“This is the most troublesome time I ever had in my life,” exclaimed the professor testily.
“Surely the man must be worth it,” muttered Renouard with a pang of jealousy traversing his breast like a self-inflicted stab.
Whether enervated by the heat or giving way to pent up irritation the professor surrendered himself to the mood of sincerity.
“He began by being a pleasantly dull boy. He developed into a pointlessly clever young man, without, I suspect, ever trying to understand anything. My daughter knew him from childhood. I am a busy man, and I confess that their engagement was a complete surprise to me. I wish their reasons for that step had been more naïve. But simplicity was out of fashion in their set. From a worldly point of view he seems to have been a mere baby. Of course, now, I am assured that he is the victim of his noble confidence in the rectitude of his kind. But that’s mere idealising of a sad reality. For my part I will tell you that from the very beginning I had the gravest doubts of his dishonesty. Unfortunately my clever daughter hadn’t. And now we behold the reaction. No. To be earnestly dishonest one must be really poor. This was only a manifestation of his extremely refined cleverness. The complicated simpleton. He had an awful awakening though.”
In such words did Professor Moorsom give his “young friend” to understand the state of his feelings toward the lost man. It was evident that the father of Miss Moorsom wished him to remain lost. Perhaps the unprecedented heat of the season made him long for the cool spaces of the Pacific, the sweep of the ocean’s free wind along the promenade decks, cumbered with long chairs, of a ship steaming towards the Californian coast. To Renouard the philosopher appeared simply the most treacherous of fathers. He was amazed. But he was not at the end of his discoveries.
“He may be dead,” the professor murmured.
“Why? People don’t die here sooner than in Europe. If he had gone to hide in Italy, for instance, you wouldn’t think of saying that.”
“Well! And suppose he has become morally disintegrated. You know he was not a strong personality,” the professor suggested moodily. “My daughter’s future is in question here.”
Renouard thought that the love of such a woman was enough to pull any broken man together — to drag a man out of his grave. And he thought this with inward despair, which kept him silent as much almost as his astonishment. At last he managed to stammer out a generous —
“Oh! Don’t let us even suppose. . .”
The professor struck in with a sadder accent than before —
“It’s good to be young. And then you have been a man of action, and necessarily a believer in success. But I have been looking too long at life not to distrust its surprises. Age! Age! Here I stand before you a man full of doubts and hesitation — spe lentus, timidus futuri.”
He made a sign to Renouard not to interrupt, and in a lowered voice, as if afraid of being overheard, even there, in the solitude of the terrace —
“And the worst is that I am not even sure how far this sentimental pilgrimage is genuine. Yes. I doubt my own child. It’s true that she’s a woman. . . . “
Renouard detected with horror a tone of resentment, as if the professor had never forgiven his daughter for not dying instead of his son. The latter noticed the young man’s stony stare.
“Ah! you don’t understand. Yes, she’s clever, open-minded, popular, and — well, charming. But you don’t know what it is to have moved, breathed, existed, and even triumphed in the mere smother and froth of life — the brilliant froth. There thoughts, sentiments, opinions, feelings, actions too, are nothing but agitation in empty space — to amuse life — a sort of superior debauchery, exciting and fatiguing, meaning nothing, leading nowhere. She is the creature of that circle. And I ask myself if she is obeying the uneasiness of an instinct seeking its satisfaction, or is it a revulsion of feeling, or is she merely deceiving her own heart by this dangerous trifling with romantic images. And everything is possible — except sincerity, such as only stark, struggling humanity can know. No woman can stand that mode of life in which women rule, and remain a perfectly genuine, simple human being. Ah! There’s some people coming out.”
He moved off a pace, then turning his head: “Upon my word! I would be infinitely obliged to you if you could throw a little cold water. . . “ and at a vaguely dismayed gesture of Renouard, he added: “Don’t be afraid. You wouldn’t be putting out a sacred fire.”
