Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer - Romance

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

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I dropped on one knee, and, suddenly extending her arm, she pressed her
hand to my lips. Lighted up from below, the picturesque aspect of her
figure took on something of a transcendental grace; the unusual upward
shadows invested her beauty with a new mystery of fascination. A minute
passed. I could hear her rapid breathing above, and I stood up before
her, holding both her hands.

"How very few days have we been together," she whispered. "Juan, I am
ashamed."

"I did not count the days. I have known you always. I have dreamed of
you since I can remember--for days, for months, a year, all my life."

The crash of a heavy door flung to, exploded, filling the galleries all
round the _patio_ with the sonorous reminder of our peril.

"Ah! We had forgotten."

I heard her voice, and felt her form in my arms. Her lips at my ear
pronounced:

"Remember, Juan. Two lives, but one death only."

And she was gone so quickly that it was as though she had passed through
the wood of the massive panels.

La Chica crouched on her knees. The lights on the floor burned before
her empty stare, and with her bare shoulders the tone of old ivory
emerging from the white linen, with wisps of raven hair hanging down her
cheeks, the abandonment of her whole person embodied every outward mark
and line of desolation.

"What do you fear from him?" I asked.

She looked up; moved nearer to me on her knees. "I have a lover
outside."

She seized her hair wildly, drew it across her face, tried to stuff
handfuls of it into her mouth, as if to stop herself from shrieking.

"He shook his finger at me," she moaned.

Her terror, as incomprehensible as the emotion of an animal, was gaining
upon me. I said sternly:

"What can he do, then?"

"I don't know."

She did not know. She was like me. She feared for her love. Like myself!
Was there anything in the way of our undoing which it was not in his
power to achieve?

"Try to be faithful to your mistress," I said, "and all may be well
yet."

She made no answer, but staggered to her feet, and went away blindly
through the door, which opened just wide enough to let her through.
There were clouds on the sky. The _patio_, in its blackness, was like
the rectangular mouth of a bottomless pit. I picked up the candlesticks,
and lighted myself to my room, walking upon air, upon tempestuous air,
in a feeling of insecurity and exultation.

The lights of my candelabrum had gone out. I stood the two candlesticks
on a table, and the shadows of the room, uplifted above the two flames
as high as the ceiling, filled the corners heavily like gathered
draperies, descended to the foot of the four walls in the shape of a
military tent, in which warlike objects vaguely gleamed: a trophy of
ancient arquebuses and conquering swords, arranged with bows, spears,
the stick and stone weapons of an extinct race, a war collar of shells
or pebbles, a round wicker-work shield in a halo of arrows, with a
matchlock piece on each side--of the sort that had to be served by two
men.

I had left the door of my room open on purpose, so that he should know
I was back there, and ready for him. I took down a long straight blade,
like a rapier, with a basket hilt. It was a cumbrous weapon, and with a
blunt edge; still, it had a point, and I was ready to thrust and parry
against the world. I called upon my foes. No enemy appeared, and by
the light of two candles, with a sword in my hand, I lost myself in the
foreshadowings of the future.

It was positive and uncertain. I wandered in it like a soul outside the
gates of paradise, with an anticipation of bliss, and the pain of my
exclusion. There was only one man in the way. I was certain he had been
watching us across the blackness of the _patio_. He must have seen the
dimly-lit dumb show of our parting at Sera-phina's door. I hoped he had
understood, and that my shadow, bearing the two lights, had struck him
as triumphant and undismayed, walking upon air. I strained my ears. I
had heard....

Somebody was coming towards me along the silent galleries. It was he;
I knew it. He was coming nearer and nearer. In the profound, tomb-like
stillness of the great house, I had heard the sound of his footsteps on
the tessellated pavement from afar. Now he had turned the corner, and
the calm, strolling pace of his approach was enough to strike awe into
an adversary's heart. It never hesitated, not once; never hurried; never
slowed till it stopped. He stood in the doorway.

I suppose, in that big room, by the light of two candles, I must have
presented an impressive picture of a menacing youth all in black, with
a tense face, and holding a naked, long rapier in his hand. At any rate,
he stood still, eyeing me from the doorway, the picture of a dapper
Spanish lawyer in a lofty frame; all in black, also, with a fair head
and a well-turned leg advanced in a black silk stocking. He had taken
off his riding boots. For the rest, I had never seen him dressed
otherwise. There was no weapon in his hand, or at his side.

I lowered the point, and, seeing he remained on the doorstep, as if not
willing to trust himself within, I said disdainfully:

"You don't suppose I would murder a defenceless man."

"Am I defenceless?" He had a slight lift of the eyebrows. "That is news,
indeed. It is you who are supposing. I have been a very certain man for
this many a year."

"How can you know how an English gentleman would feel and act? I am
neither a murderer nor yet an intriguer."

He walked right in rapidly, and, getting round to the other side of the
table, drew a small pistol out of his breeches pocket.

"You see--I am not trusting too much to your English generosity."

He laid the pistol negligently on the table. I had turned about on my
heels. As we stood, by lunging between the two candlesticks, I should
have been able to run him through the body before he could cry out.

I laid the sword on the table.

"Would you trust a damned Irish rebel?" he asked.

"You are wrong in your surmise. I would have nothing to do with a rebel,
even in my thoughts and suppositions. I think that the Intendente of Don
Balthasar Riego would look twice before murdering in a bedroom the guest
of the house--a relation, a friend of the family."

