Under Western Eyes

J >> Joseph Conrad >> Under Western Eyes


The wild beast was making its way instinctively eastward to the Pacific
coast, and the civilised humanitarian in fearful anxious dependence
watched the proceedings with awe. Through all these weeks he could never
make up his mind to appeal to human compassion. In the wary primeval
savage this shyness might have been natural, but the other too, the
civilized creature, the thinker, the escaping "political" had developed
an absurd form of morbid pessimism, a form of temporary insanity,
originating perhaps in the physical worry and discomfort of the chain.
These links, he fancied, made him odious to the rest of mankind. It
was a repugnant and suggestive load. Nobody could feel any pity at the
disgusting sight of a man escaping with a broken chain. His imagination
became affected by his fetters in a precise, matter-of-fact manner.
It seemed to him impossible that people could resist the temptation of
fastening the loose end to a staple in the wall while they went for the
nearest police official. Crouching in holes or hidden in thickets, he
had tried to read the faces of unsuspecting free settlers working in the
clearings or passing along the paths within a foot or two of his
eyes. His feeling was that no man on earth could be trusted with the
temptation of the chain.

One day, however, he chanced to come upon a solitary woman. It was on an
open slope of rough grass outside the forest. She sat on the bank of a
narrow stream; she had a red handkerchief on her head and a small basket
was lying on the ground near her hand. At a little distance could be
seen a cluster of log cabins, with a water-mill over a dammed pool
shaded by birch trees and looking bright as glass in the twilight. He
approached her silently, his hatchet stuck in his iron belt, a thick
cudgel in his hand; there were leaves and bits of twig in his tangled
hair, in his matted beard; bunches of rags he had wound round the links
fluttered from his waist. A faint clink of his fetters made the woman
turn her head. Too terrified by this savage apparition to jump up or
even to scream, she was yet too stout-hearted to faint.... Expecting
nothing less than to be murdered on the spot she covered her eyes with
her hands to avoid the sight of the descending axe. When at last she
found courage to look again, she saw the shaggy wild man sitting on
the bank six feet away from her. His thin, sinewy arms hugged his naked
legs; the long beard covered the knees on which he rested his chin; all
these clasped, folded limbs, the bare shoulders, the wild head with red
staring eyes, shook and trembled violently while the bestial creature
was making efforts to speak. It was six weeks since he had heard the
sound of his own voice. It seemed as though he had lost the faculty
of speech. He had become a dumb and despairing brute, till the woman's
sudden, unexpected cry of profound pity, the insight of her feminine
compassion discovering the complex misery of the man under the
terrifying aspect of the monster, restored him to the ranks of humanity.
This point of view is presented in his book, with a very effective
eloquence. She ended, he says, by shedding tears over him, sacred,
redeeming tears, while he also wept with joy in the manner of a
converted sinner. Directing him to hide in the bushes and wait patiently
(a police patrol was expected in the Settlement) she went away towards
the houses, promising to return at night.

As if providentially appointed to be the newly wedded wife of the
village blacksmith, the woman persuaded her husband to come out with
her, bringing some tools of his trade, a hammer, a chisel, a small
anvil.... "My fetters"--the book says--"were struck off on the banks
of the stream, in the starlight of a calm night by an athletic, taciturn
young man of the people, kneeling at my feet, while the woman like a
liberating genius stood by with clasped hands." Obviously a symbolic
couple. At the same time they furnished his regained humanity with some
decent clothing, and put heart into the new man by the information that
the seacoast of the Pacific was only a very few miles away. It could be
seen, in fact, from the top of the next ridge....

