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Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer - Romance

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




The enemy sat at the gate of our shelter, as death sits at the gate of
life. These high walls could not protect us, nor the tearful mumble of
the old woman's prayers, nor yet the careworn fidelity of Enrico. The
couple hung about us, quivering with emotion. They peeped round the
corners of the veranda, and only rarely ventured to come out openly.
The silent Galician stroked his clipped beard; the obese woman kept on
crossing herself with loud, resigned sighs. She would waddle up, wiping
her eyes, to stroke Seraphina's head and murmur endearing names. They
waited on us hand and foot, and would stand close together, ready for
the slightest sign, in a rapt contemplation. Now and then she would
nudge her husband's ribs with her thick elbow and murmur, "Her lover."

She was happy when Seraphina let her sit at her feet, and hold her hand.
She would pat it with gentle taps, squatting shapelessly on a low stool.

"Why go so far from thy old nurse, darling of my heart? Ah! love is
love, and we have only one life to live, but this England is very
far--very far away."

She nodded her big iron-gray head slowly; and to our longing England
appeared very distant, too, a fortunate isle across the seas, an abode
of peace, a sanctuary of love.

There was no plan open to us but the one laid down by Sebright. The
secrecy of our sojourn at the _hacienda_ had, in a measure, failed,
though there was no reason to suppose the two peons had broken their
oath. Our arrival at dawn had been unobserved, as far as we knew, and
the domestic slaves, mostly girls, had been kept from all communication
with the field hands outside. All these square leagues of the estate
were very much out of the world, and this isolation had not been broken
upon by any of O'Brien's agents coming out to spy. It seemed to be the
only part of Seraphina's great possessions that remained absolutely her
own.

Not a whisper of any sort of news reached us in our hiding-place till
the fourth evening, when one of the _vaqueros_ reported to Enrico
that, riding on the inland boundary, he had fallen in with a company of
infantry encamped on the edge of a little wood. Troops were being moved
upon Rio Medio. He brought a note from the officer in command of that
party. It contained nothing but a requisition for twenty head of cattle.
The same night we left the _hacienda_.

It was a starry darkness. Behind us the soft wailing of the old woman at
the gate died out:

"So far! So very far!"

We left the long street of the slave village on the left, and walked
down the gentle slope of the open glade towards the little river.
Seraphina's hair was concealed in the crown of a wide sombrero and,
wrapped up in a serape, she looked so much like a cloaked vaquero that
one missed the jingle of spurs out of her walk. Enrico had fitted me
out in his own clothes from top to toe. He carried a lanthorn, and we
followed the circle of light that swayed and trembled upon the short
grass. There was no one else with us, the crew of the _drogher_ being
already on board to await our coming.

Her mast appeared above the roof of some low sheds grouped about a short
wooden jetty. Enrico raised the lamp high to light us, as we stepped on
board.

Not a word was spoken; the five negroes of the crew (Enrico answered
for their fidelity) moved about noiselessly, almost invisible. Blocks
rattled feebly aloft.

"Enrico," said Seraphina, "do not forget to put a stone cross over poor
Castro's grave."

"No, Senorita. May you know years of felicity. We would all have laid
down our lives for you. Remember that, and do not forget the living.
Your childhood has been the consolation of the poor woman there for the
loss of our little one, your foster brother, who died. We have given to
you much of our affection for him who was denied to our old age."

He stepped back from the rail. "Go with God," he said.

The faint air filled the sail, and the outlines of wharf and roof
fell back into the sombre background of the land, but the lanthorn in
Enrico's hand glimmered motionless at the end of the jetty, till a bend
of the stream hid it from our sight.

We glided smoothly between the banks. Now and then a stretch of osiers
and cane brakes rustled alongside in the darkness. All was strange; the
contours of the land melted before our advance. The earth was made of
shifting shadows, and only the stars remained in unchanged groups of
glitter on the black sky. We floated across the land-locked basin, and
under the low headland we had steered for from the sea in the storm. All
this, seen only once under streams of lightning, was unrecognizable to
us, and seemed plunged in deep slumber. But the fresh feel of the
sea air, and the freedom of earth and sky wedded on the sea horizon,
returned to us like old friends, the companions of that time when we
communed in words and silences on board the _Lion_, that fragment
of England found in a mist, boarded in battle, with its absurd and
warmhearted protection. On our other hand, the rampart of white dunes
intruded the line of a ghostly shore between the depth of the sea
and the profundity of the sky; and when the faint breeze failed for a
moment, the negro crew troubled the silence with the heavy splashes
of their sweeps falling in slow and solemn cadence. The rudder creaked
gently; the black in command was old and of spare build, resembling
Cesar, the major-domo, without the splendour of maroon velvet and gold
lace. He was a very good sailor, I believe, taciturn and intelligent.
He had seen the _Lion_ frequently on his trips to Havana, and would
recognize her, he assured me, amongst a whole host of shipping. When
I had explained what was expected of him, according to Sebright's
programme, a bizarre grimace of a smile disturbed the bony, mournful
cast of his African face.

