‘I don’t think they chose to,’ I said. ‘I imagine they merely thought you a very rude, vulgar and ill-mannered fellow.’
‘Me?’ he cried in astonishment.
‘They are perfectly inoffensive and they have devoted their lives to what they think is the service of God, why should you gratuitously insult them?’
‘I wasn’t insultin’ them. I was only puttin’ my point of view as a rational man. I wanted to start an argument. D’you think I’ve hurt their feelings? Why, I wouldn’t do that for the world, brother.’
His surprise was so ingenuous that I laughed.
‘You’ve sneered at what they look upon as most holy. They probably think you’re a very ignorant and uneducated man; otherwise I fancy they’d think you were trying deliberately to insult them.’
His face fell. I really think he was under the impression that he had been pleasantly facetious. He looked at the old priest who was sitting in a comer reading his breviary and went up to him.
‘Father, my friend here says I hurt your feelings by what I said. I hadn’t any wish to do no such thing. I beg you to pardon me if I said anythin’ to offend you.’
The priest looked up and smiled.
‘Do not mention it, monsieur, it was of no consequence.’
‘I guess I must make up somehow, father, and if you’ll allow me I’d like to make a contribution to your fund for the poor. I’ve got a lot of piastres that I didn’t have time to change at Haiphong and if you’ll accept them you’ll be doin’ me a favour.’
Before the priest could answer he had pulled out of his trouser pocket a wad of notes and a handful of silver and put them down on the table.
‘But that is very kind of you,’ said the priest. ‘This is a large sum.’
‘Take it, it’s no good to me, I should only lose on the exchange if I turned it into real money at Hong-Kong. You’ll do me a favour by takin’ it.’
It was really a considerable amount and the priest looked at it with some embarrassment.
‘Our mission is very poor. We shall be extremely grateful. I hardly know how to thank you. I don’t know what I can do.’
‘Well, I’m an atheist, father, but if you like to remember me in your prayers next time you say them I guess it won’t harm me any an’ if you’d add the name of my mother Rachel Obermeyer Kahanski I reckon we’d be about even-stephen.’
Elfenbein lumbered back to the table at the end of which I was sitting, drinking a glass of brandy with my coffee.
‘I made it all right with him. Least I could do, wasn’t it? Listen, brother, I’ve got quite an assortment of men’s garters in one of my trunks. You come along down to my stateroom and I’ll give you a dozen pairs.’
His round took him from Batavia to Yokohama and he had been travelling now for one firm now for another for twenty years.
‘Tell me,’ I said now, ‘you must have known an awful lot of people, what opinion have you formed of the human race?’
‘Sure I’ll tell you. I think they’re bully. You’d be surprised at the kindness I’ve received from everybody. If you’re ill or anythin’ like that, perfect strangers will nurse you like your own mother. White, yellow, or brown they’re all alike. It’s surprisin’ what they’ll do for you. But they’re stupid, they’re terribly stupid. They’ve got no more brains than a turnip. They can’t even tell you the way in their own home town. I’ll give you my opinion of the human race in a nutshell, brother; their heart’s in the right place, but their head’s a thoroughly inefficient organ.’
This really is the end of this book.
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W. Somerset Maugham, The Gentleman in the Parlour
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