Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (700 page)

Captain Hagberd went back to his spade. The shouting in Carvil’s cottage stopped, and after a while the window of the parlour downstairs was lit up. A man coming from the end of the street with a firm leisurely step passed on, but seemed to have caught sight of Captain Hagberd, because he turned back a pace or two. A cold white light lingered in the western sky. The man leaned over the gate in an interested manner.

“You must be Captain Hagberd,” he said, with easy assurance.

The old man spun round, pulling out his spade, startled by the strange voice.

“Yes, I am,” he answered nervously.

The other, smiling straight at him, uttered very slowly: “You’ve been advertising for your son, I believe?”

“My son Harry,” mumbled Captain Hagberd, off his guard for once. “He’s coming home tomorrow.”

“The devil he is!” The stranger marvelled greatly, and then went on, with only a slight change of tone: “You’ve grown a beard like Father Christmas himself.”

Captain Hagberd drew a little nearer, and leaned forward over his spade. “Go your way,” he said, resentfully and timidly at the same time, because he was always afraid of being laughed at. Every mental state, even madness, has its equilibrium based upon self-esteem. Its disturbance causes unhappiness; and Captain Hagberd lived amongst a scheme of settled notions which it pained him to feel disturbed by people’s grins. Yes, people’s grins were awful. They hinted at something wrong: but what? He could not tell; and that stranger was obviously grinning — had come on purpose to grin. It was bad enough on the streets, but he had never before been outraged like this.

The stranger, unaware how near he was of having his head laid open with a spade, said seriously: “I am not trespassing where I stand, am I? I fancy there’s something wrong about your news. Suppose you let me come in.”

“You come in!” murmured old Hagberd, with inexpressible horror.

“I could give you some real information about your son — the very latest tip, if you care to hear.”

“No,” shouted Hagberd. He began to pace wildly to and fro, he shouldered his spade, he gesticulated with his other arm. “Here’s a fellow — a grinning fellow, who says there’s something wrong. I’ve got more information than you’re aware of. I’ve all the information I want. I’ve had it for years — for years — for years — enough to last me till to-morrow. Let you come in, indeed! What would Harry say?”

Bessie Carvil’s figure appeared in black silhouette on the parlour window; then, with the sound of an opening door, flitted out before the other cottage, all black, but with something white over her head. These two voices beginning to talk suddenly outside (she had heard them indoors) had given her such an emotion that she could not utter a sound.

Captain Hagberd seemed to be trying to find his way out of a cage. His feet squelched in the puddles left by his industry. He stumbled in the holes of the ruined grass-plot. He ran blindly against the fence.

“Here, steady a bit!” said the man at the gate, gravely stretching his arm over and catching him by the sleeve. “Somebody’s been trying to get at you. Hallo! what’s this rig you’ve got on? Storm canvas, by George!” He had a big laugh. “Well, you are a character!”

Captain Hagberd jerked himself free, and began to back away shrinkingly. “For the present,” he muttered, in a crestfallen tone.

“What’s the matter with him?” The stranger addressed Bessie with the utmost familiarity, in a deliberate, explanatory tone. “I didn’t want to startle the old man.” He lowered his voice as though he had known her for years. “I dropped into a barber’s on my way, to get a twopenny shave, and they told me there he was something of a character. The old man has been a character all his life.”

Captain Hagberd, daunted by the allusion to his clothing, had retreated inside, taking his spade with him; and the two at the gate, startled by the unexpected slamming of the door, heard the bolts being shot, the snapping of the lock, and the echo of an affected gurgling laugh within.

“I didn’t want to upset him,” the man said, after a short silence. “What’s the meaning of all this? He isn’t quite crazy.”

“He has been worrying a long time about his lost son,” said Bessie, in a low, apologetic tone.

“Well, I am his son.”

“Harry!” she cried — and was profoundly silent.

“Know my name? Friends with the old man, eh?”

“He’s our landlord,” Bessie faltered out, catching hold of the iron railing.

“Owns both them rabbit-hutches, does he?” commented young Hagberd, scornfully; “just the thing he would be proud of. Can you tell me who’s that chap coming to-morrow? You must know something of it. I tell you, it’s a swindle on the old man — nothing else.”

She did not answer, helpless before an insurmountable difficulty, appalled before the necessity, the impossibility and the dread of an explanation in which she and madness seemed involved together.

