Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (756 page)

Emitting a loud and vehement “Pshaw!” he glared for a moment, very round-eyed and fierce.  It was like a gigantic tomcat spitting at one suddenly.  “Look at him! . . . What do you fancy yourself to be?  What did you come here for?  If you won’t sit down and talk business you had better go to the devil.”

“I don’t know him personally,” I said.  “But after this I wouldn’t mind calling on him.  It would be refreshing to meet a gentleman.”

He followed me, growling behind my back:

“The impudence!  I’ve a good mind to write to your owners what I think of you.”

I turned on him for a moment:

“As it happens I don’t care.  For my part I assure you I won’t even take the trouble to mention you to them.”

He stopped at the door of his office while I traversed the littered anteroom.  I think he was somewhat taken aback.

“I will break every bone in your body,” he roared suddenly at the miserable mulatto lad, “if you ever dare to disturb me before half-past three for anybody.  D’ye hear?  For anybody! . . . Let alone any damned skipper,” he added, in a lower growl.

The frail youngster, swaying like a reed, made a low moaning sound.  I stopped short and addressed this sufferer with advice.  It was prompted by the sight of a hammer (used for opening the wine-cases, I suppose) which was lying on the floor.

“If I were you, my boy, I would have that thing up my sleeve when I went in next and at the first occasion I would — ”

What was there so familiar in that lad’s yellow face?  Entrenched and quaking behind the flimsy desk, he never looked up.  His heavy, lowered eyelids gave me suddenly the clue of the puzzle.  He resembled — yes, those thick glued lips — he resembled the brothers Jacobus.  He resembled both, the wealthy merchant and the pushing shopkeeper (who resembled each other); he resembled them as much as a thin, light-yellow mulatto lad may resemble a big, stout, middle-aged white man.  It was the exotic complexion and the slightness of his build which had put me off so completely.  Now I saw in him unmistakably the Jacobus strain, weakened, attenuated, diluted as it were in a bucket of water — and I refrained from finishing my speech.  I had intended to say: “Crack this brute’s head for him.”  I still felt the conclusion to be sound.  But it is no trifling responsibility to counsel parricide to any one, however deeply injured.

“Beggarly — cheeky — skippers.”

I despised the emphatic growl at my back; only, being much vexed and upset, I regret to say that I slammed the door behind me in a most undignified manner.

It may not appear altogether absurd if I say that I brought out from that interview a kindlier view of the other Jacobus.  It was with a feeling resembling partisanship that, a few days later, I called at his “store.”  That long, cavern-like place of business, very dim at the back and stuffed full of all sorts of goods, was entered from the street by a lofty archway.  At the far end I saw my Jacobus exerting himself in his shirt-sleeves among his assistants.  The captains’ room was a small, vaulted apartment with a stone floor and heavy iron bars in its windows like a dungeon converted to hospitable purposes.  A couple of cheerful bottles and several gleaming glasses made a brilliant cluster round a tall, cool red earthenware pitcher on the centre table which was littered with newspapers from all parts of the world.  A well-groomed stranger in a smart grey check suit, sitting with one leg flung over his knee, put down one of these sheets briskly and nodded to me.

I guessed him to be a steamer-captain.  It was impossible to get to know these men.  They came and went too quickly and their ships lay moored far out, at the very entrance of the harbour.  Theirs was another life altogether.  He yawned slightly.

“Dull hole, isn’t it?”

I understood this to allude to the town.

“Do you find it so?” I murmured.

“Don’t you?  But I’m off to-morrow, thank goodness.”

He was a very gentlemanly person, good-natured and superior.  I watched him draw the open box of cigars to his side of the table, take a big cigar-case out of his pocket and begin to fill it very methodically.  Presently, on our eyes meeting, he winked like a common mortal and invited me to follow his example.  “They are really decent smokes.”  I shook my head.

“I am not off to-morrow.”

“What of that?  Think I am abusing old Jacobus’s hospitality?  Heavens!  It goes into the bill, of course.  He spreads such little matters all over his account.  He can take care of himself!  Why, it’s business — ”

I noted a shadow fall over his well-satisfied expression, a momentary hesitation in closing his cigar-case.  But he ended by putting it in his pocket jauntily.  A placid voice uttered in the doorway: “That’s quite correct, Captain.”

