Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (406 page)

“You don’t mean to say you have forgotten the connection?”

She cried readily enough: “I wasn’t thinking.”  And then, while I wondered what could have been the images occupying her brain at this time, she asked me: “You didn’t see my letter to Mrs. Fyne — did you?”

“No.  I didn’t,” I shouted.  Just then the racket was distracting, a pair-horse trolly lightly loaded with loose rods of iron passing slowly very near us.  “I wasn’t trusted so far.”  And remembering Mrs. Fyne’s hints that the girl was unbalanced, I added: “Was it an unreserved confession you wrote?”

She did not answer me for a time, and as I waited I thought that there’s nothing like a confession to make one look mad; and that of all confessions a written one is the most detrimental all round.  Never confess!  Never, never!  An untimely joke is a source of bitter regret always.  Sometimes it may ruin a man; not because it is a joke, but because it is untimely.  And a confession of whatever sort is always untimely.  The only thing which makes it supportable for a while is curiosity.  You smile?  Ah, but it is so, or else people would be sent to the rightabout at the second sentence.  How many sympathetic souls can you reckon on in the world?  One in ten, one in a hundred — in a thousand — in ten thousand?  Ah!  What a sell these confessions are!  What a horrible sell!  You seek sympathy, and all you get is the most evanescent sense of relief — if you get that much.  For a confession, whatever it may be, stirs the secret depths of the hearer’s character.  Often depths that he himself is but dimly aware of.  And so the righteous triumph secretly, the lucky are amused, the strong are disgusted, the weak either upset or irritated with you according to the measure of their sincerity with themselves.  And all of them in their hearts brand you for either mad or impudent . . . “

I had seldom seen Marlow so vehement, so pessimistic, so earnestly cynical before.  I cut his declamation short by asking what answer Flora de Barral had given to his question.  “Did the poor girl admit firing off her confidences at Mrs. Fyne — eight pages of close writing — that sort of thing?”

Marlow shook his head.

“She did not tell me.  I accepted her silence, as a kind of answer and remarked that it would have been better if she had simply announced the fact to Mrs. Fyne at the cottage.  “Why didn’t you do it?” I asked point-blank.

She said: “I am not a very plucky girl.”  She looked up at me and added meaningly: “And you know it.  And you know why.”

I must remark that she seemed to have become very subdued since our first meeting at the quarry.  Almost a different person from the defiant, angry and despairing girl with quivering lips and resentful glances.

“I thought it was very sensible of you to get away from that sheer drop,” I said.

She looked up with something of that old expression.

“That’s not what I mean.  I see you will have it that you saved my life.  Nothing of the kind.  I was concerned for that vile little beast of a dog.  No!  It was the idea of — of doing away with myself which was cowardly.  That’s what I meant by saying I am not a very plucky girl.”

“Oh!” I retorted airily.  “That little dog.  He isn’t really a bad little dog.”  But she lowered her eyelids and went on:

“I was so miserable that I could think only of myself.  This was mean.  It was cruel too.  And besides I had not given it up — not then.”

* * * * *

Marlow changed his tone.

“I don’t know much of the psychology of self-destruction.  It’s a sort of subject one has few opportunities to study closely.  I knew a man once who came to my rooms one evening, and while smoking a cigar confessed to me moodily that he was trying to discover some graceful way of retiring out of existence.  I didn’t study his case, but I had a glimpse of him the other day at a cricket match, with some women, having a good time.  That seems a fairly reasonable attitude.  Considered as a sin, it is a case for repentance before the throne of a merciful God.  But I imagine that Flora de Barral’s religion under the care of the distinguished governess could have been nothing but outward formality.  Remorse in the sense of gnawing shame and unavailing regret is only understandable to me when some wrong had been done to a fellow-creature.  But why she, that girl who existed on sufferance, so to speak — why she should writhe inwardly with remorse because she had once thought of getting rid of a life which was nothing in every respect but a curse — that I could not understand.  I thought it was very likely some obscure influence of common forms of speech, some traditional or inherited feeling — a vague notion that suicide is a legal crime; words of old moralists and preachers which remain in the air and help to form all the authorized moral conventions.  Yes, I was surprised at her remorse.  But lowering her glance unexpectedly till her dark eye-lashes seemed to rest against her white cheeks she presented a perfectly demure aspect.  It was so attractive that I could not help a faint smile.  That Flora de Barral should ever, in any aspect, have the power to evoke a smile was the very last thing I should have believed.  She went on after a slight hesitation:

“One day I started for there, for that place.”

