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CHAPTER II
As I have said, I was unpacking my luggage after a journey from
London into Ukraine. The MS. of "Almayer's Folly"--my companion
already for some three years or more, and then in the ninth
chapter of its age--was deposited unostentatiously on the
writing-table placed between two windows. It didn't occur to me
to put it away in the drawer the table was fitted with, but my
eye was attracted by the good form of the same drawer's brass
handles. Two candelabra with four candles each lighted up
festally the room which had waited so many years for the
wandering nephew. The blinds were down.
Within five hundred yards of the chair on which I sat stood the
first peasant hut of the village--part of my maternal
grandfather's estate, the only part remaining in the possession
of a member of the family; and beyond the village in the
limitless blackness of a winter's night there lay the great
unfenced fields--not a flat and severe plain, but a kindly bread-
giving land of low rounded ridges, all white now, with the black
patches of timber nestling in the hollows. The road by which I
had come ran through the village with a turn just outside the
gates closing the short drive. Somebody was abroad on the deep
snowtrack; a quick tinkle of bells stole gradually into the
stillness of the room like a tuneful whisper.
My unpacking had been watched over by the servant who had come to
help me, and, for the most part, had been standing attentive but
unnecessary at the door of the room. I did not want him in the
least, but I did not like to tell him to go away. He was a young
fellow, certainly more than ten years younger than myself; I had
not been--I won't say in that place but within sixty miles of it,
ever since the year '67; yet his guileless physiognomy of the
open peasant type seemed strangely familiar. It was quite
possible that he might have been a descendant, a son or even a
grandson, of the servants whose friendly faces had been familiar
to me in my early childhood. As a matter of fact he had no such
claim on my consideration. He was the product of some village
near by and was there on his promotion, having learned the
service in one or two houses as pantry-boy. I know this because
I asked the worthy V-- next day. I might well have spared the
question. I discovered before long that all the faces about the
house and all the faces in the village: the grave faces with
long moustaches of the heads of families, the downy faces of the
young men, the faces of the little fair-haired children, the
handsome, tanned, wide-browed faces of the mothers seen at the
doors of the huts were as familiar to me as though I had known
them all from childhood, and my childhood were a matter of the
day before yesterday.
The tinkle of the traveller's bels, after growing louder, had
faded away quickly, and the tumult of barking dogs in the village
had calmed down at last. My uncle, lounging in the corner of a
small couch, smoked his long Turkish chibouk in silence.
"This is an extremely nice writing-table you have got for my
room," I remarked.
"It is really your property," he said, keeping his eyes on me,
with an interested and wistful expression as he had done ever
since I had entered the house. "Forty years ago your mother used
to write at this very table. In our house in Oratow it stood in
the little sitting-room which, by a tacit arrangement, was given
up to the girls--I mean to your mother and her sister who died so
young. It was a present to them jointly from our uncle Nicholas
B. when your mother was seventeen and your aunt two years
younger. She was a very dear, delightful girl, that aunt of
yours, of whom I suppose you know nothing more than the name.
She did not shine so much by personal beauty and a cultivated
mind, in which your mother was far superior. It was her good
sense, the admirable sweetness of her nature, her exceptional
facility and ease in daily relations that endeared her to
everybody. Her death was a terrible grief and a serious moral
loss for us all. Had she lived she would have brought the
greatest blessings to the house it would have been her lot to
enter, as wife, mother and mistress of a household. She would
have created round herself an atmosphere of peace and content
which only those who can love unselfishly are able to evoke.
Your mother--of far greater beauty, exceptionally distinguished
in person, manner and intellect--had a less easy disposition.
Being more brilliantly gifted she also expected more from life.