“Oh — I am so sorry,” she murmured.

“What’s the matter?” he said, with serenity. “You needn’t be afraid of upsetting me. It’s the other fellow that’ll be upset when he least expects it. I don’t care a hang; but there will be some fun when he shows his mug to-morrow. I don’t care that for the old man’s pieces, but right is right. You shall see me put a head on that coon — whoever he is!”

He had come nearer, and towered above her on the other side of the railings. He glanced at her hands. He fancied she was trembling, and it occurred to him that she had her part perhaps in that little game that was to be sprung on his old man to-morrow. He had come just in time to spoil their sport. He was entertained by the idea — scornful of the baffled plot. But all his life he had been full of indulgence for all sorts of women’s tricks. She really was trembling very much; her wrap had slipped off her head. “Poor devil!” he thought. “Never mind about that chap. I daresay he’ll change his mind before to-morrow. But what about me? I can’t loaf about the gate til the morning.”

She burst out: “It is you — you yourself that he’s waiting for. It is you who come to-morrow.”

He murmured. “Oh! It’s me!” blankly, and they seemed to become breathless together. Apparently he was pondering over what he had heard; then, without irritation, but evidently perplexed, he said: “I don’t understand. I hadn’t written or anything. It’s my chum who saw the paper and told me — this very morning.... Eh? what?”

He bent his ear; she whispered rapidly, and he listened for a while, muttering the words “yes” and “I see” at times. Then, “But why won’t today do?” he queried at last.

“You didn’t understand me!” she exclaimed, impatiently. The clear streak of light under the clouds died out in the west. Again he stooped slightly to hear better; and the deep night buried everything of the whispering woman and the attentive man, except the familiar contiguity of their faces, with its air of secrecy and caress.

He squared his shoulders; the broad-brimmed shadow of a hat sat cavalierly on his head. “Awkward this, eh?” he appealed to her. “To-morrow? Well, well! Never heard tell of anything like this. It’s all to-morrow, then, without any sort of to-day, as far as I can see.”

She remained still and mute.

“And you have been encouraging this funny notion,” he said.

“I never contradicted him.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“What for should I?” she defended herself. “It would only have made him miserable. He would have gone out of his mind.”

“His mind!” he muttered, and heard a short nervous laugh from her.

“Where was the harm? Was I to quarrel with the poor old man? It was easier to half believe it myself.”

“Aye, aye,” he meditated, intelligently. “I suppose the old chap got around you somehow with his soft talk. You are good-hearted.”

Her hands moved up in the dark nervously. “And it might have been true. It was true. It has come. Here it is. This is the to-morrow we have been waiting for.”

She drew a breath, and he said, good-humouredly: “Aye, with the door shut. I wouldn’t care if... And you think he could be brought round to recognise me... Eh? What?... You could do it? In a week you say? H’m, I daresay you could — but do you think I could hold out a week in this dead-alive place? Not me! I want either hard work, or an all-fired racket, or more space than there is in the whole of England. I have been in this place, though, once before, and for more than a week. The old man was advertising for me then, and a chum I had with me had a notion of getting a couple quid out of him by writing a lot of silly nonsense in a letter. That lark did not come off, though. We had to clear out — and none too soon. But this time I’ve a chum waiting for me in London, and besides...”

Bessie Carvil was breathing quickly.

“What if I tried a knock at the door?” he suggested.

“Try,” she said.

Captain Hagberd’s gate squeaked, and the shadow of the son moved on, then stopped with another deep laugh in the throat, like the father’s, only soft and gentle, thrilling to the woman’s heart, awakening to her ears.

“He isn’t frisky — is he? I would be afraid to lay hold of him. The chaps are always telling me I don’t know my own strength.”

“He’s the most harmless creature that ever lived,” she interrupted.

“You wouldn’t say so if you had seen him chasing me upstairs with a hard leather strap,” he said; “I haven’t forgotten it in sixteen years.”

She got warm from head to foot under another soft, subdued laugh. At the rat-tat-tat of the knocker her heart flew into her mouth.

“Hey, dad! Let me in. I am Harry, I am. Straight! Come back home a day too soon.”

One of the windows upstairs ran up.

