Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated)

by Joseph Conrad

  Something like that. Not the very words perhaps but such was the general sense of her overwhelming argument — the argument of refuge.

  I don’t think she gave a thought to material conditions. But as part of that argument set forth breathlessly, as if she were afraid that if she stopped for a moment she could never go on again, she mentioned that generosity of a stormy type, which had come to her from the sea, had caught her up on the brink of unmentionable failure, had whirled her away in its first ardent gust and could be trusted now, implicitly trusted, to carry them both, side by side, into absolute safety.

  She believed it, she affirmed it. He understood thoroughly at last, and at once the interior of that cab, of an aspect so pacific in the eyes of the people on the pavements, became the scene of a great agitation. The generosity of Roderick Anthony — the son of the poet — affected the ex-financier de Barral in a manner which must have brought home to Flora de Barral the extreme arduousness of the business of being a woman. Being a woman is a terribly difficult trade since it consists principally of dealings with men. This man — the man inside the cab — cast oft his stiff placidity and behaved like an animal. I don’t mean it in an offensive sense. What he did was to give way to an instinctive panic. Like some wild creature scared by the first touch of a net falling on its back, old de Barral began to struggle, lank and angular, against the empty air — as much of it as there was in the cab — with staring eyes and gasping mouth from which his daughter shrank as far as she could in the confined space.

  “Stop the cab. Stop him I tell you. Let me get out!” were the strangled exclamations she heard. Why? What for? To do what? He would hear nothing. She cried to him “Papa! Papa! What do you want to do?” And all she got from him was: “Stop. I must get out. I want to think. I must get out to think.”

  It was a mercy that he didn’t attempt to open the door at once. He only stuck his head and shoulders out of the window crying to the cabman. She saw the consequences, the cab stopping, a crowd collecting around a raving old gentleman . . . In this terrible business of being a woman so full of fine shades, of delicate perplexities (and very small rewards) you can never know what rough work you may have to do, at any moment. Without hesitation Flora seized her father round the body and pulled back — being astonished at the ease with which she managed to make him drop into his seat again. She kept him there resolutely with one hand pressed against his breast, and leaning across him, she, in her turn put her head and shoulders out of the window. By then the cab had drawn up to the curbstone and was stopped. “No! I’ve changed my mind. Go on please where you were told first. To the docks.”

  She wondered at the steadiness of her own voice. She heard a grunt from the driver and the cab began to roll again. Only then she sank into her place keeping a watchful eye on her companion. He was hardly anything more by this time. Except for her childhood’s impressions he was just — a man. Almost a stranger. How was one to deal with him? And there was the other too. Also almost a stranger. The trade of being a woman was very difficult. Too difficult. Flora closed her eyes saying to herself: “If I think too much about it I shall go mad.” And then opening them she asked her father if the prospect of living always with his daughter and being taken care of by her affection away from the world, which had no honour to give to his grey hairs, was such an awful prospect.

  “Tell me, is it so bad as that?”

  She put that question sadly, without bitterness. The famous — or notorious — de Barral had lost his rigidity now. He was bent. Nothing more deplorably futile than a bent poker. He said nothing. She added gently, suppressing an uneasy remorseful sigh:

  “And it might have been worse. You might have found no one, no one in all this town, no one in all the world, not even me! Poor papa!”

  She made a conscience-stricken movement towards him thinking: “Oh! I am horrible, I am horrible.” And old de Barral, scared, tired, bewildered by the extraordinary shocks of his liberation, swayed over and actually leaned his head on her shoulder, as if sorrowing over his regained freedom.

  The movement by itself was touching. Flora supporting him lightly imagined that he was crying; and at the thought that had she smashed in a quarry that shoulder, together with some other of her bones, this grey and pitiful head would have had nowhere to rest, she too gave way to tears. They flowed quietly, easing her overstrained nerves. Suddenly he pushed her away from him so that her head struck the side of the cab, pushing himself away too from her as if something had stung him.

