Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (494 page)

I liked it.

But chaff or no chaff they would have been surprised to see me leave them for the burly and sympathetic Mills.  I was ready to drop any easy company of equals to approach that interesting man with every mental deference.  It was not precisely because of that shipwreck.  He attracted and interested me the more because he was not to be seen.  The fear that he might have departed suddenly for England — (or for Spain) — caused me a sort of ridiculous depression as though I had missed a unique opportunity.  And it was a joyful reaction which emboldened me to signal to him with a raised arm across that café.

I was abashed immediately afterwards, when I saw him advance towards my table with his friend.  The latter was eminently elegant.  He was exactly like one of those figures one can see of a fine May evening in the neighbourhood of the Opera-house in Paris.  Very Parisian indeed.  And yet he struck me as not so perfectly French as he ought to have been, as if one’s nationality were an accomplishment with varying degrees of excellence.  As to Mills, he was perfectly insular.  There could be no doubt about him.  They were both smiling faintly at me.  The burly Mills attended to the introduction: “Captain Blunt.”

We shook hands.  The name didn’t tell me much.  What surprised me was that Mills should have remembered mine so well.  I don’t want to boast of my modesty but it seemed to me that two or three days was more than enough for a man like Mills to forget my very existence.  As to the Captain, I was struck on closer view by the perfect correctness of his personality.  Clothes, slight figure, clear-cut, thin, sun-tanned face, pose, all this was so good that it was saved from the danger of banality only by the mobile black eyes of a keenness that one doesn’t meet every day in the south of France and still less in Italy.  Another thing was that, viewed as an officer in mufti, he did not look sufficiently professional.  That imperfection was interesting, too.

You may think that I am subtilizing my impressions on purpose, but you may take it from a man who has lived a rough, a very rough life, that it is the subtleties of personalities, and contacts, and events, that count for interest and memory — and pretty well nothing else.  This — you see — is the last evening of that part of my life in which I did not know that woman.  These are like the last hours of a previous existence.  It isn’t my fault that they are associated with nothing better at the decisive moment than the banal splendours of a gilded café and the bedlamite yells of carnival in the street.

We three, however (almost complete strangers to each other), had assumed attitudes of serious amiability round our table.  A waiter approached for orders and it was then, in relation to my order for coffee, that the absolutely first thing I learned of Captain Blunt was the fact that he was a sufferer from insomnia.  In his immovable way Mills began charging his pipe.  I felt extremely embarrassed all at once, but became positively annoyed when I saw our Prax enter the café in a sort of mediaeval costume very much like what Faust wears in the third act.  I have no doubt it was meant for a purely operatic Faust.  A light mantle floated from his shoulders.  He strode theatrically up to our table and addressing me as “Young Ulysses” proposed I should go outside on the fields of asphalt and help him gather a few marguerites to decorate a truly infernal supper which was being organized across the road at the Maison Dorée — upstairs.  With expostulatory shakes of the head and indignant glances I called his attention to the fact that I was not alone.  He stepped back a pace as if astonished by the discovery, took off his plumed velvet toque with a low obeisance so that the feathers swept the floor, and swaggered off the stage with his left hand resting on the hilt of the property dagger at his belt.

Meantime the well-connected but rustic Mills had been busy lighting his briar and the distinguished Captain sat smiling to himself.  I was horribly vexed and apologized for that intrusion, saying that the fellow was a future great sculptor and perfectly harmless; but he had been swallowing lots of night air which had got into his head apparently.

Mills peered at me with his friendly but awfully searching blue eyes through the cloud of smoke he had wreathed about his big head.  The slim, dark Captain’s smile took on an amiable expression.  Might he know why I was addressed as “Young Ulysses” by my friend? and immediately he added the remark with urbane playfulness that Ulysses was an astute person.  Mills did not give me time for a reply.  He struck in: “That old Greek was famed as a wanderer — the first historical seaman.”  He waved his pipe vaguely at me.

“Ah!  Vraiment!”  The polite Captain seemed incredulous and as if weary.  “Are you a seaman?  In what sense, pray?”  We were talking French and he used the term homme de mer.

Again Mills interfered quietly.  “In the same sense in which you are a military man.”  (Homme de guerre.)

It was then that I heard Captain Blunt produce one of his striking declarations.  He had two of them, and this was the first.

“I live by my sword.”

