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Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer - Romance

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




It did not occur to Williams to ask whether I was wounded, or tired, or
hungry. And yet all through the West Indies the dinners you got on board
the Lion were famous in shipping circles. But festive men of his stamp
are often like that. They do it more for the glory and romance of the
hospitality, and he could not, perhaps, under the circumstances, expect
me to intone "for he is a jolly good fellow" over the wine. He was by
no means a bad or unfeeling man; only he was not hungry himself, and
another's mere necessity of that sort failed to excite his imagination.
I know he was no worse than other men, and I have reason to remember him
with gratitude; but, at the time, I was surprised and indignant at the
extraordinary way he took my presence for granted, as if I had come off
casually in a shore boat to idle away an hour or two on board. Since his
wife appeared satisfied, he did not seem to desire any explanation. I
felt as if I had for him no independent existence. When I had ceased
to be a source of domestic difficulty, I became a precious sort of
convenience, a most welcome person ("an English gentleman to back me
up," he repeated several times), who would help him to make "these old
women at the Admiralty sit up!" A burning shame, this! It had gone on
long enough, God knows, but if they were to tackle an old trader, like
the "Lion", now, it was time the whole country should hear of it. His
owner, J. Perkins, his wife's uncle, wasn't the man to go to sleep over
the job. Parliament should hear of it. Most fortunate I was there to
be produced--eye-witness--nobleman's son. He knew I could speak up in a
good cause.

"And by the way, Kemp," he said, with sudden annoyance, recollecting
himself, as it were, "you never turned up for that dinner--sent no word,
nor anything...."

Williams had been talking to me, but it was with Sebright that I felt
myself growing intimate. The young mate of the "Lion" stood by, very
quiet, listening with a capable smile. Now he said, in a tone of dry
comment:

"Jolly sight more useful turning up here."

"I was kidnapped away from Ramon's back shop, if that's a sufficient
apology. It's rather a long story."

"Well, you can't tell it on deck, that's very clear," Sebright had to
shout to me. "Not while this infernal noise--what the deuce's up? It
sounds more like a dog-fight than anything else."

As we ran towards the main hatch I recognized the aptness of the
comparison. It was that sort of vicious, snarling, yelping clamour which
arises all at once and suddenly dies.

"Castro! Thou Castro!"

"Malediction... My eyelids..."

"Thou! Englishman's dog!"

"Ha! _Porco_."

The voices ceased. Castro ran tiptoeing lightly, mantled in ample folds.
He assumed his hat with a brave tap, crouched swiftly inside his cloak.
It touched the deck all round in a black cone surmounted by a peering,
quivering head. Quick as thought he hopped and sank low again. Everybody
watched with wonder this play, as of some large and diabolic toy. For
my part, knowing the deadly purpose of these preliminaries, I was struck
with horror. Had he chosen to run on him at once, nothing could have
saved Manuel. The poor wretch, vigorously held in front of Castro, was
far too terrified to make a sound. With an immovable sailor on each
side, he scuffled violently, and cowered by starts as if tied up between
two stone posts. His dumb, rapid panting was in our ears. I shouted:

"Stop, Castro! Stop!... Stop him, some of you! He means to kill the
fellow!"

Nobody heeded my shouting. Castro flung his cloak on the deck, jumped on
it, kicked it aside, all in the same moment as it seemed, dodged to the
right, to the left, drew himself up, and stepped high, paunchy in his
tight smalls and short jacket, making all the time a low, sibilant
sound, which was perfectly blood-curdling.

"He has a blade on his forearm!" I yelled. "He's armed, I tell you!"

No one could comprehend my distress. A sailor, raising a lamp, had a
broad smile. Somebody laughed outright. Castro planted himself before
Manuel, nodded menacingly, and stooped ready for a spring. I was too
late in my grab at his collar, but Manuel's guardians, acting with
precision, put out one arm each to meet his rush, and he came flying
backwards upon me, as though he had rebounded from a wall.

He had almost knocked me down, and while I staggered to keep my feet the
air resounded with urgent calls to shoot, to fire, to bring him down!...
"Kill him, Senor!" came in an entreating yell from Castro. And I became
aware that Manuel had taken this opportunity to wrench himself free. I
heard the hard thud of his leap. Straight from the hatch (as I was told
later by the marvelling sailors) he had alighted with both feet on the
rail. I only saw him already there, sitting on his heels, jabbering and
nodding at us like an enormous baboon. "Shoot, sir! Shoot!" "Kill! Kill,
Senor! As you love your life--kill!"

