``What has lost us was moderation.’’
Peyrol swallowed the piece of bread and butter which he had been masticating slowly, and asked:
``What are you alluding to, citoyen?’’
``I am alluding to the republic,’’ answered Scevola, in a more assured tone than usual. ``Moderation I say. We patriots held our hand too soon. All the children of the ci-devants and all the children of traitors should have been killed together with their fathers and mothers. Contempt for civic virtues and love of tyranny were inborn in them all. They grow up and trample on all the sacred principles. . . . The work of the Terror is undone!’’
``What do you propose to do about it?’’ growled Peyrol. ``No use declaiming here or anywhere for that matter. You wouldn’t find anybody to listen to you — -you cannibal,’’ he added in a good-humoured tone. Arlette, leaning her head on her left hand, was tracing with the forefinger of her right invisible initials on the table-cloth. Catherine, stooping to light a four-beaked oil lamp mounted on a brass pedestal, turned her finely carved face over her shoulder. The sans-culotte jumped up, flinging his arms about. His hair was tousled from his sleepless tumbling on his pallet. The unbuttoned sleeves of his shirt flapped against his thin hairy forearms. He no longer looked as though he had seen a ghost. He opened a wide black mouth, but Peyrol raised his finger at him calmly.
``No, no. The time when your own people up La Boyre way — -don’t they live up there? — -trembled at the idea of you coming to visit them with a lot of patriot scallywags at your back is past. You have nobody at your back; and if you started spouting like this at large, people would rise up and hunt you down like a mad dog.’’
Scevola, who had shut his mouth, glanced over his shoulder, and as if impressed by his unsupported state went out of the kitchen, reeling, like a man who had been drinking. He had drunk nothing but water. Peyrol looked thoughtfully at the door which the indignant sans-culotte had slammed after him. During the colloquy between the two men, Arlette had disappeared into the salle. Catherine, straightening her long back, put the oil lamp with its four smoky flames on the table. It lighted her face from below. Peyrol moved it slightly aside before he spoke.
``It was lucky for you,’’ he said, gazing upwards, ``that Scevola hadn’t even one other like himself when he came here.’’
``Yes,’ she admitted. ``I had to face him alone from first to last. But can you see me between him and Arlette? In those days he raved terribly, but he was dazed and tired out. Afterwards I recovered myself and I could argue with him firmly. I used to say to him, `Look, she is so young and she has no knowledge of herself. Why, for months the only thing she would say that one could understand was `Look how it spurts, look how it splashes!’ He talked to me of his republican virtue. He was not a profligate. He could wait. She was, he said, sacred to him, and things like that. He would walk up and down for hours talking of her and I would sit there listening to him with the key of the room the child was locked in, in my pocket. I temporized, and, as you say yourself, it was perhaps because he had no one at his back that he did not try to kill me, which he might have done any day. I temporized. And after all, why should he want to kill me? He told me more than once he was sure to have Arlette for his own. Many a time he made me shiver explaining why it must be so. She owed her life to him. Oh! that dreadful crazy life. You know he is one of those men that can be patient as far as women are concerned.’’
Peyrol nodded understandingly. ``Yes, some are like that. That kind is more impatient sometimes to spill blood. Still I think that your life was one long narrow escape, at least till I turned up here.’’
``Things had settled down, somehow,’’ murmured Catherine. ``But all the same I was glad when you appeared here, a grey-headed man, serious.’’
``Grey hairs will come to any sort of man,’’ observed Peyrol acidly, ``and you did not know me. You don’t know anything of me even now.’’
``There have been Peyrols living less than half a day’s journey from here,’’ observed Catherine in a reminiscent tone.
``That’s all right,’’ said the rover in such a peculiar tone that she asked him sharply: ``What’s the matter? Aren’t you one of them? Isn’t Peyrol your name?’’
``I have had many names and this was one of them. So this name and my grey hair pleased you, Catherine? They gave you confidence in me, hein?’’
