Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (615 page)

``No signs of Scevola,’’ she said, advancing towards Peyrol. ``And Michel too has not been here yet.’’

Peyrol thought that if she had been only shorter, what with her black eyes and slightly curved nose she would have looked like a witch. But witches can read people’s thoughts, and he looked openly at Catherine with the pleasant conviction that she could not read his thoughts. He said:

``I took good care not to make any noise upstairs, Mademoiselle Catherine. When I am gone the house will be empty and quiet enough.’’

She had a curious expression. She struck Peyrol suddenly as if she were lost in that kitchen in which A she had reigned for many years. He continued:

``You will be alone all the morning.’’

She seemed to be listening to some distant sound, and after Peyrol had added, ``Everything is all right now,’’ she nodded and after a moment said in a manner that for her was unexpectedly impulsive:

``Monsieur Peyrol, I am tired of life.’’

He shrugged his shoulders and with somewhat sinister jocosity remarked:

``I will tell you what it is; you ought to have been married.’’

She turned her back on him abruptly.

``No offence,’’ Peyrol excused himself in a tone of gloom rather than of apology. ``It is no use to attach any importance to things. What is this life? Phew! Nobody can remember one-tenth of it. Here I am; and, you know, I would bet that if one of my old-time chums came along and saw me like this, here with you — -I mean one of those chums that stand up for a fellow in a scrimmage and look after him should he be hurt — -well, I bet,’’ he repeated, ``he wouldn’t know me. He would say to himself perhaps, `Hullo! here’s a comfortable married couple.’ ‘‘

He paused. Catherine, with her back to him and calling him, not ``Monsieur,’’ but ``Peyrol,’’ tout court, remarked, not exactly with displeasure, but rather with an ominous accent that this was no time for idle talk. Peyrol, however, continued, though his tone was very far from being that of idle talk:

``But you see, Mademoiselle Catherine, you were not like the others. You allowed yourself to be struck all of a heap, and at the same time you were too hard on yourself.’’

Her long thin frame, bent low to work the bellows under the enormous overmantel, she assented: ``Perhaps! We Escampobar women were always hard on ourselves.’’

``That’s what I say. If you had had things happen to you which happened to me. . . .’’

``But you men, you are different. lt doesn’t matter what you do. You have got your own strength. You need not be hard on yourselves. You go from one thing to another thoughtlessly.’’

He remained looking at her searchingly with something like a hint of a smile on his shaven lips, but she turned away to the sink where one of the women working about the farm had deposited a great pile of vegetables. She started on them with a broken-bladed knife, preserving her sibylline air even in that homely occupation.

``It will be a good soup, I see, at noon to-day,’’ said the rover suddenly. He turned on his heels and went out through the salle. The whole world lay open to him, or at any rate the whole of the Mediterranean, viewed down the ravine between the two hills. The bell of the farm’s milch-cow, which had a talent for keeping herself invisible, reached him from the right, but he could not see as much as the tips of her horns, though he looked for them. He stepped out sturdily. He had not gone twenty yards down the ravine when another sound made him stand still as if changed into stone. It was a faint noise resembling very much the hollow rumble an empty farm-cart would make on a stony road, but Peyrol looked up at the sky, and though it was perfectly clear, he did not seem pleased with its aspect. He had a hill on each side of him and the placid cove below his feet. He muttered ``H’m! Thunder at sunrise. It must be in the west. It only wanted that!’’ He feared it would first kill the little breeze there was and then knock the weather up altogether. For a moment all his faculties seemed paralyzed by that faint sound. On that sea ruled by the gods of Olympus he might have been a pagan mariner subject to Jupiter’s caprices; but like a defiant pagan he shook his fist vaguely at space which answered him by a short and threatening mutter. Then he swung on his way till he caught sight of the two mastheads of the tartane, when he stopped to listen. No sound of any sort reached him from there, and he went on his way thinking, ``Go from one thing to another thoughtlessly! Indeed! . . . That’s all old Catherine knows about it.’’ He had so many things to think of that he did not know which to lay hold of first. He just let them lie jumbled up in his head. His feelings too were in a state of confusion, and vaguely he felt that his conduct was at the mercy of an internal conflict. The consciousness of that fact accounted perhaps for his sardonic attitude towards himself and outwardly towards those whom he perceived on board the tartane; and especially towards the lieutenant whom he saw sitting on the deck leaning against the head of the rudder, characteristically aloof from the two other persons on board. Michel, also characteristically, was standing on the top of the little cabin scuttle, obviously looking out for his ``matre.’’ Citizen Scevola, sitting on deck, seemed at first sight to be at liberty, but as a matter of fact he was not. He was loosely tied up to a stanchion by three turns of the mainsheet with the knot in such a position that he could not get at it without attracting attention; and that situation seemed also somewhat characteristic of Citizen Scevola with its air of half liberty, half suspicion and, as it were, contemptuous restraint. The sans-culotte, whose late experiences had nearly unsettled his reason, first by their utter incomprehensibility and afterwards by the enigmatical attitude of Peyrol, had dropped his head and folded his arms on his breast. And that attitude was dubious too. It might have been resignation or it might have been profound sleep. The rover addressed himself first to the lieutenant.