Look at the influence of a mere play of physiognomy!  If you remember what we were talking about you will hardly believe that I caught myself grinning down at that demure little girl.  I must say too that I felt more friendly to her at the moment than ever before.

“Oh, you did?  To take that jump?  You are a determined young person.  Well, what happened that time?”

An almost imperceptible alteration in her bearing; a slight droop of her head perhaps — a mere nothing — made her look more demure than ever.

“I had left the cottage,” she began a little hurriedly.  “I was walking along the road — you know, the road.  I had made up my mind I was not coming back this time.”

I won’t deny that these words spoken from under the brim of her hat (oh yes, certainly, her head was down — she had put it down) gave me a thrill; for indeed I had never doubted her sincerity.  It could never have been a make-believe despair.

“Yes,” I whispered.  “You were going along the road.”

“When . . . “  Again she hesitated with an effect of innocent shyness worlds asunder from tragic issues; then glided on . . . “When suddenly Captain Anthony came through a gate out of a field.”

I coughed down the beginning of a most improper fit of laughter, and felt ashamed of myself.  Her eyes raised for a moment seemed full of innocent suffering and unexpressed menace in the depths of the dilated pupils within the rings of sombre blue.  It was — how shall I say it? — a night effect when you seem to see vague shapes and don’t know what reality you may come upon at any time.  Then she lowered her eyelids again, shutting all mysteriousness out of the situation except for the sobering memory of that glance, nightlike in the sunshine, expressively still in the brutal unrest of the street.

“So Captain Anthony joined you — did he?”

“He opened a field-gate and walked out on the road.  He crossed to my side and went on with me.  He had his pipe in his hand.  He said: ‘Are you going far this morning?’”

These words (I was watching her white face as she spoke) gave me a slight shudder.  She remained demure, almost prim.  And I remarked:

“You have been talking together before, of course.”

“Not more than twenty words altogether since he arrived,” she declared without emphasis.  “That day he had said ‘Good morning’ to me when we met at breakfast two hours before.  And I said good morning to him.  I did not see him afterwards till he came out on the road.”

I thought to myself that this was not accidental.  He had been observing her.  I felt certain also that he had not been asking any questions of Mrs. Fyne.

“I wouldn’t look at him,” said Flora de Barral.  “I had done with looking at people.  He said to me: ‘My sister does not put herself out much for us.  We had better keep each other company.  I have read every book there is in that cottage.’  I walked on.  He did not leave me.  I thought he ought to.  But he didn’t.  He didn’t seem to notice that I would not talk to him.”

She was now perfectly still.  The wretched little parasol hung down against her dress from her joined hands.  I was rigid with attention.  It isn’t every day that one culls such a volunteered tale on a girl’s lips.  The ugly street-noises swelling up for a moment covered the next few words she said.  It was vexing.  The next word I heard was “worried.”

“It worried you to have him there, walking by your side.”

“Yes.  Just that,” she went on with downcast eyes.  There was something prettily comical in her attitude and her tone, while I pictured to myself a poor white-faced girl walking to her death with an unconscious man striding by her side.  Unconscious?  I don’t know.  First of all, I felt certain that this was no chance meeting.  Something had happened before.  Was he a man for a coup-de-foudre, the lightning stroke of love?  I don’t think so.  That sort of susceptibility is luckily rare.  A world of inflammable lovers of the Romeo and Juliet type would very soon end in barbarism and misery.  But it is a fact that in every man (not in every woman) there lives a lover; a lover who is called out in all his potentialities often by the most insignificant little things — as long as they come at the psychological moment: the glimpse of a face at an unusual angle, an evanescent attitude, the curve of a cheek often looked at before, perhaps, but then, at the moment, charged with astonishing significance.  These are great mysteries, of course.  Magic signs.