The large noiseless Jacobus advanced into the room.  His quietness, in the circumstances, amounted to cordiality.  He had put on his jacket before joining us, and he sat down in the chair vacated by the steamer-man, who nodded again to me and went out with a short, jarring laugh.  A profound silence reigned.  With his drowsy stare Jacobus seemed to be slumbering open-eyed.  Yet, somehow, I was aware of being profoundly scrutinised by those heavy eyes.  In the enormous cavern of the store somebody began to nail down a case, expertly: tap-tap . . . tap-tap-tap.

Two other experts, one slow and nasal, the other shrill and snappy, started checking an invoice.

“A half-coil of three-inch manilla rope.”

“Right!”

“Six assorted shackles.”

“Right!”

“Six tins assorted soups, three of paté, two asparagus, fourteen pounds tobacco, cabin.”

“Right!”

“It’s for the captain who was here just now,” breathed out the immovable Jacobus.  “These steamer orders are very small.  They pick up what they want as they go along.  That man will be in Samarang in less than a fortnight.  Very small orders indeed.”

The calling over of the items went on in the shop; an extraordinary jumble of varied articles, paint-brushes, Yorkshire Relish, etc., etc. . . . “Three sacks of best potatoes,” read out the nasal voice.

At this Jacobus blinked like a sleeping man roused by a shake, and displayed some animation.  At his order, shouted into the shop, a smirking half-caste clerk with his ringlets much oiled and with a pen stuck behind his ear, brought in a sample of six potatoes which he paraded in a row on the table.

Being urged to look at their beauty I gave them a cold and hostile glance.  Calmly, Jacobus proposed that I should order ten or fifteen tons — tons!  I couldn’t believe my ears.  My crew could not have eaten such a lot in a year; and potatoes (excuse these practical remarks) are a highly perishable commodity.  I thought he was joking — or else trying to find out whether I was an unutterable idiot.  But his purpose was not so simple.  I discovered that he meant me to buy them on my own account.

“I am proposing you a bit of business, Captain.  I wouldn’t charge you a great price.”

I told him that I did not go in for trade.  I even added grimly that I knew only too well how that sort of spec. generally ended.

He sighed and clasped his hands on his stomach with exemplary resignation.  I admired the placidity of his impudence.  Then waking up somewhat:

“Won’t you try a cigar, Captain?”

“No, thanks.  I don’t smoke cigars.”

“For once!” he exclaimed, in a patient whisper.  A melancholy silence ensued.  You know how sometimes a person discloses a certain unsuspected depth and acuteness of thought; that is, in other words, utters something unexpected.  It was unexpected enough to hear Jacobus say:

“The man who just went out was right enough.  You might take one, Captain.  Here everything is bound to be in the way of business.”

I felt a little ashamed of myself.  The remembrance of his horrid brother made him appear quite a decent sort of fellow.  It was with some compunction that I said a few words to the effect that I could have no possible objection to his hospitality.

Before I was a minute older I saw where this admission was leading me.  As if changing the subject, Jacobus mentioned that his private house was about ten minutes’ walk away.  It had a beautiful old walled garden.  Something really remarkable.  I ought to come round some day and have a look at it.

He seemed to be a lover of gardens.  I too take extreme delight in them; but I did not mean my compunction to carry me as far as Jacobus’s flower-beds, however beautiful and old.  He added, with a certain homeliness of tone:

“There’s only my girl there.”

It is difficult to set everything down in due order; so I must revert here to what happened a week or two before.  The medical officer of the port had come on board my ship to have a look at one of my crew who was ailing, and naturally enough he was asked to step into the cabin.  A fellow-shipmaster of mine was there too; and in the conversation, somehow or other, the name of Jacobus came to be mentioned.  It was pronounced with no particular reverence by the other man, I believe.  I don’t remember now what I was going to say.  The doctor — a pleasant, cultivated fellow, with an assured manner — prevented me by striking in, in a sour tone:

“Ah!  You’re talking about my respected papa-in-law.”

Of course, that sally silenced us at the time.  But I remembered the episode, and at this juncture, pushed for something noncommittal to say, I inquired with polite surprise:

“You have your married daughter living with you, Mr. Jacobus?”

