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Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer - Romance

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




"Curse me if ever I go into that place again." After a time he added:
"Unless 'tis a matter of duty."

I didn't say anything; my nerves were still jangling to that shrieking,
and to the clang of the iron doors that had closed behind me. I had an
irresistible impulse to get hold of the iron candlestick and smash it
home through the skull of the turnkey--as I had done to the men who had
killed Seraphina's father... to kill this man, then to creep along the
black passages and murder man after man beside those iron doors until I
got to the open air.

He began again. "You'd think we'd get used to it--you'd think we
would--but 'tis a strain for us. You never knows what the prisoners will
do at a scene like that there. It drives 'em mad. Look at this scar.
Machell the forger done that for me, 'fore he was condemned, after a
sermon like that--a quiet, gentlemanly man, much like you. Lord, yes,
'tis a strain...." He paused, still wiping his face, then went on:
"_And_ I swear that when I sees them men sit there in that black pew,
an' hev heard the hammers going clack, clack on the scaffolding outside,
and knew that they hadn't no more chance than you have to get out of
there..." He pointed his short thumb towards the handkerchief of an
opening, where the little blurr of blue light wavered through the two
iron frames crossed in the nine feet of well. "Lord, you _never_ gets
used to it. You _wants_ them to escape; 'tis in the air through the
whole prison, even the debtors. I tells myself again and again, 'You're
a fool for your pains.' But it's the same with the others--my mates. You
can't get it out of your mind. That little kid now. I've seen children
swing; but that little kid--as sure to swing as what... as what _you_
are...."

"You think I am going to swing?" I asked.

I didn't want to kill him any more; I wanted too much to hear him
talk. I hadn't heard anything for months and months of solitude, of
darkness--on board the admiral's ship, stranded in the guardship at
Plymouth, bumping round the coast, and now here in Newgate. And it had
been darkness all the time. Jove! That Cuban time, with its movements,
its pettiness, its intrigue, its warmth, even its villainies showed
plainly enough in the chill of that blackness. It had been romance, that
life.

Little, and far away, and irrevocably done with, it showed all golden.
There wasn't any romance where I lay then; and there had been irons on
my wrists; gruff hatred, the darkness, and always despair.

On board the flagship coming home I had been chained down in the
cable-tier--a place where I could feel every straining of the great
ship. Once these had risen to a pandemonium, a frightful tumult. There
was a great gale outside. A sailor came down with a lanthorn, and tossed
my biscuit to me.

"You d------d pirate," he said, "maybe it's you saving us from
drowning."

"Is the gale very bad?" I had called.

He muttered--and the fact that he spoke to me at all showed how great
the strain of the weather must have been to wring any words out of him:

"Bad--there's a large Indiaman gone. We saw her one minute and then..."
He went away, muttering.

And suddenly the thought had come to me. What if the Indiaman were the
_Lion_--the _Lion_ with Seraphina on board? The man would not speak to
me when he came again. No one would speak to me; I was a pirate who had
fired on his own countrymen. And the thought had pursued me right into
Newgate--if she were dead; if I had taken her from that security, from
that peace, to end there.... And to end myself.

"Swing!" the turnkey said; "you'll swing right enough." He slapped the
great key on his flabby hand. "You can tell that by the signs. You,
being an Admiralty case, ought to have been in the Marshalsea. And
you're ordered solitary cell, and I'm tipped the straight wink against
your speaking a blessed word to a blessed soul. Why don't they let you
see an attorney? Why? Because they _mean_ you to swing."

I said, "Never mind that. Have you heard of a ship called the _Lion?_
Can you find out about her?"

He shook his head cunningly, and did not answer. If the _Lion_ had been
here, I must have heard. They couldn't have left me here.

I said, "For God's sake find out. Get me a shipping gazette."

He affected not to hear.

"There's money in plenty," I said.

He winked ponderously and began again. "Oh, you'll swing all right. A
man with nothing against him has a chance; with the rhino he has it,
even if he's guilty. But you'll _swing_. Charlie, who brought you back
just now, had a chat with the 'Torney-General's devil's clerk's clerk,
while old Nog o' Bow Street was trying to read their Spanish. He says
it's a Gov'nment matter. They wants to hang you bad, they do, so's to
go to the Jacky Spaniards and say, 'He were a nob, a nobby nob.' (So
you are, aren't you? One uncle an earl and t'other a dean, if so be what
they say's true.) 'He were a nobby nob and we swung 'im. Go you'n do
likewise.' They want a striking example t' keep the West India trade
quiet..." He wiped his forehead and moved my water jug of red earth on
the dirty deal table under the window, for all the world like a host in
front of a guest. "They means you to swing," he said. "They've silenced
the Thames Court reporters. Not a noospaper will publish a correct
report t'morrer. And you haven't see nobody, nor you won't, not if I can
help it."

