Really, he was absolutely broken. The insidious disease was continuing its damnable work. From Honolulu they picked up a charter for the Philippines. When they arrived in Manila, he was absolutely bald, bald as I saw him now. "No hair, no brows, no lashes; bald, ludicrous, ignoble, unclean!" He raised one finger; the boy ran to him; he sipped the green liquor.
But he did not stop there. He began it again, the lamentable tale, with new details, with inexorable precision. He was a long time on a description of his departed hair. A wealth of adjectives, subtle and splendid, came to his lips without effort. He found new, caressing words, as a mother speaking of her dead babe. And one got no impression of vanity from it, either. It was something past now, extraneous, so irrevocably detached from him that he could speak of it without egotism. He dwelled again upon his happiness—the Western College, the silvery hills, the rose-covered cottage. "And then there was——"
Again he stopped, and again, when he resumed, I had the impression of something vital left out. It was this, I think, that kept me at it; for every night, now, I heard it, the odious story, with an augmentation of details, a progressive firmness of construction. He'd begin with his gray spot and run the whole gamut of his pilous degradation. I grew infinitely weary of it, but there was the secret, the secret still held from me. It was exasperation at this continuous evasion, I think, coupled with invincible lassitude at the old tale, that led me, one night, madly to exclaim:
"Yes, yes, Dickson; but the girl, the girl; tell me about the girl now!"
By his sudden start, by his affrighted stare, I knew that I had hit it, absolutely hit it. Oh, no, I don't take much credit for that. Cherchez la femme; divested of the cynicism placed upon it by its makers, this precept is fundamental in the game of human analysis.
There was a She—yes, there was. A young girl (he's far from old himself, remember, in spite of his pate); an angel. He loved her; she loved him. She had a precious gift of imagination. He had hoped, under his critical guidance, to see it bloom into something—a talent, a genius, perhaps. But now——
"Man, man!" I almost screamed; "you fool, you imbecile; why don't you go back, go back to her? What the deuce is it, this more or less vegetation upon your head, when you have that, that of all things precious, when you have Love, Love, man!"
I was furious with him. I talked in the same vein, very extravagantly, no doubt. I gesticulated; I shouted. He listened quietly, a considering frown over his browless eyes.
No, it could not be; it could not be. I didn't understand, couldn't understand. He had left when it began. I couldn't understand. He used to walk with her in the evening. He was working hard those days; at night he'd be tired. They'd stroll gently up a canyon (Co-ed Canyon, I think he called it). They'd sit in the grass. He'd rest his head on her shoulder. Then she'd stroke that tired head, run her light fingers through his——
"Man, man!" he shouted; "imagine that, now. Imagine me there once more, and she, with that familiar gesture, that sacred gesture, running her fingers——"