“What would have been the good of it?” she sighed out.
“What good? No good, of course. We had no forebodings. This seemed to be an inexpugnable refuge, where we could live untroubled and learn to know each other.”
“It’s perhaps in trouble that people get to know each other,” she suggested.
“Perhaps,” he said indifferently. “At any rate, we would not have gone away from here with him; though I believe he would have come in eagerly enough, and ready for any service he could render. It’s that fat man’s nature — a delightful fellow. You would not come on the wharf that time I sent the shawl back to Mrs. Schomberg through him. He has never seen you.”
“I didn’t know that you wanted anybody ever to see me,” she said.
He had folded his arms on his breast and hung his head.
“And I did not know that you cared to be seen as yet. A misunderstanding evidently. An honourable misunderstanding. But it does not matter now.”
He raised his head after a silence.
“How gloomy this forest has grown! Yet surely the sun cannot have set already.”
She looked round; and as if her eyes had just been opened, she perceived the shades of the forest surrounding her, not so much with gloom, but with a sullen, dumb, menacing hostility. Her heart sank in the engulfing stillness, at that moment she felt the nearness of death, breathing on her and on the man with her. If there had been a sudden stir of leaves, the crack of a dry branch, the faintest rustle, she would have screamed aloud. But she shook off the unworthy weakness. Such as she was, a fiddle-scraping girl picked up on the very threshold of infamy, she would try to rise above herself, triumphant and humble; and then happiness would burst on her like a torrent, flinging at her feet the man whom she loved.
Heyst stirred slightly.
“We had better be getting back, Lena, since we can’t stay all night in the woods — or anywhere else, for that matter. We are the slaves of this infernal surprise which has been sprung on us by — shall I say fate? — your fate, or mine.”
It was the man who had broken the silence, but it was the woman who led the way. At the very edge of the forest she stopped, concealed by a tree. He joined her cautiously.
“What is it? What do you see, Lena?” he whispered.
She said that it was only a thought that had come into her head. She hesitated for a moment giving him over her shoulder a shining gleam in her grey eyes. She wanted to know whether this trouble, this danger, this evil, whatever it was, finding them out in their retreat, was not a sort of punishment.
“Punishment?” repeated Heyst. He could not understand what she meant. When she explained, he was still more surprised. “A sort of retribution, from an angry Heaven?” he said in wonder. “On us? What on earth for?”
He saw her pale face darken in the dusk. She had blushed. Her whispering flowed very fast. It was the way they lived together — that wasn’t right, was it? It was a guilty life. For she had not been forced into it, driven, scared into it. No, no — she had come to him of her own free will, with her whole soul yearning unlawfully.
He was so profoundly touched that he could not speak for a moment. To conceal his trouble, he assumed his best Heystian manner.
“What? Are our visitors then messengers of morality, avengers of righteousness, agents of Providence? That’s certainly an original view. How flattered they would be if they could hear you!”
“Now you are making fun of me,” she said in a subdued voice which broke suddenly.
“Are you conscious of sin?” Heyst asked gravely. She made no answer. “For I am not,” he added; “before Heaven, I am not!”
“You! You are different. Woman is the tempter. You took me up from pity. I threw myself at you.”
“Oh, you exaggerate, you exaggerate. It was not so bad as that,” he said playfully, keeping his voice steady with an effort.
He considered himself a dead man already, yet forced to pretend that he was alive for her sake, for her defence. He regretted that he had no Heaven to which he could recommend this fair, palpitating handful of ashes and dust — warm, living sentient his own — and exposed helplessly to insult, outrage, degradation, and infinite misery of the body.
She had averted her face from him and was still. He suddenly seized her passive hand.
“You will have it so?” he said. “Yes? Well, let us then hope for mercy together.”
She shook her head without looking at him, like an abashed child.
“Remember,” he went on incorrigible with his delicate raillery, “that hope is a Christian virtue, and surely you can’t want all the mercy for yourself.”
