The Desert Islander

As Constantine stumped in on his hobnailed soles, Mr. White--who was
evidently not a very tactful man--said, "Oh, are you another deserter
from the Foreign Legion?"

"I am Constantine Andreievitch Soloviev," said Constantine, surprised.
He spoke and understood English almost perfectly (his mother had been
English), yet he could not remember ever having heard the word another
applied to himself. In fact it did not--could not possibly--so apply.
There was only one of him, he knew.

Of course, in a way there was some sense in what this stupid
Englishman said. Constantine had certainly been a légionnaire in
Tonkin up till last Thursday--his narrow pipe-clayed helmet, stiff
khaki greatcoat, shabby drill uniform, puttees, brass buttons, and
inflexible boots were all the property of the French Government. But
the core--the pearl inside this vulgar, horny shell--was Constantine
Andreievitch Soloviev. That made all the difference.

Constantine saw that he must take this Didymus of an Englishman in
hand at once and tell him a few exciting stories about his dangerous
adventures between the Tonkin border and this Chinese city. Snakes,
tigers, love-crazed Chinese princesses and brigands passed rapidly
through his mind, and he chose the last, because he had previously
planned several impressive things to do if he should be attacked by
brigands. So now, though he had not actually met a brigand, those
plans would come in useful. Constantine intended to write his
autobiography some day when he should have married a rich wife and
settled down. Not only did his actual life seem to him a very rare one
but, also, lives were so interesting to make up.

Constantine was a desert islander--a spiritual Robinson Crusoe. He
made up everything himself and he wasted nothing. Robinson Crusoe was
his favourite book--in fact, almost the only book he had ever read--
and he was proud to be, like his hero, a desert islander. He actually
preferred clothing his spirit in the skins of wild thoughts that had
been the prey of his wits and sheltering it from the world's weather
in a leaky hut of his brain's own contriving, to enjoying the good
tailoring and housing that dwellers on the mainland call experience
and education. He enjoyed being barbarous, he enjoyed living alone on
his island, accepting nothing, imitating nothing, believing nothing,
adapting himself to nothing--implacably home-made. Even his tangible
possessions were those of a marooned man rather than of a civilized
citizen of this well-furnished world. At this moment his only luggage
was a balalaika that he had made himself out of cigar-boxes, and to
this he sang songs of his own composition--very imperfect songs. He
would not have claimed that either his songs or his instrument were
better than the songs and instruments made by song-makers and
balalaika-makers; they were, however, much more rapturously his than
any acquired music could have been and, indeed, in this as in almost
all things, it simply never occurred to him to take rather than make.
There was no mainland on the horizon of his desert island.

"I am not a beggar," said Constantine. "Until yesterday I had sixty
piastres which I had saved by many sacrifices during my service in the
Legion. But yesterday, passing through a dark forest of pines in the
twilight, about twenty versts from here, I met--"

"You met a band of brigands," said Mr. White. "Yes, I know you all say
that."

Constantine stared at him. He had not lived, a desert islander, in a
crowded and over-civilized world without meeting many rebuffs, so this
one did not surprise him--did not even offend him. On the contrary,
for a minute he almost loved the uncompromising Mr. White, as a
sportsman almost loves the chamois on a peculiarly inaccessible crag.
This was a friend worth a good deal of trouble to secure, Constantine
saw. He realized at once that the desert islander's line here was to
discard the brigands and to discard noble independence.