Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (187 page)

I wanted very much to see the young girl who had looked at me for a moment, and I certainly should have been distressed if Carlos had said she was married.

He answered, “What would you have?” and shrugged his shoulders gently. A smile came into his face. “She is very willful. I did not please her, I do not know why. Perhaps she has seen too many men like me.”

He told me that, when he reached Cuba, after parting with me on the Thames, his uncle, “in spite of certain influences,” had received him quite naturally as his heir, and the future head of the family. But Seraphina, whom by the laws of convenience he ought to have married, had quite calmly refused him.

“I did not impress her; she is romantic. She wanted a very bold man, a Cid, something that it is not easy to have.”

He paused again, and looked at me with some sort of challenge in his eyes.

“She could have met no one better than you,” I said.

He waved his hand a little. “Oh, for that —  —  — -” he said deprecatingly. “Besides, I am dying. I have never been well since I went into your cold sea, over there, after we left your sister. You remember how I coughed on board that miserable ship.”

I did remember it very well.

He went to the inner door, looked in, and then came back to me.

“Seraphina needs a guide — a controller — someone very strong and gentle, and kind and brave. My uncle will never ask her to marry against her wish; he is too old and has too little will. And for any man who would marry her — except one — there would be great dangers, for her and for him. It would need a cool man, and a brave man, and a good one, too, to hazard, perhaps even life, for her sake. She will be very rich. All our lands, all our towns, all our gold.” There was a suggestion of fabulousness in his dreamy voice. “They shall never be mine,” he added. “Vaya.”

He looked at me with his piercing eyes set to an expression that might have been gentle mockery. At any rate, it also contained intense scrutiny, and, perhaps, a little of appeal. I sighed myself.

“There is a man called O’Brien in there,” he said. “He does us the honour to pretend to my cousin’s hand.”

I felt singularly angry. “Well, he’s not a Spaniard,” I said.

Carlos answered mockingly, “Oh, for Spaniard, no. He is a descendant of the Irish kings.”

“He’s an adventurer,” I said. “You ought to be on your guard. You don’t know these bog-trotting fortune-hunters. They’re the laughter of Europe, kings and all.”

Carlos smiled again. “He’s a very dangerous man for all that,” he said. “I should not advise any one to come to Rio Medio, my uncle’s town, without making a friend of the Señor O’Brien.”

He went once more to the inner door, and, after a moment’s whispering with someone within, returned to me.

“My uncle still sleeps,” he said. “I must keep you a little longer. Ah, yes, the Señor O’Brien. He shall marry my cousin, I think, when I am dead.”

“You don’t know these fellows,” I said.

“Oh, I know them very well,” Carlos smiled, “there are many of them at Havana. They came there after what they call the ‘98, when there was great rebellion in Ireland, and many good Catholics were killed and ruined.”

“Then he’s a rebel, and ought to be hung,” I said.

Carlos laughed as of old. “It may be, but, my good Juan, we Christians do not see eye to eye with you. This man rebelled against your government, but, also, he suffered for the true faith. He is a good Catholic; he has suffered for it; and in the Ever Faithful Island, that is a passport. He has climbed very high; he is a judge of the Marine Court at Havana. That is why he is here to-day, attending my uncle in this affair of delivering up the pirates. My uncle loves him very much. O’Brien was at first my uncle’s clerk, and my uncle made him a juez, and he is also the intendant of my uncle’s estates, and he has a great influence in my uncle’s town of Rio Medio. I tell you, if you come to visit us, it will be as well to be on good terms with the Señor Juez O’Brien. My uncle is a very old man, and if I die before him, this O’Brien, I think, will end by marrying my cousin, because my poor uncle is very much in his hands. There are other pretenders, but they have little chance, because it is so very dangerous to come to my uncle’s town of Rio Medio, on account of this man’s intrigues and of his power with the populace.”

I looked at Carlos intently. The name of the town had seemed to be familiar to me. Now I suddenly remembered that it was where Nicolas el Demonio, the pirate who was so famous as to be almost mythical, had beaten off Admiral Rowley’s boats.

“Come, you had better see this Irish hidalgo who wants to do us so much honour,” — he gave an inscrutable glance at me, — ”but do not talk loudly till my uncle wakes.”

He threw the door open. I followed him into the room, where the vision of the ancient Don and the charming apparition of the young girl had retreated only a few moments before.