  All the warmth went out of her emotion. The very last tears turned cold on her cheek. But their work was done. She had found courage, resolution, as women do, in a good cry. With his hand covering the upper part of his face whether to conceal his eyes or to shut out an unbearable sight, he was stiffening up in his corner to his usual poker-like consistency. She regarded him in silence. His thin obstinate lips moved. He uttered the name of the cousin — the man, you remember, who did not approve of the Fynes, and whom rightly or wrongly little Fyne suspected of interested motives, in view of de Barral having possibly put away some plunder, somewhere before the smash.

  I may just as well tell you at once that I don’t know anything more of him. But de Barral was of the opinion, speaking in his low voice from under his hand, that this relation would have been only too glad to have secured his guidance.

  “Of course I could not come forward in my own name, or person. But the advice of a man of my experience is as good as a fortune to anybody wishing to venture into finance. The same sort of thing can be done again.”

  He shuffled his feet a little, let fall his hand; and turning carefully toward his daughter his puffy round cheeks, his round chin resting on his collar, he bent on her the faded, resentful gaze of his pale eyes, which were wet.

  “The start is really only a matter of judicious advertising. There’s no difficulty. And here you go and . . . “

  He turned his face away. “After all I am still de Barral, the de Barral. Didn’t you remember that?”

  “Papa,” said Flora; “listen. It’s you who must remember that there is no longer a de Barral . . . “ He looked at her sideways anxiously. “There is Mr. Smith, whom no harm, no trouble, no wicked lies of evil people can ever touch.”

  “Mr. Smith,” he breathed out slowly. “Where does he belong to? There’s not even a Miss Smith.”

  “There is your Flora.”

  “My Flora! You went and . . . I can’t bear to think of it. It’s horrible.”

  “Yes. It was horrible enough at times,” she said with feeling, because somehow, obscurely, what this man said appealed to her as if it were her own thought clothed in an enigmatic emotion. “I think with shame sometimes how I . . . No not yet. I shall not tell you. At least not now.”

  The cab turned into the gateway of the dock. Flora handed the tall hat to her father. “Here, papa. And please be good. I suppose you love me. If you don’t, then I wonder who — ”

  He put the hat on, and stiffened hard in his corner, kept a sidelong glance on his girl. “Try to be nice for my sake. Think of the years I have been waiting for you. I do indeed want support — and peace. A little peace.”

  She clasped his arm suddenly with both hands pressing with all her might as if to crush the resistance she felt in him. “I could not have peace if I did not have you with me. I won’t let you go. Not after all I went through. I won’t.” The nervous force of her grip frightened him a little. She laughed suddenly. “It’s absurd. It’s as if I were asking you for a sacrifice. What am I afraid of? Where could you go? I mean now, to-day, to-night? You can’t tell me. Have you thought of it? Well I have been thinking of it for the last year. Longer. I nearly went mad trying to find out. I believe I was mad for a time or else I should never have thought . . . “

  * * * * *

  “This was as near as she came to a confession,” remarked Marlow in a changed tone. “The confession I mean of that walk to the top of the quarry which she reproached herself with so bi
tterly. And he made of it what his fancy suggested. It could not possibly be a just notion. The cab stopped alongside the ship and they got out in the manner described by the sensitive Franklin. I don’t know if they suspected each other’s sanity at the end of that drive. But that is possible. We all seem a little mad to each other; an excellent arrangement for the bulk of humanity which finds in it an easy motive of forgiveness. Flora crossed the quarter-deck with a rapidity born of apprehension. It had grown unbearable. She wanted this business over. She was thankful on looking back to see he was following her. “If he bolts away,” she thought, “then I shall know that I am of no account indeed! That no one loves me, that words and actions and protestations and everything in the world is false — and I shall jump into the dock. That at least won’t lie.”