Before their eyes the bungalow across the cleared ground stood bathed in a sinister light. An unexpected chill gust of wind made a noise in the tree-tops. She snatched her hand away and stepped out into the open; but before she had advanced more than three yards, she stood still and pointed to the west.
“Oh look there!” she exclaimed.
Beyond the headland of Diamond Bay, lying black on a purple sea, great masses of cloud stood piled up and bathed in a mist of blood. A crimson crack like an open wound zigzagged between them, with a piece of dark red sun showing at the bottom. Heyst cast an indifferent glance at the ill-omened chaos of the sky.
“Thunderstorm making up. We shall hear it all night, but it won’t visit us, probably. The clouds generally gather round the volcano.”
She was not listening to him. Her eyes reflected the sombre and violent hues of the sunset.
“That does not look much like a sign of mercy,” she said slowly, as if to herself, and hurried on, followed by Heyst. Suddenly she stopped. “I don’t care. I would do more yet! And some day you’ll forgive me. You’ll have to forgive me!”
CHAPTER NINE
Stumbling up the steps, as if suddenly exhausted, Lena entered the room and let herself fall on the nearest chair. Before following her, Heyst took a survey of the surroundings from the veranda. It was a complete solitude. There was nothing in the aspect of this familiar scene to tell him that he and the girl were not as completely alone as they had been in the early days of their common life on this abandoned spot, with only Wang discreetly materializing from time to time and the uncomplaining memory of Morrison to keep them company.
After the cold gust of wind there was an absolute stillness of the air. The thunder-charged mass hung unbroken beyond the low, ink-black headland, darkening the twilight. By contrast, the sky at the zenith displayed pellucid clearness, the sheen of a delicate glass bubble which the merest movement of air might shatter. A little to the left, between the black masses of the headland and of the forest, the volcano, a feather of smoke by day and a cigar-glow at night, took its first fiery expanding breath of the evening. Above it a reddish star came out like an expelled spark from the fiery bosom of the earth, enchanted into permanency by the mysterious spell of frozen spaces.
In front of Heyst the forest, already full of the deepest shades, stood like a wall. But he lingered, watching its edge, especially where it ended at the line of bushes, masking the land end of the jetty. Since the girl had spoken of catching a glimpse of something white among the trees, he believed pretty firmly that they had been followed in their excursion up the mountain by Mr. Jones’s secretary. No doubt the fellow had watched them out of the forest, and now, unless he took the trouble to go back some distance and fetch a considerable circuit inland over the clearing, he was bound to walk out into the open space before the bungalows. Heyst did, indeed, imagine at one time some movement between the trees, lost as soon as perceived. He stared patiently, but nothing more happened. After all, why should he trouble about these people’s actions? Why this stupid concern for the preliminaries, since, when the issue was joined, it would find him disarmed and shrinking from the ugliness and degradation of it?
He turned and entered the room. Deep dusk reigned in there already. Lena, near the door, did not move or speak. The sheen of the white tablecloth was very obtrusive. The
brute these two vagabonds had tamed had entered on its service while Heyst and Lena were away. The table was laid. Heyst walked up and down the room several times. The girl remained without sound or movement on the chair. But when Heyst, placing the two silver candelabra on the table, struck a match to light the candles, she got up suddenly and went into the bedroom. She came out again almost immediately, having taken off her hat. Heyst looked at her over his shoulder.
“What’s the good of shirking the evil hour? I’ve lighted these candles for a sign of our return. After all, we might not have been watched — while returning, I mean. Of course we were seen leaving the house.”
The girl sat down again. The great wealth of her hair looked very dark above her colourless face. She raised her eyes, glistening softly in the light with a sort of unreadable appeal, with a strange effect of unseeing innocence.
