The Definite Object | Page 6

at me, will you?"
"With pleasure, sir!"
"Well, what do I look like?"
"The very hacme of a gentleman, sir!"
"Kind of you, Brimberly, but I know myself for an absolutely useless
thing--a purposeless, ambitionless wretch, drifting on to God knows
what. I'm a hopeless wreck, a moral derelict, and it has only occurred to
me to-night--but"--and here the speaker paused to flick the ash from his
cigar--"I fear I'm boring you?"
"No, sir--ho, no, not at all, indeed, sir!"
"You're very kind, Brimberly--light a cigarette! Ah, no, pardon me, you
prefer my cigars, I know."

"Why--why, sir--" stammered Mr. Brimberly, laying a soothing hand
upon his twitching whisker, "indeed, I--I--"
"Oh--help yourself, pray!"
Hereupon Mr. Brimberly took a cigar very much at random, and, while
Young R. watched with lazy interest, proceeded to cut it--though with
singularly clumsy fingers.
"A light, Mr. Brimberly--allow me!"
So Ravenslee held the light while Mr. Brimberly puffed his cigar to a
glow, though to be sure he coughed once and choked, as he met Young
R.'s calm grey eye.
"Now," pursued his master, "if you're quite comfortable, Mr. Brimberly,
perhaps you'll be good enough to--er--hearken further to my tale of
woe?"
Mr. Brimberly choked again and recovering, smoothed his writhing
whiskers and murmured: "It would be a honour!"
"First, then, Brimberly, have you ever hated yourself--I mean, despised
yourself so utterly and thoroughly that the bare idea of your existence
makes you angry and indignant?"
"Why--no, sir," answered Mr. Brimberly, staring, "I can't say as I 'ave,
sir."
"No," said his master with another keen glance, "and I don't suppose
you ever will!" Now here again, perhaps because of the look or
something in Young R.'s tone, Mr. Brimberly took occasion to emit a
small, apologetic cough.
"You have never felt yourself to be a--cumberer of the earth,
Brimberly?"
Mr. Brimberly, having thought the matter over, decided that he had not.

"You are not given to introspection, Brimberly?"
"Intro--ahem! No, sir, not precisely--'ardly that, sir, and then only very
occasional, sir!"
"Then you've never got on to yourself--got wise to yourself--seen
yourself as you really are?"
Mr. Brimberly goggled and groped for his whisker.
"I mean," pursued his master, "you have never seen all your secret
weaknesses and petty meannesses stripped stark naked, have you?"
"N-naked, sir!" faltered Mr. Brimberly, "very distressing indeed, sir--oh,
dear me!"
"It's a devilish unpleasant thing," continued Young R., scowling at the
fire again, "yes, it's a devilish unpleasant thing to go serenely on our
flowery way, pitying and condemning the sins and follies of others and
sublimely unconscious of our own until one day--ah, yes--one day we
meet Ourselves face to face and see beneath all our pitiful shams and
hypocrisies and know ourselves at last for what we really are--behold
the decay of faculties, the degeneration of intellect bred of sloth and
inanition and know ourselves at last--for exactly what we are!"
Mr. Brimberly stared at the preoccupation of his master's scowling
brow and grim-set mouth, and, clutching a soft handful of whisker,
murmured: "Certingly, sir!"
"When I was a boy," continued Ravenslee absently, "I used to dream of
the wonderful things I would do when I was a man--by the way, you're
quite sure I'm not boring you--?"
"No, sir--certingly not, sir--indeed, sir!"
"Take another cigar, Brimberly--oh, put it in your pocket, it will do
to--er--to add to your collection! But, as I was saying, as a boy I was
full of a godlike ambition--but, as I grew up, ambition and all the noble

things it leads to, sickened and died--died of a surfeit of dollars! And
to-day I am thirty-five and feel that I can't--that I never shall--do
anything worth while--"
"But, sir," exclaimed Mr. Brimberly with a bland and reassuring smile,
"you are one as don't have to do nothing--you're rich!"
Mr. Ravenslee started.
"Rich!" he cried, and turning, he glanced at Mr. Brimberly, and his
square chin looked so very square and his grey eyes so very piercing
that Mr. Brimberly, loosing his whisker, coughed again and shifted his
gaze to the Persian rug beneath his feet; yet when Young R. spoke
again, his voice was very soft and sleepy.
"Rich!" he repeated, "yes, that's just the unspeakable hell of it--it's
money that has crippled all endeavours and made me what I am! Rich?
I'm so rich that my friends are all acquaintances--so rich that I might
buy anything in the world except what I most desire--so rich that I am
tired of life, the world, and everything in the world, and have been
seriously considering a--er--a radical change. It is a comfort to know
that we may all of us find oblivion when we so desire."
"Oblivion!" nodded Mr. Brimberly, mouthing the word sonorously,
"oblivion, sir, certingly--my own sentiments exactly, sir--for, though
not being