‘Well, but that negro?’ I asked suddenly.
The workman looked in perplexity first at me, then
at the servant girl.
‘What negro?’ he said at last. ’Go
away, sir. You can come later. You can talk
to the master.’
I went out into the street. The gate slammed
at once behind me, sharply and heavily, with no groan
this time.
I carefully noted the street and the house, and went
away, but not home—I was conscious of a
sort of disillusionment. Everything that had happened
to me was so strange, so unexpected, and meanwhile
what a stupid conclusion to it! I had been persuaded,
I had been convinced, that I should see in that house
the room I knew, and in the middle of it my father,
the baron, in the dressing-gown, and with a pipe....
And instead of that, the master of the house was a
carpenter, and I could go and see him as much as I
liked—and order furniture of him, I dare
say.
My father had gone to America. And what was left
for me to do?... To tell my mother everything,
or to bury for ever the very memory of that meeting?
I positively could not resign myself to the idea that
such a supernatural, mysterious beginning should end
in such a senseless, ordinary conclusion!
I did not want to return home, and walked at random
away from the town.
I walked with downcast head, without thought, almost
without sensation, but utterly buried in myself.
A rhythmic hollow and angry noise raised me from my
numbness. I lifted my head; it was the sea roaring
and moaning fifty paces from me. I saw I was
walking along the sand of the dunes. The sea,
set in violent commotion by the storm in the night,
was white with foam to the very horizon, and the sharp
crests of the long billows rolled one after another
and broke on the flat shore. I went nearer to
it, and walked along the line left by the ebb and
flow of the tides on the yellow furrowed sand, strewn
with fragments of trailing seaweed, broken shells,
and snakelike ribbons of sea-grass. Gulls, with
pointed wings, flying with a plaintive cry on the
wind out of the remote depths of the air, soared up,
white as snow against the grey cloudy sky, fell abruptly,
and seeming to leap from wave to wave, vanished again,
and were lost like gleams of silver in the streaks
of frothing foam. Several of them, I noticed,
hovered persistently over a big rock, which stood
up alone in the midst of the level uniformity of the
sandy shore. Coarse seaweed was growing in irregular
masses on one side of the rock; and where its matted
tangles rose above the yellow line, was something
black, something longish, curved, not very large....
I looked attentively.... Some dark object was
lying there, lying motionless beside the rock....
This object grew clearer, more defined the nearer I
got to it....
There was only a distance of thirty paces left between
me and the rock.... Why, it was the outline of
a human form! It was a corpse; it was a drowned
man thrown up by the sea! I went right up to the
rock.
