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.
“No, no.” Miss Moorsom’s eyes stared black as night, searching the space
before her. Far away the Editor strutted forward, Willie following with
his ostentatious manner of carrying his bulky and oppressive carcass
which, however, did not remain exactly perpendicular for two seconds
together.
“The innocent Arthur . . . Yes. We’ve got him,” the Editor became very
business-like. “Yes, this letter has done it.”
He plunged into an inside pocket for it, slapped the scrap of paper with
his open palm. “From that old woman. William had it in his pocket since
this morning when Miss Moorsom gave it to him to show me. Forgot all
about it till an hour ago. Thought it was of no importance. Well, no!
Not till it was properly read.”
Renouard and Miss Moorsom emerged from the shadows side by side, a
well-matched couple, animated yet statuesque in their calmness and in
their pallor. She had let go his wrist. On catching sight of Renouard
the Editor exclaimed:
“What—you here!” in a quite shrill voice.
There came a dead pause. All the faces had in them something dismayed
and cruel.
“He’s the very man we want,” continued the Editor. “Excuse my
excitement. You are the very man, Renouard. Didn’t you tell me that
your assistant called himself Walter? Yes? Thought so. But here’s that
old woman—the butler’s wife—listen to this. She writes: All I can tell
you, Miss, is that my poor husband directed his letters to the name of H.
Walter.”
Renouard’s violent but repressed exclamation was lost in a general murmur
and shuffle of feet. The Editor made a step forward, bowed with
creditable steadiness.
“Miss Moorsom, allow me to congratulate you from the bottom of my heart
on the happy—er—issue. . . ”
“Wait,” muttered Renouard irresolutely.
The Editor jumped on him in the manner of their old friendship. “Ah,
you! You are a fine fellow too. With your solitary ways of life you
will end by having no more discrimination than a savage. Fancy living
with a gentleman for months and never guessing. A man, I am certain,
accomplished, remarkable, out of the common, since he had been
distinguished” (he bowed again) “by Miss Moorsom, whom we all admire.”
She turned her back on him.
“I hope to goodness you haven’t been leading him a dog’s life, Geoffrey,”
the Editor addressed his friend in a whispered aside.
Renouard seized a chair violently, sat down, and propping his elbow on
his knee leaned his head on his hand. Behind him the sister of the
professor looked up to heaven and wrung her hands stealthily. Mrs.
Dunster’s hands were clasped forcibly under her chin, but she, dear soul,
was looking sorrowfully at Willie. The model nephew! In this strange
state! So very much flushed! The careful disposition of the thin hairs
across Willie’s bald spot was deplorably disarranged, and the spot itself
was red and, as it were, steaming.
“What’s the matter, Geoffrey?” The Editor seemed disconcerted by the
silent attitudes round him, as though he had expected all these people to
shout and dance. “You have him on the island—haven’t you?”
“Oh, yes: I have him there,” said Renouard, without looking up.
“Well, then!” The Editor looked helplessly around as if begging for
response of some sort. But the only response that came was very
unexpected. Annoyed at being left in the background, and also because
very little drink made him nasty, the emotional Willie turned malignant
all at once, and in a bibulous tone surprising in a man able to keep his
balance so well—
“Aha! But you haven’t got him here—not yet!” he sneered. “No! You
haven’t got him yet.”
This outrageous exhibition was to the Editor like the lash to a jaded
horse. He positively jumped.
“What of that? What do you mean? We—haven’t—got—him—here. Of course he
isn’t here! But Geoffrey’s schooner is here. She can be sent at once to
fetch him here. No! Stay! There’s a better plan. Why shouldn’t you
all sail over to Malata, professor? Save time! I am sure Miss Moorsom
would prefer. . .”
With a gallant flourish of his arm he looked for Miss Moorsom. She had
disappeared. He was taken aback somewhat.
“Ah! H’m. Yes. . . . Why not. A pleasure cruise, delightful ship,
delightful season, delightful errand, del . . . No! There are no
objections. Geoffrey, I understand, has indulged in a bungalow three
sizes too large for him. He can put you all up. It will be a pleasure
for him. It will be the greatest privilege. Any man would be proud of
being an agent of this happy reunion. I am proud of the little part I’ve
played. He will consider it the greatest honour. Geoff, my boy, you had
better be stirring to-morrow bright and early about the preparations for
the trip. It would be criminal to lose a single day.”
He was as flushed as Willie, the excitement keeping up the effect of the
festive dinner. For a time Renouard, silent, as if he had not heard a
word of all that babble, did not stir. But when he got up it was to
advance towards the Editor and give him such a hearty slap on the back
that the plump little man reeled in his tracks and looked quite
frightened for a moment.
“You are a heaven-born discoverer and a first-rate manager. . . He’s
right. It’s the only way. You can’t resist the claim of sentiment, and
you must even risk the voyage to Malata. . . ” Renouard’s voice sank. “A
lonely spot,” he added, and fell into thought under all these eyes
converging on him in the sudden silence. His slow glance passed over all
the faces in succession, remaining arrested on Professor Moorsom, stony
eyed, a smouldering cigar in his fingers, and with his sister standing by
his side.
“I shall be infinitely gratified if you consent to come. But, of course,
you will. We shall sail to-morrow evening then. And now let me leave
you to your happiness.”
