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Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer - Romance

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




It was, after all, Tomas Castro to whom all the credit of the thing
belonged. Just after it had fallen very dark, he brought me the black
robes, a pair of heavy pistols to gird on under them, and the heavy
staff topped by a crucifix. He had an air of sarcastic protest in the
dim light of my room, and he explained with exaggeratedly plain words
precisely what I was to do--which, as a matter of fact, was neither more
nor less than merely following in his own footsteps.

"And, oh, Senor," he said sardonically, "if you desire again to pillow
your head upon the breast of your mother; if you would again see your
sister, who, alas! by bewitching my Carlos, is at the heart of all our
troubles; if you desire again to see that dismal land of yours, which
politeness forbids me to curse, I would beg of you not to let the
mad fury of your nation break loose in the midst of these thieves and
scoundrels."

He peered intently into the spectacled eyeholes of my cowl, and laid
his hand on his sword-hilt. His small figure, tightly clothed in black
velvet from chin to knee, swayed gently backwards and forwards in the
light of the dim candle, and his grotesque shadow flitted over the
ghostly walls of the great room. He stood gazing silently for a minute,
then turned smartly on his heels, and, with a gesture of sardonic
respect, threw open the door for me.

"Pray, Senor," he said, "that the moon may not rise too soon."

We went swiftly down the colonnades for the last time, in the pitch
darkness and into the blackness of the vast archway. The clumping staff
of my heavy crucifix drew hollow echoes from the flagstones. In the deep
sort of cave behind us, lit by a dim lanthorn, the negroes waited to
unbar the doors. Castro himself began to mutter over his beads. Suddenly
he said:

"It is the last time I shall stand here. Now, there is not any more a
place for me on the earth."

Great flashes of light began to make suddenly visible the tall pillars
of the immense mournful palace, and after a long time, absolutely
without a sound, save the sputter of enormous torches, an incredibly
ghostly body of figures, black-robed from head to foot, with large
eyeholes peering fantastically, swayed into the great arch of the hall.
Above them was the enormous black coffin. It was a sight so appalling
and unexpected that I stood gazing at them without any power to move,
until I remembered that I, too, was such a figure. And then, with an
ejaculation of impatience, Tomas Castro caught at my hand, and whirled
me round.

The great doors had swung noiselessly open, and the black night,
bespangled with little flames, was framed in front of me. He suddenly
unsheathed his portentous sword, and, hanging his great hat upon his
maimed arm, stalked, a pathetic and sinister figure of grief, down the
great steps. I followed him in the vivid and extraordinary compulsion of
the sinister body that, like one fabulous and enormous monster, swayed
impenetrably after me.

My heart beat till my head was in a tumultuous whirl, when thus, at
last, I stepped out of that house--but I suppose my grim robes cloaked
my emotions--though, seeing very clearly through the eyeholes, it was
almost incredible to me that I was not myself seen. But these Brothers
of Pity were a secret society, known to no man except their spiritual
head, who chose them in turn, and not knowing even each other. Their
good deeds of charity were, in that way, done by pure stealth. And it
happened that their spiritual director was the Father Antonio himself.
At that foot of the palace steps, drawn back out of our way, stood the
great glass coach of state, containing, even then, the woman who was
all the world to me, invisible to me, unattainable to me, not to be
comforted by me, even as her great griefs were to me invisible and
unassuageable. And there between us, in the great coffin, held on
high by the grim, shadowy beings, was all that she loved, invisible,
unattainable, too, and beyond all human comfort. Standing there, in the
midst of the whispering, bare-headed, kneeling, and villainous crowd, I
had a vivid vision of her pale, dim, pitiful face. Ah, poor thing! she
was going away for good from all that state, from all that seclusion,
from all that peace, mutely, and with a noble pride of quietness, into
a world of dangers, with no head but mine to think for her, no arm but
mine to ward off all the great terrors, the immense and dangerous weight
of a new world.

