Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (410 page)

“By Jove!” I said.  “They are about to let him out!  I never thought of that.”

Fyne was contemptuous either of me or of things at large.

“You didn’t suppose he was to be kept in jail for life?”

At that moment I caught sight of Flora de Barral at the junction of the two streets.  Then some vehicles following each other in quick succession hid from my sight the black slight figure with just a touch of colour in her hat.  She was walking slowly; and it might have been caution or reluctance.  While listening to Fyne I stared hard past his shoulder trying to catch sight of her again.  He was going on with positive heat, the rags of his solemnity dropping off him at every second sentence.

That was just it.  His wife and he had been perfectly aware of it.  Of course the girl never talked of her father with Mrs. Fyne.  I suppose with her theory of innocence she found it difficult.  But she must have been thinking of it day and night.  What to do with him?  Where to go?  How to keep body and soul together?  He had never made any friends.  The only relations were the atrocious East-end cousins.  We know what they were.  Nothing but wretchedness, whichever way she turned in an unjust and prejudiced world.  And to look at him helplessly she felt would be too much for her.

I won’t say I was thinking these thoughts.  It was not necessary.  This complete knowledge was in my head while I stared hard across the wide road, so hard that I failed to hear little Fyne till he raised his deep voice indignantly.

“I don’t blame the girl,” he was saying.  “He is infatuated with her.  Anybody can see that.  Why she should have got such a hold on him I can’t understand.  She said “Yes” to him only for the sake of that fatuous, swindling father of hers.  It’s perfectly plain if one thinks it over a moment.  One needn’t even think of it.  We have it under her own hand.  In that letter to my wife she says she has acted unscrupulously.  She has owned up, then, for what else can it mean, I should like to know.  And so they are to be married before that old idiot comes out . . . He will be surprised,” commented Fyne suddenly in a strangely malignant tone.  “He shall be met at the jail door by a Mrs. Anthony, a Mrs. Captain Anthony.  Very pleasant for Zoe.  And for all I know, my brother-in-law means to turn up dutifully too.  A little family event.  It’s extremely pleasant to think of.  Delightful.  A charming family party.  We three against the world — and all that sort of thing.  And what for.  For a girl that doesn’t care twopence for him.”

The demon of bitterness had entered into little Fyne.  He amazed me as though he had changed his skin from white to black.  It was quite as wonderful.  And he kept it up, too.

“Luckily there are some advantages in the — the profession of a sailor.  As long as they defy the world away at sea somewhere eighteen thousand miles from here, I don’t mind so much.  I wonder what that interesting old party will say.  He will have another surprise.  They mean to drag him along with them on board the ship straight away.  Rescue work.  Just think of Roderick Anthony, the son of a gentleman, after all . . . “

He gave me a little shock.  I thought he was going to say the “son of the poet” as usual; but his mind was not running on such vanities now.  His unspoken thought must have gone on “and uncle of my girls.”  I suspect that he had been roughly handled by Captain Anthony up there, and the resentment gave a tremendous fillip to the slow play of his wits.  Those men of sober fancy, when anything rouses their imaginative faculty, are very thorough.  “Just think!” he cried.  “The three of them crowded into a four-wheeler, and Anthony sitting deferentially opposite that astonished old jail-bird!”

The good little man laughed.  An improper sound it was to come from his manly chest; and what made it worse was the thought that for the least thing, by a mere hair’s breadth, he might have taken this affair sentimentally.  But clearly Anthony was no diplomatist.  His brother-in-law must have appeared to him, to use the language of shore people, a perfect philistine with a heart like a flint.  What Fyne precisely meant by “wrangling” I don’t know, but I had no doubt that these two had “wrangled” to a profoundly disturbing extent.  How much the other was affected I could not even imagine; but the man before me was quite amazingly upset.

“In a four-wheeler!  Take him on board!” I muttered, startled by the change in Fyne.

“That’s the plan — nothing less.  If I am to believe what I have been told, his feet will scarcely touch the ground between the prison-gates and the deck of that ship.”

