Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer (6 page)

There was a sort of curiosity in his eye that I did not like. I don't know whether the steward had told them that I was ‘‘queer'' only, or downright drunk, but I know the man meant to have a good look at me. I watched him coming with a smile which, as he got into point-blank range, took effect and froze his very whiskers. I did not give him time to open his lips.

‘‘Square the yards by lifts and braces before the hands go to breakfast.''

It was the first particular order I had given on board that ship; and I stayed on deck to see it executed, too. I had felt the need of asserting myself without loss of time. That sneering young cub got taken down a peg or two on that occasion, and I also seized the opportunity of having a good look at the face of every foremast man as they filed past me to go to the after braces. At breakfast time, eating nothing myself, I presided with such frigid dignity that the two mates were only too glad to escape from the cabin as soon as decency permitted; and all the time the dual working of my mind distracted me almost to the point of insanity. I was constantly watching myself, my secret self, as dependent on my actions as my own personality, sleeping in that bed, behind that door which faced me as I sat at the head of the table. It was very much like being mad, only it was worse because one was aware of it.

I had to shake him for a solid minute, but when at last he opened his eyes it was in the full possession of his senses, with an inquiring look.

‘‘All's well so far,'' I whispered. ‘‘Now you must vanish into the bathroom.''

He did so, as noiseless as a ghost, and then I rang for the steward, and facing him boldly, directed him to tidy up my stateroom while I was having my bath— ‘‘and be quick about it.'' As my tone admitted of no excuses, he said, ‘‘Yes, sir,'' and ran off to fetch his dustpan and brushes. I took a bath and did most of my dressing, splashing, and whistling softly for the steward's edification, while the secret sharer of my life stood drawn up bolt upright in that little space, his face looking very sunken in daylight, his eyelids lowered under the stern, dark line of his eyebrows drawn together by a slight frown.

When I left him there to go back to my room the steward was finishing dusting. I sent for the mate and engaged him in some insignificant conversation. It was, as it were, trifling with the terrific character of his whiskers; but my object was to give him an opportunity for a good look at my cabin. And then I could at last shut, with a clear conscience, the door of my stateroom and get my double back into the recessed part. There was nothing else for it. He had to sit still on a small folding stool, half smothered by the heavy coats hanging there. We listened to the steward going into the bathroom out of the saloon, filling the water bottles there, scrubbing the bath, setting things to rights, whisk, bang, clatter—out again into the saloon—turn the key—click. Such was my scheme for keeping my second self invisible. Nothing better could be contrived under the circumstances. And there we sat; I at my writing desk ready to appear busy with some papers, he behind me out of sight of the door. It would not have been prudent to talk in daytime; and I could not have stood the excitement of that queer sense of whispering to myself. Now and then, glancing over my shoulder, I saw him far back there, sitting rigidly on the low stool, his bare feet close together, his arms folded, his head hanging on his breast—and perfectly still. Anybody would have taken him for me.

I was fascinated by it myself. Every moment I had to glance over my shoulder. I was looking at him when a voice outside the door said:

‘‘Beg pardon, sir.''

‘‘Well!'' . . . I kept my eyes on him, and so when the voice outside the door announced, ‘‘There's a ship's boat coming our way, sir,'' I saw him give a start—the first movement he had made for hours. But he did not raise his bowed head.

‘‘All right. Get the ladder over.''

I hesitated. Should I whisper something to him? But what? His immobility seemed to have been never disturbed. What could I tell him he did not know already? . . . Finally I went on deck.

The skipper of the
Sephora
had a thin red whisker all round his face, and the sort of complexion that goes with hair of that color; also the particular, rather smeary shade of blue in the eyes. He was not exactly a showy figure; his shoulders were high, his stature but middling—one leg slightly more bandy than the other. He shook hands, looking vaguely around. A spiritless tenacity was his main characteristic, I judged. I behaved with a politeness which seemed to disconcert him. Perhaps he was shy. He mumbled to me as if he were ashamed of what he was saying; gave his name (it was something like Archbold—but at this distance of years I hardly am sure), his ship's name, and a few other particulars of that sort, in the manner of a criminal making a reluctant and doleful confession. He had had terrible weather on the passage out—terrible—terrible—wife aboard, too.