``I wasn’t sorry to see you come. Scevola too, I believe. He heard that patriots were being hunted down, here and there, and he was growing quieter every day. You roused the child wonderfully.’’
``And did that please Scevola too?’’
``Before you came she never spoke to anybody unless first spoken to. She didn’t seem to care where she was. At the same time,’’ added Catherine after a pause, ``she didn’t care what happened to her either. Oh, I have had some heavy hours thinking it all over, in the daytime doing my work, and at night while I lay awake, listening to her breathing. And I growing older all the time, and, who knows, with my last hour ready to strike. I often thought that when I felt it coming I would speak to you as I am speaking to you now.’’
``Oh, you did think,’’ said Peyrol in an undertone. ``Because of my grey hairs, I suppose.’’
``Yes. And because you came from beyond the seas,’’ Catherine said with unbending mien and in an unflinching voice. ``Don’t you know that the first time Arlette saw you she spoke to you and that it was the first time I heard her speak of her own accord since she had been brought back by that man, and I had to wash her from head to foot before I put her into her mother’s bed.’’
``The first time,’’ repeated Peyrol.
``It was like a miracle happening,’’ said Catherine, ``and it was you that had done it.’’
``Then it must be that some Indian witch has given me the power,’’ muttered Peyrol, so low that Catherine could not hear the words. But she did not seem to care, and presently went on again:
``And the child took to you wonderfully. Some sentiment was aroused in her at last.’’
``Yes,’’ assented Peyrol grimly. ``She did take to me. She learned to talk to — -the old man.’’
``It’s something in you that seems to have opened her mind and unloosed her tongue,’’ said Catherine, speaking with a sort of regal composure down at Peyrol, like a chieftainess of a tribe. ``I often used to look from afar at you two talking and wonder what she . . .’’
``She talked like a child,’’ struck in Peyrol abruptly. ``And so you were going to speak to me before your last hour came. Why, you are not making ready to die yet?’’
``Listen, Peyrol. If anybody’s last hour is near it isn’t mine. You just look about you a little. It was time I spoke to you.’’
``Why, I am not going to kill anybody,’’ muttered Peyrol. ``You are getting strange ideas into your head.’’
``It is as I said,’’ insisted Catherine without animation. ``Death seems to cling to her skirts. She has been running with it madly. Let us keep her feet out of more human blood.’’
Peyrol, who had let his head fall on his breast, jerked it up suddenly. ``What on earth are you talking about?’’ he cried angrily. ``I don’t understand you at all.’’
``You have not seen the state she was in when I got her back into my hands,’’ remarked Catherine. . . . ``I suppose you know where the lieutenant is. What made him go off like that? Where did he go to?’’
``I know,’’ said Peyrol. ``And he may be back to-night.’’
``You know where he is! And of course you know why he has gone away and why he is coming back,’’ pronounced Catherine in an ominous voice. ``Well, you had better tell him that unless he has a pair of eyes at the back of his head he had better not return here — -not return at all; for if he does, nothing can save him from a treacherous blow.’’
``No man was ever safe from treachery,’’ opined Peyrol after a moment’s silence. ``I won’t pretend not to understand what you mean.’’
``You heard as well a
s I what Scevola said just before he went out. The lieutenant is the child of some ci-devant and Arlette of a man they called a traitor to his country. You can see yourself what was in his mind.’’
``He is a chicken-hearted spouter,’’ said Peyrol contemptuously, but it did not affect Catherine’s attitude of an old sibyl risen from the tripod to prophesy calmly atrocious disasters. ``It’s all his republicanism,’’ commented Peyrol with increased scorn. ``He has got a fit of it on.’’
``No, that’s jealousy,’’ said Catherine. ``Maybe he has ceased to care for her in all these years. It is a long time since he has left off worrying me. With a creature like that I thought that if I let him be master here . . . But no! I know that after the lieutenant started coming here his awful fancies have come back. He is not sleeping at night. His republicanism is always there. But don’t you know, Peyrol, that there may be jealousy without love?’’
