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-full.”
“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.”
Renouard, with an irritated gesture, tilted his hat more forward on his
eyes, as though he were bored. The Editor went on with the remark that
to be sure neither he (Renouard) nor yet Willie were much used to meet
girls of that remarkable superiority. Willie when learning business with
a firm in London, years before, had seen none but boarding-house society,
he guessed. As to himself in the good old days, when he trod the
glorious flags of Fleet Street, he neither had access to, nor yet would
have cared for the swells. Nothing interested him then but parliamentary
politics and the oratory of the House of Commons.
He paid to this not very distant past the tribute of a tender,
reminiscent smile, and returned to his first idea that for a society girl
her action was rather fine. All the same the professor could not be very
pleased. The fellow if he was as pure as a lily now was just about as
devoid of the goods of the earth. And there were misfortunes, however
undeserved, which damaged a man’s standing permanently. On the other
hand, it was difficult to oppose cynically a noble impulse—not to speak
of the great love at the root of it. Ah! Love! And then the lady was
quite capable of going off by herself. She was of age, she had money of
her own, plenty of pluck too. Moorsom must have concluded that it was
more truly paternal, more prudent too, and generally safer all round to
let himself be dragged into this chase. The aunt came along for the same
reasons. It was given out at home as a trip round the world of the usual
kind.
Renouard had risen and remained standing with his heart beating, and
strangely affected by this tale, robbed as it was of all glamour by the
prosaic personality of the narrator. The Editor added: “I’ve been asked
to help in the search—you know.”
Renouard muttered something about an appointment and went out into the
street. His inborn sanity could not defend him from a misty creeping
jealousy. He thought that obviously no man of that sort could be worthy
of such a woman’s devoted fidelity. Renouard, however, had lived long
enough to reflect that a man’s activities, his views, and even his ideas
may be very inferior to his character; and moved by a delicate
consideration for that splendid girl he tried to think out for the man a
character of inward excellence and outward gifts—some extraordinary
seduction. But in vain. Fresh from months of solitude and from days at
sea, her splendour presented itself to him absolutely unconquerable in
its perfection, unless by her own folly. It was easier to suspect her of
this than to imagine in the man qualities which would be worthy of her.
Easier and less degrading. Because folly may be generous—could be
nothing else but generosity in her; whereas to imagine her subjugated by
something common was intolerable.
Because of the force of the physical impression he had received from her
personality (and such impressions are the real origins of the deepest
movements of our soul) this conception of her was even inconceivable.
But no Prince Charming has ever lived out of a fairy tale. He doesn’t
walk the worlds of Fashion and Finance—and with a stumbling gait at that.
Generosity. Yes. It was her generosity. But this generosity was
altogether regal in its splendour, almost absurd in its lavishness—or,
perhaps, divine.
In the evening, on board his schooner, sitting on the rail, his arms
folded on his breast and his eyes fixed on the deck, he let the darkness
catch him unawares in the midst of a meditation on the mechanism of
sentiment and the springs of passion. And all the time he had an abiding
consciousness of her bodily presence. The effect on his senses had been
so penetrating that in the middle of the night, rousing up suddenly,
wide-eyed in the darkness of his cabin, he did not create a faint mental
vision of her person for himself, but, more intimately affected, he
scented distinctly the faint perfume she used, and could almost have
sworn that he had been awakened by the soft rustle of her dress. He even
sat up listening in the dark for a time, then sighed and lay down again,
not agitated but, on the contrary, oppressed by the sensation of
something that had happened to him and could not be undone.