Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer - Romance

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

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Carlos talked with me, telling me about his former life and his
adventures. The other passengers he discountenanced by a certain
coldness of manner that made me ashamed of talking to them. I respected
him so; he was so wonderful to me then. Castro I detested; but I
accepted their relationship without in the least understanding how
Carlos, with his fine grain, his high soul--I gave him credit for a
high soul--could put up with the squalid ferocity with which I credited
Castro. It seemed to hang in the air round the grotesque ragged-ness of
the saturnine brown man.

Carlos had made Spain too hot to hold him in those tortuous intrigues of
the Army of the Faith and Bourbon troops and Italian legions. From what
I could understand, he must have played fast and loose in an insolent
manner. And there was some woman offended. There was a gayness and
gallantry in that part of it. He had known the very spirit of romance,
and now he was sailing gallantly out to take up his inheritance from
an uncle who was a great noble, owning the greater part of one of the
Intendencias of Cuba.

"He is a very old man, I hear," Carlos said--"a little doting, and
having need of me."

There were all the elements of romance about Carlos' story--except the
actual discomforts of the ship in which we were sailing. He himself had
never been in Cuba or seen his uncle; but he had, as I have indicated,
ruined himself in one way or another in Spain, and it had come as a
God-send to him when his uncle had sent Tomas Castro to bring him to
Cuba, to the town of Rio Medio.

"The town belongs to my uncle. He is very rich; a Grand d'Espagne . . .
everything; but he is now very old, and has left Havana to die in his
palace in his own town. He has an only daughter, a Dona Seraphina, and I
suppose that if I find favour in his eyes I shall marry her, and inherit
my uncle's great riches; I am the only one that is left of the family to
inherit." He waved his hand and smiled a little. "_Vaya_; a little of
that great wealth would be welcome. If I had had a few pence more there
would have been none of this worry, and I should not have been on
this dirty ship in these rags." He looked down good-humouredly at his
clothes.

"But," I said, "how do you come to be in a scrape at all?"

He laughed a little proudly.

"In a scrape?" he said. "I... I am in none. It is Tomas Castro there."
He laughed affectionately. "He is as faithful as he is ugly," he said;
"but I fear he has been a villain, too.... What do I know? Over there in
my uncle's town, there are some villains--you know what I mean, one must
not speak too loudly on this ship. There is a man called O'Brien, who
mismanages my uncle's affairs. What do I know? The good Tomas has been
in some villainy that is no affair of mine. He is a good friend and
a faithful dependent of my family's. He certainly had that man's
watch--the man we met by evil chance at Liverpool, a man who came from
Jamaica. He had bought it--of a bad man, perhaps, I do not ask. It was
Castro your police wished to take. But I, _bon Dieu_, do you think I
would take watches?"

I certainly did not think he had taken a watch; but I did not relinquish
the idea that he, in a glamorous, romantic way, had been a pirate.
Rooksby had certainly hinted as much in his irritation.

He lost none of his romantic charm in my eyes. The fact that he was
sailing in uncomfortable circumstances detracted little; nor did his
clothes, which, at the worst, were better than any I had ever had. And
he wore them with an air and a grace. He had probably been in worse
circumstances when campaigning with the Army of the Faith in Spain.
And there was certainly the uncle with the romantic title and the great
inheritance, and the cousin--the Miss Seraphina, whom he would probably
marry. I imagined him an aristocratic scapegrace, a corsair--it was the
Byronic period then--sailing out to marry a sort of shimmering princess
with hair like Veronica's, bright golden, and a face like that of a
certain keeper's daughter. Carlos, however, knew nothing about his
cousin; he cared little more, as far as I could tell. "What can she
be to me since I have seen your...?" he said once, and then stopped,
looking at me with a certain tender irony. He insisted, though, that his
aged uncle was in need of him. As for Castro--he and his rags came out
of a life of sturt and strife, and I hoped he might die by treachery.
He had undoubtedly been sent by the uncle across the seas to find
Carlos and bring him out of Europe; there was-something romantic in
that mission. He was now a dependent of the Riego family, but there were
unfathomable depths in that tubby little man's past. That he had gone to
Russia at the tail of the Grande Armee, one could not help believing. He
had been most likely in the grand army of sutlers and camp-followers.
He could talk convincingly of the cold, and of the snows and his escape.
And from his allusions one could get glimpses of what he had been
before and afterwards--apparently everything that was questionable in a
secularly disturbed Europe; no doubt somewhat of a bandit; a guerrillero
in the sixes and sevens; with the Army of the Faith near the French
border, later on.