It was said in an extraordinary dandified manner which in conjunction with the matter made me forget my tongue in my head.  I could only stare at him.  He added more naturally: “2nd Reg.  Castille, Cavalry.”  Then with marked stress in Spanish, “En las filas legitimas.”

Mills was heard, unmoved, like Jove in his cloud: “He’s on leave here.”

“Of course I don’t shout that fact on the housetops,” the Captain addressed me pointedly, “any more than our friend his shipwreck adventure.  We must not strain the toleration of the French authorities too much!  It wouldn’t be correct — and not very safe either.”

I became suddenly extremely delighted with my company.  A man who “lived by his sword,” before my eyes, close at my elbow!  So such people did exist in the world yet!  I had not been born too late!  And across the table with his air of watchful, unmoved benevolence, enough in itself to arouse one’s interest, there was the man with the story of a shipwreck that mustn’t be shouted on housetops.  Why?

I understood very well why, when he told me that he had joined in the Clyde a small steamer chartered by a relative of his, “a very wealthy man,” he observed (probably Lord X, I thought), to carry arms and other supplies to the Carlist army.  And it was not a shipwreck in the ordinary sense.  Everything went perfectly well to the last moment when suddenly the Numancia (a Republican ironclad) had appeared and chased them ashore on the French coast below Bayonne.  In a few words, but with evident appreciation of the adventure, Mills described to us how he swam to the beach clad simply in a money belt and a pair of trousers.  Shells were falling all round till a tiny French gunboat came out of Bayonne and shooed the Numancia away out of territorial waters.

He was very amusing and I was fascinated by the mental picture of that tranquil man rolling in the surf and emerging breathless, in the costume you know, on the fair land of France, in the character of a smuggler of war material.  However, they had never arrested or expelled him, since he was there before my eyes.  But how and why did he get so far from the scene of his sea adventure was an interesting question.  And I put it to him with most naïve indiscretion which did not shock him visibly.  He told me that the ship being only stranded, not sunk, the contraband cargo aboard was doubtless in good condition.  The French custom-house men were guarding the wreck.  If their vigilance could be — h’m — removed by some means, or even merely reduced, a lot of these rifles and cartridges could be taken off quietly at night by certain Spanish fishing boats.  In fact, salved for the Carlists, after all.  He thought it could be done. . . .

I said with professional gravity that given a few perfectly quiet nights (rare on that coast) it could certainly be done.

Mr. Mills was not afraid of the elements.  It was the highly inconvenient zeal of the French custom-house people that had to be dealt with in some way.

“Heavens!” I cried, astonished.  “You can’t bribe the French Customs.  This isn’t a South-American republic.”

“Is it a republic?” he murmured, very absorbed in smoking his wooden pipe.

“Well, isn’t it?”

He murmured again, “Oh, so little.”  At this I laughed, and a faintly humorous expression passed over Mills’ face.  No.  Bribes were out of the question, he admitted.  But there were many legitimist sympathies in Paris.  A proper person could set them in motion and a mere hint from high quarters to the officials on the spot not to worry over-much about that wreck. . . .

What was most amusing was the cool, reasonable tone of this amazing project.  Mr. Blunt sat by very detached, his eyes roamed here and there all over the café; and it was while looking upward at the pink foot of a fleshy and very much foreshortened goddess of some sort depicted on the ceiling in an enormous composition in the Italian style that he let fall casually the words, “She will manage it for you quite easily.”

“Every Carlist agent in Bayonne assured me of that,” said Mr. Mills.  “I would have gone straight to Paris only I was told she had fled here for a rest; tired, discontented.  Not a very encouraging report.”

“These flights are well known,” muttered Mr. Blunt.  “You shall see her all right.”

“Yes.  They told me that you . . . “

I broke in: “You mean to say that you expect a woman to arrange that sort of thing for you?”

“A trifle, for her,” Mr. Blunt remarked indifferently.  “At that sort of thing women are best.  They have less scruples.”

“More audacity,” interjected Mr. Mills almost in a whisper.

Mr. Blunt kept quiet for a moment, then: “You see,” he addressed me in a most refined tone, “a mere man may suddenly find himself being kicked down the stairs.”

I don’t know why I should have felt shocked by that statement.  It could not be because it was untrue.  The other did not give me time to offer any remark.  He inquired with extreme politeness what did I know of South American republics?  I confessed that I knew very little of them.  Wandering about the Gulf of Mexico I had a look-in here and there; and amongst others I had a few days in Haiti which was of course unique, being a negro republic.  On this Captain Blunt began to talk of negroes at large.  He talked of them with knowledge, intelligence, and a sort of contemptuous affection.  He generalized, he particularized about the blacks; he told anecdotes.  I was interested, a little incredulous, and considerably surprised.  What could this man with such a boulevardier exterior that he looked positively like, an exile in a provincial town, and with his drawing-room manner — what could he know of negroes?