The rest of his escape does not lend itself to mystic treatment and
symbolic interpretation. He ended by finding his way to the West by
the Suez Canal route in the usual manner. Reaching the shores of South
Europe he sat down to write his autobiography--the great literary
success of its year. This book was followed by other books written with
the declared purpose of elevating humanity. In these works he preached
generally the cult of the woman. For his own part he practised it under
the rites of special devotion to the transcendental merits of a certain
Madame de S--, a lady of advanced views, no longer very young, once
upon a time the intriguing wife of a now dead and forgotten diplomat.
Her loud pretensions to be one of the leaders of modern thought and of
modern sentiment, she sheltered (like Voltaire and Mme. de Stael) on the
republican territory of Geneva. Driving through the streets in her big
landau she exhibited to the indifference of the natives and the stares
of the tourists a long-waisted, youthful figure of hieratic stiffness,
with a pair of big gleaming eyes, rolling restlessly behind a short veil
of black lace, which, coming down no further than her vividly red lips,
resembled a mask. Usually the "heroic fugitive" (this name was bestowed
upon him in a review of the English edition of his book)--the "heroic
fugitive" accompanied her, sitting, portentously bearded and darkly
bespectacled, not by her side, but opposite her, with his back to the
horses. Thus, facing each other, with no one else in the roomy carriage,
their airings suggested a conscious public manifestation. Or it may have
been unconscious. Russian simplicity often marches innocently on the
edge of cynicism for some lofty purpose. But it is a vain enterprise for
sophisticated Europe to try and understand these doings. Considering the
air of gravity extending even to the physiognomy of the coachman and the
action of the showy horses, this quaint display might have possessed
a mystic significance, but to the corrupt frivolity of a Western mind,
like my own, it seemed hardly decent.

However, it is not becoming for an obscure teacher of languages to
criticize a "heroic fugitive" of worldwide celebrity. I was aware from
hearsay that he was an industrious busy-body, hunting up his compatriots
in hotels, in private lodgings, and--I was told--conferring upon them
the honour of his notice in public gardens when a suitable opening
presented itself. I was under the impression that after a visit or
two, several months before, he had given up the ladies Haldin--no doubt
reluctantly, for there could be no question of his being a determined
person. It was perhaps to be expected that he should reappear again on
this terrible occasion, as a Russian and a revolutionist, to say the
right thing, to strike the true, perhaps a comforting, note. But I did
not like to see him sitting there. I trust that an unbecoming jealousy
of my privileged position had nothing to do with it. I made no claim to
a special standing for my silent friendship. Removed by the difference
of age and nationality as if into the sphere of another existence, I
produced, even upon myself, the effect of a dumb helpless ghost, of an
anxious immaterial thing that could only hover about without the power
to protect or guide by as much as a whisper. Since Miss Haldin with her
sure instinct had refrained from introducing me to the burly celebrity,
I would have retired quietly and returned later on, had I not met a
peculiar expression in her eyes which I interpreted as a request to
stay, with the view, perhaps, of shortening an unwelcome visit.

He picked up his hat, but only to deposit it on his knees.

"We shall meet again, Natalia Victorovna. To-day I have called only
to mark those feelings towards your honoured mother and yourself,
the nature of which you cannot doubt. I needed no urging, but
Eleanor--Madame de S-- herself has in a way sent me. She extends to you
the hand of feminine fellowship. There is positively in all the range
of human sentiments no joy and no sorrow that woman cannot understand,
elevate, and spiritualize by her interpretation. That young man newly
arrived from St. Petersburg, I have mentioned to you, is already under
the charm."

At this point Miss Haldin got up abruptly. I was glad. He did not
evidently expect anything so decisive and, at first, throwing his head
back, he tilted up his dark glasses with bland curiosity. At last,
recollecting himself, he stood up hastily, seizing his hat off his knees
with great adroitness.

"How is it, Natalia Victorovna, that you have kept aloof so long, from
what after all is--let disparaging tongues say what they like--a unique
centre of intellectual freedom and of effort to shape a high conception
of our future? In the case of your honoured mother I understand in a
measure. At her age new ideas--new faces are not perhaps.... But you!
Was it mistrust--or indifference? You must come out of your reserve.
We Russians have no right to be reserved with each other. In our
circumstances it is almost a crime against humanity. The luxury of
private grief is not for us. Nowadays the devil is not combated by
prayers and fasting. And what is fasting after all but starvation. You
must not starve yourself, Natalia Victorovna. Strength is what we want.
Spiritual strength, I mean. As to the other kind, what could withstand
us Russians if we only put it forth? Sin is different in our day, and
the way of salvation for pure souls is different too. It is no longer to
be found in monasteries but in the world, in the..."

The deep sound seemed to rise from under the floor, and one felt steeped
in it to the lips. Miss Haldin's interruption resembled the effort of
a drowning person to keep above water. She struck in with an accent of
impatience--

"But, Peter Ivanovitch, I don't mean to retire into a monastery. Who
would look for salvation there?"

"I spoke figuratively," he boomed.

