It would have been impossible to make any mistake. You could not see him without recognising him—since his portrait had become so familiar in the illustrated newspapers, as well as on the cover of that remarkable book of his. And seeing him you could scarcely help struggling hard to form a clear conception of what the man really might be.
In size he was very big, but looking still bigger than the true iron frame of him because of his loose garments—and one thought at once that of course he hated all confinements and restrictions, even those entailed by well-cut neatly-fitting clothes; with dark hair, blue eyes, a reddish beard, and shoulders that seemed too heavy; of enormous energy, the fire or lust for effort that seems incomprehensibly to renew itself in the grossest excesses of gratification; explosive and uncontrollable, as men like him must always be, but with that curious streak of softness, even of sentimentality, which goes sometimes with such characters. Just as he looked bigger than his size, he looked older than his years; but this impression may have been derived less from the marks and tints left upon him by tempest and strife than from the known record of his achievements. It was difficult to believe that he had done so much and yet was only thirty-seven. Above all else, unavoidably confusing judgment and driving one back to intuitions, there was a glamour cast about him by the deeply proved quality of courage—a glamour, it should be remembered, very much more rare and therefore very much more potent and alluring then than now.
“Did you hear him laugh?”
Everybody was whispering about him, thinking of him, ostentatiously taking no notice of him—except the privileged few who from time to time were being presented to him.
After twenty minutes or so Mrs. Clutton introduced Mr. Verinder to him, and they seemed to get on well together. Mr. Verinder, pleased to show that he knew a good deal of geography, asked intelligent questions, and felt flattered by the adventurer’s eager expansive manner of giving full details in reply. Though he made you feel small physically, he did not make you feel small mentally. He said it was pleasant to be back in the old country, and agreed with Mr. Verinder that—all said and done—there was no place like London. Asked how long he intended to honour the metropolis with his presence, he laughed, and said it depended on circumstances, but he certainly should not stay more than a month or two. He was “taking the hat round,” as he explained with a laugh, trying to raise funds towards another Antarctic expedition. “The fact is, Mr. Verinder”—and Mr. Verinder was not ill-pleased to observe that his name had been picked up so quickly and correctly—“in my trade, capital is very necessary. The most successful ventures are those that are best fitted out. The more money you have behind you, the further you go.”
“I’m afraid,” said Mr. Verinder, laughing in his turn, “that that may be said of all other trades, Mr. Dyke, as well as yours; but I quite understand what you mean. Equipment. Equipment. And no doubt many risks could be minimized by foresight and wise outlay.”
Dyke became quite exuberant at finding Mr. Verinder so intelligent and sympathetic; his loud open-air voice could be heard throughout the length of Mrs. Clutton’s double drawing-room. He was giving Mr. Verinder more and more details, with a child-like enthusiasm, and he would not stop when the music began again. No one dared say hush to him, but the decorum of Mr. Verinder’s manner gradually restrained him. In regard to such interruptions, he pleased Mr. Verinder most of all by declaring that this music was incomprehensible to him—over his head; and at once concurring in Mr. Verinder’s opinion that a ballad concert at the Albert Hall was the real stuff, and laughing most heartily when Mr. Verinder said that a just finished arrangement of Bach for the violin and piano might, in the popular phrase, have been the tune the old cow died of. Then, their relations having reached this very cordial stage, Anthony Dyke said abruptly—“I’m a fish out of water here. I wonder if by chance you could tell me the name of that girl over there.”
“Which one?” asked Mr. Verinder.
“That one,” said Dyke, not of course pointing with his hand in an uncouth manner, but only making slight yet significant signs with his dark eyebrows and blue eyes. “Now—the one using her fan. I’d like to get somebody to introduce me to her.”
“I can supply the information, and gratify your wish,” said Mr. Verinder, in a tone so urbane that it was robbed of any pompousness. “She is my daughter.”