follow. They, too, have been charged with discursiveness, with disregard
of chronological order (which is in itself a crime) with
unconventionality of form (which is an impropriety). I was told severely
that the public would view with displeasure the informal character of my
recollections. "Alas!" I protested, mildly. "Could I begin with the
sacramental words, 'I was born on such a date in such a place'? The
remoteness of the locality would have robbed the statement of all
interest. I haven't lived through wonderful adventures to be related
_seriatim_. I haven't known distinguished men on whom I could pass
fatuous remarks. I haven't been mixed up with great or scandalous
affairs. This is but a bit of psychological document, and even so, I
haven't written it with a view to put forward any conclusion of my own."

But my objector was not placated. These were good reasons for not
writing at all--not a defence of what stood written already, he said.

I admit that almost anything, anything in the world, would serve as a
good reason for not writing at all. But since I have written them, all I
want to say in their defence is that these memories put down without any
regard for established conventions have not been thrown off without
system and purpose. They have their hope and their aim. The hope that
from the reading of these pages there may emerge at last the vision of a
personality; the man behind the books so fundamentally dissimilar as,
for instance, "Almayer's Folly" and "The Secret Agent," and yet a
coherent, justifiable personality both in its origin and in its action.
This is the hope. The immediate aim, closely associated with the hope,
is to give the record of personal memories by presenting faithfully the
feelings and sensations connected with the writing of my first book and
with my first contact with the sea.

In the purposely mingled resonance of this double strain a friend here
and there will perhaps detect a subtle accord.

  J. C.

TWIXT LAND AND SEA

The only bond between these three stories is, so to speak, geographical,
for their scene, be it land, be it sea, is situated in the same region
which may be called the region of the Indian Ocean with its off-shoots
and prolongations north of the equator even as far as the Gulf of Siam.
In point of time they belong to the period immediately after the
publication of that novel with the awkward title "Under Western Eyes"
and, as far as the life of the writer is concerned, their appearance in
a volume marks a definite change in the fortunes of his fiction. For
there is no denying the fact that "Under Western Eyes" found no favour
in the public eye, whereas the novel called "Chance" which followed
"Twixt Land and Sea" was received on its first appearance by many more
readers than any other of my books.

This volume of three tales was also well received, publicly and
privately and from a publisher's point of view. This little success was
a most timely tonic for my enfeebled bodily frame. For this may indeed
be called the book of a man's convalescence, at least as to
three-fourths of it; because the Secret Sharer, the middle story, was
written much earlier than the other two.

For in truth the memories of "Under Western Eyes" are associated with
the memory of a severe illness which seemed to wait like a tiger in the
jungle on the turn of a path to jump on me the moment the last words of
that novel were written. The memory of an illness is very much like the
memory of a nightmare. On emerging from it in a much enfeebled state I
was inspired to direct my tottering steps towards the Indian Ocean, a
complete change of surroundings and atmosphere from the Lake of Geneva,
as nobody would deny. Begun so languidly and with such a fumbling hand
that the first twenty pages or more had to be thrown into the
waste-paper basket, A Smile of Fortune, the most purely Indian Ocean
story of the three, has ended by becoming what the reader will see. I
will only say for myself that ï have been patted on the back for it by
most unexpected people, personally unknown to me, the chief of them of
course being the editor of a popular illustrated magazine who published
it serially in one mighty instalment. Who will dare say after this that
the change of air had not been an immense success?

The origins of the middle story, The Secret Sharer, are quite other. It
was written much earlier and was published first in _Harper's Magazine_,
during the early part, I think, of 1911. Or perhaps the latter part? My
memory on that point is hazy. The basic fact of the tale I had in my
possession for a good many years. It was in truth the common possession
of the whole fleet of merchant ships trading to India, China, and
Australia: a great company the last years of which coincided with my
first years on the wider seas. The fact itself happened on board a very
distinguished member of it, _Cutty Sark_ by name and belonging to Mr.
Willis, a notable ship-owner in his day, one of the kind (they are all
underground now) who used personally to see his ships start on their
voyages to those distant shores where they showed worthily the honoured
house-flag of their owner. I am glad I was not too late to get at
least one glimpse of Mr. Willis on a very wet and gloomy morning
watching from the pier head of the New South Dock one of his clippers
starting on a China voyage--an imposing figure of a man under the
invariable white hat so well known in the Port of London, waiting till
the head of his ship had swung down-stream before giving her a dignified
wave of a big gloved hand. For all I know it may have been the _Cutty
Sark_ herself though certainly not on that fatal voyage. I do not know
the date of the occurrence on which the scheme of The Secret Sharer is
founded; it came to light and even got into newspapers about the middle
eighties, though I had heard of it before, as it were privately, among
the officers of the great wool fleet in which my first years in deep
water were served. It came to light under circumstances dramatic enough,
I think, but which have nothing to do with my story. In the more
specially maritime part of my writings this bit of presentation may take
its place as one of my two Calm-pieces. For, if there is to be any
classification by subjects, I have done two Storm-pieces in "The Nigger
of the _Narcissus_" and in "Typhoon"; and two Calm-pieces: this one and
"The Shadow-Line," a book which belongs to a later period.

Notwithstanding their autobiographical form the above two stories are
not the record of personal experience. Their quality, such as it is,
depends on something larger if less precise: on the character, vision
and sentiment of the first twenty independent years of my life. And the
same may be said of the Freya of the Seven Isles. I was considerably
abused for writing that story on the ground of its cruelty, both in
public prints and private letters. I remember one from a man in America
who was quite furiously angry. He told me with curses and imprecations
that I had no right to write such an abominable thing which, he said,
had gratuitously and intolerably harrowed his feelings. It was a very
interesting letter to read. Impressive too. I carried it for some days
in my pocket. Had I the right? The sincerity of the anger impressed me.
Had I the right? Had I really sinned as he said or was it only that
man's madness? Yet there was a method in his fury.... I composed in my
mind a violent reply, a reply of mild argument, a reply of lofty
detachment; but they never got on paper in the end and I have forgotten
their phrasing. The very letter of the angry man has got lost somehow;
and nothing remains now but the pages of the story which I cannot recall
and would not recall if I could.

But I am glad to think that the two women in this book: Alice, the
sullen, passive victim of her fate, and the actively individual Freya,
so determined to be the mistress of her own destiny, must have evoked
some sympathies because of all my volumes of short stories this was the
one for which there was the greatest immediate demand.

  J. C.

  1920.

CHANCE

"Chance" is one of my novels that shortly after having been begun were
laid aside for a few months. Starting impetuously like a sanguine
oarsman setting forth in the early morning I came very soon to a fork in
the stream and found it necessary to pause and reflect seriously upon
the direction I would take. Either presented to me equal fascinations,
at least on the surface, and for that very reason my hesitation extended
over many days. I floated in the calm water of pleasant speculation,
between the diverging currents or conflicting impulses, with an
agreeable but perfectly irrational conviction that neither of those
currents would take me to destruction. My sympathies being equally
divided and the two forces being equal it is perfectly obvious that
nothing but mere chance influenced my decision in the end. It is a
mighty force that of mere chance; absolutely irresistible yet
manifesting itself often in delicate forms such for instance as the
charm, true or illusory, of a human being. It is very difficult to put
one's finger on the imponderable, but I may venture to say that it is
Flora de Barral who is really responsible for this novel which relates,
in fact, the story of her life.

