Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (760 page)

I looked at her rounded chin, the Jacobus chin; at the full, red lips pouting in the powdered, sallow face; at the firm modelling of the cheek, the grains of white in the hairs of the straight sombre eyebrows; at the long eyes, a narrowed gleam of liquid white and intense motionless black, with their gaze so empty of thought, and so absorbed in their fixity that she seemed to be staring at her own lonely image, in some far-off mirror hidden from my sight amongst the trees.

And suddenly, without looking at me, with the appearance of a person speaking to herself, she asked, in that voice slightly harsh yet mellow and always irritated:

“Why do you keep on coming here?”

“Why do I keep on coming here?” I repeated, taken by surprise.  I could not have told her.  I could not even tell myself with sincerity why I was coming there.  “What’s the good of you asking a question like that?”

“Nothing is any good,” she observed scornfully to the empty air, her chin propped on her hand, that hand never extended to any man, that no one had ever grasped — for I had only grasped her shoulder once — that generous, fine, somewhat masculine hand.  I knew well the peculiarly efficient shape — broad at the base, tapering at the fingers — of that hand, for which there was nothing in the world to lay hold of.  I pretended to be playful.

“No!  But do you really care to know?”

She shrugged indolently her magnificent shoulders, from which the dingy thin wrapper was slipping a little.

“Oh — never mind — never mind!”

There was something smouldering under those airs of lassitude.  She exasperated me by the provocation of her nonchalance, by something elusive and defiant in her very form which I wanted to seize.  I said roughly:

“Why?  Don’t you think I should tell you the truth?”

Her eyes glided my way for a sidelong look, and she murmured, moving only her full, pouting lips:

“I think you would not dare.”

“Do you imagine I am afraid of you?  What on earth. . . . Well, it’s possible, after all, that I don’t know exactly why I am coming here.  Let us say, with Miss Jacobus, that it is for no good.  You seem to believe the outrageous things she says, if you do have a row with her now and then.”

She snapped out viciously:

“Who else am I to believe?

“I don’t know,” I had to own, seeing her suddenly very helpless and condemned to moral solitude by the verdict of a respectable community.  “You might believe me, if you chose.”

She made a slight movement and asked me at once, with an effort as if making an experiment:

“What is the business between you and papa?”

“Don’t you know the nature of your father’s business?  Come!  He sells provisions to ships.”

She became rigid again in her crouching pose.

“Not that.  What brings you here — to this house?”

“And suppose it’s you?  You would not call that business?  Would you?  And now let us drop the subject.  It’s no use.  My ship will be ready for sea the day after to-morrow.”

She murmured a distinctly scared “So soon,” and getting up quickly, went to the little table and poured herself a glass of water.  She walked with rapid steps and with an indolent swaying of her whole young figure above the hips; when she passed near me I felt with tenfold force the charm of the peculiar, promising sensation I had formed the habit to seek near her.  I thought with sudden dismay that this was the end of it; that after one more day I would be no longer able to come into this verandah, sit on this chair, and taste perversely the flavour of contempt in her indolent poses, drink in the provocation of her scornful looks, and listen to the curt, insolent remarks uttered in that harsh and seductive voice.  As if my innermost nature had been altered by the action of some moral poison, I felt an abject dread of going to sea.

I had to exercise a sudden self-control, as one puts on a brake, to prevent myself jumping up to stride about, shout, gesticulate, make her a scene.  What for?  What about?  I had no idea.  It was just the relief of violence that I wanted; and I lolled back in my chair, trying to keep my lips formed in a smile; that half-indulgent, half-mocking smile which was my shield against the shafts of her contempt and the insulting sallies flung at me by the old woman.

She drank the water at a draught, with the avidity of raging thirst, and let herself fall on the nearest chair, as if utterly overcome.  Her attitude, like certain tones of her voice, had in it something masculine: the knees apart in the ample wrapper, the clasped hands hanging between them, her body leaning forward, with drooping head.  I stared at the heavy black coil of twisted hair.  It was enormous, crowning the bowed head with a crushing and disdained glory.  The escaped wisps hung straight down.  And suddenly I perceived that the girl was trembling from head to foot, as though that glass of iced water had chilled her to the bone.

