Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (425 page)

He would be the first to retire.  He was not infirm.  With him too the life on board ship seemed to agree; but from a sense of duty, of affection, or to placate his hidden fury, his daughter always accompanied him to his state-room “to make him comfortable.”  She lighted his lamp, helped him into his dressing-gown or got him a book from a bookcase fitted in there — but this last rarely, because Mr. Smith used to declare “I am no reader” with something like pride in his low tones.  Very often after kissing her good-night on the forehead he would treat her to some such fretful remark: “It’s like being in jail — ’pon my word.  I suppose that man is out there waiting for you.  Head jailer!  Ough!”

She would smile vaguely; murmur a conciliatory “How absurd.”  But once, out of patience, she said quite sharply “Leave off.  It hurts me.  One would think you hate me.”

“It isn’t you I hate,” he went on monotonously breathing at her.  “No, it isn’t you.  But if I saw that you loved that man I think I could hate you too.”

That word struck straight at her heart.  “You wouldn’t be the first then,” she muttered bitterly.  But he was busy with his fixed idea and uttered an awfully equable “But you don’t!  Unfortunate girl!”

She looked at him steadily for a time then said “Good-night, papa.”

As a matter of fact Anthony very seldom waited for her alone at the table with the scattered cards, glasses, water-jug, bottles and soon.  He took no more opportunities to be alone with her than was absolutely necessary for the edification of Mrs. Brown.  Excellent, faithful woman; the wife of his still more excellent and faithful steward.  And Flora wished all these excellent people, devoted to Anthony, she wished them all further; and especially the nice, pleasant-spoken Mrs. Brown with her beady, mobile eyes and her “Yes certainly, ma’am,” which seemed to her to have a mocking sound.  And so this short trip — to the Western Islands only — came to an end.  It was so short that when young Powell joined the Ferndale by a memorable stroke of chance, no more than seven months had elapsed since the — let us say the liberation of the convict de Barral and his avatar into Mr. Smith.

* * * * *

For the time the ship was loading in London Anthony took a cottage near a little country station in Essex, to house Mr. Smith and Mr. Smith’s daughter.  It was altogether his idea.  How far it was necessary for Mr. Smith to seek rural retreat I don’t know.  Perhaps to some extent it was a judicious arrangement.  There were some obligations incumbent on the liberated de Barral (in connection with reporting himself to the police I imagine) which Mr. Smith was not anxious to perform.  De Barral had to vanish; the theory was that de Barral had vanished, and it had to be upheld.  Poor Flora liked the country, even if the spot had nothing more to recommend it than its retired character.

Now and then Captain Anthony ran down; but as the station was a real wayside one, with no early morning trains up, he could never stay for more than the afternoon.  It appeared that he must sleep in town so as to be early on board his ship.  The weather was magnificent and whenever the captain of the Ferndale was seen on a brilliant afternoon coming down the road Mr. Smith would seize his stick and toddle off for a solitary walk.  But whether he would get tired or because it gave him some satisfaction to see “that man” go away — or for some cunning reason of his own, he was always back before the hour of Anthony’s departure.  On approaching the cottage he would see generally “that man” lying on the grass in the orchard at some distance from his daughter seated in a chair brought out of the cottage’s living room.  Invariably Mr. Smith made straight for them and as invariably had the feeling that his approach was not disturbing a very intimate conversation.  He sat with them, through a silent hour or so, and then it would be time for Anthony to go.  Mr. Smith, perhaps from discretion, would casually vanish a minute or so before, and then watch through the diamond panes of an upstairs room “that man” take a lingering look outside the gate at the invisible Flora, lift his hat, like a caller, and go off down the road.  Then only Mr. Smith would join his daughter again.

These were the bad moments for her.  Not always, of course, but frequently.  It was nothing extraordinary to hear Mr. Smith begin gently with some observation like this:

“That man is getting tired of you.”

He would never pronounce Anthony’s name.  It was always “that man.”

Generally she would remain mute with wide open eyes gazing at nothing between the gnarled fruit trees.  Once, however, she got up and walked into the cottage.  Mr. Smith followed her carrying the chair.  He banged it down resolutely and in that smooth inexpressive tone so many ears used to bend eagerly to catch when it came from the Great de Barral he said:

“Let’s get away.”

