Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (411 page)

“What was very simple?” I asked innocently.

“The mystery.”

“They generally are that,” I said.

Marlow eyed me for a moment in a peculiar manner.

“Well, I have discovered the mystery of Powell’s disappearances.  The fellow used to run into one of these narrow tidal creeks on the Essex shore.  These creeks are so inconspicuous that till I had studied the chart pretty carefully I did not know of their existence.  One afternoon, I made Powell’s boat out, heading into the shore.  By the time I got close to the mud-flat his craft had disappeared inland.  But I could see the mouth of the creek by then.  The tide being on the turn I took the risk of getting stuck in the mud suddenly and headed in.  All I had to guide me was the top of the roof of some sort of small building.  I got in more by good luck than by good management.  The sun had set some time before; my boat glided in a sort of winding ditch between two low grassy banks; on both sides of me was the flatness of the Essex marsh, perfectly still.  All I saw moving was a heron; he was flying low, and disappeared in the murk.  Before I had gone half a mile, I was up with the building the roof of which I had seen from the river.  It looked like a small barn.  A row of piles driven into the soft bank in front of it and supporting a few planks made a sort of wharf.  All this was black in the falling dusk, and I could just distinguish the whitish ruts of a cart-track stretching over the marsh towards the higher land, far away.  Not a sound was to be heard.  Against the low streak of light in the sky I could see the mast of Powell’s cutter moored to the bank some twenty yards, no more, beyond that black barn or whatever it was.  I hailed him with a loud shout.  Got no answer.  After making fast my boat just astern, I walked along the bank to have a look at Powell’s.  Being so much bigger than mine she was aground already.  Her sails were furled; the slide of her scuttle hatch was closed and padlocked.  Powell was gone.  He had walked off into that dark, still marsh somewhere.  I had not seen a single house anywhere near; there did not seem to be any human habitation for miles; and now as darkness fell denser over the land I couldn’t see the glimmer of a single light.  However, I supposed that there must be some village or hamlet not very far away; or only one of these mysterious little inns one comes upon sometimes in most unexpected and lonely places.

“The stillness was oppressive.  I went back to my boat, made some coffee over a spirit-lamp, devoured a few biscuits, and stretched myself aft, to smoke and gaze at the stars.  The earth was a mere shadow, formless and silent, and empty, till a bullock turned up from somewhere, quite shadowy too.  He came smartly to the very edge of the bank as though he meant to step on board, stretched his muzzle right over my boat, blew heavily once, and walked off contemptuously into the darkness from which he had come.  I had not expected a call from a bullock, though a moment’s thought would have shown me that there must be lots of cattle and sheep on that marsh.  Then everything became still as before.  I might have imagined myself arrived on a desert island.  In fact, as I reclined smoking a sense of absolute loneliness grew on me.  And just as it had become intense, very abruptly and without any preliminary sound I heard firm, quick footsteps on the little wharf.  Somebody coming along the cart-track had just stepped at a swinging gait on to the planks.  That somebody could only have been Mr. Powell.  Suddenly he stopped short, having made out that there were two masts alongside the bank where he had left only one.  Then he came on silent on the grass.  When I spoke to him he was astonished.

“Who would have thought of seeing you here!” he exclaimed, after returning my good evening.

“I told him I had run in for company.  It was rigorously true.”

“You knew I was here?” he exclaimed.

“Of course,” I said.  “I tell you I came in for company.”

“He is a really good fellow,” went on Marlow.  “And his capacity for astonishment is quickly exhausted, it seems.  It was in the most matter-of-fact manner that he said, ‘Come on board of me, then; I have here enough supper for two.’  He was holding a bulky parcel in the crook of his arm.  I did not wait to be asked twice, as you may guess.  His cutter has a very neat little cabin, quite big enough for two men not only to sleep but to sit and smoke in.  We left the scuttle wide open, of course.  As to his provisions for supper, they were not of a luxurious kind.  He complained that the shops in the village were miserable.  There was a big village within a mile and a half.  It struck me he had been very long doing his shopping; but naturally I made no remark.  I didn’t want to talk at all except for the purpose of setting him going.”

“And did you set him going?” I asked.