Mills, sitting silent with his air of watchful intelligence, seemed to read my thoughts, waved his pipe slightly and explained: “The Captain is from South Carolina.”

“Oh,” I murmured, and then after the slightest of pauses I heard the second of Mr. J. K. Blunt’s declarations.

“Yes,” he said.  “Je suis Américain, catholique et gentil-homme,” in a tone contrasting so strongly with the smile, which, as it were, underlined the uttered words, that I was at a loss whether to return the smile in kind or acknowledge the words with a grave little bow.  Of course I did neither and there fell on us an odd, equivocal silence.  It marked our final abandonment of the French language.  I was the one to speak first, proposing that my companions should sup with me, not across the way, which would be riotous with more than one “infernal” supper, but in another much more select establishment in a side street away from the Cannebière.  It flattered my vanity a little to be able to say that I had a corner table always reserved in the Salon des Palmiers, otherwise Salon Blanc, where the atmosphere was legitimist and extremely decorous besides — even in Carnival time.  “Nine tenths of the people there,” I said, “would be of your political opinions, if that’s an inducement.  Come along.  Let’s be festive,” I encouraged them.

I didn’t feel particularly festive.  What I wanted was to remain in my company and break an inexplicable feeling of constraint of which I was aware.  Mills looked at me steadily with a faint, kind smile.

“No,” said Blunt.  “Why should we go there?  They will be only turning us out in the small hours, to go home and face insomnia.  Can you imagine anything more disgusting?”

He was smiling all the time, but his deep-set eyes did not lend themselves to the expression of whimsical politeness which he tried to achieve.  He had another suggestion to offer.  Why shouldn’t we adjourn to his rooms?  He had there materials for a dish of his own invention for which he was famous all along the line of the Royal Cavalry outposts, and he would cook it for us.  There were also a few bottles of some white wine, quite possible, which we could drink out of Venetian cut-glass goblets.  A bivouac feast, in fact.  And he wouldn’t turn us out in the small hours.  Not he.  He couldn’t sleep.

Need I say I was fascinated by the idea?  Well, yes.  But somehow I hesitated and looked towards Mills, so much my senior.  He got up without a word.  This was decisive; for no obscure premonition, and of something indefinite at that, could stand against the example of his tranquil personality.

CHAPTER II

The street in which Mr. Blunt lived presented itself to our eyes, narrow, silent, empty, and dark, but with enough gas-lamps in it to disclose its most striking feature: a quantity of flag-poles sticking out above many of its closed portals.  It was the street of Consuls and I remarked to Mr. Blunt that coming out in the morning he could survey the flags of all nations almost — except his own.  (The U. S. consulate was on the other side of the town.)  He mumbled through his teeth that he took good care to keep clear of his own consulate.

“Are you afraid of the consul’s dog?” I asked jocularly.  The consul’s dog weighed about a pound and a half and was known to the whole town as exhibited on the consular fore-arm in all places, at all hours, but mainly at the hour of the fashionable promenade on the Prado.

But I felt my jest misplaced when Mills growled low in my ear: “They are all Yankees there.”

I murmured a confused “Of course.”

Books are nothing.  I discovered that I had never been aware before that the Civil War in America was not printed matter but a fact only about ten years old.  Of course.  He was a South Carolinian gentleman.  I was a little ashamed of my want of tact.  Meantime, looking like the conventional conception of a fashionable reveller, with his opera-hat pushed off his forehead, Captain Blunt was having some slight difficulty with his latch-key; for the house before which we had stopped was not one of those many-storied houses that made up the greater part of the street.  It had only one row of windows above the ground floor.  Dead walls abutting on to it indicated that it had a garden.  Its dark front presented no marked architectural character, and in the flickering light of a street lamp it looked a little as though it had gone down in the world.  The greater then was my surprise to enter a hall paved in black and white marble and in its dimness appearing of palatial proportions.  Mr. Blunt did not turn up the small solitary gas-jet, but led the way across the black and white pavement past the end of the staircase, past a door of gleaming dark wood with a heavy bronze handle.  It gave access to his rooms he said; but he took us straight on to the studio at the end of the passage.