There had been room and to spare for that sort of pike, in the muddy
waters, during the first years of the century. But the waters were
clearing, and now the good Castro had been dodging the gallows in the
Antilles or in Mexico. In his heroic moods he would swear that his
arm had been cut off at Somo Sierra; swear it with a great deal of
asseveration, making one see the Polish lancers charging the gunners,
being cut down, and his own sword arm falling suddenly.

Carlos, however, used to declare with affectionate cynicism that the
arm had been broken by the cudgel of a Polish peasant while Castro was
trying to filch a pig from a stable.... "I cut his throat out, though,"
Castro would grumble darkly; "so, like that, and it matters very
little--it is even an improvement. See, I put on my blade. See, I
transfix you that fly there.... See how astonished he was. He did never
expect that." He had actually impaled a crawling cockroach. He spent
his days cooking extraordinary messes, crouching for hours over a little
charcoal brazier that he lit surreptitiously in the back of his bunk,
making substitutes for eternal _gaspachos_.

All these things, if they deepened the romance of Carlos' career,
enhanced, also, the mystery. I asked him one day, "But why do you go to
Jamaica at all if you are bound for Cuba?"

He looked at me, smiling a little mournfully.

"Ah, Juan mio," he said, "Spain is not like your England, unchanging and
stable. The party who reign to-day do not love me, and they are masters
in Cuba as in Spain. But in his province my uncle rules alone. There I
shall be safe." He was condescending to roll some cigarettes for Tomas,
whose wooden hand incommoded him, and he tossed a fragment of tobacco to
the wind with a laugh. "In Jamaica there is a merchant, a Senor Ramon; I
have letters to him, and he shall find me a conveyance to Rio Medio, my
uncle's town. He is an _quliado_."

He laughed again. "It is not easy to enter that place, Juanino."

There was certainly some mystery about that town of his uncle's. One
night I overheard him say to Castro:

"Tell me, O my Tomas, would it be safe to take this _caballero_, my
cousin, to Rio Medio?"

Castro paused, and then murmured gruffly:

"Senor, unless that Irishman is consulted beforehand, or the English
lord would undertake to join with the picaroons, it is very assuredly
not safe."

Carlos made a little exclamation of mild astonishment.

"_Pero?_ Is it so bad as that in my uncle's own town?"

Tomas muttered something that I did not catch, and then:

"If the English _caballero_ committed indiscretions, or quarrelled--and
all these people quarrel, why, God knows--that Irish devil could hang
many persons, even myself, or take vengeance on your worship."

Carlos was silent as if in a reverie. At last he said:

"But if affairs are like this, it would be well to have one more with
us. The _caballero_, my cousin, is very strong and of great courage."

Castro grunted, "Oh, of a courage! But as the proverb says, 'If you set
an Englishman by a hornets' nest they shall not remain long within.":

After that I avoided any allusion to Cuba, because the thing, think as
I would about it, would not grow clear. It was plain that something
illegal was going on there, or how could "that Irish devil," whoever
he was, have power to hang Tomas and be revenged on Carlos? It did not
affect my love for Carlos, though, in the weariness of this mystery, the
passage seemed to drag a little. And it was obvious enough that Carlos
was unwilling or unable to tell anything about what pre-, occupied him.