``Le moment approche,’’ said Peyrol with a queer twitch at a corner of his lip, while under his soft woollen cap his venerable locks stirred in the breath of a suddenly warm air. ``The great moment — -eh?’’

He leaned over the big tiller, and seemed to be hovering above the lieutenant’s shoulder.

``What’s this infernal company?’’ murmured the latter without even looking at Peyrol.

``All old friends — -quoi?’’ said Peyrol in a homely tone. ``We will keep that little affair amongst ourselves. The fewer the men the greater the glory. Catherine is getting the vegetables ready for the noonday soup and the Englishman is coming down towards the Passe where he will arrive about noon too, ready to have his eye put out. You know, lieutenant, that will be your job. You may depend on me for sending you off when the moment comes. For what is it to you? You have no friends, you have not even a petite amie. As to expecting an old rover like me — -oh no, lieutenant! Of course liberty is sweet, but what do you know of it, you epaulette-wearers? Moreover, I am no good for quarter-deck talks and all that politeness.’’

``I wish, Peyrol, you would not talk so much,’’ said Lieutenant Ral, turning his head slightly. He was struck by the strange expression on the old rover’s face. ``And I don’t see what the actual moment matters. I am going to look for the fleet. All you have to do is to hoist the sails for me and then scramble ashore.’’

``Very simple,’’ observed Peyrol through his teeth, and then began to sing:

``Quoique leurs chapeaux sont bien laids God-dam! Moi, j’aime les Anglais Ils ont un si bon caractre!’’

``H! Citoyen!’’ and then remarked confidentially to Ral: ``He isn’t asleep, you know, but he isn’t like the English, he has a sacr mauvais caractre. He got into his head,’’ continued Peyrol, in a loud and innocent tone, ``that you locked him up in this cabin last night. Did you notice the venomous glance he gave you just now?’’

Both Lieutenant Ral and the innocent Michel appeared surprised at his boisterousness; but all the time Peyrol was thinking: ``I wish to goodness I knew how that thunderstorm is getting on and what course it is shaping. I can’t find that out unless I go up to the farm and get a view to the westward. It may be as far as the Rhne Valley; no doubt it is and it will come out of it too, curses on it. One won’t be able to reckon on half an hour of steady wind from any quarter.’’ He directed a look of ironic gaiety at all the faces in turn. Michel met it with a faithful-dog gaze and innocently open mouth. Scevola kept his chin buried on his chest. Lieutenant Ral was insensible to outward impressions and his absent stare made nothing of Peyrol. The rover himself presently fell into thought. The last stir of air died out in the little basin, and the sun clearing Porquerolles inundated it with a sudden light in which Michel blinked like an owl.

``It’s hot early,’’ he announced aloud but only because he had formed the habit of talking to himself. He would not have presumed to offer an opinion unless asked by Peyrol.

His voice having recalled Peyrol to himself, he proposed to masthead the yards and even asked Lieutenant Ral to help in that operation which was accomplished in silence except for the faint squeaking of the blocks. The sails, however, were kept hauled up in the gear.

``Like this,’’ said Peyrol, ``you have only to let go the ropes and you will be under canvas at once.’’

