FullReads

“Heaven only knows what I want.”

Renouard leaning his back against the balustrade folded his arms on his breast, appeared to meditate profoundly. His face, shaded softly by the broad brim of a planter’s Panama hat, with the straight line of the nose level with the forehead, the eyes lost in the depth of the setting, and the chin well forward, had such a profile as may be seen amongst the bronzes of classical museums, pure under a crested helmet–recalled vaguely a Minerva’s head.

“This is the most troublesome time I ever had in my life,” exclaimed the professor testily.

“Surely the man must be worth it,” muttered Renouard with a pang of jealousy traversing his breast like a self-inflicted stab.

Whether enervated by the heat or giving way to pent up irritation the professor surrendered himself to the mood of sincerity.

“He began by being a pleasantly dull boy. He developed into a pointlessly clever young man, without, I suspect, ever trying to understand anything. My daughter knew him from childhood. I am a busy man, and I confess that their engagement was a complete surprise to me. I wish their reasons for that step had been more naive. But simplicity was out of fashion in their set. From a worldly point of view he seems to have been a mere baby. Of course, now, I am assured that he is the victim of his noble confidence in the rectitude of his kind. But that’s mere idealising of a sad reality. For my part I will tell you that from the very beginning I had the gravest doubts of his dishonesty. Unfortunately my clever daughter hadn’t. And now we behold the reaction. No. To be earnestly dishonest one must be really poor. This was only a manifestation of his extremely refined cleverness. The complicated simpleton. He had an awful awakening though.”

In such words did Professor Moorsom give his “young friend” to understand the state of his feelings toward the lost man. It was evident that the father of Miss Moorsom wished him to remain lost. Perhaps the unprecedented heat of the season made him long for the cool spaces of the Pacific, the sweep of the ocean’s free wind along the promenade decks, cumbered with long chairs, of a ship steaming towards the Californian coast. To Renouard the philosopher appeared simply the most treacherous of fathers. He was amazed. But he was not at the end of his discoveries.

“He may be dead,” the professor murmured.

“Why? People don’t die here sooner than in Europe. If he had gone to hide in Italy, for instance, you wouldn’t think of saying that.”

“Well! And suppose he has become morally disintegrated. You know he was not a strong personality,” the professor suggested moodily. “My daughter’s future is in question here.”

Renouard thought that the love of such a woman was enough to pull any broken man together–to drag a man out of his grave. And he thought this with inward despair, which kept him silent as much almost as his astonishment. At last he managed to stammer out a generous –

“Oh! Don’t let us even suppose. . .”

The professor struck in with a sadder accent than before –

“It’s good to be young. And then you have been a man of action, and necessarily a believer in success. But I have been looking too long at life not to distrust its surprises. Age! Age! Here I stand before you a man full of doubts and hesitation–spe lentus, timidus futuri.”

He made a sign to Renouard not to interrupt, and in a lowered voice, as if afraid of being overheard, even there, in the solitude of the terrace –

“And the worst is that I am not even sure how far this sentimental pilgrimage is genuine. Yes. I doubt my own child. It’s true that she’s a woman. . . . “