He broke off and looked at me with an expression of candour.

"Mind you," he said, "I'm not uffish. To 'n ornery gentleman--of the
road or what you will--I'm not, if so be he's the necessary. I'd take a
letter like another. But for you, no--fear. Not that I've my knife into
you. What I can do to make you comfor'ble I will do, _both_ now an'
hereafter. But when I gets the wink, I looks after my skin. So'd any
man. You don't see nobody, nor you won't; nor your nobby relations
won't have the word. Till the Hadmir'lty trile. Charlie says it's
unconstitutional, you ought to see your 'torney, if you've one, or your
father's got one. But Lor', I says, 'Charlie, if they wants it they gets
it. This ain't no _habeas carpis_, give-the-man-a-chance case. It's the
Hadmir'lty. And not a man tried for piracy this thirty year. See what
a show it gives them, what bloody Radicle knows or keeres what the
perceedin's should be? Who's a-goin' t' make a question out of it? Go
away,' says I to Charlie. And that's it straight."

He went towards the door, then turned.

"You should be in the Marshalsea common yard; even I knows that. But
they've the wink there. 'Too full,' says they. Too full be d------d.
I've know'd the time--after the Vansdell smash it were--when they found
room for three hundred more improvident debtors over and above what
they're charted for. Too full! Their common yard! They don't want you to
speak to a soul, an' you won't till this day week, when the Hadmir'lty
Session is in full swing." He went out and locked the door, snorting,
"Too full at the Marshalsea!... Go away!"

"Find out about the _Lion_," I called, as the door closed.

It cleared the air for me, that speech. I understood that they wanted to
hang me, and I wanted not to be hung, desperately, from that moment.
I had not much cared before; I had--call it, moped. I had not really
believed, really sensed it out. It isn't easy to conceive that one is
going to be hanged, I doubt if one does even with the rope round one's
neck. I hadn't much wanted to live, but now I wanted to fight--one good
fight before I went under for good and all, condemned or acquitted.
There wasn't anything left for me to live for, Seraphina could not be
alive. The _Lion_ must have been lost.

But I was going to make a fight for it; curse it, I was going to give
them trouble. My "them" was not so much the Government that meant to
hang me as the unseen powers that suffered such a state of things, that
allowed a number of little meannesses, accidents, fatalities, to hang
me. I began to worry the turnkey. He gave me no help, only shreds of
information that let me see more plainly than ever how set "they" were
on sacrificing me to their exigencies.

The whole West Indian trade in London was in an uproar over the Pirate
Question and over the Slave Question. Jamaica was still squealing for
Separation before the premonitory grumbles of Abolition. Horton Pen,
over there, came back with astonishing clearness before me. I seemed to
hear old, wall-eyed, sandy-headed Macdonald, agitating his immense bulk
of ill-fitting white clothes in front of his newspaper, and bellowing in
his ox-voice:

"Abolition, they give us Abolition... or ram it down our throats. _They_
who haven't even the spunk to rid us o' the d------d pirates, not the
spunk to catch and hang one.... Jock, me lahd, we's abolush them before
they sail touch our neegurs.... Let them clear oor seas, let them hang
_one_ pirate, and then talk."

I was the one they were going to hang, to consolidate the bond with the
old island. The cement wanted a little blood in the mixing. Damn them!
I was going to make a fight; they had torn me from Seraphina, to fulfill
their own accursed ends. I felt myself grow harsh and strong, as a tree
feels itself grow gnarled by winter storms. I said to the turnkey again
and again:

"Man, I will promise you a thousand pounds or a pension for life, if you
will get a letter through to my mother or Squire Rooksby of Horton."

He said he daren't do it; enough was known of him to hang him if he
gave offence. His flabby fingers trembled, and his eyes grew large with
successive shocks of cupidity. He became afraid of coming near me; of
the strain of the temptation. On the next day he did not speak a word,
nor the next, nor the next. I began to grow horribly afraid of being
hung. The day before the trial arrived. Towards noon he flung the door
open.

"Here's paper, here's pens," he said. "You can prepare your defence. You
may write letters. Oh, hell! why did not they let it come sooner, I'd
have had your thousand pounds. I'll run a letter down to your people
fast as the devil could take it. I know a man, a gentleman of the road.
For twenty pun promised, split between us, he'll travel faster'n Turpin
did to York." He was waving a large sheet of newspaper agitatedly.