Renouard could hardly find words for a protest: “I assure you that I never talk with Miss Moorsom — on — on — that. And if you, her father . . . “
“I envy you your innocence,” sighed the professor. “A father is only an everyday person. Flat. Stale. Moreover, my child would naturally mistrust me. We belong to the same set. Whereas you carry with you the prestige of the unknown. You have proved yourself to be a force.”
Thereupon the professor followed by Renouard joined the circle of all the inmates of the house assembled at the other end of the terrace about a tea-table; three white heads and that resplendent vision of woman’s glory, the sight of which had the power to flutter his heart like a reminder of the mortality of his frame.
He avoided the seat by the side of Miss Moorsom. The others were talking together languidly. Unnoticed he looked at that woman so marvellous that centuries seemed to lie between them. He was oppressed and overcome at the thought of what she could give to some man who really would be a force! What a glorious struggle with this amazon. What noble burden for the victorious strength.
Dear old Mrs. Dunster was dispensing tea, looking from time to time with interest towards Miss Moorsom. The aged statesman having eaten a raw tomato and drunk a glass of milk (a habit of his early farming days, long before politics, when, pioneer of wheat-growing, he demonstrated the possibility of raising crops on ground looking barren enough to discourage a magician), smoothed his white beard, and struck lightly Renouard’s knee with his big wrinkled hand.
“You had better come back to-night and dine with us quietly.”
He liked this young man, a pioneer, too, in more than one direction. Mrs. Dunster added: “Do. It will be very quiet. I don’t even know if Willie will be home for dinner.” Renouard murmured his thanks, and left the terrace to go on board the schooner. While lingering in the drawing-room doorway he heard the resonant voice of old Dunster uttering oracularly —
“. . . the leading man here some day. . . . Like me.”
Renouard let the thin summer portière of the doorway fall behind him. The voice of Professor Moorsom said —
“I am told that he has made an enemy of almost every man who had to work with him.”
“That’s nothing. He did his work. . . . Like me.”
“He never counted the cost they say. Not even of lives.”
Renouard understood that they were talking of him. Before he could move away, Mrs. Dunster struck in placidly —
“Don’t let yourself be shocked by the tales you may hear of him, my dear. Most of it is envy.”
Then he heard Miss Moorsom’s voice replying to the old lady —
“Oh! I am not easily deceived. I think I may say I have an instinct for truth.”
He hastened away from that house with his heart full of dread.
CHAPTER VI
On board the schooner, lying on the settee on his back with the knuckles of his hands pressed over his eyes, he made up his mind that he would not return to that house for dinner — that he would never go back there any more. He made up his mind some twenty times. The knowledge that he had only to go up on the quarter deck, utter quietly the words: “Man the windlass,” and that the schooner springing into life would run a hundred miles out to sea before sunrise, deceived his struggling will. Nothing easier! Yet, in the end, this young man, almost ill-famed for his ruthless daring, the inflexible leader of two tragically successful expeditions, shrank from that act of savage energy, and began, instead, to hunt for excuses.
No! It was not for him to run away like an incurable who
cuts his throat. He finished dressing and looked at his own impassive face in the saloon mirror scornfully. While being pulled on shore in the gig, he remembered suddenly the wild beauty of a waterfall seen when hardly more than a boy, years ago, in Menado. There was a legend of a governor-general of the Dutch East Indies, on official tour, committing suicide on that spot by leaping into the chasm. It was supposed that a painful disease had made him weary of life. But was there ever a visitation like his own, at the same time binding one to life and so cruelly mortal!
