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J >> Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer >> Romance




I rose up, startled by his solemnity, by the hint of hidden significance
in these words.

"Is he dying now?" I cried.

"He ought to detach his thoughts from this earth; and if there is no
other way------"

"What way? What am I expected to do?"

"My son, I had observed your emotion. We, the appointed confidants
of men's frailties, are quick to discern the signs of their innermost
feelings. Let me tell you that my cherished daughter in God, Senorita
Dona Seraphina Riego, is with Don Carlos, the virtual head of the
family, since his Excellency Don Balthasar is in a state of, I may say,
infantile innocence."

"What do you mean, father?" I faltered.

"She is waiting for you with him," he pronounced, looking up. And as his
solemnity seemed to have deprived me of my power to move, he added, with
his ordinary simplicity, "Why, my son, she is, I may say, not wholly
indifferent to your person."

I could not have dropped more suddenly into the chair had the good
_padre_ discharged a pistol into my breast. He went away; and when I
leapt up, I saw a young man in black velvet and white ruffles staring
at me out of the large mirror set frameless into the wall, like the
apparition of a Spanish ghost with my own English face.

When I ran out, the moon had sunk below the ridge of the roof; the whole
quadrangle of the Casa had turned black under the stars, with only a
yellow glimmer of light falling into the well of the court from the lamp
under the vaulted gateway. The form of the priest had gone out of sight,
and a far-away knocking, mingling with my footfalls, seemed to be part
of the tumult within my heart. Below, a voice at the gate challenged,
"Who goes there?" I ran on. Two tiny flames burned before Carlos' door
at the end of the long vista, and two of Seraphina's maids shrank away
from the great mahogany panels at my approach. The candlesticks trembled
askew in their hands; the wax guttered down, and the taller of the two
girls, with an uncovered long neck, gazed at me out of big sleepy
eyes in a sort of dumb wonder. The teeth of the plump little one--La
Chica--rattled violently like castanets. She moved aside with a
hysterical little laugh, and glanced upwards at me.

I stopped, as if I had intruded; of all the persons in the sick-room,
not one turned a head. The stillness of the lights, of things, of the
air, seemed to have passed into Seraphina's face. She stood with a stiff
carriage under the heavy hangings of the bed, looking very Spanish and
romantic in her short black skirt, a black lace shawl enveloping her
head, her shoulders, her arms, as low as the waist. Her bare feet,
thrust into high-heeled slippers, lent to her presence an air of flight,
as if she had run into that room in distress or fear. Carlos, sitting up
amongst the snowy pillows of eider-down at his back, was not speaking
to her. He had done; and the flush on his cheek, the eager lustre of
his eyes, gave him an appearance of animation, almost of joy, a sort of
consuming, flame-like brilliance. They were waiting for me. With all his
eagerness and air of life, all he could do was to lift his white hand an
inch or two off the silk coverlet that spread over his limbs smoothly,
like a vast crimson pall. There was something joyous and cruel in the
shimmer of this piece of colour, contrasted with the dead white of the
linen, the duskiness of the wasted face, the dark head with no visible
body, symbolically motionless. The confused shadows and the tarnished
splendour of emblazoned draperies, looped up high under the ceiling,
fell in heavy and unstirring folds right down to the polished floor,
that reflected the lights like a sheet of water, or rather like ice.

I felt it slippery under my feet. I, alone, had to move, in this
great chamber, with its festive patches of colour amongst the funereal
shadows, with the expectant, still figures of priest and nun, servants
of passionless eternity, as if immobilized and made mute by hostile
wonder before the perishable triumph of life and love. And only the
impatient tapping of the sick man's hand on the stiff silk of the
coverlet was heard.

It called to me. Seraphina's unstirring head was lighted strongly by a
two-branched sconce on the wall; and when I stood by her side, not even
the shadow of the eyelashes on her cheek trembled. Carlos' lips moved;
his voice was almost extinct; but for all his emaciation, the profundity
of his eyes, the sunken cheeks, the hollow temples, he remained
attractive, with the charm of his gallant and romantic temper worn away
to an almost unearthly fineness.