Unwittingly, without volition, as if compelled by the suggestion of the
bloodthirsty cries, my hand drew the remaining pistol out of my belt. I
raised it, and found myself covering the strange antics of an infuriated
ape. He tore at his flanks with both hands in the idea, I suppose,
of stripping for a swim. Rags flew from him in all directions; an
astounding eruption of rags round a huddled-up figure crouching, wildly
active, in front of the muzzle. I had him. I was sure of my shot. He was
only an ape. A dead ape. But why? Wherefore? To what end? What could it
matter whether he lived or died. He sickened me, and I pitied him, as I
should have pitied an ape.

I lowered my arm an almost imperceptible fraction of a second before he
sprang up and vanished. The sound of the heavy plunge was followed by
a regretful clamour all over the decks, and a general rush to the side.
There was nothing to be seen; he had gone through the layer of fog
covering the water. No one heard him blow or splutter. It was as if a
lump of lead had fallen overboard.

Williams wouldn't have had this happen for a five-pound note. Sebright
expressed the hope that he wouldn't cheat the gallows by drowning. The
two men who had held him slunk away abashed. To lower a boat for
the purpose of catching him in the water would have been useless and
imprudent.

"His friends can't be far off yet in the boats," growled the bo'sun;
"and if they don't pick him up, they would be more than likely to pick
up our chaps."

Somebody expectorated in so marked a manner that I looked behind me.
Castro had resumed his cloak, and was draping himself with deliberate
dignity. When this undertaking had been accomplished, he came up very
close to me, and without a word looked up balefully from the heavy folds
thrown across his mouth and chin under the very tip of his hooked nose.

"I could not do it," I said. "I could not. It would have been useless.
Too much like murder, Tomas."

"Oh! the inconstancy, the fancifulness of these English," he
generalized, with suppressed passion, right into my face. "I don't know
what's worse, their fury or their pity. The childishness of it! The
childishness.... Do you imagine, Senor, that Manuel or the Juez O'Brien
shall some day spare you in their turn? If I didn't know the courage of
your nation..."

"I despise the _Juez_ and Manuel alike," I interrupted angrily. I
despised Castro, too, at that moment, and he paid me back with interest.
There was no mistaking his scathing tone.

"I know you well. You scorn your friends, as well as your foes. I have
seen so many of you. The blessed saints guard us from the calamity of
your friendship...."

"No friendship could make an assassin of me, Mr. Castro...."

"... Which is only a very little less calamitous than your enmity," he
continued, in a cold rage. "A very little less. You let Manuel go....
Manuel!... Because of your mercy.... Mercy! Bah! It is all your pride--your
mad pride. You shall rue it, Senor. Heaven is just. You shall rue it,
Senor."

He denounced me prophetically, wrapped up with an air of midnight
secrecy; but, after all, he had been a friend in the act, if not in
the spirit, and I contented myself by asking, with some pity for his
imbecile craving after murder:

"Why? What can Manuel do to me? He at least is completely helpless."

"Did the Senor Don Juan ever ask himself what Manuel could do to
me--Tomas Castro? To me, who am poor and a vagabond, and a friend of
Don Carlos, may his soul rest with God. Are all you English like princes
that you should never think of anybody but yourselves?"

He revolted and provoked me, as if his opinion of the English could
matter, or his point of view signify anything against the authority of
my conscience. And it is our conscience that illumines the romantic side
of our life. His point of view was as benighted and primitive as the
point of view of hunger; but, in his fidelity to the dead architect of
my fortunes, he reflected dimly the light of Carlos' romance, and I had
taken advantage of it, not so much for the saving of my life as for the
guarding of my love. I had reached that point when love displaces one's
personality, when it becomes the only ground under our feet, the only
sky over our head, the only light of vision, the first condition of
thought--when we are ready to strive for it, as we fight for the breath
of our body. Brusquely I turned my back on him, and heard the repeated
clicking of flint against his blade. He lighted a cigarette, and crossed
the deck to lean cloaked against the bulwark, smoking moodily under his
slouched hat.




CHAPTER FIVE

Manuel's escape was the last event of that memorable night. Nothing more
happened, and nothing more could be done; but there remained much talk
and wonderment to get through. I did all the talking, of course, under
the cuddy lamps. Williams, red and stout, sat staring at me across the
table. His round eyes were perfectly motionless with astonishment--the
story of what had happened in the Casa Riego was not what he had
expected of the small, badly reputed Cuban town.

