第24章

That morning wandering about his plantation, more like a frightened soul than its creator and master, he dodged the white parasol bobbing up here and there like a buoy adrift on a sea of dark-green plants.The crop promised to be magnificent, and the fashionable philosopher of the age took other than a merely scientific interest in the experiment.His investments were judicious, but he had always some little money lying by, for experiments.

After lunch, being left alone with Renouard, he talked a little of cultivation and such matters.Then suddenly:

"By the way, is it true what my sister tells me, that your plantation boys have been disturbed by a ghost?"Renouard, who since the ladies had left the table was not keeping such a strict watch on himself, came out of his abstraction with a start and a stiff smile.

"My foreman had some trouble with them during my absence.They funk working in a certain field on the slope of the hill.""A ghost here!" exclaimed the amused professor."Then our whole conception of the psychology of ghosts must be revised.This island has been uninhabited probably since the dawn of ages.How did a ghost come here.By air or water? And why did it leave its native haunts.Was it from misanthropy? Was he expelled from some community of spirits?"Renouard essayed to respond in the same tone.The words died on his lips.Was it a man or a woman ghost, the professor inquired.

"I don't know." Renouard made an effort to appear at ease.He had, he said, a couple of Tahitian amongst his boys - a ghost-ridden race.They had started the scare.They had probably brought their ghost with them.

"Let us investigate the matter, Renouard," proposed the professor half in earnest."We may make some interesting discoveries as to the state of primitive minds, at any rate."This was too much.Renouard jumped up and leaving the room went out and walked about in front of the house.He would allow no one to force his hand.Presently the professor joined him outside.He carried his parasol, but had neither his book nor his pipe with him.Amiably serious he laid his hand on his "dear young friend's"arm.

"We are all of us a little strung up," he said."For my part Ihave been like sister Anne in the story.But I cannot see anything coming.Anything that would be the least good for anybody - Imean."

Renouard had recovered sufficiently to murmur coldly his regret of this waste of time.For that was what, he supposed, the professor had in his mind.

"Time," mused Professor Moorsom."I don't know that time can be wasted.But I will tell you, my dear friend, what this is: it is an awful waste of life.I mean for all of us.Even for my sister, who has got a headache and is gone to lie down."He shook gently Renouard's arm."Yes, for all of us! One may meditate on life endlessly, one may even have a poor opinion of it - but the fact remains that we have only one life to live.And it is short.Think of that, my young friend."He released Renouard's arm and stepped out of the shade opening his parasol.It was clear that there was something more in his mind than mere anxiety about the date of his lectures for fashionable audiences.What did the man mean by his confounded platitudes? To Renouard, scared by Luiz in the morning (for he felt that nothing could be more fatal than to have his deception unveiled otherwise than by personal confession), this talk sounded like encouragement or a warning from that man who seemed to him to be very brazen and very subtle.It was like being bullied by the dead and cajoled by the living into a throw of dice for a supreme stake.

Renouard went away to some distance from the house and threw himself down in the shade of a tree.He lay there perfectly still with his forehead resting on his folded arms, light-headed and thinking.It seemed to him that he must be on fire, then that he had fallen into a cool whirlpool, a smooth funnel of water swirling about with nauseating rapidity.And then (it must have been a reminiscence of his boyhood) he was walking on the dangerous thin ice of a river, unable to turn back....Suddenly it parted from shore to shore with a loud crack like the report of a gun.

With one leap he found himself on his feet.All was peace, stillness, sunshine.He walked away from there slowly.Had he been a gambler he would have perhaps been supported in a measure by the mere excitement.But he was not a gambler.He had always disdained that artificial manner of challenging the fates.The bungalow came into view, bright and pretty, and all about everything was peace, stillness, sunshine....

While he was plodding towards it he had a disagreeable sense of the dead man's company at his elbow.The ghost! He seemed to be everywhere but in his grave.Could one ever shake him off? he wondered.At that moment Miss Moorsom came out on the verandah;and at once, as if by a mystery of radiating waves, she roused a great tumult in his heart, shook earth and sky together - but he plodded on.Then like a grave song-note in the storm her voice came to him ominously.

"Ah! Mr.Renouard..." He came up and smiled, but she was very serious."I can't keep still any longer.Is there time to walk up this headland and back before dark?"The shadows were lying lengthened on the ground; all was stillness and peace."No," said Renouard, feeling suddenly as steady as a rock."But I can show you a view from the central hill which your father has not seen.A view of reefs and of broken water without end, and of great wheeling clouds of sea-birds."She came down the verandah steps at once and they moved off."You go first," he proposed, "and I'll direct you.To the left."She was wearing a short nankin skirt, a muslin blouse; he could see through the thin stuff the skin of her shoulders, of her arms.The noble delicacy of her neck caused him a sort of transport."The path begins where these three palms are.The only palms on the island.""I see."

She never turned her head.After a while she observed: "This path looks as if it had been made recently.""Quite recently," he assented very low.