  Well I don’t know. If it had come to that she would have been most likely fished out, what with her natural want of luck and the good many people on the quay and on board. And just where the Ferndale was moored there hung on a wall (I know the berth) a coil of line, a pole, and a life-buoy kept there on purpose to save people who tumble into the dock. It’s not so easy to get away from life’s betrayals as she thought. However it did not come to that. He followed her with his quick gliding walk. Mr. Smith! The liberated convict de Barral passed off the solid earth for the last time, vanished for ever, and there was Mr. Smith added to that world of waters which harbours so many queer fishes. An old gentleman in a silk hat, darting wary glances. He followed, because mere existence has its claims which are obeyed mechanically. I have no doubt he presented a respectable figure. Father-in-law. Nothing more respectable. But he carried in his heart the confused pain of dismay and affection, of involuntary repulsion and pity. Very much like his daughter. Only in addition he felt a furious jealousy of the man he was going to see.

  A residue of egoism remains in every affection — even paternal. And this man in the seclusion of his prison had thought himself into such a sense of ownership of that single human being he had to think about, as may well be inconceivable to us who have not had to serve a long (and wickedly unjust) sentence of penal servitude. She was positively the only thing, the one point where his thoughts found a resting-place, for years. She was the only outlet for his imagination. He had not much of that faculty to be sure, but there was in it the force of concentration. He felt outraged, and perhaps it was an absurdity on his part, but I venture to suggest rather in degree than in kind. I have a notion that no usual, normal father is pleased at parting with his daughter. No. Not even when he rationally appreciates “Jane being taken off his hands” or perhaps is able to exult at an excellent match. At bottom, quite deep down, down in the dark (in some cases only by digging), there is to be found a certain repugnance . . . With mothers of course it is different. Women are more loyal, not to each other, but to their common femininity which they behold triumphant with a secret and proud satisfaction.

  The circumstances of that match added to Mr. Smith’s indignation. And if he followed his daughter into that ship’s cabin it was as if into a house of disgrace and only because he was still bewildered by the suddenness of the thing. His will, so long lying fallow, was overborne by her determination and by a vague fear of that regained liberty.

  You will be glad to hear that Anthony, though he did shirk the welcome on the quay, behaved admirably, with the simplicity of a man who has no small meannesses and makes no mean reservations. His eyes did not flinch and his tongue did not falter. He was, I have it on the best authority, admirable in his earnestness, in his sincerity and also in his restraint. He was perfect. Nevertheless the vital force of his unknown individuality addressing him so familiarly was enough to fluster Mr. Smith. Flora saw her father trembling in all his exiguous length, though he held himself stiffer than ever if that was possible. He muttered a little and at last managed to utter, not loud of course but very distinctly: “I am here under protest,” the corners of his mouth sunk disparagingly, his eyes stony. “I am here under protest. I have been locked up by a conspiracy. I — ”

  He raised his hands to his forehead — his silk hat was on the table rim upwards; he had put it there with a despairing gesture as he came in — he raised his hands to his forehead. “It seems to me unfair. I — ” He broke off again. Anthony looked at Flora who stood by the side of her father.

  “Well, sir, you will soon get used to me. Surely you and she must have had enough of shore-people and their confounded half-and-half ways to last you both for a life-time. A particularly merciful lot they are too. You ask Flora. I am alluding to my own sister, her best friend, and not a bad woman either as they go.”

  The captain of the Ferndale checked himself. “Lucky thing I was there to step in. I want you to make yourself at home, and before long — ”

  The faded stare of the Great de Barral silenced Anthony by its inexpressive fixity. He signalled with his eyes to Flora towards the door of the state-room fitted specially to receive Mr. Smith, the free man. She seized the free man’s hat off the table and took him caressingly under the arm. “Yes! This is home, come and see your room, papa!”

  Anthony himself threw open the door and Flora took care to shut it carefully behind herself and her father. “See,” she began but desisted because it was clear that he would look at none of the contrivances for his comfort. She herself had hardly seen them before. He was looking only at the new carpet and she waited till he should raise his eyes.