I had noticed an intimacy spring up between the ship's second mate and
Tomas, who was, it seemed to me, forever engaged in long confabulations
in the man's cabin, and, as much to make talk as for any other reason,
I asked Carlos if he had noticed his dependent's familiarity. It was
noticeable because Castro held aloof from every other soul on board.
Carlos answered me with one of his nervous and angry smiles.

"Ah, Juan mine, do not ask too many questions! I wish you could come
with me all the way, but I cannot tell you all I know. I do not even
myself know all. It seems that the man is going to leave the ship in
Jamaica, and has letters for that Senor Ramon, the merchant, even as I
have. _Vaya_; more I cannot tell you."

This struck me as curious, and a little of the whole mystery seemed from
that time to attach to the second mate, who before had been no more to
me than a long, sallow Nova Scotian, with a disagreeable intonation and
rather offensive manners. I began to watch him, desultorily, and was
rather startled by something more than a suspicion that he himself was
watching me. On one occasion in particular I seemed to observe this. The
second mate was lankily stalking the deck, his hands in his pockets. As
he paused in his walk to spit into the sea beside me, Carlos said:

"And you, my Juan, what will you do in this Jamaica?"

The sense that we were approaching land was already all over the ship.
The second mate leered at me enigmatically, and moved slowly away.
I said that I was going to the Horton Estates, Rooksby's, to learn
planting under a Mr. Macdonald, the agent. Carlos shrugged his
shoulders. I suppose I had spoken with some animation.

"Ah," he said, with his air of great wisdom and varied experience,
of disillusionment, "it will be much the same as it has been at your
home--after the first days. Hard work and a great sameness." He began to
cough violently.

I said bitterly enough, "Yes. It will be always the same with me. I
shall never see life. You've seen all that there is to see, so I suppose
you do not mind settling down with an old uncle in a palace."

He answered suddenly, with a certain darkness of manner, "That is as God
wills. Who knows? Perhaps life, even in my uncle's palace, will not be
so safe."

The second mate was bearing down on us again.

I said jocularly, "Why, when I get very tired of life at Horton Pen, I
shall come to see you in your uncle's town."

Carlos had another of his fits of coughing.

"After all, we are kinsmen. I dare say you would give me a bed," I went
on.

The second mate was quite close to us then.

Carlos looked at me with an expression of affection that a little shamed
my lightness of tone:

"I love you much more than a kinsman, Juan," he said. "I wish you could
come with me. I try to arrange it. Later, perhaps, I may be dead. I am
very ill."

He was undoubtedly ill. Campaigning in Spain, exposure in England in a
rainy time, and then the ducking when we came on board, had done him no
good. He looked moodily at the sea.

"I wish you could come. I will try------"

The mate had paused, and was listening quite unaffectedly, behind
Carlos' back.

A moment after Carlos half turned and regarded him with a haughty stare.

He whistled and walked away.

Carlos muttered something that I did not catch about "spies of that
pestilent Irishman." Then:

"I will not selfishly take you into any more dangers," he said. "But
life on a sugar plantation is not fit for you."

I felt glad and flattered that a personage so romantic should deem me a
fit companion for himself. He went forward as if with some purpose.

Some days afterwards the second mate sent for me to his cabin. He had
been on the sick list, and he was lying in his bunk, stripped to the
waist, one arm and one leg touching the floor. He raised himself slowly
when I came in, and spat. He had in a pronounced degree the Nova Scotian
peculiarities and accent, and after he had shaved, his face shone like
polished leather.

"Hallo!" he said. "See heeyur, young Kemp, does your neck just _itch_ to
be stretched?"

I looked at him with mouth and eyes agape.

He spat again, and waved a claw towards the forward bulkhead.

"They'll do it for yeh," he said. "You're such a green goose, it makes
me sick a bit. You hevn't reckoned out the chances, not quite. It's a
kind of dead reckoning yeh hevn't had call to make. Eh?"

"What do you mean?" I asked, bewildered.