The dinner was indeed quiet. Willie, given half an hour’s grace, failed to turn up, and his chair remained vacant by the side of Miss Moorsom. Renouard had the professor’s sister on his left, dressed in an expensive gown becoming her age. That maiden lady in her wonderful preservation reminded Renouard somehow of a wax flower under glass. There were no traces of the dust of life’s battles on her anywhere. She did not like him very much in the afternoons, in his white drill suit and planter’s hat, which seemed to her an unduly Bohemian costume for calling in a house where there were ladies. But in the evening, lithe and elegant in his dress clothes and with his pleasant, slightly veiled voice, he always made her conquest afresh. He might have been anybody distinguished — the son of a duke. Falling under that charm probably (and also because her brother had given her a hint), she attempted to open her heart to Renouard, who was watching with all the power of his soul her niece across the table. She spoke to him as frankly as though that miserable mortal envelope, emptied of everything but hopeless passion, were indeed the son of a duke.
Inattentive, he heard her only in snatches, till the final confidential burst: “. . . glad if you would express an opinion. Look at her, so charming, such a great favourite, so generally admired! It would be too sad. We all hoped she would make a brilliant marriage with somebody very rich and of high position, have a house in London and in the country, and entertain us all splendidly. She’s so eminently fitted for it. She has such hosts of distinguished friends! And then — this instead! . . . My heart really aches.”
Her well-bred if anxious whisper was covered by the voice of professor Moorsom discoursing subtly down the short length of the dinner table on the Impermanency of the Measurable to his venerable disciple. It might have been a chapter in a new and popular book of Moorsomian philosophy. Patriarchal and delighted, old Dunster leaned forward a little, his eyes shining youthfully, two spots of colour at the roots of his white beard; and Renouard, glancing at the senile excitement, recalled the words heard on those subtle lips, adopted their scorn for his own, saw their truth before this man ready to be amused by the side of the grave. Yes! Intellectual debauchery in the froth of existence! Froth and fraud!
On the same side of the table Miss Moorsom never once looked towards her father, all her grace as if frozen, her red lips compressed, the faintest rosiness under her dazzling complexion, her black eyes burning motionless, and the very coppery gleams of light lying still on the waves and undulation of her hair. Renouard fancied himself overturning the table, smashing crystal and china, treading fruit and flowers under foot, seizing her in his arms, carrying her off in a tumult of shrieks from all these people, a silent frightened mortal, into some profound retreat as in the age of Cavern men. Suddenly everybody got up, and he hastened to rise too, finding himself out of breath and quite unsteady on his feet.
On the terrace the philosopher, after lighting a cigar, slipped his hand condescendingly under his “dear young friend’s” arm. Renouard regarded him now with the profoundest mistrust. But the great man seemed really to have a liking for his young friend — one of those mysterious sympathies, disregarding the differences of age and position, which in this case might have been explained by the failure of philosophy to meet a very real worry of a practical kind.
After a turn or two and some casual talk the professor said suddenly: “My late son was in your school — do you know? I can imagine that had he lived and you had ever met you would have understood each other. He too was inclined to action.”
He sighed, then, shaking off the mournful thought and with a nod at the dusky part of the terrace where the dress of his daughter made a luminous stain: “I really wish you would drop in that quarter a few sensible, discouraging words.”
Renouard disengaged himself from that most perfidious of men under the pretence of astonishment, and stepping back a pace —
“Surely you are making fun of me, Professor Moorsom,” he said with a low laugh, which was really a sound of rage.
“My dear young friend! It’s no subject for jokes, to me. . . You don’t seem to have any notion of your prestige,” he added, walking away towards the chairs.
“Humbug!” thought Renouard, standing still and looking after him. “And yet! And yet! What if it were true?”
He advanced then towards Miss Moorsom. Posed on the seat on which they had first spoken to each other, it was her turn to watch him coming on. But many of the windows were not lighted that evening. It was dark over there. She appeared to him luminous in her clear dress, a figure without shape, a face without features, awaiting his approach, till he got quite near to her, sat down, and they had exchanged a few insignificant words. Gradually she came out like a magic painting of charm, fascination, and desire, glowing mysteriously on the dark background. Something imperceptible in the lines of her attitude, in the modulations of her voice, seemed to soften that suggestion of calm unconscious pride which enveloped her always like a mantle. He, sensitive like a bond slave to the moods of the master, was moved by the subtle relenting of her grace to an infinite tenderness. He fought down the impulse to seize her by the hand, lead her down into the garden away under the big trees, and throw himself at her feet uttering words of love. His emotion was so strong that he had to cough slightly, and not knowing what to talk to her about he began to tell her of his mother and sisters. All the family were coming to London to live there, for some little time at least.
