Within the Tides

by Joseph Conrad
Contents:

The Planter of Malata
The Partner

The Inn of the Two Witches
Because of the Dollars

THE PLANTER OF MALATA
CHAPTER I

In the private editorial office of the principal newspaper in a
great colonial city two men were talking. They were both young.

The stouter of the two, fair, and with more of an urban look about
him, was the editor and part-owner of the important newspaper.

The other's name was Renouard. That he was exercised in his mind
about something was evident on his fine bronzed face. He was a

lean, lounging, active man. The journalist continued the
conversation.

"And so you were dining yesterday at old Dunster's."
He used the word old not in the endearing sense in which it is

sometimes applied to intimates, but as a matter of sober fact. The
Dunster in question was old. He had been an eminentcolonial

statesman, but had now retired from active politics after a tour in
Europe and a lengthy stay in England, during which he had had a

very good press indeed. The colony was proud of him.
"Yes. I dined there," said Renouard. "Young Dunster asked me just

as I was going out of his office. It seemed to be like a sudden
thought. And yet I can't help suspecting some purpose behind it.

He was very pressing. He swore that his uncle would be very
pleased to see me. Said his uncle had mentioned lately that the

granting to me of the Malata concession was the last act of his
official life."

"Very touching. The old boy sentimentalises over the past now and
then."

"I really don't know why I accepted," continued the other.
"Sentiment does not move me very easily. Old Dunster was civil to

me of course, but he did not even inquire how I was getting on with
my silk plants. Forgot there was such a thing probably. I must

say there were more people there than I expected to meet. Quite a
big party."

"I was asked," remarked the newspaper man. "Only I couldn't go.
But when did you arrive from Malata?"

"I arrived yesterday at daylight. I am anchored out there in the
bay - off Garden Point. I was in Dunster's office before he had

finished reading his letters. Have you ever seen young Dunster
reading his letters? I had a glimpse of him through the open door.

He holds the paper in both hands, hunches his shoulders up to his
ugly ears, and brings his long nose and his thick lips on to it

like a sucking apparatus. A commercial monster."
"Here we don't consider him a monster," said the newspaper man

looking at his visitor thoughtfully.
"Probably not. You are used to see his face and to see other

faces. I don't know how it is that, when I come to town, the
appearance of the people in the street strike me with such force.

They seem so awfully expressive."
"And not charming."

"Well - no. Not as a rule. The effect is forcible without being
clear. . . . I know that you think it's because of my solitary

manner of life away there."
"Yes. I do think so. It is demoralising. You don't see any one

for months at a stretch. You're leading an unhealthy life."
The other hardly smiled and murmured the admission that true enough

it was a good eleven months since he had been in town last.
"You see," insisted the other. "Solitude works like a sort of

poison. And then you perceive suggestions in faces - mysterious
and forcible, that no sound man would be bothered with. Of course

you do."
Geoffrey Renouard did not tell his journalist friend that the

suggestions of his own face, the face of a friend, bothered him as
much as the others. He detected a degrading quality in the touches

of age which every day adds to a human countenance. They moved and
disturbed him, like the signs of a horribleinward travail which

was frightfullyapparent 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 frugalcolonial 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
unwholesome effect of solitude, the argument for the safety of

companionship even if quarrelsome. Very well. In this docility he
was sensible and even likeable. But what did he do next? Instead

of takingcounsel as to the choice with his old backer and friend,
and a man, besides, knowing everybody employed and unemployed on

the pavements of the town, this extraordinary Renouard suddenly and
almost surreptitiously picked up a fellow - God knows who - and

sailed away with him back to Malata in a hurry; a proceeding
obviously rash and at the same time not quite straight. That was

the sort of thing. The secretly unforgiving journalist laughed a
little longer and then ceased to shake all over.

"Oh, yes. About that assistant of yours. . . ."
"What about him," said Renouard, after waiting a while, with a

shadow of uneasiness on his face.
"Have you nothing to tell me of him?"

"Nothing except. . . ." Incipient grimness vanished out of
Renouard's aspect and his voice, while he hesitated as if