“I’m afraid you give me no credit whatever for my good intentions in the matter I’ve spoken to you about,” said Sterne.
“I simply don’t understand you.”
“Captain Whalley is a very audacious man, but he will understand that his game is up. That’s all that anybody need ever know of it from me. Believe me, I am very considerate in this, but duty is duty. I don’t want to make a fuss. All I ask you, as his friend, is to tell him from me that the game’s up. That will be sufficient.”
Mr. Van Wyk felt a loathsome dismay at this queer privilege of friendship. He would not demean himself by asking for the slightest explanation; to drive the other away with contumely he did not think prudent — as yet, at any rate. So much assurance staggered him. Who could tell what there could be in it, he thought? His regard for Captain Whalley had the tenacity of a disinterested sentiment, and his practical instinct coming to his aid, he concealed his scorn.
“I gather, then, that this is something grave.”
“Very grave,” Sterne assented solemnly, delighted at having produced an effect at last. He was ready to add some effusive protestations of regret at the “unavoidable necessity,” but Mr. Van Wyk cut him short — very civilly, however.
Once on the veranda Mr. Van Wyk put his hands in his pockets, and, straddling his legs, stared down at a black panther skin lying on the floor before a rocking-chair. “It looks as if the fellow had not the pluck to play his own precious game openly,” he thought.
This was true enough. In the face of Massy’s last rebuff Sterne dared not declare his knowledge. His object was simply to get charge of the steamer and keep it for some time. Massy would never forgive him for forcing himself on; but if Captain Whalley left the ship of his own accord, the command would devolve upon him for the rest of the trip; so he hit upon the brilliant idea of scaring the old man away. A vague menace, a mere hint, would be enough in such a brazen case; and, with a strange admixture of compassion, he thought that Batu Beru was a very good place for throwing up the sponge. The skipper could go ashore quietly, and stay with that Dutchman of his. Weren’t these two as thick as thieves together? And on reflection he seemed to see that there was a way to work the whole thing through that great friend of the old man’s. This was another brilliant idea. He had an inborn preference for circuitous methods. In this particular case he desired to remain in the background as much as possible, to avoid exasperating Massy needlessly. No fuss! Let it all happen naturally.
Mr. Van Wyk all through the dinner was conscious of a sense of isolation that invades sometimes the closeness of human intercourse. Captain Whalley failed lamentably and obviously in his attempts to eat something. He seemed overcome by a strange absentmindedness. His hand would hover irresolutely, as if left without guidance by a preoccupied mind. Mr. Van Wyk had heard him coming up from a long way off in the profound stillness of the river-side, and had noticed the irresolute character of the footfalls. The toe of his boot had struck the bottom stair as though he had come along mooning with his head in the air right up to the steps of the veranda. Had the captain of the Sofala been another sort of man he would have suspected the work of age there. But one glance at him was enough. Time — after, indeed, marking him for its own — had given him up to his usefulness, in which his simple faith would see a proof of Divine mercy. “How could I contrive to warn him?” Mr. Van Wyk wondered, as if Captain Whalley had been miles and miles away, out of sight and earshot of all evil. He was sickened by an immense disgust of Sterne. To even mention his threat to a man like Whalley would be positively indecent. There was something more vile and insulting in its hint than in a definite charge of crime — the debasing taint of blackmailing. “What could anyone bring against him?” he asked himself. This was a limpid personality. “And for what object?” The Power that man trusted had thought fit to leave him nothing on earth that envy could lay hold of, except a bare crust of bread.
“Won’t you try some of this?” he asked, pushing a dish slightly. Suddenly it seemed to Mr. Van Wyk that Sterne might possibly be coveting the command of the Sofala. His cynicism was quite startled by what looked like a proof that no man may count himself safe from his kind unless in the very abyss of misery. An intrigue of that sort was hardly worth troubling about, he judged; but still, with such a fool as Massy to deal with, Whalley ought to and must be warned.
