Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated)

by Joseph Conrad

  “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 pl
uck 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.

  CHAPTER III

  In the afternoon he lounged into the editorial office, carrying with affected nonchalance that weight of the irremediable he had felt laid on him suddenly in the small hours of the night — that consciousness of something that could no longer be helped. His patronising friend informed him at once that he had made the acquaintance of the Moorsom party last night. At the Dunsters, of course. Dinner.

  “Very quiet. Nobody there. It was much better for the business. I say . . .”

  Renouard, his hand grasping the back of a chair, stared down at him dumbly.

  “Phew! That’s a stunning girl. . . Why do you want to sit on that chair? It’s uncomfortable!”

  “I wasn’t going to sit on it.” Renouard walked slowly to the window, glad to find in himself enough self-control to let go the chair instead of raising it on high and bringing it down on the Editor’s head.

  “Willie kept on gazing at her with tears in his boiled eyes. You should have seen him bending sentimentally over her at dinner.”

  “Don’t,” said Renouard in such an anguished tone that the Editor turned right round to look at his back.

  “You push your dislike of young Dunster too far. It’s positively morbid,” he disapproved mildly. “We can’t be all beautiful after thirty. . . . I talked a little, about you mostly, to the professor. He appeared to be interested in the silk plant — if only as a change from the great subject. Miss Moorsom didn’t seem to mind when I confessed to her that I had taken you into the confidence of the thing. Our Willie approved too. Old Dunster with his white beard seemed to give me his blessing. All those people have a great opinion of you, simply because I told them that you’ve led every sort of life one can think of before you got struck on exploration. They want you to make suggestions. What do you think ‘Master Arthur’ is likely to have taken to?”

  “Something easy,” muttered Renouard without unclenching his teeth.

  “Hunting man. Athlete. Don’t be hard on the chap. He may be riding boundaries, or droving cattle, or humping his swag about the back-blocks away to the devil — somewhere. He may be even prospecting at the back of beyond — this very moment.”

  “Or lying dead drunk in a roadside pub. It’s late enough in the day for that.”

  The Editor looked up instinctively. The clock was pointing at a quarter to five. “Yes, it is,” he admitted. “But it needn’t be. And he may have lit out into the Western Pacific all of a sudden — say in a trading schooner. Though I really don’t see in what capacity. Still . . . “

  “Or he may be passing at this very moment under this very window.”

  “Not he . . . and I wish you would get away from it to where one can see your face. I hate talking to a man’s back. You stand there like a hermit on a sea-shore growling to yourself. I tell you what it is, Geoffrey, you don’t like mankind.”

  “I don’t make my living by talking about mankind’s affairs,” Renouard defended himself. But he came away obediently and sat down in the arm-chair. “How can you be so certain that your man isn’t down there in the street?” he asked. “It’s neither more nor less probable than every single one of your other suppositions.”

  Placated by Renouard’s docility the Editor gazed at him for a while. “Aha! I’ll tell you how. Learn then that we have begun the campaign. We have telegraphed his description to the police of every township up and down the land. And what’s more we’ve ascertained definitely that he hasn’t been in this town for the last three months at least. How much longer he’s been away we can’t tell.”

  “That’s very curious.”

  “It’s very simple. Miss Moorsom wrote to him, to the post office here directly she returned to London after her excursion into the country to see the old butler. Well — her letter is still lying there. It has not been called for. Ergo, this town is not his usual abode. Personally, I never thought it was. But he cannot fail to turn up some time or other. Our main hope lies just in the certitude that he must come to town sooner or later. Remember he doesn’t know that the butler is dead, and he will want to inquire for a letter. Well, he’ll find a note from Miss Moorsom.”

  Renouard, silent, thought that it was likely enough. His profound distaste for this conversation was betrayed by an air of weariness darkening his energetic sun-tanned features, and by the augmented dreaminess of his eyes. The Editor noted it as a further proof of that immoral detachment from mankind, of that callousness of sentiment fostered by the unhealthy conditions of solitude — according to his own favourite theory. Aloud he observed that as long as a man had not given up correspondence he could not be looked upon as lost. Fugitive criminals had been tracked in that way by justice, he reminded his friend; then suddenly changed the bearing of the subject somewhat by asking if Renouard had heard from his people lately, and if every member of his large tribe was well and happy.

  “Yes, thanks.”

  The tone was curt, as if repelling a liberty. Renouard did not like being asked about his people, for whom he had a profound and remorseful affection. He had not seen a single human being to whom he was related, for many years, and he was extremely different from them all.

  On the very morning of his arrival from his island he had gone to a set of pigeon-holes in Willie Dunster’s outer office a
nd had taken out from a compartment labelled “Malata” a very small accumulation of envelopes, a few addressed to himself, and one addressed to his assistant, all to the care of the firm, W. Dunster and Co. As opportunity offered, the firm used to send them on to Malata either by a man-of-war schooner going on a cruise, or by some trading craft proceeding that way. But for the last four months there had been no opportunity.

  “You going to stay here some time?” asked the Editor, after a longish silence.

  Renouard, perfunctorily, did see no reason why he should make a long stay.

  “For health, for your mental health, my boy,” rejoined the newspaper man. “To get used to human faces so that they don’t hit you in the eye so hard when you walk about the streets. To get friendly with your kind. I suppose that assistant of yours can be trusted to look after things?”

  “There’s the half-caste too. The Portuguese. He knows what’s to be done.”

  “Aha!” The Editor looked sharply at his friend. “What’s his name?”

  “Who’s name?”

  “The assistant’s you picked up on the sly behind my back.”

  Renouard made a slight movement of impatience.

  “I met him unexpectedly one evening. I thought he would do as well as another. He had come from up country and didn’t seem happy in a town. He told me his name was Walter. I did not ask him for proofs, you know.”

  “I don’t think you get on very well with him.”

  “Why? What makes you think so.”

  “I don’t know. Something reluctant in your manner when he’s in question.”

  “Really. My manner! I don’t think he’s a great subject for conversation, perhaps. Why not drop him?”