He was going to have his desire because, on the threshold of his
spiritual inheritance, he refused, or was unable, to turn his gaze away
from this world. Father Antonio's business was to save this soul; and
with a sort of simple and sacerdotal shrewdness, in which there was much
love for his most noble penitent, he would try to appease its trouble by
a romantic satisfaction. His voice, very grave and profound, addressed
me:

"Approach, my son--nearer. We trust the natural feelings of pity which
are implanted in every human breast, the nobility of your extraction,
the honour of your _hidalguidad_, and that inextinguishable courage
which, as by the unwearied mercy of God, distinguishes the sons of
your fortunate and unhappy nation." His bass voice, deepened in solemn
utterance, vibrated huskily. There was a rustic dignity in his uncouth
form, in his broad face, in the gesture of the raised hand. "You
shall promise to respect the dictates of our conscience, guided by the
authority of our faith; to defer to our scruples, and to the procedure
of our Church in matters which we believe touch the welfare of our
souls.... You promise?"

He waited. Carlos' eyes burned darkly on my face. What were they asking
of me? This was nothing. Of course I would respect her scruples--her
scruples--if my heart should break. I felt her living intensely by my
side; she could be brought no nearer to me by anything they could do, or
I could promise. She had already all the devotion of my love and youth,
the unreasoning and potent devotion, without a thought or hope of
reward. I was almost ashamed to pronounce the two words they expected.
"I promise."

And suddenly the meaning pervading this scene, something that was in my
mind already, and that I had hardly dared to look at till now, became
clear to me in its awful futility against the dangers, in all its remote
consequences. It was a betrothal. The priest--Carlos, too--must have
known that it had no binding power. To Carlos it was symbolic of his
wishes. Father Antonio was thinking of the papal dispensation. I was a
heretic. What if it were refused? But what was that risk to me, who had
never dared to hope? Moreover, they had brought her there, had persuaded
her; she had been influenced by her fears, impressed by Carlos. What
could she care for me? And I repeated:

"I promise. I promise, even at the cost of suffering and unhappiness,
never to demand anything from her against her conscience."

Carlos' voice sounded weak. "I answer for him, good father." Then
he seemed to wander in a whisper, which we two caught faintly, "He
resembles his sister, O Divine------"

And on this ghostly sigh, on this breath, with the feeble click of beads
in the nun's hands, a silence fell upon the room, vast as the stillness
of a world of unknown faiths, loves, beliefs, of silent illusions, of
unexpressed passions and secret motives that live in our unfathomable
hearts.

Seraphina had given me a quick glance--the first glance--which I had
rather felt than seen. Carlos made an effort, and, raising himself, put
her hand in mine.

Father Antonio, trying to pronounce a short allocution, broke down,
naive in his emotion, as he had been in his dignity. I could at first
catch only the words, "Beloved child--Holy Father--poor priest...."
He had taken this upon himself; and he would attest the purity of our
intentions, the necessity of the case, the assent of the head of the
family, my excellent disposition. All the Englishmen had excellent
dispositions. He would, personally, go to the foot of the Holy See--on
his knees, if necessary. Meantime, a document--he should at once prepare
a justificative document. The archbishop, it is true, did not like him
on account of the calumnies of that man O'Brien. But there was, beyond
the seas, the supreme authority of the Church, unerring and inaccessible
to calumnies.

All that time Seraphina's hand was lying passive in my palm--warm,
soft, living; all the life, all the world, all the happiness, the only
desire--and I dared not close my grasp, afraid of the vanity of my
hopes, shrinking from the intense felicity in the audacious act.
Father Antonio--I must say the word--blubbered. He was now only a
tender-hearted, simple old man, nothing more.

"Before God now, Don Juan.... I am only a poor priest, but invested
with a sacred office, an enormous power. Tremble, Senor, it is a young
girl... I have loved her like my own; for, indeed, I have in baptism
given her the spiritual life. You owe her protection; it is for that,
before God, Senor------"

It was as if Carlos had swooned; his eyes were closed, his face like
a carving. But gradually the suggestion of a tender and ironic smile
appeared on his lips. With a slow effort he raised his arm and his
eyelids, in an appeal of all his weariness for my ear. I made a movement
to stoop over him, and the floor, the great bed, the whole room, seemed
to heave and sway. I felt a slight, a fleeting pressure of Seraphina's
hand before it slipped out of mine; I thought, in the beating rush of
blood to my temples, that I was going mad.

He had thrown his arm over my neck; there was the calming austerity of
death on his lips, that just touched my ear and departed, together with
the far-away sound of the words, losing themselves in the remoteness of
another world:

"Like an Englishman, Juan."

