Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (421 page)

He strolled on aimlessly a prey to gentle melancholy.  He walked and walked.  There were but few people about in this breathing space of a poor neighbourhood.  Under certain conditions of life there is precious little time left for mere breathing.  But still a few here and there were indulging in that luxury; yet few as they were Captain Anthony, though the least exclusive of men, resented their presence.  Solitude had been his best friend.  He wanted some place where he could sit down and be alone.  And in his need his thoughts turned to the sea which had given him so much of that congenial solitude.  There, if always with his ship (but that was an integral part of him) he could always be as solitary as he chose.  Yes.  Get out to sea!

The night of the town with its strings of lights, rigid, and crossed like a net of flames, thrown over the sombre immensity of walls, closed round him, with its artificial brilliance overhung by an emphatic blackness, its unnatural animation of a restless, overdriven humanity.  His thoughts which somehow were inclined to pity every passing figure, every single person glimpsed under a street lamp, fixed themselves at last upon a figure which certainly could not have been seen under the lamps on that particular night.  A figure unknown to him.  A figure shut up within high unscaleable walls of stone or bricks till next morning . . . The figure of Flora de Barral’s father.  De Barral the financier — the convict.

There is something in that word with its suggestions of guilt and retribution which arrests the thought.  We feel ourselves in the presence of the power of organized society — a thing mysterious in itself and still more mysterious in its effect.  Whether guilty or innocent, it was as if old de Barral had been down to the Nether Regions.  Impossible to imagine what he would bring out from there to the light of this world of uncondemned men.  What would he think?  What would he have to say?  And what was one to say to him?

Anthony, a little awed, as one is by a range of feelings stretching beyond one’s grasp, comforted himself by the thought that probably the old fellow would have little to say.  He wouldn’t want to talk about it.  No man would.  It must have been a real hell to him.

And then Anthony, at the end of the day in which he had gone through a marriage ceremony with Flora de Barral, ceased to think of Flora’s father except, as in some sort, the captive of his triumph.  He turned to the mental contemplation of the white, delicate and appealing face with great blue eyes which he had seen weep and wonder and look profoundly at him, sometimes with incredulity, sometimes with doubt and pain, but always irresistible in the power to find their way right into his breast, to stir there a deep response which was something more than love — he said to himself, — as men understand it.  More?  Or was it only something other?  Yes.  It was something other.  More or less.  Something as incredible as the fulfilment of an amazing and startling dream in which he could take the world in his arms — all the suffering world — not to possess its pathetic fairness but to console and cherish its sorrow.

Anthony walked slowly to the ship and that night slept without dreams.

CHAPTER FIVE — THE GREAT DE BARRAL

Renovated certainly the saloon of the Ferndale was to receive the “strange woman.”  The mellowness of its old-fashioned, tarnished decoration was gone.  And Anthony looking round saw the glitter, the gleams, the colour of new things, untried, unused, very bright — too bright.  The workmen had gone only last night; and the last piece of work they did was the hanging of the heavy curtains which looped midway the length of the saloon — divided it in two if released, cutting off the after end with its companion-way leading direct on the poop, from the forepart with its outlet on the deck; making a privacy within a privacy, as though Captain Anthony could not place obstacles enough between his new happiness and the men who shared his life at sea.  He inspected that arrangement with an approving eye then made a particular visitation of the whole, ending by opening a door which led into a large state-room made of two knocked into one.  It was very well furnished and had, instead of the usual bedplace of such cabins, an elaborate swinging cot of the latest pattern.  Anthony tilted it a little by way of trial.  “The old man will be very comfortable in here,” he said to himself, and stepped back into the saloon closing the door gently.  Then another thought occurred to him obvious under the circumstances but strangely enough presenting itself for the first time.  “Jove!  Won’t he get a shock,” thought Roderick Anthony.

He went hastily on deck.  “Mr. Franklin, Mr. Franklin.”  The mate was not very far.  “Oh!  Here you are.  Miss . . . Mrs. Anthony’ll be coming on board presently.  Just give me a call when you see the cab.”