Sebright, who had all the duties of the soiled ship and chipped men
to attend to, came in from the deck several times, and would stand
listening for minutes with his fingers playing thoughtfully about his
slight moustache. The dawn was not very far when he led me into his
own cabin. I was half dead with fatigue, and troubled by an inward
restlessness.

"Turn in into my berth," said Sebright.

I protested with a stiff tongue, but he gave me a friendly push, and
I tumbled like a log on to the bedclothes. As soon as my head felt the
pillow the fresh colouring of his face appeared blurred, and an arm,
mistily large, was extended to put out the light of the lamp screwed to
the bulkhead.

"I suppose you know there are warrants out in Jamaica against you--for
that row with the admiral," he said.

An irresistible and unexpected drowsiness had relaxed all my limbs.

"Hang Jamaica!" I said, with difficult animation. "We are going home."

"Hang Jamaica!" he agreed. Then, in the dark, as if coming after me
across the obscure threshold of sleep, his voice meditated, "I am sorry,
though, we are bound for Havana. Pity. Great pity! Has it occurred to
you, Mr. Kemp, that..."

It is very possible that he did not finish his sentence; no more
penetrated, at least, into my drowsy ear. I awoke slowly from a
trance-like sleep, with a confused notion of having to pick up the
thread of a dropped hint. I went up on deck.

The sun shone, a faint breeze blew, the sea sparkled freshly, and the
wet decks glistened. I stood still, touched by the new glory of light
falling on me; it was a new world--new and familiar, yet disturbingly
beautiful. I seemed to discover all sorts of secret charms that I had
never seen in things I had seen a hundred times. The watch on deck
were busy with brooms and buckets; a sailor, coiling a rope over a
pin, paused in his work to point over the port-quarter, with a massive
fore-arm like a billet of red mahogany.

I looked about, rubbing my eyes. The "Lion", close hauled, was heading
straight away from the coast, which stood out, not very far yet,
outlined heavily and flooded with light. Astern, and to leeward of us,
against a headland of black and indigo, a dazzling white speck resembled
a snowflake fallen upon the blue of the sea.

"That's a schooner," said the seaman.

They were the first words I heard that morning, and their friendly
hoarseness brushed away whatever of doubt might seem to mar the
inexplicability of my new glow of my happiness. It was because we were
safe--she and I--and because my undisturbed love let my heart open to
the beauty of the young day and the joyousness of a splendid sea. I took
deep breaths, and my eyes went all over the ship, embracing, like an
affectionate contact, her elongated shape, the flashing brasses,
the tall masts, the gentle curves of her sails soothed into perfect
stillness by the wind. I felt that she was a shrine, for was not
Seraphina sleeping in her, as safe as a child in its cradle? And
presently the beauty, the serenity, the purity, and the splendour of the
world would be reflected in her clear eyes, and made over to me by her
glance.

There are times when an austere and just Providence, in its march
along the inscrutable way, brings our hearts to the test of their own
unreason. Which of us has not been tried by irrational awe, fear, pride,
abasement, exultation? And such moments remain marked by indelible
physical impressions, standing out of the ghostly level of memory
like rocks out of the sea, like towers on a plain. I had many of these
unforgettable emotions--the profound horror of Don Balthasar's death;
the first floating of the boat, like the opening of wings in space; the
first fluttering of the flames in the fog--many others afterwards, more
cruel, more terrible, with a terror worse than death, in which the very
suffering was lost; and also this--this moment of elation in the clear
morning, as if the universe had shed its glory upon my feelings as the
sunshine glorifies the sea. I laughed in very lightness of heart, in a
profound sense of success; I laughed, irresponsible and oblivious, as
one laughs in the thrilling delight of a dream.

"Do I look so confoundedly silly?" asked Sebright, speaking as though
he had a heavy cold. "I am stupid--tired. I've been on my feet this
twenty-four hours--about the liveliest in my life, too. You haven't
slept very long either--none of us have. I'm sure I hope your young lady
has rested."

He put his hands in his pockets. He might have been very tired, but
I had never seen a boy fresh out of bed with a rosier face. The black
pin-points of his pupils seemed to bore through distance, exploring the
horizon beyond my shoulder. The man called Mike, the one I had had the
tussle with overnight, came up behind the indefatigable mate, and shyly
offered me my pistol. His head was bound over the top, and under the
chin, as if for toothache, and his bronzed, rough-hewn face looked out
astonishingly through the snowy whiteness of the linen. Only a few hours
before, we had been doing our best to kill each other. In my cordial
glow, I bantered him light-heartedly about his ferocity and his
strength.

