And Toppan knew that she would succeed. He knew that in his present mood he would make any sacrifice for her sake. He foresaw that her appeal would be too strong for him. That was, if he opened and read her letter. Just now the question was, should he do it? If he read that letter he knew that he was lost, his career would stop where it was. To be great he had only to throw it unopened into the fire; yes, but to be great without her, was it worth the while? What would fame and honour and greatness be, without her? He realised that the time had come to choose between her and his career and that it all depended upon the opening of her letter. Two hours later, he flung himself down before his table and took her letter in his hand. His fingers itched for the touch of it. Close to his elbow lay a little copper knife with poison grooves, such as are used by the Hill-tribes in the Kuen-Lun mountains. Toppan kept it for a paper cutter; just now he picked it up. For a long time he remained sitting, holding Victoria's letter in one hand, the little knife in the other. Then he put the point under the flap of the envelope and slowly cut it open.
Two weeks later the Kamtchatka Expedition sailed with Bushby in command. Toppan did not go; he was married to Victoria Boyden that Fall.
Last season I met Toppan at Coronado Beach. The world has about forgotten him now, but he is quite content as he is. He is head clerk in old Mr. Boyden's insurance office and he plays a capital game of tennis.
A Caged Lion
In front of the entrance a "spieler" stood on a starch-box and beat upon a piece of tin with a stick, and we weakly succumbed to his frenzied appeals and went inside. We did this, I am sure, partly to please the "spieler," who would have been dreadfully disappointed if we had not done so, but partly, too, to please Toppan, who was always interested in the great beasts and liked to watch them.
It is possible that you may remember Toppan as the man who married Victoria Boyden, and, in so doing, thrust his greatness from him and became a bank clerk instead of an explorer. After he married, he came to be quite ashamed of what he had done in Thibet and Africa and other unknown corners of the earth, and, after a while, very seldom spoke of that part of his life at all; or, when he did, it was only to allude to it as a passing boyish fancy, altogether foolish and silly, like calf-love and early attempts at poetry.
"I used to think I was going to set the world on fire at one time," he said once; "I suppose every young fellow has some such ideas. I only made an ass of myself, and I'm glad I'm well out of it. Victoria saved me from that."
But this was long afterward. He died hard, and sometimes he would have moments of strength in his weakness, just as before he had given up his career during a moment of weakness in his strength. During the first years after he had given up his career, he thought he was content with the way things had come to be; but it was not so, and now and then the old feeling, the love of the old life, the old ambition, would be stirred into activity again by some sight, or sound, or episode in the conventional life around him. A chance paragraph in a newspaper, a sight of the Arizona deserts of sage and cactus, a momentary panic on a ferry-boat, sometimes even fine music or a great poem would wake the better part of him to the desire of doing great things. At such times the longing grew big and troublous within him to cut loose from it all and get back to those places of the earth where there were neither months nor years, and where the days of the week had no names; where he could feel unknown winds blowing against his face and unnamed mountains rising beneath his feet; where he could see great, sandy, stony stretches of desert with hot, blue shadows, and plains of salt, and thickets of jungle-grass, broken only by the lairs of beasts and the paths the steinbok make when they go down to water.
The most trifling thing would recall all this to him, just as a couple of notes have recalled to you whole arias and overtures. But with Toppan it was as though one had recalled the arias and the overtures and then was not allowed to sing them.
We went into the arena and sat down. The ring in the middle was fenced in by a great, circular, iron cage. The tiers of seats rose around this, a band was playing in a box over the entrance, and the whole interior was lighted by an electric globe slung over the middle of the cage.