"Conrad, Joseph - Within The Tides" - читать интересную книгу автора (Conrad Joseph)

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