“Yes,” said Heyst across the table, the fingertips of one hand resting on the immaculate cloth. “A creature with an antediluvian lower jaw, hairy like a mastodon, and formed like a pre-historic ape, has laid this table. Are you awake, Lena? Am I? I would pinch myself, only I know that nothing would do away with this dream. Three covers. You know it is the shorter of the two who’s coming — the gentleman who, in the play of his shoulders as he walks, and in his facial structure, recalls a Jaguar. Ah, you don’t know what a jaguar is? But you have had a good look at these two. It’s the short one, you know, who’s to be our guest.”
She made a sign with her head that she knew; Heyst’s insistence brought Ricardo vividly before her mental vision. A sudden languor, like the physical echo of her struggle with the man, paralysed all her limbs. She lay still in the chair, feeling very frightened at this phenomenon — ready to pray aloud for strength.
Heyst had started to pace the room.
“Our guest! There is a proverb — in Russia, I believe — that when a guest enters the house, God enters the house. The sacred virtue of hospitality! But it leads one into trouble as well as any other.”
The girl unexpectedly got up from the chair, swaying her supple figure and stretching her arms above her head. He stopped to look at her curiously, paused, and then went on:
“I venture to think that God has nothing to do with such a hospitality and with such a guest!”
She had jumped to her feet to react against the numbness, to discover whether her body would obey her will. It did. She could stand up, and she could move her arms freely. Though no physiologist, she concluded that all that sudden numbness was in her head, not in her limbs. Her fears assuaged, she thanked God for it mentally, and to Heyst murmured a protest:
“Oh, yes! He’s got to do with everything — every little thing. Nothing can happen — ”
“Yes,” he said hastily, “one of the two sparrows can’t be struck to the ground — you are thinking of that.” The habitual playful smile faded on the kindly lips under the martial moustache. “Ah, you remember what you have been told — as a child — on Sundays.”
“Yes, I do remember.” She sank into the chair again. “It was the only decent bit of time I ever had when I was a kid, with our landlady’s two girls, you know.”
“I wonder, Lena,” Heyst said, with a return to his urbane playfulness, “whether you are just a little child, or whether you represent something as old as the world.”
She surprised Heyst by saying dreamily:
“Well — and what about you?”
“I? I date later — much later. I can’t call myself a child, but I am so recent that I may call myself a man of the last hour — or is it the hour before last? I have been out of it so long that I am not certain how far the hands of the clock have moved since — since — ”
He glanced at the portrait of his father, exactly above the head of the girl, as if it were ignoring her in its painted austerity of feeling. He did not finish the sentence; but he did not remain silent for long.
“Only what must be avoided are fallacious inferences, my dear Lena — especially at this hour.”
“Now you are making fun of me again,” she said without looking up.
“Am I?” he cried. “Making fun? No, giving warning. Hang it all, whatever truth people told you in the old days, there is also this one — that sparrows do fall to the ground, that they are brought to the ground. This is no vain assertion, but a fact. That’s why” — again his tone changed, while he picked up the table knife and let it fall disdainfully — ”that’s why I wish these wretched round knives had some edge on them. Absolute rubbish — neither edge, point, nor substance. I believe one of these forks would make a better weapon at a pinch. But can I go about with a fork in my pocket?” He gnashed his teeth with a rage very real, and yet comic.
“There used to be a carver here, but it was broken and thrown away a long time ago. Nothing much to carve here. It would have made a noble weapon, no doubt; but — ”
He stopped. The girl sat very quiet, with downcast eyes. As he kept silence for some time, she looked up and said thoughtfully:
“Yes, a knife — it’s a knife that you would want, wouldn’t you, in case, in case — ”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“There must be a crowbar or two in the sheds; but I have given up all the keys together. And then, do you see me walking about with a crowbar in my hand? Ha, ha! And besides, that edifying sight alone might start the trouble for all I know. In truth, why has it not started yet?”
“Perhaps they are afraid of you,” she whispered, looking down again.
“By Jove, it looks like it,” he assented meditatively. “They do seem to hang back for some reason. Is that reason prudence, or downright fear, or perhaps the leisurely method of certitude?”