He looked at me, grinning, half naked, with amused contempt, for quite a
long time, and at last offered sardonically to open my eyes for me.

I said nothing.

"Do you know what will happen to you," he asked, "ef yeh don't get quit
of that Carlos of yours?"

I was surprised into muttering that I didn't know.

"I can tell yeh," he continued. "Yeh will get hanged."

By that time I was too amazed to get angry. I simply suspected the Blue
Nose of being drunk. But he glared at me so soberly that next moment I
felt frightened.

"Hanged by the neck," he repeated; and then added, "Young fellow, you
scoot. Take a fool's advice, and _scoot_. That Castro is a blame fool,
anyhow. Yeh want men for that job. Men, I tell you." He slapped his bony
breast.

I had no idea that he could look so ferocious. His eyes fascinated me,
and he opened his cavernous mouth as if to swallow me. His lantern jaws
snapped without a sound. He seemed to change his mind.

"I am done with yeh," he said, with a sort of sinister restraint. He
rose to his feet, and, turning his back to me, began to shave, squinting
into a broken looking-glass.

I had not the slightest inkling of his meaning. I only knew that going
out of his berth was like escaping from the dark lair of a beast into
a sunlit world. There is no denying that his words, and still more his
manner, had awakened in me a sense of insecurity that had no precise
object, for it was manifestly absurd and impossible to suspect my friend
Carlos. Moreover, hanging was a danger so recondite, and an eventuality
so extravagant, as to make the whole thing ridiculous. And yet I
remembered how unhappy I felt, how inexplicably unhappy. Presently the
reason was made clear. I was homesick. I gave no further thought to the
second mate. I looked at the harbour we were entering, and thought of
the home I had left so eagerly. After all, I was no more than a boy, and
even younger in mind than in body.

Queer-looking boats crawled between the shores like tiny water beetles.
One headed out towards us, then another. I did not want them to reach
us. It was as if I did not wish my solitude to be disturbed, and I was
not pleased with the idea of going ashore. A great ship, floating high
on the water, black and girt with the two broad yellow streaks of her
double tier of guns, glided out slowly from beyond a cluster of shipping
in the bay. She passed without a hail, going out under her topsails with
a flag at the fore. Her lofty spars overtopped our masts immensely, and
I saw the men in her rigging looking down on our decks. The only sounds
that came out of her were the piping of boatswain's calls and the
tramping of feet. Imagining her to be going home, I felt a great desire
to be on board. Ultimately, as it turned out, I went home in that very
ship, but then it was too late. I was another man by that time, with
much queer knowledge and other desires. Whilst I was looking and longing
I heard Carlos' voice behind me asking one of our sailors what ship it
was.

"Don't you know a flagship when you see it?" a voice grumbled surlily.
"Admiral Rowley's," it continued. Then it rumbled out some remarks about
"pirates, vermin, coast of Cuba."

Carlos came to the side, and looked after the man-of-war in the
distance.

"_You_ could help us," I heard him mutter.

CHAPTER FIVE

There was a lad called Barnes, a steerage passenger of about my own age,
a raw, red-headed Northumbrian yokel, going out as a recruit to one of
the West Indian regiments. He was a serious, strenuous youth, and I had
talked a little with him at odd moments. In my great loneliness I went
to say good-by to him after I had definitely parted with Carlos.

I had been in our cabin. A great bustle of shore-going, of leave-taking
had sprung up all over the ship. Carlos and Castro had entered with a
tall, immobile, gold-spectacled Spaniard, dressed all in white, and with
a certain air of noticing and attentive deference, bowing a little as
he entered the cabin in earnest conference with Tomas Castro. Carlos had
preceded them with a certain nonchalance, and the Spaniard--it was
the Senor Ramon, the merchant I had heard of--regarded him as if with
interested curiosity. With Tomas he seemed already familiar. He stood in
the doorway, against the strong light, bowing a little.

With a certain courtesy, touched with indifference, Carlos made him
acquainted with me. Ramon turned his searching, quietly analytic gaze
upon me.