"Well, then, I am speaking figuratively too. But sorrow is sorrow and
pain is pain in the old way. They make their demands upon people. One
has got to face them the best way one can. I know that the blow which
has fallen upon us so unexpectedly is only an episode in the fate of a
people. You may rest assured that I don't forget that. But just now
I have to think of my mother. How can you expect me to leave her to
herself...?"

"That is putting it in a very crude way," he protested in his great
effortless voice.

Miss Haldin did not wait for the vibration to die out.

"And run about visiting amongst a lot of strange people. The idea is
distasteful for me; and I do not know what else you may mean?"

He towered before her, enormous, deferential, cropped as close as a
convict and this big pinkish poll evoked for me the vision of a wild
head with matted locks peering through parted bushes, glimpses of naked,
tawny limbs slinking behind the masses of sodden foliage under a cloud
of flies and mosquitoes. It was an involuntary tribute to the vigour
of his writing. Nobody could doubt that he had wandered in Siberian
forests, naked and girt with a chain. The black broadcloth coat invested
his person with a character of austere decency--something recalling a
missionary.

"Do you know what I want, Natalia Victorovna?" he uttered solemnly. "I
want you to be a fanatic."

"A fanatic?"

"Yes. Faith alone won't do."

His voice dropped to a still lower tone. He raised for a moment one
thick arm; the other remained hanging down against his thigh, with the
fragile silk hat at the end.

"I shall tell you now something which I entreat you to ponder
over carefully. Listen, we need a force that would move heaven and
earth--nothing less."

The profound, subterranean note of this "nothing less" made one shudder,
almost, like the deep muttering of wind in the pipes of an organ.

"And are we to find that force in the salon of Madame de S--? Excuse
me, Peter Ivanovitch, if I permit myself to doubt it. Is not that lady a
woman of the great world, an aristocrat?"

"Prejudice!" he cried. "You astonish me. And suppose she was all that!
She is also a woman of flesh and blood. There is always something to
weigh down the spiritual side in all of us. But to make of it a reproach
is what I did not expect from you. No! I did not expect that. One would
think you have listened to some malevolent scandal."

"I have heard no gossip, I assure you. In our province how could we? But
the world speaks of her. What can there be in common in a lady of that
sort and an obscure country girl like me?"

"She is a perpetual manifestation of a noble and peerless spirit,"
he broke in. "Her charm--no, I shall not speak of her charm. But,
of course, everybody who approaches her falls under the spell....
Contradictions vanish, trouble falls away from one.... Unless I
am mistaken--but I never make a mistake in spiritual matters--you are
troubled in your soul, Natalia Victorovna."

Miss Haldin's clear eyes looked straight at his soft enormous face;
I received the impression that behind these dark spectacles of his he
could be as impudent as he chose.

"Only the other evening walking back to town from Chateau Borel with our
latest interesting arrival from Petersburg, I could notice the powerful
soothing influence--I may say reconciling influence.... There he was,
all these kilometres along the shores of the lake, silent, like a man
who has been shown the way of peace. I could feel the leaven working in
his soul, you understand. For one thing he listened to me patiently.
I myself was inspired that evening by the firm and exquisite genius
of Eleanor--Madame de S--, you know. It was a full moon and I could
observe his face. I cannot be deceived...."

Miss Haldin, looking down, seemed to hesitate.

"Well! I will think of what you said, Peter Ivanovitch. I shall try to
call as soon as I can leave mother for an hour or two safely."

Coldly as these words were said I was amazed at the concession. He
snatched her right hand with such fervour that I thought he was going
to press it to his lips or his breast. But he only held it by the
finger-tips in his great paw and shook it a little up and down while he
delivered his last volley of words.

"That's right. That's right. I haven't obtained your full confidence
as yet, Natalia Victorovna, but that will come. All in good time. The
sister of Viktor Haldin cannot be without importance.... It's simply
impossible. And no woman can remain sitting on the steps. Flowers,
tears, applause--that has had its time; it's a mediaeval conception. The
arena, the arena itself is the place for women!"

He relinquished her hand with a flourish, as if giving it to her for a
gift, and remained still, his head bowed in dignified submission before
her femininity.

"The arena!... You must descend into the arena, Natalia."

He made one step backwards, inclined his enormous body, and was gone
swiftly. The door fell to behind him. But immediately the powerful
resonance of his voice was heard addressing in the ante-room the
middle-aged servant woman who was letting him out. Whether he exhorted
her too to descend into the arena I cannot tell. The thing sounded like
a lecture, and the slight crash of the outer door cut it short suddenly.


