Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated)

by Joseph Conrad

  The staircase door had slammed to behind her. Nobody was pursuing her; and Catherine, putting forth her lean brown arm, arrested Arlette’s flight with such a jerk that the two women swung against each other. She seized her niece by the shoulders.

  ``What is this, in Heaven’s name? Where are you rushing to?’’ she cried, and the other, as if suddenly exhausted, whispered:

  ``I woke up from an awful dream.’’

  The kitchen grew dark under the cloud that hung over the house now. There was a feeble flicker of lightning and a faint crash, far away.

  The old woman gave her niece a little shake.

  ``Dreams are nothing,’’ she said. ``You are awake now. . . .’’ And indeed Catherine thought that no dream could be so bad as the realities which kept hold of one through the long waking hours.

  ``They were killing him,’’ moaned Arlette, beginning to tremble and struggle in her aunt’s arms. ``I tell you they were killing him.’’

  ``Be quiet. Were you dreaming of Peyrol?’’

  She became still in a moment and then whispered: ``No. Eugne.’’

  She had seen Ral set upon by a mob of men and women, all dripping with blood, in a livid cold light, in front of a stretch of mere shells of houses with cracked walls and broken windows, and going down in the midst of a forest of raised arms brandishing sabres, clubs, knives, axes. There was also a man flourishing a red rag on a stick, while another was beating a drum which boomed above the sickening sound of broken glass falling like rain on the pavement. And away round the corner of an empty street came Peyrol whom she recognized by his white head, walking without haste, swinging his cudgel regularly. The terrible thing was that Peyrol looked straight at her, not noticing anything, composed, without a frown or a smile, unseeing and deaf, while she waved her arms and shrieked desperately to him for help. She woke up with the piercing sound of his name in her ears and with the impression of the dream so powerful that even now, looking distractedly into her aunt’s face, she could see the bare arms of that murderous crowd raised above Ral’s sinking head. Yet the name that had sprung to her lips on waking was the name of Peyrol. She pushed her aunt away with such force that the old woman staggered backwards and to save herself had to catch hold of the overmantel above her head. Arlette ran to the door of the salle, looked in, came back to her aunt and shouted: ``Where is he?’’

  Catherine really did not know which path the lieutenant had taken. She understood very well that ``he’’ meant Ral.

  She said: ``He went away a long time ago’’ grasped her niece’s arm and added with an effort to steady her voice: ``He is coming back, Arlette — -for nothing will keep him away from you.’’

  Arlette, as if mechanically, was whispering to herself the magic name, ``Peyrol, Peyrol!’’ then cried: ``I want Eugne now. This moment.’’

  Catherine’s face wore a look of unflinching patience. ``He has departed on service,’’ she said. Her niece looked at her with enormous eyes, coal-black, profound, and immovable, while in a forcible and distracted tone she said: ``You and Peyrol have been plotting to rob me of my reason. But I will know how to make that old man give him up. He is mine!’’ She spun round wildly like a person looking for a way of escape from a deadly peril, and rushed out blindly.

  About Escampobar the air was murky but calm, and the silence was so profound that it was possible to hear the first heavy drops of rain striking the ground. In the intimidating shadow of the storm-cloud, Arlette stood irresolute for a moment, but it was to Peyrol, the man of mystery and power, that her thoughts turned. She was ready to embrace his knees, to entreat and to scold. ``Peyrol, Peyrol!’’ she cried twice, and lent her ear as if expecting an answer. Then she shouted: ``I want him back.’’

  Catherine, alone in the kitchen, moving with dignity, sat down in the armchair with the tall back, like a senator in his curule chair awaiting the blow of a barbarous fate.

  Arlette flew down the slope. The first sign of her coming was a faint thin scream which really the rover alone heard and understood. He pressed his lips in a particular way, showing his appreciation of the coming difficulty. The next moment he saw, poised on a detached boulder and thinly veiled by the first perpendicular shower, Arlette, who, catching sight of the tartane with the men on board of her, let out a prolonged shriek of mingled triumph and despair: ``Peyrol! Help! Pey — — — rol!’’

