The Misanthrope

Since I have returned from the rock and discussed the story in all its
bearings, I have begun to wonder if the man made a fool of me. In the
deeps of my consciousness I feel that he did not.

Nevertheless, I cannot resist the effect of all the laughter that has
been evoked by my narrative.

Here on the mainland the whole thing seems unlikely, grotesque,
foolish. On the rock the man's confession carried absolute conviction.
The setting is everything; and I am, perhaps, thankful that my present
circumstances are so beautifully conducive to sanity. No one
appreciates the mystery of life more than I do; but when the mystery
involves such a doubt of oneself, I find it pleasanter to forget.
Naturally, I do not want to believe the story. If I did I should know
myself to be some kind of human horror. And the terror of it all lies
in the fact that I may never know precisely what kind...

Before I went we had eliminated the facile and banal explanation that
the man was mad, and had fallen back upon the two inevitable
alternatives: Crime and Disappointed Love. We were human and romantic,
and we tried desperately hard not to be too obvious.

Once before a man had made the same attempt and had built or tried to
build a house on the Gulland rock; but he had been defeated within a
fortnight, and what was left of his building was taken off the island
and turned into a tin church. It is there still. We all went to
Trevone and ruminated over and round it, perhaps with some faint hope
that one of us might, all-unknowing, have the abilities of a
psychometrist.

Nothing came of that visit but a slight intensification of those
theories that were already becoming a little stale. We compared the
early failure of thirty years ago, the attempt that was baffled, with
the present success. For this new misanthrope had lived on the Gulland
through the whole winter--and still lived. Indeed, the fact of his
presence on that awful lump of rock was now accepted by the country
people; to them he was scarcely a shade madder than the other
visitors; that remunerative, recurrent host that this year broke their
journey to Bedruthan in order to stand on Trevone beach and stare
foolishly at the just visible hut that stuck like a cubical gall on
the landward face of that humped, desolate island.