12 
LAND & WATER 
December 12, 1918 
The Most Miserable of Men: 
A Story by Desmond MacCarthy 
OF all men," said the youth who was sitting 
in the far comer of the railway carriage, gazing 
into the setting sun, "of all men I am the most 
miserable." 
We were alone in the compartment, and he 
was talking to himself. I rustled my paper, but he took 
no notice and his lips continued to move inaudibly. His 
worried young face looked intelligent and amiable. I liked 
him. 
" I hope you won't think mo intrusive, " I said (at the sound 
of my voice he came to himself), "but, if you feel inclined, 
will you tell me what prompted that tragic exclamation ? " 
"What! What did I say?" 
" You said you were the most miserable of men. It is 
not likely that I can help, but it might be a relief to talk 
about what is on your mind to some one you will never see 
again." 
After a pause he said shyly, "I am ashamed." 
"Therl you will get relief from telhng me," I replied. 
"Confession makes us feel we are after all superior to our- 
selves. There is nothing like it for reviving self-respect." 
"I am too ashamed," he repeated, smiling a little. 
I leaned across and touched his knee. "You will forgive 
me : then ? " We were sOent for some minutes and ceased 
to look at each other. 
The rhythmic trantle-trantle of the unhurrying train was 
soothing to us both. Outside in the landscape the sun had 
gone down, and my tortured companion having now no 
dazzling disc to gaze into, fell to prodding the scat opposite 
with his stick. He was still considering himself, I surmised, 
in a painfully searching though, perhaps, no longer in a 
tragic light. I liked him very much. 
"You see . . . The fact is . . ." (I turned to Mm at 
once). "Oh! I can't," he exclaimed desperately, bringing 
his heel down on the floor of the carriage with a bang. 
" How long ago did it happen ? " 
He seemed relieved at my question. " Three years about. " 
"Three years! And you are stiU the most miserable of 
men ? " 
" Oh, no 1 That's only what I felt like just now. I don't 
often think of it ; but when I do — it's absurd — I always 
say that to myself. It has become a habit. I don't always 
say it aloud though," he added smiling. 
"I am verj' glad you did," I answered, "for now you can 
get it off your mind, whatever it is, and it wiU never come 
back again — at any rate, so excruciatingly." 
He laughed, this time quite naturally. "The truth is, 
now that I evidently mean to tell you, what embarrasses me 
most is that it is such a little thing." 
"There!" I exclaimed. "There you are! You're half 
cured already. Go on. Go on. " 
"Well, will you believe something first? Really believe 
it ? I'm not a snob. I mean I am not, and never was such 
a snob as many other people. I don't boast about my fine 
acquaintances. I'm not such a fool — now, &t any rate. 
And I swear I never really did, or very seldom ever ; and even 
then only in a way, don't you know, that left me the benefit 
of the doubt. But hotels have, or rather had (Heaven knows 
I'm cured for ever) a simply beastly effect on me. And, " 
he went on, stooping forward with a frown of agitated eager- 
ness, "I'm not a liar. I mean, of course, what anyone would 
call a liar. I he very httle. But these hotels ! I've thought 
a lot about them, as you will socn be able to imagine, and 
I've made out a sort of psychology of the hotel crowd. You 
see, in an hotel, each person loses everything that distinguishes 
and explains him ; everybody is anonymotis. There people 
are cooped up together, eyeing each other, wondering about 
each other, sneering at each other, or approaching each 
other with the stiff comic caution of mistrustful dogs. Every- 
body who hasn't an obvious badge is an unknown quantity. 
Everybody gossips and guesses about everybody else, and 
the result is everybody wants to flourish his or her credentials. 
That is the prevailing social atmosphere, and it is odious — 
I speak with the bitterness of one who has been infected 
by it. In an hotel a sensitive person invariably becomes 
contemptuous and misanthropic. One's fellow human beings 
are simply awful in hotels. When they come down day after 
day, to breakfast, lunch and dinner ; when you see them 
between whiles over the paraphernalia of tea in the marble 
hall, munching to music, you think to yourself, 'This is too 
much ! Here are these pigs with their noses in the trough 
again ! ' Of course, your own mouth is full, but they all 
look disgustingly idle and useless — so you do, no doubt. 