At that trying time especially, we were greatly concerned about
her state. Suffering in her health from the shock of her
father's death (she was alone in the house with him when he died
suddenly), she was torn by the inward struggle between her love
for the man whom she was to marry in the end and her knowledge of
her dead father's declared objection to that match. Unable to
bring herself to disregard that cherished memory and that
judgment she had always respected and trusted, and, on the other
hand, feeling the impossibility to resist a sentiment so deep and
so true, she could not have been expected to preserve her mental
and moral balance. At war with herself, she could not give to
others that feeling of peace which was not her own. It was only
later, when united at last with the man of her choice that she
developed those uncommon gifts of mind and heart which compelled
the respect and admiration even of our foes. Meeting with calm
fortitude the cruel trials of a life reflecting all the national
and social misfortunes of the community, she realised the highest
conceptions of duty as a wife, a mother and a patriot, sharing
the exile of her husband and representing nobly the ideal of
Polish womanhood. Our Uncle Nicholas was not a man very
accessible to feelings of affection. Apart from his worship for
Napoleon the Great, he loved really, I believe, only three people
in the world: his mother--your great-grandmother, whom you have
seen but cannot possibly remember; his brother, our father, in
whose house he lived for so many years; and of all of us, his
nephews and nieces grown up round him, your mother alone. The
modest, lovable qualities of the youngest sister he did not seem
able to see. It was I who felt most profoundly this unexpected
stroke of death falling upon the family less than a year after I
had become its head. It was terribly unexpected. Driving home
one wintry afternoon to keep me company in our empty house, where
I had to remain permanently administering the estate and
attending to the complicated affairs--(the girls took it in turn
week and week about)--driving, as I said, from the house of the
Countess Tekla Potochka, where our invalid mother was staying
then to be near a doctor, they lost the road and got stuck in a
snowdrift. She was alone with the coachman and old Valery, the
personal servant of our late father. Impatient of delay while
they were trying to dig themselves out, she jumped out of the
sledge and went to look for the road herself. All this happened
in '51, not ten miles from the house in which we are sitting now.
The road was soon found, but snow had begun to fall thickly
again, and they were four more hours getting home. Both the men
took off their sheepskin-lined great-coats and used all their own
rugs to wrap her up against the cold, notwithstanding her
protests, positive orders and even struggles, as Valery
afterwards related to me. 'How could I,' he remonstrated with
her, 'go to meet the blessed soul of my late master if I let any
harm come to you while there's a spark of life left in my body?'
When they reached home at last the poor old man was stiff and
speechless from exposure, and the coachman was in not much better
plight, though he had the strength to drive round to the stables
himself. To my reproaches for venturing out at all in such
weather, she answered characteristically that she could not bear
the thought of abandoning me to my cheerless solitude. It is
incomprehensible how it was that she was allowed to start. I
suppose it had to be! She made light of the cough which came on
next day, but shortly afterwards inflammation of the lungs set
in, and in three weeks she was no more! She was the first to be
taken away of the young generation under my care. Behold the
vanity of all hopes and fears! I was the most frail at birth of
all the children. For years I remained so delicate that my
parents had but little hope of bringing me up; and yet I have
survived five brothers and two sisters, and many of my
contemporaries; I have outlived my wife and daughter too--and
from all those who have had some knowledge at least of these old
times you alone are left. It has been my lot to lay in an early
grave many honest hearts, many brilliant promises, many hopes
full of life."
He got up brusquely, sighed, and left me, saying: "We will dine
in half an hour." Without moving I listened to his quick steps
resounding on the waxed floor of the next room, traversing the
ante-room lined with bookshelves, where he paused to put his
chibouk in the pipe-stand before passing into the drawing-room
(these were all en suite), where he became inaudible on the thick
carpet. But I heard the door of his study-bedroom close. He was
then sixty-two years old and had been for a quarter of a century
the wisest, the firmest, the most indulgent of guardians,
extending over me a paternal care and affection, a moral support
which I seemed to feel always near me in the most distant parts
of the earth.
As to Mr. Nicholas B., sub-lieutenant of 1808, lieutenant of 1813
in the French Army, and for a short time Officier d'Ordonnance of
Marshal Marmont; afterwards Captain in the 2nd Regiment of
Mounted Rifles in the Polish Army--such as it existed up to 1830
in the reduced kingdom established by the Congress of Vienna--I
must say that from all that more distant past, known to me
traditionally and a little de visu, and called out by the words
of the man just gone away, he remains the most incomplete figure.
