Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (587 page)

It was the next morning that I heard that young Burden desired that his
fiancee
’s solicitors should scrutinise the accounts of the Burden Trust — and Death loomed up before me.

You will ask: why Death ? Why not some alternative? Flight or prison ? Well: prison would be an unendurable travelling through Time, flight an equally unendurable travelling through Time with Space added. Both these things are familiar: Death alone, in spite of all the experience that humanity has had of Death, is the utterly unfamiliar. For a gambler it is a
coup
alluring beyond belief — as we know neither what we stake nor what we stand to win. I, personally, stand to win a great deal, since Life holds nothing for me and I stake only my life — and what I seek is only forgetfulness of you, or some sort of eventual and incomprehensible union with you. For the union with you that I seek is a queer sort of thing; hardly at all, I think, a union of the body, but a sort of consciousness of our thoughts proceeding onwards together. That we may find in the unending Afterwards. Or we may find the Herb Oblivion.

Either of these things I desire. For, in so far as we can dogmatise about Death we may lay it down that Death is the negation of Action but is powerless against Thought. I do not desire Action: and at the same time I do not fear Thought. For it is not my thoughts of you that I fear: left alone with them I can say: “ What is she more than any other material object? “ It is my feelings that wear out my brain — my feelings that make me know that you are more than every material object living or still, and more than every faith dead or surviving. For feeling is neither Thought nor Action: it is the very stuff of Life itself. And, if Death be the negation of Life it may well be the end of consciousness.

The worst that Death can do to me is to deliver me up for ever to unsatisfied longings for you. Well, that is all that Life has done, that is all that Life can do, for me.

But Life can do so much more that is worse. Believe me when I say that I dread imprisonment — and believe me when I say that I do not dread disgrace. For you know very well that it is true when I say that I positively chuckle at the thought of the shock my fall would give to all these unawakened intelligences of this world. You know how I despise Edward Burden for trusting in me; you know how I have always despised other people who trusted in established reputations. I don’t mean to say that I should not have liked to keep the game up, certainly I should, since in gambling it is more desirable to win than to lose. And it is more amusing to fool fools than to give them eye-openers. But I think that, in gambling, it is only a shade less desirable,
per se
, to lose than to win. The main point is the sensation of either; and the only valid objection to losing is that, if one loses too often one has at last no longer the wherewithal to gamble. Similarly, to give people eye-openers is,
per se
, nearly as desirable as to fool them. It is not quite so desirable, since the game itself is the fooling. But the great objection in my case is that the eye-opener would once and for all put an end to the chance of my ever fooling them again. That, however, is a very small matter and what I dread is not that. If people no longer trusted in me I could no doubt still find an outlet for my energies with those who sought to take advantage of my abilities, trusting to themselves to wrest from me a sufficient share of the plunder that they so ardently desire, that I so really have no use for.

No, I seek in Death a refuge from exposure not because exposure would cripple my energies: it would probably help them: and not because exposure would mean disgrace; I should probably find ironical satisfaction in it — but simply because it would mean imprisonment. That I dread beyond belief: I clench my fingers when, in conversation; I hear the words: “ A long sentence.” For that would mean my being delivered up for a long time — for ever — to you. I write “ for ever “ advisedly and after reflection, since a long subjection without relief, to that strain would leave upon my brain a wound that must prove ineffaceable. For to be alone and to think — those are my terrors.

One reads that men who have been condemned for long years to solitary imprisonment go mad. But I think hat even that sad gift from Omnipotent Fate would not be mine. As I figure the world to myself, Fate is terrible only to those who surrender to her. If I surrendered, to the extent of living to go to prison, then assuredly the future must be uniformly heavy, uniformly doomed, in my eyes. For I would as soon be mad as anything else I can think of. But I should not go mad. Men go mad because of the opportunities they miss: because the world changes outside the prison walls, or because their children starve. But I have no opportunities to miss or take: the changes of the world to me are nothing, and there is no soul between whom and starvation I could stand.

Whilst I am about making this final disposition of my properties — let me tell you finally what I have done in regard to your husband himself. It is a fact — and this I have been keeping up my sleeve as a final surprise for you — that he is almost cured....

But I have just received an incomprehensible note from Edward Burden. He asks me for some particulars as to his confounded estate and whether I can lend him some thousands of pounds at short notice. Heaven knows what new scrape this is that he’s in. Of course this may precipitate
my crash
. But whatever happens, I shall find time to write my final words to you — and nothing else really matters....

VII

I HAVEN’T yet discovered what Edward Burden is doing. I have found him a good round sum upon mortgage — the irony of the position being that the money is actually his whilst the mortgage does not actually exist. He says that what he is doing with the money will please me. I suppose that means that he’s embarking upon some sort of speculation which he imagines that I would favour. It is odd that he should think that I find gratification in his imitating myself.

But why should I concern myself with this thing at all? Nothing in the world can ever please or displease me any more. For I have taken my resolve: this is my last night upon earth. When I lay down this pen again, I shall never take up any pen more.

For I have said all that I can say to you. I am utterly tired out. To-night I shall make up into a parcel all these letters — I must sit through the night because it is only to-morrow morning that I shall be able to register the parcel to you — and registering it will be my last act upon the habitable globe. For biting through the glass in the ring will be not an action, but the commencement of a new train of thought. Or perhaps only my final action will come to an end when you read these words in Rome. Or will that be only thought — the part of me that lives — pleading to you to give your thoughts for company? I feel too tired to think the matter out !

