Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (614 page)

``Yes, I hear you.’’

``You are an honest man.’’ It was Catherine’s unemotional voice. ``The day has broken. You will go away.’’

``Yes,’’ he said without raising his head.

``She is asleep,’’ went on Catherine or whoever it was, ``exhausted, and you would have to shake her hard before she would wake. You will go. You know,’’ the voice continued inflexibly, ``she is my niece, and you know that there is death in the folds of her skirt and blood about her feet. She is for no man.’’

Ral felt all the anguish of an unearthly experience. This thing that looked like Catherine and spoke like a cruel fate had to be faced. He raised his head in this light that seemed to him appalling and not of this world.

``Listen well to me, you too,’’ he said. ``If she had all the madness of the world and the sin of all the murders of the Revolution on her shoulders, I would still hug her to my breast. Do you understand?’’

The apparition which resembled Catherine lowered and raised its hooded head slowly. ``There was a time when I could have hugged l’enfer mme to my breast. He went away. He had his vow. You have only your honesty. You will go.’’

``I have my duty,’’ said Lieutenant Ral in measured tones, as if calmed by the excess of horror that old woman inspired him with.

``Go without disturbing her, without looking at her.’’

``I will carry my shoes in my hand,’’ he said. He sighed deeply and felt as if sleepy. ``It is very early,’’ he muttered.

``Peyrol is already down at the well,’’ announced Catherine. ``What can he be doing there all this time?’’ she added in a troubled voice. Ral, with his feet now on the ground, gave her a side glance; but she was already gliding away, and when he looked again she had vanished from the room and the door was shut.

CHAPTER XV

Catherine, going downstairs, found Peyrol still at the well. He seemed to be looking into it with extreme interest.

``Your coffee is ready, Peyrol,’’ she shouted to him from the doorway.

He turned very sharply like a man surprised and came along smiling.

``That’s pleasant news, Mademoiselle Catherine,’’ he said. ``You are down early.’’

``Yes,’’ she admitted, ``but you too, Peyrol. Is Michel about? Let him come and have some coffee too.’’

``Michel’s at the tartane. Perhaps you don’t know that she is going to make a little voyage.’’ He drank a mouthful of coffee and took a bite out of a slice of bread. He was hungry. He had been up all night and had even had a conversation with Citizen Scevola. He had also done some work with Michel after daylight; however, there had not been much to do because the tartane was always kept ready for sea. Then after having again locked up Citizen Scevola, who was extremely concerned as to what was going to happen to him but was left in a state of uncertainty, he had come up to the farm, had gone upstairs where he was busy with various things for a time, and then had stolen down very cautiously to the well, where Catherine, whom he had not expected downstairs so early, had seen him before she went into Lieutenant Ral’s room. While he enjoyed his coffee he listened without any signs of surprise to Catherine’s comments upon the disappearance of Scevola. She had looked into his den. He had not slept on his pallet last night, of that she was certain, and he was nowhere to be seen, not even in the most distant field, from the points of vantage around the farm. It was inconceivable that he should have slipped away to Madrague, where he disliked to go, or to the village, where he was afraid to go. Peyrol remarked that whatever happened to him he was no great loss, but Catherine was not to be soothed.

``It frightens a body,’’ she said. ``He may be hiding somewhere to jump on one treacherously. You know what I mean, Peyrol.’’

``Well, the lieutenant will have nothing to fear, as he’s going away. As to myself, Scevola and I are good friends. I had a long talk with him quite recently. You two women can manage him perfectly; and then, who knows, perhaps he has gone away for good.’’

Catherine stared at him, if such a word as stare can be applied to a profound contemplative gaze. ``The lieutenant has nothing to fear from him,’’ she repeated cautiously.

``No, he is going away. Didn’t you know it?’’ The old woman continued to look at him profoundly. ``Yes, he is on service.’’

For another minute or so Catherine continued silent in her contemplative attitude. Then her hesitation came to an end. She could not resist the desire to inform Peyrol of the events of the night. As she went on Peyrol forgot the half-full bowl of coffee and his half-eaten piece of bread. Catherine’s voice flowed with austerity. She stood there, imposing and solemn like a peasant-priestess. The relation of what had been to her a soul-shaking experience did not take much time, and she finished with the words, ``The lieutenant is an honest man.’’ And after a pause she insisted further: ``There is no denying it. He has acted like an honest man.’’

For a moment longer Peyrol continued to look at the coffee in the bowl, then without warning got up with such violence that the chair behind him was thrown back upon the flagstones.

