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Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer - Romance

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




One of them stood high on lank black legs, with long black arms thrown
up stiffly above the black shape of a hat. The two others crouched low
on the very edge of the water, peering as if from an ambush.

The clearness of this vision was contained by a thick and fiery
atmosphere, into which a soft white rush and swirl of fog fell like a
sudden whirl of snow. It closed down and overwhelmed at once the tall
flutter of the flames, the black figures, the purple gleams playing
round my oar. The hot glare had struck my eyeballs once, and had melted
away again into the old, fiery stain on the mended fabric of the fog.
But the attitudes of the crouching men left no room for doubt that we
had been seen. I expected a sudden uplifting of voices on the shore,
answered by cries from the sea, and I screamed excitedly at Castro to
lay hold of his oar.

He did not stir, and after my shout, which must have fallen on the
scared ears with a weird and unearthly note, a profound silence attended
us--the silence of a superstitious fear. And, instead of howls, I heard,
before the boat had travelled its own short length, a voice that seemed
to be the voice of fear itself asking, "Did you hear that?" and a
trembling mutter of an invocation to all the saints. Then a strangled
throat trying to pronounce firmly, "The souls of the dead _Inglez_.
Crying from pain."

Admiral Rowley's seamen, so miserably thrown away in the ill-conceived
attack on the bay, were making a ghostly escort for our escape. Those
dead boats'-crews were supposed to haunt the fatal spot, after the
manner of spectres that linger in remorse, regret, or revenge, about
the gates of departure. I had blundered; the fog, breaking apart, had
betrayed us. But my obscure and vanquished countrymen held possession
of the outlet by the memory of their courage. In this critical moment it
was they, I may say, who stood by us.

We, on our part, must have been disclosed, dark, indistinct, utterly
inexplicable; completely unexpected; an apparition of stealthy shades.
The painful voice in the fog said:

"Let them be. Answer not. They shall pass on, for none of them died on
the shore--all in the water. Yes, all in the water."

I suppose the man was trying to reassure himself and his companions.
His meaning, no doubt, was that, being on shore, they were safe from
the ghosts of those _Inglez_ who had never achieved a landing. From
the enlarging and sudden deepening of the glow, I knew that they were
throwing more brushwood on the fire.

I kept on sculling, and gradually the sharp fusillade of dry twigs grew
more distant, more muffled in the fog. At last it ceased altogether.
Then a weakness came over me, and, hauling my oar in, I sat down by
Sera-phina's side. I longed for the sound of her voice, for some tender
word, for the caress of a murmur upon my perplexed soul. I was sure of
her, as of a conquered and rare treasure, whose possession simplifies
life into a sort of adoring guardianship--and I felt so much at her
mercy that an overwhelming sense of guilt made me afraid to speak to
her. The slight heave of the open sea swung the boat up and down.

Suddenly Castro let out a sort of lugubrious chuckle, and, in low tones,
I began to upbraid him with his apathy. Even with his one arm he should
have obeyed my call to the oar. It was incomprehensible to me that
we had not been fired at. Castro enlightened me, in a few moody and
scornful words. The Rio Medio people, he commented upon the incident,
were fools, of bestial nature, afraid of they knew not what.

"Castro, the valour of these dead countrymen of mine was not wasted;
they have stood by us like true friends," I whispered in the excitement
of our escape.

"These insensate English," he grumbled....

"A dead enemy would have served the turn better. If the _caballero_ had
none other than dead friends...."

His harsh, bitter mumble stopped. Then Sera-phina's voice said softly:

"It is you who are the friend, Tomas Castro. To you shall come a
friend's reward."

"Alas, Senorita!" he sighed. "What remains for me in this world--for me
who have given for two masses for the souls of that illustrious man, and
of your cousin Don Carlos, my last piece of silver?"

"We shall make you very rich, Tomas Castro," she said with decision, as
if there had been bags of gold in the boat.

He returned a high-flown phrase of thanks in a bitter, absent whisper.
I knew well enough that the help he had given me was not for money, not
for love--not even for loyalty to the Riegos. It was obedience to the
last recommendation of Carlos. He ran risks for my safety, but gave me
none of his allegiance.

He was still the same tubby, murderous little man, with a steel blade
screwed to the wooden stump of his forearm, as when, swelling his
breast, he had stepped on his toes before me like a bloodthirsty pigeon,
in the steerage of the ship that had brought us from home. I heard him
mumble, with almost incredible, sardonic contempt, that, indeed,
the senor would soon have none but dead friends if he refrained
from striking at his enemies. Had the senor taken the very excellent
opportunity afforded by Providence, and that any sane Christian man
would have taken--to let him stab the Juez O'Brien--we should not then
be wandering in a little boat. What folly! What folly! One little thrust
of a knife, and we should all have been now safe in our beds....