At the crucial moment of my indecision Flora de Barral passed before me,
but so swiftly that I failed at first to get hold of her. Though loth to
give her up I didn't see the way of pursuit clearly and was on the point
of becoming discouraged when my natural liking for Captain Anthony came
to my assistance. I said to myself that if that man was so determined to
embrace a "wisp of mist" the best thing for me was to join him in that
eminently practical and praiseworthy adventure. I simply followed
Captain Anthony. Each of us was bent on capturing his own dream. The
reader will be able to judge of our success.

Captain Anthony's determination led him a long and roundabout course and
that is why this book is a long book. That the course was of my own
choosing I will not deny. A critic had remarked that if I had selected
another method of composition and taken a little more trouble the tale
could have been told in about two hundred pages. I confess I do not
perceive exactly the bearings of such criticism or even the use of such
a remark. No doubt that by selecting a certain method and taking great
pains the whole story might have been written out on a cigarette paper.
For that matter, the whole history of mankind could be written thus if
only approached with sufficient detachment. The history of men on this
earth since the beginning of ages may be resumed in one phrase of
infinite poignancy: They were born, they suffered, they died.... Yet it
is a great tale! But in the infinitely minute stories about men and
women it is my lot on earth to narrate I am not capable of such
detachment.

What makes this book memorable to me apart from the natural sentiment
one has for one's creation is the response it provoked. The general
public responded largely, more largely perhaps than to any other book of
mine, in the only way the general public can respond, that is by buying
a certain number of copies. This gave me a considerable amount of
pleasure, because what I always feared most was drifting unconsciously
into the position of a writer for a limited coterie; a position which
would have been odious to me as throwing a doubt on the soundness of my
belief in the solidarity of all mankind in simple ideas and in sincere
emotions. Regarded as a manifestation of criticism (for it would be
outrageous to deny to the general public the possession of a critical
mind) the reception was very satisfactory. I saw that I had managed to
please a certain number of minds busy attending to their own very real
affairs. It is agreeable to think one is able to please. From the minds
whose business it is precisely to criticize such attempts to please,
this book received an amount of discussion and of a rather searching
analysis which not only satisfied that personal vanity I share with the
rest of mankind but reached my deeper feelings and aroused my gratified
interest. The undoubted sympathy informing the varied appreciations of
that book was, I love to think, a recognition of my good faith in the
pursuit of my art--the art of the novelist which a distinguished French
writer at the end of a successful career complained of as being: _Trop
difficile!_ It is indeed too arduous in the sense that the effort must
be invariably so much greater than the possible achievement. In that
sort of foredoomed task which is in its nature very lonely also,
sympathy is a precious thing. It can make the most severe criticism
welcome. To be told that better things have been expected of one may be
soothing in view of how much better things one had expected from oneself
in this art which, in these days, is no longer justified by the
assumption, somewhere and somehow, of a didactic purpose.

I do not mean to hint that anybody had ever done me the injury (I don't
mean insult, I mean injury) of charging a single one of my pages with
didactic purpose. But every subject in the region of intellect and
emotion must have a morality of its own if it is treated at all
sincerely; and even the most artful of writers will give himself (and
his morality) away in about every third sentence. The varied shades of
moral significance which have been discovered in my writings are very
numerous. None of them, however, have provoked a hostile manifestation.
It may have happened to me to sin against taste now and then, but
apparently I have never sinned against the basic feelings and elementary
convictions which make life possible to the mass of mankind and, by
establishing a standard of judgment, set their idealism free to look for
plainer ways, for higher feelings, for deeper purposes.

I cannot say that any particular moral complexion has been put on this
novel but I do not think that anybody had detected in it an evil
intention. And it is only for their intentions that men can be held
responsible. The ultimate effects of whatever they do are far beyond
their control. In doing this book my intention was to interest people in
my vision of things which is indissolubly allied to the style in which
it is expressed. In other words I wanted to write a certain amount of
pages in prose, which, strictly speaking, is my proper business. I have
attended to it conscientiously with the hope of being entertaining or at
least not insufferably boring to my readers. I can not sufficiently
insist upon the truth that when I sit down to write my intentions are
always blameless however deplorable the ultimate effect of the act may
turn out to be.

  J. C.

  1920.

WITHIN THE TIDES

The tales collected in this book have elicited on their appearance two
utterances in the shape of comment and one distinctly critical charge. A
reviewer observed that I liked to write of men who go to sea or live on
lonely islands untrammeled by the pressure of worldly circumstances
because such characters allowed freer play to my imagination which in
their case was only bounded by natural laws and the universal human
conventions. There is a certain truth in this remark no doubt. It is
only the suggestion of deliberate choice that misses its mark. I have
not sought for special imaginative freedom or a larger play of fancy in
my choice of characters and subjects. The nature of the knowledge,
suggestions or hints used in my imaginative work has depended directly
on the conditions of my active life. It depended more on contacts, and
very slight contacts at that, than on actual experience; because my life
as a matter of fact was far from being adventurous in itself. Even now
when I look back on it with a certain regret (who would not regret his
youth?) and positive affection, its colouring wears the sober hue of
hard work and exacting calls of duty, things which in themselves are not
much charged with a feeling of romance. If these things appeal strongly
to me even in retrospect it is, I suppose, because the romantic feeling
of reality was in me an inborn faculty, that in itself may be a curse
but when disciplined by a sense of personal responsibility and a
recognition of the hard facts of existence shared with the rest of
mankind becomes but a point of view from which the very shadows of life
appear endowed with an internal glow. And such romanticism is not a sin.
It is none the worse for the knowledge of truth. It only tries to make
the best of it, hard as it may be; and in this hardness discovers a
certain aspect of beauty.

I am speaking here of romanticism in relation to life, not of
romanticism in relation to imaginative literature, which, in its early
days, was associated simply with mediæval subjects, or, at any rate,
with subjects sought for in a remote past. My subjects are not mediæval
and I have a natural right to them because my past is very much my own.
If their course lie out of the beaten path of organized social life, it
is, perhaps, because I myself did in a sort break away from it early in
obedience to an impulse which must have been very genuine since it has
sustained me through all the dangers of disillusion. But that origin of
my literary work was very far from giving a larger scope to my
imagination. On the contrary, the mere fact of dealing with matters
outside the general run of everyday experience laid me under the
obligation of a more scrupulous fidelity to the truth of my own
sensations. The problem was to make unfamiliar things credible. To do
that I had to create for them, to reproduce for them, to envelop them in
their proper atmosphere of actuality. This was the hardest task of all
and the most important, in view of that conscientious rendering of truth
in thought and fact which has been always my aim.

