Joseph Conrad - Within the Tides - Tales

The lights on the deck had gone out one after the other. The schooner slept.

About an hour after Miss Moorsom had gone below without a sign or a word for him, Renouard got out of his hammock slung in the waist under the midship awning—for he had given up all the accommodation below to his guests. He got out with a sudden swift movement, flung off his sleeping jacket, rolled his pyjamas up his thighs, and stole forward, unseen by the one Kanaka of the anchor-watch. His white torso, naked like a stripped athlete’s, glimmered, ghostly, in the deep shadows of the deck. Unnoticed he got out of the ship over the knight-heads, ran along the back rope, and seizing the dolphin-striker firmly with both hands, lowered himself into the sea without a splash.

He swam away, noiseless like a fish, and then struck boldly for the land, sustained, embraced, by the tepid water. The gentle, voluptuous heave of its breast swung him up and down slightly; sometimes a wavelet murmured in his ears; from time to time, lowering his feet, he felt for the bottom on a shallow patch to rest and correct his direction. He landed at the lower end of the bungalow garden, into the dead stillness of the island. There were no lights. The plantation seemed to sleep, as profoundly as the schooner. On the path a small shell cracked under his naked heel.

The faithful half-caste foreman going his rounds cocked his ears at the sharp sound. He gave one enormous start of fear at the sight of the swift white figure flying at him out of the night. He crouched in terror, and then sprang up and clicked his tongue in amazed recognition.

“Tse! Tse! The master!”

“Be quiet, Luiz, and listen to what I say.”

Yes, it was the master, the strong master who was never known to raise his voice, the man blindly obeyed and never questioned. He talked low and rapidly in the quiet night, as if every minute were precious. On learning that three guests were coming to stay Luiz clicked his tongue rapidly. These clicks were the uniform, stenographic symbols of his emotions, and he could give them an infinite variety of meaning. He listened to the rest in a deep silence hardly affected by the low, “Yes, master,” whenever Renouard paused.

“You understand?” the latter insisted. “No preparations are to be made till we land in the morning. And you are to say that Mr. Walter has gone off in a trading schooner on a round of the islands.”

“Yes, master.”

“No mistakes—mind!”

“No, master.”

Renouard walked back towards the sea. Luiz, following him, proposed to call out half a dozen boys and man the canoe.

“Imbecile!”

“Tse! Tse! Tse!”

“Don’t you understand that you haven’t seen me?”

“Yes, master. But what a long swim. Suppose you drown.”

“Then you can say of me and of Mr. Walter what you like. The dead don’t mind.”

Renouard entered the sea and heard a faint “Tse! Tse! Tse!” of concern from the half-caste, who had already lost sight of the master’s dark head on the overshadowed water.

Renouard set his direction by a big star that, dipping on the horizon, seemed to look curiously into his face. On this swim back he felt the mournful fatigue of all that length of the traversed road, which brought him no nearer to his desire. It was as if his love had sapped the invisible supports of his strength. There came a moment when it seemed to him that he must have swum beyond the confines of life. He had a sensation of eternity close at hand, demanding no effort—offering its peace. It was easy to swim like this beyond the confines of life looking at a star. But the thought: “They will think I dared not face them and committed suicide,” caused a revolt of his mind which carried him on. He returned on board, as he had left, unheard and unseen. He lay in his hammock utterly exhausted and with a confused feeling that he had been beyond the confines of life, somewhere near a star, and that it was very quiet there.

CHAPTER IX

Sheltered by the squat headland from the first morning sparkle of the sea the little bay breathed a delicious freshness. The party from the schooner landed at the bottom of the garden. They exchanged insignificant words in studiously casual tones. The professor’s sister put up a long-handled eye-glass as if to scan the novel surroundings, but in reality searching for poor Arthur anxiously. Having never seen him otherwise than in his town clothes she had no idea what he would look like. It had been left to the professor to help his ladies out of the boat because Renouard, as if intent on giving directions, had stepped forward at once to meet the half-caste Luiz hurrying down the path. In the distance, in front of the dazzlingly sunlit bungalow, a row of dark-faced house-boys unequal in stature and varied in complexion preserved the immobility of a guard of honour.

Luiz had taken off his soft felt hat before coming within earshot. Renouard bent his head to his rapid talk of domestic arrangements he meant to make for the visitors; another bed in the master’s room for the ladies and a cot for the gentleman to be hung in the room opposite where—where Mr. Walter—here he gave a scared look all round—Mr. Walter—had died.

“Very good,” assented Renouard in an even undertone. “And remember what you have to say of him.”

“Yes, master. Only”—he wriggled slightly and put one bare foot on the other for a moment in apologetic embarrassment—“only I—I—don’t like to say it.”

Renouard looked at him without anger, without any sort of expression. “Frightened of the dead? Eh? Well—all right. I will say it myself—I suppose once for all. . . .” Immediately he raised his voice very much.

“Send the boys down to bring up the luggage.”

“Yes, master.”

Renouard turned to his distinguished guests who, like a personally conducted party of tourists, had stopped and were looking about them.

“I am sorry,” he began with an impassive face. “My man has just told me that Mr. Walter . . .” he managed to smile, but didn’t correct himself . . . “has gone in a trading schooner on a short tour of the islands, to the westward.”

This communication was received in profound silence.

Renouard forgot himself in the thought: “It’s done!” But the sight of the string of boys marching up to the house with suit-cases and dressing-bags rescued him from that appalling abstraction.

“All I can do is to beg you to make yourselves at home . . . with what patience you may.”

This was so obviously the only thing to do that everybody moved on at once. The professor walked alongside Renouard, behind the two ladies.

“Rather unexpected—this absence.”

“Not exactly,” muttered Renouard. “A trip has to be made every year to engage labour.”

“I see . . . And he . . . How vexingly elusive the poor fellow has become! I’ll begin to think that some wicked fairy is favouring this love tale with unpleasant attentions.”

Renouard noticed that the party did not seem weighed down by this new disappointment. On the contrary they moved with a freer step. The professor’s sister dropped her eye-glass to the end of its chain. Miss Moorsom took the lead. The professor, his lips unsealed, lingered in the open: but Renouard did not listen to that man’s talk. He looked after that man’s daughter—if indeed that creature of irresistible seductions were a daughter of mortals. The very intensity of his desire, as if his soul were streaming after her through his eyes, defeated his object of keeping hold of her as long as possible with, at least, one of his senses. Her moving outlines dissolved into a misty coloured shimmer of a woman made of flame and shadows, crossing the threshold of his house.

The days which followed were not exactly such as Renouard had feared—yet they were not better than his fears. They were accursed in all the moods they brought him. But the general aspect of things was quiet. The professor smoked innumerable pipes with the air of a worker on his holiday, always in movement and looking at things with that mysteriously sagacious aspect of men who are admittedly wiser than the rest of the world. His white head of hair—whiter than anything within the horizon except the broken water on the reefs—was glimpsed in every part of the plantation always on the move under the white parasol. And once he climbed the headland and appeared suddenly to those below, a white speck elevated in the blue, with a diminutive but statuesque effect.