He bowed, very grave, pointed suddenly his finger at Willie who was
swaying about with a sleepy frown. . . . “Look at him. He’s overcome
with happiness. You had better put him to bed . . . ” and disappeared
while every head on the terrace was turned to Willie with varied
expressions.
Renouard ran through the house. Avoiding the carriage road he fled down
the steep short cut to the shore, where his gig was waiting. At his loud
shout the sleeping Kanakas jumped up. He leaped in. “Shove off. Give
way!” and the gig darted through the water. “Give way! Give way!” She
flew past the wool-clippers sleeping at their anchors each with the open
unwinking eye of the lamp in the rigging; she flew past the flagship of
the Pacific squadron, a great mass all dark and silent, heavy with the
slumbers of five hundred men, and where the invisible sentries heard his
urgent “Give way! Give way!” in the night. The Kanakas, panting, rose
off the thwarts at every stroke. Nothing could be fast enough for him!
And he ran up the side of his schooner shaking the ladder noisily with
his rush.
On deck he stumbled and stood still.
Wherefore this haste? To what end, since he knew well before he started
that he had a pursuer from whom there was no escape.
As his foot touched the deck his will, his purpose he had been hurrying
to save, died out within. It had been nothing less than getting the
schooner under-way, letting her vanish silently in the night from amongst
these sleeping ships. And now he was certain he could not do it. It was
impossible! And he reflected that whether he lived or died such an act
would lay him under a dark suspicion from which he shrank. No, there was
nothing to be done.
He went down into the cabin and, before even unbuttoning his overcoat,
took out of the drawer the letter addressed to his assistant; that letter
which he had found in the pigeon-hole labelled “Malata” in young
Dunster’s outer office, where it had been waiting for three months some
occasion for being forwarded. From the moment of dropping it in the
drawer he had utterly forgotten its existence—till now, when the man’s
name had come out so clamorously. He glanced at the common envelope,
noted the shaky and laborious handwriting: H. Walter, Esqre. Undoubtedly
the very last letter the old butler had posted before his illness, and in
answer clearly to one from “Master Arthur” instructing him to address in
the future: “Care of Messrs. W. Dunster and Co.” Renouard made as if to
open the envelope, but paused, and, instead, tore the letter deliberately
in two, in four, in eight. With his hand full of pieces of paper he
returned on deck and scattered them overboard on the dark water, in which
they vanished instantly.
He did it slowly, without hesitation or remorse. H. Walter, Esqre, in
Malata. The innocent Arthur—What was his name? The man sought for by
that woman who as she went by seemed to draw all the passion of the earth
to her, without effort, not deigning to notice, naturally, as other women
breathed the air. But Renouard was no longer jealous of her very
existence. Whatever its meaning it was not for that man he had picked up
casually on obscure impulse, to get rid of the tiresome expostulations of
a so-called friend; a man of whom he really knew nothing—and now a dead
man. In Malata. Oh, yes! He was there secure enough, untroubled in his
grave. In Malata. To bury him was the last service Renouard had
rendered to his assistant before leaving the island on this trip to town.
Like many men ready enough for arduous enterprises Renouard was inclined
to evade the small complications of existence. This trait of his
character was composed of a little indolence, some disdain, and a
shrinking from contests with certain forms of vulgarity—like a man who
would face a lion and go out of his way to avoid a toad. His intercourse
with the meddlesome journalist was that merely outward intimacy without
sympathy some young men get drawn into easily. It had amused him rather
to keep that “friend” in the dark about the fate of his assistant.
Renouard had never needed other company than his own, for there was in
him something of the sensitiveness of a dreamer who is easily jarred. He
had said to himself that the all-knowing one would only preach again
about the evils of solitude and worry his head off in favour of some
forlornly useless protégé of his. Also the inquisitiveness of the Editor
had irritated him and had closed his lips in sheer disgust.
And now he contemplated the noose of consequences drawing tight around
him.
It was the memory of that diplomatic reticence which on the terrace had
stiffled his first cry which would have told them all that the man sought
for was not to be met on earth any more. He shrank from the absurdity of
hearing the all-knowing one, and not very sober at that, turning on him
with righteous reproaches—
“You never told me. You gave me to understand that your assistant was
alive, and now you say he’s dead. Which is it? Were you lying then or
are you lying now?” No! the thought of such a scene was not to be borne.
He had sat down appalled, thinking: “What shall I do now?”
His courage had oozed out of him. Speaking the truth meant the Moorsoms
going away at once—while it seemed to him that he would give the last
shred of his rectitude to secure a day more of her company. He sat
on—silent. Slowly, from confused sensations, from his talk with the
professor, the manner of the girl herself, the intoxicating familiarity
of her sudden hand-clasp, there had come to him a half glimmer of hope.
The other man was dead. Then! . . . Madness, of course—but he could not
give it up. He had listened to that confounded busybody arranging
everything—while all these people stood around assenting, under the spell
of that dead romance. He had listened scornful and silent. The glimmers
of hope, of opportunity, passed before his eyes. He had only to sit
still and say nothing. That and no more. And what was truth to him in
the face of that great passion which had flung him prostrate in spirit at
her adored feet!
And now it was done! Fatality had willed it! With the eyes of a mortal
struck by the maddening thunderbolt of the gods, Renouard looked up to
the sky, an immense black pall dusted over with gold, on which great
shudders seemed to pass from the breath of life affirming its sway.