  Ral jumped to his feet with an extremely scared face, but Peyrol extended an arresting arm. ``She is calling to me,’’ he said, gazing at the figure poised on the rock. ``Well leaped! Sacr nom! . . . Well leaped!’’ And he muttered to himself soberly: ``She will break her legs or her neck.’’

  ``I see you, Peyrol,’’ screamed Arlette, who seemed to be flying through the air. ``Don’t you dare.’’

  ``Yes, here I am,’’ shouted the rover, striking his breast with his fist.

  Lieutenant Ral put both his hands over his face. Michel looked on open-mouthed, very much as if watching a performance in a circus; but Scevola cast his eyes down. Arlette came on board with such an impetus that Peyrol had to step forward and save her from a fall which would have stunned her. She struggled in his arms with extreme violence. The heiress of Escampobar with her loose black hair seemed the incarnation of pale fury. ``Misrable! Don’t you dare!’’ A roll of thunder covered her voice, but when it had passed away she was heard again in suppliant tones. ``Peyrol, my friend, my dear old friend. Give him back to me,’’ and all the time her body writhed in the arms of the old seaman. ``You used to love me, Peyrol,’’ she cried without ceasing to struggle, and suddenly struck the rover twice in the face with her clenched fist. Peyrol’s head received the two blows as if it had been made of marble, but he felt with fear her body become still, grow rigid in his arms. A heavy squall enveloped the group of people on board the tartane. Peyrol laid Arlette gently on the deck. Her eyes were closed, her hands remained clenched; every sign of life had left her white face. Peyrol stood up and looked at the tall rocks streaming with water. The rain swept over the tartane with an angry swishing roar to which was added the sound of water rushing violently down the folds and seams of the precipitous shore vanishing gradually from his sight, as if this had been the beginning of a destroying and universal deluge — -the end of all things.

  Lieutenant Ral, kneeling on one knee, contemplated the pale face of Arlette. Distinct, yet mingling with the faint growl of distant thunder, Peyrol’s voice was heard saying:

  ``We can’t put her ashore and leave her lying in the rain. She must be taken up to the house.’’ Arlette’s soaked clothes clung to her limbs while the lieutenant, his bare head dripping with rain water, looked as if he had just saved her from drowning. Peyrol gazed down inscrutably at the woman stretched on the deck and at the kneeling man. ``She has fainted from rage at her old Peyrol,’’ he went on rather dreamily. ``Strange things do happen. However, lieutenant, you had better take her under the arms and step ashore first. I will help you. Ready? Lift.’’

  The movements of the two men had to be careful and their progress was slow on the lower, steep part of the slope. After going up more than two-thirds of the way, they rested their insensible burden on a flat stone. Ral continued to sustain the shoulders but Peyrol lowered the feet gently.

  ``Ha!’’ he said. ``You will be able to carry her yourself the rest of the way and give her up to old Catherine. Get a firm footing and I will lift her and place her in your arms. You can walk the distance quite easily. There. . . . Hold her a little higher, or her feet will be catching on the stones.’’

  Arlette’s hair was hanging far below the lieutenant’s arm in an inert and heavy mass. The thunderstorm was passing away, leaving a cloudy sky. And Peyrol thought with a profound sigh: ``I am tired.’’

  ``She is light,’’ said Ral.

  ``Parbleu, she is light. If she were dead, you would find her heavy enough. Allons, lieutenant. No! I am not coming. What’s the good? I’ll stay down here. I have no mind to listen to Catherine’s scolding.’’


  The lieutenant, looking absorbed into the face resting in the hollow of his arm, never averted his gaze — -not even when Peyrol, stooping over Arlette, kissed the white forehead near the roots of the hair, black as a raven’s wing.

  ``What am I to do?’’ muttered Ral.

  ``Do? Why, give her up to old Catherine. And you may just as well tell her that I will be coming along directly. That will cheer her up. I used to count for something in that house. Allez. For our time is very short.’’

  With these words he turned away and walked slowly down to the tartane. A breeze had sprung up. He felt it on his wet neck and was grateful for the cool touch which recalled him to himself, to his old wandering self which had known no softness and no hesitation in the face of any risk offered by life.

