"And how about Dina, now?" the braggart asked Truant.
"Hush! hush, man!" said Truant. "A little discretion, if you please!"
But the tipsy fop would not be shut up so quickly.
"Will you give me authority to fill the vacant place, Harry? As lawfully authorized comforter?"
"All right! All right!" said Harry Truant, to get rid of him.
But I had distinctly heard and comprehended everything. Or rather I only comprehended that by a word of authority I had suddenly obtained permission to do exactly what my body desired. The tormented body, desperate from the long struggle of serpent and eagle, now desired vengeance and destruction. The room, the gas lights, the chairs, everything in an agreeable, even pleasant fashion began to fade, to float, to wheel about — and with the silent murderous resolution that in like circumstances had characterized my forefathers of the masculine line, I clutched Harry Truant by the throat.
If these memoirs were to find an English or American publisher, it would be politic to announce here that the Englishman with his practised boxing fists with ease doubled up the Italian and knocked him into a corner, unconscious. Anything short of that the public of Rudyard Kipling would not stand for, of course. Yet I prefer to state the truth: that Harry Truant and Vico Muralto dealt each other some ugly blows that night, but without deadly consequences, and that they were with difficulty separated by those present. The challenge for a duel, as conflicting with the laws and morals of his country, was not accepted by the English officer, which at the time greatly vexed me and stamped him in my eyes as the very soul of cowardice and dishonor, but which to-day I not only excuse, but highly respect.
That same year Harry and Emmy went to India as husband and wife. Vico and his father entered upon their last journey together.
VIII
In my youth people sometimes called me a poet, and though they employed the term vaguely and at random, yet it was not wholly unjustified. For I am a destroyer of suggestion, a shatterer of the group, a wanderer from the herd, an idol-hater, but also a searcher for joy, beauty and bliss, a lover of reality; and all these are characteristics of a poet.