He stood before me, patiently rubbing the brown instep of one thick foot
with the horny sole of the other.

"You paid me off for that bit, sir," he said bashfully. "It was in the
way of duty."

"I'm uncommon glad you didn't squeeze the ghost out of me," I said; "a
morning like this is enough to make you glad you can breathe."

To this day I remember the beauty of that rugged, grizzled, hairy
seaman's eyelashes. They were long and thick, shadowing the eyes softly
like the lashes of a young girl.

"I'm sure, sir, we wish you luck--to you and the young lady--all of us,"
he said shamefacedly; and his bass, half-concealed mutter was quite as
sweet to my ears as a celestial melody; it was, after all, the sanction
of simple earnestness to my desires and hopes--a witness that he and his
like were on my side in the world of romance.

"Well, go forward now, Mike," Sebright said, as I took the pistol.

"It's a blessing to talk to one's own people," I said, expansively, to
him. "He's a fine fellow." I stuck the pistol in my belt. "I trust I
shall never need to use barrel or butt again, as long as I live."

"A very sensible wish," Sebright answered, with a sort of reserve of
meaning in his tone; "especially as on board here we couldn't find you a
single pinch of powder for a priming. Do you notice the consort we have
this morning?"

"What do I want with powder?" I asked. "Do you mean that?" I pointed
to the white sail of the schooner. Sebright, looking hard at me, nodded
several times.

"We sighted her as soon as day broke. D'you know what she means?"

I said I supposed she was a coaster.

"It means, most likely, that the fellow with the curls that made me
think of my maiden aunt, has managed to keep his horse-face above
water." He meant Manuel-del-Popolo. "What mischief he may do yet before
he runs his head into a noose, it's hard to say. The old Spaniard you
brought with you thinks he has already been busy--for no good, you may
be sure."

"You mean that's one of the Rio schooners?" I asked quickly.

That, with all its consequent troubles forme, was what he did mean. He
said I might take his word for it that, with the winds we had had, no
craft working along the coast could be just there now unless she came
out of Rio Medio. There was a calm almost up to sunrise, and it looked
as if they had towed her out with boats before daylight.... "Seems a
rather unlikely bit of exertion for the lazy brutes; but if they are as
much afraid of that confounded Irishman as you say they are, that would
account for their energy."

They would steal and do murder simply for the love of God, but it would
take the fear of a devil to make them do a bit of honest work--and
pulling an oar _was_ honest work, no matter why it was done. This was
the combined wisdom of Sebright and of Tomas Castro, with whom he had
been in consultation. As to the fear of the devil, O'Brien was very much
like a devil, an efficient substitute. And there was certainly somebody
or something to make them bestir themselves like this....

Before my mind arose a scene: Manuel, the night before, pulled out of
the water into a boat--raging, half-drowned, eloquent, inspired. The
contemptible beast _was_ inspired, as a politician is, a demagogue.
He could sway his fellows, as I had heard enough to know. And I felt
a slight chill on the warmth of my hope, because that bright sail,
brilliantly and furtively dodging along in our wake, must be the product
of Manuel's inspiration, urged to perseverance by the fear of O'Brien.
The mate continued, staring knowingly at it:

"You know I am putting two and two together, like the old maids that
come to see my aunt when they want to take away a woman's character.
The Dagos are out and no mistake. The question is, Why? You must know
whether those schooners can sail anything; but don't forget the old
_Lion_ is pretty smart. Is it likely they'll attempt the ship again?"

I negatived that at once. I explained to Sebright that the store of
ammunition in Rio Medio would not run to it; that the _Lugarenos_ were
cowardly, divided by faction, incapable, by themselves, of combining
for any length of time, and still less of following a plan requiring
perseverance and hardihood.

"They can't mean anything in the nature of open attack," I affirmed.
"They may have attempted something of the sort in Nichols' time, but it
isn't in their nature."

Sebright said that was practically Castro's opinion, too--except that
Castro had emphasized his remarks by spitting all the time, "like an old
tomcat. He seems a very spiteful man, with no great love for you, Mr.
Kemp. Do you think it safe to have him about you? What are all these
grievances of his?"

Castro seemed to have spouted his bile like a volcano, and had rather
confused Sebright. He had said much about being a friend of the Spanish
lord--Carlos; and that now he had no place on earth to hide his head.

"As far as I could make out, he's wanted in England," said Sebright,
"for some matter of a stolen watch, years ago in Liverpool, I think. And
your cousin, the grandee, was mixed up in that, too. That sounds funny;
you didn't tell us about that. Damme if he didn't seem to imply that
you, too... But you have never been in Liverpool. Of course not...."

