Within the Tides | Page 2

insisted the other. "Solitude works like a sort of poison. And
then you perceive suggestions in faces--mysterious and forcible, that no
sound man would be bothered with. Of course you do."
Geoffrey Renouard did not tell his journalist friend that the suggestions
of his own face, the face of a friend, bothered him as much as the others.
He detected a degrading quality in the touches of age which every day
adds to a human countenance. They moved and disturbed him, like the
signs of a horrible inward travail which was frightfully apparent to the
fresh eye he had brought from his isolation in Malata, where he had
settled after five strenuous years of adventure and exploration.
"It's a fact," he said, "that when I am at home in Malata I see no one
consciously. I take the plantation boys for granted."
"Well, and we here take the people in the streets for granted. And that's
sanity."
The visitor said nothing to this for fear of engaging a discussion. What
he had come to seek in the editorial office was not controversy, but
information. Yet somehow he hesitated to approach the subject.

Solitary life makes a man reticent in respect of anything in the nature of
gossip, which those to whom chatting about their kind is an everyday
exercise regard as the commonest use of speech.
"You very busy?" he asked.
The Editor making red marks on a long slip of printed paper threw the
pencil down.
"No. I am done. Social paragraphs. This office is the place where
everything is known about everybody--including even a great deal of
nobodies. Queer fellows drift in and out of this room. Waifs and strays
from home, from up-country, from the Pacific. And, by the way, last
time you were here you picked up one of that sort for your
assistant--didn't you?"
"I engaged an assistant only to stop your preaching about the evils of
solitude," said Renouard hastily; and the pressman laughed at the
half-resentful tone. His laugh was not very loud, but his plump person
shook all over. He was aware that his younger friend's deference to his
advice was based only on an imperfect belief in his wisdom--or his
sagacity. But it was he who had first helped Renouard in his plans of
exploration: the five-years' programme of scientific adventure, of work,
of danger and endurance, carried out with such distinction and
rewarded modestly with the lease of Malata island by the frugal
colonial government. And this reward, too, had been due to the
journalist's advocacy with word and pen--for he was an influential man
in the community. Doubting very much if Renouard really liked him,
he was himself without great sympathy for a certain side of that man
which he could not quite make out. He only felt it obscurely to be his
real personality--the true--and, perhaps, the absurd. As, for instance, in
that case of the assistant. Renouard had given way to the arguments of
his friend and backer--the argument against the unwholesome effect of
solitude, the argument for the safety of companionship even if
quarrelsome. Very well. In this docility he was sensible and even
likeable. But what did he do next? Instead of taking counsel as to the
choice with his old backer and friend, and a man, besides, knowing
everybody employed and unemployed on the pavements of the town,

this extraordinary Renouard suddenly and almost surreptitiously picked
up a fellow--God knows who--and sailed away with him back to Malata
in a hurry; a proceeding obviously rash and at the same time not quite
straight. That was the sort of thing. The secretly unforgiving journalist
laughed a little longer and then ceased to shake all over.
"Oh, yes. About that assistant of yours. . . ."
"What about him," said Renouard, after waiting a while, with a shadow
of uneasiness on his face.
"Have you nothing to tell me of him?"
"Nothing except. . . ." Incipient grimness vanished out of Renouard's
aspect and his voice, while he hesitated as if reflecting seriously before
he changed his mind. "No. Nothing whatever."
"You haven't brought him along with you by chance--for a change."
The Planter of Malata stared, then shook his head, and finally
murmured carelessly: "I think he's very well where he is. But I wish
you could tell me why young Dunster insisted so much on my dining
with his uncle last night. Everybody knows I am not a society man."
The Editor exclaimed at so much modesty. Didn't his friend know that
he was their one and only explorer--that he was the man experimenting
with the silk plant. . . .
"Still, that doesn't tell me why I was invited yesterday. For young
Dunster never thought of this civility before. . . ."
"Our Willie," said