To morrow

J >> Joseph Conrad >> To morrow


"The whole world ain't a bit too big for me to spread my elbows in, I
can tell you--what's your name--Bessie--let alone a dam' parlour in a
hutch. Marry! He wants me to marry and settle! And as likely as not he
has looked out the girl too--dash my soul! And do you know the Judy, may
I ask?"

She shook all over with noiseless dry sobs; but he was fuming and
fretting too much to notice her distress. He bit his thumb with rage at
the mere idea. A window rattled up.

"A grinning, information fellow," pronounced old Hagberd dogmatically,
in measured tones. And the sound of his voice seemed to Bessie to make
the night itself mad--to pour insanity and disaster on the earth. "Now
I know what's wrong with the people here, my dear. Why, of course!
With this mad chap going about. Don't you have anything to do with him,
Bessie. Bessie, I say!"

They stood as if dumb. The old man fidgeted and mumbled to himself at
the window. Suddenly he cried, piercingly: "Bessie--I see you. I'll tell
Harry."

She made a movement as if to run away, but stopped and raised her hands
to her temples. Young Hagberd, shadowy and big, stirred no more than a
man of bronze. Over their heads the crazy night whimpered and scolded in
an old man's voice.

"Send him away, my dear. He's only a vagabond. What you want is a good
home of your own. That chap has no home--he's not like Harry. He can't
be Harry. Harry is coming to-morrow. Do you hear? One day more," he
babbled more excitedly; "never you fear--Harry shall marry you."

His voice rose very shrill and mad against the regular deep soughing of
the swell coiling heavily about the outer face of the sea-wall.

"He will have to. I shall make him, or if not"--he swore a great
oath--"I'll cut him off with a shilling to-morrow, and leave everything
to you. I shall. To you. Let him starve."

The window rattled down.

Harry drew a deep breath, and took one step toward Bessie. "So it's
you--the girl," he said, in a lowered voice. She had not moved, and she
remained half turned away from him, pressing her head in the palms of
her hands. "My word!" he continued, with an invisible half-smile on his
lips. "I have a great mind to stop. . . ."

Her elbows were trembling violently.

"For a week," he finished without a pause.

She clapped her hands to her face.

He came up quite close, and took hold of her wrists gently. She felt his
breath on her ear.

"It's a scrape I am in--this, and it is you that must see me through."
He was trying to uncover her face. She resisted. He let her go then, and
stepping back a little, "Have you got any money?" he asked. "I must be
off now."

She nodded quickly her shamefaced head, and he waited, looking away from
her, while, trembling all over and bowing her neck, she tried to find
the pocket of her dress.

"Here it is!" she whispered. "Oh, go away! go away for God's sake! If I
had more--more--I would give it all to forget--to make you forget."

He extended his hand. "No fear! I haven't forgotten a single one of you
in the world. Some gave me more than money--but I am a beggar now--and
you women always had to get me out of my scrapes."

He swaggered up to the parlour window, and in the dim light filtering
through the blind, looked at the coin lying in his palm. It was a
half-sovereign. He slipped it into his pocket. She stood a little on
one side, with her head drooping, as if wounded; with her arms hanging
passive by her side, as if dead.

"You can't buy me in," he said, "and you can't buy yourself out."

He set his hat firmly with a little tap, and next moment she felt
herself lifted up in the powerful embrace of his arms. Her feet lost the
ground; her head hung back; he showered kisses on her face with a silent
and over-mastering ardour, as if in haste to get at her very soul. He
kissed her pale cheeks, her hard forehead, her heavy eyelids, her faded
lips; and the measured blows and sighs of the rising tide accompanied
the enfolding power of his arms, the overwhelming might of his caresses.
It was as if the sea, breaking down the wall protecting all the homes
of the town, had sent a wave over her head. It passed on; she staggered
backwards, with her shoulders against the wall, exhausted, as if she had
been stranded there after a storm and a shipwreck.

She opened her eyes after awhile; and listening to the firm, leisurely
footsteps going away with their conquest, began to gather her skirts,
staring all the time before her. Suddenly she darted through the open
gate into the dark and deserted street.

"Stop!" she shouted. "Don't go!"

And listening with an attentive poise of the head, she could not tell
whether it was the beat of the swell or his fateful tread that seemed
to fall cruelly upon her heart. Presently every sound grew fainter, as
though she were slowly turning into stone. A fear of this awful silence
came to her--worse than the fear of death. She called upon her ebbing
strength for the final appeal:

"Harry!"

Not even the dying echo of a footstep. Nothing. The thundering of the
surf, the voice of the restless sea itself, seemed stopped. There was
not a sound--no whisper of life, as though she were alone and lost in
that stony country of which she had heard, where madmen go looking for
gold and spurn the find.

Captain Hagberd, inside his dark house, had kept on the alert. A window
ran up; and in the silence of the stony country a voice spoke above
her head, high up in the black air--the voice of madness, lies and
despair--the voice of inextinguishable hope. "Is he gone yet--that
information fellow? Do you hear him about, my dear?"

She burst into tears. "No! no! no! I don't hear him any more," she
sobbed.

He began to chuckle up there triumphantly. "You frightened him away.
Good girl. Now we shall be all right. Don't you be impatient, my dear.
One day more."

In the other house old Carvil, wallowing regally in his arm-chair, with
a globe lamp burning by his side on the table, yelled for her, in a
fiendish voice: "Bessie! Bessie! you Bessie!"

She heard him at last, and, as if overcome by fate, began to totter
silently back toward her stuffy little inferno of a cottage. It had no
lofty portal, no terrific inscription of forfeited hopes--she did not
understand wherein she had sinned.

Captain Hagberd had gradually worked himself into a state of noisy
happiness up there.

"Go in! Keep quiet!" she turned upon him tearfully, from the doorstep
below.

He rebelled against her authority in his great joy at having got rid at
last of that "something wrong." It was as if all the hopeful madness of
the world had broken out to bring terror upon her heart, with the voice
of that old man shouting of his trust in an everlasting to-morrow.