Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (548 page)

Both his hearers felt vividly the urgent necessity to hear no more. D’Alcacer, uncomfortable on a campstool, sat stiff and stared at the glass stopper of a carafe. Mrs. Travers turned a little sideways and leaning on her elbow rested her head on the palm of her hand like one thinking about matters of profound import. Mr. Travers talked; he talked inflexibly, in a harsh blank voice, as if reading a proclamation. The other two, as if in a state of incomplete trance, had their ears assailed by fragments of official verbiage.

“An international understanding — the duty to civilize — failed to carry out — compact — Canning — ” D’Alcacer became attentive for a moment. “ — not that this attempt, almost amusing in its impudence, influences my opinion. I won’t admit the possibility of any violence being offered to people of our position. It is the social aspect of such an incident I am desirous of criticising.”

Here d’Alcacer lost himself again in the recollection of Mrs. Travers and Immada looking at each other — the beginning and the end, the flower and the leaf, the phrase and the cry. Mr. Travers’ voice went on dogmatic and obstinate for a long time. The end came with a certain vehemence.

“And if the inferior race must perish, it is a gain, a step toward the perfecting of society which is the aim of progress.”

He ceased. The sparks of sunset in crystal and silver had gone out, and around the yacht the expanse of coast and Shallows seemed to await, unmoved, the coming of utter darkness. The dinner was over a long time ago and the patient stewards had been waiting, stoical in the downpour of words like sentries under a shower.

Mrs. Travers rose nervously and going aft began to gaze at the coast. Behind her the sun, sunk already, seemed to force through the mass of waters the glow of an unextinguishable fire, and below her feet, on each side of the yacht, the lustrous sea, as if reflecting the colour of her eyes, was tinged a sombre violet hue.

D’Alcacer came up to her with quiet footsteps and for some time they leaned side by side over the rail in silence. Then he said — ”How quiet it is!” and she seemed to perceive that the quietness of that evening was more profound and more significant than ever before. Almost without knowing it she murmured — ”It’s like a dream.” Another long silence ensued; the tranquillity of the universe had such an August ampleness that the sounds remained on the lips as if checked by the fear of profanation. The sky was limpid like a diamond, and under the last gleams of sunset the night was spreading its veil over the earth. There was something precious and soothing in the beautifully serene end of that expiring day, of the day vibrating, glittering and ardent, and dying now in infinite peace, without a stir, without a tremor, without a sigh — in the certitude of resurrection.

Then all at once the shadow deepened swiftly, the stars came out in a crowd, scattering a rain of pale sparks upon the blackness of the water, while the coast stretched low down, a dark belt without a gleam. Above it the top-hamper of the brig loomed indistinct and high.

Mrs. Travers spoke first.

“How unnaturally quiet! It is like a desert of land and water without a living soul.”

“One man at least dwells in it,” said d’Alcacer, lightly, “and if he is to be believed there are other men, full of evil intentions.”

“Do you think it is true?” Mrs. Travers asked.

Before answering d’Alcacer tried to see the expression of her face but the obscurity was too profound already.

“How can one see a dark truth on such a dark night?” he said, evasively. “But it is easy to believe in evil, here or anywhere else.”

She seemed to be lost in thought for a while.

“And that man himself?” she asked.

After some time d’Alcacer began to speak slowly. “Rough, uncommon, decidedly uncommon of his kind. Not at all what Don Martin thinks him to be. For the rest — mysterious to me. He is your countryman after all — ”

She seemed quite surprised by that view.

“Yes,” she said, slowly. “But you know, I can not — what shall I say? — imagine him at all. He has nothing in common with the mankind I know. There is nothing to begin upon. How does such a man live? What are his thoughts? His actions? His affections? His — ”

“His conventions,” suggested d’Alcacer. “That would include everything.”