“A grinning, information fellow,” said the voice of old Hagberd, up in the darkness. “Don’t you have anything to do with him. It will spoil everything.”

She heard Harry Hagberd say, “Hallo, dad,” then a clanging clatter. The window rumbled down, and he stood before her again.

“It’s just like old times. Nearly walloped the life out of me to stop me going away, and now I come back he throws a confounded shovel at my head to keep me out. It grazed my shoulder.”

She shuddered.

“I wouldn’t care,” he began, “only I spent my last shillings on the railway fare and my last twopence on a shave — out of respect for the old man.”

“Are you really Harry Hagberd?” she asked. “Can you prove it?”

“Can I prove it? Can any one else prove it?” he said jovially. “Prove with what? What do I want to prove? There isn’t a single corner in the world, barring England, perhaps, where you could not find some man, or more likely woman, that would remember me for Harry Hagberd. I am more like Harry Hagberd than any man alive; and I can prove it to you in a minute, if you will let me step inside your gate.”

“Come in,” she said.

He entered then the front garden of the Carvils. His tall shadow strode with a swagger; she turned her back on the window and waited, watching the shape, of which the footfalls seemed the most material part. The light fell on a tilted hat; a powerful shoulder, that seemed to cleave the darkness; on a leg stepping out. He swung about and stood still, facing the illuminated parlour window at her back, turning his head from side to side, laughing softly to himself.

“Just fancy, for a minute, the old man’s beard stuck on to my chin. Hey? Now say. I was the very spit of him from a boy.”

“It’s true,” she murmured to herself.

“And that’s about as far as it goes. He was always one of your domestic characters. Why, I remember how he used to go about looking very sick for three days before he had to leave home on one of his trips to South Shields for coal. He had a standing charter from the gas-works. You would think he was off on a whaling cruise — three years and a tail. Ha, ha! Not a bit of it. Ten days on the outside. The Skimmer of the Seas was a smart craft. Fine name, wasn’t it? Mother’s uncle owned her....”

He interrupted himself, and in a lowered voice, “Did he ever tell you what mother died of?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Miss Bessie, bitterly; “from impatience.”

He made no sound for a while; then brusquely: “They were so afraid I would turn out badly that they fairly drove me away. Mother nagged at me for being idle, and the old man said he would cut my soul out of my body rather than let me go to sea. Well, it looked as if he would do it too — so I went. It looks to me sometimes as if I had been born to them by a mistake — in that other hutch of a house.”

“Where ought you to have been born by rights?” Bessie Carvil interrupted him, defiantly.

“In the open, upon a beach, on a windy night,” he said, quick as lightning. Then he mused slowly. “They were characters, both of them, by George; and the old man keeps it up well — don’t he? A damned shovel on the — Hark! who’s that making that row? ‘Bessie, Bessie.’ It’s in your house.”

“It’s for me,” she said, with indifference.

He stepped aside, out of the streak of light. “Your husband?” he inquired, with the tone of a man accustomed to unlawful trysts. “Fine voice for a ship’s deck in a thundering squall.”

“No; my father. I am not married.”

“You seem a fine girl, Miss Bessie, dear,” he said at once.

She turned her face away.

“Oh, I say, — what’s up? Who’s murdering him?”

“He wants his tea.” She faced him, still and tall, with averted head, with her hands hanging clasped before her.

“Hadn’t you better go in?” he suggested, after watching for a while the nape of her neck, a patch of dazzling white skin and soft shadow above the sombre line of her shoulders. Her wrap had slipped down to her elbows. “You’ll have all the town coming out presently. I’ll wait here a bit.”

Her wrap fell to the ground, and he stooped to pick it up; she had vanished. He threw it over his arm, and approaching the window squarely he saw a monstrous form of a fat man in an armchair, an unshaded lamp, the yawning of an enormous mouth in a big flat face encircled by a ragged halo of hair — Miss Bessie’s head and bust. The shouting stopped; the blind ran down. He lost himself in thinking how awkward it was. Father mad; no getting into the house. No money to get back; a hungry chum in London who would begin to think he had been given the go-by. “Damn!” he muttered. He could break the door in, certainly; but they would perhaps bundle him into chokey for that without asking questions — no great matter, only he was confoundedly afraid of being locked up, even in mistake. He turned cold at the thought. He stamped his feet on the sodden grass.