III


"We remained looking at each other for a time."

"Do you know who he is?"

Miss Haldin, coming forward, put this question to me in English.

I took her offered hand.

"Everybody knows. He is a revolutionary feminist, a great writer, if
you like, and--how shall I say it--the--the familiar guest of Madame de
S--'s mystic revolutionary salon."

Miss Haldin passed her hand over her forehead.

"You know, he was with me for more than an hour before you came in. I
was so glad mother was lying down. She has many nights without sleep,
and then sometimes in the middle of the day she gets a rest of several
hours. It is sheer exhaustion--but still, I am thankful.... If it
were not for these intervals...."

She looked at me and, with that extraordinary penetration which used to
disconcert me, shook her head.

"No. She would not go mad."

"My dear young lady," I cried, by way of protest, the more shocked
because in my heart I was far from thinking Mrs. Haldin quite sane.

"You don't know what a fine, lucid intellect mother had," continued
Nathalie Haldin, with her calm, clear-eyed simplicity, which seemed to
me always to have a quality of heroism.

"I am sure...." I murmured.

"I darkened mother's room and came out here. I've wanted for so long to
think quietly."

She paused, then, without giving any sign of distress, added, "It's so
difficult," and looked at me with a strange fixity, as if watching for a
sign of dissent or surprise.

I gave neither. I was irresistibly impelled to say--

"The visit from that gentleman has not made it any easier, I fear."

Miss Haldin stood before me with a peculiar expression in her eyes.

"I don't pretend to understand completely. Some guide one must have,
even if one does not wholly give up the direction of one's conduct to
him. I am an inexperienced girl, but I am not slavish, There has been
too much of that in Russia. Why should I not listen to him? There is no
harm in having one's thoughts directed. But I don't mind confessing
to you that I have not been completely candid with Peter Ivanovitch. I
don't quite know what prevented me at the moment...."

She walked away suddenly from me to a distant part of the room; but
it was only to open and shut a drawer in a bureau. She returned with
a piece of paper in her hand. It was thin and blackened with close
handwriting. It was obviously a letter.

"I wanted to read you the very words," she said. "This is one of my poor
brother's letters. He never doubted. How could he doubt? They make only
such a small handful, these miserable oppressors, before the unanimous
will of our people."

"Your brother believed in the power of a people's will to achieve
anything?"

"It was his religion," declared Miss Haldin.

I looked at her calm face and her animated eyes.

"Of course the will must be awakened, inspired, concentrated," she went
on. "That is the true task of real agitators. One has got to give up
one's life to it. The degradation of servitude, the absolutist lies must
be uprooted and swept out. Reform is impossible. There is nothing to
reform. There is no legality, there are no institutions. There are
only arbitrary decrees. There is only a handful of cruel--perhaps
blind--officials against a nation."

The letter rustled slightly in her hand. I glanced down at the
flimsy blackened pages whose very handwriting seemed cabalistic,
incomprehensible to the experience of Western Europe.

"Stated like this," I confessed, "the problem seems simple enough. But I
fear I shall not see it solved. And if you go back to Russia I know that
I shall not see you again. Yet once more I say: go back! Don't suppose
that I am thinking of your preservation. No! I know that you will not
be returning to personal safety. But I had much rather think of you in
danger there than see you exposed to what may be met here."

"I tell you what," said Miss Haldin, after a moment of reflection. "I
believe that you hate revolution; you fancy it's not quite honest. You
belong to a people which has made a bargain with fate and wouldn't like
to be rude to it. But we have made no bargain. It was never offered to
us--so much liberty for so much hard cash. You shrink from the idea
of revolutionary action for those you think well of as if it were
something--how shall I say it--not quite decent."

I bowed my head.

"You are quite right," I said. "I think very highly of you"

"Don't suppose I do not know it," she began hurriedly. "Your friendship
has been very valuable."

"I have done little else but look on."

She was a little flushed under the eyes.

"There is a way of looking on which is valuable I have felt less lonely
because of it. It's difficult to explain."