It is obvious that I must have seen him in '64, for it is certain
that he would not have missed the opportunity of seeing my mother
for what he must have known would be the last time. From my
early boyhood to this day, if I try to call up his image, a sort
of mist rises before my eyes, a mist in which I perceive vaguely
only a neatly brushed head of white hair (which is exceptional in
the case of the B. family, where it is the rule for men to go
bald in a becoming manner, before thirty) and a thin, curved,
dignified nose, a feature in strict accordance with the physical
tradition of the B. family. But it is not by these fragmentary
remains of perishable mortality that he lives in my memory. I
knew, at a very early age, that my grand-uncle Nicholas B. was a
Knight of the Legion of Honour and that he had also the Polish
Cross for valour Virtuti Militari. The knowledge of these
glorious facts inspired in me an admiring veneration; yet it is
not that sentiment, strong as it was, which resumes for me the
force and the significance of his personality. It is overborne
by another and complex impression of awe, compassion and horror.
Mr. Nicholas B. remains for me the unfortunate and miserable (but
heroic) being who once upon a time had eaten a dog.
It is a good forty years since I heard the tale, and the effect
has not worn off yet. I believe this is the very first, say,
realistic, story I heard in my life; but all the same I don't
know why I should have been so frightfully impressed. Of course
I know what our village dogs look like--but still. . .No! At
this very day, recalling the horror and compassion of my
childhood, I ask myself whether I am right in disclosing to a
cold and fastidious world that awful episode in the family
history. I ask myself--is it right?--especially as the B. family
had always been honourably known in a wide country-side for the
delicacy of their tastes in the matter of eating and drinking.
But upon the whole, and considering that this gastronomical
degradation overtaking a gallant young officer lies really at the
door of the Great Napoleon, I think that to cover it up by
silence would be an exaggeration of literary restraint. Let the
truth stand here. The responsibility rests with the Man of St.
Helena in view of his deplorable levity in the conduct of the
Russian campaign. It was during the memorable retreat from
Moscow that Mr. Nicholas B., in company of two brother officers--
as to whose morality and natural refinement I know nothing--
bagged a dog on the outskirts of a village and subsequently
devoured him. As far as I can remember the weapon used was a
cavalry sabre, and the issue of the sporting episode was rather
more of a matter of life and death than if it had been an
encounter with a tiger. A picket of Cossacks was sleeping in
that village lost in the depths of the great Lithuanian forest.
The three sportsmen had observed them from a hiding-place making
themselves very much at home amongst the huts just before the
early winter darkness set in at four o'clock. They had observed
them with disgust and perhaps with despair. Late in the night
the rash counsels of hunger overcame the dictates of prudence.
Crawling through the snow they crept up to the fence of dry
branches which generally encloses a village in that part of
Lithuania. What they expected to get and in what manner, and
whether this expectation was worth the risk, goodness only knows.
However, these Cossack parties, in most cases wandering without
an officer, were known to guard themselves badly and often not at
all. In addition, the village lying at a great distance from the
line of French retreat, they could not suspect the presence of
stragglers from the Grand Army. The three officers had strayed
away in a blizzard from the main column and had been lost for
days in the woods, which explains sufficiently the terrible
straits to which they were reduced. Their plan was to try and
attract the attention of the peasants in that one of the huts
which was nearest to the enclosure; but as they were preparing to
venture into the very jaws of the lion, so to speak, a dog (it is
mighty strange that there was but one), a creature quite as
formidable under the circumstances as a lion, began to bark on
the other side of the fence. . .
At this stage of the narrative, which I heard many times (by
request) from the lips of Captain Nicholas B.'s sister-in-law, my
grandmother, I used to tremble with excitement.
The dog barked. And if he had done no more than bark three
officers of the Great Napoleon's army would have perished
honourably on the points of Cossack's lances, or perchance
escaping the chase would have died decently of starvation. But
before they had time to think of running away, that fatal and
revolting dog, being carried away by the excess of his zeal,
dashed out through a gap in the fence. He dashed out and died.
His head, I understand, was severed at one blow from his body. I
understand also that later on, within the gloomy solitudes of the
snow-laden woods, when, in a sheltering hollow, a fire had been
lit by the party, the condition of the quarry was discovered to
be distinctly unsatisfactory. It was not thin--on the contrary,
it seemed unhealthily obese; its skin showed bare patches of an
unpleasant character. However, they had not killed that dog for
the sake of the pelt. He was large. . .He was eaten. . .The rest
is silence. . .
