The Extraordinary Cabman - Page 2

still continues.

It is necessary in this narrative to preserve the utmost exactitude
of detail. After leaving my friend at the House I took the cab
on a few hundred yards to an office in Victoria-street which I
had to visit. I then got out and offered him more than his fare.
He looked at it, but not with the surly doubt and general
disposition to try it on which is not unknown among normal cabmen.
But this was no normal, perhaps, no human, cabman. He looked at it
with a dull and infantile astonishment, clearly quite genuine.
"Do you know, sir," he said, "you've only given me 1s.8d?"
I remarked, with some surprise, that I did know it. "Now you know,
sir," said he in a kindly, appealing, reasonable way, "you know
that ain't the fare from Euston." "Euston," I repeated vaguely,
for the phrase at that moment sounded to me like China or Arabia.
"What on earth has Euston got to do with it?" "You hailed me just outside
Euston Station," began the man with astonishing precision, "and then
you said----" "What in the name of Tartarus are you talking about?"
I said with Christian forbearance; "I took you at the south-west
corner of Leicester-square." "Leicester-square," he exclaimed,
loosening a kind of cataract of scorn, "why we ain't been near
Leicester-square to-day. You hailed me outside Euston Station,
and you said----" "Are you mad, or am I?" I asked with scientific calm.

I looked at the man. No ordinary dishonest cabman would
think of creating so solid and colossal and creative a lie.
And this man was not a dishonest cabman. If ever a human
face was heavy and simple and humble, and with great big
blue eyes protruding like a frog's, if ever (in short)
a human face was all that a human face should be, it was the
face of that resentful and respectful cabman. I looked up and
down the street; an unusually dark twilight seemed to be coming
on. And for one second the old nightmare of the sceptic put
its finger on my nerve. What was certainty? Was anybody
certain of anything? Heavens! to think of the dull rut of the
sceptics who go on asking whether we possess a future life.
The exciting question for real scepticism is whether we
possess a past life. What is a minute ago, rationalistically
considered, except a tradition and a picture? The darkness grew
deeper from the road. The cabman calmly gave me the most elaborate
details of the gesture, the words, the complex but consistent
course of action which I had adopted since that remarkable
occasion when I had hailed him outside Euston Station. How did I
know (my sceptical friends would say) that I had not hailed him
outside