"On my honour, Carlos."

His arm, releasing my neck, fell stretched out on the coverlet. Father
Antonio had mastered his emotion; with the trail of undried tears on
his face, he had become a priest again, exalted above the reach of his
earthly sorrow by the august concern of his sacerdocy.

"Don Carlos, my son, is your mind at ease, now?"

Carlos closed his eyes slowly.

"Then turn all your thoughts to heaven." Father Antonio's bass voice
rose, aloud, with an extraordinary authority. "You have done with the
earth."

The arm of the nun touched the cords of the curtains" and the massive
folds shook and fell expanded, hiding from us the priest and the
penitent.




CHAPTER FOUR

Seraphina and I moved towards the door sadly, as if under the oppression
of a memory, as people go back from the side of a grave to the cares of
life. No exultation possessed me. Nothing had happened. It had been a
sick man's whim.

"Senorita," I said low, with my hand on the wrought bronze of the
door-handle, "Don Carlos might have died in full trust of my devotion to
you--without this."

"I know it," she answered, hanging her head.

"It was his wish," I said. "And I deferred."

"It was his wish," she repeated.

"Remember he had asked you for no promise."

"Yes, it is you only he has asked. You have remembered it very well,
Senor. And you--you ask for nothing."

"No," I said; "neither from your heart nor from your conscience--nor
from your gratitude. Gratitude from you! As if it were not I that
owe you gratitude for having condescended to stand with your hand in
mine--if only for a moment--if only to bring peace to a dying man; for
giving me the felicity, the illusion of this wonderful instant, that,
all my life, I shall remember as those who are suddenly stricken blind
remember the great glory of the sun. I shall live with it, I shall
cherish it in my heart to my dying day; and I promise never to mention
it to you again."

Her lips were slightly parted, her eyes remained downcast, her head
drooped as if in extreme attention.

"I asked for no promise," she murmured coldly.

My heart was heavy. "Thank you for that proof of your confidence," I
said. "I am yours without any promises. Wholly yours. But what can I
offer? What help? What refuge? What protection? What can I do? I can
only die for you. Ah, but this was cruel of Carlos, when he knew that I
had nothing else but my poor life to give."

"I accept that," she said unexpectedly. "Senorita, it is generous of you
to accept so worthless a gift--a life I value not at all save for one
unique memory which I owe to you."

I knew she was looking at me while I swung open the door with a low bow.
I did not trust myself to look at her. An unreasonable disenchantment,
like the awakening from a happy dream, oppressed me. I felt an almost
angry desire to seize her in my arms--to go back to my dream. If I had
looked at her then, I believed I could not have controlled myself.

She passed out; and when I looked up there was O'Brien booted and
spurred, but otherwise in his lawyer's black, inclining his dapper
figure profoundly before her in the dim gallery. She had stopped short.
The two maids, huddled together behind her, stared with terrified eyes.
The flames of their candles vacillated very much.

I closed the door quietly. Carlos was done with the earth. This had
become my affair; and the necessity of coming to an immediate decision
almost deprived me of my power of thinking. The necessity had arisen too
swiftly; the arrival of that man acted like the sudden apparition of
a phantom. It had been expected, however; only, from the moment we
had turned away from Carlos' bedside, we had thought of nothing but
ourselves; we had dwelt alone in our emotions, as if there had been no
inhabitant of flesh and blood on the earth but we two. Our danger had
been present, no doubt, in our minds, because we drew it in with every
breath. It was the indispensable condition of our contact, of our words,
of our thoughts; it was the atmosphere of our feelings; a something
as all-pervading and impalpable as the air we drew into our lungs. And
suddenly this danger, this breath of our life, had taken this material
form. It was material and expected, and yet it had the effect of an evil
spectre, inasmuch as one did not know where and how it was vulnerable,
what precisely it would do, how one should defend one's self.

His bow was courtly; his gravity was all in his bearing, which was quiet
and confident: the manner of a capable man, the sort of man the great
of this earth find invaluable and are inclined to trust. His full-shaven
face had a good-natured, almost a good-humored expression, which I have
come to think must have depended on the cast of his features, on the
setting of his eyes--on some peculiarity not under his control, or else
he could not have preserved it so well. On certain occasions, as this
one, for instance, it affected me as a refinement of cynicism; and,
generally, it was startling, like the assumption of a mask inappropriate
to the action and the speeches of the part.