A silence in which a small boy shudders and says firmly:
"I could not have eaten that dog."
And his grandmother remarks with a smile:
"Perhaps you don't know what it is to be hungry."
I have learned something of it since. Not that I have been
reduced to eat dog. I have fed on the emblematical animal,
which, in the language of the volatile Gauls, is called la vache
enragee; I have lived on ancient salt junk, I know the taste of
shark, of trepang, of snake, of nondescript dishes containing
things without a name--but of the Lithuanian village dog--never!
I wish it to be distinctly understood that it is not I but my
grand-uncle Nicholas, of the Polish landed gentry, Chevalier de
la Legion d'Honneur, &c. &c., who, in his young days, had eaten
the Lithuanian dog.
I wish he had not. The childish horror of the deed clings
absurdly to the grizzled man. I am perfectly helpless against
it. Still if he really had to, let us charitably remember that
he had eaten him on active service, while bearing up bravely
against the greatest military disaster of modern history, and, in
a manner, for the sake of his country. He had eaten him to
appease his hunger no doubt, but also for the sake of an
unappeasable and patriotic desire, in the glow of a great faith
that lives still, and in the pursuit of a great illusion kindled
like a false beacon by a great man to lead astray the effort of a
brave nation.
Pro patria!
Looked at in that light it appears a sweet and decorous meal.
And looked at in the same light my own diet of la vache enragee
appears a fatuous and extravagant form of self-indulgence; for
why should I, the son of a land which such men as these have
turned up with their ploughshares and bedewed with their blood,
undertake the pursuit of fantastic meals of salt junk and hard
tack upon the wide seas? On the kindest view it seems an
unanswerable question. Alas! I have the conviction that there
are men of unstained rectitude who are ready to murmur scornfully
the word desertion. Thus the taste of innocent adventure may be
made bitter to the palate. The part of the inexplicable should
be allowed for in appraising the conduct of men in a world where
no explanation is final. No charge of faithlessness ought to be
lightly uttered. The appearances of this perishable life are
deceptive like everything that falls under the judgment of our
imperfect senses. The inner voice may remain true enough in its
secret counsel. The fidelity to a special tradition may last
through the events of an unrelated existence, following
faithfully too the traced way of an inexplicable impulse.
It would take too long to explain the intimate alliance of
contradictions in human nature which makes love itself wear at
times the desperate shape of betrayal. And perhaps there is no
possible explanation. Indulgence--as somebody said--is the most
intelligent of all the virtues. I venture to think that it is
one of the least common, if not the most uncommon of all. I
would not imply by this that men are foolish--or even most men.
Far from it. The barber and the priest, backed by the whole
opinion of the village, condemned justly the conduct of the
ingenious hidalgo who, sallying forth from his native place,
broke the head of the muleteer, put to death a flock of
inoffensive sheep, and went through very doleful experiences in a
certain stable. God forbid that an unworthy churl should escape
merited censure by hanging on to the stirrup-leather of the
sublime caballero. His was a very noble, a very unselfish
fantasy, fit for nothing except to raise the envy of baser
mortals. But there is more than one aspect to the charm of that
exalted and dangerous figure. He, too, had his frailties. After
reading so many romances he desired naively to escape with his
very body from the intolerable reality of things. He wished to
meet eye to eye the valorous giant Brandabarbaran, Lord of
Arabia, whose armour is made of the skin of a dragon, and whose
shield, strapped to his arm, is the gate of a fortified city. O
amiable and natural weakness! O blessed simplicity of a gentle
heart without guile! Who would not succumb to such a consoling
temptation? Nevertheless it was a form of self-indulgence, and
the ingenious hidalgo of La Mancha was not a good citizen. The
priest and the barber were not unreasonable in their strictures.
Without going so far as the old King Louis-Philippe, who used to
say in his exile, "The people are never in fault"--one may admit
that there must be some righteousness in the assent of a whole
village. Mad! Mad! He who kept in pious meditation the ritual
vigil-of-arms by the well of an inn and knelt reverently to be
knighted at daybreak by the fat, sly rogue of a landlord, has
come very near perfection. He rides forth, his head encircled by
a halo--the patron saint of all lives spoiled or saved by the
irresistible grace of imagination. But he was not a good
citizen.
