Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (408 page)

Flora, relieved, got clear away to her room upstairs, and shutting her door quietly, dropped into a chair.  She was used to reproaches, abuse, to all sorts of wicked ill usage — short of actual beating on her body.  Otherwise inexplicable angers had cut and slashed and trampled down her youth without mercy — and mainly, it appeared, because she was the financier de Barral’s daughter and also condemned to a degrading sort of poverty through the action of treacherous men who had turned upon her father in his hour of need.  And she thought with the tenderest possible affection of that upright figure buttoned up in a long frock-coat, soft-voiced and having but little to say to his girl.  She seemed to feel his hand closed round hers.  On his flying visits to Brighton he would always walk hand in hand with her.  People stared covertly at them; the band was playing; and there was the sea — the blue gaiety of the sea.  They were quietly happy together . . . It was all over!

An immense anguish of the present wrung her heart, and she nearly cried aloud.  That dread of what was before her which had been eating up her courage slowly in the course of odious years, flamed up into an access of panic, that sort of headlong panic which had already driven her out twice to the top of the cliff-like quarry.  She jumped up saying to herself: “Why not now?  At once!  Yes.  I’ll do it now — in the dark!”  The very horror of it seemed to give her additional resolution.

She came down the staircase quietly, and only on the point of opening the door and because of the discovery that it was unfastened, she remembered Captain Anthony’s threat to stay in the garden all night.  She hesitated.  She did not understand the mood of that man clearly.  He was violent.  But she had gone beyond the point where things matter.  What would he think of her coming down to him — as he would naturally suppose.  And even that didn’t matter.  He could not despise her more than she despised herself.  She must have been light-headed because the thought came into her mind that should he get into ungovernable fury from disappointment, and perchance strangle her, it would be as good a way to be done with it as any.

“You had that thought,” I exclaimed in wonder.

With downcast eyes and speaking with an almost painstaking precision (her very lips, her red lips, seemed to move just enough to be heard and no more), she said that, yes, the thought came into her head.  This makes one shudder at the mysterious ways girls acquire knowledge.  For this was a thought, wild enough, I admit, but which could only have come from the depths of that sort of experience which she had not had, and went far beyond a young girl’s possible conception of the strongest and most veiled of human emotions.

“He was there, of course?” I said.

“Yes, he was there.”  She saw him on the path directly she stepped outside the porch.  He was very still.  It was as though he had been standing there with his face to the door for hours.

Shaken up by the changing moods of passion and tenderness, he must have been ready for any extravagance of conduct.  Knowing the profound silence each night brought to that nook of the country, I could imagine them having the feeling of being the only two people on the wide earth.  A row of six or seven lofty elms just across the road opposite the cottage made the night more obscure in that little garden.  If these two could just make out each other that was all.

“Well!  And were you very much terrified?” I asked.

She made me wait a little before she said, raising her eyes: “He was gentleness itself.”

I noticed three abominable, drink-sodden loafers, sallow and dirty, who had come to range themselves in a row within ten feet of us against the front of the public-house.  They stared at Flora de Barral’s back with unseeing, mournful fixity.

“Let’s move this way a little,” I proposed.

She turned at once and we made a few paces; not too far to take us out of sight of the hotel door, but very nearly.  I could just keep my eyes on it.  After all, I had not been so very long with the girl.  If you were to disentangle the words we actually exchanged from my comments you would see that they were not so very many, including everything she had so unexpectedly told me of her story.  No, not so very many.  And now it seemed as though there would be no more.  No!  I could expect no more.  The confidence was wonderful enough in its nature as far as it went, and perhaps not to have been expected from any other girl under the sun.  And I felt a little ashamed.  The origin of our intimacy was too gruesome.  It was as if listening to her I had taken advantage of having seen her poor bewildered, scared soul without its veils.  But I was curious, too; or, to render myself justice without false modesty — I was anxious; anxious to know a little more.

I felt like a blackmailer all the same when I made my attempt with a light-hearted remark.

“And so you gave up that walk you proposed to take?”