``You think so,’’ said the rover profoundly. He pondered full of his own experience. ``And he has tasted blood too,’’ he muttered after a pause. ``You may be right.’’
``I may be right,’’ repeated Catherine in a slightly indignant tone. ``Every time I see Arlette near him I tremble lest it should come to words and to a bad blow. And when they are both out of my sight it is still worse. At this moment I am wondering where they are. They may be together and I daren’t raise my voice to call her away for fear of rousing his fury.’’
``But it’s the lieutenant he is after,’’ observed Peyrol in a lowered voice. ``Well, I can’t stop the lieutenant coming back.’’
``Where is she? Where is he?’’ whispered Catherine in a tone betraying her secret anguish.
Peyrol rose quietly and went into the salle, leaving the door open. Catherine heard the latch of the outer door being lifted cautiously. In a few moments Peyrol returned as quietly as he had gone out.
``I stepped out to look at the weather. The moon is about to rise and the clouds have thinned down. One can see a star here and there.’’ He lowered his voice considerably. ``Arlette is sitting on the bench humming a little song to herself. I really wonder whether she knew I was standing within a few feet of her.’’
``She doesn’t want to hear or see anybody except one man,’’ affirmed Catherine, now in complete control of her voice. ``And she was humming a song, did you say? She who would sit for hours without making a sound. And God knows what song it could have been!’’
``Yes, there’s a great change in her,’’ admitted Peyrol with a heavy sigh. ``This lieutenant,’’ he continued after a pause, ``has always behaved coldly to her. I noticed him many times turn his face away when he saw her coming towards us. You know what these epaulette-wearers are, Catherine. And then this one has some worm of his own that is gnawing at him. I doubt whether he has ever forgotten that he was a ci-devant boy. Yet I do believe that she does not want to see and hear anybody but him. Is it because she has been deranged in her head for so long?’’
``No, Peyrol,’’ said the old woman. ``It isn’t that. You want to know how I can tell? For years nothing could make her either laugh or cry. You know that yourself. You have seen her every day. Would you believe that within the last month she has been both crying and laughing on my breast without knowing why?’’
``This I don’t understand,’’ said Peyrol.
``But I do. That lieutenant has got only to whistle to make her run after him. Yes, Peyrol. That is so. She has no fear, no shame, no pride. I myself have been nearly like that.’’ Her fine brown face seemed to grow more impassive before she went on much lower and as if arguing with herself: ``Only I at least was never blood-mad. I was fit for any man’s arms. . . . But then that man is not a priest.’’
The last words made Peyrol start. He had almost forgotten that story. He said to himself: ``She knows, she has had the experience.’’
``Look here, Catherine,’’ he said decisively, ``the lieutenant is coming back. He will be here probably about midnight. But one thing I can tell you: he is not coming back to whistle her away. Oh, no! It is not for her sake that he will come back.’’
``Well, if it isn’t for her that he is coming back then it must be because death has beckoned to him,’’ she announced in a tone of solemn unemotional conviction. ``A man who has received a sign from death — -nothing can stop him!’’
Peyrol, who had seen death face to face many times, looked at Catherine’s fine brown profile curiously.
``It is a fact,’’ he murmured, ``that men who rush out to seek death do not often find it. So one must have a sign? What sort of sign would it be?’’
``How is anybody to know?’’ asked Catherine, staring across the kitchen at the wall. ``Even those to whom it is made do not recognize it for what it is. But they obey all the same. I tell you, Peyrol, nothing can stop them. It may be a glance, or a smile, or a shadow on the water, or a thought that passes through the head. For my poor brother and sister-in-law it was the face of their child.’’