His tone was one of weary superiority, and I remained appalled by that
truth, stripped of all chivalrous pretence. It was clear, in sparing
that defenceless life, I had been guilty of cruelty for the sake of
my conscience. There was Seraphina by my side; it was she who had to
suffer. I had let her enemy go free, because he had happened to be near
me, disarmed. Had I acted like an Englishman and a gentleman, or only
like a fool satisfying his sentiment at other people's expense? Innocent
people, too, like the Riego servants, Castro himself; like Seraphina,
on whom my high-minded forbearance had brought all these dangers, these
hardships, and this uncertain fate.

She gave no sign of having heard Castro's words. The silence of women
is very impenetrable, and it was as if my hold upon the world--since she
was the whole world for me--had been weakened by that shade of decency
of feeling which makes a distinction between killing and murder. But
suddenly I felt, without her cloaked figure having stirred, her small
hand slip into mine. Its soft warmth seemed to go straight to my heart
soothing, invigorating--as it she had slipped into my palm a weapon of
extraordinary and inspiring potency.

"Ah, you are generous," I whispered close to the edge of the cloak
overshadowing her face.

"You must now think of yourself, Juan," she said.

"Of myself," I echoed sadly. "I have only you to think of, and you
are so far away--out of my reach. There are your dead--all your loss,
between you and me."

She touched my arm.

"It is I who must think of my dead," she whispered. "But you, you must
think of yourself, because I have nothing of mine in this world now."

Her words affected me like the whisper of remorse. It was true. There
were her wealth, her lands, her palaces; but her only refuge was that
little boat. Her father's long aloofness from life had created such an
isolation round his closing years that his daughter had no one but me to
turn to for protection against the plots of her own Intendente. And,
at the thought of our desperate plight, of the suffering awaiting us in
that small boat, with the possibility of a lingering death for an end,
I wavered for a moment. Was it not my duty to return to the bay and give
myself up? In that case, as Castro expressed it, our throats would be
cut for love of the _Juez_.

But Seraphina, the rabble would carry to the Casa on the palms of their
hands--out of veneration for the family, and for fear of O'Brien.

"So, Senor," he mumbled, "if to you to-morrow's sun is as little as to
me let us pull the boat's head, round."

"Let us set our hands to the side and overturn it, rather," Seraphina
said, with an indignation of high command.

I said no more. If I could have taken O'Brien with me into the other
world, I would have died to save her the pain of so much as a pinprick.
But because I could not, she must even go with me; must suffer because I
clung to her as men cling to their hope of highest good--with an exalted
and selfish devotion.

Castro had moved forward, as if to show his readiness to pull round.
Meantime I heard a click. A feeble gleam fell on his misty hands under
the black halo of the hat rim. Again the flint and blade clicked, and a
large red spark winked rapidly in the bows. He had lighted a cigarette.




CHAPTER TWO

Silence, stillness, breathless caution were the absolute conditions of
our existence. But I hadn't the heart to remonstrate with him for the
danger he caused Seraphina and myself. The fog was so thick now that
I could not make out his outline, but I could smell the tobacco very
plainly.

The acrid odour of _picadura_ seemed to knit the events of three years
into one uninterrupted adventure. I remembered the shingle beach; the
deck of the old _Thames_. It brought to my mind my first vision of
Seraphina, and the emblazoned magnificence of Carlos' sick bed. It all
came and went in a whiff of smoke; for of all the power and charm that
had made Carlos so seductive there remained no such deep trace in
the world as in the heart of the little grizzled bandit who, like a
philosopher, or a desperado, puffed his cigarette in the face of the
very spirit of murder hovering round us, under the mask and cloak of the
fog. And by the serene heaven of my life's evening, the spirit of
murder became actually audible to us in hasty and rhythmical knocks,
accompanied by a cheerful tinkling.

These sounds, growing swiftly louder, at last induced Castro to throw
away his cigarette. Seraphina clutched my arm. The noise of oars rowing
fast, to the precipitated jingling of a guitar, swooped down upon us
with a gallant ferocity.

"_Caramba_," Castro muttered; "it is the fool Manuel himself!"

I said, then: "We have eight shots between us two, Tomas."