  He didn’t do that but spoke in his usual voice. “So this is your husband, that . . . And I locked up!”

  “Papa, what’s the good of harping on that,” she remonstrated no louder. “He is kind.”

  “And you went and . . . married him so that he should be kind to me. Is that it? How did you know that I wanted anybody to be kind to me?”

  “How strange you are!” she said thoughtfully.

  “It’s hard for a man who has gone through what I have gone through to feel like other people. Has that occurred to you? . . . “ He looked up at last . . . “Mrs. Anthony, I can’t bear the sight of the fellow.” She met his eyes without flinching and he added, “You want to go to him now.” His mild automatic manner seemed the effect of tremendous self-restraint — and yet she remembered him always like that. She felt cold all over.

  “Why, of course, I must go to him,” she said with a slight start.

  He gnashed his teeth at her and she went out.

  Anthony had not moved from the spot. One of his hands was resting on the table. She went up to him, stopped, then deliberately moved still closer. “Thank you, Roderick.”

  “You needn’t thank me,” he murmured. “It’s I who . . . “

  “No, perhaps I needn’t. You do what you like. But you are doing it well.”

  He sighed then hardly above a whisper because they were near the state-room door, “Upset, eh?”

  She made no sign, no sound of any kind. The thorough falseness of the position weighed on them both. But he was the braver of the two. “I dare say. At first. Did you think of telling him you were happy?”

  “He never asked me,” she smiled faintly at him. She was disappointed by his quietness. “I did not say more than I was absolutely obliged to say — of myself.” She was beginning to be irritated with this man a little. “I told him I had been very lucky,” she said suddenly despondent, missing Anthony’s masterful manner, that something arbitrary and tender which, after the first scare, she had accustomed herself to look forward to with pleasurable apprehension. He was contemplating her rather blankly. She had not taken off her outdoor things, hat, gloves. She was like a caller. And she had a movement suggesting the end of a not very satisfactory business call. “Perhaps it would be just as well if we went ashore. Time yet.”

  He gave her a glimpse of his unconstrained self in the low vehement “You dare!” which sprang to his lips and out of them with a most menacing inflexion.

  “You dare . . . What’s the matter now?”

  These last words were shot out not at her but at
some target behind her back. Looking over her shoulder she saw the bald head with black bunches of hair of the congested and devoted Franklin (he had his cap in his hand) gazing sentimentally from the saloon doorway with his lobster eyes. He was heard from the distance in a tone of injured innocence reporting that the berthing master was alongside and that he wanted to move the ship into the basin before the crew came on board.

  His captain growled “Well, let him,” and waved away the ulcerated and pathetic soul behind these prominent eyes which lingered on the offensive woman while the mate backed out slowly. Anthony turned to Flora.

  “You could not have meant it. You are as straight as they make them.”

  “I am trying to be.”

  “Then don’t joke in that way. Think of what would become of — me.”

  “Oh yes. I forgot. No, I didn’t mean it. It wasn’t a joke. It was forgetfulness. You wouldn’t have been wronged. I couldn’t have gone. I — I am too tired.”

  He saw she was swaying where she stood and restrained himself violently from taking her into his arms, his frame trembling with fear as though he had been tempted to an act of unparalleled treachery. He stepped aside and lowering his eyes pointed to the door of the stern-cabin. It was only after she passed by him that he looked up and thus he did not see the angry glance she gave him before she moved on. He looked after her. She tottered slightly just before reaching the door and flung it to behind her nervously.

  Anthony — he had felt this crash as if the door had been slammed inside his very breast — stood for a moment without moving and then shouted for Mrs. Brown. This was the steward’s wife, his lucky inspiration to make Flora comfortable. “Mrs. Brown! Mrs. Brown!” At last she appeared from somewhere. “Mrs. Anthony has come on board. Just gone into the cabin. Hadn’t you better see if you can be of any assistance?”