"Her story," said Ross, aiming his cigar-end at a phosphorescent patch of ocean, "was discreditable enough to be true." He drew an immense red handkerchief from the pocket of his pyjamas, and wiped his extensive forehead, muttering, "As far as a woman ever tells the truth about herself."
I sat on in silence waiting for the epigrams to end and the narrative to begin.
It was a stifling night off the East Coast of Africa. A wind that blew from the Equator and followed a crowded ship made sleep impossible. Nightly it drove Ross and myself on deck to spend the intolerable hours in talk.
I did not know much about Ross; no one on board did. A big man with a walrus moustache and a bald head, he had joined the vessel at an unusual East Coast port with few possessions—a rifle or two, and a green kit bag. His preposterous opinions were enunciated with the precise utterance of a spinster, and punctuated by pulls at a virulent black cigar. He knew men and cities; he knew Africa at its heart, where are neither men nor cities.
Our mutual acquaintanceship exhausted, we had drifted to anecdotes of the improbabilities that happen daily in that improbable continent.
"You can never tell what the most normal folk will do," he had said. "One of the most charming girls I know—in three weeks she and her husband had reduced the Decalogue to ribbons...." He broke off, and I had difficulty in inducing him to begin again.
"The girl," he said at last, between puffs of his cigar, "came to me for advice. This implied no particular compliment to my wisdom, since I was the only disinterested white man for a hundred miles. I told her that only fools gave advice, and only wise men took it.
'God knows I'm not wise,' she said, 'but I'd do anything to...'
'My dear, I'll do my best,' I said when I saw that she did not mean to finish her sentence, 'but even for that I must hear a bit more.' She looked at me a little startled, then threw up her chin and plunged into her story. And, as I said, by most standards, it did her little enough credit. Unless courage covers as much as charity. Courage is even needed for a proud woman to tell a man whom she'd met half a dozen times the full story of her ... 'indiscretions' shall we call them?" He paused and seemed to ponder the qualities and failings of his heroine. "Still, most of the other animals have courage," he added. "And no doubt if she was to stay sane, she had to get things clear in her own head. Anyhow, she spared me no detail or digression in the telling of her deplorable history."
Ross got up and walked heavily to the rail where he stood staring down at the sea, which parted before our bows with the sound and motion of split silk. His voice came to me a little muted by the night.