He thrust his brace of pistols upon my knees.

"Dispose of them as your worship pleases," he muttered.

"You mustn't _give_ up, yet," I whispered.

"What is it that I give up?" he mumbled wearily. "Besides, there grows
from my forearm a blade. If I shall find myself indisposed to quit this
world alone.... Listen to the singing of that imbecile."

A carolling falsetto seemed to hang muffled in upper space, above the
fog that settled low on the water, like a dense and milky sediment of
the air. The moonlight fell into it strangely. We seemed to breathe at
the bottom of a shallow sea, white as snow, shining like silver, and
impenetrably opaque everywhere, except overhead, where the yellow disc
of the moon glittered through a thin cloud of steam. The gay truculence
of the hollow knocking, the metallic jingle, the shrill trolling, went
on crescendo to a burst of babbling voices, a mad speed of tinkling, a
thundering shout, "_Altro, Amigos!_" followed by a great clatter of oars
flung in. The sudden silence pulsated with the ponderous strokes of my
heart.

To escape now seemed impossible. At least it seemed impossible while
they talked. A dark spot in the shining expanse of fog swam into view.
It shifted its place after I had first made it out, and then remained
motionless, astern of the dinghy. It was the shadow of a big boat full
of men, but when they were silent, I was not sure that I saw anything
at all. I made no doubt, had they been aware of our nearness, there were
amongst them eyes that could have detected us in the same elusive way.
But how could they even dream of anything of the kind? They talked
noisily, and there must have been a round dozen of them, at the least.

Sometimes they would fall a-shouting all together, and then keep quiet
as if listening. By-and-by I began to hear answering yells, that seemed
to converge upon us from all directions.

We were in the thick of it. It was Manuel's boat, as Castro had guessed,
and the other boats were rallying upon it gropingly, keeping up a
succession of yells:

"_Ohe! Ohe!_ Where, where?"

And the people in Manuel's boat howled back at them, "_Ohe! Ohe...e!_
This way; here!"

Suddenly he struck the guitar a mighty blow, and chanted in an inspired
and grandiose strain:

"Steer--for--the--song."

His fingers ran riot among the strings, and above the jingling his
voice, forced to the highest pitch, declaimed, as in the midst of a
tempest:

"I adore the saints in the glory of heaven
And, on the dust of the earth,
The print of her footsteps."

He was improvising. Sometimes he gasped; the rill of softened tinkle ran
on, and, glaring watchfully, I fancied I could detect his shape in the
white vapour, like a shadow thrown from afar by a tallow dip upon a
snowy sheet--the lank droop of his posturing, the greasy locks, the
attentive poise of his head, the sentimental rolling of his lustrous and
enormous eyes.

I had not forgotten his astonishing display in the cabin of the schooner
when, after the confiding of his woes and his ambitions, he had favoured
me with a sample of his art. As at that time, when he had been nursing
his truculent conceit, he sang, and the unsteady twanging of his guitar
lurched and staggered far behind his voice, like a drunken slave in the
footsteps of a raving master. Tinkle, tinkle, twang! A headlong rush of
muddled fingering; a sudden bang, like a heavy stumble.

"She is the proud daughter of the old Castile! _Ola! Ola!_" he chanted
mysteriously at the beginning of every stanza in a rapturous and soft
ecstasy, and then would shriek, as though he had been suddenly cast up
on the rock. The poet of Rio Medio was rallying his crew of thieves to a
rhapsody of secret and unrequited passion. _Twang, ping, tinkle tinkle_.
He was the _Capataz_ of the valiant _Lugarenos_! The true _Capataz!_
The only _Capataz. Ola! Ola! Twang, twang_. But he was the slave of
her charms, the captive of her eyes, of her lips, of her hair, of her
eyebrows, which, he proclaimed in a soaring shriek, were like rainbows
arched over stars.

It was a love-song, a mournful parody, the odious grimacing of an ape to
the true sorrow of the human face. I could have fled from it, as from
an intolerable humiliation. And it would have been easy to pull away
unheard while he sang, but I had a plan, the beginning of a plan,
something like the beginning of a hope. And for that I should have to
use the fog for the purpose of remaining within earshot.