The other utterance of the two I have alluded to above consisted in the
observation that in this volume of mine the whole was greater than its
parts. I pass it on to my readers merely remarking that if this is
really so then I must take it as a tribute to my personality since those
stories which by implication seem to hold so well together as to be
surveyed en bloc and judged as the product of a single mood, were
written at different times, under various influences and with the
deliberate intention of trying several ways of telling a tale. The hints
and suggestions for all of them had been received at various times and
in distant parts of the globe. The book received a good deal of varied
criticism, mainly quite justifiable, but in a couple of instances quite
surprising in its objections. Amongst them was the critical charge of
false realism brought against the opening story: The Planter of Malata.
I would have regarded it as serious enough if I had not discovered on
reading further that the distinguished critic was accusing me simply of
having sought to evade a happy ending out of a sort of moral cowardice,
lest I should be condemned as a superficially sentimental person. Where
(and of what sort) there are to be found in The Planter of Malata any
germs of happiness that could have fructified at the end I am at a loss
to see. Such criticism seems to miss the whole purpose and significance
of a piece of writing the primary intention of which was mainly
aesthetic; an essay in description and narrative around a given
psychological situation. Of more seriousness was the spoken criticism of
an old and valued friend who thought that in the scene near the rock,
which from the point of view of psychology is crucial, neither Felicia
Moorsom nor Geoffrey Renouard find the right things to say to each
other. I didn't argue the point at the time, for, to be candid, I didn't
feel quite satisfied with the scene myself. On re-reading it lately for
the purpose of this edition I have come to the conclusion that there is
that much truth in my friend's criticism that I have made those people a
little too explicit in their emotion and thus have destroyed to a
certain extent the characteristic illusory glamour of their
personalities. I regret this defect very much for I regard The Planter
of Malata as a nearly successful attempt at doing a very difficult thing
which I would have liked to have made as perfect as it lay in my power.
Yet considering the pitch and the tonality of the whole tale it is very
difficult to imagine what else those two people could have found to say
at that time and on that particular spot of the earth's surface. In the
mood in which they both were, and given the exceptional state of their
feelings, anything might have been said.

The eminent critic who charged me with false realism, the outcome of
timidity, was quite wrong. I should like to ask him what he imagines
the, so to speak, lifelong embrace of Felicia Moorsom and Geoffrey
Renouard could have been like? Could it have been at all? Would it have
been credible? No! I did not shirk anything, either from timidity or
laziness. Perhaps a little mistrust of my own powers would not have been
altogether out of place in this connection. But it failed me; and I
resemble Geoffrey Renouard in so far that when once engaged in an
adventure I cannot bear the idea of turning back. The moment had
arrived for these people to disclose themselves. They had to do it. To
render a crucial point of feelings in terms of human speech is really an
impossible task. Written words can only form a sort of translation. And
if that translation happens, from want of skill or from over-anxiety, to
be too literal, the people caught in the toils of passion, instead of
disclosing themselves, which would be art, are made to give themselves
away, which is neither art nor life. Nor yet truth! At any rate not the
whole truth; for it is truth robbed of all its necessary and sympathetic
reservations and qualifications which give it its fair form, its just
proportions, its semblance of human fellowship.

Indeed the task of the translator of passions into speech may be
pronounced "too difficult." However, with my customary impenitence I am
glad I have attempted the story with all its implications and
difficulties, including the scene by the side of the gray rock crowning
the height of Malata. But I am not so inordinately pleased with the
result as not to be able to forgive a patient reader who may find it
somewhat disappointing.

I have left myself no space to talk about the other three stories
because I do not think that they call for detailed comment. Each of them
has its special mood and I have tried purposely to give each its special
tone and a different construction of phrase. A reviewer asked in
reference to the Inn of the Two Witches whether I ever came across a
tale called A Very Strange Bed published in _Household Words_ in 1852 or
54. I never saw a number of _Household Words_ of that decade. A bed of
the sort was discovered in an inn on the road between Rome and Naples at
the end of the 18th century. Where I picked up the information I cannot
say now but I am certain it was not in a tale. This bed is the only
"fact" of the Witches' Inn. The other two stories have considerably more
"fact" in them, derived from my own personal knowledge.

  J. C.

  1920

NOTE TO THE FIRST EDITION

The last word of this novel was written on the 29th of May, 1914. And
that last word was the single word of the title.

Those were the times of peace. Now that the moment of publication
approaches I have been considering the discretion of altering the title
page. The word Victory, the shining and tragic goal of noble effort,
appeared too great, too august, to stand at the head of a mere novel.
There was also the possibility of falling under the suspicion of
commercial astuteness deceiving the public into the belief that the book
had something to do with war.

Of that, however, I was not afraid very much. What influenced my
decision most were the obscure promptings of that pagan residuum of awe
and wonder which lurks still at the bottom of our old humanity. Victory
was the last word I had written in peace time. It was the last literary
thought which had occurred to me before the doors of the Temple of Janus
flying open with a crash shook the minds, the hearts, the consciences of
men all over the world. Such coincidence could not be treated lightly.
And I made up my mind to let the word stand, in the same hopeful spirit
in which some simple citizen of Old Rome would have "accepted the Omen."

The second point on which I wish to offer a remark is the existence (in
the novel) of a person named Schomberg.

That I believe him to be true goes without saying. I am not likely to
offer pinchbeck wares to my public consciously. Schomberg is an old
member of my company. A very subordinate personage in Lord Jim as far
back as the year 1899, he became notably active in a certain short story
of mine published in 1902. Here he appears in a still larger part, true
to life (I hope), but also true to himself. Only, in this instance, his
deeper passions come into play, and thus his grotesque psychology is
completed at last.

I don't pretend to say that this is the entire Teutonic psychology; but
it is indubitably the psychology of a Teuton. My object in mentioning
him here is to bring out the fact that, far from being the incarnation
of recent animosities, he is the creature of my old, deep-seated and, as
it were, impartial conviction.

  J. C.

VICTORY

On approaching the task of writing this Note for "Victory" the first
thing I am conscious of is the actual nearness of the book, its
nearness to me personally, to the vanished mood in which it was written
and to the mixed feelings aroused by the critical notices the book
obtained when first published almost exactly a year after the beginning
of the great war. The writing of it was finished in 1914 long before the
murder of an Austrian Archduke sounded the first note of warning for a
world already full of doubts and fears.

The contemporaneous very short Author's Note which is preserved in this
edition bears sufficient witness to the feelings with which I consented
to the publication of the book. The fact of the book having been
published in the United States early in the year made it difficult to
delay its appearance in England any longer. It came out in the
thirteenth month of the war, and my conscience was troubled by the awful
incongruity of throwing this bit of imagined drama into the welter of
reality, tragic enough in all conscience but even more cruel than tragic
and more inspiring than cruel. It seemed awfully presumptuous to think
there would be eyes to spare for those pages in a community which in the
crash of the big guns and in the din of brave words expressing the
truth of an indomitable faith could not but feel the edge of a sharp
knife at its throat.

The unchanging Man of history is wonderfully adaptable both by his power
of endurance and in his capacity for detachment. The fact seems to be
that the play of his destiny is too great for his fears and too
mysterious for his understanding. Were the trump of the Last Judgment to
sound suddenly on a working day the musician at his piano would go on
with his performance of Beethoven's Sonata and the cobbler at his stall
stick to his last in undisturbed confidence in the virtues of the
leather. And with perfect propriety. For what are we to let ourselves be
disturbed by an angel's vengeful music too mighty for our ears and too
awful for our terrors? Thus it happens to us to be struck suddenly by
the lightning of wrath. The reader will go on reading if the book
pleases him and the critic will go on criticizing with that faculty of
detachment born perhaps from a sense of infinite littleness and which is
yet the only faculty that seems to assimilate man to the immortal gods.