CHAPTER THREE

The room was very lofty and coldly dim; there were great bars in front of the begrimed windows. It was very bare, containing only a long black table, some packing cases, and half a dozen rocking chairs. Of these, five were very new and one very old, black and heavy, with a green leather seat and a coat of arms worked on its back cushions. There were little heaps of mahogany sawdust here and there on the dirty tiled floor, and a pile of sacking in one corner. Beneath a window the flap of an open trap-door half hid a large green damp-stain; a deep recess in the wall yawned like a cavern, and had two or three tubs in the right corner; a man with a blond head, slightly bald as if he had been tonsured, was rocking gently in one of the new chairs.

Opposite him, with his aged face towards us, sat the old Don asleep in the high chair. His delicate white hands lay along the arms, one of them holding a gold vinaigrette; his black, silver-headed cane was between his silk-stockinged legs. The diamond buckles of his shoes shot out little vivid rays, even in that gloomy place. The young girl was sitting with her hands to her temples and her elbows on the long table, minutely examining the motionlessness of a baby lizard, a tiny thing with golden eyes, whom fear seemed to have turned into stone.

We entered quietly, and after a moment she looked up candidly into my eyes, and placed her finger on her lips, motioning her head towards her father. She placed her hand in mine, and whispered very clearly:

“Be welcome, my English cousin,” and then dropped her eyes again to the lizard.

She knew all about me from Carlos. The man of whom I had seen only the top of his head, turned his chair suddenly and glinted at me with little blue eyes. He was rather small and round, with very firm flesh, and very white, plump hands. He was dressed in the black clothes of a Spanish judge. On his round face there was always a smile like that which hangs around the jaws of a pike — only more humorous. He bowed a little exaggeratedly to me and said:

“Ah, ye are that famous Mr. Kemp.”

I said that I imagined him the more famous Señor Juez O’Brien.

“It’s little use saying ye arren’t famous,” he said. His voice had the faint, infinitely sweet twang of certain Irishry; a thing as delicate and intangible as the scent of lime flowers. “Our noble friend” — he indicated Carlos with a little flutter of one white hand — ”has told me what make of a dare-devil gallant ye are; breaking the skulls of half the Bow Street runners for the sake of a friend in distress. Well, I honour ye for it; I’ve done as much myself.” He added, “In the old days,” and sighed.

“You mean in the ‘98,” I said, a little insolently.

O’Brien’s eyes twinkled. He had, as a matter of fact, nearly lost his neck in the Irish fiasco, either in Clonmel or Sligo, bolting violently from the English dragoons, in the mist, to a French man-of-war’s boats in the bay. To him, even though he was now a judge in Cuba, it was an episode of heroism of youth — of romance, in fact. So that, probably, he did not resent my mention of it. I certainly wanted to resent something that was slighting in his voice, and patronizing in his manner.

The old Don slumbered placidly, his face turned up to the distant begrimed ceiling.

“Now, I’ll make you a fair offer,” O’Brien said suddenly, after an intent study of the insolent glance that I gave him. I disliked him because I knew nothing about the sort of man he was. He was, as a matter of fact, more alien to me than Carlos. And he gave me the impression that, if perhaps he were not absolutely the better man, he could still make a fool of me, or at least make me look like a fool.

“I’m told you are a Separationist,” he said. “Well, it’s like me. I am an Irishman; there has been a price on my head in another island. And there are warrants out against you here for assaulting the admiral. We can work together, and there’s nothing low in what I have in mind for you.”

He had heard frequently from Carlos that I was a desperate and aristocratically lawless young man, who had lived in a district entirely given up to desperate and murderous smugglers. But this was the first I had heard definitely of warrants against me in Jamaica. That, no doubt, he had heard from Ramon, who knew everything. In all this little sardonic Irishman said to me, it seemed the only thing worth attention. It stuck in my mind while, in persuasive tones, and with airy fluency, he discoursed of the profits that could be made, nowadays, in arming privateers under the Mexican flag. He told me I needn’t be surprised at their being fitted out in a Spanish colony. “There’s more than one aspect to disloyalty like this,” said he dispassionately, but with a quick wink contrasting with his tone.

Spain resented our recognition of their rebellious colonies. And with the same cool persuasiveness, relieved by humorous smiles, he explained that the loyal Spaniards of the Ever Faithful Island thought there was no sin in doing harm to the English, even under the Mexican flag, whose legal existence they did not recognize.