"But is the _caballero_ going over, too?" he asked.

Carlos said, "No. I think not, now."

And at that moment the second mate, shouldering his way through a
white-clothed crowd of shore people, made up behind Senor Ramon. He held
a letter in his hand.

"I am going over," he said, in his high nasal voice, and with a certain
ferocity.

Ramon looked round apprehensively.

Carlos said, "The senor, my cousin, wishes for a Mr. Macdonald. You know
him, senor?"

Ramon made a dry gesture of perfect acquaintance. "I think I have seen
him just now," he said. "I will make inquiries."

All three of them had followed him, and became lost in the crowd. It
was then, not knowing whether I should ever see Carlos again, and with
a desperate, unhappy feeling of loneliness, that I had sought out Barnes
in the dim immensity of the steerage.

In the square of wan light that came down the scuttle he was cording his
hair-trunk--unemotional and very matter-of-fact. He began to talk in an
everyday voice about his plans. An uncle was going to meet him, and to
house him for a day or two before he went to the barracks.

"Mebbe we'll meet again," he said. "I'll be here many years, I think."

He shouldered his trunk and climbed unromantically up the ladder. He
said he would look for Macdonald for me.

It was absurd to suppose that the strange ravings of the second mate had
had an effect on me. "Hanged! Pirates!" Was Carlos really a pirate, or
Castro, his humble friend? It was vile of me to suspect Carlos. A couple
of men, meeting by the scuttle, began to talk loudly, every word coming
plainly to my ears in the stillness of my misery, and the large deserted
steerage. One of them, new from home, was asking questions. Another
answered:

"Oh, I lost half a seroon the last voyage--the old thing."

"Haven't they routed out the scoundrels yet?" the other asked.

The first man lowered his voice. I caught only that "the admiral was an
old fool--no good for this job. He's found out the name of the place the
pirates come from--Rio Medio. That's the place, only he can't get in at
it with his three-deckers. You saw his flagship?"

Rio Medio was the name of the town to which Carlos was going--which his
uncle owned. They moved away from above.

What was I to believe? What could this mean? But the second mate's,
"Scoot, young man," seemed to come to my ears like the blast of a
trumpet. I became suddenly intensely anxious to find Macdonald--to see
no more of Carlos.

From above came suddenly a gruff voice in Spanish. "Senor, it would be a
great folly."

Tomas Castro was descending the ladder gingerly. He was coming to fetch
his bundle. I went hastily into the distance of the vast, dim cavern of
spare room that served for the steerage.

"I want him very much," Carlos said. "I like him. He would be of help to
us."

"It's as your worship wills," Castro said gruffly. They were both at
the bottom of the ladder. "But an Englishman there would work great
mischief. And this youth----"

"I will take him, Tomas," Carlos said, laying a hand on his arm.

"Those others will think he is a spy. I know them," Castro muttered.
"They will hang him, or work some devil's mischief. You do not know that
Irish judge--the _canaille_, the friend of priests."

"He is very brave. He will not fear," Carlos said.

I came suddenly forward. "I will not go with you," I said, before I had
reached them even.

Castro started back as if he had been stung, and caught at the wooden
hand that sheathed his steel blade.

"Ah, it is you, Senor," he said, with an air of relief and dislike.
Carlos, softly and very affectionately, began inviting me to go to his
uncle's town. His uncle, he was sure, would welcome me. Jamaica and a
planter's life were not fit for me.

I had not then spoken very loudly, or had not made my meaning very
clear. I felt a great desire to find Macdonald, and a simple life that I
could understand.

"I am not going with you," I said, very loudly this time.

He stopped at once. Through the scuttle of the half-deck we heard a
hubbub of voices, of people exchanging greetings, of Christian names
called out joyously. A tumultuous shuffling of feet went on continuously
over our heads. The ship was crowded with people from the shore. Perhaps
Macdonald was amongst them, even looking for me.

