Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (621 page)
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Authors: JOSEPH CONRAD
SUSPENSE
A NAPOLEONIC NOVEL
Conrad’s unfinished novel
CONTENTS
PART I
I
A deep red glow flushed the fronts of marble palaces piled up on the slope of an arid mountain whose barren ridge traced high on the darkening sky a ghostly and glimmering outline. The winter sun was setting over the Gulf of Genoa. Behind the massive shore the sky to the east was like darkening glass. The open water too had a glassy look with a purple sheen in which the evening light lingered as if clinging to the water. The sails of a few becalmed feluccas looked rosy and cheerful, motionless in the gathering gloom. Their heads were all pointing towards the superb city. Within the long jetty with the squat round tower at the end, the water of the harbour had turned black. A bigger vessel with square sails, issuing from it and arrested by the sudden descent of the calm, faced the red disc of the sun. Her ensign hung down and its colours were not to be made out; but a lank man in a shabby sailor’s jacket and wearing a strange cap with a tassel, who lounged with both his arms thrown over the black breech of an enormous piece of ordnance that with three of its monstrous fellows squatted on the platform of the tower, seemed to have no doubt of her nationality; for to the question of a young civilian in a long coat and Hessian boots and with an ingenuous young countenance above the folds of a white neckcloth he answered curtly, taking a short pipe out of his mouth but not turning his head.
“She’s Elban.”
He replaced his pipe and preserved an unsociable air. The elegant young man with the pleasant countenance, (who was Cosmo, the son of Sir Charles Latham of Latham Hall, Yorkshire), repeated under his breath, “Elban,” and remained wrapped up in still contemplation of the becalmed ship with her undistinguishable flag.
It was not till the sun had sunk beneath the waters of the Mediterranean and the undistinguishable flag had been hauled down on board the motionless ship that he stirred and turned his eyes towards the harbour. The nearest prominent object in it was the imposing shape of an English line-of-battle ship moored on the west side not far from the quay. Her tall spars overtopped the roofs of the houses and the English ensign at her flagstaff had been just hauled down and replaced by a lantern that looked strange in the clear twilight. The forms of shipping crowded towards the head of the harbour were merging into one another. Cosmo let his eyes wander over the circular platform of the tower. The man leaning over the gun went on smoking with indifference.
“Are you the guardian of this tower?” asked the young man.
The other gave him a sidelong glance and made answer without changing his attitude and more as if speaking to himself:
“This is now an unguarded spot. The wars are over.”
“Do they close the door at the bottom of this tower at night?” enquired Cosmo.
“That is a matter worth consideration especially for those like you, for instance, who have a soft bed to go to for the night.”
The young man put his head on one side and looked at his interlocutor with a faint smile.
“You don’t seem to care,” he said. “So I conclude I need not. As long as you are content to stay here I am safe enough. I followed you up the stairs, you know.”
The man with the pipe stood up abruptly. “You followed me here? Why did you do that, in the name of all the saints?”
The young man laughed as if at a good joke. “Because you were walking in front of me. There was nobody else in view near the Mole. Suddenly you disappeared. Then I saw that the door at the bottom of the tower was open and I walked up the stairs on to this platform. And I would have been very surprised if I hadn’t found you here.”
The man in the strange cap ornamented with a tassel had taken his pipe out of his mouth to listen. “That was all?”
“Yes, that was all.”
“Nobody but an Englishman would behave like that,” commented the other to himself, a slight appearance of apprehension passing over his features. “You are an eccentric people.”
“I don’t see anything eccentric in what I’ve done. I simply wanted to walk out of the town. The Mole was as good as any other part. It is very pleasant here.”
A slight breeze touched the two men’s faces, while they stood silent, looking at each other. “I am but an idle traveller,” said Cosmo easily. “I arrived this morning by land. I am glad I had the idea to come out here to behold your town glowing in the sunset and to get a sight of a vessel belonging to Elba. There can’t be very many of them. But you, my friend . . . “
“I have as much right to idle away my time here as any English traveller,” interrupted the man hastily.
“It is very pleasant here,” repeated the young traveller, staring into the dusk which had invaded the platform of the tower.
“Pleasant?” repeated the other. “Yes, perhaps. The last time I was on this platform I was only ten years old. A solid round shot was spinning and rattling all over the stone floor. It made a wondrous disturbance and seemed a living thing full of fury.”
“A solid shot!” exclaimed Cosmo, looking all over the smooth flagstones as if expecting to see the traces of that visitation. “Where did it come from?”
“It came from an English brig belonging to Milord Keith’s Squadron. She stood in quite close and opened fire on us. . • . Heaven only knows why. The audacity of your people! A single shot from one of those big fellows,” he continued, slapping the enormous bulging breech of the gun by his side, “would have been enough to sink her like a stone.”
“I can well believe it. But the fearlessness of our seamen has ceased to astonish the world long ago,” murmured the young traveller.
“There are plenty of fearless people in the world, but luck is even better than courage. The brig sailed away unscathed. Yes, luck is even better than courage. Surer than wisdom and stronger than justice. Luck is a great thing. It is the only thing worth having on one’s side. And you people have always had it. Yes, signore, you belong to a lucky nation or else you would not be standing here on this platform looking across the water in the direction of that crumb of land that is the last refuge of your greatest enemy.”
