Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated)

by Joseph Conrad

  His eyes fell on a cut-glass water-ewer, and, with a convulsive sweep of his arm, he sent it flying far away from the table. It fell heavily, shattering itself with the unringing thud of a piece of ice. “Like this.” He remained for some time with his eyes fixed on the table, and when he looked up at me it was with a sort of amused incredulity. His tone was not resentful. He spoke in a business-like manner, a little contemptuously. I had only Don Carlos to thank for the position in which I found myself. What the “poor devil over there” expected from me, he, O’Brien, would not inquire. It was a ridiculous boy-and-girl affair. If those two — meaning Carlos and Seraphina — had not been so mighty clever, I should have been safe now in Jamaica jail, on a charge of treasonable practices. He seemed to find the idea funny. Well, anyhow, he had meant no worse by me than my own dear countrymen. When he, O’Brien, had found how absurdly he had been hoodwinked by Don Carlos — the poor devil — and misled by Ramon — he would make him smart for it, yet — all he had intended to do was to lodge me in Havana jail. On his word of honour...

  “Me in jail!” I cried angrily. “You — you would dare! On what charge? You could not....”

  “You don’t know what Pat O’Brien can do in Cuba.”

  The little country solicitor came out in a flash from under the Spanish lawyer. Then he frowned slightly at me. “You being an Englishman, I would have had you taken up on a charge of stealing.”

  Blood rushed to my face. I lost control over myself. “Mr. O’Brien,” I said, “I dare say you could have trumped up anything against me. You are a very great scoundrel.”

  “Why? Because I don’t lie about my motives, as you all do? I would wish you to know that I would scorn to lie either to myself or to you.”

  I touched the haft of the sword on the table. It was lying with the point his way.

  “I had been thinking,” said I, in great heat, “to propose to you that we should fight it out between us two, man to man, rebel and traitor as you have been.”

  “The devil you have!” he muttered.

  “But really you are too much of a Picaroon. I think the gallows should be your end.”

  I gave rein to my exasperation, because I felt myself hopelessly in his power. What he was driving at, I could not tell. I had an intolerable sense of being as much at his mercy as though I had been lying bound hand and foot on the floor. It gave me pleasure to tell him what I thought. And, perhaps, I was not quite candid, either. Suppose I provoked him enough to fire his pistol at me. He had been fingering the butt, absently, as we talked. He might have missed me, and then.... Or he might have shot me dead. But surely there was some justice in Cuba. It was clear enough that he did not wish to kill me himself. Well, this was a desperate strait; to force him to do something he did not wish to do, even at the cost of my own life, was the only step left open to me to thwart his purpose; the only thing I could do just then for the furtherance of my mission to save Seraphina from his intrigues. I was oppressed by the misery of it all. As to killing him as he stood — if I could do it by being very quick with the old rapier — my bringing up, my ideas, my very being, recoiled from it. I had never taken a life. I was very young. I was not used to scenes of violence; and to begin like this in cold blood! Not only my conscience, but my very courage faltered. Truth to tell, I was afraid; not for myself — I had the courage to die; but I was afraid of the act. It was the unknown for me — for my nerve — for my conscience. And then the Spanish gallows! That, too, revolted me. To kill him, and then kill myself.... No, I must live. “Two lives, one death,” she had said..... For a second or two my brain reeled with horror; I was certainly losing my self-possession. His voice broke upon that nightmare.

  “It may be your lot, yet,” it said. I burst into a nervous laugh. For a moment I could not stop myself.

  “I won’t murder you,” I cried.

  To this he said astonishingly, “Will you go to Mexico?”

  It sounded like a joke. He was very serious. “I shall send one of the schooners there on a little affair of mine. I can make use of you. I give you this chance.” It was as though he had thrown a bucketful of water over me. I had an inward shiver, and became quite cool. It was his turn now to let himself go.

  It was a matter of delivering certain papers to the Spanish commandant in Tamaulipas. There would be some employment found for me with the Royal troops. I was a relation of the Riegos. And there came upon his voice a strange ardour; a swiftness into his utterance. He walked away from the table; came back, and gazed into my face in a marked, expectant manner. He was not prompted by any love for me, he said, and gave an uncertain laugh.

