Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (755 page)

I assured him sympathetically that I had never heard — and he became very doleful.  This meant no good he was sure.  There was something in it which looked like a warning.  But when I remarked that surely another figure of a woman could be procured I found myself being soundly rated for my levity.  The old boy flushed pink under his clear tan as if I had proposed something improper.  One could replace masts, I was told, or a lost rudder — any working part of a ship; but where was the use of sticking up a new figurehead?  What satisfaction?  How could one care for it?  It was easy to see that I had never been shipmates with a figurehead for over twenty years.

“A new figurehead!” he scolded in unquenchable indignation.  “Why!  I’ve been a widower now for eight-and-twenty years come next May and I would just as soon think of getting a new wife.  You’re as bad as that fellow Jacobus.”

I was highly amused.

“What has Jacobus done?  Did he want you to marry again, Captain?” I inquired in a deferential tone.  But he was launched now and only grinned fiercely.

“Procure — indeed!  He’s the sort of chap to procure you anything you like for a price.  I hadn’t been moored here for an hour when he got on board and at once offered to sell me a figurehead he happens to have in his yard somewhere.  He got Smith, my mate, to talk to me about it.  ‘Mr. Smith,’ says I, ‘don’t you know me better than that?  Am I the sort that would pick up with another man’s cast-off figurehead?’  And after all these years too!  The way some of you young fellows talk — ”

I affected great compunction, and as I stepped into the boat I said soberly:

“Then I see nothing for it but to fit in a neat fiddlehead — perhaps.  You know, carved scrollwork, nicely gilt.”

He became very dejected after his outburst.

“Yes.  Scrollwork.  Maybe.  Jacobus hinted at that too.  He’s never at a loss when there’s any money to be extracted from a sailorman.  He would make me pay through the nose for that carving.  A gilt fiddlehead did you say — eh?  I dare say it would do for you.  You young fellows don’t seem to have any feeling for what’s proper.”

He made a convulsive gesture with his right arm.

“Never mind.  Nothing can make much difference.  I would just as soon let the old thing go about the world with a bare cutwater,” he cried sadly.  Then as the boat got away from the steps he raised his voice on the edge of the quay with comical animosity:

“I would!  If only to spite that figurehead-procuring bloodsucker.  I am an old bird here and don’t you forget it.  Come and see me on board some day!”

I spent my first evening in port quietly in my ship’s cuddy; and glad enough was I to think that the shore life which strikes one as so pettily complex, discordant, and so full of new faces on first coming from sea, could be kept off for a few hours longer.  I was however fated to hear the Jacobus note once more before I slept.

Mr. Burns had gone ashore after the evening meal to have, as he said, “a look round.”  As it was quite dark when he announced his intention I didn’t ask him what it was he expected to see.  Some time about midnight, while sitting with a book in the saloon, I heard cautious movements in the lobby and hailed him by name.

Burns came in, stick and hat in hand, incredibly vulgarised by his smart shore togs, with a jaunty air and an odious twinkle in his eye.  Being asked to sit down he laid his hat and stick on the table and after we had talked of ship affairs for a little while:

“I’ve been hearing pretty tales on shore about that ship-chandler fellow who snatched the job from you so neatly, sir.”

I remonstrated with my late patient for his manner of expressing himself.  But he only tossed his head disdainfully.  A pretty dodge indeed: boarding a strange ship with breakfast in two baskets for all hands and calmly inviting himself to the captain’s table!  Never heard of anything so crafty and so impudent in his life.

I found myself defending Jacobus’s unusual methods.

“He’s the brother of one of the wealthiest merchants in the port.”  The mate’s eyes fairly snapped green sparks.

“His grand brother hasn’t spoken to him for eighteen or twenty years,” he declared triumphantly.  “So there!”

“I know all about that,” I interrupted loftily.

“Do you sir?  H’m!”  His mind was still running on the ethics of commercial competition.  “I don’t like to see your good nature taken advantage of.  He’s bribed that steward of ours with a five-rupee note to let him come down — or ten for that matter.  He don’t care.  He will shove that and more into the bill presently.”

“Is that one of the tales you have heard ashore?” I asked.