The transformed Fyne spoke in a forcibly lowered tone which I heard without difficulty.  The rumbling, composite noises of the street were hushed for a moment, during one of these sudden breaks in the traffic as if the stream of commerce had dried up at its source.  Having an unobstructed view past Fyne’s shoulder, I was astonished to see that the girl was still there.  I thought she had gone up long before.  But there was her black slender figure, her white face under the roses of her hat.  She stood on the edge of the pavement as people stand on the bank of a stream, very still, as if waiting — or as if unconscious of where she was.  The three dismal, sodden loafers (I could see them too; they hadn’t budged an inch) seemed to me to be watching her.  Which was horrible.

Meantime Fyne was telling me rather remarkable things — for him.  He declared first it was a mercy in a sense.  Then he asked me if it were not real madness, to saddle one’s existence with such a perpetual reminder.  The daily existence.  The isolated sea-bound existence.  To bring such an additional strain into the solitude already trying enough for two people was the craziest thing.  Undesirable relations were bad enough on shore.  One could cut them or at least forget their existence now and then.  He himself was preparing to forget his brother-in-law’s existence as much as possible.

That was the general sense of his remarks, not his exact words.  I thought that his wife’s brother’s existence had never been very embarrassing to him but that now of course he would have to abstain from his allusions to the “son of the poet — you know.”  I said “yes, yes” in the pauses because I did not want him to turn round; and all the time I was watching the girl intently.  I thought I knew now what she meant with her — ”He was most generous.”  Yes.  Generosity of character may carry a man through any situation.  But why didn’t she go then to her generous man?  Why stand there as if clinging to this solid earth which she surely hated as one must hate the place where one has been tormented, hopeless, unhappy?  Suddenly she stirred.  Was she going to cross over?  No.  She turned and began to walk slowly close to the curbstone, reminding me of the time when I discovered her walking near the edge of a ninety-foot sheer drop.  It was the same impression, the same carriage, straight, slim, with rigid head and the two hands hanging lightly clasped in front — only now a small sunshade was dangling from them.  I saw something fateful in that deliberate pacing towards the inconspicuous door with the words Hotel Entrance on the glass panels.

She was abreast of it now and I thought that she would stop again; but no!  She swerved rigidly — at the moment there was no one near her; she had that bit of pavement to herself — with inanimate slowness as if moved by something outside herself.

“A confounded convict,” Fyne burst out.

With the sound of that word offending my ears I saw the girl extend her arm, push the door open a little way and glide in.  I saw plainly that movement, the hand put out in advance with the gesture of a sleep-walker.

She had vanished, her black figure had melted in the darkness of the open door.  For some time Fyne said nothing; and I thought of the girl going upstairs, appearing before the man.  Were they looking at each other in silence and feeling they were alone in the world as lovers should at the moment of meeting?  But that fine forgetfulness was surely impossible to Anthony the seaman directly after the wrangling interview with Fyne the emissary of an order of things which stops at the edge of the sea.  How much he was disturbed I couldn’t tell because I did not know what that impetuous lover had had to listen to.

“Going to take the old fellow to sea with them,” I said.  “Well I really don’t see what else they could have done with him.  You told your brother-in-law what you thought of it?  I wonder how he took it.”

“Very improperly,” repeated Fyne.  “His manner was offensive, derisive, from the first.  I don’t mean he was actually rude in words.  Hang it all, I am not a contemptible ass.  But he was exulting at having got hold of a miserable girl.”

“It is pretty certain that she will be much less poor and miserable,” I murmured.

It looked as if the exultation of Captain Anthony had got on Fyne’s nerves.  “I told the fellow very plainly that he was abominably selfish in this,” he affirmed unexpectedly.

“You did!  Selfish!” I said rather taken aback.  “But what if the girl thought that, on the contrary, he was most generous.”

“What do you know about it,” growled Fyne.  The rents and slashes of his solemnity were closing up gradually but it was going to be a surly solemnity.  “Generosity!  I am disposed to give it another name.  No.  Not folly,” he shot out at me as though I had meant to interrupt him.  “Still another.  Something worse.  I need not tell you what it is,” he added with grim meaning.

“Certainly.  You needn’t — unless you like,” I said blankly.  Little Fyne had never interested me so much since the beginning of the de Barral-Anthony affair when I first perceived possibilities in him.  The possibilities of dull men are exciting because when they happen they suggest legendary cases of “possession,” not exactly by the devil but, anyhow, by a strange spirit.