They don't know how to spend half their time — nor do you. 
And with these til-qnoques whispering in your ears, the impulse 
to distinguish yourself from them in the eyes of any one who 
seems a httle nicer than the rest, becomes irresistible. In 
short you are pushed into becoming a snob of one kind or 
another. And now for my adventure, which has made me," 
and he laughed quite heartily, " ' the most miserable of -men. ' 
"I shan't laugh again," he added gloomily. "It really 
is a painful story. 
" I was preceding a friend of mine to a much frequented 
spot in Switzerland, a place for winter sports, where he 
was to meet me two days later. During the last stages 
of th" journey I fell in with an English family, and we travelled 
in the same carriage. We soon made out that we were going 
to the same place and to the same, hotel. The family con- 
sisted of a father, a kindly, modest, straightforward man, 
a mamma with a manner, a girl whose looks pleased me ex- 
tremely, and a perky censorious, public-school boy. I had 
better tell you I myself was in my twentieth year. 
"Father and daughter both hked me at once, but Mamma 
was proof against all my attempts to interest her ; and when 
she did respond, it was all with a non-committal smile, all 
the easier to read for being so gracious. The father, the 
daughter and I were in those delightful spirits pecuHar to 
the first morning abroad — you know how soon people make 
friends when they are childishly happy ? The boy was at 
the age when he hates to show elation, and when the sight 
of a sister making a visible impression on a young man (for 
some unknown reason witli which, nevertheless, I believe I 
sympathise) is particularly irritating. But even he thawed 
over our second breakfast in the train. His mother, however, 
mostly kept her face to the window, smiling on us in pre- 
occupied way from time to time, and rubbing away the frosted 
breath from the pane to get a clearer view of the steep snowy 
hiUs and pine woods as they passed. Sometimes with a 
little ejaculation she would single out something for admira- 
tion, but with all my alacrity I was always too late to share 
her pleasure. 
" I think I divined at the time that she was capable of 
reading her husband a lecture on the folly of making friends 
in the train with young men one knows nothing about, and 
that she wished me to feel that she regarded our further 
acquaintance as strictly conditional. Indeed, I must have 
felt that challenge in her from the first, and inwardly resolved 
to overwhelm her with my credentials, for only from having 
taken some such unconscious resolution can I account for 
my subsequent impulse and behaviour. 
"Well, towards evening we arrived at our destination. 
It was a long lake in a barren Alpine valley, with a large 
straggling timber village beside it. Black figures were 
still pushing about like water spiders over the surface of the 
lake, and still more people were plodding their way in file 
or in knots towards the barrack-like hotels on the slopes. 
The stars had begun to point above the mountains ; and to 
draw such air into the lungs was like swallowing a draught 
of glittering icy water. 
" My new friends wanted me to get into their conveyance, 
for we had engaged rooms at the same hotel ; and she whose 
presence had already begun to infuse a subtle exhilaration 
into the scene, called out to me there was 'plenty, plenty of 
room.' Her voice in the dusk sounded magically kind and 
clear. But even if her mother had not proceeded to fluff 
herself out over the seat, they would have been cramped ; 
so I waved my hat and drove alone, through the wooden 
snow-thatched village up to the hotel. / - 
" The circular door of the Imperial admitted me to a hall 
of which not only the atmosphere but the vegetation was 
apparently tropical. On my way across the marble floor 
towards the gilded lift, 1 noticed couples swinging non- 
chalantly in rocking-chairs side by side among palms and 
flowers. There was a big group, laughing, talking round a 
flaring fire : girls in knitted jerseys, holding skates, girls in 
evening frocks, men in dinner jackets, and men still in their 
stockings and boots. The sting of frost was on all their 
faces, and their voices had that pleasant resonance which 
comes from having spent the day in the open air. At these 
sights the sense of the adventure of gregarious life got hold 
of me, and while I wels unpacking I was filled with that 
delicious excitement (remember I was twenty) wliich gets 