Cosmo leaned over the stone parapet near the embrasure of the gun on tne other side of which the man with the short pipe in his hand made a vaguely emphatic gesture: “I wonder what thoughts pass through your head,” he went on in a quiet detached tone. “Or perhaps you are too young yet to have many thoughts in your head. Excuse my liberty, but I have always heard that one may be frank in speech with an Englishman; and by your speech there can be no doubt of you being of that nation.”
“I can assure you I have no thoughts of hatred. . . . Look, the Elban ship is getting farther away. Or is it only the darkness that makes her seem so?”
“The night air is heavy. There is more wind on the water than up here, where we stand; but I don’t think she has moved away. You are interested in that Elban ship, signore.”
“There is a fascination now about everything connected with that island,” confessed the ingenuous traveller. “You have just said that I was too young to think. You don’t seem so very much older than myself. I wonder what thoughts you may have.”
“The thoughts of a common man, thoughts that could be of no interest to an English milord,” answered the other, in a grimly deprecatory tone.
“Do you think that all Englishmen are lords?” asked Cosmo, with a laugh.
“I didn’t think. I went by your appearance. I remember hearing an old man once say that you were a lordly nation.”
“Really!” exclaimed the young man and laughed again in a low, pleasant note. “I remember hearing of an old man who called us a nation of traders.”
“Nazione di mercante,” repeated the man slowly. “Well, that may be true too. Different men, different wisdoms.”
“This didn’t occur to me,” said Cosmo, seating himself with a little spring on the stone parapet of the tower. He rested one foot on the massive gun-carriage and fixed his clear eyes on the dark red streak on the western sky left by the retreating sun like a long gash inflicted on the suffering body of the universe. . . . “Different men, different wisdoms,” he repeated, musingly. “I suppose it must be. People’s lives are so very different. . . . And of what kind was the wisdom of your old man?”
“The wisdom of a great plain as level almost as the jea,” said the other gravely. “His voice was as unexpected when I heard it as your own, signore. The eve-aingshadows had closed aboutme justafter I had seen to the west, on the edge of the world as it were, a lion miss his spring on a bounding deer. They went away right into the glow and vanished. It was as though I had dreamed. When I turned round there was the old man behind me no farther away than half the width of this platform. He only smiled at my startled looks. His long silver locks stirred in the breeze. He had been watching me, it seems, from folds of ground and from amongst reed beds for nearly half a day, wondering what I might be at. I had come ashore to wander on the plain. I like to be alone sometimes. My ship was anchored in a bight of this deserted coast a good many miles away, too many to walk back in the dark for a stranger like me. So I spent the night in that old man’s ranch, a hut of grass and reeds, near a little piece of water peopled by a multitude of birds. He treated me as if I had been his son. We talked till dawn and when the sun rose I did not go back to my ship. What I had on board of my own was not of much value, and there was certainly no one there to address me as “My son” in that particular tone — you know what I mean, signore.”
“I don’t know — but I think I can guess,” was the answer whose light-hearted yet earnest frankness was particularly boyish and provoked a smile on the part of the older man. In repose his face was grave. His English interlocutor went on after a pause. “You deserted from your ship to join a hermit in a wilderness simply because the tone of his voice appealed to your heart. Is that your meaning?”
“You have guessed it, signorino. Perhaps there was more in it than that. There is no doubt about it that I did desert from my ship.”
“And where was that?”
“On the coast of South America,” answered the man from the other side of the big gun, with sudden curtness. “And now it is time for us to part.”
But neither of them stirred and for some time they remained silent, growing shadowy to each other on the massive tower, which itself, in the advancing night, was but a gray shadow above the dark and motionless sea.
“How long did you stay with that hermit in the desert?” asked Cosmo. “And how did you leave him?”
“Signore, it was he who left me. After I had buried his body I had nothing more to do there. I had learned much during that year.”
“What is it you learned, my friend? I should like to know.”
“Signore, his wisdom was not like that of other men and it would be too long to explain to you here on this tower and at this late hour of the day. I learned many things. How to be patient, for instance. . . . Don’t you think, signore, that your friends or the servants at the inn may become uneasy at your long absence?”
“I tell you I haven’t been much more than two hours in this town and I have spoken to nobody in it till I came upon you, except of course to the people at the inn.”
“They may start looking for you.”
“Why should they trouble their heads? It isn’t late yet. Why should they notice my absence?”
“Why? . . . Simply because your supper may be ready by this time,” retorted the man impatiently.
“It may be, but I am not hungry yet,” said the young man casually. “Let them search for me all over the town if they like.” Then in a tone of interest, “Do you think they would think of looking for me here?” he asked.
“No. This is the last spot anybody would think of,” muttered the other as if to himself. He raised his voice markedly, “We must part indeed. Good-night, signore.”
“Good-night.”
The man in the seaman’s jacket stared for a moment, then with a brusque movement cocked his cap with the strange tassel more on the side of his head. “I am not going away from this spot,” he said.
“I thought you were. Why did you wish me goodnight then?”
“Because we must part.”
“I suppose we must some time or other,” agreed Cosmo in a friendly voice. “I should like to meet you again.”
“We must part at once, this moment, on this tower.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to be left alone,” answered the other after the slightest of pauses.
“Oh, come! Why on earth do you want to be left alone? What is it you could do here?” protested the other with great good humour. Then as if struck by an amusing notion, “Unless indeed you want to practise incantations,” he continued lightly, “and perhaps call the Evil One to your side.” He paused. “There are people, you know, that think it can be done,” he added in a mocking tone.