  As he stepped on board, the shower passed away. Michel, wet to the skin, was still in the very same attitude gazing up the slope. Citizen Scevola had drawn his knees up and was holding his head in his hands; whether because of rain or cold or for some other reason, his teeth were chattering audibly with a continuous and distressing rattle. Peyrol flung off his jacket, heavy with water, with a strange air as if it was of no more use to his mortal envelope, squared his broad shoulders and directed Michel in a deep, quiet voice to let go the lines holding the tartane to the shore. The faithful henchman was taken aback and required one of Peyrol’s authoritative ``Allez’’ to put him in motion. Meantime the rover cast off the tiller lines and laid his hand with an air of mastery on the stout piece of wood projecting horizontally from the rudder-head about the level of his hip. The voices and the movements of his companions caused Citizen Scevola to master the desperate trembling of his jaw. He wriggled a little in his bonds and the question that had been on his lips for a good many hours was uttered again.

  ``What are you going to do with me?’’

  ``What do you think of a little promenade at sea?’’ Peyrol asked in a tone that was not unkindly.

  Citizen Scevola, who had seemed totally and completely cast down and subdued, let out a most unexpected screech.

  ``Unbind me. Put me ashore.’’

  Michel, busy forward, was moved to smile as though he had possessed a cultivated sense of incongruity. Peyrol remained serious.

  ``You shall be untied presently,’’ he assured the blood-drinking patriot, who had been for so many years the reputed possessor not only of Escampobar, but of the Escampobar heiress that, living on appearances, he had almost come to believe in that ownership himself. No wonder he screeched at this rude awakening. Peyrol raised his voice: ``Haul on the line, Michel.’’

  As, directly the ropes had been let go, the tartane had swung clear of the shore, the movement given her by Michel carried her towards the entrance by which the basin communicated with the cove. Peyrol attended to the helm, and in a moment, gliding through the narrow gap, the tartane carrying her way, shot out almost into the middle of the cove.

  A little wind could be felt, running light wrinkles over the water, but outside the overshadowed sea was already speckled with white caps. Peyrol helped Michel to haul aft the sheets and then went back to the tiller. The pretty spick-and-span craft that had been lying idle for so long began to glide into the wide world. Michel gazed at the shore as if lost in admiration. Citizen Scevola’s head had fallen on his knees while his nerveless hands clasped his legs loosely. He was the very image of dejection.

  ``H, Michel! Come here and cast loose the citizen. It is only fair that he should be untied for a little excursion at sea.’’

  When his order had been executed, Peyrol addressed himself to the desolate figure on the deck.

  ``Like this, should the tartane get capsized in a squall, you will have an equal chance with us to swim for your life.’’

  Scevola disdained to answer. He was engaged in biting his knee with rage in a stealthy fashion.

  ``You came on board for some murderous purpose. Who you were after unless it was myself, God only knows. I feel quite justified in giving you a little outing at sea. I won’t conceal from you, citizen, that it may not be without risk to life or limb. But you have only yourself to thank for being here.’’

  As the tartane drew clear of the cove, she felt more the weight of the breeze and darted forward with a lively motion. A vaguely contented smile lighted up Michel’s hairy countenance.

  ``She feels the sea,’’ said Peyrol, who enjoyed the swift movement of his vessel. ``This is different from your lagoon, Michel.’’

  ``To be sure,’’ said Michel with becoming gravity.

  ``Doesn’t it seem funny to you, as you look back at the shore, to think that you have left nothing and nobody behind?’’

  Michel assumed the aspect of a man confronted by an intellectual problem. Since he had become Peyrol’s henchman he had lost the habit of thinking altogether. Directions and orders were easy things to apprehend; but a conversation with him whom he called ``notre matre’’ was a serious matter demanding great and concentrated attention.

  ``Possibly,’’ he murmured, looking strangely self-conscious.

  ``Well, you are lucky, take my word for it,’’ said the rover, watching the course of his little vessel along the head of the peninsula. ``You have not even a dog to miss you.’’

  ``I have only you, Matre Peyrol.’’

  ``That’s what I was thinking,’’ said Peyrol half to himself, while Michel, who had good sea-legs, kept his balance to the movements of the craft without taking his eyes from the rover’s face.

  ``No,’’ Peyrol exclaimed suddenly, after a moment of meditation, ``I could not leave you behind.’’ He extended his open palm towards Michel.

  ``Put your hand in there,’’ he said.