Mr. Travers appeared suddenly behind them with a glowing cigar in his teeth. He took it between his fingers to declare with persistent acrimony that no amount of “scoundrelly intimidation” would prevent him from having his usual walk. There was about three hundred yards to the southward of the yacht a sandbank nearly a mile long, gleaming a silvery white in the darkness, plumetted in the centre with a thicket of dry bushes that rustled very loud in the slightest stir of the heavy night air. The day after the stranding they had landed on it “to stretch their legs a bit,” as the sailing-master defined it, and every evening since, as if exercising a privilege or performing a duty, the three paced there for an hour backward and forward lost in dusky immensity, threading at the edge of water the belt of damp sand, smooth, level, elastic to the touch like living flesh and sweating a little under the pressure of their feet.

This time d’Alcacer alone followed Mr. Travers. Mrs. Travers heard them get into the yacht’s smallest boat, and the night-watchman, tugging at a pair of sculls, pulled them off to the nearest point. Then the man returned. He came up the ladder and she heard him say to someone on deck:

“Orders to go back in an hour.”

His footsteps died out forward, and a somnolent, unbreathing repose took possession of the stranded yacht.

VI

After a time this absolute silence which she almost could feel pressing upon her on all sides induced in Mrs. Travers a state of hallucination. She saw herself standing alone, at the end of time, on the brink of days. All was unmoving as if the dawn would never come, the stars would never fade, the sun would never rise any more; all was mute, still, dead — as if the shadow of the outer darkness, the shadow of the uninterrupted, of the everlasting night that fills the universe, the shadow of the night so profound and so vast that the blazing suns lost in it are only like sparks, like pin-points of fire, the restless shadow that like a suspicion of an evil truth darkens everything upon the earth on its passage, had enveloped her, had stood arrested as if to remain with her forever.

And there was such a finality in that illusion, such an accord with the trend of her thought that when she murmured into the darkness a faint “so be it” she seemed to have spoken one of those sentences that resume and close a life.

As a young girl, often reproved for her romantic ideas, she had dreams where the sincerity of a great passion appeared like the ideal fulfilment and the only truth of life. Entering the world she discovered that ideal to be unattainable because the world is too prudent to be sincere. Then she hoped that she could find the truth of life an ambition which she understood as a lifelong devotion to some unselfish ideal. Mr. Travers’ name was on men’s lips; he seemed capable of enthusiasm and of devotion; he impressed her imagination by his impenetrability. She married him, found him enthusiastically devoted to the nursing of his own career, and had nothing to hope for now.

That her husband should be bewildered by the curious misunderstanding which had taken place and also permanently grieved by her disloyalty to his respectable ideals was only natural. He was, however, perfectly satisfied with her beauty, her brilliance, and her useful connections. She was admired, she was envied; she was surrounded by splendour and adulation; the days went on rapid, brilliant, uniform, without a glimpse of sincerity or true passion, without a single true emotion — not even that of a great sorrow. And swiftly and stealthily they had led her on and on, to this evening, to this coast, to this sea, to this moment of time and to this spot on the earth’s surface where she felt unerringly that the moving shadow of the unbroken night had stood still to remain with her forever.

“So be it!” she murmured, resigned and defiant, at the mute and smooth obscurity that hung before her eyes in a black curtain without a fold; and as if in answer to that whisper a lantern was run up to the foreyard-arm of the brig. She saw it ascend swinging for a. short space, and suddenly remain motionless in the air, piercing the dense night between the two vessels by its glance of flame that strong and steady seemed, from afar, to fall upon her alone.

Her thoughts, like a fascinated moth, went fluttering toward that light — that man — that girl, who had known war, danger, seen death near, had obtained evidently the devotion of that man. The occurrences of the afternoon had been strange in themselves, but what struck her artistic sense was the vigour of their presentation. They outlined themselves before her memory with the clear simplicity of some immortal legend. They were mysterious, but she felt certain they were absolutely true. They embodied artless and masterful feelings; such, no doubt, as had swayed mankind in the simplicity of its youth. She envied, for a moment, the lot of that humble and obscure sister. Nothing stood between that girl and the truth of her sensations. She could be sincerely courageous, and tender and passionate and — well — ferocious. Why not ferocious? She could know the truth of terror — and of affection, absolutely, without artificial trammels, without the pain of restraint.