In the twinkle of innumerable candles, the priceless harness of the
white mules, waiting to draw the great coach after us, shone like
streaks of ore in an infinitely rich silver mine. A double line of
tapers kept the road to the cathedral, and a crowd of our negroes, the
bell muzzles of their guns suggested in the twinkling light, massed
themselves round the coach. Outside the lines were the crowd of
rapscallions in red jackets, their women and children--all the
population of the Aldea Bajo, groaning. The whole crowd got into motion
round us, the white mules plunging frantically, the coach swaying. Ahead
of me inarched the sardonic, gallantly grotesque figure of true Tomas,
his sword point up, his motions always jaunty. Ahead of him, again,
were the white robes of many priests, a cluster of tall candles, a great
jewelled cross, and a tall saint's figure swaying, more than shoulder
high, and disappearing up above into the darkness. For me, under my
cowl, it was suffocatingly hot; but I seemed to move forward, following,
swept along without any volition of my own. It appeared an immensely
long journey; and then, as we went at last up the cathedral steps, a
voice cried harshly, "Death to the heretic!" My heart stood still.
I clutched frantically at the handle of a pistol that I could not
disengage from folds of black cloth. But, as a matter of fact, the cry
was purely a general one; I was supposed to be shut up in the palace
still.

The sudden glow, the hush, the warm breath of incense, and the blaze
of light turned me suddenly faint; my ears buzzed, and I heard strange
sounds.

The cathedral was a mass of heads. Everyone in Rio Medio was present,
or came trooping in behind us. The better class was clustered near the
blaze of gilding, mottled marble, wax flowers, and black and purple
drapery that vaulted over the two black coffins in the choir. Down in
the unlit body of the church the riff-raff of O'Brien kept the doors.

I followed the silent figure of Tomas Castro to the bishop's own stall,
right up in the choir, and we became hidden from the rest by the forest
of candles round the catafalque. Up the centre of the great church,
and high over the heads of the kneeling people, came the great coffin,
swaying, its bearers robbed of half their grimness by the blaze of
lights. Tomas Castro suddenly caught at my sleeve whilst they were
letting the coffin down on to the bier. He drew me unnoticed into
the shadow behind the bishop's stall. In the swift transit, I had a
momentary glance of a small, black figure, infinitely tiny in that
quiet place, and infinitely solitary, veiled in black from head to foot,
coming alone up the centre of the nave.

I stood hidden there beside the bishop's stall for a long time, and then
suddenly I saw the black figure alone in the gallery, looking down upon
me--from the _loggia_ of the Riegos. I felt suddenly an immense calm;
she was looking at me with unseeing eyes, but I knew and felt that she
would follow me now to the end of the world. I had no more any doubts
as to the issue of our enterprise; it was open to no unsuccess with a
figure so steadfast engaged in it; it was impossible that blind fate
should be insensible to her charm, impossible that any man could strike
at or thwart her.

Monks began to sing; a great brass instrument grunted lamentably; in the
body of the building there was silence. The bishop and his supporters
moved about, as if aimlessly, in front of the altar; the chains of the
gold censors clicked ceaselessly. Seraphina's head had sunk forward out
of my sight. All the heads of the cathedral bowed down, and suddenly,
from round the side of the stall, a hand touched mine, and a voice said,
"It is time." Very softly, as if it were part of the rite, I was drawn
round the stall through a door in the side of the screen. As we went
out, in his turnings, the old bishop gave us the benediction. Then the
door closed on the glory of his robes, and in a minute, in the darkness
we were rustling down a circular narrow staircase into the dimness of
a crypt, lit by the little blue flame of an oil lamp. From above came
sounds like thunder, immense, vibrating; we were immediately under the
choir. Through the cracks round a large stone showed a parallelogram of
light.

In the dimness I had a glimpse of the face of my conductor--a thin,
wonderfully hollow-cheeked lay brother. He began, with great gentleness,
to assist me out of my black robes, and then he said:

"The senorita will be here very soon with the Senor Tomas," and then
added, with an infinitely sad and tender, dim smile:

"Will not the Senor Caballero, if it is not repugnant, say a prayer for
the repose of..." He pointed gently upwards to the great flagstone above
which was the coffin of Don Balthasar and Carlos. The priest himself was
one of those very holy, very touching---perhaps, very stupid--men that
one finds in such places. With his dim, wistful face he is very present
in my memory. He added: "And that the good God of us all may keep it
in the Senor Caballero's heart to care well for the soul of the dear
senorita."

"I am a very old man," he whispered, after a pause. He was indeed an
old man, quite worn out, quite without hope on earth. "I have loved the
senorita since she was a child. The Senor Caballero takes her from us. I
would have him pray--to be made worthy."

Whilst I was doing it, the place began to be alive with whispers of
garments, of hushed footsteps, a small exclamation in a gruff voice.
Then the stone above moved out of its place, and a blaze of light fell
down from the choir above.