He assured me that his own sense could tell him that much.  No; what he had heard on shore was that no respectable person in the whole town would come near Jacobus.  He lived in a large old-fashioned house in one of the quiet streets with a big garden.  After telling me this Burns put on a mysterious air.  “He keeps a girl shut up there who, they say — ”

“I suppose you’ve heard all this gossip in some eminently respectable place?” I snapped at him in a most sarcastic tone.

The shaft told, because Mr. Burns, like many other disagreeable people, was very sensitive himself.  He remained as if thunderstruck, with his mouth open for some further communication, but I did not give him the chance.  “And, anyhow, what the deuce do I care?” I added, retiring into my room.

And this was a natural thing to say.  Yet somehow I was not indifferent.  I admit it is absurd to be concerned with the morals of one’s ship-chandler, if ever so well connected; but his personality had stamped itself upon my first day in harbour, in the way you know.

After this initial exploit Jacobus showed himself anything but intrusive.  He was out in a boat early every morning going round the ships he served, and occasionally remaining on board one of them for breakfast with the captain.

As I discovered that this practice was generally accepted, I just nodded to him familiarly when one morning, on coming out of my room, I found him in the cabin.  Glancing over the table I saw that his place was already laid.  He stood awaiting my appearance, very bulky and placid, holding a beautiful bunch of flowers in his thick hand.  He offered them to my notice with a faint, sleepy smile.  From his own garden; had a very fine old garden; picked them himself that morning before going out to business; thought I would like. . . . He turned away.  “Steward, can you oblige me with some water in a large jar, please.”

I assured him jocularly, as I took my place at the table, that he made me feel as if I were a pretty girl, and that he mustn’t be surprised if I blushed.  But he was busy arranging his floral tribute at the sideboard.  “Stand it before the Captain’s plate, steward, please.”  He made this request in his usual undertone.

The offering was so pointed that I could do no less than to raise it to my nose, and as he sat down noiselessly he breathed out the opinion that a few flowers improved notably the appearance of a ship’s saloon.  He wondered why I did not have a shelf fitted all round the skylight for flowers in pots to take with me to sea.  He had a skilled workman able to fit up shelves in a day, and he could procure me two or three dozen good plants —

The tips of his thick, round fingers rested composedly on the edge of the table on each side of his cup of coffee.  His face remained immovable.  Mr. Burns was smiling maliciously to himself.  I declared that I hadn’t the slightest intention of turning my skylight into a conservatory only to keep the cabin-table in a perpetual mess of mould and dead vegetable matter.

“Rear most beautiful flowers,” he insisted with an upward glance.  “It’s no trouble really.”

“Oh, yes, it is.  Lots of trouble,” I contradicted.  “And in the end some fool leaves the skylight open in a fresh breeze, a flick of salt water gets at them and the whole lot is dead in a week.”

Mr. Burns snorted a contemptuous approval.  Jacobus gave up the subject passively.  After a time he unglued his thick lips to ask me if I had seen his brother yet.  I was very curt in my answer.

“No, not yet.”

“A very different person,” he remarked dreamily and got up.  His movements were particularly noiseless.  “Well — thank you, Captain.  If anything is not to your liking please mention it to your steward.  I suppose you will be giving a dinner to the office-clerks presently.”

“What for?” I cried with some warmth.  “If I were a steady trader to the port I could understand it.  But a complete stranger! . . . I may not turn up again here for years.  I don’t see why! . . . Do you mean to say it is customary?”

“It will be expected from a man like you,” he breathed out placidly.  “Eight of the principal clerks, the manager, that’s nine, you three gentlemen, that’s twelve.  It needn’t be very expensive.  If you tell your steward to give me a day’s notice — ”

“It will be expected of me!  Why should it be expected of me?  Is it because I look particularly soft — or what?

His immobility struck me as dignified suddenly, his imperturbable quality as dangerous.  “There’s plenty of time to think about that,” I concluded weakly with a gesture that tried to wave him away.  But before he departed he took time to mention regretfully that he had not yet had the pleasure of seeing me at his “store” to sample those cigars.  He had a parcel of six thousand to dispose of, very cheap.