It is only when the catastrophe matches the natural obscurity of our
fate that even the best representative of the race is liable to lose his
detachment. It is very obvious that on the arrival of the gentlemanly
Mr. Jones, the single-minded Ricardo and the faithful Pedro, Heyst, the
man of universal detachment, loses his mental self-possession, that fine
attitude before the universally irremediable which wears the name of
stoicism. It is all a matter of proportion. There should have been a
remedy for that sort of thing. And yet there is no remedy. Behind this
minute instance of life's hazards Heyst sees the power of blind destiny.
Besides, Heyst in his fine detachment had lost the habit of asserting
himself. I don't mean the courage of self-assertion, either moral or
physical, but the mere way of it, the trick of the thing, the readiness
of mind and the turn of the hand that come without reflection and lead
the man to excellence in life, in art, in crime, in virtue and for the
matter of that, even in love. Thinking is the great enemy of perfection.
The habit of profound reflection, I am compelled to say, is the most
pernicious of all the habits formed by the civilized man.

But I wouldn't be suspected even remotely of making fun of Axel Heyst.
I have always liked him. The flesh and blood individual who stands
behind the infinitely more familiar figure of the book I remember as a
mysterious Swede right enough. Whether he was a baron, too, I am not so
certain. He himself never laid a claim to that distinction. His
detachment was too great to make any claims big or small on one's
credulity. I will not say where I met him because I fear to give my
readers a wrong impression, since a marked incongruity between a man and
his surroundings is often a very misleading circumstance. We became very
friendly for a time and I would not like to expose him to unpleasant
suspicions though, personally, I am sure he would have been indifferent
to suspicions as he was indifferent to all the other disadvantages of
life. He was not the whole Heyst of course; he is only the physical and
moral foundation of my Heyst laid on the ground of a short acquaintance.
That it was short is certainly not my fault for he had charmed me by the
mere amenity of his detachment which, in this case, I cannot help
thinking he had carried to excess. He went away from his rooms without
leaving a trace. I wondered where he had gone to--but now I know. He
vanished from my ken only to drift into this adventure that,
unavoidable, waited for him in a world which he persisted in looking
upon as a malevolent shadow spinning in the sunlight. Often in the
course of years an expressed sentiment, the particular sense of a phrase
heard casually, would recall him to my mind so that I have fastened on
to him many words heard on other men's lips and belonging to other men's
less perfect, less pathetic moods.

The same observation will apply _mutatis mutandis_ to Mr. Jones, who is
built on a much slenderer connection. Mr. Jones (or whatever his name
was) did not drift away from me. He turned his back on me and walked out
of the room. It was in a little hotel in the Island of St. Thomas in the
West Indies (in the year '75) where we found him one hot afternoon
extended on three chairs, all alone in the loud buzzing of flies to
which his immobility and his cadaverous aspect gave an almost gruesome
significance. Our invasion must have displeased him because he got off
the chairs brusquely and walked out leaving with me an indelibly weird
impression of his thin shanks. One of the men with me said that the
fellow was the most desperate gambler he had ever come across. I said:
"A professional sharper?" and got for answer: "He's a terror; but I must
say that up to a certain point he will play fair...." I wonder what the
point was. I never saw him again because I believe he went straight on
board a mail-boat which left within the hour for other ports of call in
the direction of Aspinall. Mr. Jones' characteristic insolence belongs
to another man of a quite different type. I will say nothing as to the
origins of his mentality because I don't intend to make any damaging
admissions.

It so happened that the very same year Ricardo--the physical
Ricardo--was a fellow passenger of mine on board an extremely small and
extremely dirty little schooner, during a four days' passage between two
places in the Gulf of Mexico whose names don't matter. For the most part
he lay on deck aft as it were at my feet, and raising himself from time
to time on his elbow would talk about himself and go on talking, not
exactly to me or even at me (he would not even look up but kept his eyes
fixed on the deck) but more as if communing in a low voice with his
familiar devil. Now and then he would give me a glance and make the
hairs of his stiff little moustache stir quaintly. His eyes were green
and every cat I see to this day reminds me of the exact contour of his
face. What he was travelling for or what was his business in life he
never confided to me. Truth to say the only passenger on board that
schooner who could have talked openly about his activities and purposes
was a very snuffy and conversationally delightful friar, the Superior of
a convent, attended by a very young lay brother, of a particularly
ferocious countenance. We had with us also, lying prostrate in the dark
and unspeakable cuddy of that schooner, an old Spanish gentleman, owner
of much luggage and, as Ricardo assured me, very ill indeed. Ricardo
seemed to be either a servant or the confidant of that aged and
distinguished-looking invalid, who early on the passage held a long
murmured conversation with the friar, and after that did nothing but
groan feebly, smoke cigarettes and now and then call for Martin in a
voice full of pain. Then he who had become Ricardo in the book would go
below into that beastly and noisome hole, remain there mysteriously,
and coming up on deck again with a face on which nothing could be read,
would as likely as not resume for my edification the exposition of his
moral attitude toward life illustrated by striking particular instances
of the most atrocious complexion. Did he mean to frighten me? Or seduce
me? Or astonish me? Or arouse my admiration? All he did was to arouse my
amused incredulity. As scoundrels go he was far from being a bore. For
the rest my innocence was so great then that I could not take his
philosophy seriously. All the time he kept one ear turned to the cuddy
in the manner of a devoted servant, but I had the idea that in some way
or other he had imposed the connection on the invalid for some end of
his own. The reader therefore won't be surprised to hear that one
morning I was told without any particular emotion by the padrone of the
schooner that the "Rich man" down there was dead: He had died in the
night. I don't remember ever being so moved by the desolate end of a
complete stranger. I looked down the skylight, and there was the devoted
Martin busy cording cowhide trunks belonging to the deceased whose
white beard and hooked nose were the only parts I could make out in the
dark depths of a horrible stuffy bunk.

As it fell calm in the course of the afternoon and continued calm during
all that night and the terrible, flaming day, the late Rich man had to
be thrown overboard at sunset, though as a matter of fact we were in
sight of the low pestilential mangrove-lined coast of our destination.
The excellent Father Superior mentioned to me with an air of immense
commiseration: "The poor man has left a young daughter." Who was to look
after her I don't know, but I saw the devoted Martin taking the trunks
ashore with great care just before I landed myself. I would perhaps have
tracked the ways of that man of immense sincerity for a little while but
I had some of my own very pressing business to attend to, which in the
end got mixed up with an earthquake and so I had no time to give to
Ricardo. The reader need not be told that I have not forgotten him,
though.

My contact with the faithful Pedro was much shorter and my observation
of him was less complete but incomparably more anxious. It ended in a
sudden inspiration to get out of his way. It was in a hovel of sticks
and mats by the side of a path. As I went in there only to ask for a
bottle of lemonade I have not to this day the slightest idea what in my
appearance or actions could have roused his terrible ire. It became
manifest to me less than two minutes after I had set eyes on him for the
first time, and though immensely surprised of course I didn't stop to
think it out. I took the nearest short cut--through the wall. This
bestial apparition and a certain enormous buck nigger encountered in
Haiti only a couple of months afterwards have fixed my conception of
blind, furious, unreasoning rage, as manifested in the human animal, to
the end of my days. Of the nigger I used to dream for years afterwards.
Of Pedro never. The impression was less vivid. I got away from him too
quickly.

