Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (784 page)

While he was speaking Renouard saw again the sway of her figure in a movement of grace and strength — felt the pressure of her hand — heard the last accents of the deep murmur that came from her throat so white in the light of the window, and remembered the black rays of her steady eyes passing off his face when she turned away.  He remembered all this visually, and it was not exactly pleasurable.  It was rather startling like the discovery of a new faculty in himself.  There are faculties one would rather do without — such, for instance, as seeing through a stone wall or remembering a person with this uncanny vividness.  And what about those two people belonging to her with their air of expectant solicitude!  Really, those figures from home got in front of one.  In fact, their persistence in getting between him and the solid forms of the everyday material world had driven Renouard to call on his friend at the office.  He hoped that a little common, gossipy information would lay the ghost of that unexpected dinner-party.  Of course the proper person to go to would have been young Dunster, but, he couldn’t stand Willie Dunster — not at any price.

In the pause the Editor had changed his attitude, faced his desk, and smiled a faint knowing smile.

“Striking girl — eh?” he said.

The incongruity of the word was enough to make one jump out of the chair.  Striking!  That girl striking!  Stri . . .!  But Renouard restrained his feelings.  His friend was not a person to give oneself away to.  And, after all, this sort of speech was what he had come there to hear.  As, however, he had made a movement he re-settled himself comfortably and said, with very creditable indifference, that yes — she was, rather.  Especially amongst a lot of over-dressed frumps.  There wasn’t one woman under forty there.

“Is that the way to speak of the cream of our society; the ‘top of the basket,’ as the French say,” the Editor remonstrated with mock indignation.  “You aren’t moderate in your expressions — you know.”

“I express myself very little,” interjected Renouard seriously.

“I will tell you what you are.  You are a fellow that doesn’t count the cost.  Of course you are safe with me, but will you never learn. . . .”

“What struck me most,” interrupted the other, “is that she should pick me out for such a long conversation.”

“That’s perhaps because you were the most remarkable of the men there.”

Renouard shook his head.

“This shot doesn’t seem to me to hit the mark,” he said calmly.  “Try again.”

“Don’t you believe me?  Oh, you modest creature.  Well, let me assure you that under ordinary circumstances it would have been a good shot.  You are sufficiently remarkable.  But you seem a pretty acute customer too.  The circumstances are extraordinary.  By Jove they are!”

He mused.  After a time the Planter of Malata dropped a negligent —

“And you know them.”

“And I know them,” assented the all-knowing Editor, soberly, as though the occasion were too special for a display of professional vanity; a vanity so well known to Renouard that its absence augmented his wonder and almost made him uneasy as if portending bad news of some sort.

“You have met those people?” he asked.

“No.  I was to have met them last night, but I had to send an apology to Willie in the morning.  It was then that he had the bright idea to invite you to fill the place, from a muddled notion that you could be of use.  Willie is stupid sometimes.  For it is clear that you are the last man able to help.”

“How on earth do I come to be mixed up in this — whatever it is?”  Renouard’s voice was slightly altered by nervous irritation.  “I only arrived here yesterday morning.”

CHAPTER II

His friend the Editor turned to him squarely.  “Willie took me into consultation, and since he seems to have let you in I may just as well tell you what is up.  I shall try to be as short as I can.  But in confidence — mind!”

He waited.  Renouard, his uneasiness growing on him unreasonably, assented by a nod, and the other lost no time in beginning.  Professor Moorsom — physicist and philosopher — fine head of white hair, to judge from the photographs — plenty of brains in the head too — all these famous books — surely even Renouard would know. . . .

Renouard muttered moodily that it wasn’t his sort of reading, and his friend hastened to assure him earnestly that neither was it his sort — except as a matter of business and duty, for the literary page of that newspaper which was his property (and the pride of his life).  The only literary newspaper in the Antipodes could not ignore the fashionable philosopher of the age.  Not that anybody read Moorsom at the Antipodes, but everybody had heard of him — women, children, dock labourers, cabmen.  The only person (besides himself) who had read Moorsom, as far as he knew, was old Dunster, who used to call himself a Moorsomian (or was it Moorsomite) years and years ago, long before Moorsom had worked himself up into the great swell he was now, in every way. . . Socially too.  Quite the fashion in the highest world.

Renouard listened with profoundly concealed attention.  “A charlatan,” he muttered languidly.