“I think it would be worth your while to secure some,” he added with a fat, melancholy smile and left the cabin.

Mr. Burns struck his fist on the table excitedly.

“Did you ever see such impudence!  He’s made up his mind to get something out of you one way or another, sir.”

At once feeling inclined to defend Jacobus, I observed philosophically that all this was business, I supposed.  But my absurd mate, muttering broken disjointed sentences, such as: “I cannot bear! . . . Mark my words! . . .” and so on, flung out of the cabin.  If I hadn’t nursed him through that deadly fever I wouldn’t have suffered such manners for a single day.

CHAPTER III

Jacobus having put me in mind of his wealthy brother I concluded I would pay that business call at once.  I had by that time heard a little more of him.  He was a member of the Council, where he made himself objectionable to the authorities.  He exercised a considerable influence on public opinion.  Lots of people owed him money.  He was an importer on a great scale of all sorts of goods.  For instance, the whole supply of bags for sugar was practically in his hands.  This last fact I did not learn till afterwards.  The general impression conveyed to me was that of a local personage.  He was a bachelor and gave weekly card-parties in his house out of town, which were attended by the best people in the colony.

The greater, then, was my surprise to discover his office in shabby surroundings, quite away from the business quarter, amongst a lot of hovels.  Guided by a black board with white lettering, I climbed a narrow wooden staircase and entered a room with a bare floor of planks littered with bits of brown paper and wisps of packing straw.  A great number of what looked like wine-cases were piled up against one of the walls.  A lanky, inky, light-yellow, mulatto youth, miserably long-necked and generally recalling a sick chicken, got off a three-legged stool behind a cheap deal desk and faced me as if gone dumb with fright.  I had some difficulty in persuading him to take in my name, though I could not get from him the nature of his objection.  He did it at last with an almost agonised reluctance which ceased to be mysterious to me when I heard him being sworn at menacingly with savage, suppressed growls, then audibly cuffed and finally kicked out without any concealment whatever; because he came back flying head foremost through the door with a stifled shriek.

To say I was startled would not express it.  I remained still, like a man lost in a dream.  Clapping both his hands to that part of his frail anatomy which had received the shock, the poor wretch said to me simply:

“Will you go in, please.”  His lamentable self-possession was wonderful; but it did not do away with the incredibility of the experience.  A preposterous notion that I had seen this boy somewhere before, a thing obviously impossible, was like a delicate finishing touch of weirdness added to a scene fit to raise doubts as to one’s sanity.  I stared anxiously about me like an awakened somnambulist.

“I say,” I cried loudly, “there isn’t a mistake, is there?  This is Mr. Jacobus’s office.”

The boy gazed at me with a pained expression — and somehow so familiar!  A voice within growled offensively:

“Come in, come in, since you are there. . . . I didn’t know.”

I crossed the outer room as one approaches the den of some unknown wild beast; with intrepidity but in some excitement.  Only no wild beast that ever lived would rouse one’s indignation; the power to do that belongs to the odiousness of the human brute.  And I was very indignant, which did not prevent me from being at once struck by the extraordinary resemblance of the two brothers.

This one was dark instead of being fair like the other; but he was as big.  He was without his coat and waistcoat; he had been doubtless snoozing in the rocking-chair which stood in a corner furthest from the window.  Above the great bulk of his crumpled white shirt, buttoned with three diamond studs, his round face looked swarthy.  It was moist; his brown moustache hung limp and ragged.  He pushed a common, cane-bottomed chair towards me with his foot.

“Sit down.”

I glanced at it casually, then, turning my indignant eyes full upon him, I declared in precise and incisive tones that I had called in obedience to my owners’ instructions.

“Oh!  Yes.  H’m!  I didn’t understand what that fool was saying. . . . But never mind!  It will teach the scoundrel to disturb me at this time of the day,” he added, grinning at me with savage cynicism.

I looked at my watch.  It was past three o’clock — quite the full swing of afternoon office work in the port.  He snarled imperiously: “Sit down, Captain.”

I acknowledged the gracious invitation by saying deliberately:

“I can listen to all you may have to say without sitting down.”