Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (611 page)

The first gun of the Amelia lifted him to his feet as though he had been snatched up by the hair of his head. He intended to give a resounding cheer, but produced only a feeble gurgle in his throat. His ship was talking to him. They hadn’t given him up. At the second report he scrambled ashore with the agility of a cat — -in fact, with so much agility that he had a fit of giddiness. After it passed off he returned deliberately to the tartane to get hold of the stable fork. Then trembling with emotion, he staggered off quietly and resolutely with the only purpose of getting down to the seashore. He knew that as long as he kept downhill he would be all right. The ground in this part being a smooth rocky surface and Symons being barefooted, he passed at no great distance from Peyrol without being heard. When he got on rough ground he used the stable fork for a staff. Slowly as he moved he was not really strong enough to be sure-footed. Ten minutes later or so Peyrol, lying ensconced behind a bush, beard the noise of a rolling stone far away in the direction of the cove. Instantly the patient Peyrol got on his feet and started towards the cove himself. Perhaps he would have smiled if the importance and gravity of the affair in which he was engaged had not given all his thoughts a serious cast. Pursuing a higher path than the one followed by Symons, he had presently the satisfaction of seeing the fugitive, made very noticeable by the white bandages about his head, engaged in the last part of the steep descent. No nurse could have watched with more anxiety the adventure of a little boy than Peyrol the progress of his former prisoner. He was very glad to perceive that he had had the sense to take what looked like the tartane’s boathook to help himself with. As Symons’ figure sank lower and lower in his descent Peyrol moved on, step by step, till at last he saw him from above sitting down on the seashore, looking very forlorn and lonely, with his bandaged head between his hands. Instantly Peyrol sat down too, protected by a projecting rock. And it is safe to say that with that there came a complete cessation of all sound and movement on the lonely head of the peninsula for a full half hour.

Peyrol was not in doubt as to what was going to happen. He was as certain that the corvette’s boat or boats were now on the way to the cove as though he had seen them leave the side of the Amelia. But he began to get a little impatient. He wanted to see the end of this episode. Most of the time he was watching Symons. ``Sacre tte dure,’’ he thought. ``He has gone to sleep.’ Indeed Symons immobility was so complete that he might have been dead from his exertions: only Peyrol had a conviction that his once youthful chum was not the sort of person that dies easily. The part of the cove he had reached was all right for Peyrol’s purpose. But it would have been quite easy for a boat or boats to fail to notice Symons, and the consequence of that would be that the English would probably land in several parties for a search, discover the tartane. Peyrol shuddered.

Suddenly he made out a boat just clear of the eastern point of the cove. Mr. Bolt had been hugging the coast and progressing very slowly, according to his instructions, till he had reached the edge of the point’s shadow where it lay ragged and black on the moonlit water. Peyrol could see the oars rise and fall. Then another boat glided into view. Peyrol’s alarm for his tartane grew intolerable. ``Wake up, animal, wake up,’’ he mumbled through his teeth. Slowly they glided on, and the first cutter was on the point of passing by the man on the shore when Peyrol was relieved by the hail of ``Boat ahoy’’ reaching him faintly where he knelt leaning forward, an absorbed spectator.

He saw the boat heading for Symons, who was standing up now and making desperate signs with both arms. Then he saw him dragged in over the bows, the boat back out, and then both of them tossed oars and floated side by side on the sparkling water of the cove.

Peyrol got up from his knees. They had their man now. But perhaps they would persist in landing since there must have been some other purpose at first in the mind of the captain of the English corvette. This suspense did not last long. Peyrol saw the oars fall in the water, and in a very few minutes the boats, pulling round, disappeared one after another behind the eastern point of the cove.

``That’s done,’’ muttered Peyrol to himself. ``I will never see the silly hard-head again.’’ He had a strange notion that those English boats had carried off something belonging to him, not a man but a part of his own life, the sensation of a regained touch with the far-off days in the Indian Ocean. He walked down quickly as if to examine the spot from which Testa Dura had left the soil of France. He was in a hurry now to get back to the farmhouse and meet Lieutenant Ral, who would be due back from Toulon. The way by the cove was as short as any other. When he got down he surveyed the empty shore and wondered at a feeling of emptiness within himself. While walking up towards the foot of the ravine he saw an object lying on the ground. It was a stable fork. He stood over it asking himself, ``How on earth did this thing come here?’’ as though he had been too surprised to pick it up. Even after he had done so he remained motionless, meditating on it. He connected it with some activity of Scevola, since he was the man to whom it belonged, but that was no sort of explanation of its presence on that spot, unless . . .