By this time we were seated in the cabin and the steward brought in a tray with a bottle and glasses. ‘‘Thanks! No.'' Never took liquor. Would have some water, though. He drank two tumblerfuls. Terrible thirsty work. Ever since daylight had been exploring the islands round his ship.

‘‘What was that for—fun?'' I asked, with an appearance of polite interest.

‘‘No!'' He sighed. ‘‘Painful duty.''

As he persisted in his mumbling and I wanted my double to hear every word, I hit upon the notion of informing him that I regretted to say I was hard of hearing.

‘‘Such a young man, too!'' he nodded, keeping his smeary blue, unintelligent eyes fastened upon me. ‘‘What was the cause of it—some disease?'' he inquired, without the least sympathy and as if he thought that, if so, I'd got no more than I deserved.

‘‘Yes; disease,'' I admitted in a cheerful tone which seemed to shock him. But my point was gained, because he had to raise his voice to give me his tale. It is not worth while to record that version. It was just over two months since all this had happened, and he had thought so much about it that he seemed completely muddled as to its bearings, but still immensely impressed.

‘‘What would you think of such a thing happening on board your own ship? I've had the
Sephora
for these fifteen years. I am a well-known shipmaster.''

He was densely distressed—and perhaps I should have sympathized with him if I had been able to detach my mental vision from the unsuspected sharer of my cabin as though he were my second self. There he was on the other side of the bulkhead, four or five feet from us, no more, as we sat in the saloon. I looked politely at Captain Archbold (if that was his name), but it was the other I saw, in a gray sleeping suit, seated on a low stool, his bare feet close together, his arms folded, and every word said between us falling into the ears of his dark head bowed on his chest.

‘‘I have been at sea now, man and boy, for seven-and-thirty years, and I've never heard of such a thing happening in an English ship. And that it should be my ship. Wife on board, too.''

I was hardly listening to him.

‘‘Don't you think,'' I said, ‘‘that the heavy sea which, you told me, came aboard just then might have killed the man? I have seen the sheer weight of a sea kill a man very neatly, by simply breaking his neck.''

‘‘Good God!'' he uttered, impressively, fixing his smeary blue eyes on me. ‘‘The sea! No man killed by the sea ever looked like that.'' He seemed positively scandalized at my suggestion. And as I gazed at him certainly not prepared for anything original on his part, he advanced his head close to me and thrust his tongue out at me so suddenly that I couldn't help starting back.

After scoring over my calmness in this graphic way he nodded wisely. If I had seen the sight, he assured me, I would never forget it as long as I lived. The weather was too bad to give the corpse a proper sea burial. So next day at dawn they took it up on the poop, covering its face with a bit of bunting; he read a short prayer, and then, just as it was, in its oilskins and long boots, they launched it amongst those mountainous seas that seemed ready every moment to swallow up the ship herself and the terrified lives on board of her.

‘‘That reefed foresail saved you,'' I threw in.

‘‘Under God—it did,'' he exclaimed fervently. ‘‘It was by a special mercy, I firmly believe, that it stood some of those hurricane squalls.''

‘‘It was the setting of that sail which——'' I began.

‘‘God's own hand in it,'' he interrupted me. ‘‘Nothing less could have done it. I don't mind telling you that I hardly dared give the order. It seemed impossible that we could touch anything without losing it, and then our last hope would have been gone.''

The terror of that gale was on him yet. I let him go on for a bit, then said, casually—as if returning to a minor subject:

‘‘You were very anxious to give up your mate to the shore people, I believe?''

He was. To the law. His obscure tenacity on that point had in it something incomprehensible and a little awful; something, as it were, mystical, quite apart from his anxiety that he should not be suspected of ‘‘countenancing any doings of that sort.'' Seven-and-thirty virtuous years at sea, of which over twenty of immaculate command, and the last fifteen in the
Sephora,
seemed to have laid him under some pitiless obligation.