Let me, then, finish with this earth: I told you, when I finished writing last night, that Robert is almost cured. I would not have told you this for the sake of arrogating to myself the position of a saviour. But I imagine that you would like the cure to go on and, in the case of some accident after my death, it might go all to pieces once more. Quite simply then: I have been doing two things. In the first place I have persuaded your chemists to reduce very gradually the strength of chloral, so that the bottles contain nearly half water. And Robert perceives no difference. Now of course it is very important that he shall not know of the trick that is being so beneficently played on him — so that, in case he should go away or for one reason or another change his chemists, it must be carefully seen to that instead of pure chloral he obtains the exactly diluted mixture. In this way he may be brought gradually to drinking almost pure water.

But that alone would hardly be satisfactory: a comparatively involuntary cure is of little value in comparison with an effort of the will. You may, conceivably, expel nature with a fork, but nothing but a passion will expel a passion. The only point to be proved is whether there exists in your husband any other passion for the sake of which he might abandon his passion for the clearness of vision which he always says his chloral gives him. He has not, of course, the incentives usual to men: you cannot , in fact, “get” him along ordinary lines....But apart from his physical craving for the drug he
has
that passion for clearness of intellect that he says the drug gives him — and it is through that that, at last, I have managed to hit his pride.

For I have put it to him very strongly that one view of life is just as good as another — no better, no worse, but just the same. And I have put it to him that his use of chloral simply limits for him the number of views of life that he might conceivably have. And, when you come to think of all the rhapsodies of his that we have listened to, I think that that piece of special pleading is sufficiently justified. I do indeed honestly believe that, for what it is worth, he is on the road to salvation. He means to make a struggle — to attempt the great feat of once more seeing life with the eyes that Fate originally gave to him.

This is my legacy to
you
: if you ask me why I have presented you with this man’s new identity — since it
will
mean a new identity — I must answer that I simply don’t know. Why have we kept him alive all these years P I have done it no doubt because I had nothing to give you. But you? If you have loved me you must have wished him — I won’t say dead — but no more there. Yet you have tried too — and I suppose this answer to the riddle is simply the answer to the whole riddle of our life. We have tried to play a supremely difficult game simply because it sanctified our love. For, after all, sanctification arises from difficulties. Well, we have made our way very strait and we have so narrowed the door of entrance that it has vanished altogether. We have never had
any
hope of a solution that could have satisfied us.

If we had cared to break the rules of the game, I suppose we could have done it easily enough — and we could have done it the more easily since neither you nor I ever subscribed to those rules. If we have not it was, I think, simply because we sought the difficulty which sanctifies.... Has it been a very imbecile proceeding? I am most uncertain. For it is not a thing to be very proud of — to be able to say that, for a whole lifetime, one has abstained from that which one most desired. On the other hand, we have won a curious and difficult game. Well — there it is — and there is your legacy. I do not think that there is anything else for me to write about. You will see that, in my will, I have left everything I possess to — Edward Burden. This is not because I wish to make him reparation, and it’s not because I wish to avoid scandal: it is simply because it may show him one very simple thing. It will show him how very nearly I might have made things come right. I have been balancing my accounts very carefully, and I find that, reckoning things reasonably against myself, Edward Burden will have a five-pound note with which to buy himself a mourning-ring.

The being forced to attend to my accounts will make him gasp a good deal. It will certainly shake his belief in all accepted reputations — for he will look on the faces of many men each “ as solid as the Bank

of England,” and he will think: “ I wonder if you are like —  — ? “ His whole world will crumble — not because I have been dishonest, since he is cold-blooded enough to believe that all men may be dishonest. But he will tremble because I have been able to be so wildly dishonest and yet to be so successfully respectable. He won’t even dare to “ expose “ me, since, if he did that, half of the shares which he will inherit from me would suffer an eclipse of disreputability, would tumble to nothingness in value — and would damage his poor pocket. He will have to have my estate set down at a high figure; he will have to be congratulated on his fortunate inheritance, and he will have, sedulously, to compound my felony.

You will wonder how I can be capable of this final cruelty — the most cruel thing that, perhaps, ever one man did to another. I will tell you why it is: it is because I hate all the Edward Burdens of the world — because, being the eternal Haves of the world, they have made their idiotic rules of the game. And you and I suffer: you and I, the eternal Have Nots. And we suffer, not because their rules bind us, but because, being the finer spirits, we are forced to set ourselves rules that are still more strict in order that, in all things, we may be the truly gallant.

But why do I write: “ You will wonder how I can be capable of this “? You will have understood — you who understand everything.

Eight in the morning
. — Well: now we part. I am going to register the parcel containing all these letters to you. We part: and it is as if you were dropping back — the lost Eurydice of the world — into an utter blackness. For, in a minute, you will be no more than part of my past. Well then: goodnight.

VIII

You will have got the telegram I sent you long before you got the parcel of letters: you will have got the note I wrote you by the same post as the letters themselves. If I have taken these three days to myself before again writing to you it has been because I have needed to recover my power of thinking. Now, in a way, I have recovered it — and it is only fair to say that I have devoted all my thoughts to how the new situation affects you — and you in your relations to me.

It places me in your hands — let that be written first and foremost. You have to decree my life or my death. For I take it that now we can never get back again into our old position: I have spoken, you have heard me speak. The singular unity, the silence of our old life is done with for good. There is perhaps no reason why this should not be so: silence is no necessary part of our relationship. But it has seemed to make a rather exquisite bond between us.

It must, if I am to continue to live — it must be replaced by some other bond. In our silence we have seemed to speak in all sorts of strange ways: we have perhaps read each other’s thoughts. I have seen words form themselves upon your lips. But now you must — there is no way out of it — you must write to me. You
must
write to me fully: all your thoughts. You must, as I have done, find the means of speech — or I can no longer live...