“Yes, I gave up the walk,” she said slowly before raising her downcast eyes.  When she did so it was with an extraordinary effect.  It was like catching sight of a piece of blue sky, of a stretch of open water.  And for a moment I understood the desire of that man to whom the sea and sky of his solitary life had appeared suddenly incomplete without that glance which seemed to belong to them both.  He was not for nothing the son of a poet.  I looked into those unabashed eyes while the girl went on, her demure appearance and precise tone changed to a very earnest expression.  Woman is various indeed.

“But I want you to understand, Mr. . . . “ she had actually to think of my name . . . “Mr. Marlow, that I have written to Mrs. Fyne that I haven’t been — that I have done nothing to make Captain Anthony behave to me as he had behaved.  I haven’t.  I haven’t.  It isn’t my doing.  It isn’t my fault — if she likes to put it in that way.  But she, with her ideas, ought to understand that I couldn’t, that I couldn’t . . . I know she hates me now.  I think she never liked me.  I think nobody ever cared for me.  I was told once nobody could care for me; and I think it is true.  At any rate I can’t forget it.”

Her abominable experience with the governess had implanted in her unlucky breast a lasting doubt, an ineradicable suspicion of herself and of others.  I said:

“Remember, Miss de Barral, that to be fair you must trust a man altogether — or not at all.”

She dropped her eyes suddenly.  I thought I heard a faint sigh.  I tried to take a light tone again, and yet it seemed impossible to get off the ground which gave me my standing with her.

“Mrs. Fyne is absurd.  She’s an excellent woman, but really you could not be expected to throw away your chance of life simply that she might cherish a good opinion of your memory.  That would be excessive.”

“It was not of my life that I was thinking while Captain Anthony was — was speaking to me,” said Flora de Barral with an effort.

I told her that she was wrong then.  She ought to have been thinking of her life, and not only of her life but of the life of the man who was speaking to her too.  She let me finish, then shook her head impatiently.

“I mean — death.”

“Well,” I said, “when he stood before you there, outside the cottage, he really stood between you and that.  I have it out of your own mouth.  You can’t deny it.”

“If you will have it that he saved my life, then he has got it.  It was not for me.  Oh no!  It was not for me that I — It was not fear!  There!”  She finished petulantly: “And you may just as well know it.”

She hung her head and swung the parasol slightly to and fro.  I thought a little.

“Do you know French, Miss de Barral?” I asked.

She made a sign with her head that she did, but without showing any surprise at the question and without ceasing to swing her parasol.

“Well then, somehow or other I have the notion that Captain Anthony is what the French call un galant homme.  I should like to think he is being treated as he deserves.”

The form of her lips (I could see them under the brim of her hat) was suddenly altered into a line of seriousness.  The parasol stopped swinging.

“I have given him what he wanted — that’s myself,” she said without a tremor and with a striking dignity of tone.

Impressed by the manner and the directness of the words, I hesitated for a moment what to say.  Then made up my mind to clear up the point.

“And you have got what you wanted?  Is that it?”

The daughter of the egregious financier de Barral did not answer at once this question going to the heart of things.  Then raising her head and gazing wistfully across the street noisy with the endless transit of innumerable bargains, she said with intense gravity:

“He has been most generous.”

I was pleased to hear these words.  Not that I doubted the infatuation of Roderick Anthony, but I was pleased to hear something which proved that she was sensible and open to the sentiment of gratitude which in this case was significant.  In the face of man’s desire a girl is excusable if she thinks herself priceless.  I mean a girl of our civilization which has established a dithyrambic phraseology for the expression of love.  A man in love will accept any convention exalting the object of his passion and in this indirect way his passion itself.  In what way the captain of the ship Ferndale gave proofs of lover-like lavishness I could not guess very well.  But I was glad she was appreciative.  It is lucky that small things please women.  And it is not silly of them to be thus pleased.  It is in small things that the deepest loyalty, that which they need most, the loyalty of the passing moment, is best expressed.