``Could he have drowned himself?’’ thought Peyrol, looking at the smooth and luminous water of the cove. It could give him no answer. Then at arm’s length he contemplated his find. At last he shook his head, shouldered the fork, and with slow steps continued on his way.

CHAPTER XIV

The midnight meeting of Lieutenant Ral and Peyrol was perfectly silent. Peyrol, sitting on the bench outside the salle, had heard the footsteps coming up the Madrague track long before the lieutenant became visible. But he did not move. He did not even look at him. The lieutenant, unbuckling his sword-belt, sat down without uttering a word. The moon, the only witness of the meeting, seemed to shine on two friends so identical in thought and feeling that they could commune with each other without words. It was Peyrol who spoke first.

``You are up to time.’’

``I had the deuce of a job to hunt up the people and get the certificate stamped. Everything was shut up. The Port-Admiral was giving a dinner-party, but he came out to speak to me when I sent in my name. And all the time, do you know, gunner, I was wondering whether I would ever see you again in my life. Even after I had the certificate, such as it is, in my pocket, I wondered whether I would.’’

``What the devil did you think was going to happen to me?’’ growled Peyrol perfunctorily. He had thrown the incomprehensible stable fork under the narrow bench, and with his feet drawn in he could feel it there, lying against the wall.

``No, the question with me was whether I would ever come here again.’’

Ral drew a folded paper from his pocket and dropped it on the bench. Peyrol picked it up carelessly. That thing was meant only to throw dust into Englishmen’s eyes. The lieutenant, after a moment’s silence, went on with the sincerity of a man who suffered too much to keep his trouble to himself.

``I had a hard struggle.’’

``That was too late,’’ said Peyrol, very positively. ``You had to come back here for very shame; and now you have come, you don’t look very happy.’’

``Never mind my looks, gunner. I have made up my mind.’’

A ferocious, not unpleasing thought flashed through Peyrol’s mind. It was that this intruder on the Escampobar sinister solitude in which he, Peyrol, kept order was under a delusion. Mind! Pah! His mind had nothing to do with his return. He had returned because in Catherine’s words, ``death had made a sign to him.’’ Meantime, Lieutenant Ral raised his hat to wipe his moist brow.

``I made up my mind to play the part of dispatch-bearer. As you have said yourself, Peyrol, one could not bribe a man — -I mean an honest man — -so you will have to find the vessel and leave the rest to me. In two or three days . . . You are under a moral obligation to let me have your tartane.’’

Peyrol did not answer. He was thinking that Ral had got his sign, but whether it meant death from starvation or disease on board an English prison hulk, or in some other way, it was impossible to say. This naval officer was not a man he could trust; to whom he could, for instance, tell the story of his prisoner and what he had done with him. Indeed, the story was altogether incredible. The Englishman commanding that corvette had no visible, conceivable or probable reason for sending a boat ashore to the cove of all places in the world. Peyrol himself could hardly believe that it had happened. And he thought: ``If I were to tell that lieutenant he would only think that I was an old scoundrel who had been in treasonable communication with the English for God knows how long. No words of mine could persuade him that this was as unforeseen to me as the moon falling from the sky.’’

``I wonder,’’ he burst out, but not very loud, ``what made you keep on coming back here time after time!’’ Ral leaned his back against the wall and folded his arms in the familiar attitude of their leisurely talks.

``Ennui, Peyrol,’’ he said in a far-away tone. ``Confounded boredom.’’

Peyrol also, as if unable to resist the force of example, assumed the same attitude, and said:

``You seem to be a man that makes no friends.’’

``True, Peyrol. I think I am that sort of man.’’

``What, no friends at all? Not even a little friend of any sort?’’

Lieutenant Ral leaned the back of his head against the wall and made no answer. Peyrol got on his legs.

``Oh, then, it wouldn’t matter to anybody if you were to disappear for years in an English hulk. And so if I were to give you my tartane you would go?’’

``Yes, I would go this moment.’’