Then, without noticing the gloominess of the mate’s countenance he went in again.  Not a friendly word, not a professional remark, or a small joke, not as much as a simple and inane “fine day.”  Nothing.  Just turned about and went in.

We know that, when the moment came, he thought better of it and decided to meet Flora’s father in that privacy of the main cabin which he had been so careful to arrange.  Why Anthony appeared to shrink from the contact, he who was sufficiently self-confident not only to face but to absolutely create a situation almost insane in its audacious generosity, is difficult to explain.  Perhaps when he came on the poop for a glance he found that man so different outwardly from what he expected that he decided to meet him for the first time out of everybody’s sight.  Possibly the general secrecy of his relation to the girl might have influenced him.  Truly he may well have been dismayed.  That man’s coming brought him face to face with the necessity to speak and act a lie; to appear what he was not and what he could never be, unless, unless —

In short, we’ll say if you like that for various reasons, all having to do with the delicate rectitude of his nature, Roderick Anthony (a man of whom his chief mate used to say: he doesn’t know what fear is) was frightened.  There is a Nemesis which overtakes generosity too, like all the other imprudences of men who dare to be lawless and proud . . . “

“Why do you say this?” I inquired, for Marlow had stopped abruptly and kept silent in the shadow of the bookcase.

“I say this because that man whom chance had thrown in Flora’s way was both: lawless and proud.  Whether he knew anything about it or not it does not matter.  Very likely not.  One may fling a glove in the face of nature and in the face of one’s own moral endurance quite innocently, with a simplicity which wears the aspect of perfectly Satanic conceit.  However, as I have said it does not matter.  It’s a transgression all the same and has got to be paid for in the usual way.  But never mind that.  I paused because, like Anthony, I find a difficulty, a sort of dread in coming to grips with old de Barral.

You remember I had a glimpse of him once.  He was not an imposing personality: tall, thin, straight, stiff, faded, moving with short steps and with a gliding motion, speaking in an even low voice.  When the sea was rough he wasn’t much seen on deck — at least not walking.  He caught hold of things then and dragged himself along as far as the after skylight where he would sit for hours.  Our, then young, friend offered once to assist him and this service was the first beginning of a sort of friendship.  He clung hard to one — Powell says, with no figurative intention.  Powell was always on the lookout to assist, and to assist mainly Mrs. Anthony, because he clung so jolly hard to her that Powell was afraid of her being dragged down notwithstanding that she very soon became very sure-footed in all sorts of weather.  And Powell was the only one ready to assist at hand because Anthony (by that time) seemed to be afraid to come near them; the unforgiving Franklin always looked wrathfully the other way; the boatswain, if up there, acted likewise but sheepishly; and any hands that happened to be on the poop (a feeling spreads mysteriously all over a ship) shunned him as though he had been the devil.

We know how he arrived on board.  For my part I know so little of prisons that I haven’t the faintest notion how one leaves them.  It seems as abominable an operation as the other, the shutting up with its mental suggestions of bang, snap, crash and the empty silence outside — where an instant before you were — you were — and now no longer are.  Perfectly devilish.  And the release!  I don’t know which is worse.  How do they do it?  Pull the string, door flies open, man flies through: Out you go!  Adios!  And in the space where a second before you were not, in the silent space there is a figure going away, limping.  Why limping?  I don’t know.  That’s how I see it.  One has a notion of a maiming, crippling process; of the individual coming back damaged in some subtle way.  I admit it is a fantastic hallucination, but I can’t help it.  Of course I know that the proceedings of the best machine-made humanity are employed with judicious care and so on.  I am absurd, no doubt, but still . . . Oh yes it’s idiotic.  When I pass one of these places . . . did you notice that there is something infernal about the aspect of every individual stone or brick of them, something malicious as if matter were enjoying its revenge of the contemptuous spirit of man.  Did you notice?  You didn’t?  Eh?  Well I am perhaps a little mad on that point.  When I pass one of these places I must avert my eyes.  I couldn’t have gone to meet de Barral.  I should have shrunk from the ordeal.  You’ll notice that it looks as if Anthony (a brave man indubitably) had shirked it too.  Little Fyne’s flight of fancy picturing three people in the fatal four wheeler — you remember? — went wide of the truth.  There were only two people in the four wheeler.  Flora did not shrink.  Women can stand anything.  The dear creatures have no imagination when it comes to solid facts of life.  In sentimental regions — I won’t say.  It’s another thing altogether.  There they shrink from or rush to embrace ghosts of their own creation just the same as any fool-man would.