"Fall on board by accident, Senor. _Si!_ Now, by St. Jago of
Compostella, the patron cf our _hacienda_, you shall see this old
Pedro--who has been set to sail the craft ever since she was built--as
overcome by an accident as a little rascal of a boy that has stolen a
boat."

After this wordy declaration he never spoke to us again. He gave his
short orders in low undertones, and the others, four stalwart blacks, in
the prime of life, executed them in silence. Another night brought the
unchanging stars to look at us in their multitudes, till the dawn put
them out just as we opened the entrance of the harbour. The daylight
discovered the arid colouring of the coast, a castle on a sandy
hill, and a few small boats with ragged sails making for the land. A
brigantine, that seemed to have carried the breeze with her right in,
threw up the Stars and Stripes radiantly to the rising sun, before
rounding the point. The sound of bells came out to sea, and met us while
we crept slowly on, abreast of the battery at the water's edge.

"A feast-day in the city," said the old negro at the helm. "And here is
an English ship of war."

The sun-rays struck from afar full at her belted side; the water was
like glass along the shore. She swam into the very shade of the hill,
before she wore round, with great deliberation, in an ample sweep of
her headgear through a complete half-circle. She came to the wind on the
other tack under her short canvas; her lower deck ports were closed, the
hammock cloths like a ridge of unmelted snow lying along her rail.

It was evident she was kept standing off and on outside the harbour,
as an armed man may pace to and fro before a gate. With the hum of six
hundred wakeful lives in her flanks, the tap-tapping of a drum, and the
shrill modulations of the boatswain's calls piping some order along her
decks, she floated majestically across our path. But the only living
being we saw was the red-coated marine on sentry by the lifebuoys,
looking down at us over the taffrail. We passed so close to her that
I could distinguish the whites of his eyes, and the tompions in the
muzzles of her stern-chasers protruding out of the ports belonging to
the admiral's quarters.

I knew her. She was Rowley's flagship. She had thrown the shadow of her
sails upon the end of my first sea journey. She was the man-of-war going
out for a cruise on that day when Carlos, Tomas, and myself arrived in
Jamaica in the old _Thames_. And there she was meeting me again, after
two years, before Havana--the might of the fortunate isle to which we
turned our eyes, part and parcel of my inheritance, formidable with the
courage of my countrymen, humming with my native speech--and as foreign
to my purposes as if I had forfeited forever my birthright in her
protection. I had drifted into a sort of outlaw. You may not break the
king's peace and be made welcome on board a king's ship. You may not
hope to make use of a king's ship for the purposes of an elopement.
There was no room on board that seventy-four for our romance.

As it was, I very nearly hailed her. What would become of us if the
Lion had already left Havana? I thought. But no. To hail her meant
separation--the only forbidden thing to those who, in the strength of
youth and love, are permitted to defy the world together.

I did not hail; and the marine dwindled to a red speck upon the noble
hull forging away from us on the offshore tack. The brazen clangour of
bells seemed to struggle with the sharp puff of the breeze that sent us
in.

The shipping in harbour was covered with bunting in honour of the
feast-day; for the same reason, there was not a sign of the usual crowd
of small boats that give animation to the waters of a port; the middle
of the harbour was strangely empty. A solitary bumboat canoe, with a
yellow bunch of bananas in the bow, and an old negro woman dipping
a languid paddle at the stern, were all that met my eye. Presently,
however, a six-oared custom-house galley darted out from the tier of
ships, pulling for the American brigantine. I noticed in her, beside the
ordinary port officials, several soldiers, and a person astonishingly
like the _alguazil_ of the illustrations to Spanish romances. One of the
uniformed sitters waved his hand at us, recognizing an estate _drogher_,
and shouted some directions, of which we only caught the words:

"Steps--examination--to-morrow."

