Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (386 page)

“He cruises about the mouth of the river all the summer.  He will be easy to find any week-end,” he remarked ringing the bell so that we might settle up with the waiter.

* * * * *

Later on I asked Marlow why he wished to cultivate this chance acquaintance.  He confessed apologetically that it was the commonest sort of curiosity.  I flatter myself that I understand all sorts of curiosity.  Curiosity about daily facts, about daily things, about daily men.  It is the most respectable faculty of the human mind — in fact I cannot conceive the uses of an incurious mind.  It would be like a chamber perpetually locked up.  But in this particular case Mr. Powell seemed to have given us already a complete insight into his personality such as it was; a personality capable of perception and with a feeling for the vagaries of fate, but essentially simple in itself.

Marlow agreed with me so far.  He explained however that his curiosity was not excited by Mr. Powell exclusively.  It originated a good way further back in the fact of his accidental acquaintance with the Fynes, in the country.  This chance meeting with a man who had sailed with Captain Anthony had revived it.  It had revived it to some purpose, to such purpose that to me too was given the knowledge of its origin and of its nature.  It was given to me in several stages, at intervals which are not indicated here.  On this first occasion I remarked to Marlow with some surprise:

“But, if I remember rightly you said you didn’t know Captain Anthony.”

“No.  I never saw the man.  It’s years ago now, but I seem to hear solemn little Fyne’s deep voice announcing the approaching visit of his wife’s brother “the son of the poet, you know.”  He had just arrived in London from a long voyage, and, directly his occupations permitted, was coming down to stay with his relatives for a few weeks.  No doubt we two should find many things to talk about by ourselves in reference to our common calling, added little Fyne portentously in his grave undertones, as if the Mercantile Marine were a secret society.

You must understand that I cultivated the Fynes only in the country, in their holiday time.  This was the third year.  Of their existence in town I knew no more than may be inferred from analogy.  I played chess with Fyne in the late afternoon, and sometimes came over to the cottage early enough to have tea with the whole family at a big round table.  They sat about it, an unsmiling, sunburnt company of very few words indeed.  Even the children were silent and as if contemptuous of each other and of their elders.  Fyne muttered sometimes deep down in his chest some insignificant remark.  Mrs. Fyne smiled mechanically (she had splendid teeth) while distributing tea and bread and butter.  A something which was not coldness, nor yet indifference, but a sort of peculiar self-possession gave her the appearance of a very trustworthy, very capable and excellent governess; as if Fyne were a widower and the children not her own but only entrusted to her calm, efficient, unemotional care.  One expected her to address Fyne as Mr.  When she called him John it surprised one like a shocking familiarity.  The atmosphere of that holiday was — if I may put it so — brightly dull.  Healthy faces, fair complexions, clear eyes, and never a frank smile in the whole lot, unless perhaps from a girl-friend.

The girl-friend problem exercised me greatly.  How and where the Fynes got all these pretty creatures to come and stay with them I can’t imagine.  I had at first the wild suspicion that they were obtained to amuse Fyne.  But I soon discovered that he could hardly tell one from the other, though obviously their presence met with his solemn approval.  These girls in fact came for Mrs. Fyne.  They treated her with admiring deference.  She answered to some need of theirs.  They sat at her feet.  They were like disciples.  It was very curious.  Of Fyne they took but scanty notice.  As to myself I was made to feel that I did not exist.

After tea we would sit down to chess and then Fyne’s everlasting gravity became faintly tinged by an attenuated gleam of something inward which resembled sly satisfaction.  Of the divine frivolity of laughter he was only capable over a chess-board.  Certain positions of the game struck him as humorous, which nothing else on earth could do . . .

“He used to beat you,” I asserted with confidence.

“Yes.  He used to beat me,” Marlow owned up hastily.

So he and Fyne played two games after tea.  The children romped together outside, gravely, unplayfully, as one would expect from Fyne’s children, and Mrs. Fyne would be gone to the bottom of the garden with the girl-friend of the week.  She always walked off directly after tea with her arm round the girl-friend’s waist.  Marlow said that there was only one girl-friend with whom he had conversed at all.  It had happened quite unexpectedly, long after he had given up all hope of getting into touch with these reserved girl-friends.