It seems to me but natural that those three buried in a corner of my
memory should suddenly get out into the light of the world--so natural
that I offer no excuse for their existence. They were there, they had to
come out; and this is a sufficient excuse for a writer of tales who had
taken to his trade without preparation or premeditation and without any
moral intention but that which pervades the whole scheme of this world
of senses.

Since this Note is mostly concerned with personal contacts and the
origins of the persons in the tale, I am bound also to speak of Lena,
because if I were to leave her out it would look like a slight; and
nothing would be further from my thoughts than putting a slight on Lena.
If of all the personages involved in the "mystery of Samburan" I have
lived longest with Heyst (or with him I call Heyst) it was at her, whom
I call Lena, that I have looked the longest and with a most sustained
attention. This attention originated in idleness for which I have a
natural talent. One evening I wandered into a café, in a town not of the
tropics but of the South of France. It was filled with tobacco smoke,
the hum of voices, the rattling of dominoes and the sounds of strident
music. The orchestra was rather smaller than the one that performed at
Schomberg's hotel, had the air more of a family party than of an
enlisted band, and, I must confess, seemed rather more respectable than
the Zangiacomo musical enterprise. It was less pretentious also, more
homely and familiar, so to speak, insomuch that in the intervals when
all the performers left the platform one of them went amongst the marble
tables collecting offerings of sous and francs in a battered tin
receptacle recalling the shape of a sauceboat. It was a girl. Her
detachment from her task seems to me now to have equalled or even
surpassed Heyst's aloofness from all the mental degradations to which a
man's intelligence is exposed in its way through life. Silent and
wide-eyed she went from table to table with the air of a sleep-walker
and with no other sound but the slight rattle of the coins to attract
attention. It was long after the sea-chapter of my life had been closed
but it is difficult to discard completely the characteristics of half a
life-time, and it was in something of the jack-ashore spirit that I
dropped a five-franc piece into the sauceboat; whereupon the
sleep-walker turned her head to gaze at me and said "Merci, Monsieur,"
in a tone in which there was no gratitude but only surprise. I must have
been idle indeed to take the trouble to remark on such slight evidence
that the voice was very charming and when the performers resumed their
seats I shifted my position slightly in order not to have that
particular performer hidden from me by the little man with the beard who
conducted, and who might for all I know have been her father, but whose
real mission in life was to be a model for the Zangiacomo of "Victory."
Having got a clear line of sight I naturally (being idle) continued to
look at the girl through all the second part of the programme. The shape
of her dark head inclined over the violin was fascinating, and, while
resting between the pieces of that interminable programme she was, in
her white dress and with her brown hands reposing in her lap, the very
image of dreamy innocence. The mature, bad-tempered woman at the piano
might have been her mother, though there was not the slightest
resemblance between them. All I am certain of in their personal relation
to each other is that cruel pinch on the upper part of the arm. That I
am sure I have seen! There could be no mistake. I was in a too idle mood
to imagine such a gratuitous barbarity. It may have been playfulness,
yet the girl jumped up as if she had been stung by a wasp. It may have
been playfulness. Yet I saw plainly poor "dreamy innocence" rub gently
the affected place as she filed off with the other performers down the
middle aisle between the marble tables in the uproar of voices, the
rattling of dominoes, through a blue atmosphere of tobacco smoke. I
believe that those people left the town next day.

Or perhaps they had only migrated to the other big café, on the other
side of the Place de la Comedie. It is very possible. I did not go
across to find out. It was my perfect idleness that had invested the
girl with a peculiar charm, and I did not want to destroy it by any
superfluous exertion. The receptivity of my indolence made the
impression so permanent that when the moment came for her meeting with
Heyst I felt that she would be heroically equal to every demand of the
risky and uncertain future. I was so convinced of it that I let her go
with Heyst, I won't say without a pang but certainly without misgivings.
And in view of her triumphant end what more could I have done for her
rehabilitation and her happiness?

  J. C.

  1920.

THE SHADOW-LINE

This story, which I admit to be in its brevity a fairly complex piece of
work, was not intended to touch on the supernatural. Yet more than one
critic has been inclined to take it in that way, seeing in it an attempt
on my part to give the fullest scope to my imagination by taking it
beyond the confines of the world of the living, suffering humanity. But
as a matter of fact my imagination is not made of stuff so elastic as
all that. I believe that if I attempted to put the strain of the
Supernatural on it it would fail deplorably and exhibit an unlovely gap.
But I could never have attempted such a thing, because all my moral and
intellectual being is penetrated by an invincible conviction that
whatever falls under the dominion of our senses must be in nature and,
however exceptional, cannot differ in its essence from all the other
effects of the visible and tangible world of which we are a
self-conscious part. The world of the living contains enough marvels and
mysteries as it is; marvels and mysteries acting upon our emotions and
intelligence in ways so inexplicable that it would almost justify the
conception of life as an enchanted state. No, I am too firm in my
consciousness of the marvellous to be ever fascinated by the mere
supernatural, which (take it any way you like) is but a manufactured
article, the fabrication of minds insensitive to the intimate delicacies
of our relation to the dead and to the living, in their countless
multitudes; a desecration of our tenderest memories; an outrage on our
dignity.

Whatever my native modesty may be it will never condescend so low as to
seek help for my imagination within those vain imaginings common to all
ages and that in themselves are enough to fill all lovers of mankind
with unutterable sadness. As to the effect of a mental or moral shock on
a common mind that is quite a legitimate subject for study and
description. Mr. Burns' moral being receives a severe shock in his
relations with his late captain, and this in his diseased state turns
into a mere superstitious fancy compounded of fear and animosity. This
fact is one of the elements of the story, but there is nothing
supernatural in it, nothing so to speak from beyond the confines of this
world, which in all conscience holds enough mystery and terror in
itself.

Perhaps if I had published this tale, which I have had for a long time
in my mind, under the title of First Command, no suggestion of the
Supernatural would have been found in it by any impartial reader,
critical or otherwise. I will not consider here the origins of the
feeling in which its actual title, The Shadow-Line, occurred to my mind.
Primarily the aim of this piece of writing was the presentation of
certain facts which certainly were associated with the change from
youth, carefree and fervent, to the more self-conscious and more
poignant period of maturer life. Nobody can doubt that before the
supreme trial of a whole generation I had an acute consciousness of the
minute and insignificant character of my own obscure experience. There
could be no question here of any parallelism. That notion never entered
my head. But there was a feeling of identity, though with an enormous
difference of scale--as of one single drop measured against the bitter
and stormy immensity of an ocean. And this was very natural too. For
when we begin to meditate on the meaning of our own past it seems to
fill all the world in its profundity and its magnitude. This book was
written in the last three months of the year 1916. Of all the subjects
of which a writer of tales is more or less conscious within himself this
is the only one I found it possible to attempt at the time. The depth
and the nature of the mood with which I approached it is best expressed
perhaps in the dedication which strikes me now as a most
disproportionate thing--as another instance of the overwhelming
greatness of our own emotion to ourselves.

