PROLOGUE
It is a cause of very great regret to me that this task has taken somuch longer a time than I had expected for its completion. It isnow many months--over a year, in fact--since I wrote to Georgetownannouncing my intention of publishing, IN A VERY FEW MONTHS, the wholetruth about Mr. Abel. Hardly less could have been looked for from hisnearest friend, and I had hoped that the discussion in the newspaperswould have ceased, at all events, until the appearance of the promisedbook. It has not been so; and at this distance from Guiana I was notaware of how much conjectural matter was being printed week by week inthe local press, some of which must have been painful reading to Mr.Abel's friends. A darkened chamber, the existence of which had neverbeen suspected in that familiar house in Main Street, furnishedonly with an ebony stand on which stood a cinerary urn, its surfaceornamented with flower and leaf and thorn, and winding through it allthe figure of a serpent; an inscription, too, of seven short words whichno one could understand or rightly interpret; and finally the disposalof the mysterious ashes--that was all there was relating to an untoldchapter in a man's life for imagination to work on. Let us hope thatnow, at last, the romance-weaving will come to an end. It was, however,but natural that the keenest curiosity should have been excited; notonly because of that peculiar and indescribable charm of the man, whichall recognized and which won all hearts, but also because of that hiddenchapter--that sojourn in the desert, about which he preserved silence.It was felt in a vague way by his intimates that he had met with unusualexperiences which had profoundly affected him and changed the course ofhis life. To me alone was the truth known, and I must now tell, brieflyas possible, how my great friendship and close intimacy with him cameabout.
When, in 1887, I arrived in Georgetown to take up an appointment in apublic office, I found Mr. Abel an old resident there, a man of meansand a favourite in society. Yet he was an alien, a Venezuelan, oneof that turbulent people on our border whom the colonists have alwayslooked on as their natural enemies. The story told to me was that abouttwelve years before that time he had arrived at Georgetown from someremote district in the interior; that he had journeyed alone on footacross half the continent to the coast, and had first appeared amongthem, a young stranger, penniless, in rags, wasted almost to a skeletonby fever and misery of all kinds, his face blackened by long exposureto sun and wind. Friendless, with but little English, it was a hardstruggle for him to live; but he managed somehow, and eventually lettersfrom Caracas informed him that a considerable property of which he hadbeen deprived was once more his own, and he was also invited to returnto his country to take his part in the government of the Republic. ButMr. Abel, though young, had already outlived political passions andaspirations, and, apparently, even the love of his country; at allevents, he elected to stay where he was--his enemies, he would saysmilingly, were his best friends--and one of the first uses he made ofhis fortune was to buy that house in Main Street which was afterwardslike a home to me.
I must state here that my friend's full name was Abel Guevez deArgensola, but in his early days in Georgetown he was called by hisChristian name only, and later he wished to be known simply as "Mr.Abel."
I had no sooner made his acquaintance than I ceased to wonder at theesteem and even affection with which he, a Venezuelan, was regarded inthis British colony. All knew and liked him, and the reason of it wasthe personal charm of the man, his kindly disposition, his manner withwomen, which pleased them and excited no man's jealousy--not eventhe old hot-tempered planter's, with a very young and pretty andlight-headed wife--his love of little children, of all wild creatures,of nature, and of whatsoever was furthest removed from the commonmaterial interests and concerns of a purely commercial community.The things which excited other men--politics, sport, and the price ofcrystals--were outside of his thoughts; and when men had done withthem for a season, when like the tempest they had "blown their fill" inoffice and club-room and house and wanted a change, it was a relief toturn to Mr. Abel and get him to discourse of his world--the world ofnature and of the spirit.
It was, all felt, a good thing to have a Mr. Abel in Georgetown. Thatit was indeed good for me I quickly discovered. I had certainlynot expected to meet in such a place with any person to share mytastes--that love of poetry which has been the chief passion and delightof my life; but such a one I had found in Mr. Abel. It surprised methat he, suckled on the literature of Spain, and a reader of only ten ortwelve years of English literature, possessed a knowledge of our modernpoetry as intimate as my own, and a love of it equally great. Thisfeeling brought us together and made us two--the nervous olive-skinnedHispano-American of the tropics and the phlegmatic blue-eyed Saxon ofthe cold north--one in spirit and more than brothers. Many were thedaylight hours we spent together and "tired the sun with talking"; many,past counting, the precious evenings in that restful house of his whereI was an almost daily guest. I had not looked for such happiness; nor,he often said, had he. A result of this intimacy was that the vague ideaconcerning his hidden past, that some unusual experience had profoundlyaffected him and perhaps changed the whole course of his life, did notdiminish, but, on the contrary, became accentuated, and was often inmy mind. The change in him was almost painful to witness whenever ourwandering talk touched on the subject of the aborigines, and of theknowledge he had acquired of their character and languages whenliving or travelling among them; all that made his conversation mostengaging--the lively, curious mind, the wit, the gaiety of spirittinged with a tender melancholy--appeared to fade out of it; even theexpression of his face would change, becoming hard and set, and he woulddeal you out facts in a dry mechanical way as if reading them in a book.It grieved me to note this, but I dropped no hint of such a feeling, andwould never have spoken about it but for a quarrel which came at last tomake the one brief solitary break in that close friendship of years.I got into a bad state of health, and Abel was not only much concernedabout it, but annoyed, as if I had not treated him well by being ill,and he would even say that I could get well if I wished to. I did nottake this seriously, but one morning, when calling to see me at theoffice, he attacked me in a way that made me downright angry with him.He told me that indolence and the use of stimulants was the cause ofmy bad health. He spoke in a mocking way, with a presence of not quitemeaning it, but the feeling could not be wholly disguised. Stung by hisreproaches, I blurted out that he had no right to talk to me, evenin fun, in such a way. Yes, he said, getting serious, he had the bestright--that of our friendship. He would be no true friend if he kept hispeace about such a matter. Then, in my haste, I retorted that to me thefriendship between us did not seem so perfect and complete as it did tohim. One condition of friendship is that the partners in it should beknown to each other. He had had my whole life and mind open to him, toread it as in a book. HIS life was a closed and clasped volume to me.
His face darkened, and after a few moments' silent reflection he got upand left me with a cold good-bye, and without that hand-grasp which hadbeen customary between us.
After his departure I had the feeling that a great loss, a greatcalamity, had befallen me, but I was still smarting at his too candidcriticism, all the more because in my heart I acknowledged its truth.And that night, lying awake, I repented of the cruel retort I had made,and resolved to ask his forgiveness and leave it to him to determinethe question of our future relations. But he was beforehand with me, andwith the morning came a letter begging my forgiveness and asking me togo that evening to dine with him.
We were alone, and during dinner and afterwards, when we sat smoking andsipping black coffee in the veranda, we were unusually quiet, even togravity, which caused the two white-clad servants that waited on us--thebrown-faced subtle-eyed old Hindu butler and an almost blue-black youngGuiana Negro--to direct many furtive glances at their master's face.They were accustomed to see him in a more genial mood when he had afriend to dine. To me the change in his manner was not surprising: fromthe moment of seeing him I had divined that he had determined to openthe shut and clas
ped volume of which I had spoken--that the time had nowcome for him to speak.