Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (526 page)

Only the unwelcome reflection that this was impossible made me get up at last with a sigh of deep grief at the end of the dream.  But I got up without despair.  She didn’t murmur, she didn’t stir.  There was something august in the stillness of the room.  It was a strange peace which she shared with me in this unexpected shelter full of disorder in its neglected splendour.  What troubled me was the sudden, as it were material, consciousness of time passing as water flows.  It seemed to me that it was only the tenacity of my sentiment that held that woman’s body, extended and tranquil above the flood.  But when I ventured at last to look at her face I saw her flushed, her teeth clenched — it was visible — her nostrils dilated, and in her narrow, level-glancing eyes a look of inward and frightened ecstasy.  The edges of the fur coat had fallen open and I was moved to turn away.  I had the same impression as on the evening we parted that something had happened which I did not understand; only this time I had not touched her at all.  I really didn’t understand.  At the slightest whisper I would now have gone out without a murmur, as though that emotion had given her the right to be obeyed.  But there was no whisper; and for a long time I stood leaning on my arm, looking into the fire and feeling distinctly between the four walls of that locked room the unchecked time flow past our two stranded personalities.

And suddenly she spoke.  She spoke in that voice that was so profoundly moving without ever being sad, a little wistful perhaps and always the supreme expression of her grace.  She asked as if nothing had happened:

“What are you thinking of, amigo?”

I turned about.  She was lying on her side, tranquil above the smooth flow of time, again closely wrapped up in her fur, her head resting on the old-gold sofa cushion bearing like everything else in that room the decoratively enlaced letters of her monogram; her face a little pale now, with the crimson lobe of her ear under the tawny mist of her loose hair, the lips a little parted, and her glance of melted sapphire level and motionless, darkened by fatigue.

“Can I think of anything but you?” I murmured, taking a seat near the foot of the couch.  “Or rather it isn’t thinking, it is more like the consciousness of you always being present in me, complete to the last hair, to the faintest shade of expression, and that not only when we are apart but when we are together, alone, as close as this.  I see you now lying on this couch but that is only the insensible phantom of the real you that is in me.  And it is the easier for me to feel this because that image which others see and call by your name — how am I to know that it is anything else but an enchanting mist?  You have always eluded me except in one or two moments which seem still more dream-like than the rest.  Since I came into this room you have done nothing to destroy my conviction of your unreality apart from myself.  You haven’t offered me your hand to touch.  Is it because you suspect that apart from me you are but a mere phantom, and that you fear to put it to the test?”

One of her hands was under the fur and the other under her cheek.  She made no sound.  She didn’t offer to stir.  She didn’t move her eyes, not even after I had added after waiting for a while,

“Just what I expected.  You are a cold illusion.”

She smiled mysteriously, right away from me, straight at the fire, and that was all.

CHAPTER VI

I had a momentary suspicion that I had said something stupid.  Her smile amongst many other things seemed to have meant that, too.  And I answered it with a certain resignation:

“Well, I don’t know that you are so much mist.  I remember once hanging on to you like a drowning man . . . But perhaps I had better not speak of this.  It wasn’t so very long ago, and you may . . . “

“I don’t mind.  Well . . .”

“Well, I have kept an impression of great solidity.  I’ll admit that.  A woman of granite.”

“A doctor once told me that I was made to last for ever,” she said.

“But essentially it’s the same thing,” I went on.  “Granite, too, is insensible.”

I watched her profile against the pillow and there came on her face an expression I knew well when with an indignation full of suppressed laughter she used to throw at me the word “Imbecile.”  I expected it to come, but it didn’t come.  I must say, though, that I was swimmy in my head and now and then had a noise as of the sea in my ears, so I might not have heard it.  The woman of granite, built to last for ever, continued to look at the glowing logs which made a sort of fiery ruin on the white pile of ashes.  “I will tell you how it is,” I said.  “When I have you before my eyes there is such a projection of my whole being towards you that I fail to see you distinctly.  It was like that from the beginning.  I may say that I never saw you distinctly till after we had parted and I thought you had gone from my sight for ever.  It was then that you took body in my imagination and that my mind seized on a definite form of you for all its adorations — for its profanations, too.  Don’t imagine me grovelling in spiritual abasement before a mere image.  I got a grip on you that nothing can shake now.”