  Michel hesitated for a moment before this extraordinary proposal. At last he did so, and Peyrol, holding the bereaved fisherman’s hand in a powerful grip, said:

  ``If I had gone away by myself, I would have left you marooned on this earth like a man thrown out to die on a desert island.’’ Some dim perception of the solemnity of the occasion seemed to enter Michel’s primitive brain. He connected Peyrol’s words with the sense of his own insignificant position at the tail of all mankind; and, timidly, he murmured with his clear, innocent glance unclouded, the fundamental axiom of his philosophy:

  ``Somebody must be last in this world.’’

  ``Well, then, you will have to forgive me all that may happen between this and the hour of sunset.’’

  The tartane, obeying the helm, fell off before the wind, with her head to the eastward.

  Peyrol murmured: ``She has not forgotten how to walk the seas.’’ His unsubdued heart, heavy for so many days, had a moment of buoyancy — -the illusion of immense freedom.

  At that moment Ral, amazed at finding no tartane in the basin, was running madly towards the cove, where he was sure Peyrol must be waiting to give her up to him. He ran out on to the very rock on which Peyrol’s late prisoner had sat after his escape, too tired to care, yet cheered by the hope of liberty. But Ral was in a worse plight. He could see no shadowy form through the thin veil of rain which pitted the sheltered piece of water framed in the rocks. The little craft had been spirited away. Impossible! There must be something wrong with his eyes! Again the barren hillsides echoed the name of ``Peyrol,’’ shouted with all the force of Ral’s lungs. He shouted it only once, and about five minutes afterwards appeared at the kitchen-door, panting, streaming with water as if he had fought his way up from the bottom of the sea. In the tall-backed armchair Arlette lay, with her limbs relaxed, her head on Catherine’s arm, her face white as death. He saw her open her black eyes, enormous and as if not of this world; he saw old Catherine turn her head, heard a cry of surprise, and saw a sort of struggle beginning between the two women. He screamed at them like a madman: ``Peyrol has betrayed me!’’ and in an instant, with a bang of the door, he was gone.

  The rain had ceased. Above his head the unbroken mass of clouds moved to the eastward, and he moved in the same direction as if he to
o were driven by the wind up the hillside, towards the lookout. When he reached the spot and, gasping, flung one arm round the trunk of the leaning tree, the only thing he was aware of during the sombre pause in the unrest of the elements was the distracting turmoil of his thoughts. After a moment he perceived through the rain the English ship with her topsails lowered on the caps, forging ahead slowly across the northern entrance of the Petite Passe. His distress fastened insanely on the notion of there being a connection between that enemy ship and Peyrol’s inexplicable conduct. That old man had always meant to go himself! And when a moment after, looking to the southward, he made out the shadow of the tartane coming round the land in the midst of another squall, he muttered to himself a bitter: ``Of course!’’ She had both her sails set. Peyrol was indeed pressing her to the utmost in his shameful haste to traffic with the enemy. The truth was that from the position in which Ral first saw him, Peyrol could not yet see the English ship, and held confidently on his course up the middle of the strait. The man-of-war and the little tartane saw each other quite unexpectedly at a distance that was very little over a mile. Peyrol’s heart flew into his mouth at finding himself so close to the enemy. On board the Amelia at first no notice was taken. It was simply a tartane making for shelter on the north side of Porquerolles. But when Peyrol suddenly altered his course, the master of the man-of-war, noticing the manuvre, took up the long glass for a look. Captain Vincent was on deck and agreed with the master’s remark that ``there was a craft acting suspiciously.’’ Before the Amelia could come round in the heavy squall, Peyrol was already under the battery of Porquerolles and, so far, safe from capture. Captain Vincent had no mind to bring his ship within reach of the battery and risk damage in his rigging or hull for the sake of a small coaster. However, the tale brought on board by Symons of his discovery of a hidden craft, of his capture, and his wonderful escape, had made every tartane an object of interest to the whole ship’s company. The Amelia remained hove to in the strait while her officers watched the lateen sails gliding to and fro under the protecting muzzles of the guns. Captain Vincent himself had been impressed by Peyrol’s manuvre. Coasting craft as a rule were not afraid of the Amelia. After taking a few turns on the quarter-deck he ordered Symons to be called aft.