J. C. 1919.




PART I

AN OUTCAST OF THE ISLANDS

CHAPTER ONE

When he stepped off the straight and narrow path of his peculiar
honesty, it was with an inward assertion of unflinching resolve to fall
back again into the monotonous but safe stride of virtue as soon as his
little excursion into the wayside quagmires had produced the desired
effect. It was going to be a short episode--a sentence in brackets, so
to speak--in the flowing tale of his life: a thing of no moment, to be
done unwillingly, yet neatly, and to be quickly forgotten. He imagined
that he could go on afterwards looking at the sunshine, enjoying the
shade, breathing in the perfume of flowers in the small garden before
his house. He fancied that nothing would be changed, that he would be
able as heretofore to tyrannize good-humouredly over his half-caste
wife, to notice with tender contempt his pale yellow child, to patronize
loftily his dark-skinned brother-in-law, who loved pink neckties and
wore patent-leather boots on his little feet, and was so humble before
the white husband of the lucky sister. Those were the delights of his
life, and he was unable to conceive that the moral significance of any
act of his could interfere with the very nature of things, could dim
the light of the sun, could destroy the perfume of the flowers, the