But that had not been precisely Castro's point. He had affirmed he had
enemies in Spain; he shuddered at the idea of going to France, and now
my English fancifulness had made it impossible for him to live in Rio
Medio, where he had had the care of a good _pad-rona_.

"I suppose he means a landlady," Sebright chuckled. "Old but good, he
says. He expected to die there in peace, a good Christian. And what's
that about the priests getting hold of his very last bit of silver? I
must say that sounded truest of all his rigmarole. For the salvation of
his soul, I suppose?"

"No, my cousin's soul," I said gloomily.

"Humbugs. I only understood one word in three."

Just then Tomas himself stalked into sight among the men forward. Coming
round the corner of the deck-house, he stopped at the galley door like
a crow outside a hut, waiting. We watched him getting a light for his
cigarette at the galley door with much dignified pantomime. The negro
cook of the _Lion_, holding out to him in the doorway a live coal in
a pair of tongs, turned his Ethiopian face and white ivories towards
a group of sailors lost in the contemplation of the proceedings.' And,
when Castro had passed them, spurting jets of smoke, they swung about
to look after his short figure, upon whose draped blackness the sunlight
brought out reddish streaks as if bucketfuls of rusty water had been
thrown over him from hat to toe. The end of his broken plume hung
forward aggressively.

"Look how the fellow struts! Night and thunder! Hey, Don Tenebroso!
Would your worship hasten hither...." Sebright hailed jocularly.

Castro, without altering his pace, came up to us.

"What do you think of her now?" asked Sebright, pointing to the strange
sail. "She's grown a bit plainer, now she is out of the glare."

Castro, wrapping his chin, stood still, face to the sea. After a long
while:

"Malediction," he pronounced slowly, and without moving his head shot a
sidelong glance at me.

"It's clear enough how _he_ feels about our friends over there.
Malediction. Just so. Very proper. But it seems as though he had a bone
to pick with all the world," drawled Sebright, a little sleepily.
Then, resuming his briskness, he bantered, "So you don't want to go to
England, Mr. Castro? No friends there? _Sus. per col._, and that sort of
thing?"

Castro, contemptuous, staring straight away, nodded impatiently.

"But this gentleman you are so devoted to is going to England--to his
friends."

Castro's arms shook under the mantle falling all round him straight from
the neck. His whole body seemed convulsed. From his puckered dark lips
issued a fiendish and derisive squeal.

"Let his friends beware, then. _Por Dios!_ Let them beware. Let them
pray and fast, and beg the intercession of the saints. Ha! ha! ha!..."

Nothing could have been more unlike his saturnine self-centred
truculence of restraint. He impressed me; and even Sebright's steady,
cool eyes grew perceptibly larger before this sarcastic fury. Castro
choked; the rusty, black folds encircling him shook and heaved.
Unexpectedly he thrust out in front of the cloak one yellow, dirty
little hand, side by side with the bright end of his fixed blade.

"What do I hear? To England! Going to England! Ha! Then let him hasten
there straight! Let him go straight there, I say--I, Tomas Castro!"

He lowered his tone to impress us more, and the point of the knife, as
it were an emphatic forefinger, tapped the open palm forcibly. Did we
think that a man was not already riding along the coast to Havana on
a fast mule?--the very best mule from the stables of Don Balthasar
himself--that murdered saint. The Captain-General had no such mules.
His late excellency owned a sugar estate halfway between Rio Medio and
Havana, and a relay of riding mules was kept there for quickness when
His Excellency of holy memory found occasion to write his commands to
the capital. The news of our escape would reach the _Juez_ next day at
the latest. Manuel would take care of that--unless he were drowned. But
he could swim like a fish. Malediction!

"I cried out to you to kill!" he addressed me directly; "with all my
soul I cried. And why? Because he had seen you and the senorita, too,
alas! He should have been made dumb--made dumb with your pistol, Senor,
since those two stupid English mariners were too much for an old man
like me. Manuel should have been made dumb--dumb forever, I say. What
mattered he--that gutter-born offspring of an evil _Gitana_, whom I have
seen, Senor! I, myself, have seen her in the days of my adversity in
Madrid, Senor--a red flower behind the ear, clad in rags that did not
cover all her naked skin, looking on while they fought for her with
knives in a wine-shop full of beggars and thieves. Si, senor. That's his
mother. _Improvisador--politico--capataz_. Ha.... Dirt!"

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