At this moment Captain Whalley, bolt upright, the deep cavities of the eyes overhung by a bushy frown, and one large brown hand resting on each side of his empty plate, spoke across the tablecloth abruptly — ”Mr. Van Wyk, you’ve always treated me with the most humane consideration.”
“My dear captain, you make too much of a simple fact that I am not a savage.” Mr. Van Wyk, utterly revolted by the thought of Sterne’s obscure attempt, raised his voice incisively, as if the mate had been hiding somewhere within earshot. “Any consideration I have been able to show was no more than the rightful due of a character I’ve learned to regard by this time with an esteem that nothing can shake.”
A slight ring of glass made him lift his eyes from the slice of pine-apple he was cutting into small pieces on his plate. In changing his position Captain Whalley had contrived to upset an empty tumbler.
Without looking that way, leaning sideways on his elbow, his other hand shading his brow, he groped shakily for it, then desisted. Van Wyk stared blankly, as if something momentous had happened all at once. He did not know why he should feel so startled; but he forgot Sterne utterly for the moment.
“Why, what’s the matter?”
And Captain Whalley, half-averted, in a deadened, agitated voice, muttered —
“Esteem!”
“And I may add something more,” Mr. Van Wyk, very steady-eyed, pronounced slowly.
“Hold! Enough!” Captain Whalley did not change his attitude or raise his voice. “Say no more! I can make you no return. I am too poor even for that now. Your esteem is worth having. You are not a man that would stoop to deceive the poorest sort of devil on earth, or make a ship unseaworthy every time he takes her to sea.”
Mr. Van Wyk, leaning forward, his face gone pink all over, with the starched table-napkin over his knees, was inclined to mistrust his senses, his power of comprehension, the sanity of his guest.
“Where? Why? In the name of God! — what’s this? What ship? I don’t understand who . . .”
“Then, in the name of God, it is I! A ship’s unseaworthy when her captain can’t see. I am going blind.”
Mr. Van Wyk made a slight movement, and sat very still afterwards for a few seconds; then, with the thought of Sterne’s “The game’s up,” he ducked under the table to pick up the napkin which had slipped off his knees. This was the game that was up. And at the same time the muffled voice of Captain Whalley passed over him —
“I’ve deceived them all. Nobody knows.”
He emerged flushed to the eyes. Captain Whalley, motionless under the full blaze of the lamp, shaded his face with his hand.
“And you had that courage?”
“Call it by what name you like. But you are a humane man — a — a — gentleman, Mr. Van Wyk. You may have asked me what I had done with my conscience.”
He seemed to muse, profoundly silent, very still in his mournful pose.
“I began to tamper with it in my pride. You begin to see a lot of things when you are going blind. I could not be frank with an old chum even. I was not frank with Massy — no, not altogether. I knew he took me for a wealthy sailor fool, and I let him. I wanted to keep up my importance — because there was poor Ivy away there — my daughter. What did I want to trade on his misery for? I did trade on it — for her. And now, what mercy could I expect from him? He would trade on mine if he knew it. He would hunt the old fraud out, and stick to the money for a year. Ivy’s money. And I haven’t kept a penny for myself. How am I going to live for a year. A year! In a year there will be no sun in the sky for her father.”
His deep voice came out, awfully veiled, as thoug
h he had been overwhelmed by the earth of a landslide, and talking to you of the thoughts that haunt the dead in their graves. A cold shudder ran down Mr. Van Wyk’s back.
“And how long is it since you have . . .?” he began.
“It was a long time before I could bring myself to believe in this — this visitation.” Captain Whalley spoke with gloomy patience from under his hand.
He had not thought he had deserved it. He had begun by deceiving himself from day to day, from week to week. He had the Serang at hand there — an old servant. It came on gradually, and when he could no longer deceive himself . . .
His voice died out almost.
“Rather than give her up I set myself to deceive you all.”
“It’s incredible,” whispered Mr. Van Wyk. Captain Whalley’s appalling murmur flowed on.