"Really? Well, I too have felt less lonely. That's easy to explain,
though. But it won't go on much longer. The last thing I want to tell
you is this: in a real revolution--not a simple dynastic change or a
mere reform of institutions--in a real revolution the best characters
do not come to the front. A violent revolution falls into the hands of
narrow-minded fanatics and of tyrannical hypocrites at first. Afterwards
comes the turn of all the pretentious intellectual failures of the time.
Such are the chiefs and the leaders. You will notice that I have left
out the mere rogues. The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane,
and devoted natures; the unselfish and the intelligent may begin a
movement--but it passes away from them. They are not the leaders of
a revolution. They are its victims: the victims of disgust, of
disenchantment--often of remorse. Hopes grotesquely betrayed, ideals
caricatured--that is the definition of revolutionary success. There have
been in every revolution hearts broken by such successes. But enough of
that. My meaning is that I don't want you to be a victim."

"If I could believe all you have said I still wouldn't think of myself,"
protested Miss Haldin. "I would take liberty from any hand as a hungry
man would snatch at a piece of bread. The true progress must begin
after. And for that the right men shall be found. They are already
amongst us. One comes upon them in their obscurity, unknown, preparing
themselves...."

She spread out the letter she had kept in her hand all the time, and
looking down at it--

"Yes! One comes upon such men!" she repeated, and then read out the
words, "Unstained, lofty, and solitary existences."

Folding up the letter, while I looked at her interrogatively, she
explained--

"These are the words which my brother applies to a young man he came to
know in St. Petersburg. An intimate friend, I suppose. It must be. His
is the only name my brother mentions in all his correspondence with me.
Absolutely the only one, and--would you believe it?--the man is here. He
arrived recently in Geneva."

"Have you seen him?" I inquired. "But, of course; you must have seen
him."

"No! No! I haven't! I didn't know he was here. It's Peter Ivanovitch
himself who told me. You have heard him yourself mentioning a new
arrival from Petersburg.... Well, that is the man of 'unstained,
lofty, and solitary existence.' My brother's friend!"

"Compromised politically, I suppose," I remarked.

"I don't know. Yes. It must be so. Who knows! Perhaps it was this very
friendship with my brother which.... But no! It is scarcely possible.
Really, I know nothing except what Peter Ivanovitch told me of him. He
has brought a letter of introduction from Father Zosim--you know, the
priest-democrat; you have heard of Father Zosim?"

"Oh yes. The famous Father Zosim was staying here in Geneva for some two
months about a year ago," I said. "When he left here he seems to have
disappeared from the world."

"It appears that he is at work in Russia again. Somewhere in the
centre," Miss Haldin said, with animation. "But please don't mention
that to any one--don't let it slip from you, because if it got into the
papers it would be dangerous for him."

"You are anxious, of course, to meet that friend of your brother?" I
asked.

Miss Haldin put the letter into her pocket. Her eyes looked beyond my
shoulder at the door of her mother's room.

"Not here," she murmured. "Not for the first time, at least."

After a moment of silence I said good-bye, but Miss Haldin followed me
into the ante-room, closing the door behind us carefully.

"I suppose you guess where I mean to go tomorrow?"

"You have made up your mind to call on Madame de S--."

"Yes. I am going to the Chateau Borel. I must."

"What do you expect to hear there?" I asked, in a low voice.

I wondered if she were not deluding herself with some impossible hope.
It was not that, however.

"Only think--such a friend. The only man mentioned in his letters. He
would have something to give me, if nothing more than a few poor words.
It may be something said and thought in those last days. Would you want
me to turn my back on what is left of my poor brother--a friend?"

"Certainly not," I said. "I quite understand your pious curiosity."

"--Unstained, lofty, and solitary existences," she murmured to herself.
"There are! There are! Well, let me question one of them about the loved
dead."

"How do you know, though, that you will meet him there? Is he staying in
the Chateau as a guest--do you suppose?"

"I can't really tell," she confessed. "He brought a written introduction
from Father Zosim--who, it seems, is a friend of Madame de S-- too. She
can't be such a worthless woman after all."

"There were all sorts of rumours afloat about Father Zosim himself," I
observed.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Calumny is a weapon of our government too. It's well known. Oh yes! It
is a fact that Father Zosim had the protection of the Governor-General
of a certain province. We talked on the subject with my brother two
years ago, I remember. But his work was good. And now he is proscribed.
What better proof can one require. But no matter what that priest was
or is. All that cannot affect my brother's friend. If I don't meet him
there I shall ask these people for his address. And, of course, mother
must see him too, later on. There is no guessing what he may have to
tell us. It would be a mercy if mamma could be soothed. You know what
she imagines. Some explanation perhaps may be found, or--or even made
up, perhaps. It would be no sin."