Would the fog last long enough to serve my turn? That was the only
question, and I believed it would, for it settled lower; it settled
down denser, almost too heavy to be stirred by the fitful efforts of the
breeze. It was a true night fog of the tropics, that, born after sunset,
tries to creep back into the warm bosom of the sea before sunrise. Once
in Rio Medio, taking a walk in the early morning along the sand-dunes,
I had stood watching below me the heads of some people, fishing from a
boat, emerge strangely in the dawn out of such a fog. It concealed their
very shoulders more completely than water could have done. I trusted it
would not come so soon to our heads, emerging, though it seemed to me
that already, by merely clambering on Castro's shoulders, I could attain
to clear moonlight; see the highlands of the coast, the masts of the
English ship. She could not be very far off if only one could tell
the direction. But an unsteady little dinghy was not the platform for
acrobatic exercises, and Castro not exactly the man.

The slightest noise would have betrayed us, and moreover, the thing
was no good, for even supposing I had got a hurried sight of the ship's
spars, I should have to get down into the fog to pull, and there would
be nothing visible to keep us from going astray, unless at every
dozen strokes I clambered on Castro's shoulders again to rectify the
direction--an obviously impracticable and absurd proceeding.

"She is the proud daughter of old Castile, _Ola, Ola_," Manuel sang
confidentially with a subdued and gallant lilt... Obviously
impracticable. But I had another idea.

"_Tinkle tinkle pinnnng... Brrroum. Brrrroum_.
My soul yearns for the alms of a smile.
For a forgiving glance yearns my lofty soul..."

he sang. Ah, if one could have added another four feet to one's stature.
Four or five feet only. There seemed to be nothing but a thin veil
between me and the moon. No more than a thin haze. But at the level
of my eyes everything was hidden. From behind the white veil came
the crying of the strings, a screeching, lugubrious and fierce in its
artificial transport, as if it were mocking my sad and ardent conviction
of un-worthiness, the crowning torment, and the inward pride of pure
love. In the breathless pauses I could hear the hollow bumping of
gunwales knocking against each other; faint splashings of oars; the
distant hail of some laggards groping their way on the shrouded sea.

The note of cruel passion that runs in the blood held these cut-throats
profoundly silent in their boats, as at home I could imagine a party of
smugglers (they would not stick at a murder or two, either) listening,
with pensive faces, to a sentimental ditty of some "sweet Nancy," howled
dismally within the walls of a wayside taproom in the smoke of pipes. I
seemed to understand profoundly the difference of races that brings with
it the feeling of romance or awakens hate. My gorge rose at Manuel's
song. I hated his lamentations. "Alas, alas; in vain, in vain." He
strummed with vertiginous speed, with fury, and the distracted clamour
of his voice, wrestling madly with the ringing madness of the strings,
ended in a piercing and supreme shriek.

"Finished. It is finished." A low and applauding murmur flowed to
my ears, the austere acclamations of connoisseurs. "Viva, viva,
Manuele!"--a squeak of fervid admiration. "Ah, our _Manuelito_."... But
a gruff voice discoursed jovially, "Care not, Manuel. What of Paquita
with the broken tooth? Is she not left to thee? And _por Dios, hombres_,
in the dark all women are alike."

"I will cram thy unclean mouth with live coals," Manuel drawled
spitefully.

They roared with laughter at this sally. I depicted to myself their
shapes, their fierce gesticulations, their earrings, bound heads, rags,
and weapons, the vile scowls on their swarthy, grimacing faces. My
anxiety beheld them as plainly as anything seen with the eyes of
the body. And, with my sharpened hearing catching every word with
preternatural distinctness, I felt as if, the ring of Gyges on my
finger, I had sat invisible at the council of my enemies.

It was noisy, animated, with an issue of supreme interest for us.
The ship, seen at midday standing inshore with a light wind, had not
approached the bay near enough to be conveniently attacked till just
after dusk. They had waited for her all the afternoon, sleeping and
gambling on the spit of sand. But something heavy in her appearance had
excited their craven suspicions, and checked their ardour. She appeared
to them dangerous. What if she were an English man-of-war disguised?
Some even pretended to recognize in her positively one of the lighter
frigates of Rowley's squadron. Night had fallen whilst they squabbled,
and their flotilla hung under the land, the men in a conflict of
rapacity and fear, arguing among themselves as to the ship's character,
but all unanimously goading Manuel--since he _would_ call himself their
only _Capataz_--to go boldly and find out.