She had the strength of mind not to spin round.  On the contrary she went on to a shabby bit of a mirror on the wall.  In the greenish glass her own face looked far off like the livid face of a drowned corpse at the bottom of a pool.  She laughed faintly.

“I tell you that man’s getting — ”

“Papa,” she interrupted him.  “I have no illusions as to myself.  It has happened to me before but — ”

Her voice failing her suddenly her father struck in with quite an unwonted animation.  “Let’s make a rush for it, then.”

Having mastered both her fright and her bitterness, she turned round, sat down and allowed her astonishment to be seen.  Mr. Smith sat down too, his knees together and bent at right angles, his thin legs parallel to each other and his hands resting on the arms of the wooden arm-chair.  His hair had grown long, his head was set stiffly, there was something fatuously venerable in his aspect.

“You can’t care for him.  Don’t tell me.  I understand your motive.  And I have called you an unfortunate girl.  You are that as much as if you had gone on the streets.  Yes.  Don’t interrupt me, Flora.  I was everlastingly being interrupted at the trial and I can’t stand it any more.  I won’t be interrupted by my own child.  And when I think that it is on the very day before they let me out that you . . . “

He had wormed this fact out of her by that time because Flora had got tired of evading the question.  He had been very much struck and distressed.  Was that the trust she had in him?  Was that a proof of confidence and love?  The very day before!  Never given him even half a chance.  It was as at the trial.  They never gave him a chance.  They would not give him time.  And there was his own daughter acting exactly as his bitterest enemies had done.  Not giving him time!

The monotony of that subdued voice nearly lulled her dismay to sleep.  She listened to the unavoidable things he was saying.

“But what induced that man to marry you?  Of course he’s a gentleman.  One can see that.  And that makes it worse.  Gentlemen don’t understand anything about city affairs — finance.  Why! — the people who started the cry after me were a firm of gentlemen.  The counsel, the judge — all gentlemen — quite out of it!  No notion of . . . And then he’s a sailor too.  Just a skipper — ”

“My grandfather was nothing else,” she interrupted.  And he made an angular gesture of impatience.

“Yes.  But what does a silly sailor know of business?  Nothing.  No conception.  He can have no idea of what it means to be the daughter of Mr. de Barral — even after his enemies had smashed him.  What on earth induced him — ”

She made a movement because the level voice was getting on her nerves.  And he paused, but only to go on again in the same tone with the remark:

“Of course you are pretty.  And that’s why you are lost — like many other poor girls.  Unfortunate is the word for you.”

She said: “It may be.  Perhaps it is the right word; but listen, papa.  I mean to be honest.”

He began to exhale more speeches.

“Just the sort of man to get tired and then leave you and go off with his beastly ship.  And anyway you can never be happy with him.  Look at his face.  I want to save you.  You see I was not perhaps a very good husband to your poor mother.  She would have done better to have left me long before she died.  I have been thinking it all over.  I won’t have you unhappy.”

He ran his eyes over her with an attention which was surprisingly noticeable.  Then said, “H’m!  Yes.  Let’s clear out before it is too late.  Quietly, you and I.”

She said as if inspired and with that calmness which despair often gives: “There is no money to go away with, papa.”

He rose up straightening himself as though he were a hinged figure.  She said decisively:

“And of course you wouldn’t think of deserting me, papa?”

“Of course not,” sounded his subdued tone.  And he left her, gliding away with his walk which Mr. Powell described to me as being as level and wary as his voice.  He walked as if he were carrying a glass full of water on his head.

Flora naturally said nothing to Anthony of that edifying conversation.  His generosity might have taken alarm at it and she did not want to be left behind to manage her father alone.  And moreover she was too honest.  She would be honest at whatever cost.  She would not be the first to speak.  Never.  And the thought came into her head: “I am indeed an unfortunate creature!”

It was by the merest coincidence that Anthony coming for the afternoon two days later had a talk with Mr. Smith in the orchard.  Flora for some reason or other had left them for a moment; and Anthony took that opportunity to be frank with Mr. Smith.  He said: “It seems to me, sir, that you think Flora has not done very well for herself.  Well, as to that I can’t say anything.  All I want you to know is that I have tried to do the right thing.”  And then he explained that he had willed everything he was possessed of to her.  “She didn’t tell you, I suppose?”

