my legs to the knees insensible. By chance there was an ex-medical student in the settlement, who turned what rough knowledge of surgery was his to the best account he was able. One of my legs was mortified beyond recovery; and this he amputated. The other, after incredible suffering, was saved to me. For weeks, however, I was kept knocking at death’s door; and, when at length I could creep from under the shadow, it was to the knowledge of an anguish more cruel than the other. This man, this genius, whom I had given so much to save, had deserted me while I lay stricken, and, carrying with him all the rare accumulations of our enterprise, had gone south to Vancouver. There was no message left, no consideration for me in all his vile philosophy of self-interest. It was just a case of treacherous abandonment.
“When I was sufficiently recovered, I pursued him by tedious heart-breaking stages, long months in their accomplishment. I will not weary you, you thing of thoughtless life, with their particulars. I was sustained, and only sustained, through all by the thought of wresting from this scientific egoist an acknowledgment of my share in the practical success of our expedition. At last, poor, friendless, crippled, I ran him to earth in London. I found him there, his name writ famous in the annals of the Royal Society; himself the honoured recipient of its gold medal; his collection—our collection—already on view in the hallowed precincts of Crane Street.
“I faced, and upbraided him with his treachery. He retorted coldly that he had never considered me but as the servant of his enterprise, useless to it when once, through my own folly, disabled. I found a friend, and the affair made a little stir. To my accusations he answered that he had employed, but had been forced to discard me, through the irregularity of my habits. Outraged beyond words, I challenged him; he accepted, and we met at Richmond. His first shot, aimed with diabolical ingenuity, shattered the bones of my sound knee; and, in the result, the limb had to be amputated above. When I was discharged from the hospital, it was to find the exhibition closed, the town empty, and myself thrust upon it, a helpless, destitute hulk.
“The friend I have mentioned, humorous and good-natured, came to my assistance. He commanded some pale interest at Court. By means of it, he procured me, as an expert naturalist, the post of Royal Ratcatcher, in succession to a Mr. Gower, who had lately filled the office at a yearly salary of one hundred pounds. The royal economy, however, docked me, as only two-thirds of a man, of a third of the sum. I wore a uniform of scarlet and yellow worsted, with emblematic figures of rats destroying wheat-sheaves embroidered on it; and in this I stood, the laughing-stock of the maids of honour, for three years.
“At the end of that time, having had the misfortune to overlook a rat which had made its nest in a pair of the Duke of Cumberland’s state breeches, I was dismissed without a character. Again I applied to my friend, and was recommended by him, for my scientific attainments, to a French nobleman, who was troubled by the croaking of frogs in his ponds, and employed me to whip the water all night with a long wand of willow that his rest might be undisturbed. But the constant immersion rotting my stumps, and he refusing to supply me with others, I was obliged to resign my post, and returned to England.