“Well — no.  I should say not.  I shouldn’t wonder though if most of his writing had been done with his tongue in his cheek.  Of course.  That’s to be expected.  I tell you what: the only really honest writing is to be found in newspapers and nowhere else — and don’t you forget it.”

The Editor paused with a basilisk stare till Renouard had conceded a casual: “I dare say,” and only then went on to explain that old Dunster, during his European tour, had been made rather a lion of in London, where he stayed with the Moorsoms — he meant the father and the girl.  The professor had been a widower for a long time.

“She doesn’t look just a girl,” muttered Renouard.  The other agreed.  Very likely not.  Had been playing the London hostess to tip-top people ever since she put her hair up, probably.

“I don’t expect to see any girlish bloom on her when I do have the privilege,” he continued.  “Those people are staying with the Dunster’s incog., in a manner, you understand — something like royalties.  They don’t deceive anybody, but they want to be left to themselves.  We have even kept them out of the paper — to oblige old Dunster.  But we shall put your arrival in — our local celebrity.”

“Heavens!”

“Yes.  Mr. G. Renouard, the explorer, whose indomitable energy, etc., and who is now working for the prosperity of our country in another way on his Malata plantation . . . And, by the by, how’s the silk plant — flourishing?”

“Yes.”

“Did you bring any fibre?”

“Schooner-f.”

“I see.  To be transhipped to Liverpool for experimental manufacture, eh?  Eminent capitalists at home very much interested, aren’t they?”

“They are.”

A silence fell.  Then the Editor uttered slowly — ”You will be a rich man some day.”

Renouard’s face did not betray his opinion of that confident prophecy.  He didn’t say anything till his friend suggested in the same meditative voice —

“You ought to interest Moorsom in the affair too — since Willie has let you in.”

“A philosopher!”

“I suppose he isn’t above making a bit of money.  And he may be clever at it for all you know.  I have a notion that he’s a fairly practical old cove. . . . Anyhow,” and here the tone of the speaker took on a tinge of respect, “he has made philosophy pay.”

Renouard raised his eyes, repressed an impulse to jump up, and got out of the arm-chair slowly.  “It isn’t perhaps a bad idea,” he said.  “I’ll have to call there in any case.”

He wondered whether he had managed to keep his voice steady, its tone unconcerned enough; for his emotion was strong though it had nothing to do with the business aspect of this suggestion.  He moved in the room in vague preparation for departure, when he heard a soft laugh.  He spun about quickly with a frown, but the Editor was not laughing at him.  He was chuckling across the big desk at the wall: a preliminary of some speech for which Renouard, recalled to himself, waited silent and mistrustful.

“No!  You would never guess!  No one would ever guess what these people are after.  Willie’s eyes bulged out when he came to me with the tale.”

“They always do,” remarked Renouard with disgust.  “He’s stupid.”

“He was startled.  And so was I after he told me.  It’s a search party.  They are out looking for a man.  Willie’s soft heart’s enlisted in the cause.”

Renouard repeated: “Looking for a man.”

He sat down suddenly as if on purpose to stare.  “Did Willie come to you to borrow the lantern,” he asked sarcastically, and got up again for no apparent reason.

“What lantern?” snapped the puzzled Editor, and his face darkened with suspicion.  “You, Renouard, are always alluding to things that aren’t clear to me.  If you were in politics, I, as a party journalist, wouldn’t trust you further than I could see you.  Not an inch further.  You are such a sophisticated beggar.  Listen: the man is the man Miss Moorsom was engaged to for a year.  He couldn’t have been a nobody, anyhow.  But he doesn’t seem to have been very wise.  Hard luck for the young lady.”

He spoke with feeling.  It was clear that what he had to tell appealed to his sentiment.  Yet, as an experienced man of the world, he marked his amused wonder.  Young man of good family and connections, going everywhere, yet not merely a man about town, but with a foot in the two big F’s.

Renouard lounging aimlessly in the room turned round: “And what the devil’s that?” he asked faintly.

“Why Fashion and Finance,” explained the Editor.  “That’s how I call it.  There are the three R’s at the bottom of the social edifice and the two F’s on the top.  See?”

“Ha! Ha!  Excellent!  Ha! Ha!” Renouard laughed with stony eyes.