Mr. Smith shook his head slightly.  And Anthony, trying to be friendly, was just saying that he proposed to keep the ship away from home for at least two years.  “I think, sir, that from every point of view it would be best,” when Flora came back and the conversation, cut short in that direction, languished and died.  Later in the evening, after Anthony had been gone for hours, on the point of separating for the night, Mr. Smith remarked suddenly to his daughter after a long period of brooding:

“A will is nothing.  One tears it up.  One makes another.”  Then after reflecting for a minute he added unemotionally:

“One tells lies about it.”

Flora, patient, steeled against every hurt and every disgust to the point of wondering at herself, said: “You push your dislike of — of — Roderick too far, papa.  You have no regard for me.  You hurt me.”

He, as ever inexpressive to the point of terrifying her sometimes by the contrast of his placidity and his words, turned away from her a pair of faded eyes.

“I wonder how far your dislike goes,” he began.  “His very name sticks in your throat.  I’ve noticed it.  It hurts me.  What do you think of that?  You might remember that you are not the only person that’s hurt by your folly, by your hastiness, by your recklessness.”  He brought back his eyes to her face.  “And the very day before they were going to let me out.”  His feeble voice failed him altogether, the narrow compressed lips only trembling for a time before he added with that extraordinary equanimity of tone, “I call it sinful.”

Flora made no answer.  She judged it simpler, kinder and certainly safer to let him talk himself out.  This, Mr. Smith, being naturally taciturn, never took very long to do.  And we must not imagine that this sort of thing went on all the time.  She had a few good days in that cottage.  The absence of Anthony was a relief and his visits were pleasurable.  She was quieter.  He was quieter too.  She was almost sorry when the time to join the ship arrived.  It was a moment of anguish, of excitement; they arrived at the dock in the evening and Flora after “making her father comfortable” according to established usage lingered in the state-room long enough to notice that he was surprised.  She caught his pale eyes observing her quite stonily.  Then she went out after a cheery good-night.

Contrary to her hopes she found Anthony yet in the saloon.  Sitting in his arm-chair at the head of the table he was picking up some business papers which he put hastily in his breast pocket and got up.  He asked her if her day, travelling up to town and then doing some shopping, had tired her.  She shook her head.  Then he wanted to know in a half-jocular way how she felt about going away, and for a long voyage this time.

“Does it matter how I feel?” she asked in a tone that cast a gloom over his face.  He answered with repressed violence which she did not expect:

“No, it does not matter, because I cannot go without you.  I’ve told you . . . You know it.  You don’t think I could.”

“I assure you I haven’t the slightest wish to evade my obligations,” she said steadily.  “Even if I could.  Even if I dared, even if I had to die for it!”

He looked thunderstruck.  They stood facing each other at the end of the saloon.  Anthony stuttered.  “Oh no.  You won’t die.  You don’t mean it.  You have taken kindly to the sea.”

She laughed, but she felt angry.

“No, I don’t mean it.  I tell you I don’t mean to evade my obligations.  I shall live on . . . feeling a little crushed, nevertheless.”

“Crushed!” he repeated.  “What’s crushing you?”

“Your magnanimity,” she said sharply.  But her voice was softened after a time.  “Yet I don’t know.  There is a perfection in it — do you understand me, Roderick? — which makes it almost possible to bear.”

He sighed, looked away, and remarked that it was time to put out the lamp in the saloon.  The permission was only till ten o’clock.

“But you needn’t mind that so much in your cabin.  Just see that the curtains of the ports are drawn close and that’s all.  The steward might have forgotten to do it.  He lighted your reading lamp in there before he went ashore for a last evening with his wife.  I don’t know if it was wise to get rid of Mrs. Brown.  You will have to look after yourself, Flora.”

He was quite anxious; but Flora as a matter of fact congratulated herself on the absence of Mrs. Brown.  No sooner had she closed the door of her state-room than she murmured fervently, “Yes!  Thank goodness, she is gone.”  There would be no gentle knock, followed by her appearance with her equivocal stare and the intolerable: “Can I do anything for you, ma’am?” which poor Flora had learned to fear and hate more than any voice or any words on board that ship — her only refuge from the world which had no use for her, for her imperfections and for her troubles.