Thinking of what such life could be Mrs. Travers felt invaded by that inexplicable exaltation which the consciousness of their physical capacities so often gives to intellectual beings. She glowed with a sudden persuasion that she also could be equal to such an existence; and her heart was dilated with a momentary longing to know the naked truth of things; the naked truth of life and passion buried under the growth of centuries.

She glowed and, suddenly, she quivered with the shock of coming to herself as if she had fallen down from a star. There was a sound of rippling water and a shapeless mass glided out of the dark void she confronted. A voice below her feet said:

“I made out your shape — on the sky.” A cry of surprise expired on her lips and she could only peer downward. Lingard, alone in the brig’s dinghy, with another stroke sent the light boat nearly under the yacht’s counter, laid his sculls in, and rose from the thwart. His head and shoulders loomed up alongside and he had the appearance of standing upon the sea. Involuntarily Mrs. Travers made a movement of retreat.

“Stop,” he said, anxiously, “don’t speak loud. No one must know. Where do your people think themselves, I wonder? In a dock at home? And you — ”

“My husband is not on board,” she interrupted, hurriedly.

“I know.”

She bent a little more over the rail.

“Then you are having us watched. Why?”

“Somebody must watch. Your people keep such a good look-out — don’t they? Yes. Ever since dark one of my boats has been dodging astern here, in the deep water. I swore to myself I would never see one of you, never speak to one of you here, that I would be dumb, blind, deaf. And — here I am!”

Mrs. Travers’ alarm and mistrust were replaced by an immense curiosity, burning, yet quiet, too, as if before the inevitable work of destiny. She looked downward at Lingard. His head was bared, and, with one hand upon the ship’s side, he seemed to be thinking deeply.

“Because you had something more to tell us,” Mrs. Travers suggested, gently.

“Yes,” he said in a low tone and without moving in the least.

“Will you come on board and wait?” she asked.

“Who? I!” He lifted his head so quickly as to startle her. “I have nothing to say to him; and I’ll never put my foot on board this craft. I’ve been told to go. That’s enough.”

“He is accustomed to be addressed deferentially,” she said after a pause, “and you — ”

“Who is he?” asked Lingard, simply.

These three words seemed to her to scatter her past in the air — like smoke. They robbed all the multitude of mankind of every vestige of importance. She was amazed to find that on this night, in this place, there could be no adequate answer to the searching naiveness of that question.

“I didn’t ask for much,” Lingard began again. “Did I? Only that you all should come on board my brig for five days. That’s all. . . . Do I look like a liar? There are things I could not tell him. I couldn’t explain — I couldn’t — not to him — to no man — to no man in the world — ”

His voice dropped.

“Not to myself,” he ended as if in a dream.

“We have remained unmolested so long here,” began Mrs. Travers a little unsteadily, “that it makes it very difficult to believe in danger, now. We saw no one all these days except those two people who came for you. If you may not explain — ”

“Of course, you can’t be expected to see through a wall,” broke in Lingard. “This coast’s like a wall, but I know what’s on the other side. . . . A yacht here, of all things that float! When I set eyes on her I could fancy she hadn’t been more than an hour from home. Nothing but the look of her spars made me think of old times. And then the faces of the chaps on board. I seemed to know them all. It was like home coming to me when I wasn’t thinking of it. And I hated the sight of you all.”

“If we are exposed to any peril,” she said after a pause during which she tried to penetrate the secret of passion hidden behind that man’s words, “it need not affect you. Our other boat is gone to the Straits and effective help is sure to come very soon.”

“Affect me! Is that precious watchman of yours coming aft? I don’t want anybody to know I came here again begging, even of you. Is he coming aft? . . . Listen! I’ve stopped your other boat.”

His head and shoulders disappeared as though he had dived into a denser layer of obscurity floating on the water. The watchman, who had the intention to stretch himself in one of the deck chairs, catching sight of the owner’s wife, walked straight to the lamp that hung under the ridge pole of the awning, and after fumbling with it for a time went away forward with an indolent gait.

“You dared!” Mrs. Travers whispered down in an intense tone; and directly, Lingard’s head emerged again below her with an upturned face.