The Pupil | Page 8

the subject again
spontaneously, but her contribution to it was merely that she had
thought all the while they were getting on so beautifully. Pemberton's
reply to this revelation was that unless they immediately put down
something on account he would leave them on the spot and for ever. He
knew she would wonder how he would get away, and for a moment
expected her to enquire. She didn't, for which he was almost grateful to
her, so little was he in a position to tell.
"You won't, you know you won't--you're too interested," she said. "You
are interested, you know you are, you dear kind man!" She laughed
with almost condemnatory archness, as if it were a reproach--though
she wouldn't insist; and flirted a soiled pocket-handkerchief at him.
Pemberton's mind was fully made up to take his step the following

week. This would give him time to get an answer to a letter he had
despatched to England. If he did in the event nothing of the sort--that is
if he stayed another year and then went away only for three months--it
was not merely because before the answer to his letter came (most
unsatisfactory when it did arrive) Mr. Moreen generously counted out
to him, and again with the sacrifice to "form" of a marked man of the
world, three hundred francs in elegant ringing gold. He was irritated to
find that Mrs. Moreen was right, that he couldn't at the pinch bear to
leave the child. This stood out clearer for the very reason that, the night
of his desperate appeal to his patrons, he had seen fully for the first
time where he was. Wasn't it another proof of the success with which
those patrons practised their arts that they had managed to avert for so
long the illuminating flash? It descended on our friend with a breadth
of effect which perhaps would have struck a spectator as comical, after
he had returned to his little servile room, which looked into a close
court where a bare dirty opposite wall took, with the sound of shrill
clatter, the reflexion of lighted back windows. He had simply given
himself away to a band of adventurers. The idea, the word itself, wore a
romantic horror for him--he had always lived on such safe lines. Later
it assumed a more interesting, almost a soothing, sense: it pointed a
moral, and Pemberton could enjoy a moral. The Moreens were
adventurers not merely because they didn't pay their debts, because
they lived on society, but because their whole view of life, dim and
confused and instinctive, like that of clever colour-blind animals, was
speculative and rapacious and mean. Oh they were "respectable," and
that only made them more immondes. The young man's analysis, while
he brooded, put it at last very simply--they were adventurers because
they were toadies and snobs. That was the completest account of
them--it was the law of their being. Even when this truth became vivid
to their ingenious inmate he remained unconscious of how much his
mind had been prepared for it by the extraordinary little boy who had
now become such a complication in his life. Much less could he then
calculate on the information he was still to owe the extraordinary little
boy.

CHAPTER V

But it was during the ensuing time that the real problem came up--the
problem of how far it was excusable to discuss the turpitude of parents
with a child of twelve, of thirteen, of fourteen. Absolutely inexcusable
and quite impossible it of course at first appeared; and indeed the
question didn't press for some time after Pemberton had received his
three hundred francs. They produced a temporary lull, a relief from the
sharpest pressure. The young man frugally amended his wardrobe and
even had a few francs in his pocket. He thought the Moreens looked at
him as if he were almost too smart, as if they ought to take care not to
spoil him. If Mr. Moreen hadn't been such a man of the world he would
perhaps have spoken of the freedom of such neckties on the part of a
subordinate. But Mr. Moreen was always enough a man of the world to
let things pass--he had certainly shown that. It was singular how
Pemberton guessed that Morgan, though saying nothing about it, knew
something had happened. But three hundred francs, especially when
one owed money, couldn't last for ever; and when the treasure was
gone--the boy knew when it had failed--Morgan did break ground. The
party had returned to Nice at the beginning of the winter, but not to the
charming villa. They went to an hotel, where they stayed three months,
and then moved to another establishment, explaining that they had left
the first because, after waiting