“I did,” said Marlow, composing his features into an impenetrable expression which somehow assured me of his success better than an air of triumph could have done.

* * * * *

“You made him talk?” I said after a silence.

“Yes, I made him . . . about himself.”

“And to the point?”

“If you mean by this,” said Marlow, “that it was about the voyage of the Ferndale, then again, yes.  I brought him to talk about that voyage, which, by the by, was not the first voyage of Flora de Barral.  The man himself, as I told you, is simple, and his faculty of wonder not very great.  He’s one of those people who form no theories about facts.  Straightforward people seldom do.  Neither have they much penetration.  But in this case it did not matter.  I — we — have already the inner knowledge.  We know the history of Flora de Barral.  We know something of Captain Anthony.  We have the secret of the situation.  The man was intoxicated with the pity and tenderness of his part.  Oh yes!  Intoxicated is not too strong a word; for you know that love and desire take many disguises.  I believe that the girl had been frank with him, with the frankness of women to whom perfect frankness is impossible, because so much of their safety depends on judicious reticences.  I am not indulging in cheap sneers.  There is necessity in these things.  And moreover she could not have spoken with a certain voice in the face of his impetuosity, because she did not have time to understand either the state of her feelings, or the precise nature of what she was doing.

Had she spoken ever so clearly he was, I take it, too elated to hear her distinctly.  I don’t mean to imply that he was a fool.  Oh dear no!  But he had no training in the usual conventions, and we must remember that he had no experience whatever of women.  He could only have an ideal conception of his position.  An ideal is often but a flaming vision of reality.

To him enters Fyne, wound up, if I may express myself so irreverently, wound up to a high pitch by his wife’s interpretation of the girl’s letter.  He enters with his talk of meanness and cruelty, like a bucket of water on the flame.  Clearly a shock.  But the effects of a bucket of water are diverse.  They depend on the kind of flame.  A mere blaze of dry straw, of course . . . but there can be no question of straw there.  Anthony of the Ferndale was not, could not have been, a straw-stuffed specimen of a man.  There are flames a bucket of water sends leaping sky-high.

We may well wonder what happened when, after Fyne had left him, the hesitating girl went up at last and opened the door of that room where our man, I am certain, was not extinguished.  Oh no!  Nor cold; whatever else he might have been.

It is conceivable he might have cried at her in the first moment of humiliation, of exasperation, “Oh, it’s you!  Why are you here?  If I am so odious to you that you must write to my sister to say so, I give you back your word.”  But then, don’t you see, it could not have been that.  I have the practical certitude that soon afterwards they went together in a hansom to see the ship — as agreed.  That was my reason for saying that Flora de Barral did go to sea . . . “

“Yes.  It seems conclusive,” I agreed.  “But even without that — if, as you seem to think, the very desolation of that girlish figure had a sort of perversely seductive charm, making its way through his compassion to his senses (and everything is possible) — then such words could not have been spoken.”

“They might have escaped him involuntarily,” observed Marlow.  “However, a plain fact settles it.  They went off together to see the ship.”

“Do you conclude from this that nothing whatever was said?” I inquired.

“I should have liked to see the first meeting of their glances upstairs there,” mused Marlow.  “And perhaps nothing was said.  But no man comes out of such a ‘wrangle’ (as Fyne called it) without showing some traces of it.  And you may be sure that a girl so bruised all over would feel the slightest touch of anything resembling coldness.  She was mistrustful; she could not be otherwise; for the energy of evil is so much more forcible than the energy of good that she could not help looking still upon her abominable governess as an authority.  How could one have expected her to throw off the unholy prestige of that long domination?  She could not help believing what she had been told; that she was in some mysterious way odious and unlovable.  It was cruelly true — to her.  The oracle of so many years had spoken finally.  Only other people did not find her out at once . . . I would not go so far as to say she believed it altogether.  That would be hardly possible.  But then haven’t the most flattered, the most conceited of us their moments of doubt?  Haven’t they?  Well, I don’t know.  There may be lucky beings in this world unable to believe any evil of themselves.  For my own part I’ll tell you that once, many years ago now, it came to my knowledge that a fellow I had been mixed up with in a certain transaction — a clever fellow whom I really despised — was going around telling people that I was a consummate hypocrite.  He could know nothing of it.  It suited his humour to say so.  I had given him no ground for that particular calumny.  Yet to this day there are moments when it comes into my mind, and involuntarily I ask myself, ‘What if it were true?’  It’s absurd, but it has on one or two occasions nearly affected my conduct.  And yet I was not an impressionable ignorant young girl.  I had taken the exact measure of the fellow’s utter worthlessness long before.  He had never been for me a person of prestige and power, like that awful governess to Flora de Barral.  See the might of suggestion?  We live at the mercy of a malevolent word.  A sound, a mere disturbance of the air, sinks into our very soul sometimes.  Flora de Barral had been more astounded than convinced by the first impetuosity of Roderick Anthony.  She let herself be carried along by a mysterious force which her person had called into being, as her father had been carried away out of his depth by the unexpected power of successful advertising.