“I told him it was a shame,” said Fyne.  “Even if the girl did make eyes at him — but I think with you that she did not.  Yes!  A shame to take advantage of a girl’s — a distresses girl that does not love him in the least.”

“You think it’s so bad as that?” I said.  “Because you know I don’t.”

“What can you think about it,” he retorted on me with a solemn stare.  “I go by her letter to my wife.”

“Ah! that famous letter.  But you haven’t actually read it,” I said.

“No, but my wife told me.  Of course it was a most improper sort of letter to write considering the circumstances.  It pained Mrs. Fyne to discover how thoroughly she had been misunderstood.  But what is written is not all.  It’s what my wife could read between the lines.  She says that the girl is really terrified at heart.”

“She had not much in life to give her any very special courage for it, or any great confidence in mankind.  That’s very true.  But this seems an exaggeration.”

“I should like to know what reasons you have to say that,” asked Fyne with offended solemnity.  “I really don’t see any.  But I had sufficient authority to tell my brother-in-law that if he thought he was going to do something chivalrous and fine he was mistaken.  I can see very well that he will do everything she asks him to do — but, all the same, it is rather a pitiless transaction.”

For a moment I felt it might be so.  Fyne caught sight of an approaching tram-car and stepped out on the road to meet it.  “Have you a more compassionate scheme ready?” I called after him.  He made no answer, clambered on to the rear platform, and only then looked back.  We exchanged a perfunctory wave of the hand.  We also looked at each other, he rather angrily, I fancy, and I with wonder.  I may also mention that it was for the last time.  From that day I never set eyes on the Fynes.  As usual the unexpected happened to me.  It had nothing to do with Flora de Barral.  The fact is that I went away.  My call was not like her call.  Mine was not urged on me with passionate vehemence or tender gentleness made all the finer and more compelling by the allurements of generosity which is a virtue as mysterious as any other but having a glamour of its own.  No, it was just a prosaic offer of employment on rather good terms which, with a sudden sense of having wasted my time on shore long enough, I accepted without misgivings.  And once started out of my indolence I went, as my habit was, very, very far away and for a long, long time.  Which is another proof of my indolence.  How far Flora went I can’t say.  But I will tell you my idea: my idea is that she went as far as she was able — as far as she could bear it — as far as she had to . . . “

PART II — THE KNIGHT

CHAPTER ONE — THE FERNDALE

I have said that the story of Flora de Barral was imparted to me in stages.  At this stage I did not see Marlow for some time.  At last, one evening rather early, very soon after dinner, he turned up in my rooms.

I had been waiting for his call primed with a remark which had not occurred to me till after he had gone away.

“I say,” I tackled him at once, “how can you be certain that Flora de Barral ever went to sea?  After all, the wife of the captain of the Ferndale — ” the lady that mustn’t be disturbed “of the old ship-keeper — may not have been Flora.”

“Well, I do know,” he said, “if only because I have been keeping in touch with Mr. Powell.”

“You have!” I cried.  “This is the first I hear of it.  And since when?”

“Why, since the first day.  You went up to town leaving me in the inn.  I slept ashore.  In the morning Mr. Powell came in for breakfast; and after the first awkwardness of meeting a man you have been yarning with over-night had worn off, we discovered a liking for each other.”

As I had discovered the fact of their mutual liking before either of them, I was not surprised.

“And so you kept in touch,” I said.

“It was not so very difficult.  As he was always knocking about the river I hired Dingle’s sloop-rigged three-tonner to be more on an equality.  Powell was friendly but elusive.  I don’t think he ever wanted to avoid me.  But it is a fact that he used to disappear out of the river in a very mysterious manner sometimes.  A man may land anywhere and bolt inland — but what about his five-ton cutter?  You can’t carry that in your hand like a suit-case.

“Then as suddenly he would reappear in the river, after one had given him up.  I did not like to be beaten.  That’s why I hired Dingle’s decked boat.  There was just the accommodation in her to sleep a man and a dog.  But I had no dog-friend to invite.  Fyne’s dog who saved Flora de Barral’s life is the last dog-friend I had.  I was rather lonely cruising about; but that, too, on the river has its charm, sometimes.  I chased the mystery of the vanishing Powell dreamily, looking about me at the ships, thinking of the girl Flora, of life’s chances — and, do you know, it was very simple.”