“What’s the matter now?” I said, startled, but in no very sympathetic mood.

She shook her bowed, overweighted head and cried in a stifled voice but with a rising inflection:

“Go away!  Go away!  Go away!”

I got up then and approached her, with a strange sort of anxiety.  I looked down at her round, strong neck, then stooped low enough to peep at her face.  And I began to tremble a little myself.

“What on earth are you gone wild about, Miss Don’t Care?”

She flung herself backwards violently, her head going over the back of the chair.  And now it was her smooth, full, palpitating throat that lay exposed to my bewildered stare.  Her eyes were nearly closed, with only a horrible white gleam under the lids as if she were dead.

“What has come to you?” I asked in awe.  “What are you terrifying yourself with?”

She pulled herself together, her eyes open frightfully wide now.  The tropical afternoon was lengthening the shadows on the hot, weary earth, the abode of obscure desires, of extravagant hopes, of unimaginable terrors.

“Never mind!  Don’t care!”  Then, after a gasp, she spoke with such frightful rapidity that I could hardly make out the amazing words: “For if you were to shut me up in an empty place as smooth all round as the palm of my hand, I could always strangle myself with my hair.”

For a moment, doubting my ears, I let this inconceivable declaration sink into me.  It is ever impossible to guess at the wild thoughts that pass through the heads of our fellow-creatures.  What monstrous imaginings of violence could have dwelt under the low forehead of that girl who had been taught to regard her father as “capable of anything” more in the light of a misfortune than that of a disgrace; as, evidently, something to be resented and feared rather than to be ashamed of?  She seemed, indeed, as unaware of shame as of anything else in the world; but in her ignorance, her resentment and fear took a childish and violent shape.

Of course she spoke without knowing the value of words.  What could she know of death — she who knew nothing of life?  It was merely as the proof of her being beside herself with some odious apprehension, that this extraordinary speech had moved me, not to pity, but to a fascinated, horrified wonder.  I had no idea what notion she had of her danger.  Some sort of abduction.  It was quite possible with the talk of that atrocious old woman.  Perhaps she thought she could be carried off, bound hand and foot and even gagged.  At that surmise I felt as if the door of a furnace had been opened in front of me.

“Upon my honour!” I cried.  “You shall end by going crazy if you listen to that abominable old aunt of yours — ”

I studied her haggard expression, her trembling lips.  Her cheeks even seemed sunk a little.  But how I, the associate of her disreputable father, the “lowest of the low” from the criminal Europe, could manage to reassure her I had no conception.  She was exasperating.

“Heavens and earth!  What do you think I can do?”

“I don’t know.”

Her chin certainly trembled.  And she was looking at me with extreme attention.  I made a step nearer to her chair.

“I shall do nothing.  I promise you that.  Will that do?  Do you understand?  I shall do nothing whatever, of any kind; and the day after to-morrow I shall be gone.”

What else could I have said?  She seemed to drink in my words with the thirsty avidity with which she had emptied the glass of water.  She whispered tremulously, in that touching tone I had heard once before on her lips, and which thrilled me again with the same emotion:

“I would believe you.  But what about papa — ”

“He be hanged!”  My emotion betrayed itself by the brutality of my tone.  “I’ve had enough of your papa.  Are you so stupid as to imagine that I am frightened of him?  He can’t make me do anything.”

All that sounded feeble to me in the face of her ignorance.  But I must conclude that the “accent of sincerity” has, as some people say, a really irresistible power.  The effect was far beyond my hopes, — and even beyond my conception.  To watch the change in the girl was like watching a miracle — the gradual but swift relaxation of her tense glance, of her stiffened muscles, of every fibre of her body.  That black, fixed stare into which I had read a tragic meaning more than once, in which I had found a sombre seduction, was perfectly empty now, void of all consciousness whatever, and not even aware any longer of my presence; it had become a little sleepy, in the Jacobus fashion.