It seems he had just been doing this with the help of a few choicer
spirits, and under cover of the fog. They had managed to steal near
enough to hear Englishmen conversing on board, orders given, and the
yo-hoing of invisible sailors, trimming the yards of the ship to the
fitful airs. This last, of course, was decisive. Such sounds are not
heard on a man-of-war. She was a merchant ship: she would be an easy
prey. And Manuel, in a state of exaltation at his venturesome bravery,
had pulled back inshore, to rally all the boats round his own, and lead
them to certain plunder. They would soon find out, he declaimed, what
it was to have at their head their own valiant Manuel, instead of that
vagabond, that stranger, that Andalusian starveling; that traitor, that
infidel, that Castro. Hidden away, he seemed to spout all this for
our ears alone, as though he could see us in our boat.... Patience;
patience! Some day he would cut off that interloper's eyelids, and lay
him on his back under a nice clear sun. Castro made a brusque movement;
a little shudder of disgust escaped Seraphina.... Meantime, Manuel
declared, by his audacity, that ship was as good as theirs already.
"_Viva el Capataz!_" they cheered.

The cloud-like vapours resting on the sea muffled the short roar; we
heard grim laughter, excited cries. He began to make a set speech, and
his voice, haranguing with vehement inflections in the shining whiteness
of a cloud, had an amazing and uncorporeal character; the quality of
abstract surprise; of phenomenal emotion shouted into empty space. And
for me it had, also, the fascination of a revealed depth.

It was like the oration of an ambitious leader in a farce; he held his
hearers with his eloquence, as much as he had done with the song of his
grotesque and desecrating love. He vaunted his sagacity and his valour,
and overwhelmed with invective all sorts of names--my own and
Castro's among them. He revealed the unholy ideals of all that band
of scoundrels--ideals that he said should find fruition under his
captaincy. He boasted of secret conferences with O'Brien. There were
murmurs of satisfaction.

I don't wonder at Seraphina's shudder of horror, of disgust, of dismay,
and indignation. Robbed of the inexpugnable shelter of the Casa Riego,
she, too, was made to look into the depths; upon the animalism, the
lusts, and the reveries of that sordid, vermin-haunted crowd. I felt for
her a profound and shamed sorrow. It was like a profaning touch on the
sacredness of her mourning for the dead, and on her clear and passionate
vision of life.

"_Hombres de Rio Medio! Amigos! Valientes!..._" Manuel was beginning
his peroration. He would lead them, now, against the English ship. The
terrified heretics would surrender. There was always gold in English
ships. He stopped his speech, and then called loudly, "Let the boats
keep touch with each other, and not stray in that fog."

"The dog," grunted Castro. We heard a resolute bustle of preparation;
oars were being shipped.

"Make ready, Tomas," I whispered.

"Ready for what?" he grumbled. "Where shall your worship run from these
swine?"

"We must follow them," I answered.

"The madness of the senor's countrymen descends upon him," he whispered
with sardonic politeness. "Wherefore follow?"

"To find the English ship," I answered swiftly.

This, from the moment we had heard Manuel's guitar, had been my
idea. Since the fog that concealed us from their sight made us, too,
hopelessly blind, those wretches must guide us themselves out of their
own clutches, as it were. I don't put this forward as an inspired
conception. It was a most risky and almost hopeless expedient; but the
position was so critical that there was no other alternative to sitting
still and waiting with folded hands for discovery. Castro seemed more
inclined for the latter.

Fortunately, the bandits wasted some time in blasphemous bickerings as
to the order of the boats in the procession of attack. I urged my views
upon Castro in hurried whispers. His assent was of importance, since he
could use an oar very well, and, if left to myself, I could not hope to
scull fast enough to keep within hearing of the flotilla.

"Of what use to us would be a ship in Manuel's power?" he argued
morosely. On the other hand, if we waited near her till she had been
plundered and released, neither the fog nor the night would last
forever.

"My countrymen will beat them off," I affirmed confidently. "At any
rate, let us be on the spot. We may take a hand. And remember, Tomas,
they are not led by you, this time."

"True," he said, mollified. "But one thing more deserves the
consideration of your worship... If we follow this plan, we take the
senorita among flying bullets. And lead, alas! unlike steel, is blind,
or that illustrious man would not now be dead. If we wait here, the
senorita, at least, shall take no harm from these ruffians, as I have
said."

"Are you afraid of the bullets?" I asked Seraphina.

Before she had answered, Castro hissed at me:

"Oh, you unspeakable English. Would you sacrifice the daughter, too,
only because she is brave?"

His sinister allusion made my blood boil with rage, and suddenly run
cold in my veins. Swathed in the brilliant cloud, we heard the sounds
of quarrelling and scrambling die away; cries of "Ready! ready!" an
unexpected and brutal laugh. Seraphina leaned forward.

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