Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (506 page)

“I was going from room to room and Therese was following me.  ‘I don’t know that my life is a secret to anybody,’ I said to her, ‘but how do you know anything about it?’  And then she told me that it was through a cousin of ours, that horrid wretch of a boy, you know.  He had finished his schooling and was a clerk in a Spanish commercial house of some kind, in Paris, and apparently had made it his business to write home whatever he could hear about me or ferret out from those relations of mine with whom I lived as a girl.  I got suddenly very furious.  I raged up and down the room (we were alone upstairs), and Therese scuttled away from me as far as the door.  I heard her say to herself, ‘It’s the evil spirit in her that makes her like this.’  She was absolutely convinced of that.  She made the sign of the cross in the air to protect herself.  I was quite astounded.  And then I really couldn’t help myself.  I burst into a laugh.  I laughed and laughed; I really couldn’t stop till Therese ran away.  I went downstairs still laughing and found her in the hall with her face to the wall and her fingers in her ears kneeling in a corner.  I had to pull her out by the shoulders from there.  I don’t think she was frightened; she was only shocked.  But I don’t suppose her heart is desperately bad, because when I dropped into a chair feeling very tired she came and knelt in front of me and put her arms round my waist and entreated me to cast off from me my evil ways with the help of saints and priests.  Quite a little programme for a reformed sinner.  I got away at last.  I left her sunk on her heels before the empty chair looking after me.  ‘I pray for you every night and morning, Rita,’ she said. — ’Oh, yes.  I know you are a good sister,’ I said to her.  I was letting myself out when she called after me, ‘And what about this house, Rita?’  I said to her, ‘Oh, you may keep it till the day I reform and enter a convent.’  The last I saw of her she was still on her knees looking after me with her mouth open.  I have seen her since several times, but our intercourse is, at any rate on her side, as of a frozen nun with some great lady.  But I believe she really knows how to make men comfortable.  Upon my word I think she likes to look after men.  They don’t seem to be such great sinners as women are.  I think you could do worse than take up your quarters at number 10.  She will no doubt develop a saintly sort of affection for you, too.”

I don’t know that the prospect of becoming a favourite of Doña Rita’s peasant sister was very fascinating to me.  If I went to live very willingly at No. 10 it was because everything connected with Doña Rita had for me a peculiar fascination.  She had only passed through the house once as far as I knew; but it was enough.  She was one of those beings that leave a trace.  I am not unreasonable — I mean for those that knew her.  That is, I suppose, because she was so unforgettable.  Let us remember the tragedy of Azzolati the ruthless, the ridiculous financier with a criminal soul (or shall we say heart) and facile tears.  No wonder, then, that for me, who may flatter myself without undue vanity with being much finer than that grotesque international intriguer, the mere knowledge that Doña Rita had passed through the very rooms in which I was going to live between the strenuous times of the sea-expeditions, was enough to fill my inner being with a great content.  Her glance, her darkly brilliant blue glance, had run over the walls of that room which most likely would be mine to slumber in.  Behind me, somewhere near the door, Therese, the peasant sister, said in a funnily compassionate tone and in an amazingly landlady-of-a-boarding-house spirit of false persuasiveness:

“You will be very comfortable here, Señor.  It is so peaceful here in the street.  Sometimes one may think oneself in a village.  It’s only a hundred and twenty-five francs for the friends of the King.  And I shall take such good care of you that your very heart will be able to rest.”

CHAPTER II

Doña Rita was curious to know how I got on with her peasant sister and all I could say in return for that inquiry was that the peasant sister was in her own way amiable.  At this she clicked her tongue amusingly and repeated a remark she had made before: “She likes young men.  The younger the better.”  The mere thought of those two women being sisters aroused one’s wonder.  Physically they were altogether of different design.  It was also the difference between living tissue of glowing loveliness with a divine breath, and a hard hollow figure of baked clay.