Perhaps that and nothing else was meant by the well-remembered
exclamation of my tutor.
It was in the jolly year 1873, the very last year in which I have
had a jolly holiday. There have been idle years afterwards,
jolly enough in a way and not altogether without their lesson,
but this year of which I speak was the year of my last schoolboy
holiday. There are other reasons why I should remember that
year, but they are too long to state formally in this place.
Moreover they have nothing to do with that holiday. What has to
do with the holiday is that before the day on which the remark
was made we had seen Vienna, the Upper Danube, Munich, the Falls
of the Rhine, the Lake of Constance--in fact it was a memorable
holiday of travel. Of late we had been tramping slowly up the
Valley of the Reuss. It was a delightful time. It was much more
like a stroll than a tramp. Landing from a Lake of Lucerne
steamer in Fluellen, we found ourselves at the end of the second
day, with the dusk overtaking our leisurely footsteps, a little
way beyond Hospenthal. This is not the day on which the remark
was made: in the shadows of the deep valley and with the
habitations of men left some way behind, our thoughts ran not
upon the ethics of conduct but upon the simpler human problem of
shelter and food. There did not seem anything of the kind in
sight, and we were thinking of turning back when suddenly at a
bend of the road we came upon a building, ghostly in the
twilight.
At that time the work on the St. Gothard Tunnel was going on, and
that magnificent enterprise of burrowing was directly responsible
for the unexpected building, standing all alone upon the very
roots of the mountains. It was long though not big at all; it
was low; it was built of boards, without ornamentation, in
barrack-hut style, with the white window-frames quite flush with
the yellow face of its plain front. And yet it was an hotel; it
had even a name which I have forgotten. But there was no gold-
laced door-keeper at its humble door. A plain but vigorous
servant-girl answered our inquiries, then a man and woman who
owned the place appeared. It was clear that no travellers were
expected, or perhaps even desired, in this strange hostelry,
which in its severe style resembled the house which surmounts the
unseaworthy-looking hulls of the toy Noah's Arks, the universal
possession of European childhood. However, its roof was not
hinged and it was not full to the brim of slabsided and painted
animals of wood. Even the live tourist animal was nowhere in
evidence. We had something to eat in a long, narrow room at one
end of a long, narrow table, which, to my tired perception and to
my sleepy eyes, seemed as if it would tilt up like a see-saw
plank, since there was no one at the other end to balance it
against our two dusty and travel-stained figures. Then we
hastened upstairs to bed in a room smelling of pine planks, and I
was fast asleep before my head touched the pillow.
In the morning my tutor (he was a student of the Cracow
University) woke me up early, and as we were dressing remarked:
"There seems to be a lot of people staying in this hotel. I have
heard a noise of talking up till 11 o'clock?" This statement
surprised me; I had heard no noise whatever, having slept like a
top.
We went downstairs into the long and narrow dining-room with its
long and narrow table. There were two rows of plates on it. At
one of the many uncurtained windows stood a tall bony man with a
bald head set off by a bunch of black hair above each ear and
with a long black beard. He glanced up from the paper he was
reading and seemed genuinely astonished at our intrusion. By-
and-by more men came in. Not one of them looked like a tourist.
Not a single woman appeared. These men seemed to know each other
with some intimacy, but I cannot say they were a very talkative
lot. The bald-headed man sat down gravely at the head of the
table. It all had the air of a family party. By-and-by, from
one of the vigorous servant-girls in national costume, we
discovered that the place was really a boarding-house for some
English engineers engaged at the works of the St. Gothard Tunnel;
and I could listen my fill to the sounds of the English language,
as far as it is used at a breakfast-table by men who do not
believe in wasting many words on the mere amenities of life.
This was my first contact with British mankind apart from the
tourist kind seen in the hotels of Zurich and Lucerne--the kind
which has no real existence in a workaday world. I know now that
the bald-headed man spoke with a strong Scotch accent. I have
met many of his kind since, both ashore and afloat. The second
engineer of the steamer "Mavis", for instance, ought to have been
his twin brother. I cannot help thinking that he really was,
though for some reasons of his own he assured me that he never
had a twin brother. Anyway the deliberate bald-headed Scot with
the coal-black beard appeared to my boyish eyes a very romantic
and mysterious person.