They went on board that morning.  The Ferndale had just come to her loading berth.  The only living creature on board was the ship-keeper — whether the same who had been described to us by Mr. Powell, or another, I don’t know.  Possibly some other man.  He, looking over the side, saw, in his own words, ‘the captain come sailing round the corner of the nearest cargo-shed, in company with a girl.’  He lowered the accommodation ladder down on to the jetty . . . “

“How do you know all this?” I interrupted.

Marlow interjected an impatient:

“You shall see by and by . . . Flora went up first, got down on deck and stood stock-still till the captain took her by the arm and led her aft.  The ship-keeper let them into the saloon.  He had the keys of all the cabins, and stumped in after them.  The captain ordered him to open all the doors, every blessed door; state-rooms, passages, pantry, fore-cabin — and then sent him away.

“The Ferndale had magnificent accommodation.  At the end of a passage leading from the quarter-deck there was a long saloon, its sumptuosity slightly tarnished perhaps, but having a grand air of roominess and comfort.  The harbour carpets were down, the swinging lamps hung, and everything in its place, even to the silver on the sideboard.  Two large stern cabins opened out of it, one on each side of the rudder casing.  These two cabins communicated through a small bathroom between them, and one was fitted up as the captain’s state-room.  The other was vacant, and furnished with arm-chairs and a round table, more like a room on shore, except for the long curved settee following the shape of the ship’s stern.  In a dim inclined mirror, Flora caught sight down to the waist of a pale-faced girl in a white straw hat trimmed with roses, distant, shadowy, as if immersed in water, and was surprised to recognize herself in those surroundings.  They seemed to her arbitrary, bizarre, strange.  Captain Anthony moved on, and she followed him.  He showed her the other cabins.  He talked all the time loudly in a voice she seemed to have known extremely well for a long time; and yet, she reflected, she had not heard it often in her life.  What he was saying she did not quite follow.  He was speaking of comparatively indifferent things in a rather moody tone, but she felt it round her like a caress.  And when he stopped she could hear, alarming in the sudden silence, the precipitated beating of her heart.

The ship-keeper dodged about the quarter-deck, out of hearing, and trying to keep out of sight.  At the same time, taking advantage of the open doors with skill and prudence, he could see the captain and “that girl” the captain had brought aboard.  The captain was showing her round very thoroughly.  Through the whole length of the passage, far away aft in the perspective of the saloon the ship-keeper had interesting glimpses of them as they went in and out of the various cabins, crossing from side to side, remaining invisible for a time in one or another of the state-rooms, and then reappearing again in the distance.  The girl, always following the captain, had her sunshade in her hands.  Mostly she would hang her head, but now and then she would look up.  They had a lot to say to each other, and seemed to forget they weren’t alone in the ship.  He saw the captain put his hand on her shoulder, and was preparing himself with a certain zest for what might follow, when the “old man” seemed to recollect himself, and came striding down all the length of the saloon.  At this move the ship-keeper promptly dodged out of sight, as you may believe, and heard the captain slam the inner door of the passage.  After that disappointment the ship-keeper waited resentfully for them to clear out of the ship.  It happened much sooner than he had expected.  The girl walked out on deck first.  As before she did not look round.  She didn’t look at anything; and she seemed to be in such a hurry to get ashore that she made for the gangway and started down the ladder without waiting for the captain.