I saw beside me Seraphina's face, brilliantly lit, looking upwards.
Tomas Castro said:

"Come quickly... come quickly... the prayers are ending; there will be
people in the street." And from above an enormous voice intoned:

"_Tu.. u.. ba mi.. i.. i..rum..._" And the serpent groaned discordantly.
The end of a great box covered with black velvet glided forward above
our heads; ropes were fastened round it. The priest had opened a door in
the shadowy distance, beside a white marble tablet in the thick walls.
The coffin up above moved forward a little again; the ropes were
readjusted with a rattling, wooden sound. A dry, formal voice intoned
from above:

"_Erit... Justus Ab auditione..._"

From the open door the priest rattled his keys, and said, "Come, come,"
impatiently.

I was horribly afraid that Seraphina would shriek or faint, or refuse
to move. There was very little time. The pirates might stream out of the
front of the cathedral as we came from the back; the bishop had promised
to accentuate the length of the service. But Seraphina glided towards
the open door; a breath of fresh air reached us. She looked back once.
The coffin was swinging right over the hole, shutting out the light.
Tomas Castro took her hand and said, "Come... come," with infinite
tenderness.

He had been sobbing convulsedly. We went up some steps, and the door
shut behind us with a sound like a sigh of relief.

We walked fast, in perfect blackness and solitude, on the deserted beach
between the old town and the village. Every soul was near the cathedral.
A boat lay half afloat. To the left in the distance the light of the
schooner opposite the Casa Riego wavered on the still water.

Suddenly Tomas Castro said:

"The senorita never before set foot to the open ground."

At once I lifted her into the boat. "Shove off, Tomas," I said, with a
beating heart.




PART FOURTH -- BLADE AND GUITAR




CHAPTER ONE

There was a slight, almost imperceptible jar, a faint grating noise, a
whispering sound of sand--and the boat, without a splash, floated.

The earth, slipping as it were away from under the keel, left us borne
upon the waters of the bay, which were as still as the windless night
itself. The pushing off of that boat was like a launching into space, as
a bird opens its wings on the brow of a cliff, and remains poised in
the air. A sense of freedom came to me, the unreasonable feeling of
exultation--as if I had been really a bird essaying its flight for the
first time. Everything, sudden and evil and most fortunate, had been
arranged for me, as though I had been a lay figure on which Romance
had been wreaking its bewildering unexpectedness; but with the floating
clear of the boat, I felt somehow that this escape I had to manage
myself.

It was dark. Dipping cautiously the blade of the oar, I gave another
push against the shelving shore. Seraphina sat, cloaked and motionless,
and Tomas Castro, in the bows, made no sound. I didn't even hear him
breathe. Everything was left to me. The boat, impelled afresh, made
a slight ripple, and my elation was replaced in a moment by all the
torments of the most acute anxiety.

I gave another push, and then lost the bottom. Success depended upon
my resource, readiness, and courage. And what was this success?
Immediately, it meant getting out of the bay, and into the open sea in
a twelve-foot dinghy looted from some ship years ago by the Rio Medio
pirates, if that miserable population of sordid and ragged outcasts of
the Antilles deserved such a romantic name. They were sea-thieves.

Already the wooded shoulder of a mountain was thrown out intensely
black by the glow in the sky behind. The moon was about to rise. A great
anguish took my heart as if in a vice. The stillness of the dark shore
struck me as unnatural. I imagined the yell of the discovery breaking
it, and the fancy caused me a greater emotion than the thing itself, I
flatter myself, could possibly have done. The unusual silence in which,
through the open portals, the altar of the cathedral alone blazed with
many flames upon the bay, seemed to enter my very heart violently, like
a sudden access of anguish. The two in the boat with me were silent,
too. I could not bear it.

"Seraphina," I murmured, and heard a stifled sob.

"It is time to take the oars, Senor," whispered Castro suddenly, as
though he had fallen asleep as soon as he had scrambled into the bows,
and only had awaked that instant. "The mists in the middle of the bay
will hide us when the moon rises."

It was time--if we were to escape. Escape where? Into the open sea? With
that silent, sorrowing girl by my side! In this miserable cockleshell,
and without any refuge open to us? It was not really a hesitation; she
could not be left at the mercy of O'Brien. It was as though I had for
the first time perceived how vast the world was; how dangerous; how
unsafe. And there was no alternative. There could be no going back.

Perhaps, if I had known what was before us, my heart would have failed
me utterly out of sheer pity. Suddenly my eyes caught sight of the moon
making like the glow of a bush fire on the black slope of the mountain.
In a moment it would flood the bay with light, and the schooner anchored
off the beach before the Casa Riego was not eighty yards away. I dipped
my oar without a splash. Castro pulled with his one hand.