"That's sensible," he said, with that unalterable air of good nature,
which sometimes was like the most cruel mockery of humour. "And do you
think that even a relation of the Riegos would escape the scaffold for
killing Don Patricio O'Brien, one of the Royal Judges of the Marine
Court, member of the Council, Procurator to the Chapter...."

"Intendente of the Casa," I threw in.

"That's my gratitude," he said gravely. "So you see...."

"Supreme chief of thieves and picaroons," I suggested again.

He answered this by a gesture of disdainful superiority.

"I wonder if you---if any of you English--would have the courage to risk
your all--ambition, pride, position, wealth, peace of mind, your dearest
hope, your self-respect--like this. For an idea."

His tone, that revealed something exalted and sad behind everything that
was sordid and base in the acts of that man's villainous tools,
struck me with astonishment. I beheld, as an inseparable whole, the
contemptible result, the childishness of his imagination, the danger of
his recklessness, and something like loftiness in his pitiful illusion.

"Nothing's too hot, too dirty, too heavy. Any way to get at you English;
any means. To strike! That's the thing. I would die happy if I knew I
had helped to detach from you one island--one little island of all the
earth you have filched away, stolen, taken by force, got by lying....
Don't taunt me with your taunts of thieves. What weapons better worthy
of you could I use? Oh, I am modest. I am modest. This is a little
thing, this Jamaica. What do I care for the Separationist blatherskite
more than for the loyal fools? You are all English to me. If I had my
way, your Empire would die of pin-pricks all over its big, overgrown
body. Let only one bit drop off. If robbing your ships may help it,
then, as you see me standing here, I am ready to go myself in a leaky
boat. I tell you Jamaica's gone. And that may be the beginning of the
end."

He lifted his arm not at me, but at England, if I may judge from his
burning stare. It was not to me he was speaking. There we were, Irish
and English, face to face, as it had been ever since we had met in the
narrow way of the world that had never been big enough for the tribes,
the nations, the races of man.

"Now, Mr. O'Brien, I don't know what you may do to me, but I won't
listen to any of this," I said, very red in the face.

"Who wants you to listen?" he muttered absently, and went away from the
table to look out of the loophole, leaving me there with the sword and
the pistol.

Whatever he might have said of the scaffold, this was very imprudent
of him. It was characteristic of the man--of that impulsiveness which
existed in him side by side with his sagacity, with his coolness in
intrigue, with his unmerciful and revengeful temper. By my own feelings
I understood what an imprudence it was. But he was turning his back on
me, and how could I?... His imprudence was so complete that it made for
security. He did not, I am sure, remember my existence. I would just as
soon have jumped with a dagger upon a man in the dark.

He was really stirred to his depths--to the depths of his hate, and of
his love--by seeing me, an insignificant youth (I was no more), surge up
suddenly in his path. He turned where he stood at last, and contemplated
me with a sort of thoughtful surprise, as though he had tried to account
to himself for my existence.

"No," he said, to himself really, "I wonder when I look at you. How did
you manage to get that pretty reputation over there? Ramon's a fool. He
shall know it to his cost. But the craftiness of that Carlos! Or is it
only my confounded willingness to believe?"

He was putting his finger nearly on the very spot. I said nothing.

"Why," he exclaimed, "when it's all boiled down, you are only an English
beggar boy."

"I've come to a man's estate since we met last," I said meaningly.

He seemed to meditate over this. His face never changed, except,
perhaps, to an even more amused benignity of expression.

"You have lived very fast by that account," he remarked artlessly.
"Is it possible now? Well, life, as you know, can't last forever; and,
indeed, taking a better look at you in this poor light, you do seem to
be very near death."

I did not flinch; and, with a very dry mouth, I uttered defiantly:

"Such talk means nothing."

"Bravely said. But this is not talk. You've gone too fast. I am giving
you a chance to turn back."

"Not an inch," I said fiercely. "Neither in thought, in deed; not even
in semblance."

He seemed as though he wanted to swallow a bone in his throat.

"Believe me, there is more in life than you think. There is at your age,
more than..." he had a strange contortion of the body, as though in a
sudden access of internal pain; that humorous smile, that abode in the
form of his lips, changed into a ghastly, forced grin... "than one love
in a life--more than one woman."

I believe he tried to leer at me, because his voice was absolutely dying
in his throat. My indignation was boundless. I cried out with the fire
of deathless conviction:

"It is not true. You know it is not true."

He was speechless for a time; then, shaking and stammering with that
inward rage that seemed to heave like molten lava in his breast, without
ever coming to the surface of his face:

"What! Is it I, then, who have to go back? For--for you---a boy--come
from devil knows where--an English, beggarly.... For a girl's whim....
I--a man."

He calmed down. "No; you are mad. You are dreaming. You don't know. You
can't--you! You don't know what a man is; you with your calf-love a day
old. How dare you look at me who have breathed for years in the very
air? You fool--you little, wretched fool! For years sleeping, and
waking, and working...."

"And intriguing," I broke in, "and plotting, and deceiving--for years."

This calmed him altogether. "I am a man; you are but a boy; or else I
would not have to tell you that your love"--he choked at the word--"is
to mine like--like--"

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 dictate: 'Out of regard for your future, and the
desire for active life, of your own will, you accept eagerly Senor
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, Senor 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
__Lugarenos__, 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 __Lugarenos__
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.

Senor O'Brien, old Cesar whispered, without looking at me, was extremely
occupied in the _Cancilleria_. 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.

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