“Not even the sign of God’s anger could make me forget her. How could I forsake my child, feeling my vigor all the time — the blood warm within me? Warm as yours. It seems to me that, like the blinded Samson, I would find the strength to shake down a temple upon my head. She’s a struggling woman — my own child that we used to pray over together, my poor wife and I. Do you remember that day I as well as told you that I believed God would let me live to a hundred for her sake? What sin is there in loving your child? Do you see it? I was ready for her sake to live for ever. I half believed I would. I’ve been praying for death since. Ha! Presumptuous man — you wanted to live . . .”
A tremendous, shuddering upheaval of that big frame, shaken by a gasping sob, set the glasses jingling all over the table, seemed to make the whole house tremble to the roof-tree. And Mr. Van Wyk, whose feeling of outraged love had been translated into a form of struggle with nature, understood very well that, for that man whose whole life had been conditioned by action, there could exist no other expression for all the emotions; that, to voluntarily cease venturing, doing, enduring, for his child’s sake, would have been exactly like plucking his warm love for her out of his living heart. Something too monstrous, too impossible, even to conceive.
Captain Whalley had not changed his attitude, that seemed to express something of shame, sorrow, and defiance.
“I have even deceived you. If it had not been for that word ‘esteem.’ These are not the words for me. I would have lied to you. Haven’t I lied to you? Weren’t you going to trust your property on board this very trip?”
“I have a floating yearly policy,” Mr. Van Wyk said almost unwittingly, and was amazed at the sudden cropping up of a commercial detail.
“The ship is unseaworthy, I tell you. The policy would be invalid if it were known . . .”
“We shall share the guilt, then.”
“Nothing could make mine less,” said Captain Whalley.
He had not dared to consult a doctor; the man would have perhaps asked who he was, what he was doing; Massy might have heard something. He had lived on without any help, human or divine. The very prayers stuck in his throat. What was there to pray for? and death seemed as far as ever. Once he got into his cabin he dared not come out again; when he sat down he dared not get up; he dared not raise his eyes to anybody’s face; he felt reluctant to look upon the sea or up to the sky. The world was fading before his great fear of giving himself away. The old ship was his last friend; he was not afraid of her; he knew every inch of her deck; but at her too he hardly dared to look, for fear of finding he could see less than the day before. A great incertitude enveloped him. The horizon was gone; the sky mingled darkly with the sea. Who was this figure standing over yonder? what was this thing lying down there? And a frightful doubt of the reality of what he could see made even the remnant of sight that remained to him an added torment, a pitfall always open for his miserable pretense. He was afraid to stumble inexcusably over something — to say a fatal Yes or No to a question. The hand of God was upon him, but it could not tear him away from his child. And, as if in a nightmare of humiliation, every featureless man seemed an enemy.
He let his hand fall heavily on the table. Mr. Van Wyk, arms down, chin on breast, with a gleam of white teeth pressing on the lower lip, meditated on Sterne’s “The game’s up.”
“The Serang of course does not know.”
“Nobody,” said Captain Whalley, with assurance.
“Ah yes. Nobody. Very well. Can you keep it up to the end of the trip? That is the last under the agreement with Massy.”
Captain Whalley got up and stood erect, very stately, with the great white beard lying like a silver breastplate over the awful secret of his heart. Yes; that was the only hope there was for him of ever seeing her again, of securing the money, the last he could do for her, before he crept away somewhere — useless, a burden, a reproach to himself. His voice faltered.
“Think of it! Never see her any more: the only human being besides myself now on earth that can remember my wife. She’s just like her mother. Lucky the poor woman is where there are no tears shed over those they loved on earth and that remain to pray not to be led into temptation — because, I suppose, the blessed know the secret of grace in God’s dealings with His created children.”
He swayed a little, said with austere dignity —
“I don’t. I know only the child He has given me.”
And he began to walk. Mr. Van Wyk, jumping up, saw the full meaning of the rigid head, the hesitating feet, the vaguely extended hand. His heart was beating fast; he moved a chair aside, and instinctively advanced as if to offer his arm. But Captain Whalley passed him by, making for the stairs quite straight.