Our steersman took off his old hat humbly, to hail back, "_Muy bien,
Senor_."

I breathed freely, for they gave us no more of their attention.
Soldiers, _alguazil_, and custom-house officers were swarming aboard
the American, as if bent on ransacking her from stem to stern in the
shortest possible time, so as not to be late for the procession.

The absence of movement in the harbour, the festive and idle appearance
of the ships, with the flutter of innumerable flags on the forest
of masts, and the great uproar of church bells in the air, made an
impressive greeting for our eyes and ears. And the deserted aspect of
the harbour front of the city was very striking, too. The feast had
swept the quays of people so completely that the tiny pair of sentries
at the foot of a tall yellow building caught the eye from afar.
Sera-phina crouched on a coil of rope under the bulwark; old Pedro, at
the tiller, peered about from under his hand, and I, trying to expose
myself to view as little as possible, helped him to look for the _Lion_.
There she is. Yes! No! There she was. A crushing load fell off my chest.
We had made her out together, old Pedro and I.

And then the last part of Sebright's plan had to be carried out at once.
The foresheet of the _drogher_ appeared to part, our mainsail shook,
and before I could gasp twice, we had drifted stern foremost into the
_Lion's_ mizzen chains with a crash that brought a genuine expression of
concern to the old negro's face. He had managed the whole thing with a
most convincing skill, and without even once glancing at the ship. We
had done our part, but the people of the Lion seemed to fail in theirs
unaccountably. Of all the faces that crowded her rail at the shock, not
one appeared with a glimmer of intelligence. All the cargo ports were
down. Their surprise and their swearing appeared to me alarmingly
unaffected; with a most imbecile alacrity they exerted themselves, with
small spars and boathooks, to push the drogher off. Nobody seemed to
recognize me; Seraphina might have been a peon sitting on deck, cloaked
from neck to heels and under a sombrero. I dared not shout to them in
English, for fear of being heard on board the other ships around. At
last Sebright himself appeared on the poop.

He gave one look over the side.

"What the devil..." he began. Was he blind, too?

Suddenly I saw him throw up his arms above his head. He vanished. A port
came open with a jerk at the last moment. I lifted Seraphina up: two
hands caught hold of her, and, in my great hurry to scramble up after
her, I barked my shins cruelly. The port fell; the drogher went on
bumping alongside, completely disregarded. Seraphina dropped the cloak
at her feet and flung off her hat.

"Good-morning, _amigos_," she said gravely.

A hissed "Damn you fools--keep quiet!" from Sebright, stifled the cheer
in all those bronzed throats. Only a thin little poor "hooray" quavered
along the deck. The timid steward had not been able to overcome his
enthusiasm. He slapped his head in despair, and rushed away to bury
himself in his pantry.

"Turned up, by heavens!... Go in.... Good God!... Bucketfuls of
tears...." stammered Sebright, pushing us into the cuddy. "Go in! Go in
at once!"

Mrs. Williams rose from behind the table wide-eyed, clasping her hands,
and stumbled twice as she ran to us.

"What have you done to that child, Mr. Kemp!" she cried insanely at me.
"Oh, my dear, my dear! You look like your own ghost."

Sebright, burning with impatience, pulled me away. The cabin door fell
upon the two women, locked in a hug, and, stepping into his stateroom,
we could do nothing at first but slap each other on the back and
ejaculate the most unmeaning exclamations, like a couple of jocular
idiots. But when, in the expansion of my heart, I tried to banter him
about not keeping his word to look out for us, he bent double in trying
to restrain his hilarity, slapped his thighs, and grew red in the face.

The excellent joke was that, for the past six days, we had been supposed
to be dead--drowned; at least Dona Seraphina had been provided with that
sort of death in her own name; I was drowned, too, but in the disguise
of a piratical young English nobleman.

"There's nothing too bad for them to believe of us," he commented, and
guffawed in his joy at seeing me unscathed. "Dead! Drowned! Ha! Ha!
Good, wasn't it?"

Mrs. Williams--he said--had been weeping her eyes out over our desolate
end; and even the skipper had sulked with his food for a day or two.

"Ha! Ha! Drowned! Excellent!" He shook me by the shoulders, looking me
straight in the eyes--and the bizarre, nervous hilarity of my reception,
so unlike his scornful attitude, proved that he, too, had believed the
rumour. Indeed, nothing could have been more natural, considering my
inexperience in handling boats and the fury of the norther. It had sent
the Lion staggering into Havana in less than twenty hours after we had
parted from her on the coast.