“Don’t speak like this,” she said.  “It’s too much for me.  And there is a whole long night before us.”

“You don’t think that I dealt with you sentimentally enough perhaps?  But the sentiment was there; as clear a flame as ever burned on earth from the most remote ages before that eternal thing which is in you, which is your heirloom.  And is it my fault that what I had to give was real flame, and not a mystic’s incense?  It is neither your fault nor mine.  And now whatever we say to each other at night or in daylight, that sentiment must be taken for granted.  It will be there on the day I die — when you won’t be there.”

She continued to look fixedly at the red embers; and from her lips that hardly moved came the quietest possible whisper: “Nothing would be easier than to die for you.”

“Really,” I cried.  “And you expect me perhaps after this to kiss your feet in a transport of gratitude while I hug the pride of your words to my breast.  But as it happens there is nothing in me but contempt for this sublime declaration.  How dare you offer me this charlatanism of passion?  What has it got to do between you and me who are the only two beings in the world that may safely say that we have no need of shams between ourselves?  Is it possible that you are a charlatan at heart?  Not from egoism, I admit, but from some sort of fear.  Yet, should you be sincere, then — listen well to me — I would never forgive you.  I would visit your grave every day to curse you for an evil thing.”

“Evil thing,” she echoed softly.

“Would you prefer to be a sham — that one could forget?”

“You will never forget me,” she said in the same tone at the glowing embers.  “Evil or good.  But, my dear, I feel neither an evil nor a sham.  I have got to be what I am, and that, amigo, is not so easy; because I may be simple, but like all those on whom there is no peace I am not One.  No, I am not One!”

“You are all the women in the world,” I whispered bending over her.  She didn’t seem to be aware of anything and only spoke — always to the glow.

“If I were that I would say: God help them then.  But that would be more appropriate for Therese.  For me, I can only give them my infinite compassion.  I have too much reverence in me to invoke the name of a God of whom clever men have robbed me a long time ago.  How could I help it?  For the talk was clever and — and I had a mind.  And I am also, as Therese says, naturally sinful.  Yes, my dear, I may be naturally wicked but I am not evil and I could die for you.”

“You!” I said.  “You are afraid to die.”

“Yes.  But not for you.”

The whole structure of glowing logs fell down, raising a small turmoil of white ashes and sparks.  The tiny crash seemed to wake her up thoroughly.  She turned her head upon the cushion to look at me.

“It’s a very extraordinary thing, we two coming together like this,” she said with conviction.  “You coming in without knowing I was here and then telling me that you can’t very well go out of the room.  That sounds funny.  I wouldn’t have been angry if you had said that you wouldn’t.  It would have hurt me.  But nobody ever paid much attention to my feelings.  Why do you smile like this?”

“At a thought.  Without any charlatanism of passion I am able to tell you of something to match your devotion.  I was not afraid for your sake to come within a hair’s breadth of what to all the world would have been a squalid crime.  Note that you and I are persons of honour.  And there might have been a criminal trial at the end of it for me.  Perhaps the scaffold.”

“Do you say these horrors to make me tremble?”

“Oh, you needn’t tremble.  There shall be no crime.  I need not risk the scaffold, since now you are safe.  But I entered this room meditating resolutely on the ways of murder, calculating possibilities and chances without the slightest compunction.  It’s all over now.  It was all over directly I saw you here, but it had been so near that I shudder yet.”

She must have been very startled because for a time she couldn’t speak.  Then in a faint voice:

“For me!  For me!” she faltered out twice.

“For you — or for myself?  Yet it couldn’t have been selfish.  What would it have been to me that you remained in the world?  I never expected to see you again.  I even composed a most beautiful letter of farewell.  Such a letter as no woman had ever received.”

Instantly she shot out a hand towards me.  The edges of the fur cloak fell apart.  A wave of the faintest possible scent floated into my nostrils.

“Let me have it,” she said imperiously.

“You can’t have it.  It’s all in my head.  No woman will read it.  I suspect it was something that could never have been written.  But what a farewell!  And now I suppose we shall say good-bye without even a handshake.  But you are safe!  Only I must ask you not to come out of this room till I tell you you may.”

