Joseph Conrad The Rover

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in their inconsequence. Even the woman letting herself go on his arm seemed to
have no weight as it might have happened in a dream.
``She is there,'' breathed Arlette suddenly, rising on tiptoe to reach up to
his ear. ``She must have heard you go past.''
``Where is she?'' asked Real with the same intense secrecy.
``Outside the door. She must have been listening to the murmur of our voices.
. . .'' Arlette breathed into his ear as if relating an enormity. ``She told
me one day that I was one of those who are fit for no man's arms.''
At this he flung his other arm round her and looked into her enlarged as if
frightened eyes, while she clasped him with all her strength and they stood
like that a long time, lips pressed on lips without a kiss, and breathless in
the closeness of their contact. To him the stillness seemed to extend to the
limits of the universe.
The thought ``Am I going to die?'' flashed through that stillness and lost
itself in it like a spark flying in an everlasting night. The only result of
it was the tightening of his hold on Arlette.
An aged and uncertain voice was heard uttering the word ``Arlette.''
Catherine, who had been listening to their murmurs, could not bear the long
silence. They heard her trembling tones as distinctly as though she had been
in the room. Real felt as if it had saved his life. They separated silently.
``Go away,'' called out Arlette.
``Arl. . .''
``Be quiet,'' she cried louder. ``You can do nothing.''
``Arlette,'' came through the door, tremulous and commanding.
``She will wake up Scevola,'' remarked Arlette to Real in a conversational
tone. And they both waited for sounds that did not come. Arlette pointed her
finger at the wall. ``He is there, you know.''
``He is asleep,'' muttered Real. But the thought ``I am lost'' which he
formulated in his mind had no reference to Scevola.
``He is afraid,'' said Arlette contemptuously in an undertone. ``But that
means little. He would quake with fright one moment and rush out to do murder
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the next.''
Slowly, as if drawn by the irresistible authority of the old woman, they had
been moving towards the door.
Real thought with the sudden enlightenment of passion: ``If she does not go
now I won't have the strength to part from her in the morning.'' He had no
image of death before his eyes but of a long and intolerable separation. A
sigh verging upon a moan reached them from the other side of the door and made
the air around them heavy with sorrow against which locks and keys will not
avail.
``You had better go to her,'' he whispered in a penetrating tone.
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``Of course I will,'' said Arlette with some feeling. ``Poor old thing. She
and I have only each other in the world, but I am the daughter here, she must
do what I tell her.'' With one of her hands on Real's shoulder she put her
mouth close to the door and said distinctly:
``I am coming directly. Go back to your room and wait for me,'' as if she had
no doubt of being obeyed.
A profound silence ensued. Perhaps Catherine had gone already. Real and
Arlette stood still for a whole minute as if both had been changed into stone.
``Go now,'' said Real in a hoarse, hardly audible voice.
She gave him a quick kiss on the lips and again they stood like a pair of
enchanted lovers bewitched into immobility.
``If she stays on,'' thought Real, ``I shall never have the courage to tear
myself away, and then I shall have to blow my brains out.'' But when at last
she moved he seized her again and held her as if she had been his very life.
When he let her go he was appalled by hearing a very faint laugh of her secret
joy.
``Why do you laugh?'' he asked in a scared tone.
She stopped to answer him over her shoulder.
``I laughed because I thought of all the days to come. Days and days and days.
Have you thought of them?''
``Yes,'' Real faltered, like a man stabbed to the heart, holding the door half
open. And he was glad to have something to hold on to.
She slipped out with a soft rustle of her silk skirt, but before he had time
to close the door behind her she put back her arm for an instant. He had just
time to press the palm of her hand to his lips. It was cool. She snatched it
away and he had the strength of mind to shut the door after her. He felt like
a man chained to the wall and dying of thirst, from whom a cold drink is
snatched away. The room became dark suddenly. He thought, ``A cloud over the
moon, a cloud over the moon, an enormous cloud,'' while he walked rigidly to
the window, insecure and swaying as if on a tight rope. After a moment he
perceived the moon in a sky on which there was no sign of the smallest cloud
anywhere. He said to himself, ``I suppose I nearly died just now. But no,'' he
went on thinking with deliberate cruelty, ``Oh, no, I shall not die. I shall
only suffer, suffer, suffer. . .
.''
``Suffer, suffer.'' Only by stumbling against the side of the bed did he
discover that he had gone away from the window. At once he flung himself
violently on the bed with his face buried in the pillow, which he bit to
restrain the cry of distress about to burst through his lips. Natures schooled
into insensibility when once overcome by a mastering passion are like
vanquished giants ready for despair. He, a man on service, felt himself
shrinking from death and that doubt contained in itself all possible doubts of
his own fortitude. The only thing he knew was that he would be gone tomorrow
morning. He shuddered along his whole extended length, then lay still gripping
a handful of bedclothes in each hand to prevent himself from leaping up in
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panicky restlessness. He was saying to himself pedantically, ``I must lie down
and rest, I must rest to have strength for tomorrow, I must rest,'' while the
tremendous struggle to keep still broke out in waves of perspiration on his
forehead. At last sudden oblivion must have descended on him because he turned
over and sat up suddenly with the sound of the word ``Ecoutez'' in his ears.
A strange, dim, cold light filled the room; a light he did not recognize for
anything he had known before, and at the foot of his bed stood a figure in
dark garments with a dark shawl over its head, with a fleshless
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predatory face and dark hollows for its eyes, silent, expectant, implacable. .
. . Is this death?'' he asked himself, staring at it terrified. It resembled
Catherine. It said again: ``Ecoutez.'' He took away his eyes from it and
glancing down noticed that his clothes were torn open on his chest. He would
not look up at that thing, whatever it was, spectre or old woman, and said:
``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.''
Real felt all the anguish of an unearthly experience. This thing that looked [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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