This much having been said I may pass on now to a few remarks about the
mere material of the story. As to locality it belongs to that part of
the Eastern Seas from which I have carried away into my writing life the
greatest number of suggestions. From my statement that I thought of this
story for a long time under the title of First Command the reader may
guess that it is concerned with my personal experience. And as a matter
of fact it _is_ personal experience seen in perspective with the eye of
the mind and coloured by that affection one can't help feeling for such
events of one's life as one has no reason to be ashamed of. And that
affection is as intense (I appeal here to universal experience) as the
shame, and almost the anguish with which one remembers some unfortunate
occurrences, down to mere mistakes in speech, that have been perpetrated
by one in the past. The effect of perspective in memory is to make
things loom large because the essentials stand out isolated from their
surroundings of insignificant daily facts which have naturally faded out
of one's mind. I remember that period of my sea-life with pleasure
because begun inauspiciously it turned out in the end a success from a
personal point of view, leaving a tangible proof in the terms of the
letter the owners of the ship wrote to me two years afterwards when I
resigned my command in order to come home. This resignation marked the
beginning of another phase of my seaman's life, its terminal phase, if I
may say so, which in its own way has coloured another portion of my
writings. I didn't know then how near its end my sea-life was, and
therefore I felt no sorrow except at parting with the ship. I was sorry
also to break my connection with the firm which owned her and who were
pleased to receive with friendly kindness and give their confidence to a
man who had entered their service in an accidental manner and in very
adverse circumstances. Without disparaging the earnestness of my purpose
I suspect now that luck had no small part in the success of the trust
reposed in me. And one cannot help remembering with pleasure the time
when one's best efforts were seconded by a run of luck.

The words "_Worthy of my undying regard_" selected by me for the motto
on the title page are quoted from the text of the book itself; and,
though one of my critics surmised that they applied to the ship, it is
evident from the place where they stand that they refer to the men of
that ship's company: complete strangers to their new captain and yet who
stood by him so well during those twenty days that seemed to have been
passed on the brink of a slow and agonizing destruction. And _that_ is
the greatest memory of all! For surely it is a great thing to have
commanded a handful of men worthy of one's undying regard.

  J. C.

  1920.

ARROW OF GOLD

FIRST NOTE

The pages which follow have been extracted from a pile of manuscript
which was apparently meant for the eye of one woman only. She seems to
have been the writer's childhood friend. They had parted as children, or
very little more than children. Years passed. Then something recalled to
the woman the companion of her young days and she wrote to him: "I have
been hearing of you lately. I know where life has brought you. You
certainly selected your own road. But to us, left behind, it always
looked as if you had struck out into a pathless desert. We always
regarded you as a person that must be given up for lost. But you have
turned up again; and though we may never see each other, my memory
welcomes you and I confess to you I should like to know the incidents on
the road which has led you to where you are now."

And he answers her: "I believe you are the only one now alive who
remembers me as a child. I have heard of you from time to time, but I
wonder what sort of person you are now. Perhaps if I did know I wouldn't
dare put pen to paper. But I don't know. I only remember that we were
great chums. In fact, I chummed with you even more than with your
brothers. But I am like the pigeon that went away in the fable of the
Two Pigeons. If I once start to tell you I would want you to feel that
you have been there yourself. I may overtax your patience with the story
of my life so different from yours, not only in all the facts but
altogether in spirit. You may not understand. You may even be shocked. I
say all this to myself; but I know I shall succumb! I have a distinct
recollection that in the old days, when you were about fifteen, you
always could make me do whatever you liked."

He succumbed. He begins his story for her with the minute narration of
this adventure which took about twelve months to develop. In the form in
which it is presented here it has been pruned of all allusions to their
common past, of all asides, disquisitions, and explanations addressed
directly to the friend of his childhood. And even as it is the whole
thing is of considerable length. It seems that he had not only a memory
but that he also knew how to remember. But as to that opinions may
differ.

This, his first great adventure, as he calls it, begins in Marseilles.
It ends there, too. Yet it might have happened anywhere. This does not
mean that the people concerned could have come together in pure space.
The locality had a definite importance. As to the time, it is easily
fixed by the events at about the middle years of the seventies, when Don
Carlos de Bourbon, encouraged by the general reaction of all Europe
against the excesses of communistic Republicanism, made his attempt for
the throne of Spain, arms in hand, amongst the hills and gorges of
Guipuzcoa. It is perhaps the last instance of a Pretender's adventure
for a Crown that History will have to record with the usual grave moral
disapproval tinged by a shamefaced regret for the departing romance.
Historians are very much like other people.

However, History has nothing to do with this tale. Neither is the moral
justification or condemnation of conduct aimed at here. If anything it
is perhaps a little sympathy that the writer expects for his buried
youth, as he lives it over again at the end of his insignificant course
on this earth. Strange person--yet perhaps not so very different from
ourselves.

A few words as to certain facts may be added.

It may seem that he was plunged very abruptly into this long adventure.
But from certain passages (suppressed here because mixed up with
irrelevant matter) it appears clearly that at the time of the meeting in
the café, Mills had already gathered, in various quarters, a definite
view of the eager youth who had been introduced to him in that
ultra-legitimist salon. What Mills had learned represented him as a
young gentleman who had arrived furnished with proper credentials and
who apparently was doing his best to waste his life in an eccentric
fashion, with a bohemian set (one poet, at least, emerged out of it
later) on one side, and on the other making friends with the people of
the Old Town, pilots, coasters, sailors, workers of all sorts. He
pretended rather absurdly to be a seaman himself and was already
credited with an ill-defined and vaguely illegal enterprise in the Gulf
of Mexico. At once it occurred to Mills that this eccentric youngster
was the very person for what the legitimist sympathizers had very much
at heart just then; to organize a supply by sea of arms and ammunition
to the Carlist detachments in the South. It was precisely to confer on
that matter with Doña Rita that Captain Blunt had been despatched from
Headquarters.

Mills got in touch with Blunt at once and put the suggestion before him.
The Captain thought this the very thing. As a matter of fact, on that
evening of Carnival, those two, Mills and Blunt, had been actually
looking everywhere for our man. They had decided that he should be drawn
into the affair if it could be done. Blunt naturally wanted to see him
first. He must have estimated him a promising person, but, from another
point of view, not dangerous. Thus lightly was the notorious (and at the
same time mysterious) Monsieur George brought into the world; out of the
contact of two minds which did not give a single thought to his flesh
and blood.

This purpose explains the intimate tone given to their first
conversation and the sudden introduction of Doña Rita's history. Mills,
of course, wanted to hear all about it. As to Captain Blunt I suspect
that, at the time, he was thinking of nothing else. In addition it was
Doña Rita who would have to do the persuading; for, after all, such an
enterprise with its ugly and desperate risks was not a trifle to put
before a man--however young.

It cannot be denied that Mills seems to have acted somewhat
unscrupulously. He himself appears to have had some doubt about it, at a
given moment, as they were driving to the Prado. But perhaps Mills, with
his penetration, understood very well the nature he was dealing with. He
might even have envied it. But it's not my business to excuse Mills. As
to him whom we may regard as Mills' victim it is obvious that he has
never harboured a single reproachful thought. For him Mills is not to be
criticized. A remarkable instance of the great power of mere
individuality over the young.