I don’t know in what the sign consisted in this case.  It might have been her pallor (it wasn’t pasty nor yet papery) that white face with eyes like blue gleams of fire and lips like red coals.  In certain lights, in certain poises of head it suggested tragic sorrow.  Or it might have been her wavy hair.  Or even just that pointed chin stuck out a little, resentful and not particularly distinguished, doing away with the mysterious aloofness of her fragile presence.  But any way at a given moment Anthony must have suddenly seen the girl.  And then, that something had happened to him.  Perhaps nothing more than the thought coming into his head that this was “a possible woman.”

Followed this waylaying!  Its resolute character makes me think it was the chin’s doing; that “common mortal” touch which stands in such good stead to some women.  Because men, I mean really masculine men, those whose generations have evolved an ideal woman, are often very timid.  Who wouldn’t be before the ideal?  It’s your sentimental trifler, who has just missed being nothing at all, who is enterprising, simply because it is easy to appear enterprising when one does not mean to put one’s belief to the test.

Well, whatever it was that encouraged him, Captain Anthony stuck to Flora de Barral in a manner which in a timid man might have been called heroic if it had not been so simple.  Whether policy, diplomacy, simplicity, or just inspiration, he kept up his talk, rather deliberate, with very few pauses.  Then suddenly as if recollecting himself:

“It’s funny.  I don’t think you are annoyed with me for giving you my company unasked.  But why don’t you say something?”

I asked Miss de Barral what answer she made to this query.

“I made no answer,” she said in that even, unemotional low voice which seemed to be her voice for delicate confidences.  “I walked on.  He did not seem to mind.  We came to the foot of the quarry where the road winds up hill, past the place where you were sitting by the roadside that day.  I began to wonder what I should do.  After we reached the top Captain Anthony said that he had not been for a walk with a lady for years and years — almost since he was a boy.  We had then come to where I ought to have turned off and struck across a field.  I thought of making a run of it.  But he would have caught me up.  I knew he would; and, of course, he would not have allowed me.  I couldn’t give him the slip.”

“Why didn’t you ask him to leave you?” I inquired curiously.

“He would not have taken any notice,” she went on steadily.  “And what could I have done then?  I could not have started quarrelling with him — could I?  I hadn’t enough energy to get angry.  I felt very tired suddenly.  I just stumbled on straight along the road.  Captain Anthony told me that the family — some relations of his mother — he used to know in Liverpool was broken up now, and he had never made any friends since.  All gone their different ways.  All the girls married.  Nice girls they were and very friendly to him when he was but little more than a boy.  He repeated: ‘Very nice, cheery, clever girls.’  I sat down on a bank against a hedge and began to cry.”

“You must have astonished him not a little,” I observed.

Anthony, it seems, remained on the road looking down at her.  He did not offer to approach her, neither did he make any other movement or gesture.  Flora de Barral told me all this.  She could see him through her tears, blurred to a mere shadow on the white road, and then again becoming more distinct, but always absolutely still and as if lost in thought before a strange phenomenon which demanded the closest possible attention.

Flora learned later that he had never seen a woman cry; not in that way, at least.  He was impressed and interested by the mysteriousness of the effect.  She was very conscious of being looked at, but was not able to stop herself crying.  In fact, she was not capable of any effort.  Suddenly he advanced two steps, stooped, caught hold of her hands lying on her lap and pulled her up to her feet; she found herself standing close to him almost before she realized what he had done.  Some people were coming briskly along the road and Captain Anthony muttered: “You don’t want to be stared at.  What about that stile over there?  Can we go back across the fields?”

She snatched her hands out of his grasp (it seems he had omitted to let them go), marched away from him and got over the stile.  It was a big field sprinkled profusely with white sheep.  A trodden path crossed it diagonally.  After she had gone more than half way she turned her head for the first time.  Keeping five feet or so behind, Captain Anthony was following her with an air of extreme interest.  Interest or eagerness.  At any rate she caught an expression on his face which frightened her.  But not enough to make her run.  And indeed it would have had to be something incredibly awful to scare into a run a girl who had come to the end of her courage to live.