We slipped out unnoticed. Our mapped-out route led over the
Furca Pass towards the Rhone Glacier, with the further intention
of following down the trend of the Hasli Valley. The sun was
already declining when we found ourselves on the top of the pass,
and the remark alluded to was presently uttered.
We sat down by the side of the road to continue the argument
begun half a mile or so before. I am certain it was an argument
because I remember perfectly how my tutor argued and how without
the power of reply I listened with my eyes fixed obstinately on
the ground. A stir on the road made me look up--and then I saw
my unforgettable Englishman. There are acquaintances of later
years, familiars, shipmates, whom I remember less clearly. He
marched rapidly towards the east (attended by a hang-dog Swiss
guide) with the mien of an ardent and fearless traveller. He was
clad in a knickerbocker suit, but as at the same time he wore
short socks under his laced boots, for reasons which whether
hygienic or conscientious were surely imaginative, his calves
exposed to the public gaze and to the tonic air of high
altitudes, dazzled the beholder by the splendour of their marble-
like condition and their rich tone of young ivory. He was the
leader of a small caravan. The light of a headlong, exalted
satisfaction with the world of men and the scenery of mountains
illumined his clean-cut, very red face, his short, silver-white
whiskers, his innocently eager and triumphant eyes. In passing
he cast a glance of kindly curiosity and a friendly gleam of big,
sound, shiny teeth towards the man and the boy sitting like dusty
tramps by the roadside, with a modest knapsack lying at their
feet. His white calves twinkled sturdily, the uncouth Swiss
guide with a surly mouth stalked like an unwilling bear at his
elbow; a small train of three mules followed in single file the
lead of this inspiring enthusiast. Two ladies rode past one
behind the other, but from the way they sat I saw only their
calm, uniform backs, and the long ends of blue veils hanging
behind far down over their identical hat-brims. His two
daughters surely. An industrious luggage-mule, with unstarched
ears and guarded by a slouching, sallow driver, brought up the
rear. My tutor, after pausing for a look and a faint smile,
resumed his earnest argument.
I tell you it was a memorable year! One does not meet such an
Englishman twice in a lifetime. Was he in the mystic ordering of
common events the ambassador of my future, sent out to turn the
scale at a critical moment on the top of an Alpine pass, with the
peaks of the Bernese Oberland for mute and solemn witnesses? His
glance, his smile, the unextinguishable and comic ardour of his
striving-forward appearance helped me to pull myself together.
It must be stated that on that day and in the exhilarating
atmosphere of that elevated spot I had been feeling utterly
crushed. It was the year in which I had first spoken aloud of my
desire to go to sea. At first like those sounds that, ranging
outside the scale to which men's ears are attuned, remain
inaudible to our sense of hearing, this declaration passed
unperceived. It was as if it had not been. Later on, by trying
various tones I managed to arouse here and there a surprised
momentary attention--the "What was that funny noise?" sort of
inquiry. Later on it was--"Did you hear what that boy said?
What an extraordinary outbreak!" Presently a wave of scandalised
astonishment (it could not have been greater if I had announced
the intention of entering a Carthusian monastery) ebbing out of
the educational and academical town of Cracow spread itself over
several provinces. It spread itself shallow but far-reaching.
It stirred up a mass of remonstrance, indignation, pitying
wonder, bitter irony and downright chaff. I could hardly breathe
under its weight, and certainly had no words for an answer.
People wondered what Mr. T.B. would do now with his worrying
nephew and, I dare say, hoped kindly that he would make short
work of my nonsense.
What he did was to come down all the way from Ukraine to have it
out with me and to judge by himself, unprejudiced, impartial and
just, taking his stand on the ground of wisdom and affection. As
far as is possible for a boy whose power of expression is still
unformed I opened the secret of my thoughts to him and he in
return allowed me a glimpse into his mind and heart; the first
glimpse of an inexhaustible and noble treasure of clear thought
and warm feeling, which through life was to be mine to draw upon
with a never-deceived love and confidence. Practically, after
several exhaustive conversations, he concluded that he would not
have me later on reproach him for having spoiled my life by an
unconditional opposition. But I must take time for serious
reflection. And I must not only think of myself but of others;
weigh the claims of affection and conscience against my own
sincerity of purpose. "Think well what it all means in the
larger issues, my boy," he exhorted me finally with special
friendliness. "And meantime try to get the best place you can at
the yearly examinations."