"What does it mean?" I asked. My head was whirling.

"Radical papers got a-holt of it," he said. "Trust them for nosing out.
And the Government's answering them. They say you're going to suffer
for your crimes. Hark to this... um, um... 'The wretched felon now in
Newgate will incur the just penalty...' Then they slaps the West Indies
in the face. 'When the planters threaten to recur to some other power
for protection, they, of course, believe that the loss of the colonies
would be severely felt. But...'"

"The _Lion's_ home," I said.

It burst upon me that she was--that she must be. Williams--or
Sebright--he was the man, had been speaking up for me. Or Seraphina had
been to the Spanish ambassador.

She was back; I should see her. I started up.

"The _Lion's_ home," I repeated.

The turnkey snarled, "She was posted as overdue three days ago."

I couldn't believe it was true.

"I saw it in the papers," he grumbled on. "I dursn't tell you." He
continued violently, "Blow my dickey. It would make a cat sick."

My sudden exaltation, my sudden despair, gave way to indifference.

"Oh, coming, coming!" he shouted, in answer to an immense bellowing cry
that loomed down the passage without.

I heard him grumble, "Of course, of course. I shan't make a penny." Then
he caught hold of my arm. "Here, come along, someone to see you in the
press-yard."

He pulled me along the noisome, black warren of passages, slamming the
inner door viciously behind him.

The press-yard--the exercising ground for the condemned--was empty; the
last batch had gone out, _my_ batch would be the next to come in, the
turnkey said suddenly. It was a well of a place, high black walls going
up into the desolate, weeping sky, and quite tiny. At one end was a sort
of slit in the wall, closed with tall, immense windows. From there a
faint sort of rabbit's squeak was going up through the immense roll and
rumble of traffic on the other side of the wall. The turnkey pushed me
towards it.

"Go on," he said. "I'll not listen; I ought to. But, curse me, I'm not
a bad sort," he added gloomily; "I dare say you'll make it worth my
while."

I went and peered through the bars at a faint object pressed against
other bars in just another slit across a black passage.

"What, Jackie, boy; what, Jackie?" Blinking his eyes, as if the dim
light were too strong for them, a thin, bent man stood there in a
brilliant new court coat. His face was meagre in the extreme, the nose
and cheekbones polished and transparent like a bigaroon cherry. A thin
tuft of reddish hair was brushed back from his high, shining forehead.
It was my father. He exclaimed:

"What, Jackie, boy! How old you look!" then waved his arm towards me.
"In trouble?" he said. "You in trouble?"

He rubbed his thin hands together, and looked round the place with a
cultured man's air of disgust. I said, "Father!" and he suddenly began
to talk very fast and agitatedly of what he had been doing for me. My
mother, he said, was crippled with rheumatism, and Rooksby and Veronica
on the preceding Thursday had set sail for Jamaica. He had read to my
mother, beside her bed, the newspaper containing an account of my case;
and she had given him money, and he had started with violent haste for
London. The haste and the rush were still dazing him. He had lived down
there in the farmhouse beneath the downs, with the stackyards under his
eyes, with his books of verse and his few prints on the wall------My
God, how it all came back to me.

In his disjointed speeches, I could see how exactly the same it all
remained. The same old surly man with a squint had driven him along the
muddy roads in the same ancient gig, past the bare elms, to meet the
coach. And my father had never been in London since he had walked the
streets with the Prince Regent's friends.

Whilst he talked to me there, lines of verse kept coming to his lips;
and, after the habitual pleasure of the apt quotation, he felt acutely
shocked at the inappropriateness of the place, the press-yard, with
the dim light weeping downwards between immensely high walls, and the
desultory snowflakes that dropped between us. And he had tried so hard,
in his emergency, to be practical. When he had reached London, before
even attempting to see me, he had run from minister to minister trying
to influence them in my favour--and he reached me in Newgate with
nothing at all effected.

I seemed to know him then, so intimately, so much better than anything
else in the world.

He began, "I had my idea in the up-coach last night. I thought, 'A very
great personage was indebted to me in the old days (more indebted than
you are aware of, Johnnie). I will intercede with him.' That was why my
first step was to my old tailor's in Conduit Street. Because... what is
fit for a farm for a palace were low." He stopped, reflected, then said,
"What is fit for _the_ farm for _the_ palace were low."