“He could not see me at all out of his line,” Van Wyk thought, with a sort of awe. Then going to the head of the stairs, he asked a little tremulously —
“What is it like — like a mist — like . . .”
Captain Whalley, half-way down, stopped, and turned round undismayed to answer.
“It is as if the light were ebbing out of the world. Have you ever watched the ebbing sea on an open stretch of sands withdrawing farther and farther away from you? It is like this — only there will be no flood to follow. Never. It is as if the sun were growing smaller, the stars going out one by one. There can’t be many left that I can see by this. But I haven’t had the courage to look of late . . .” He must have been able to make out Mr. Van Wyk, because he checked him by an authoritative gesture and a stoical —
“I can get about alone yet.”
It was as if he had taken his line, and would accept no help from men, after having been cast out, like a presumptuous Titan, from his heaven. Mr. Van Wyk, arrested, seemed to count the footsteps right out of earshot. He walked between the tables, tapping smartly with his heels, took up a paper-knife, dropped it after a vague glance along the blade; then happening upon the piano, struck a few chords again and again, vigorously, standing up before the keyboard with an attentive poise of the head like a piano-tuner; closing it, he pivoted on his heels brusquely, avoided the little terrier sleeping trustfully on crossed forepaws, came upon the stairs next, and, as though he had lost his balance on the top step, ran down headlong out of the house. His servants, beginning to clear the table, heard him mutter to himself (evil words no doubt) down there, and then after a pause go away with a strolling gait in the direction of the wharf.
The bulwarks of the Sofala lying alongside the bank made a low, black wall on the undulating contour of the shore. Two masts and a funnel uprose from behind it with a great rake, as if about to fall: a solid, square elevation in the middle bore the ghostly shapes of white boats, the curves of davits, lines of rail and stanchions, all confused and mingling darkly everywhere; but low down, amidships, a single lighted port stared out on the night, perfectly round, like a small, full moon, whose yellow beam caught a patch of wet mud, the edge of trodden grass, two turns of heavy cable wound round the foot of a thick wooden post in the ground.
Mr. Van Wyk, peering alongside, heard a muzzy boastful voice apparently jeering at a person called Prendergast. It mouthed abuse thickly, choked; then pronounced very d
istinctly the word “Murphy,” and chuckled. Glass tinkled tremulously. All these sounds came from the lighted port. Mr. Van Wyk hesitated, stooped; it was impossible to look through unless he went down into the mud.
“Sterne,” he said, half aloud.
The drunken voice within said gladly —
“Sterne — of course. Look at him blink. Look at him! Sterne, Whalley, Massy. Massy, Whalley, Sterne. But Massy’s the best. You can’t come over him. He would just love to see you starve.”
Mr. Van Wyk moved away, made out farther forward a shadowy head stuck out from under the awnings as if on the watch, and spoke quietly in Malay, “Is the mate asleep?”
“No. Here, at your service.”
In a moment Sterne appeared, walking as noiselessly as a cat on the wharf.
“It’s so jolly dark, and I had no idea you would be down to-night.”
“What’s this horrible raving?” asked Mr. Van Wyk, as if to explain the cause of a shudder than ran over him audibly.
“Jack’s broken out on a drunk. That’s our second. It’s his way. He will be right enough by to-morrow afternoon, only Mr. Massy will keep on worrying up and down the deck. We had better get away.”
He muttered suggestively of a talk “up at the house.” He had long desired to effect an entrance there, but Mr. Van Wyk nonchalantly demurred: it would not, he feared, be quite prudent, perhaps; and the opaque black shadow under one of the two big trees left at the landing-place swallowed them up, impenetrably dense, by the side of the wide river, that seemed to spin into threads of glitter the light of a few big stars dropped here and there upon its outspread and flowing stillness.
“The situation is grave beyond doubt,” Mr. Van Wyk said. Ghost-like in their white clothes they could not distinguish each others’ features, and their feet made no sound on the soft earth. A sort of purring was heard. Mr. Sterne felt gratified by such a beginning.
Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) Page 566