But, man being a perverse animal, instead of rejoicing at my complete success, I beheld it with astounded and indignant eyes.  There was something cynical in that unconcealed alteration, the true Jacobus shamelessness.  I felt as though I had been cheated in some rather complicated deal into which I had entered against my better judgment.  Yes, cheated without any regard for, at least, the forms of decency.

With an easy, indolent, and in its indolence supple, feline movement, she rose from the chair, so provokingly ignoring me now, that for very rage I held my ground within less than a foot of her.  Leisurely and tranquil, behaving right before me with the ease of a person alone in a room, she extended her beautiful arms, with her hands clenched, her body swaying, her head thrown back a little, revelling contemptuously in a sense of relief, easing her limbs in freedom after all these days of crouching, motionless poses when she had been so furious and so afraid.

All this with supreme indifference, incredible, offensive, exasperating, like ingratitude doubled with treachery.

I ought to have been flattered, perhaps, but, on the contrary, my anger grew; her movement to pass by me as if I were a wooden post or a piece of furniture, that unconcerned movement brought it to a head.

I won’t say I did not know what I was doing, but, certainly, cool reflection had nothing to do with the circumstance that next moment both my arms were round her waist.  It was an impulsive action, as one snatches at something falling or escaping; and it had no hypocritical gentleness about it either.  She had no time to make a sound, and the first kiss I planted on her closed lips was vicious enough to have been a bite.

She did not resist, and of course I did not stop at one.  She let me go on, not as if she were inanimate — I felt her there, close against me, young, full of vigour, of life, a strong desirable creature, but as if she did not care in the least, in the absolute assurance of her safety, what I did or left undone.  Our faces brought close together in this storm of haphazard caresses, her big, black, wide-open eyes looked into mine without the girl appearing either angry or pleased or moved in any way.  In that steady gaze which seemed impersonally to watch my madness I could detect a slight surprise, perhaps — nothing more.  I showered kisses upon her face and there did not seem to be any reason why this should not go on for ever.

That thought flashed through my head, and I was on the point of desisting, when, all at once, she began to struggle with a sudden violence which all but freed her instantly, which revived my exasperation with her, indeed a fierce desire never to let her go any more.  I tightened my embrace in time, gasping out: “No — you don’t!” as if she were my mortal enemy.  On her part not a word was said.  Putting her hands against my chest, she pushed with all her might without succeeding to break the circle of my arms.  Except that she seemed thoroughly awake now, her eyes gave me no clue whatever.  To meet her black stare was like looking into a deep well, and I was totally unprepared for her change of tactics.  Instead of trying to tear my hands apart, she flung herself upon my breast and with a downward, undulating, serpentine motion, a quick sliding dive, she got away from me smoothly.  It was all very swift; I saw her pick up the tail of her wrapper and run for the door at the end of the verandah not very gracefully.  She appeared to be limping a little — and then she vanished; the door swung behind her so noiselessly that I could not believe it was completely closed.  I had a distinct suspicion of her black eye being at the crack to watch what I would do.  I could not make up my mind whether to shake my fist in that direction or blow a kiss.

CHAPTER VI

Either would have been perfectly consistent with my feelings.  I gazed at the door, hesitating, but in the end I did neither.  The monition of some sixth sense — the sense of guilt, maybe, that sense which always acts too late, alas! — warned me to look round; and at once I became aware that the conclusion of this tumultuous episode was likely to be a matter of lively anxiety.  Jacobus was standing in the doorway of the dining-room.  How long he had been there it was impossible to guess; and remembering my struggle with the girl I thought he must have been its mute witness from beginning to end.  But this supposition seemed almost incredible.  Perhaps that impenetrable girl had heard him come in and had got away in time.

He stepped on to the verandah in his usual manner, heavy-eyed, with glued lips.  I marvelled at the girl’s resemblance to this man.  Those long, Egyptian eyes, that low forehead of a stupid goddess, she had found in the sawdust of the circus; but all the rest of the face, the design and the modelling, the rounded chin, the very lips — all that was Jacobus, fined down, more finished, more expressive.