Having named all the short prefaces written for my books, Author's
Notes, this one too must have the same heading for the sake of
uniformity if at the risk of some confusion. "The Arrow of Gold," as its
sub-title states, is a story between two Notes. But these Notes are
embodied in its very frame, belong to its texture, and their mission is
to prepare and close the story. They are material to the comprehension
of the experience related in the narrative and are meant to determine
the time and place together with certain historical circumstances
conditioning the existence of the people concerned in the transactions
of the twelve months covered by the narrative. It was the shortest way
of getting over the preliminaries of a piece of work which could not
have been of the nature of a chronicle.

"The Arrow of Gold" is my first after-the-war publication. The writing
of it was begun in the autumn of 1917 and finished in the summer of
1918. Its memory is associated with that of the darkest hour of the war,
which, in accordance with the well known proverb, preceded the dawn--the
dawn of peace.

As I look at them now, these pages, written in the days of stress and
dread, wear a look of strange serenity. They were written calmly, yet
not in cold blood, and are perhaps the only kind of pages I could have
written at that time full of menace, but also full of faith.

The subject of this book I have been carrying about with me for many
years, not so much a possession of my memory as an inherent part of
myself. It was ever present to my mind and ready to my hand, but I was
loth to touch it from a feeling of what I imagined to be mere shyness
but which in reality was a very comprehensible mistrust of myself.

In plucking the fruit of memory one runs the risk of spoiling its bloom,
especially if it has got to be carried into the market-place. This being
the product of my private garden my reluctance can be easily understood;
though some critics have expressed their regret that I had not written
this book fifteen years earlier I do not share that opinion. If I took
it up so late in life it is because the right moment had not arrived
till then. I mean the positive feeling of it, which is a thing that
cannot be discussed. Neither will I discuss here the regrets of those
critics, which seem to me the most irrelevant thing that could have been
said in connection with literary criticism.

I never tried to conceal the origins of the subject matter of this book
which I have hesitated so long to write; but some reviewers indulged
themselves with a sense of triumph in discovering in it my Dominic of
"The Mirror of the Sea" under his own name (a truly wonderful
discovery) and in recognizing the balancelle _Tremolino_ in the unnamed
little craft in which Mr. George plied his fantastic trade and sought to
allay the pain of his incurable wound. I am not in the least
disconcerted by this display of perspicacity. It is the same man and the
same balancelle. But for the purposes of a book like "The Mirror of the
Sea" all I could make use of was the personal history of the little
_Tremolino_. The present work is not in any sense an attempt to develop
a subject lightly touched upon in former years and in connection with
quite another kind of love. What the story of the _Tremolino_ in its
anecdotic character has in common with the story of "The Arrow of Gold"
is the quality of initiation (through an ordeal which required some
resolution to face) into the life of passion. In the few pages at the
end of "The Mirror of the Sea" and in the whole volume of "The Arrow of
Gold," _that_ and no other is the subject offered to the public. The
pages and the book form together a complete record; and the only
assurance I can give my readers is, that as it stands here with all its
imperfections it is given to them complete.

I venture this explicit statement because, amidst much sympathetic
appreciation, I have detected here and there a note, as it were, of
suspicion. Suspicion of facts concealed, of explanations held back, of
inadequate motives. But what is lacking in the facts is simply what I
did not know, and what is not explained is what I did not understand
myself, and what seems inadequate is the fault of my imperfect insight.
And all that I could not help. In the case of this book I was unable to
supplement these deficiences by the exercise of my inventive faculty. It
was never very strong; and on this occasion its use would have seemed
exceptionally dishonest. It is from that ethical motive and not from
timidity that I elected to keep strictly within the limits of unadorned
sincerity and to try to enlist the sympathies of my readers without
assuming lofty omniscience or descending to the subterfuge of
exaggerated emotions.

  J. C.

  1920.

THE RESCUE

Of the three long novels of mine which suffered an interruption, "The
Rescue" was the one that had to wait the longest for the good pleasure
of the Fates. I am betraying no secret when I state here that it had to
wait precisely for twenty years. I laid it aside at the end of the
summer of 1898 and it was about the end of the summer of 1918 that I
took it up again with the firm determination to see the end of it and
helped by the sudden feeling that I might be equal to the task.

This does not mean that I turned to it with elation. I was well aware
and perhaps even too much aware of the dangers of such an adventure. The
amazingly sympathetic kindness which men of various temperaments,
diverse views and different literary tastes have been for years
displaying towards my work has done much for me, has done all--except
giving me that overweening self-confidence which may assist an
adventurer sometimes but in the long run ends by leading him to the
gallows.

As the characteristic I want most to impress upon these short Author's
Notes prepared for my first Collected Edition is that of absolute
frankness, I hasten to declare that I founded my hopes not on my
supposed merits but on the continued goodwill of my readers. I may say
at once that my hopes have been justified out of all proportion to my
deserts. I met with the most considerate, most delicately expressed
criticism free from all antagonism and in its conclusions showing an
insight which in itself could not fail to move me deeply, but was
associated also with enough commendation to make me feel rich beyond the
dreams of avarice--I mean an artist's avarice which seeks its treasure
in the hearts of men and women.

No! Whatever the preliminary anxieties might have been this adventure
was not to end in sorrow. Once more Fortune favoured audacity; and yet I
have never forgotten the jocular translation of _Audaces fortuna juvat_
offered to me by my tutor when I was a small boy: "The Audacious get
bitten." However he took care to mention that there were various kinds
of audacity. Oh, there are, there are!... There is, for instance, the
kind of audacity almost indistinguishable from impudence.... I must
believe that in this case I have not been impudent for I am not
conscious of having been bitten.

The truth is that when "The Rescue" was laid aside it was not laid aside
in despair. Several reasons contributed to this abandonment and, no
doubt, the first of them was the growing sense of general difficulty in
the handling of the subject. The contents and the course of the story I
had clearly in my mind. But as to the way of presenting the facts, and
perhaps in a certain measure as to the nature of the facts themselves, I
had many doubts. I mean the telling, representative facts, helpful to
carry on the idea, and, at the same time, of such a nature as not to
demand an elaborate creation of the atmosphere to the detriment of the
action. I did not see how I could avoid becoming wearisome in the
presentation of detail and in the pursuit of clearness. I saw the action
plainly enough. What I had lost for the moment was the sense of the
proper formula of expression, of the only formula that would suit. This,
of course, weakened my confidence in the intrinsic worth and in the
possible interest of the story--that is in my invention. But I suspect
that all the trouble was, in reality, the doubt of my prose, the doubt
of its adequacy, of its power to master both the colours and the shades.