The mists rising on the lowlands never filled the bay, and I could see
them lying in moonlight across the outlet like a silvery white ghost
of a wall. We penetrated it, and instantly became lost to view from the
shore.

Castro, pulling quickly, turned his head, and grunted at a red blur
very low in the mist. A fire was burning on the low point of land where
Nichols--the Nova Scotian--had planted the battery which had worked such
havoc with Admiral Rowley's boats. It was a mere earthwork and some of
the guns had been removed. The fire, however, warned us that there were
some people on the point. We ceased rowing for a moment, and Castro
explained to me that a fire was always lit when any of these thieves'
boats were stirring. There would be three or four men to keep it up. On
this very night Manuel-del-Popolo was outside with a good many rowboats,
waiting on the _Indiaman_. The ship had been seen nearing the shore
since noon. She was becalmed now. Perhaps they were looting her already.

This fact had so far favoured our escape. There had been no strollers on
the beach that night. Since the investment of the Casa Riego, Castro had
lived amongst the besiegers on his prestige of a superior person, of
a _caballero_ skilled in war and diplomacy. No one knew how much the
tubby, saturnine little man was in the confidence of the Juez O'Brien;
and there was no doubt that he was a good Catholic. He was a very grave,
a very silent _caballero_. In reality his heart had been broken by the
death of Carlos, and he did not care what happened to him. His action
was actuated by his scorn and hate of the Rio Medio population, rather
than by any friendly feeling towards myself.

On that night Domingo's partisans were watching the Casa Riego, while
Manuel (who was more of a seaman) had taken most of his personal
friends, and all the larger boats that would float, to do a bit of
"outside work," as they called it, upon the becalmed West Indiaman.

This had facilitated Castro's plan, and it also accounted for the
smallness of the boat, which was the only one of the refuse lot left
on the beach that did not gape at every seam. She was not tight by any
means, though. I could hear the water washing above the bottom-boards,
and I remember how concern about keeping Seraphina's feet dry mingled
with the grave apprehensions of our enterprise.

We had been paddling an easy stroke. The red blurr of the fire on the
point was growing larger, while the diminished blaze of lights on the
high altar of the cathedral pierced the mist with an orange ray.

"The boat should be baled out," I remarked in a whisper.

Castro laid his oar in and made his way to the thwart. It shows how well
we were prepared for our flight, that there was not even a half-cocoanut
shell in the boat. A gallon earthenware jar, stoppered with a bunch of
grass, contained all our provision of fresh water. Castro displaced it,
and, bending low, tried to bale with his big, soft hat. I should imagine
that he found it impracticable, because, suddenly, he tore off one
of his square-toed shoes with a steel buckle. He used it as a scoop,
blaspheming at the necessity, but in a very low mutter, out of respect
for Seraphina.

Standing up in the stern-sheets by her side, I kept on sculling gently.
Once before I had gone desperately to sea--escaping the gallows,
perhaps--in a very small boat, with the drunken song of Rangsley's uncle
heralding the fascination of the unknown to a very callow youth. That
night had been as dark, but the danger had been less great. The boat, it
is true, had actually sunk under us, but then it was only the sea that
might have swallowed me who knew nothing of life, and was as much a
stranger to fate as the animals on our farm. But now the world of men
stood ready to devour us, and the Gulf of Mexico was of no more account
than a puddle on a road infested by robbers. What were the dangers
of the sea to the passions amongst which I was launched--with my high
fortunes in my hand, and, like all those who live and love, with a sword
suspended above my head?

The danger had been less great on that old night, when I had heard
behind me the soft crash of the smugglers' feet on the shingle. It had
been less great, and, if it had had a touch of the sordid, it had led me
to this second and more desperate escape--in a cockleshell, carrying
off a silent and cloaked figure, which quickened my heart-beats at each
look. I was carrying her off from the evil spells of the Casa Riego,
as a knight a princess from an enchanted castle. But she was more to me
than any princess to any knight.

There was never anything like that in the world. Lovers might have gone,
in their passion, to a certain death; but never, it seemed to me, in
the history of youth, had they gone in such an atmosphere of cautious
stillness upon such a reckless adventure. Everything depended upon
slipping out through the gullet of the bay without a sound. The men on
the point had no means of pursuit, but, if they heard or saw anything,
they could shout a warning to the boats outside. These were the real
dangers--my first concern. Afterwards... I did not want to think
of afterwards. There were only the open sea and the perilous coast.
Perhaps, if I thought of them, I should give up.