“Mind ye, it’s an organized thing, I have something to say in it. It hurts Mr. Canning’s Government at home, the curse of Cromwell on him and them. They will be dropping some of their own colonies directly. And as you are a Separationist, small blame to you, and I am an Irishman, we shan’t cry our eyes out over it. Come, Mr. Kemp, ‘tis all for the good of the Cause.... And there’s nothing low. You are a gentleman, and I wouldn’t propose anything that was. The very best people in Havana are interested in the matter. Our schooners lie in Rio Medio, but I can’t be there all the time myself.”

Surprise deprived me of speech. I glanced at Carlos. He was watching us inscrutably. The young girl touched the lizard gently, but it was too frightened to move. O’Brien, with shrewd glances, rocked his chair.... What did I want? he inquired. To see life? What he proposed was the life for a fine young fellow like me. Moreover, I was half Scotch. Had I forgotten the wrongs of my own country? Had I forgotten the ‘45?

“You’ll have heard tell of a Scotch Chief Justice whose son spent in Amsterdam the money his father earned on the justice seat in Edinb’ro’ — money paid for rum and run silks . . .”

Of course I had heard of it; everybody had; but it had been some years before.

“We’re backwards hereabouts,” O’Brien jeered. “But over there they winked and chuckled at the judge, and they do the same in Havana at us.”

Suddenly from behind us the voice of the young girl said, “Of what do you discourse, my English cousin?”

O’Brien interposed deferentially. “Señorita, I ask him to come to Rio,” he said.

She turned her large dark eyes scrutinizingly upon me, then dropped them again. She was arranging some melon seeds in a rayed circle round the lizard that looked motionlessly at her.

“Do not speak very loudly, lest you awaken my father,” she warned us.

The old Don’s face was still turned to the ceiling. Carlos, standing behind his chair, opened his mouth a little in a half smile. I was really angry with O’Brien by that time, with his air of omniscience, superiority, and self-content, as if he were talking to a child or someone very credulous and weak-minded.

“What right have you to speak for me, Señor Juez?” I said in the best Spanish I could.

The young girl looked at me once more, and then again looked down.

“Oh, I can speak for you,” he answered in English, “because I know. Your position’s this.” He sat down in his rocking chair, crossed his legs, and looked at me as if he expected me to show signs of astonishment at his knowing so much. “You’re in a hole. You must leave this island of Jamaica — surely it’s as distressful as my own dear land — and you can’t go home, because the runners would be after you. You’re ‘wanted’ here as well as there, and you’ve nowhere to go.”

I looked at him, quite startled by this view of my case. He extended one plump hand towards me, and still further lowered his voice.

“Now, I offer you a good berth, a snug berth. And ‘tis a pretty spot.” He got a sort of languorous honey into his voice, and drawled out, “The — the Señorita’s.” He took an air of businesslike candour. “You can help us, and we you; we could do without you better than you without us. Our undertaking — there’s big names in it, just as in the Free Trading you know so well, don’t be saying you don’t — is worked from Havana. What we need is a man we can trust. We had one — Nichols. You remember the mate of the ship you came over in. He was Nicola el Demonio; he won’t be any longer — I can’t tell you why, it’s too long a story.”

I did remember very vividly that cadaverous Nova Scotian mate of the Thames, who had warned me with truculent menaces against showing my face in Rio Medio. I remembered his sallow, shiny cheeks, and the exaggerated gestures of his claw-like hands.

O’Brien smiled. “Nichols is alive right enough, but no more good than if he were dead. And that’s the truth. He pretends his nerve’s gone; he was a devil among tailors for a time, but he’s taken to crying now. It was when your blundering old admiral’s boats had to be beaten off that his zeal cooled. He thinks the British Government will rise in its strength.” There was a bitter contempt in his voice, but he regained his calm business tone. “It will do nothing of the sort. I’ve given them those seven poor devils that had to die to-day without absolution. So Nichols is done for, as far as we are concerned. I’ve got him put away to keep him from blabbing. You can have his place — and better than his place. He was only a sailor, which you are not. However, you know enough of ships, and what we want is a man with courage, of course, but also a man we can trust. Any of the Creoles would bolt into the bush the moment they’d five dollars in hand. We’ll pay you well; a large share of all you take.”