  My wits had returned to me wholly; and as he repeated “No love for you — no love for you,” I had the intuition that what influenced him was his love for Seraphina. I saw it. I read it in the workings of his face. His eyes retained his good-humoured twinkle. He did not attach any importance to a boy-and-girl affair; not at all — pah! The lady, naturally young, warmhearted, full of kindness. I mustn’t think.... Ha, ha! A man of his age, of course, understood.... No importance at all.

  He walked away from the table trying to snap his fingers, and, suddenly, he reeled; he reeled, as though he had been overcome by the poison of his jealousy — as though a thought had stabbed him to the heart. There was an instant when the sight of that man moved me more than anything I had seen of passionate suffering before (and that was nothing), or since. He longed to kill me — I felt it in the very air of the room; and he loved her too much to dare. He laughed at me across the table. I had ridiculously misunderstood a very proper and natural kindness of a girl with not much worldly experience. He had known her from the earliest childhood.

  “Take my word for it,” he stammered.

  It seemed to me that there were tears in his eyes. A stiff smile was parting his lips. He took up the pistol, and evidently not knowing anything about it, looked with an air of curiosity into the barrel.

  It was time to think of making my career. That’s what I ought to be thinking of at my age. “At your age — at your age,” he repeated aimlessly. I was an Englishman. He hated me — and it was easy to believe this, though he neither glared nor grimaced. He smiled.

  He smiled continuously and rather pitifully. But his devotion to a — a — person who.... His devotion was great enough to overcome even that, even that. Did I understand? I owed it to the lady’s regard, which, for the rest, I had misunderstood — stupidly misunderstood.

  “Well, at your age it’s excusable!” he mumbled. “A career that...”

  “I see,” I said slowly. Young as I was, it was impossible to mistake his motives. Only a man of mature years, and really possessed by a great passion — by a passion that had grown slowly, till it was exactly as big as his soul — could have acted like this — with that profound simplicity, with such resignation, with such horrible moderation — But I wanted to find out more. “And when would you want me to go?” I asked, with a dissimulation of which I would not have suspected myself capable a moment before. I was maturing in the fire of love, of danger; in the lurid light of life piercing through my youthful innocence.

  “Ah,” he said, banging the pistol on to the table hurriedly. “At once. To-night. Now.”

  “Without seeing anybody?”

  “Without seeing... Oh, of course. In your own interest.”

  He was very quiet now. “I thought you looked intelligent enough,” he said, appearing suddenly very tired. “I am glad you see your position. You shall go far in the Royal service, on the faith of Pat O’Brien, English as you are. I will make it my own business for the sake of — the Riego family. There is only one little condition.”

  He pulled out of his pocket a piece of paper, a pen, a travelling inkstand. He looked the lawyer to the life; the Spanish family lawyer grafted on an Irish attorney.

  “You can’t see anybody. But you ought to write. Dona Seraphina naturally would be interested. A cousin and... I shall explain to Don Balthasar, of course.... I will dictat
e: ‘Out of regard for your future, and the desire for active life, of your own will, you accept eagerly Señor O’Brien’s proposition.’ She’ll understand.”

  “Oh, yes, she’ll understand,” I said.

  “Yes. And that you will write of your safe arrival in Tamaulipas. You must promise to write. Your word...”

  “By heavens, Señor O’Brien!” I burst out with inexpressible scorn, “I thought you meant your villains to cut my throat on the passage. I should have deserved no better fate.”

  He started. I shook with rage. A change had come upon both of us as sudden as if we had been awakened by a violent noise. For a time we did not speak a word. One look at me was enough for him. He passed his hand over his forehead.

  “What devil’s in you, boy?” he said. “I seem to make nothing but mistakes.”

  He went to the loophole window, and, advancing his head, cried out:

  “The schooner does not sail to-night.”

  He had some of his cut-throats posted under the window. I could not make out the reply he got; but after a while he said distinctly, so as to be heard below:

  “I give up that spy to you.” Then he came back, put the pistol in his pocket, and said to me, “Fool! I’ll make you long for death yet.”