I thought only of gaining each successive moment and concentrated all
my faculties into an effort of stealthiness. I handled the boat with a
deliberation full of tense prudence, as if the oar had been a stalk of
straw, as if the water of the bay had been the film of a glass bubble an
unguarded movement could have shivered to atoms. I hardly breathed, for
the feeling that a deeper breath would have blown away the mist that was
our sole protection now.

It was not blown away. On the contrary, it clung closer to us, with the
enveloping chill of a cloud wreathing a mountain crag. The vague shadows
and dim outlines that had hung around us began, at last, to vanish
utterly in an impenetrable and luminous whiteness. And through the
jumble of my thoughts darted the sudden knowledge that there was a
sea-fog outside--a thing quite different from the nightly mists of the
bay. It was rolling into the passage inexplicably, for no stir of air
reached us. It was possible to watch its endless drift by the glow of
the fire on the point, now much nearer us. Its edges seemed to melt
away in the flight of the water-dust. It was a sea-fog coming in. Was
it disastrous to us, or favourable? It, at least, answered our immediate
need for concealment, and this was enough for me, when all our future
hung upon every passing minute.

The Rio picaroons, when engaged in thieving from some ship becalmed
on the coast, began by towing one of their schooners as far as the
entrance. They left her there as a rallying point for the boats, and to
receive the booty.

One of these schooners, as I knew, was moored opposite the Casa Riego.
The other might be lying at anchor somewhere right in the fairway ahead,
within a few yards. I strained my ears for some revealing sound from
her, if she were there--a cough, a voice, the creak of a block, or the
fall of something on her deck. Nothing came. I began to fear lest I
should run stem on into her side without a moment's warning. I could see
no further than the length of our twelve-foot boat.

To make certain of avoiding that danger, I decided to shave close the
spit of sand that tipped the narrow strip of lowland to the south. I set
my teeth, and sheered in resolutely.

Castro remained on the after-thwart, with his elbows on his knees. His
head nearly touched my leg. I could distinguish the woeful, bent
back, the broken swaying of the plume in his hat. Seraphina's perfect
immobility gave me the measure of her courage, and the silence was so
profoundly pellucid that the flutter of the flames that we were nearing
began to come loud out of the blur of the glow. Then I heard the very
crackling of the wood, like a fusillade from a great distance. Even then
Castro did not deign to turn his head.

Such as he was--a born vagabond, _contrabandista_, spy in armed camps,
sutler at the tail of the _Grande Armee_ (escaped, God only knows how,
from the snows of Russia), beggar, _guerrillero_, bandit, sceptically
murderous, draping his rags in saturnine dignity--he had ended by
becoming the sinister and grotesque squire of our quixotic Carlos. There
was something romantically sombre in his devotion. He disdained to turn
round at the danger, because he had left his heart on the coffin as a
lesser affection would have laid a wreath. I looked down at Seraphina.
She too, had left a heart in the vaults of the cathedral. The edge of
the heavy cloak drawn over her head concealed her face from me, and,
with her face, her ignorance, her great doubts, her great fears.

I heard, above the crackling of dry wood, a husky exclamation of
surprise, and then a startled voice exclaiming:

"Look! _Santissima Madre!_ What is this?"

Sheer instinct altered at once the motion of my hand so as to incline
the bows of the dinghy away from the shore; but a sort of stupefying
amazement seized upon my soul. We had been seen. It was all over. Was it
possible? All over, already?

In my anxiety to keep clear of the schooner which, for all I know to
this day, may not have been there at all, I had come too close to the
sand, so close that I heard soft, rapid footfalls stop short in the fog.
A voice seemed to be asking me in a whisper:

"Where, oh, where?"

Another cried out irresistibly, "I see it."

It was a subdued cry, as if hushed in sudden awe.

My arm swung to and fro; the turn of my wrist went on imparting the
propelling motion of the oar. All the rest of my body was gripped
helplessly in the dead expectation of the end, as if in the benumbing
seconds of a fall from a towering height. And it was swift, too. I felt
a draught at the back of my neck--a breath of wind. And instantly, as if
a battering-ram had been let swing past me at many layers of stretched
gauze, I beheld, through a tattered deep hole in the fog, a roaring
vision of flames, borne down and springing up again; a dance of purple
gleams on the strip of unveiled water, and three coal-black figures in
the light.

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