"Ah, _amigo mio_, but you _must_ now," said Carlos gently--"you
must------" And, looking me straight in the face with a still,
penetrating glance of his big, romantic eyes, "It is a good life," he
whispered seductively, "and I like you, John Kemp. You are young-very
young yet. But I love you very much for your own sake, and for the sake
of one I shall never see again."

He fascinated me. He was all eyes in the dusk, standing in a languid
pose just clear of the shaft of light that fell through the scuttle in a
square patch.

I lowered my voice, too. "What life?" I asked.

"Life in my uncle's palace," he said, so sweetly and persuasively that
the suggestiveness of it caused a thrill in me.

His uncle could nominate me to posts of honour fit for a _caballero_.

I seemed to wake up. "Your uncle the pirate!" I cried, and was amazed at
my own words.

Tomas Castro sprang up, and placed his rough, hot hand over my lips.

"Be quiet, John Kemp, you fool!" he hissed with sudden energy.

He had spruced himself, but I seemed to see the rags still nutter about
him. He had combed out his beard, but I could not forget the knots that
had been in it.

"I told your worship how foolish and wrong-headed these English are," he
said sardonically to Carlos. And then to me, "If the senor speaks loudly
again, I shall kill him."

He was evidently very frightened of something.

Carlos, silent as an apparition at the foot of the ladder, put a finger
to his lips and glanced upwards.

Castro writhed his whole body, and I stepped backwards. "I know what Rio
Medio is," I said, not very loudly. "It is a nest of pirates."

Castro crept towards me again on the points of his toes. "Senor Don Juan
Kemp, child of the devil," he hissed, looking very much frightened, "you
must die!"

I smiled. He was trembling all over. I could hear the talking and
laughing that went on under the break of the poop. Two women were
kissing, with little cries, near the hatchway. I could hear them
distinctly.

Tomas Castro dropped his ragged cloak with a grandiose gesture.

"By my hand!" he added with difficulty.

He was really very much alarmed. Carlos was gazing up the hatch. I was
ready to laugh at the idea of dying by Tomas Castro's hand while, within
five feet of me, people were laughing and kissing. I should have laughed
had I not suddenly felt his hand on my throat. I kicked his shins hard,
and fell backwards over a chest. He went back a step or two, flourished
his arm, beat his chest, and turned furiously upon Carlos.

"He will get us murdered," he said. "Do you think we are safe here? If
these people here heard that name they wouldn't wait to ask who
your worship is. They would tear us to pieces in an instant. I tell
you--_moi_, Tomas Castro--he will ruin us, this white fool-------"

Carlos began to cough, shaken speechless as if by an invisible devil.
Castro's eyes ran furtively all round him, then he looked at me. He made
an extraordinary swift motion with his right hand, and I saw that he was
facing me with a long steel blade displayed. Carlos continued to cough.
The thing seemed odd, laughable still. Castro began to parade round
me: it was as if he were a cock performing its saltatory rites before
attacking. There was the same tenseness of muscle. He stepped with
extraordinary care on the points of his toes, and came to a stop about
four feet from me. I began to wonder what Rooksby would have thought of
this sort of thing, to wonder why Castro himself found it necessary to
crouch for such a long time. Up above, the hum of many people, still
laughing, still talking, faded a little out of mind. I understood,
horribly, how possible it would be to die within those few feet of them.
Castro's eyes were dusky yellow, the pupils a great deal inflated,
the lines of his mouth very hard and drawn immensely tight. It seemed
extraordinary that he should put so much emotion into such a very easy
killing. I had my back against the bulkhead, it felt very hard against
my shoulder-blades. I had no dread, only a sort of shrinking from the
actual contact of the point, as one shrinks from being tickled. I opened
my mouth. I was going to shriek a last, despairing call, to the light
and laughter of meetings above when Carlos, still shaken, with one white
hand pressed very hard upon his chest, started forward and gripped his
hand round Castro's steel. He began to whisper in the other's hairy ear.
I caught:

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