He had journeyed in his customary manner overland from Havana, arriving
unexpectedly at night, as he had often done before; only this time he
had found the little door, cut out in one of the sides of the big gate,
bolted fast. It was his knocking I had heard, as I hurried after the
priest. The major-domo, who had been called up to let him in, told me
afterwards that the senor intendente had put no question whatever to him
as to this, and had gone on, as usual, towards his own room. Nobody knew
what was going on in Carlos' chamber, but, of course, he came upon the
two girls at the door. He said nothing to them either, only just stopped
there and waited, leaning with one elbow on the balustrade with his
good-tempered, gray eyes fixed on the door. He had fully expected to see
Seraphina come out presently, but I think he did not count on seeing
me as well. When he straightened himself up after the bow, we two were
standing side by side.

I had stepped quickly towards her, asking myself what he would do. He
did not seem to be armed; neither had I any weapon about me. Would he
fly at my throat? I was the bigger, and the younger man. I wished he
would. But he found a way of making me feel all his other advantages.
He did not recognize my existence. He appeared not to see me at all. He
seemed not to be aware of Seraphina's startled immobility, of my firm
attitude; but turning his good-humoured face towards the two girls, who
appeared ready to sink through the floor before his gaze, he shook his
fore-finger at them slightly.

This was all. He was not menacing; he was almost playful; and this
gesture, marvellous in its economy of effort, disclosed all the might
and insolence of his power. It had the unerring efficacy of an act of
instinct. It was instinct. He could not know how he dismayed us by
that shake of the finger. The tall girl dropped her candlestick with
a clatter, and fled along the gallery like a shadow. La Chica cowered
under the wall. The light of her candle just touched dimly the form of
a negro boy, waiting passively in the background with O'Brien's
saddle-bags over his shoulder.

"You see," said Seraphina to me, in a swift, desolate murmur. "They are
all like this--all, all."

Without a change of countenance, without emphasis, he said to her in
French:

"_Votre pere dort sans doute, Senorita_."

And she intrepidly replied, "You know very well, Senor Intendente, that
nothing can make him open his eyes."

"So it seems," he muttered between his teeth, stooping to pick up the
dropped candlestick. It was lying at my feet. I could have taken him
at a disadvantage, then; I could have felled him with one blow, thrown
myself upon his back. Thus may an athletic prisoner set upon a jailer
coming into his cell, if there were not the prison, the locks, the bars,
the heavy gates! the walls, all the apparatus of captivity, and the
superior weight of the idea chaining down the will, if not the courage.

It might have been his knowledge of this, or his absolute disdain of
me. The unconcerned manner in which he busied himself--his head within
striking distance of my fist--in lighting the extinguished candle from
the trembling Chica's humiliated me beyond expression. He had some
difficulty with that, till he said to her just audibly, "Calm thyself,
nina," and she became rigid in her appearance of excessive terror.

He turned then towards Seraphina, candlestick in hand, courteously
saying in Spanish:

"May I be allowed to help light you to your door, since that silly
Juanita--I think it was Juanita--has taken leave of her senses? She is
not fit to remain in your service--any more than this one here."

With a gasp of desolation, La Chica began to sob limply against the
wall. I made one step forward; and, holding the candle well up, as
though for the purpose of examining my face carefully, he never looked
my way, while he and Seraphina were exchanging a few phrases in French
which I did not understand well enough to fellow.

He was politely interrogatory, it seemed to me. The natural,
good-humoured expression never left his face, as though he had a fund of
inexhaustible patience for dealing with the unaccountable trifles of a
woman's conduct. Seraphina's shawl had slipped off her head. La Chica
sidled towards her, sobbing a deep sob now and then, without any sign of
tears; and with their scattered hair, their bare arms, the disorder of
their attire, they looked like two women discovered in a secret flight
for life. Only the mistress stood her ground firmly; her voice was
decided; there was resolution in the way one little white hand clutched
the black lace on her bosom. Only once she seemed to hesitate in her
replies. Then, after a pause he gave her for reflection, he appeared
to repeat his question. She glanced at me apprehensively, as I thought,
before she confirmed the previous answer by a slow inclination of her
head.

Had he allowed himself to make a provoking movement, a dubious gesture
of any sort, I would have flung myself upon him at once; but the
nonchalant manner in which he looked away, while he extended to me his
hand with the candlestick, amazed me. I simply took it from him. He
stepped back, with a ceremonious bow for Seraphina. La Chica ran up
close to her elbow. I heard her voice saying sadly, "You need fear
nothing for yourself, child"; and they moved away slowly. I remained
facing O'Brien, with a vague notion of protecting their retreat.

