第22章

Sheltered by the squat headland from the first morning sparkle of the sea the little bay breathed a delicious freshness.The party from the schooner landed at the bottom of the garden.They exchanged insignificant words in studiously casual tones.The professor's sister put up a long-handled eye-glass as if to scan the novel surroundings, but in reality searching for poor Arthur anxiously.Having never seen him otherwise than in his town clothes she had no idea what he would look like.It had been left to the professor to help his ladies out of the boat because Renouard, as if intent on giving directions, had stepped forward at once to meet the half-caste Luiz hurrying down the path.In the distance, in front of the dazzlingly sunlit bungalow, a row of dark-faced house-boys unequal in stature and varied in complexion preserved the immobility of a guard of honour.

Luiz had taken off his soft felt hat before coming within earshot.

Renouard bent his head to his rapid talk of domestic arrangements he meant to make for the visitors; another bed in the master's room for the ladies and a cot for the gentleman to be hung in the room opposite where - where Mr.Walter - here he gave a scared look all round - Mr.Walter - had died.

"Very good," assented Renouard in an even undertone."And remember what you have to say of him.""Yes, master.Only" - he wriggled slightly and put one bare foot on the other for a moment in apologetic embarrassment - "only I - I- don't like to say it."

Renouard looked at him without anger, without any sort of expression."Frightened of the dead? Eh? Well - all right.Iwill say it myself - I suppose once for all...Immediately he raised his voice very much.

"Send the boys down to bring up the luggage.""Yes, master."

Renouard turned to his distinguished guests who, like a personally conducted party of tourists, had stopped and were looking about them.

"I am sorry," he began with an impassive face."My man has just told me that Mr.Walter..." he managed to smile, but didn't correct himself..."has gone in a trading schooner on a short tour of the islands, to the westward."This communication was received in profound silence.

Renouard forgot himself in the thought: "It's done!" But the sight of the string of boys marching up to the house with suit-cases and dressing-bags rescued him from that appalling abstraction.

"All I can do is to beg you to make yourselves at home...with what patience you may."This was so obviously the only thing to do that everybody moved on at once.The professor walked alongside Renouard, behind the two ladies.

"Rather unexpected - this absence."

"Not exactly," muttered Renouard."A trip has to be made every year to engage labour.""I see...And he...How vexingly elusive the poor fellow has become! I'll begin to think that some wicked fairy is favouring this love tale with unpleasant attentions."Renouard noticed that the party did not seem weighed down by this new disappointment.On the contrary they moved with a freer step.

The professor's sister dropped her eye-glass to the end of its chain.Miss Moorsom took the lead.The professor, his lips unsealed, lingered in the open: but Renouard did not listen to that man's talk.He looked after that man's daughter - if indeed that creature of irresistible seductions were a daughter of mortals.The very intensity of his desire, as if his soul were streaming after her through his eyes, defeated his object of keeping hold of her as long as possible with, at least, one of his senses.Her moving outlines dissolved into a misty coloured shimmer of a woman made of flame and shadows, crossing the threshold of his house.

The days which followed were not exactly such as Renouard had feared - yet they were not better than his fears.They were accursed in all the moods they brought him.But the general aspect of things was quiet.The professor smoked innumerable pipes with the air of a worker on his holiday, always in movement and looking at things with that mysteriously sagacious aspect of men who are admittedly wiser than the rest of the world.His white head of hair - whiter than anything within the horizon except the broken water on the reefs - was glimpsed in every part of the plantation always on the move under the white parasol.And once he climbed the headland and appeared suddenly to those below, a white speck elevated in the blue, with a diminutive but statuesque effect.