There entered first with slow caution, gun at the ready, the man who had mocked Andrews when they waited together in the witnesses’ room. Some other men followed him with equal caution and ranged themselves against the wall, where they stood ready to shoot, their eyes turning nervously hither and thither, as though they dreaded some sudden attack.
“So it’s you, Andrews, again,” their leader said, with a grin intended for mockery. Andrews smiled back. He felt at last clear and certain of himself, happy in his decision.
“Where are your friends?”
“They’ve gone,” he said and smiling at the association he caught a friendly echo of Carlyon’s voice. “They are all gone into the world of light, and I alone sit lingering here.” Into what a harsh light had they passed and in what a refreshing darkness did he stay. It touched his hot brain with cool fingers like the fingers of a woman and the ache and restless longing and despair were at an end. And the darkness soon would grow deeper and in that darkness who knew but that there was a hope to find something which no knife could injure? It was no longer despair but a whimsical reproach with which he thought—if you had waited one month more, one week more, I might have believed. Now I hope.
“They’ve gone,” he repeated, his eyes turning not to the elderly revenue officer who addressed him, but to Elizabeth. The officer’s eyes followed his and remained fixed in a gradually growing horror and disgust.
“What’s this?” he said and suddenly moved round the table and came face to face with the body. “She’s dead,” he added, voice falling into a whisper. He looked up. “Did they do this? We’ll hang them now.”
“I killed her,” Andrews said. “You’ll find my name on the knife.” You are safe now, Carlyon, he thought, not with any bitter, soured or jealous love, but with a quiet and amused friendliness. We are quits. And yet it is true—I did kill her or my father in me. But, father, you too shall die.
Leaning forward, paler than when he entered, the man drew out the knife and read the name in the rude, schoolboy attempt at engraving. “You scum,” he said. He gave an order to his men.
“I’m coming quietly,” Andrews said. “Didn’t I send for you?” They watched him with puzzled, suspicious and totally uncomprehending eyes, but made no attempt to bind his hands.
“There’s nothing more to stay for,” Andrews said and walked to the door. They followed him as if he were their leader and outside formed round him without a word. It was quite dark, but the moon, like a ship on a land girt lake, sailed in a deep blue gap between the clouds, shedding a pale light upon their crumpled splendour. One star companioned her.
Andrews did not look back upon the cottage. Regret had gone, even remembrance of the graceless body abandoned there. To his own surprise he felt happy and at peace, for his father was slain and yet a self remained, a self which knew neither lust, blasphemy nor cowardice, but only peace and curiosity for the dark, which deepened around him. You were always right, he said, in the hope, not yet belief, that there was something in the night which would hear him, the fourth time has brought peace. His father’s had been a stubborn ghost, but it was laid at last, and he need no longer be torn in two between that spirit and the stern unresting critic which was wont to speak. I am that critic, he said with a sense of discovery and exhilaration.
It was the men around him who seemed overweighted with a kind of despair for the dead. They walked heavily and nervously, forgetting the prisoner in their horror of his act. They did not know how close they were treading to another deed. Aware of his safe presence in their midst they kept their eyes away from him in a kind of shame that any man could be so callous. To Andrews’s sense now there were two stars or it might be two yellow candles in the night around him. One was the sole companion of the moon, the other glimmered more brightly still in the belt of the old officer in front of him and bore his own name. Slowly his hand stole out unnoticed on an errand of supreme importance, for between the two candles there was a white set face that regarded him without pity and without disapproval, with wisdom and with sanity.
Colophon
The Man Within
was published in 1929 by
Graham Greene.
This ebook was transcribed and produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Paul Bryan,
and is based on on digital scans from the
Internet Archive.
The cover page is adapted from
Night,
a painting completed circa 1873 by
Maksymilian Gierymski.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.
The first edition of this ebook was released on
January 1, 2025, 9:01 a.m.
You can check for updates to this ebook, view its revision history, or download it for different ereading systems at
standardebooks.org/ebooks/graham-greene/the-man-within.
The volunteer-driven Standard Ebooks project relies on readers like you to submit typos, corrections, and other improvements. Anyone can contribute at standardebooks.org.
Uncopyright
May you do good and not evil.
May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others.
May you share freely, never taking more than you give.
Copyright pages exist to tell you that you can’t do something. Unlike them, this Uncopyright page exists to tell you that the writing