He felt across his coat for his breast pocket. It was what he had done
years and years ago, and all these years between, inscribe ideas for
lines of verse in his pocket-book. I said:

"You have seen the king?"

His face lengthened a little. "Not _seen_ him. But I found one of the
duke's secretaries, a pleasant young fellow... not such as we used to
be. But the duke was kind enough to interest himself. Perhaps my name
has lived in the land. I was called Curricle Kemp, as I may have told
you, because I drove a vermilion one with green and gilt wheels...."

His face, peering at me through the bars, had, for a moment, a flush
of pride. Then he suddenly remembered, and, as if to propitiate his own
reproof, he went on:

"I saw the Secretary of State, and he assured me, very civilly, that
not even the highest personage in the land...." He dropped his voice,
"Jackie, boy," he said, his narrow-lidded eyes peering miserably across
at me, "there's not even hope of a reprieve afterwards."

I leaned my face wearily against the iron bars. What, after all, was the
use of fighting if the _Lion_ were not back?

Then, suddenly, as the sound of his words echoed down the bare,
black corridors, he seemed to realize the horror of it. His face grew
absolutely white, he held his head erect, as if listening to a distant
sound. And then he began to cry--horribly, and for a long time.

It was I that had to comfort him. His head had bowed at the conviction
of his hopeless uselessness; all through his own life he had been made
ineffectual by his indulgence in perfectly innocent, perfectly trivial
enjoyments, and now, in this extremity of his only son, he was rendered
almost fantastically of no avail.

"No, no, sir! You have done all that any one could; you couldn't break
these walls down. Nothing else would help."

Small, hopeless sobs shook him continually. His thin, delicate white
fingers gripped the black grille, with the convulsive grasp of a very
weak man. It was more distressing to me than anything I had ever seen or
felt. The mere desire, the intense desire to comfort him, made me get
a grip upon myself again. And I remembered that, now that I could
communicate with the outer air, it was absolutely easy; he would save my
life. I said:

"You have only to go to Clapham, sir."

And the moment I was in a state to command him, to direct him, to give
him something to do, he became a changed man. He looked up and listened.
I told him to go to Major Cowper's. It would be easy enough to find him
at Clapham. Cowper, I remembered, could testify to my having been seized
by Tomas Castro. He had seen me fight on the decks. And what was more,
he would certainly know the addresses of Kingston planters, if any were
in London. They could testify that I had been in Jamaica all the while
Nikola el Escoces was in Rio Medio. I knew there were some. My father
was fidgeting to be gone. He had his name marked for him, and a will
directing his own. He was not the same man. But I particularly told him
to send me a lawyer first of all.

"Yes, yes!" he said, fidgeting to go, "to Major Cowper's. Let me write
his address."

"And a solicitor," I said. "Send him to me on your way there."

"Yes, yes," he said, "I shall be able to be of use to the solicitor. As
a rule, they are men of no great perspicacity."

And he went hurriedly away.

The real torture, the agony of suspense began then. I steadied my nerves
by trying to draw up notes for my speech to the jury on the morrow. That
was the turnkey's idea.

He said, "Slap your chest, 'peal to the honour of a British gent, and
pitch it in strong."

It was not much good; I could not keep to any logical sequence of
thought, my mind was forever wandering to what my father was doing. I
pictured him in his new blue coat, running agitatedly through crowded
streets, his coat-tails flying behind his thin legs. The hours dragged
on, and it was a matter of minutes. I had to hold upon the table edge to
keep myself from raging about the cell. I tried to bury myself again in
the scheme for my defence. I wondered whom my father would have found.
There was a man called Cary who had gone home from Kingston. He had a
bald head and blue eyes; he must remember me. If he would corroborate!
And the lawyer, when he came, might take another line of defence. It
began to fall dusk slowly, through the small barred windows.

The entire night passed without a word from my father. I paced up and
down the whole time, composing speeches to the jury. And then the day
broke. I calmed myself with a sort of frantic energy.

Early the jailer came in, and began fussing about my cell.

"Case comes on about one," he said. "Grand jury at half after twelve.
No fear they won't return a true bill. Grand jury, five West India
merchants. They means to have you. 'Torney-General, S'lic'tor-General.
S'r Robert Mead, and five juniors agin you... You take my tip. Throw
yourself on the mercy of the court, and make a rousing speech with
a young 'ooman in it. Not that you'll get much mercy from them. They
Admir'lty jedges is all hangers. 'S we say, 'Oncet the anchor goes up
in the Old Bailey, there ain't no hope. We begins to clean out the
c'ndemned cell, here. Sticks the anchor up over their heads, when it is
Hadmir'lty case,'" he commented.