She had remained thoughtful, letting her deep motionless eyes rest on the streaming jumble of traffic.  Suddenly she said:

“And I wanted to ask you . . . I was really glad when I saw you actually here.  Who would have expected you here, at this spot, before this hotel!  I certainly never . . . You see it meant a lot to me.  You are the only person who knows . . . who knows for certain . . . “

“Knows what?” I said, not discovering at first what she had in her mind.  Then I saw it.  “Why can’t you leave that alone?” I remonstrated, rather annoyed at the invidious position she was forcing on me in a sense.  “It’s true that I was the only person to see,” I added.  “But, as it happens, after your mysterious disappearance I told the Fynes the story of our meeting.”

Her eyes raised to mine had an expression of dreamy, unfathomable candour, if I dare say so.  And if you wonder what I mean I can only say that I have seen the sea wear such an expression on one or two occasions shortly before sunrise on a calm, fresh day.  She said as if meditating aloud that she supposed the Fynes were not likely to talk about that.  She couldn’t imagine any connection in which . . . Why should they?

As her tone had become interrogatory I assented.  “To be sure.  There’s no reason whatever — ” thinking to myself that they would be more likely indeed to keep quiet about it.  They had other things to talk of.  And then remembering little Fyne stuck upstairs for an unconscionable time, enough to blurt out everything he ever knew in his life, I reflected that he would assume naturally that Captain Anthony had nothing to learn from him about Flora de Barral.  It had been up to now my assumption too.  I saw my mistake.  The sincerest of women will make no unnecessary confidences to a man.  And this is as it should be.

“No — no!” I said reassuringly.  “It’s most unlikely.  Are you much concerned?”

“Well, you see, when I came down,” she said again in that precise demure tone, “when I came down — into the garden Captain Anthony misunderstood — ”

“Of course he would.  Men are so conceited,” I said.

I saw it well enough that he must have thought she had come down to him.  What else could he have thought?  And then he had been “gentleness itself.”  A new experience for that poor, delicate, and yet so resisting creature.  Gentleness in passion!  What could have been more seductive to the scared, starved heart of that girl?  Perhaps had he been violent, she might have told him that what she came down to keep was the tryst of death — not of love.  It occurred to me as I looked at her, young, fragile in aspect, and intensely alive in her quietness, that perhaps she did not know herself then what sort of tryst she was coming down to keep.

She smiled faintly, almost awkwardly as if she were totally unused to smiling, at my cheap jocularity.  Then she said with that forced precision, a sort of conscious primness:

“I didn’t want him to know.”

I approved heartily.  Quite right.  Much better.  Let him ever remain under his misapprehension which was so much more flattering for him.

I tried to keep it in the tone of comedy; but she was, I believe, too simple to understand my intention.  She went on, looking down.

“Oh!  You think so?  When I saw you I didn’t know why you were here.  I was glad when you spoke to me because this is exactly what I wanted to ask you for.  I wanted to ask you if you ever meet Captain Anthony — by any chance — anywhere — you are a sailor too, are you not? — that you would never mention — never — that — that you had seen me over there.”

“My dear young lady,” I cried, horror-struck at the supposition.  “Why should I?  What makes you think I should dream of . . . “

She had raised her head at my vehemence.  She did not understand it.  The world had treated her so dishonourably that she had no notion even of what mere decency of feeling is like.  It was not her fault.  Indeed, I don’t know why she should have put her trust in anybody’s promises.

But I thought it would be better to promise.  So I assured her that she could depend on my absolute silence.

“I am not likely to ever set eyes on Captain Anthony,” I added with conviction — as a further guarantee.

She accepted my assurance in silence, without a sign.  Her gravity had in it something acute, perhaps because of that chin.  While we were still looking at each other she declared:

“There’s no deception in it really.  I want you to believe that if I am here, like this, to-day, it is not from fear.  It is not!”

“I quite understand,” I said.  But her firm yet self-conscious gaze became doubtful.  “I do,” I insisted.  “I understand perfectly that it was not of death that you were afraid.”