  “You’ve given yourself away pretty well,” I said. “Some day I shall unmask you. It will be my revenge on you for daring to propose to me....”

  “What?” he interrupted, over his shoulder. “You? Not you — and I’ll tell you why. It’s because dead men tell no tales.”

  He passed through the door — a back view of a dapper Spanish lawyer, all in black, in a lofty frame. The calm, strolling footsteps went away along the gallery. He turned the corner. The tapping of his heels echoed in the patio, into whose blackness filtered the first suggestion of the dawn.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I remember walking about the room, and thinking to myself, “This is bad, this is very bad; what shall I do now?” A sort of mad meditation that in this meaningless way became so tense as positively to frighten me. Then it occurred to me that I could do nothing whatever at present, and I was soothed by this sense of powerless-ness, which, one would think, ought to have driven me to distraction. I went to sleep ultimately, just as a man sentenced to death goes to sleep, lulled in a sort of ghastly way by the finality of his doom. Even when I awoke it kept me steady, in a way. I washed, dressed, walked, ate, said “Good-morning, Cesar,” to the old major-domo I met in the gallery; exchanged grins with the negro boys under the gateway, and watched the mules being ridden out barebacked by other nearly naked negro boys into the sea, with great splashing of water and a noise of voices. A small knot of men, unmistakably Lugareños, stood on the beach, also, watching the mules, and exchanging loud jocular shouts with the blacks. Rio Medio, the dead, forsaken, and desecrated city, was lying, as bare as a skeleton, on the sands. They were yellow; the bay was very blue, the wooded hills very green.

  After the mules had been ridden uproariously back to the stables, wet and capering, and shaking their long ears, all the life of the land seemed to take refuge in this vivid colouring. As I looked at it from the outer balcony above the great gate, the small group of Lugareños turned about to look at the Casa Riego.

  They recognized me, no doubt, and one of them flourished, threateningly, an arm from under his cloak. I retreated indoors.

  This was the only menacing sign, absolutely the only sign that marked this day. It was a day of pause. Seraphina did not leave her apartments; Don Balthasar did not show himself; Father Antonio, hurrying towards the sick room, greeted me with only a wave of the hand. I was not admitted to see Carlos; the nun came to the door, shook her head at me, and closed it gently in my face. Castro, sitting on the floor not very far away, seemed unaware of me in so marked a manner that it inspired me with the idea of not taking the slightest notice of him. Now and then the figure of a maid in white linen and bright petticoat flitted in the upper gallery, and once I fancied I saw the black, rigid carriage of the duenna disappearing behind a pillar.

  Señor O’Brien, old Cesar whispered, without looking at me, was extremely occupied in the Cancillería. His midday meal was served him there. I had mine all alone, and then the sunny, heat-laden stillness of siesta-time fell upon the Castilian dignity of the house.

  I sank into a kind of reposeful belief in the work of accident. Something would happen. I did not know how soon and how atrociously my belief was to be justified. I exercised my ingenuity in the most approved lover-fashion — in devising means how to get secret speech with Seraphina. The confounded silly maids fled from my most distant appearance, as though I had the pest. I was wondering whether I should not go simply and audaciously and knock at her door, when I fancied I heard a scratching at mine. It was a very stealthy sound, quite capable of awakening my dormant emotions.

  I went to the door and listened. Then, opening it the merest crack, I saw the inexplicable emptiness of the gallery. Castro, on his hands and knees, startled me by whispering at my feet:

  “Stand aside, Señor.”

  He entered my room on all-fours, and waited till I got the door closed before he stood up.

  “Even he may sleep sometimes,” he said. “And the balustrade has hidden me.”

  To see this little saturnine bandit, who generally stalked about haughtily, as if the whole Casa belonged to him by right of fidelity, crawl into my room like this was inexpressibly startling. He shook the folds of his cloak, and dropped his hat on the floor.