One day he saw a woman walking about on the edge of a high quarry, which rose a sheer hundred feet, at least, from the road winding up the hill out of which it had been excavated.  He shouted warningly to her from below where he happened to be passing.  She was really in considerable danger.  At the sound of his voice she started back and retreated out of his sight amongst some young Scotch firs growing near the very brink of the precipice.

“I sat down on a bank of grass,” Marlow went on.  “She had given me a turn.  The hem of her skirt seemed to float over that awful sheer drop, she was so close to the edge.  An absurd thing to do.  A perfectly mad trick — for no conceivable object!  I was reflecting on the foolhardiness of the average girl and remembering some other instances of the kind, when she came into view walking down the steep curve of the road.  She had Mrs. Fyne’s walking-stick and was escorted by the Fyne dog.  Her dead white face struck me with astonishment, so that I forgot to raise my hat.  I just sat and stared.  The dog, a vivacious and amiable animal which for some inscrutable reason had bestowed his friendship on my unworthy self, rushed up the bank demonstratively and insinuated himself under my arm.

The girl-friend (it was one of them) went past some way as though she had not seen me, then stopped and called the dog to her several times; but he only nestled closer to my side, and when I tried to push him away developed that remarkable power of internal resistance by which a dog makes himself practically immovable by anything short of a kick.  She looked over her shoulder and her arched eyebrows frowned above her blanched face.  It was almost a scowl.  Then the expression changed.  She looked unhappy.  “Come here!” she cried once more in an angry and distressed tone.  I took off my hat at last, but the dog hanging out his tongue with that cheerfully imbecile expression some dogs know so well how to put on when it suits their purpose, pretended to be deaf.

She cried from the distance desperately.

“Perhaps you will take him to the cottage then.  I can’t wait.”

“I won’t be responsible for that dog,” I protested getting down the bank and advancing towards her.  She looked very hurt, apparently by the desertion of the dog.  “But if you let me walk with you he will follow us all right,” I suggested.

She moved on without answering me.  The dog launched himself suddenly full speed down the road receding from us in a small cloud of dust.  It vanished in the distance, and presently we came up with him lying on the grass.  He panted in the shade of the hedge with shining eyes but pretended not to see us.  We had not exchanged a word so far.  The girl by my side gave him a scornful glance in passing.

“He offered to come with me,” she remarked bitterly.

“And then abandoned you!” I sympathized.  “It looks very unchivalrous.  But that’s merely his want of tact.  I believe he meant to protest against your reckless proceedings.  What made you come so near the edge of that quarry?  The earth might have given way.  Haven’t you noticed a smashed fir tree at the bottom?  Tumbled over only the other morning after a night’s rain.”

“I don’t see why I shouldn’t be as reckless as I please.”

I was nettled by her brusque manner of asserting her folly, and I told her that neither did I as far as that went, in a tone which almost suggested that she was welcome to break her neck for all I cared.  This was considerably more than I meant, but I don’t like rude girls.  I had been introduced to her only the day before — at the round tea-table — and she had barely acknowledged the introduction.  I had not caught her name but I had noticed her fine, arched eyebrows which, so the physiognomists say, are a sign of courage.

I examined her appearance quietly.  Her hair was nearly black, her eyes blue, deeply shaded by long dark eyelashes.  She had a little colour now.  She looked straight before her; the corner of her lip on my side drooped a little; her chin was fine, somewhat pointed.  I went on to say that some regard for others should stand in the way of one’s playing with danger.  I urged playfully the distress of the poor Fynes in case of accident, if nothing else.  I told her that she did not know the bucolic mind.  Had she given occasion for a coroner’s inquest the verdict would have been suicide, with the implication of unhappy love.  They would never be able to understand that she had taken the trouble to climb over two post-and-rail fences only for the fun of being reckless.  Indeed even as I talked chaffingly I was greatly struck myself by the fact.

She retorted that once one was dead what horrid people thought of one did not matter.  It was said with infinite contempt; but something like a suppressed quaver in the voice made me look at her again.  I perceived then that her thick eyelashes were wet.  This surprising discovery silenced me as you may guess.  She looked unhappy.  And — I don’t know how to say it — well — it suited her.  The clouded brow, the pained mouth, the vague fixed glance!  A victim.  And this characteristic aspect made her attractive; an individual touch — you know.