Indeed Therese did somehow resemble an achievement, wonderful enough in its way, in unglazed earthenware.  The only gleam perhaps that one could find on her was that of her teeth, which one used to get between her dull lips unexpectedly, startlingly, and a little inexplicably, because it was never associated with a smile.  She smiled with compressed mouth.  It was indeed difficult to conceive of those two birds coming from the same nest.  And yet . . . Contrary to what generally happens, it was when one saw those two women together that one lost all belief in the possibility of their relationship near or far.  It extended even to their common humanity.  One, as it were, doubted it.  If one of the two was representative, then the other was either something more or less than human.  One wondered whether these two women belonged to the same scheme of creation.  One was secretly amazed to see them standing together, speaking to each other, having words in common, understanding each other.  And yet! . . . Our psychological sense is the crudest of all; we don’t know, we don’t perceive how superficial we are.  The simplest shades escape us, the secret of changes, of relations.  No, upon the whole, the only feature (and yet with enormous differences) which Therese had in common with her sister, as I told Doña Rita, was amiability.

“For, you know, you are a most amiable person yourself,” I went on.  “It’s one of your characteristics, of course much more precious than in other people.  You transmute the commonest traits into gold of your own; but after all there are no new names.  You are amiable.  You were most amiable to me when I first saw you.”

“Really.  I was not aware.  Not specially . . . “

“I had never the presumption to think that it was special.  Moreover, my head was in a whirl.  I was lost in astonishment first of all at what I had been listening to all night.  Your history, you know, a wonderful tale with a flavour of wine in it and wreathed in clouds, with that amazing decapitated, mutilated dummy of a woman lurking in a corner, and with Blunt’s smile gleaming through a fog, the fog in my eyes, from Mills’ pipe, you know.  I was feeling quite inanimate as to body and frightfully stimulated as to mind all the time.  I had never heard anything like that talk about you before.  Of course I wasn’t sleepy, but still I am not used to do altogether without sleep like Blunt . . .”

“Kept awake all night listening to my story!”  She marvelled.

“Yes.  You don’t think I am complaining, do you?  I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.  Blunt in a ragged old jacket and a white tie and that incisive polite voice of his seemed strange and weird.  It seemed as though he were inventing it all rather angrily.  I had doubts as to your existence.”

“Mr. Blunt is very much interested in my story.”

“Anybody would be,” I said.  “I was.  I didn’t sleep a wink.  I was expecting to see you soon — and even then I had my doubts.”

“As to my existence?”

“It wasn’t exactly that, though of course I couldn’t tell that you weren’t a product of Captain Blunt’s sleeplessness.  He seemed to dread exceedingly to be left alone and your story might have been a device to detain us . . .”

“He hasn’t enough imagination for that,” she said.

“It didn’t occur to me.  But there was Mills, who apparently believed in your existence.  I could trust Mills.  My doubts were about the propriety.  I couldn’t see any good reason for being taken to see you.  Strange that it should be my connection with the sea which brought me here to the Villa.”

“Unexpected perhaps.”

“No.  I mean particularly strange and significant.”

“Why?”

“Because my friends are in the habit of telling me (and each other) that the sea is my only love.  They were always chaffing me because they couldn’t see or guess in my life at any woman, open or secret. . .”

“And is that really so?” she inquired negligently.

“Why, yes.  I don’t mean to say that I am like an innocent shepherd in one of those interminable stories of the eighteenth century.  But I don’t throw the word love about indiscriminately.  It may be all true about the sea; but some people would say that they love sausages.”

“You are horrible.”

“I am surprised.”

“I mean your choice of words.”

“And you have never uttered a word yet that didn’t change into a pearl as it dropped from your lips.  At least not before me.”

She glanced down deliberately and said, “This is better.  But I don’t see any of them on the floor.”

“It’s you who are horrible in the implications of your language.  Don’t see any on the floor!  Haven’t I caught up and treasured them all in my heart?  I am not the animal from which sausages are made.”

She looked at me suavely and then with the sweetest possible smile breathed out the word: “No.”

And we both laughed very loud.  O! days of innocence!  On this occasion we parted from each other on a light-hearted note.  But already I had acquired the conviction that there was nothing more lovable in the world than that woman; nothing more life-giving, inspiring, and illuminating than the emanation of her charm.  I meant it absolutely — not excepting the light of the sun.