I was extremely anxious that Señor Ortega should never even catch a glimpse of Doña Rita, never guess how near he had been to her.  I was extremely anxious the fellow should depart for Tolosa and get shot in a ravine; or go to the Devil in his own way, as long as he lost the track of Doña Rita completely.  He then, probably, would get mad and get shut up, or else get cured, forget all about it, and devote himself to his vocation, whatever it was — keep a shop and grow fat.  All this flashed through my mind in an instant and while I was still dazzled by those comforting images, the voice of Doña Rita pulled me up with a jerk.

“You mean not out of the house?”

“No, I mean not out of this room,” I said with some embarrassment.

“What do you mean?  Is there something in the house then?  This is most extraordinary!  Stay in this room?  And you, too, it seems?  Are you also afraid for yourself?”

“I can’t even give you an idea how afraid I was.  I am not so much now.  But you know very well, Doña Rita, that I never carry any sort of weapon in my pocket.”

“Why don’t you, then?” she asked in a flash of scorn which bewitched me so completely for an instant that I couldn’t even smile at it.

“Because if I am unconventionalized I am an old European,” I murmured gently.  “No, Excellentissima, I shall go through life without as much as a switch in my hand.  It’s no use you being angry.  Adapting to this great moment some words you’ve heard before: I am like that.  Such is my character!”

Doña Rita frankly stared at me — a most unusual expression for her to have.  Suddenly she sat up.

“Don George,” she said with lovely animation, “I insist upon knowing who is in my house.”

“You insist! . . . But Therese says it is her house.”

Had there been anything handy, such as a cigarette box, for instance, it would have gone sailing through the air spouting cigarettes as it went.  Rosy all over, cheeks, neck, shoulders, she seemed lighted up softly from inside like a beautiful transparency.  But she didn’t raise her voice.

“You and Therese have sworn my ruin.  If you don’t tell me what you mean I will go outside and shout up the stairs to make her come down.  I know there is no one but the three of us in the house.”

“Yes, three; but not counting my Jacobin.  There is a Jacobin in the house.”

“A Jac . . .!  Oh, George, is this the time to jest?” she began in persuasive tones when a faint but peculiar noise stilled her lips as though they had been suddenly frozen.  She became quiet all over instantly.  I, on the contrary, made an involuntary movement before I, too, became as still as death.  We strained our ears; but that peculiar metallic rattle had been so slight and the silence now was so perfect that it was very difficult to believe one’s senses.  Doña Rita looked inquisitively at me.  I gave her a slight nod.  We remained looking into each other’s eyes while we listened and listened till the silence became unbearable.  Doña Rita whispered composedly: “Did you hear?”

“I am asking myself . . . I almost think I didn’t.”

“Don’t shuffle with me.  It was a scraping noise.”

“Something fell.”

“Something!  What thing?  What are the things that fall by themselves?  Who is that man of whom you spoke?  Is there a man?”

“No doubt about it whatever.  I brought him here myself.”

“What for?”

“Why shouldn’t I have a Jacobin of my own?  Haven’t you one, too?  But mine is a different problem from that white-haired humbug of yours.  He is a genuine article.  There must be plenty like him about.  He has scores to settle with half a dozen people, he says, and he clamours for revolutions to give him a chance.”

“But why did you bring him here?”

“I don’t know — from sudden affection . . . “

All this passed in such low tones that we seemed to make out the words more by watching each other’s lips than through our sense of hearing.  Man is a strange animal.  I didn’t care what I said.  All I wanted was to keep her in her pose, excited and still, sitting up with her hair loose, softly glowing, the dark brown fur making a wonderful contrast with the white lace on her breast.  All I was thinking of was that she was adorable and too lovely for words!  I cared for nothing but that sublimely aesthetic impression.  It summed up all life, all joy, all poetry!  It had a divine strain.  I am certain that I was not in my right mind.  I suppose I was not quite sane.  I am convinced that at that moment of the four people in the house it was Doña Rita who upon the whole was the most sane.  She observed my face and I am sure she read there something of my inward exaltation.  She knew what to do.  In the softest possible tone and hardly above her breath she commanded: “George, come to yourself.”