“I hope you will go and tell them something of me. Something seen,” he said pressingly.
By this miserable subterfuge, like a man about to part with his life, he hoped to make her remember him a little longer.
“Certainly,” she said. “I’ll be glad to call when I get back. But that ‘when’ may be a long time.”
He heard a light sigh. A cruel jealous curiosity made him ask —
“Are you growing weary, Miss Moorsom?”
A silence fell on his low spoken question.
“Do you mean heart-weary?” sounded Miss Moorsom’s voice. “You don’t know me, I see.”
“Ah! Never despair,” he muttered.
“This, Mr. Renouard, is a work of reparation. I stand for truth here. I can’t think of myself.”
He could have taken her by the throat for every word seemed an insult to his passion; but he only said —
“I never doubted the — the — nobility of your purpose.”
“And to hear the word weariness pronounced in this connection surprises me. And from a man too who, I understand, has never counted the cost.”
“You are pleased to tease me,” he said, directly he had recovered his voice and had mastered his anger. It was as if Professor Moorsom had dropped poison in his ear which was spreading now and tainting his passion, his very jealousy. He mistrusted every word that came from those lips on which his life hung. “How can you know anything of men who do not count the cost?” he asked in his gentlest tones.
“From hearsay — a little.”
“Well, I assure you they are like the others, subject to suffering, victims of spells. . . .”
“One of them, at least, speaks very strangely.”
She dismissed the subject after a short silence. “Mr. Renouard, I had a disappointment this morning. This mail brought me a letter from the widow of the old butler — you know. I expected to learn that she had heard from — from here. But no. No letter arrived home since we left.”
Her voice was calm. His jealousy couldn’t stand much more of
this sort of talk; but he was glad that nothing had turned up to help the search; glad blindly, unreasonably — only because it would keep her longer in his sight — since she wouldn’t give up.
“I am too near her,” he thought, moving a little further on the seat. He was afraid in the revulsion of feeling of flinging himself on her hands, which were lying on her lap, and covering them with kisses. He was afraid. Nothing, nothing could shake that spell — not if she were ever so false, stupid, or degraded. She was fate itself. The extent of his misfortune plunged him in such a stupor that he failed at first to hear the sound of voices and footsteps inside the drawing-room. Willie had come home — and the Editor was with him.
They burst out on the terrace babbling noisily, and then pulling themselves together stood still, surprising — and as if themselves surprised.
CHAPTER VII
They had been feasting a poet from the bush, the latest discovery of the Editor. Such discoveries were the business, the vocation, the pride and delight of the only apostle of letters in the hemisphere, the solitary patron of culture, the Slave of the Lamp — as he subscribed himself at the bottom of the weekly literary page of his paper. He had had no difficulty in persuading the virtuous Willie (who had festive instincts) to help in the good work, and now they had left the poet lying asleep on the hearthrug of the editorial room and had rushed to the Dunster mansion wildly. The Editor had another discovery to announce. Swaying a little where he stood he opened his mouth very wide to shout the one word “Found!” Behind him Willie flung both his hands above his head and let them fall dramatically. Renouard saw the four white-headed people at the end of the terrace rise all together from their chairs with an effect of sudden panic.
“I tell you — he — is — found,” the patron of letters shouted emphatically.
“What is this!” exclaimed Renouard in a choked voice. Miss Moorsom seized his wrist suddenly, and at that contact fire ran through all his veins, a hot stillness descended upon him in which he heard the blood — or the fire — beating in his ears. He made a movement as if to rise, but was restrained by the convulsive pressure on his wrist.
Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) Page 621