He moved his big hand from right to left quietly.  No!  That was another of his girls, he stated, ponderously and under his breath as usual.  She . . . He seemed in a pause to be ransacking his mind for some kind of descriptive phrase.  But my hopes were disappointed.  He merely produced his stereotyped definition.

“She’s a very different sort of person.”

“Indeed. . . . And by the by, Jacobus, I called on your brother the other day.  It’s no great compliment if I say that I found him a very different sort of person from you.”

He had an air of profound reflection, then remarked quaintly:

“He’s a man of regular habits.”

He might have been alluding to the habit of late siesta; but I mumbled something about “beastly habits anyhow” — and left the store abruptly.

CHAPTER IV

My little passage with Jacobus the merchant became known generally.  One or two of my acquaintances made distant allusions to it.  Perhaps the mulatto boy had talked.  I must confess that people appeared rather scandalised, but not with Jacobus’s brutality.  A man I knew remonstrated with me for my hastiness.

I gave him the whole story of my visit, not forgetting the tell-tale resemblance of the wretched mulatto boy to his tormentor.  He was not surprised.  No doubt, no doubt.  What of that?  In a jovial tone he assured me that there must be many of that sort.  The elder Jacobus had been a bachelor all his life.  A highly respectable bachelor.  But there had never been open scandal in that connection.  His life had been quite regular.  It could cause no offence to any one.

I said that I had been offended considerably.  My interlocutor opened very wide eyes.  Why?  Because a mulatto lad got a few knocks?  That was not a great affair, surely.  I had no idea how insolent and untruthful these half-castes were.  In fact he seemed to think Mr. Jacobus rather kind than otherwise to employ that youth at all; a sort of amiable weakness which could be forgiven.

This acquaintance of mine belonged to one of the old French families, descendants of the old colonists; all noble, all impoverished, and living a narrow domestic life in dull, dignified decay.  The men, as a rule, occupy inferior posts in Government offices or in business houses.  The girls are almost always pretty, ignorant of the world, kind and agreeable and generally bilingual; they prattle innocently both in French and English.  The emptiness of their existence passes belief.

I obtained my entry into a couple of such households because some years before, in Bombay, I had occasion to be of use to a pleasant, ineffectual young man who was rather stranded there, not knowing what to do with himself or even how to get home to his island again.  It was a matter of two hundred rupees or so, but, when I turned up, the family made a point of showing their gratitude by admitting me to their intimacy.  My knowledge of the French language made me specially acceptable.  They had meantime managed to marry the fellow to a woman nearly twice his age, comparatively well off: the only profession he was really fit for.  But it was not all cakes and ale.  The first time I called on the couple she spied a little spot of grease on the poor devil’s pantaloons and made him a screaming scene of reproaches so full of sincere passion that I sat terrified as at a tragedy of Racine.

Of course there was never question of the money I had advanced him; but his sisters, Miss Angele and Miss Mary, and the aunts of both families, who spoke quaint archaic French of pre-Revolution period, and a host of distant relations adopted me for a friend outright in a manner which was almost embarrassing.

It was with the eldest brother (he was employed at a desk in my consignee’s office) that I was having this talk about the merchant Jacobus.  He regretted my attitude and nodded his head sagely.  An influential man.  One never knew when one would need him.  I expressed my immense preference for the shopkeeper of the two.  At that my friend looked grave.

“What on earth are you pulling that long face about?” I cried impatiently.  “He asked me to see his garden and I have a good mind to go some day.”

“Don’t do that,” he said, so earnestly that I burst into a fit of laughter; but he looked at me without a smile.

This was another matter altogether.  At one time the public conscience of the island had been mightily troubled by my Jacobus.  The two brothers had been partners for years in great harmony, when a wandering circus came to the island and my Jacobus became suddenly infatuated with one of the lady-riders.  What made it worse was that he was married.  He had not even the grace to conceal his passion.  It must have been strong indeed to carry away such a large placid creature.  His behaviour was perfectly scandalous.  He followed that woman to the Cape, and apparently travelled at the tail of that beastly circus to other parts of the world, in a most degrading position.  The woman soon ceased to care for him, and treated him worse than a dog.  Most extraordinary stories of moral degradation were reaching the island at that time.  He had not the strength of mind to shake himself free. . . .