GEORGE WEBBER HAD grown into a youth somewhat above the middle height, around five feet nine or ten, but he gave the impression of being shorter than that because of the way he had been shaped and molded, and the way in which he carried himself. He walked with a slight stoop, and his head, which was carried somewhat forward with a thrusting movement, was set down solidly upon a short neck, between shoulders which, in comparison with the lower part of his figure, his thighs and legs, were extremely large and heavy. He was barrel-chested, and perhaps the most extraordinary feature of his make-up—which accounted for the nickname he had had since childhood—were the arms and hands: the arms were unusually long, and the hands, as well as the feet, were very big with long, spatulate fingers which curved naturally and deeply in like paws. The effect of this inordinate length of arms and hands, which dangled almost to the knees, together with the stooped and heavy shoulders and the out-thrust head, was to give his whole figure a somewhat prowling and half-crouching posture.
His features, his face, were small, compact—somewhat pugnosed, the eyes set very deep in beneath heavy brows, the forehead rather low, the hair beginning not far above the brows. When he was listening or talking to someone, his body prowling downward, his head thrust forward and turned upward with a kind of packed attentiveness, the simian analogy was inevitable; therefore the name of “Monk” had stuck. Moreover, it had never occurred to him, apparently, to get his figure clothed in garments suited to his real proportions. He just walked into a store somewhere and picked up and wore out the first thing he could get on. Thus, in a way of which he was not wholly conscious, the element of grotesqueness in him was exaggerated.
The truth of the matter is that he was not really grotesque at all. His dimensions, while unusual and a little startling at first sight, were not abnormal. He was not in any way a freak of nature, although some people might think so. He was simply a youth with big hands and feet, extremely long arms, a trunk somewhat too large and heavy, with legs too short, and features perhaps too small and compact for the big shoulders that supported them. Since he had added to this rather awkward but not distorted figure certain unconscious tricks and mannerisms, such as his habit of carrying his head thrust forward, and of peering upward when he was listening or talking, it was not surprising if the impression he first made on people should sometimes arouse laughter and surprise. Certainly he knew this, and he sometimes furiously and bitterly resented it; but he had never inquired sufficiently or objectively enough into the reasons for it.
Although he had a very intense and apprehensive eye for the appearance of things, the eager, passionate absorption of his interest and attention was given to the world around him. To his own appearance he had never given a thought. So when, as sometimes happened, the effect he had on people was rudely and brutally forced upon his attention, it threw him into a state of furious anger. For he was young—and had not learned the wisdom and tolerant understanding of experience and maturity. He was young—still over-sensitive. He was young—not able to forget himself, to accept the jokes and badinage good-naturedly. He was young—and did not know that personal beauty is no great virtue in a man, and that this envelope of flesh and blood, in which a spirit happened to be sheathed, could be a loyal and enduring, though ugly, friend.
All this—and many more important things besides—had got him into a lot of confusion, a lot of torture, and a lot of brute unhappiness. And the same thing was happening to a million other young men at that time. Monk was a hard-pressed kid. And because he was hard pressed, he had wangled himself into a lot of nonsense. It wouldn’t be true to say, for example, that he hadn’t got anything out of his “education.” Such as it was, he had got a great deal out of it, but, like most of the “education” of the time, it had been full of waste, foolishness, and misplaced emphasis.
The plain, blunt truth of the matter was that, essentially, although he did not know it, Monk was an explorer. And so were a million other young people at that time. Well, exploring is a thrilling thing. But, even for the physical explorers, it is a hard thing, too. Monk had the true faith, the true heroism, of an explorer. He was a lot more lonely than Columbus ever was, and for this reason he was desperately confused, groping, compromising, and unsure.
It would be nice to report that he was swift and certain as a flame, always shot true to the mark, and knew what he knew. But this wasn’t true. He knew what he knew, but he admitted that he knew it only seldom. Then when he did, he asserted it; like every other kid, he “went to town.” He said it, he shot it home, he made no apologies—he was passionate and fierce and proud, and true—but the next morning he would wake up feeling that he had made a fool of himself and that he had something to explain.