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.