This time it was I who was holding the light before his face. It was
calm and colourless; his eyes were fixed on the ground reflectively,
with the appearance of profound and quiet absorption. But suddenly I
perceived the convulsive clutch of his hand on the skirt of his coat. It
was as if accidentally I had looked inside the man--upon the strength of
his illusions, on his desire, on his passion. Now he will fly at me,
I thought, with a tremendously convincing certitude. Now------All my
muscles, stiffening, answered the appeal of that thought of battle.

He said, "Won't you give me that light?"

And I understood he demanded a surrender.

"I would see you die first where you stand," was my answer.

This object in my hand had become endowed with moral
meaning--significant, like a symbol--only to be torn from me with my
life.

He lifted his head; the light twinkled in his eyes. "Oh, _I_ won't die,"
he said, with that bizarre suggestion of humour in his face, in his
subdued voice. "But it is a small thing; and you are young; it may be
yet worth your while to try and please me--this time."

Before I could answer, Seraphina, from some little distance, called out
hurriedly:

"Don Juan, your arm."

Her voice, sounding a little unsteady, made me forget O'Brien, and,
turning my back on him, I ran up to her. She needed my support; and
before us La Chica tottered and stumbled along with the lights, moaning:

"_Madre de Dios!_ What will become of us now! Oh, what will become of us
now!"

"You know what he had asked me to let him do," Seraphina talked rapidly.
"I made answer, 'No; give the light to my cousin.' Then he said, 'Do you
really wish it, Senorita? I am the older friend.' I repeated, 'Give the
light to my cousin, Senor.' He, then, cruelly, 'For the young man's own
sake, reflect, Senorita.' And he waited before he asked me again, 'Shall
I surrender it to him?' I felt death upon my heart, and all my fear for
you--there." She touched her beautiful throat with a swift movement of
a hand that disappeared at once under the lace. "And because I could
not speak, I------Don Juan, you have just offered me your life--I------
_Misericordia!_ What else was possible? I made with my head the sign
'Yes.'"

In the stress, hurry, and rapture encompassing my immense gratitude,
I pressed her hand to my side familiarly, as if we had been two lovers
walking in a lane on a serene evening.

"If you had not made that sign, it would have been worse than death--in
my heart," I said. "He had allied me, too, to renounce my trust, my
light."

We walked on slowly, accompanied in our sudden silence by the plash of
the fountain at the bottom of the great square of darkness on our left,
and by the piteous moans of La Chica.

"That is what he meant," said the enchanting voice by my side. "And you
refused. That is your valour."

"From no selfish motives," I said, troubled, as if all the great
incertitude of my mind had been awakened by the sound that brought so
much delight to my heart. "My valour is nothing."

"It has given me a new courage," she said.

"You did not want more," I said earnestly.

"Ah! I was very much alone. It is difficult to------"

She hesitated.

"To live alone," I finished.

"More so to die," she whispered, with a new note of timidity. "It is
frightful. Be cautious, Don Juan, for the love of God, because I could
not------"

We stopped. La Chica, silent, as if exhausted, drooped lamentably,
with her shoulder against the wall, by Seraphina's door; and the pure
crystalline sound of the fountain below, enveloping the parting pause,
seemed to wind its coldness round my heart.

"Poor Don Carlos!" she said. "I had a great affection for him. I was
afraid they would want me to marry him. He loved your sister."

"He never told her," I murmured. "I wonder if she ever guessed."

"He was poor, homeless, ill already, in a foreign land."

"We all loved him at home," I said.

"He never asked her," she breathed out. "And, perhaps--but he never
asked her."

"I have no more force," sighed La Chica, suddenly, and sank down at the
foot of the wall, putting the candlesticks on the floor.

"You have been very good to him," I said; "only he need not have
demanded this from you. Of course, I understood perfectly.... I hope you
understand, too, that I------"

"Senor, my cousin," she flashed out suddenly, "do you think that I would
have consented only from my affection for him?"

"Senorita," I cried, "I am poor, homeless, in a foreign land. How can I
believe? How can I dare to dream?--unless your own voice------"

"Then you are permitted to ask. Ask, Don Juan."

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