The scholastic year came to an end. I took a fairly good place
at the exams., which for me (for certain reasons) happened to be
a more difficult task than for other boys. In that respect I
could enter with a good conscience upon that holiday which was
like a long visit pour prendre conge of the mainland of old
Europe I was to see so little of for the next four and twenty
years. Such, however, was not the avowed purpose of that tour.
It was rather, I suspect, planned in order to distract and occupy
my thoughts in other directions. Nothing had been said for
months of my going to sea. But my attachment to my young tutor
and his influence over me were so well known that he must have
received a confidential mission to talk me out of my romantic
folly. It was an excellently appropriate arrangement, as neither
he nor I had ever had a single glimpse of the sea in our lives.
That was to come by-and-by for both of us in Venice, from the
outer shore of Lido. Meantime he had taken his mission to heart
so well that I began to feel crushed before we reached Zurich.
He argued in railway trains, in lake steamboats, he had argued
away for me the obligatory sunrise on the Righi, by Jove! Of his
devotion to his unworthy pupil there can be no doubt. He had
proved it already by two years of unremitting and arduous care.
I could not hate him. But he had been crushing me slowly, and
when he started to argue on the top of the Furca Pass he was
perhaps nearer a success than either he or I imagined. I
listened to him in despairing silence, feeling that ghostly,
unrealised and desired sea of my dreams escape from the unnerved
grip of my will.
The enthusiastic old Englishman had passed--and the argument went
on. What reward could I expect from such a life at the end of my
years, either in ambition, honour or conscience? An unanswerable
question. But I felt no longer crushed. Then our eyes met and a
genuine emotion was visible in his as well as in mine. The end
came all at once. He picked up the knapsack suddenly and got on
to his feet.
"You are an incorrigible, hopeless Don Quixote. That's what you
are."
I was surprised. I was only fifteen and did not know what he
meant exactly. But I felt vaguely flattered at the name of the
immortal knight turning up in connection with my own folly, as
some people would call it to my face. Alas! I don't think there
was anything to be proud of. Mine was not the stuff the
protectors of forlorn damsels, the redressers of this world's
wrongs are made of; and my tutor was the man to know that best.
Therein, in his indignation, he was superior to the barber and
the priest when he flung at me an honoured name like a reproach.
I walked behind him for full five minutes; then without looking
back he stopped. The shadows of distant peaks were lengthening
over the Furca Pass. When I came up to him he turned to me and
in full view of the Finster-Aarhorn, with his band of giant
brothers rearing their monstrous heads against a brilliant sky,
put his hand on my shoulder affectionately.
"Well! That's enough. We will have no more of it."
And indeed there was no more question of my mysterious vocation
between us. There was to be no more question of it at all,
nowhere or with any one. We began the descent of the Furca Pass
conversing merrily. Eleven years later, month for month, I stood
on Tower Hill on the steps of the St. Katherine's Dockhouse, a
master in the British Merchant Service. But the man who put his
hand on my shoulder at the top of the Furca Pass was no longer
living.
That very year of our travels he took his degree of the
Philosophical Faculty--and only then his true vocation declared
itself. Obedient to the call he entered at once upon the four-
year course of the Medical Schools. A day came when, on the deck
of a ship moored in Calcutta, I opened a letter telling me of the
end of an enviable existence. He had made for himself a practice
in some obscure little town of Austrian Galicia. And the letter
went on to tell me how all the bereaved poor of the district,
Christians and Jews alike, had mobbed the good doctor's coffin
with sobs and lamentations at the very gate of the cemetery.
How short his years and how clear his vision! What greater
reward in ambition, honour and conscience could he have hoped to
win for himself when, on the top of the Furca Pass, he bade me
look well to the end of my opening life.
Content of CHAPTER II [Joseph Conrad's book: Some Reminiscences]
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