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The Pools of Silence. H. De Vere Stacpoole
Читать онлайн.Название The Pools of Silence
Год выпуска 0
isbn 4064066223977
Автор произведения H. De Vere Stacpoole
Жанр Языкознание
Издательство Bookwire
SCHAUNARD
The young man turned down the Avenue Malakoff, after he had left Berselius’s house, in the direction of the Avenue des Champs Elysées.
In twenty-four hours a complete change had taken place in his life. His line of travel had taken a new and most unexpected course; it was as though a train on the North German had, suddenly, by some mysterious arrangement of points and tracks, found itself on the Paris-Lyons and Mediterranean Railway.
Yesterday afternoon the prospect before him, though vague enough, was American. A practice in some big central American town. It would be a hard fight, for money was scanty, and in medicine, especially in the States, advertisement counts for very much.
All that was changed now, and the hard, definite prospect that had elbowed itself out of vagueness stood before him: Africa, its palms and poisonous forests, the Congo—Berselius.
Something else besides these things also stood before him very definitely and almost casting them into shade. Maxine.
Up to this, a woman had never stood before him as a possible part of his future, if we except Mary Eliza Summers, the eleven-year-old daughter of old Abe Summers, who kept the store in Dodgeville, Vermont, years ago—that is to say, when Paul Quincy Adams was twelve, an orchard-robbing hooligan, whose chief worry in life was that, though he could thrash his eldest brother left-handed, he was condemned by the law of entail to wear his old pants.
When a man falls in love with a woman—really in love—though the attainment of his desire be all but impossible, he has reached the goal of life; no tide can take him higher toward the Absolute. He has reached life’s zenith, and never will he rise higher, even though he live to wield a sceptre or rule armies.
Adams reached the Place de la Concorde on foot, walking and taking his way mechanically, and utterly unconscious of the passers-by.
He was studying in minute detail Maxine Berselius, the pose of her head outlined against the tapestry, the curves of her lips that could speak so well without speaking, the little shell-like ears, the brown-gold coils of her hair, her hands, her dress.
He was standing undetermined as to his route, and whether he would cross over to the Rue St. Honoré or turn toward the Seine, when someone gripped his arm from behind, and, turning, he found himself face to face with Dr. Stenhouse, an English physician who had set up in Paris, practising in the Boulevard Haussmann and flourishing exceedingly.
“Well, this is luck,” said Stenhouse. “I lost your address, or I would have written, asking you to come and see us. I remembered it was over on the other side of the water somewhere, but where exactly I could not remember. What are you doing with yourself?”
“Nothing, just at present.”
“Well, see here. I’m going to the Rue du Mont Thabor to see a patient; walk along with me—it’s quite close, just behind the Rue St. Honoré.”
They crossed the Place de la Concorde.
“You have finished your post-graduate work, I expect,” said Stenhouse. “Are you going to practise in the States?”
“Ultimately, I may,” replied Adams. “I have always intended doing so; but I have to feel my way very cautiously, for the money market is not in a particularly flourishing state with me.”
“Good heavens!” said Stenhouse, “when is it with a medical man, especially when he is just starting? I’ve been through that. See here, why don’t you start in Paris?”
“Paris?”
“Yes, this is the place to make money. You say you are thinking of starting in some American city; well, let me tell you, there are very few American cities so full of rich Americans as Paris.”
“Well,” said Adams, “the idea is not a bad one, but just for the present I am fixed. I am going on a big-game shooting expedition to the Congo.”
“As doctor?”
“Yes, and the salary is not bad—two thousand francs a month and everything found, to say nothing of the fun.”
“And the malaria?”
“Oh, one has to run risks.”
“Whom are you going with?”
“A man called Berselius.”
“Not Captain Berselius?” asked Stenhouse, stopping dead.
“Yes, Captain Berselius, of No. 14 Avenue Malakoff. I have just returned from having déjeuner with him.”
Stenhouse whistled. They were in the Rue du Mont Thabor by this, in front of a small café.
“Well,” said Adams, “what’s wrong?”
“Everything,” replied the other. “This is the house where my patient lives. Wait for me, for a moment, like a good fellow. I shan’t detain you long, and then we can finish our talk, for I have something to tell you.”
He darted into the café and Adams waited, watching the passers-by and somewhat perturbed in mind. Stenhouse’s manner impressed him uncomfortably, for, if Captain Berselius had been the devil, the Englishman could not have put more disfavour into his tone. And he (Adams) had made a compact with Captain Berselius.
The Rue du Mont Thabor is a somewhat gloomy little street, and it fitted Adams’s mood as he waited, watching the passers-by and the small affairs of the little shops.
At the end of five minutes Stenhouse returned.
“Well?” said Adams.
“I have had no luncheon yet,” replied Stenhouse. “I have been so rushed. Come with me to a little place I know in the Rue St. Honoré, where I can get a cup of tea and a bun. We will talk then.”
“Now,” said Stenhouse, when he was seated at a little marble-topped table with the cup of tea and the bun before him. “You say you have engaged yourself to go to the Congo with Captain Berselius.”
“Yes. What do you know about him?”
“That’s just the difficulty. I can only say this, and it’s between ourselves, the man’s name is a byword for a brute and a devil.”
“That’s cheerful,” said Adams.
“Mind you,” said Stenhouse, “he is in the very best society. I have met him at a reception at the Elysée. He goes everywhere. He belongs to the best clubs; he’s a persona grata at more courts than one, and an intimate friend of King Leopold of Belgium. His immense wealth, or part of it, comes from the rubber industry—motor tires and so forth. And he’s mad after big game. That’s his pleasure—killing. He’s a killer. That is the best description of the man. The lust of blood is in him, and the astounding thing, to my mind, is that he is not a murderer. He has killed two men in duels, and they say that it is a sight to see him fighting. Mind you, when I say ‘murderer,’ I do not mean to imply that he is a man who would murder for money. Give the devil his due. I mean that he is quite beyond reason when aroused, and if you were to hit Captain Berselius in the face he would kill you as certain as I’ll get indigestion from that bun I have just swallowed. The last doctor he took with him to Africa died at Marseilles from the hardships he went through—not at the hands of Berselius, for that would have aroused inquiry, but simply from the hardships of the expedition; but he gave frightful accounts to the hospital authorities of the way this Berselius had treated the natives. He drove that expedition right away from Libreville, in the French Congo, to God knows where. He had it under martial law the whole time, clubbing and thrashing the niggers at the least offence, and shooting with his own hand two of them