``Where is he, that honest man?’’ he shouted suddenly in stentorian tones which not only caused Catherine to raise her hands, but frightened himself, and he dropped at once to a mere forcible utterance. ``Where is that man? Let me see him.’’

Even Catherine’s hieratic composure was disturbed. ``Why,’’ she said, looking really disconcerted, ``he will be down here directly. This bowl of coffee is for him.’’

Peyrol made as if to leave the kitchen, but Catherine stopped him. ``For God’s sake, Monsieur Peyrol,’’ she said, half in entreaty and half in command, ``don’t wake up the child. Let her sleep. Oh, let her sleep! Don’t wake her up. God only knows how long it is since she has slept properly. I could not tell you. I daren’t think of it.’’ She was shocked by hearing Peyrol declare: ``All this is confounded nonsense.’’ But he sat down again, seemed to catch sight of the coffee bowl and emptied what was left in it down his throat.

``I don’t want her on my hands more crazy than she has been before,’’ said Catherine, in a sort of exasperation but in a very low tone. This phrase in its selfish form expressed a real and profound compassion for her niece. She dreaded the moment when that fatal Arlette would wake up and the dreadful complications of life which her slumbers had suspended would have to be picked up again. Peyrol fidgeted on his seat.

``And so he told you he was going? He actually did tell you that?’’ he asked.

``He promised to go before the child wakes up. . . . At once.’’

``But, sacr nom d’un chien, there is never any wind before eleven o’clock,’’ Peyrol exclaimed in a tone of profound annoyance, yet trying to moderate his voice, while Catherine, indulgent to his changing moods, only compressed her lips and nodded at him soothingly. ``It is impossible to work with people like that,’’ he mumbled.

``Do you know, Monsieur Peyrol, that she has been to see the priest?’’ Catherine was heard suddenly, towering above her end of the table. The two women had had a talk before Arlette had been induced by her aunt to lie down. Peyrol gave a start.

``What? Priest? . . . Now look here, Catherine,’’ he went on with repressed ferocity, ``do you imagine that all this interests me in the least?’’

``I can think of nothing but that niece of mine. We two have nobody but each other in the world,’’ she went on, reproducing the very phrase Arlette had used to Ral. She seemed to be thinking aloud, but noticed that Peyrol was listening with attention. ``He wanted to shut her up from everybody,’’ and the old woman clasped her meagre hands with a sudden gesture. ``I suppose there are still some convents about the world.’’

``You and the patronne are mad together,’’ declared Peyrol. ``All this only shows what an ass the cur is. I don’t know much about these things, though I have seen some nuns in my time, and some very queer ones too, but it seems to me that they don’t take crazy people into convents. Don’t you be afraid. I tell you that.’’ He stopped because the inner door of the kitchen came open and Lieutenant Ral stepped in. His sword hung on his forearm by the belt, his hat was on his head. He dropped his little valise on the floor and sat down in the nearest chair to put on his shoes which he had brought down in his other hand. Then he came up to the table. Peyrol, who had kept his eyes on him, thought: ``Here is one who looks like a moth scorched in the fire.’’ Ral’s eyes were sunk, his cheeks seemed hollowed and the whole face had an arid and dry aspect.

``Well, you are in a fine state for the work of deceiving the enemy,’’ Peyrol observed. ``Why, to look at you, nobody would believe a word you said. You are not going to be ill, I hope. You are on service. You haven’t got the right to be ill. I say, Mademoiselle Catherine, produce the bottle — -you know, my private bottle. . . .’’ He snatched it from Catherine’s hand, poured some brandy into the lieutenant’s coffee, pushed the bowl towards him and waited. ``Nom de nom!’’ he said forcibly, ``don’t you know what this is for? It’s for you to drink.’’ Ral obeyed with a strange, automatic docility. ``And now,’’ said Peyrol, getting up, ``I will go to my room and shave. This is a great day — -the day we are going to see the lieutenant off.’’

Till then Ral had not uttered a word, but directly the door closed behind Peyrol he raised his head.

``Catherine!’’ His voice was like a rustle in his throat. She was looking at him steadily and he continued: ``Listen, when she finds I am gone you tell her I will return soon. To-morrow. Always to-morrow.’’

``Yes, my good Monsieur,’’ said Catherine in an unmoved voice but clasping her hands convulsively. ``There is nothing else I would dare tell her!’’

``She will believe you,’’ whispered Ral wildly.