The dog had run on ahead and now gazed at us by the side of the Fyne’s garden-gate in a tense attitude and wagging his stumpy tail very, very slowly, with an air of concentrated attention.  The girl-friend of the Fynes bolted violently through the aforesaid gate and into the cottage leaving me on the road — astounded.

A couple of hours afterwards I returned to the cottage for chess as usual.  I saw neither the girl nor Mrs. Fyne then.  We had our two games and on parting I warned Fyne that I was called to town on business and might be away for some time.  He regretted it very much.  His brother-in-law was expected next day but he didn’t know whether he was a chess-player.  Captain Anthony (“the son of the poet — you know”) was of a retiring disposition, shy with strangers, unused to society and very much devoted to his calling, Fyne explained.  All the time they had been married he could be induced only once before to come and stay with them for a few days.  He had had a rather unhappy boyhood; and it made him a silent man.  But no doubt, concluded Fyne, as if dealing portentously with a mystery, we two sailors should find much to say to one another.

This point was never settled.  I was detained in town from week to week till it seemed hardly worth while to go back.  But as I had kept on my rooms in the farmhouse I concluded to go down again for a few days.

It was late, deep dusk, when I got out at our little country station.  My eyes fell on the unmistakable broad back and the muscular legs in cycling stockings of little Fyne.  He passed along the carriages rapidly towards the rear of the train, which presently pulled out and left him solitary at the end of the rustic platform.  When he came back to where I waited I perceived that he was much perturbed, so perturbed as to forget the convention of the usual greetings.  He only exclaimed Oh! on recognizing me, and stopped irresolute.  When I asked him if he had been expecting somebody by that train he didn’t seem to know.  He stammered disconnectedly.  I looked hard at him.  To all appearances he was perfectly sober; moreover to suspect Fyne of a lapse from the proprieties high or low, great or small, was absurd.  He was also a too serious and deliberate person to go mad suddenly.  But as he seemed to have forgotten that he had a tongue in his head I concluded I would leave him to his mystery.  To my surprise he followed me out of the station and kept by my side, though I did not encourage him.  I did not however repulse his attempts at conversation.  He was no longer expecting me, he said.  He had given me up.  The weather had been uniformly fine — and so on.  I gathered also that the son of the poet had curtailed his stay somewhat and gone back to his ship the day before.

That information touched me but little.  Believing in heredity in moderation I knew well how sea-life fashions a man outwardly and stamps his soul with the mark of a certain prosaic fitness — because a sailor is not an adventurer.  I expressed no regret at missing Captain Anthony and we proceeded in silence till, on approaching the holiday cottage, Fyne suddenly and unexpectedly broke it by the hurried declaration that he would go on with me a little farther.

“Go with you to your door,” he mumbled and started forward to the little gate where the shadowy figure of Mrs. Fyne hovered, clearly on the lookout for him.  She was alone.  The children must have been already in bed and I saw no attending girl-friend shadow near her vague but unmistakable form, half-lost in the obscurity of the little garden.

I heard Fyne exclaim “Nothing” and then Mrs. Fyne’s well-trained, responsible voice uttered the words, “It’s what I have said,” with incisive equanimity.  By that time I had passed on, raising my hat.  Almost at once Fyne caught me up and slowed down to my strolling gait which must have been infinitely irksome to his high pedestrian faculties.  I am sure that all his muscular person must have suffered from awful physical boredom; but he did not attempt to charm it away by conversation.  He preserved a portentous and dreary silence.  And I was bored too.  Suddenly I perceived the menace of even worse boredom.  Yes!  He was so silent because he had something to tell me.

I became extremely frightened.  But man, reckless animal, is so made that in him curiosity, the paltriest curiosity, will overcome all terrors, every disgust, and even despair itself.  To my laconic invitation to come in for a drink he answered by a deep, gravely accented: “Thanks, I will” as though it were a response in church.  His face as seen in the lamplight gave me no clue to the character of the impending communication; as indeed from the nature of things it couldn’t do, its normal expression being already that of the utmost possible seriousness.  It was perfect and immovable; and for a certainty if he had something excruciatingly funny to tell me it would be all the same.