‘‘And you know,'' he went on, groping shamefacedly amongst his feelings, ‘‘I did not engage that young fellow. His people had some interest with my owners. I was in a way forced to take him on. He looked very smart, very gentlemanly, and all that. But do you know—I never liked him, somehow. I am a plain man. You see, he wasn't exactly the sort for the chief mate of a ship like the
Sephora.
''

I had become so connected in thoughts and impressions with the secret sharer of my cabin that I felt as if I, personally, were being given to understand that I, too, was not the sort that would have done for the chief mate of a ship like the
Sephora.
I had no doubt of it in my mind.

‘‘Not at all the style of man. You understand,'' he insisted, superfluously, looking hard at me.

I smiled urbanely. He seemed at a loss for a while.

‘‘I suppose I must report a suicide.''

‘‘Beg pardon?''

‘‘Sui-cide! That's what I'll have to write to my owners directly I get in.''

‘‘Unless you manage to recover him before tomorrow, '' I assented, dispassionately. . . . ‘‘I mean, alive.''

He mumbled something which I really did not catch, and I turned my ear to him in a puzzled manner. He fairly bawled:

‘‘The land—I say, the mainland is at least seven miles off my anchorage.''

‘‘About that.''

My lack of excitement, of curiosity, of surprise, of any sort of pronounced interest, began to arouse his distrust. But except for the felicitous pretense of deafness I had not tried to pretend anything. I had felt utterly incapable of playing the part of ignorance properly, and therefore was afraid to try. It is also certain that he had brought some ready-made suspicions with him, and that he viewed my politeness as a strange and unnatural phenomenon. And yet how else could I have received him? Not heartily! That was impossible for psychological reasons, which I need not state here. My only object was to keep off his inquiries. Surlily? Yes, but surliness might have provoked a point-blank question. From its novelty to him and from its nature, punctilious courtesy was the manner best calculated to restrain the man. But there was the danger of his breaking through my defense bluntly. I could not, I think, have met him by a direct lie, also for psychological (not moral) reasons. If he had only known how afraid I was of his putting my feeling of identity with the other to the test! But, strangely enough—(I thought of it only afterwards)—I believe that he was not a little disconcerted by the reverse side of that weird situation, by something in me that reminded him of the man he was seeking—suggested a mysterious similitude to the young fellow he had distrusted and disliked from the first.

However that might have been, the silence was not very prolonged. He took another oblique step.

‘‘I reckon I had no more than a two-mile pull to your ship. Not a bit more.''

‘‘And quite enough, too, in this awful heat,'' I said.

Another pause full of mistrust followed. Necessity, they say, is mother of invention, but fear, too, is not barren of ingenious suggestions. And I was afraid he would ask me point-blank for news of my other self.

‘‘Nice little saloon, isn't it?'' I remarked, as if noticing for the first time the way his eyes roamed from one closed door to the other. ‘‘And very well fitted out, too. Here, for instance,'' I continued, reaching over the back of my seat negligently and flinging the door open, ‘‘is my bathroom.''

He made an eager movement, but hardly gave it a glance. I got up, shut the door of the bathroom, and invited him to have a look round, as if I were very proud of my accommodation. He had to rise and be shown round, but he went through the business without any raptures whatever.

‘‘And now we'll have a look at my stateroom,'' I declared, in a voice as loud as I dared to make it, crossing the cabin to the starboard side with purposely heavy steps.

He followed me in and gazed around. My intelligent double had vanished. I played my part.

‘‘Very convenient—isn't it?''

‘‘Very nice. Very comf . . .'' He didn't finish and went out brusquely as if to escape from some unrighteous wiles of mine. But it was not to be. I had been too frightened not to feel vengeful; I felt I had him on the run, and I meant to keep him on the run. My polite insistence must have had something menacing in it, because he gave in suddenly. And I did not let him off a single item; mate's room, pantry, storerooms, the very sail locker which was also under the poop— he had to look into them all. When at last I showed him out on the quarter-deck he drew a long, spiritless sigh, and mumbled dismally that he must really be going back to his ship now. I desired my mate, who had joined us, to see to the captain's boat.