Peyrol laughed quite loud, tilting his head back. All at once the laugh stopped short and the lieutenant was amazed to see him reel as though he had been hit in the chest. While giving way to his bitter mirth, the rover had caught sight of Arlette’s face at the, open window of the lieutenant’s room. He sat heavily on the bench and was unable to make a sound. The lieutenant was startled enough to detach the back of his head from the wall to look at him. Peyrol stooped low suddenly, and began to drag the stable fork from its concealment. Then he got on his feet and stood leaning on it, glaring down at Ral, who gazed upwards with languid surprise. Peyrol was asking himself, ``Shall I pick him up on that pair of prongs, carry him down and fling him in the sea?’’ He felt suddenly overcome by a heaviness of arms and a heaviness of heart that made all movement impossible. His stiffened and powerless limbs refused all service. . . . Let Catherine look after her niece. He was sure that the old woman was not very far away. The lieutenant saw him absorbed in examining the points of the prongs carefully. There was something queer about all this.

``Hallo, Peyrol! What’s the matter?’’ he couldn’t help asking.

``I was just looking,’’ said Peyrol. ``One prong is chipped a little. I found this thing in a most unlikely place.’’

The lieutenant still gazed at him curiously.

``I know! It was under the bench.’’

``H’m,’’ said Peyrol, who had recovered some self-control. ``It belongs to Scevola.’’

``Does it?’’ said the lieutenant, falling back again.

His interest seemed exhausted, but Peyrol didn’t move.

``You go about with a face fit for a funeral,’’ he remarked suddenly in a deep voice. ``Hang it all, lieutenant, I have heard you laugh once or twice, but the devil take me if I ever saw you smile. It is as if you had been bewitched in your cradle.’’

Lieutenant Ral got up as if moved by a spring. ``Bewitched,’’ he repeated, standing very stiff: ``In my cradle, eh? . . . No, I don’t think it was so early as that.’’

He walked forward with a tense still face straight at Peyrol as though he had been blind. Startled, the rover stepped out of the way and, turning on his heels, followed him with his eyes. The lieutenant paced on, as if drawn by a magnet, in the direction of the door of the house. Peyrol, his eyes fastened on Ral’s back, let him nearly reach it before he called out tentatively: ``I say, lieutenant!’’ To his extreme surprise, Ral swung round as if to a touch.

``Oh, yes,’’ he answered, also in an undertone. ``We will have to discuss that matter to-morrow.’’

Peyrol, who had approached him close, said in a whisper which sounded quite fierce: ``Discuss? No! We will have to carry it out to-morrow. I have been waiting half the night just to tell you that.’’

Lieutenant Ral nodded. The expression on his face was so stony that Peyrol doubted whether he had understood. He added:

``It isn’t going to be child’s play.’’ The lieutenant was about to open the door when Peyrol said: ``A moment,’’ and again the lieutenant turned about silently.

``Michel is sleeping somewhere on the stairs. Will you just stir him up and tell him I am waiting outside? We two will have to finish our night on board the tartane, and start work at break of day to get her ready for sea. Yes, lieutenant, by noon. In twelve hours’ time you will be saying good-bye to la belle France.’’

Lieutenant Ral’s eyes staring over his shoulder, seemed glazed and motionless in the moonlight like the eyes of a dead man. But he went in. Peyrol heard presently sounds within of somebody staggering in the passage and Michel projected himself outside headlong, but after a stumble or two pulled up, scratching his head and looking on every side in the moonlight without perceiving Peyrol, who was regarding him from a distance of five feet. At last Peyrol said:

``Come, wake up! Michel! Michel!’’

``Voil, notre matre.’’

``Look at what I have picked up,’’ said Peyrol. ``Take it and put it away.’’

Michel didn’t offer to touch the stable fork extended to him by Peyrol.

``What’s the matter with you?’’ asked Peyrol.

``Nothing, nothing! Only last time I saw it, it was on Scevola’s shoulder.’’ He glanced up at the sky.

``A little better than an hour ago.’’

``What was he doing?’’

``Going into the yard to put it away.’’

``Well, now you go into the yard to put it away,’’ said Peyrol, ``and don’t be long about it.’’ He waited with his hand over his chin till his henchman reappeared before him. But Michel had not got over his surprise.