I listened to him with strained attention. I made up my mind to miss not
a word uttered that day. It was my only chance.

"You don't know any one from Jamaica?" I asked.

He shook his bullet head, and tapped his purple nose. "Can't be done,"
he said. "You'd get a ornery hallybi fer a guinea a head, but they'd
keep out of this case. They've necks like you and me."

Whilst he was speaking, the whole of the outer world, as far as it
affected me, came suddenly in upon me--that was what I meant to the
great city that lay all round, the world, in the centre of which was my
cell. To the great mass, I was matter for a sensation; to them I might
prove myself beneficial in this business. Perhaps there were others who
were thinking I might be useful in one way or another. There were the
ministers of the Crown, who did not care much whether Jamaica separated
or not. But they wanted to hang me because they would be able to say
disdainfully to the planters, "Separate if you like; we've done our
duty, we've hanged a man."

All those people had their eyes on me, and they were about the only ones
who knew of my existence. That was the end of my Romance! Romance! The
broadsheet sellers would see to it afterwards with a "Dying confession."




CHAPTER FOUR

I never saw my father again until I was in the prisoner's anteroom at
the Old Bailey. It was full of lounging men, whose fleshy limbs bulged
out against the tight, loud checks of their coats and trousers. These
were jailers waiting to bring in their prisoners. On the other side
of one black door the Grand Jury was deliberating on my case, behind
another the court was in waiting to try me. I was in a sort of tired
lull. All night I had been pacing up and down, trying to bring my brain
to think of points--points in my defence. It was very difficult. I knew
that I must keep cool, be calm, be lucid, be convincing; and my brain
had reeled at times, even in the darkness of the cell. I knew it had
reeled, because I remembered that once I had fallen against the stone
of one of the walls, and once against the door. Here, in the light, with
only a door between myself and the last scene, I regained my hold. I was
going to fight every inch from start to finish. I was going to let no
chink of their armour go untried. I was going to make a good fight. My
teeth chattered like castanets, jarring in my jaws until it was painful.
But that was only with the cold.

A hubbub of expostulation was going on at the third door. My turnkey
called suddenly:

"Let the genman in, Charlie. Pal o' ourn," and my father ran huntedly
into the room. He began an endless tale of a hackney coachman who had
stood in front of the door of his coach to prevent his number being
taken; of a crowd of caddee-smashers, who had hustled him and filched
his purse. "Of course, I made a fight for it," he said, "a damn good
fight, considering. It's in the blood. But the watch came, and, in
short--on such an occasion as this there is no time for words--I passed
the night in the watch-house. Many and many a night I passed there when
I and Lord------But I am losing time."

"You ain't fit to walk the streets of London alone, sir," the turnkey
said.

My father gave him a corner of his narrow-lidded eyes. "My man," he
said, "I walked the streets with the highest in the land before your
mother bore you in Bridewell, or whatever jail it was."

"Oh, no offence," the turnkey muttered.

I said, "Did you find Cowper, sir? Will he give evidence?"

"Jackie," he said agitatedly, as if he were afraid of offending me, "he
said you had filched his wife's rings."

That, in fact, was what Major Cowper _had_ said--that I had dropped into
their ship near Port Royal Heads, and had afterwards gone away with the
pirates who had filched his wife's rings. My father, in his indignation,
had not even deigned to ask him for the address of Jamaica planters in
London; and on his way back to find a solicitor he had come into contact
with those street rowdies and the watch. He had only just come from
before the magistrates.

A man with one eye poked his head suddenly from behind the Grand Jury
door. He jerked his head in my direction.

"True bill against that 'ere," he said, then drew his head in again.

"Jackie, boy," my father said, putting a thin hand on my wrist, and
gazing imploringly into my eyes, "I'm... I'm ... I can't tell you
how...."

I said, "It doesn't matter, father." I felt a foretaste of how my past
would rise up to crush me. Cowper had let that wife of his coerce
him into swearing my life away. I remembered vividly his blubbering
protestations of friendship when I persuaded Tomas Castro to return him
his black deed-box with the brass handle, on that deck littered with
rubbish.... "Oh, God bless you, God bless you. You have saved me from
starvation...." There had been tears in his old blue eyes. "If you need
it I will go anywhere... do anything to help you. On the honour of a
gentleman and a soldier." I had, of course, recommended his wife to give
up her rings when the pirates were threatening her in the cabin. The
other door opened, another man said:

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