Peyrol folded his arms on his breast and dropped his head. Melancholy was a sentiment to which he was a stranger; for what has melancholy to do with the life of a sea-rover, a Brother of the Coast, a simple, venturesome, precarious life, full of risks and leaving no time for introspection or for that momentary self-forgetfulness which is called gaiety. Sombre fury, fierce merriment, he had known in passing gusts, coming from outside; but never this intimate inward sense of the vanity of all things, that doubt of the power within himself.
``I wonder what the sign for me will be,’’ he thought; and concluded with self-contempt that for him there would be no sign, that he would have to die in his bed like an old yard dog in his kennel. Having reached that depth of despondency, there was nothing more before him but a black gulf into which his consciousness sank like a stone.
The silence which had lasted perhaps a minute after Catherine had finished speaking was traversed suddenly by a clear high voice saying:
``What are you two plotting here?’’
Arlette stood in the doorway of the salle. The gleam of light in the whites of her eyes set off her black and penetrating glance. The surprise was complete. The profile of Catherine, who was standing by the table, became if possible harder; a sharp carving of an old prophetess of some desert tribe. Arlette made three steps forward. In Peyrol even extreme astonishment was deliberate. He had been famous for never looking as though he had been caught unprepared. Age had accentuated that trait of a born leader. He only slipped off the edge of the table and said in his deep voice:
``Why, patronne! We haven’t said a word to each other for ever so long.’’
Arlette moved nearer still. ``I know,’’ she cried. ``It was horrible. I have been watching you two. Scevola came and dumped himself on the bench close to me. He began to talk to me, and so I went away. That man bores me. And here I find you people saying nothing. It’s insupportable. What has come to you both? Say, you, Papa Peyrol — -don’t you like me any more?’’ Her voice filled the kitchen. Peyrol went to the salle door and shut it. While coming back he was staggered by the brilliance of life within her that seemed to pale the flames of the lamp. He said half in jest:
``I don’t know whether I didn’t like you better when you were quieter.’’
``And you would like best to see me still quieter in my grave.’’
She dazzled him. Vitality streamed out of her eyes, her lips, her whole person, enveloped her like a halo and . . . yes, truly, the faintest possible flush had appeared on her cheeks, played on them faintly rosy like the light of a distant flame on the snow. She raised her arms up in the air and let her hands fall from on high on Peyrol’s shoulders, captured his desperately dodging eyes with her black and compelling glance, put out all her instinctive seduction — - while he felt a growing fierceness in the grip of her fingers.
``No! I can’t hold it in! Monsieur Peyrol, Papa Peyrol, old gunner, you horrid sea-wolf, be an angel and tell me where he is.’’
The rover, whom only that morning the powerful
grasp of Lieutenant Ral found as unshakable as a rock, felt all his strength vanish under the hands of that woman. He said thickly:
``He has gone to Toulon. He had to go.’’
``What for? Speak the truth to me!’’
``Truth is not for everybody to know,’’ mumbled Peyrol, with a sinking sensation as though the very ground were going soft under his feet. ``On service,’’ he added in a growl.
Her hands slipped suddenly from his big shoulders. ``On service?’’ she repeated. ``What service?’’ Her voice sank and the words ``Oh, yes! His service’’ were hardly heard by Peyrol, who as soon as her hands had left his shoulders felt his strength returning to him and the yielding earth grow firm again under his feet. Right in front of him Arlette, silent, with her arms hanging down before her with entwined fingers, seemed stunned because Lieutenant Ral was not free from all earthly connections, like a visiting angel from heaven depending only on God to whom she had prayed. She had to share him with some service that could order him about. She felt in herself a strength, a power, greater than any service.
``Peyrol,’’ she cried low, ``don’t break my heart, my new heart, that has just begun to beat. Feel how it beats. Who could bear it?’’ She seized the rover’s thick hairy paw and pressed it hard against her breast. ``Tell me when he will be back.’’
``Listen, patronne, you had better go upstairs,’’ began Peyrol with a great effort and snatching his captured hand away. He staggered backwards a little while Arlette shouted at him:
Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) Page 480