From this there was only one step further to take.  The step into a conscious surrender; the open perception that this charm, warming like a flame, was also all-revealing like a great light; giving new depth to shades, new brilliance to colours, an amazing vividness to all sensations and vitality to all thoughts: so that all that had been lived before seemed to have been lived in a drab world and with a languid pulse.

A great revelation this.  I don’t mean to say it was soul-shaking.  The soul was already a captive before doubt, anguish, or dismay could touch its surrender and its exaltation.  But all the same the revelation turned many things into dust; and, amongst others, the sense of the careless freedom of my life.  If that life ever had any purpose or any aim outside itself I would have said that it threw a shadow across its path.  But it hadn’t.  There had been no path.  But there was a shadow, the inseparable companion of all light.  No illumination can sweep all mystery out of the world.  After the departed darkness the shadows remain, more mysterious because as if more enduring; and one feels a dread of them from which one was free before.  What if they were to be victorious at the last?  They, or what perhaps lurks in them: fear, deception, desire, disillusion — all silent at first before the song of triumphant love vibrating in the light.  Yes.  Silent.  Even desire itself!  All silent.  But not for long!

This was, I think, before the third expedition.  Yes, it must have been the third, for I remember that it was boldly planned and that it was carried out without a hitch.  The tentative period was over; all our arrangements had been perfected.  There was, so to speak, always an unfailing smoke on the hill and an unfailing lantern on the shore.  Our friends, mostly bought for hard cash and therefore valuable, had acquired confidence in us.  This, they seemed to say, is no unfathomable roguery of penniless adventurers.  This is but the reckless enterprise of men of wealth and sense and needn’t be inquired into.  The young caballero has got real gold pieces in the belt he wears next his skin; and the man with the heavy moustaches and unbelieving eyes is indeed very much of a man.  They gave to Dominic all their respect and to me a great show of deference; for I had all the money, while they thought that Dominic had all the sense.  That judgment was not exactly correct.  I had my share of judgment and audacity which surprises me now that the years have chilled the blood without dimming the memory.  I remember going about the business with light-hearted, clear-headed recklessness which, according as its decisions were sudden or considered, made Dominic draw his breath through his clenched teeth, or look hard at me before he gave me either a slight nod of assent or a sarcastic “Oh, certainly” — just as the humour of the moment prompted him.

One night as we were lying on a bit of dry sand under the lee of a rock, side by side, watching the light of our little vessel dancing away at sea in the windy distance, Dominic spoke suddenly to me.

“I suppose Alphonso and Carlos, Carlos and Alphonso, they are nothing to you, together or separately?”

I said: “Dominic, if they were both to vanish from the earth together or separately it would make no difference to my feelings.”

He remarked: “Just so.  A man mourns only for his friends.  I suppose they are no more friends to you than they are to me.  Those Carlists make a great consumption of cartridges.  That is well.  But why should we do all those mad things that you will insist on us doing till my hair,” he pursued with grave, mocking exaggeration, “till my hair tries to stand up on my head? and all for that Carlos, let God and the devil each guard his own, for that Majesty as they call him, but after all a man like another and — no friend.”

“Yes, why?” I murmured, feeling my body nestled at ease in the sand.

It was very dark under the overhanging rock on that night of clouds and of wind that died and rose and died again.  Dominic’s voice was heard speaking low between the short gusts.

“Friend of the Señora, eh?”

“That’s what the world says, Dominic.”

“Half of what the world says are lies,” he pronounced dogmatically.  “For all his majesty he may be a good enough man.  Yet he is only a king in the mountains and to-morrow he may be no more than you.  Still a woman like that — one, somehow, would grudge her to a better king.  She ought to be set up on a high pillar for people that walk on the ground to raise their eyes up to.  But you are otherwise, you gentlemen.  You, for instance, Monsieur, you wouldn’t want to see her set up on a pillar.”

“That sort of thing, Dominic,” I said, “that sort of thing, you understand me, ought to be done early.”