Without answering Ral returned to his position by the rudder-head. He was saying to himself — -``I am sneaking off. No, there is honour, duty. And of course I will return. But when? They will forget all about me and I shall never be exchanged. This war may last for years, — -’’ and illogically he wished he could have had a God to whom he could pray for relief in his anguish. ``She will be in despair,’’ he thought, writhing inwardly at the mental picture of a distracted Arlette. Life, however, had embittered his spirit early, and he said to himself: ``But in a month’s time will she even give me a thought?’’ Instantly he felt remorseful with a remorse strong enough to lift him to his feet as if he were morally obliged to go up again and confess to Arlette this sacrilegious cynicism of thought. ``I am mad,’’ he muttered, perching himself on the low rail. His lapse from faith plunged him into such a depth of unhappiness that he felt all his strength of will go out of him. He sat there apathetic and suffering. He meditated dully: ``Young men have been known to die suddenly; why should not I? I am, as a matter of fact, at the end of my endurance. I am half dead already. Yes! but what is left of that life does not belong to me now.’’

``Peyrol,’’ he said in such a piercing tone that even Scevola jerked his head up; but he made an effort to reduce his shrillness and went on speaking very carefully: ``I have left a letter for the Secretary General at the Majorit to pay twenty-five hundred francs to Jean — -you are Jean, are you not? — -Peyrol, price of the tartane in which I sail. Is that right?’’

``What did you do that for?’’ asked Peyrol with an extremely stony face. ``To get me into trouble?’’

``Don’t be a fool, gunner, nobody remembers your, name. It is buried under a stack of blackened paper. I must ask you to go there and tell them that you have seen with your own eyes Lieutenant Ral sail away on his mission.’’

The stoniness of Peyrol persisted but his eyes were full of fury. ``Oh, yes, I see myself going there. Twenty-five hundred francs! Twenty-five hundred fiddlesticks.’’ His tone changed suddenly. ``I heard some one say that you were an honest man, and I suppose this is a proof of it. Well, to the devil with your honesty.’’ He glared at the lieutenant and then thought: ``He doesn’t even pretend to listen to what I say’’ — -and another sort of anger, partly contemptuous and with something of dim sympathy in it, replaced his downright fury. ``Pah!’’ he said, spat over the side, and walking up to Ral with great deliberation, slapped him on the shoulder. The only effect of this proceeding was to make Ral look up at him without any expression whatever.

Peyrol then picked up the lieutenant’s valise and carried it down into the cuddy. As he passed by, Citizen Scevola uttered the word ``Citoyen’’ but it was only when he came back again that Peyrol condescended to say, ``Well?’’

``What are you going to do with me?’’ asked Scevola.

``You would not give me an account of how you came on board this tartane,’’ said Peyrol in a tone that sounded almost friendly, ``therefore I need not tell you what I will do with you.’’

A low muttering of thunder followed so close upon his words that it might have come out of Peyrol’s own lips. The rover gazed uneasily at the sky. It was still clear overhead, and at the bottom of that little basin surrounded by rocks there was no view in any other direction; but even as he gazed there was a sort of flicker in the sunshine succeeded by a mighty but distant clap of thunder. For the next half hour Peyrol and Michel were busy ashore taking a long line from the tartane to the entrance of the little basin where they fastened the end of it to a bush. This was for the purpose of hauling the tartane out into the cove. Then they came aboard again. The bit of sky above their heads was still clear, but while walking with the hauling line near the cove Peyrol had got a glimpse of the edge of the cloud. The sun grew scorching all of a sudden, and in the stagnating air a mysterious change seemed to come over the quality and the colour of the light. Peyrol flung his cap on the deck, baring his head to the subtle menace of the breathless stillness of the air.

``Phew! a chauffe,’ he muttered, rolling up the sleeves of his jacket. He wiped his forehead with his mighty forearm upon which a mermaid with an immensely long fishtail was tattooed. Perceiving the lieutenant’s belted sword lying on the deck, he picked it up and without any ceremony threw it down the cabin stairs. As he was passing again near Scevola, the sans-culotte raised his voice.

``I believe you are one of those wretches corrupted by English gold,’’ he cried like one inspired. His shining eyes, his red cheeks, testified to the fire of patriotism burning in his breast, and he used that conventional phrase of revolutionary time, a time when, intoxicated with oratory, he used to run about dealing death to traitors of both sexes and all ages. But his denunciation was received in such profound silence that his own belief in it wavered. His words had sunk into an abysmal stillness and the next sound was Peyrol speaking to Ral.