Joseph Conrad: Within the Tides: Tales

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-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.”