“And you proceed from one set to the other in this democratic age,” the Editor went on with unperturbed complacency.  “That is if you are clever enough.  The only danger is in being too clever.  And I think something of the sort happened here.  That swell I am speaking of got himself into a mess.  Apparently a very ugly mess of a financial character.  You will understand that Willie did not go into details with me.  They were not imparted to him with very great abundance either.  But a bad mess — something of the criminal order.  Of course he was innocent.  But he had to quit all the same.”

“Ha! Ha!” Renouard laughed again abruptly, staring as before.  “So there’s one more big F in the tale.”

“What do you mean?” inquired the Editor quickly, with an air as if his patent were being infringed.

“I mean — Fool.”

“No.  I wouldn’t say that.  I wouldn’t say that.”

“Well — let him be a scoundrel then.  What the devil do I care.”

“But hold on!  You haven’t heard the end of the story.”

Renouard, his hat on his head already, sat down with the disdainful smile of a man who had discounted the moral of the story.  Still he sat down and the Editor swung his revolving chair right round.  He was full of unction.

“Imprudent, I should say.  In many ways money is as dangerous to handle as gunpowder.  You can’t be too careful either as to who you are working with.  Anyhow there was a mighty flashy burst up, a sensation, and — his familiar haunts knew him no more.  But before he vanished he went to see Miss Moorsom.  That very fact argues for his innocence — don’t it?  What was said between them no man knows — unless the professor had the confidence from his daughter.  There couldn’t have been much to say.  There was nothing for it but to let him go — was there? — for the affair had got into the papers.  And perhaps the kindest thing would have been to forget him.  Anyway the easiest.  Forgiveness would have been more difficult, I fancy, for a young lady of spirit and position drawn into an ugly affair like that.  Any ordinary young lady, I mean.  Well, the fellow asked nothing better than to be forgotten, only he didn’t find it easy to do so himself, because he would write home now and then.  Not to any of his friends though.  He had no near relations.  The professor had been his guardian.  No, the poor devil wrote now and then to an old retired butler of his late father, somewhere in the country, forbidding him at the same time to let any one know of his whereabouts.  So that worthy old ass would go up and dodge about the Moorsom’s town house, perhaps waylay Miss Moorsom’s maid, and then would write to ‘Master Arthur’ that the young lady looked well and happy, or some such cheerful intelligence.  I dare say he wanted to be forgotten, but I shouldn’t think he was much cheered by the news.  What would you say?”

Renouard, his legs stretched out and his chin on his breast, said nothing.  A sensation which was not curiosity, but rather a vague nervous anxiety, distinctly unpleasant, like a mysterious symptom of some malady, prevented him from getting up and going away.

“Mixed feelings,” the Editor opined.  “Many fellows out here receive news from home with mixed feelings.  But what will his feelings be when he hears what I am going to tell you now?  For we know he has not heard yet.  Six months ago a city clerk, just a common drudge of finance, gets himself convicted of a common embezzlement or something of that kind.  Then seeing he’s in for a long sentence he thinks of making his conscience comfortable, and makes a clean breast of an old story of tampered with, or else suppressed, documents, a story which clears altogether the honesty of our ruined gentleman.  That embezzling fellow was in a position to know, having been employed by the firm before the smash.  There was no doubt about the character being cleared — but where the cleared man was nobody could tell.  Another sensation in society.  And then Miss Moorsom says: ‘He will come back to claim me, and I’ll marry him.’  But he didn’t come back.  Between you and me I don’t think he was much wanted — except by Miss Moorsom.  I imagine she’s used to have her own way.  She grew impatient, and declared that if she knew where the man was she would go to him.  But all that could be got out of the old butler was that the last envelope bore the postmark of our beautiful city; and that this was the only address of ‘Master Arthur’ that he ever had.  That and no more.  In fact the fellow was at his last gasp — with a bad heart.  Miss Moorsom wasn’t allowed to see him.  She had gone herself into the country to learn what she could, but she had to stay downstairs while the old chap’s wife went up to the invalid.  She brought down the scrap of intelligence I’ve told you of.  He was already too far gone to be cross-examined on it, and that very night he died.  He didn’t leave behind him much to go by, did he?  Our Willie hinted to me that there had been pretty stormy days in the professor’s house, but — here they are.  I have a notion she isn’t the kind of everyday young lady who may be permitted to gallop about the world all by herself — eh?  Well, I think it rather fine of her, but I quite understand that the professor needed all his philosophy under the circumstances.  She is his only child now — and brilliant — what?  Willie positively spluttered trying to describe her to me; and I could see directly you came in that you had an uncommon experience.”