``Yes! She will believe me,’’ repeated Catherine in a mournful tone.

Ral got up, put the sword-belt over his head, picked up the valise. There was a little flush on his cheeks.

``Adieu,’’ he said to the silent old woman. She made no answer, but as he turned away she raised her hand a little, hesitated, and let it fall again. It seemed to her that the women of Escampobar had been singled out for divine wrath. Her niece appeared to her like the scapegoat charged with all the murders and blasphemies of the Revolution. She herself too had been cast out from the grace of God. But that had been a long time ago. She had made her peace with Heaven since. Again she raised her hand and, this time, made in the air the sign of the cross at the back of Lieutenant Ral.

Meanwhile upstairs Peyrol, scraping his big flat cheek with an English razor-blade at the window, saw Lieutenant Ral on the path to the shore; and high above there, commanding a vast view of sea and land, he shrugged his shoulders impatiently with no visible provocation. One could not trust those epaulette-wearers. They would cram a fellow’s head with notions either for their own sake or for the sake of the service. Still, he was too old a bird to be caught with chaff; and besides, that long-legged stiff beggar going down the path with all his officer airs, was honest enough. At any rate he knew a seaman when he saw one, though he was as cold-blooded as a fish. Peyrol had a smile which was a little awry.

Cleaning the razor-blade (one of a set of twelve in a case) he had a vision of a brilliantly hazy ocean and an English Indiaman with her yards braced all ways, her canvas blowing loose above her bloodstained decks overrun by a lot of privateersmen and with the island of Ceylon swelling like a thin blue cloud on the far horizon. He had always wished to own a set of English blades and there he had got it, fell over it as it were, lying on the floor of a cabin which had been already ransacked. ``For good steel — -it was good steel,’’ he thought looking at the blade fixedly. And there it was, nearly worn out. The others too. That steel! And here he was holding the case in his hand as though he had just picked it up from the floor. Same case. Same man. And the steel worn out.

He shut the case brusquely, flung it into his sea-chest which was standing open, and slammed the lid down. The feeling which was in his breast and had been known to more articulate men than himself, was that life was a dream less substantial than the vision of Ceylon lying like a cloud on the sea. Dream left astern. Dream straight ahead. This disenchanted philosophy took the shape of fierce swearing. ``Sacr nom de nom de nom. . . . Tonnerre de bon Dieu!’’

While tying his neckcloth he handled it with fury as though he meant to strangle himself with it. He rammed a soft cap on to his venerable locks recklessly, seized his cudgel — -but before leaving the room walked up to the window giving on the east. He could not see the Petite Passe on account of the lookout hill, but to the left a great portion of the Hyres roadstead lay spread out before him, pale grey in the morning light, with the land about Cape Blanc swelling in the distance with all its details blurred as yet and only one conspicuous object presenting to his sight something that might have been a lighthouse by its shape, but which Peyrol knew very well was the English corvette already under way and with all her canvas set.

This sight pleased Peyrol mainly because he had expected it. The Englishman was doing exactly what he had expected he would do, and Peyrol looked towards the English cruiser with a smile of malicious triumph as if he were confronting her captain. For some reason or other he imagined Captain Vincent as long-faced, with yellow teeth and a wig, whereas that officer wore his own hair and had a set of teeth which would have done honour to a London belle and was really the hidden cause of Captain Vincent appearing so often wreathed in smiles.

That ship at this great distance and steering in his direction held Peyrol at the window long enough for the increasing light of the morning to burst into sunshine, colouring and filling-in the flat outline of the land with tints of wood and rock and field, with clear dots of buildings enlivening the view. The sun threw a sort of halo around the ship. Recollecting himself, Peyrol left the room and shut the door quietly. Quietly too he descended the stairs from his garret. On the landing he underwent a short inward struggle, at the end of which he approached the door of Catherine’s room and opening it a little, put his head in. Across the whole width of it he saw Arlette fast asleep. Her aunt had thrown a light coverlet over her. Her low shoes stood at the foot of the bed. Her black hair lay loose on the pillow; and Peyrol’s gaze became arrested by the long eyelashes on her pale cheek. Suddenly he fancied she moved, and he withdrew his head sharply, pulling the door to. He listened for a moment as if tempted to open it again, but judging it too risky, continued on his way downstairs. At his reappearance in the kitchen Catherine turned sharply. She was dressed for the day, with a big white cap on her head, a black bodice and a brown skirt with ample folds. She had a pair of varnished sabots on her feet over her shoes.