Suddenly a change came over him. He pushed me on to the settee.

"Speak! Talk! What has happened? Where have you been all this time? Man,
you look ten years older."

"Ten years. Is that all?" I said.

And after he had heard the whole story of our passages he appeared
greatly sobered.

"Wonderful! Wonderful!" he muttered, lost in deep thought, till I
reminded him it was his turn, now, to speak.

"You are the talk of the town," he said, recovering his elasticity of
spirit as he went on. The death of Don Balthasar had been the first
great sensation of Havana, but it seemed that O'Brien had kept that news
to himself, till he heard by an overland messenger that Sera-phina and I
had escaped from Casa Riego.

Then he gave it to the world; he let it be inferred that he had the
news of both events together. The story, as sworn to by various suborned
rascals, and put out by his creatures, ran that an English desperado,
arriving in Rio Medio with some Mexicans in a schooner, had incited the
rabble of the place to attack the Casa Riego. Don Balthasar had been
shot while defending his house at the head of his negroes; and Don
Bal-thasar's daughter had been carried off by the English pirate.

The amazement and sensation were extreme. Several of the first families
went into mourning. A service for the repose of Don Balthasar's soul was
sung in the Cathedral. Captain Williams went there out of curiosity, and
returned full of the magnificence of the sight; nave draped in black, an
enormous catafalque, with silver angels, more than life-size, kneeling
at the four corners with joined hands, an amazing multitude of lights. A
demonstration of unbounded grief from the Judge of the Marine Court had
startled the distinguished congregation. In his place amongst the
body of higher magistrature, Don Patricio O'Brien burst into an
uncontrollable paroxysm of sobs, and had to be assisted out of the
church.

It was almost incredible, but I could well believe it. With the
thunderous strains of _Dies Irae_ rolling over his bowed head, amongst
all these symbols and trappings of woe, he must have seen, in the black
anguish of his baffled passion, the true image of death itself, and
tasted all the profound deception of life. Who could tell how much
secret rage, jealousy, regret, and despair had gone to that outburst of
grief, whose truth had fluttered a distinguished company of mourners,
and had nearly interrupted their official supplications for the repose
of that old man, who had been dead to the world for so many years? I
believe that, on that very day, just as he was going to the service,
O'Brien had received the news of our supposed death by drowning. The
music, the voices, the lights of the grave, the pomp of mourning, awe,
and supplication crying for mercy upon the dead, had been too much for
him. He had presumed too much upon his fortitude. He wept aloud for his
love lost, for his vengeance defeated, for the dreams gone out of his
life, for the inaccessible consummation of his desire.

"And, you know, with all these affairs, he feels himself wobbling in
his socket," Sebright began again, after musing for a while. Indeed, the
last events in Rio Medio were endangering his position. He could no
more present his reports upon the state of the province with incidental
reflections upon the bad faith of the English Government (who encouraged
the rebels against the Catholic king), the arrogance of the English
admiral, and concluding with the loyalty and honesty of the Rio Medio
population, "who themselves suffered many acts of molestation from the
Mexican pirates." The most famous of these papers, printed at that time
in the official _Gazette_, had recommended that the loyal town should
be given a battery of thirty-six pounders for purposes of self-defence.
They had been given them just in time to be turned on Rowley's boats; it
is known with what deadly effect. O'Brien's report after that event had
made it clear that that virtuous population of the bay, exasperated by
the intrusions of the Mexicanos upon their peaceful state, and abhorring
in their souls the rebellion trying to lift its envenomed head, etc.,
etc.,... heroically manned the battery to defend their town from the
boats which they took to be these very pirates the British admiral
was in search of. He pleaded for them the uncertain light of the early
morning, the ardour of citizens, valorous, but naturally inexperienced
in matters of war, and the impossibility to suppose that the admiral of
a friendly power would dispatch an armed force to land on these shores.
I have read these things with my own eyes; there were old files of the
_Gazette_ on board, and Sebright, who had been reading up his O'Brien,
pointed them out to me with his finger, muttering:

"Here--look there. Pretty, ain't it?"