It is difficult to describe, exactly as I remember it, the complex
state of my feelings; but those of my readers who take an interest in
artistic perplexities will understand me best when I point out that I
dropped "The Rescue" not to give myself up to idleness, regrets, or
dreaming, but to begin "The Nigger of the Narcissus" and to go on with
it without hesitation and without a pause. A comparison of any page of
"The Rescue" with any page of "The Nigger" will furnish an ocular
demonstration of the nature and the inward meaning of this first crisis
of my writing life. For it was a crisis undoubtedly. The laying aside of
a work so far advanced was a very awful decision to take. It was wrung
from me by a sudden conviction that _there_ only was the road of
salvation, the clear way out for an uneasy conscience. The finishing of
"The Nigger" brought to my troubled mind the comforting sense of an
accomplished task, and the first consciousness of a certain sort of
mastery which could accomplish something with the aid of propitious
stars. Why I did not return to "The Rescue" at once then, was not for
the reason that I had grown afraid of it. Being able now to assume a
firm attitude I said to myself deliberately: "That thing can wait." At
the same time I was just as certain in my mind that "Youth," a story
which I had then, so to speak, on the tip of my pen, could _not_ wait.
Neither could Heart of Darkness be put off; for the practical reason
that Mr. Wm. Blackwood having requested me to write something for the
No. M. of his magazine I had to stir up at once the subject of that tale
which had been long lying quiescent in my mind, because, obviously, the
venerable Maga at her patriarchal age of 1000 numbers could not be kept
waiting. Then "Lord Jim," with about seventeen pages already written at
odd times, put in his claim which was irresistible. Thus every stroke of
the pen was taking me further away from the abandoned "Rescue," not
without some compunction on my part but with a gradually diminishing
resistance; till at last I let myself go as if recognizing a superior
influence against which it was useless to contend.

The years passed and the pages grew in number, and the long reveries of
which they were the outcome stretched wide between me and the deserted
"Rescue" like the smooth hazy spaces of a dreamy sea. Yet I never
actually lost sight of that dark speck in the misty distance. It had
grown very small but it asserted itself with the appeal of old
associations. It seemed to me that it would be a base thing for me to
slip out of the world leaving it out there all alone, waiting for its
fate--that would never come!

Sentiment, pure sentiment as you see, prompted me in the last instance
to face the pains and hazards of that return. As I moved slowly towards
the abandoned body of the tale it loomed up big amongst the glittering
shallows of the coast, lonely but not forbidding. There was nothing
about it of a grim derelict. It had an air of expectant life. One after
another I made out the familiar faces watching my approach with faint
smiles of amused recognition. They had known well enough that I was
bound to come back to them. But their eyes met mine seriously as was
only to be expected since I myself felt very serious as I stood amongst
them again after years of absence. At once, without wasting words, we
went to work together on our renewed life; and every moment I felt more
strongly that They Who had Waited bore no grudge to the man who however
widely he may have wandered at times had played truant only once in his
life.

  J. C.

  1920.

NOTES ON LIFE AND LETTERS

I don't know whether I ought to offer an apology for this collection
which has more to do with life than with letters. Its appeal is made to
orderly minds. This, to be frank about it, is a process of tidying up,
which, from the nature of things, can not be regarded as premature. The
fact is that I wanted to do it myself because of a feeling that had
nothing to do with the considerations of worthiness or unworthiness of
the small (but unbroken) pieces collected within the covers of this
volume. Of course it may be said that I might have taken up a broom and
used it without saying anything about it. That certainly is one way of
tidying up.

But it would have been too much to have expected me to treat all this
matter as removable rubbish. All those things had a place in my life.
Whether any of them deserve to have been picked up and ranged on the
shelf--this shelf--I cannot say, and, frankly, I have not allowed my
mind to dwell on the question. I was afraid of thinking myself into a
mood that would hurt my feelings; for those pieces of writing, whatever
may be the comment on their display, appertain to the character of the
man.

And so here they are, dusted, which was but a decent thing to do, but in
no way polished, extending from the year '98 to the year '20, a thin
array (for such a stretch of time) of really innocent attitudes: Conrad
literary, Conrad political, Conrad reminiscent, Conrad controversial.
Well, yes! A one-man show--or is it merely the show of one man?

The only thing that will not be found amongst those Figures and Things
that have passed away will be Conrad "_en pantoufles_." It is a
constitutional inability. _Schlafrock und pantoffeln!_ Not that! Never!
I don't know whether I dare boast like a certain South American general
who used to say that no emergency of war or peace had ever found him
"with his boots off"; but I may say that whenever the various
periodicals mentioned in this book called on me to come out and blow the
trumpet of personal opinions or strike the pensive lute that speaks of
the past, I always tried to pull on my boots first. I didn't want to do
it, God knows! Their Editors, to whom I beg to offer my thanks here,
made me perform mainly by kindness but partly by bribery. Well, yes!
Bribery. What can you expect? I never pretended to be better than the
people in the next street and even in the same street.

This volume (including these embarrassed introductory remarks) is as
near as I shall ever come to déshabillé in public; and perhaps it will
do something to help towards a better vision of the man, if it gives no
more than a partial view of a piece of his back, a little dusty (after
the process of tidying up), a little bowed, and receding from the world
not because of weariness or misanthropy but for other reasons that
cannot be helped: because the leaves fall, the water flows, the clock
ticks with that horrid pitiless solemnity which you must have observed
in the ticking of the hall clock at home. For reasons like that. Yes! It
recedes. And this was the chance to afford one more view of it--even to
my own eyes.

The section within this volume called Letters explains itself though I
do not pretend to say that it justifies its own existence. It claims
nothing in its defence except the right of speech which I believe
belongs to everybody outside a Trappist monastery. The part I have
ventured, for shortness' sake, to call Life, may perhaps justify itself
by the emotional sincerity of the feelings to which the various papers
included under that head owe their origin. And as they relate to events
of which everyone has a date, they are in the nature of sign-posts
pointing out the direction my thoughts were compelled to take at the
various crossroads. If anybody detects any sort of consistency in the
choice, this will be only proof positive that wisdom had nothing to do
with it. Whether right or wrong, instinct alone is invariable; a fact
which only adds a deeper shade to its inherent mystery. The appearance
of intellectuality these pieces may present at first sight is merely the
result of the arrangement of words. The logic that may be found there is
only the logic of the language. But I need not labour the point. There
will be plenty of people sagacious enough to perceive the absence of all
wisdom from these pages. But I believe sufficiently in human sympathies
to imagine that very few will question their sincerity. Whatever
delusions I may have suffered from I have had no delusions as to the
nature of the facts commented on here. I may have misjudged their
import: but that is the sort of error for which one may expect a certain
amount of toleration.

The only paper of this collection which has never been published before
is the Note on the Polish problem. It was written at the request of a
friend to be shown privately, and its "Protectorate" idea, sprung from a
strong sense of the critical nature of the situation, was shaped by the
actual circumstances of the time. The time was about a month before the
entrance of Roumania into the war, and though, honestly, I had seen
already the shadow of coming events I could not permit my misgivings to
enter into and destroy the structure of my plan. I still believe that
there was some sense in it. It may certainly be charged with the
appearance of lack of faith and it lays itself open to the throwing of
many stones; but my object was practical and I had to consider warily
the preconceived notions of the people to whom it was implicitly
addressed and also their unjustifiable hopes. They were unjustifiable,
but who was to tell them that? I mean who was wise enough and
convincing enough to show them the inanity of their mental attitude? The
whole atmosphere was poisoned with visions that were not so much false
as simply impossible. They were also the result of vague and unconfessed
fears, and that made their strength. For myself, with a very definite
dread in my heart, I was careful not to allude to their character
because I did not want the Note to be thrown away unread. And then I had
to remember that the impossible has sometimes the trick of coming to
pass to the confusion of minds and often to the crushing of hearts.

Of the other papers I have nothing special to say. They are what they
are, and I am by now too hardened a sinner to feel ashamed of
insignificant indiscretions. And as to their appearance in this form I
claim that indulgence to which all sinners against themselves are
entitled.

  J. C.

  1920.