No.  I suppose the girl Flora went on that errand reasonably.  And then, why!  This was the moment for which she had lived.  It was her only point of contact with existence.  Oh yes.  She had been assisted by the Fynes.  And kindly.  Certainly.  Kindly.  But that’s not enough.  There is a kind way of assisting our fellow-creatures which is enough to break their hearts while it saves their outer envelope.  How cold, how infernally cold she must have felt — unless when she was made to burn with indignation or shame.  Man, we know, cannot live by bread alone but hang me if I don’t believe that some women could live by love alone.  If there be a flame in human beings fed by varied ingredients earthly and spiritual which tinge it in different hues, then I seem to see the colour of theirs.  It is azure . . . What the devil are you laughing at . . . “

Marlow jumped up and strode out of the shadow as if lifted by indignation but there was the flicker of a smile on his lips.  “You say I don’t know women.  Maybe.  It’s just as well not to come too close to the shrine.  But I have a clear notion of woman.  In all of them, termagant, flirt, crank, washerwoman, blue-stocking, outcast and even in the ordinary fool of the ordinary commerce there is something left, if only a spark.  And when there is a spark there can always be a flame . . . “

He went back into the shadow and sat down again.

“I don’t mean to say that Flora de Barral was one of the sort that could live by love alone.  In fact she had managed to live without.  But still, in the distrust of herself and of others she looked for love, any kind of love, as women will.  And that confounded jail was the only spot where she could see it — for she had no reason to distrust her father.

She was there in good time.  I see her gazing across the road at these walls which are, properly speaking, awful.  You do indeed seem to feel along the very lines and angles of the unholy bulk, the fall of time, drop by drop, hour by hour, leaf by leaf, with a gentle and implacable slowness.  And a voiceless melancholy comes over one, invading, overpowering like a dream, penetrating and mortal like poison.

When de Barral came out she experienced a sort of shock to see that he was exactly as she remembered him.  Perhaps a little smaller.  Otherwise unchanged.  You come out in the same clothes, you know.  I can’t tell whether he was looking for her.  No doubt he was.  Whether he recognized her?  Very likely.  She crossed the road and at once there was reproduced at a distance of years, as if by some mocking witchcraft, the sight so familiar on the Parade at Brighton of the financier de Barral walking with his only daughter.  One comes out of prison in the same clothes one wore on the day of condemnation, no matter how long one has been put away there.  Oh, they last!  They last!  But there is something which is preserved by prison life even better than one’s discarded clothing.  It is the force, the vividness of one’s sentiments.  A monastery will do that too; but in the unholy claustration of a jail you are thrown back wholly upon yourself — for God and Faith are not there.  The people outside disperse their affections, you hoard yours, you nurse them into intensity.  What they let slip, what they forget in the movement and changes of free life, you hold on to, amplify, exaggerate into a rank growth of memories.  They can look with a smile at the troubles and pains of the past; but you can’t.  Old pains keep on gnawing at your heart, old desires, old deceptions, old dreams, assailing you in the dead stillness of your present where nothing moves except the irrecoverable minutes of your life.

De Barral was out and, for a time speechless, being led away almost before he had taken possession of the free world, by his daughter.  Flora controlled herself well.  They walked along quickly for some distance.  The cab had been left round the corner — round several corners for all I know.  He was flustered, out of breath, when she helped him in and followed herself.  Inside that rolling box, turning towards that recovered presence with her heart too full for words she felt the desire of tears she had managed to keep down abandon her suddenly, her half-mournful, half-triumphant exultation subside, every fibre of her body, relaxed in tenderness, go stiff in the close look she took at his face.  He was different.  There was something.  Yes, there was something between them, something hard and impalpable, the ghost of these high walls.