But that was all over. The bubble had burst. It was reported in town
that the private audience the _Juez_ had lately from the
Captain-General was of a most stormy description. They say old Marshal
What-d'ye-call-'um ended by flinging his last report in his face, and
asking him how dared he work his lawyer's tricks upon an old soldier.
Good old fighting cock. But stupid. All these old soldiers were stupid,
Sebright declared. Old admirals, too. However, the land troops had
arrived in Rio Medio by this time; the _Tornado_ frigate, too, no doubt,
having sailed four days ago, with orders to burn the villages to the
ground; and the good _Lugarenos_ must be catching colds trying to hide
from the carabineers in the deep, damp woods.

Our admiral was awaiting the issue of that expedition. Returning home
under a cloud, Rowley wanted to take with him the assurance of the
pirate nest being destroyed at last, as a sort of diplomatic feather in
his cap.

"He may think," Sebright commented, "that it's his sailorly bluff that
has done it, but, as far as I can see, nobody but you yourself, Kemp,
had anything to do with bringing it about. Funny, is it not? Old Rowley
keeps his ship dodging outside because it's cooler at sea than stewing
in this harbour, but he sends in a boat for news every morning. What he
is most anxious for is to get the notorious Nichols into his hands; take
him home for a hanging. It seems clear to me that they are humbugging
him ashore. Nichols! Where's Nichols? There are people here who say that
Nichols has had free board and lodging in Havana jail for the last
six months. Others swear that it is Nichols who has killed the old
gentleman, run off with Dona Seraphina, and got drowned. Nichols! Who's
Nichols? On that showing you are Nichols. Anybody may be Nichols. Who
has ever seen him outside Rio Medio? I used to believe in him at one
time, but, upon my word I begin to doubt whether there ever was such a
man."

"But the man existed, at any rate," I said. "I knew him--I've talked
with him. He came out second mate in the same ship with me--in the old
_Thames_. Ramon took charge of him in Kingston, and that's the last
positive thing I can swear to, of him. But that he was in Rio Medio for
two years, and vanished from there almost directly after that unlucky
boat affair, I am absolutely certain."

"Well, I suppose O'Brien knows where to lay his hand on him. But no
matter where the fellow is, in jail or out of it, the admiral will never
get hold of him. If they had him they could not think of giving him up.
He knows too much of the game; and remember that O'Brien, if he wobbles
in the socket, is by no means down yet. A man like that doesn't get
knocked over like a ninepin. You may be sure he has twenty skeletons put
away in good places, that he will haul out one by one, rather than
let himself be squashed. He's not going to give in. A few days ago, a
priest--your priest, you know--turned up here on foot from Rio Medio,
and went about wringing his hands, declaring that he knew all the truth,
and meant to make a noise about it, too. O'Brien made short work of him,
though; got the archbishop to send him into retreat, as they call it,
to a Franciscan convent a hundred miles from here. These things are
whispered about all along the gutters of this place."

I imagined the poor Father Antonio, with his simple resignation,
mourning for us in his forced retreat, brokenhearted, and murmuring,
"Inscrutable, inscrutable." I should have liked to see the old man.

"I tell you the town is fairly buzzing with the atrocities of this
business," Sebright went on. "It's the thing for fashionable people to
go and see what I may call the relics of the crime. They are on show in
the waiting-hall of the Palace of Justice. Why, I went there myself. You
go through a swing door into a big place that, for cheerfulness, is no
better than a monster coal cellar, and there you behold, laid out on
a little black table, Mrs. Williams' woollen shawl, your Senorita's
tortoise-shell comb, that had got entangled in it somehow, and my old
cap that I lent you--you remember. I assure you, it gave me the horrors
to see the confounded things spread out there in that dim religious
light. Dash me, if I didn't go queer all over. And all the time swell
carriages stopping before the portico, dressed-up women walking up in
pairs and threes, sighing before the missus' shawl, turning up their
eyes, 'Ah! _Pobrecita! Pobrecita!_ But what a strange wrap for her
to have. It is very coarse. Perished in the flower of her youth.
Incredible! Oh, the savage, cruel Englishman.' The funniest thing in the
world."

But if this was so, Manuel's _Lugarenos_ were now in Havana. Sebright
pointed out that, as things stood, it was the safest place for them,
under the wing of their patron. Sebright had recognized the schooner
at once. She came in very early one morning, and hauled herself
unostentatiously out of sight amongst a ruck of small craft moored in
the lower part of the harbour. He took the first opportunity to ask one
of the guards on the quay what was that pretty vessel over there, just
to hear what the man would say. He was assured that she was a Porto Rico
trader of no consequence, well known in the port.

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