Out in the black night, not very far from the bungalow, resounded a loud and prolonged whistle. Lena’s hands grasped the sides of the chair, but she made no movement. Heyst started, and turned his face away from the door.
The startling sound had died away.
“Whistles, yells, omens, signals, portents — what do they matter?” he said. “But what about the crowbar? Suppose I had it! Could I stand in ambush at the side of the door — this door — and smash the first protruding head, scatter blood and brains over the floor, over these walls, and then run stealthily to the other door to do the same thing — and repeat the performance for a third time, perhaps? Could I? On suspicion, without compunction, with a calm and determined purpose? No, it is not in me. I date too late. Would you like to see me attempt this thing while that mysterious prestige of mine lasts — or their not less mysterious hesitation?”
“No, no!” she whispered ardently, as if compelled to speak by his eyes fixed on her face. “No, it’s a knife you want to defend yourself with — to defend — there will be time — ”
“And who knows if it isn’t really my duty?” he began again, as if he had not heard her disjointed words at all. “It may be — my duty to you, to myself. For why should I put up with the humiliation of their secret menaces? Do you know what the world would say?”
He emitted a low laugh, which struck her with terror. She would have got up, but he stooped so low over her that she could not move without first pushing him away.
“It would say, Lena, that I — the Swede — after luring my friend and partner to his death from mere greed of money, have murdered these unoffending shipwrecked strangers from sheer funk. That would be the story whispered — perhaps shouted — certainly spread out, and believed — and believed, my dear Lena!”
“Who would believe such awful things?”
“Perhaps you wouldn’t — not at first, at any rate; but the power of calumny grows with time. It’s insidious and penetrating. It can even destroy one’s faith in oneself — dry-rot the soul.”
All at once her eyes leaped to the door and remained fixed, stony, a little enlarged. Turning his head, Heyst beheld the figure of Ricardo framed in the doorway. For a moment none of the three moved, then, looking from the newcomer to the girl in the chair, Heyst formulated a sa
rdonic introduction.
“Mr Ricardo, my dear.”
Her head drooped a little. Ricardo’s hand went up to his moustache. His voice exploded in the room.
“At your service, ma’am!”
He stepped in, taking his hat off with a flourish, and dropping it carelessly on a chair near the door.
“At your service,” he repeated, in quite another tone. “I was made aware there was a lady about, by that Pedro of ours; only I didn’t know I should have the privilege of seeing you tonight, ma’am.”
Lena and Heyst looked at him covertly, but he, with a vague gaze avoiding them both, looked at nothing, seeming to pursue some point in space.
“Had a pleasant walk?” he asked suddenly.
“Yes. And you?” returned Heyst, who had managed to catch his glance.
“I haven’t been a yard away from the governor this afternoon till I started for here.” The genuineness of the accent surprised Heyst, without convincing him of the truth of the words.
“Why do you ask?” pursued Ricardo with every inflection of perfect candour.
“You might have wished to explore the island a little,” said Heyst, studying the man, who, to render him justice, did not try to free his captured gaze. “I may remind you that it wouldn’t be a perfectly safe proceeding.”
Ricardo presented a picture of innocence.
“Oh, yes — meaning that Chink that has ran away from you. He ain’t much!”
“He has a revolver,” observed Heyst meaningly.
“Well, and you have a revolver, too,” Mr. Ricardo argued unexpectedly. “I don’t worry myself about that.”
“That’s different. I am not afraid of you,” Heyst made answer after a short pause.
“Of me?”
“Of all of you.”
“You have a queer way of putting things,” began Ricardo.
At that moment the door on the compound side of the house came open with some noise, and Pedro entered, pressing the edge of a loaded tray to his breast. His big, hairy head rolled a little, his feet fell in front of each other with a short, hard thump on the floor. The arrival changed the current of Ricardo’s thought, perhaps, but certainly of his speech.
Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) Page 373