  “Still, it is better so. The very women of the house are not safe,” he said. “Señor, I have no mind to be delivered to the English for hanging. But I have not been admitted to see Don Carlos, and, therefore, I must make my report to you. These are Don Carlos’ orders. ‘Serve him, Castro, when I am dead, as if my soul had passed into his body.’“

  He nodded sadly. “Si! But Don Carlos is a friend to me and you — you.” He shook his head, and drew me away from the door. “Two Lugareños,” he said, “Manuel and another one, did go last night, as directed by the friar” — he supposed — ”to meet the Juez in the bush outside Rio Medio.”

  I had guessed that much, and told him of Manuel’s behaviour under my window. How did they know my chamber?

  “Bad, bad,” muttered Castro. “La Chica told her lover, no doubt.” He hissed, and stamped his foot.

  She was pretty, but flighty. The lover was a silly boy of decent, Christian parents, who was always hanging about in the low villages. No matter.

  What he could not understand was why some boats should have been held in readiness till nearly the morning to tow a schooner outside. Manuel came along at dawn, and dismissed the crews. They had separated, making a great noise on the beach, and yelling, “Death to the Inglez!”

  I cleared up that point for him. He told me that O’Brien had the duenna called to his room that morning. Nothing had been heard outside, but the woman came out staggering, with her hand on the wall. He had terrified her. God knows what he had said to her. The widow — as Castro called her — had a son, an escrivano in one of the Courts of Justice. No doubt it was that.

  “There it is, Señor,” murmured Castro, scowling all round, as if every wall of the room was an enemy. “He holds all the people in his hand in some way. Even I must be cautious, though I am a humble, trusted friend of the Casa!”

  “What harm could he do you?” I asked.

  “He is civil to me. Amigo Castro here, and Amigo Castro there. Bah! The devil, alone, is his friend! He could deliver me to justice, and get my life sworn away. He could — — — Quien sabe? What need he care what he does — a man that can get absolution from the archbishop himself if he likes.”

  He meditated. “No! there is only one remedy for him.” He tiptoed to my ear. “The knife!”

  He made a pass in the air with his blade, and I remembered vividly the cockroach he had impaled with such accuracy on board the Thames. His baneful glance reminded me of his murderous capering in the steerage, when
he had thought that the only remedy for me was the knife.

  He went to the loop-hole, and passed the steel thoughtfully on the stone edge. I had not moved.

  “The knife; but what would you have? Before, when I talked of this to Don Carlos, he only laughed at me. That was his way in matters of importance. Now they will not let me come in to him. He is too near God — and the Señorita — why, she is too near the saints for all the great nobility of her spirit. But, que dia-bleria, when I — in my devotion — opened my mouth to her I saw some of that spirit in her eyes....”

  There was a slight irony in his voice. “No! Me — Castro! to be told that an English Señora would have dismissed me forever from her presence for such a hint. ‘Your Excellency,’ I said, ‘deign, then, to find it good that I should avoid giving offence to that man. It is not my desire to run my neck into the iron collar.’“

  He looked at me fixedly, as if expecting me to make a sign, then shrugged his shoulders.

  “Bueno. You see this? Then look to it yourself, Señor. You are to me even as Don Carlos — all except for the love. No English body is big enough to receive his soul. No friend will be left that would risk his very honour of a noble for a man like Tomas Castro. Let me warn you not to leave the Casa, even if a shining angel stood outside the gate and called you by name. The gate is barred, now, night and day. I have dropped a hint to Cesar, and that old African knows more than the Señor would suppose. I cannot tell how soon I may have the opportunity to talk to you again.”

  He peeped through the crack of the door, then slipped out, suddenly falling at once on his hands and knees, so as to be hidden by the stone balustrade from anybody in the patio. He, too, did not think himself safe.

  Early in the evening I descended into the court, and Father Antonio, walking up and down the patio with his eyes on his breviary, muttered to me:

  “Sit on this chair,” and went on without stopping.

  I took a chair near the marble rim of the basin with its border of English flowers, its splashing thread of water. The goldfishes that had been lying motionless, with their heads pointing different ways, glided into a bunch to the fall of my shadow, waiting for crumbs of bread.