The Project Gutenberg eBook of The nature of a crime
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: The nature of a crime
Author: Joseph Conrad
Ford Madox Ford
Release date: January 22, 2025 [eBook #75172]
Language: English
Original publication: Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1924
Credits: Emmanuel Ackerman, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NATURE OF A CRIME ***
_The Nature of
a Crime_
BY
JOSEPH CONRAD
AND
FORD MADOX FORD
(F. M. HUEFFER)
[Illustration]
GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1924
COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
AT
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
_First Edition_
_The Nature of
a Crime_
BOOKS BY JOSEPH CONRAD
ALMAYER’S FOLLY
AN OUTCAST OF THE ISLANDS
THE NIGGER OF THE “NARCISSUS”
TALES OF UNREST
LORD JIM: A ROMANCE
YOUTH: A NARRATIVE
TYPHOON
FALK, AND OTHER STORIES
NOSTROMO: A TALE OF THE SEABOARD
THE MIRROR OF THE SEA
THE SECRET AGENT
A SET OF SIX
UNDER WESTERN EYES
A PERSONAL RECORD
’TWIXT LAND AND SEA
CHANCE
WITHIN THE TIDES
VICTORY
THE SHADOW-LINE
THE ARROW OF GOLD
THE RESCUE
NOTES ON LIFE AND LETTERS
THE ROVER
_With Ford Madox Ford_ (_Hueffer_)
ROMANCE: A NOVEL
THE INHERITORS: AN EXTRAVAGANT STORY
THE NATURE OF A CRIME
PREFACES
I
For years my consciousness of this small piece of collaboration has
been very vague, almost impalpable, like fleeting visits from a ghost.
If I ever thought of it, and I must confess that I can hardly remember
ever doing it on purpose till it was brought definitely to my notice
by my Collaborator, I always regarded it as something in the nature
of a fragment. I was surprised and even shocked to discover that it
was rounded. But I need not have been. Rounded as it is in form, using
the word form in its simplest sense--printed form--it remains yet a
fragment from its very nature and also from necessity. It could never
have become anything else. And even as a fragment it is but a fragment
of something else that might have been--of a mere intention.
But, as it stands, what impresses me most is the amount this fragment
contains of the crudely materialistic atmosphere of the time of its
origin, the time when the _English Review_ was founded. It emerges from
the depths of a past as distant from us now as the square-skirted, long
frock-coats in which unscrupulous, cultivated, high-minded _jouisseurs_
like ours here attended to their strange business activities and
cultivated the little blue flower of sentiment. No doubt our man was
conceived for purposes of irony; but our conception of him, I fear, is
too fantastic.
Yet the most fantastic thing of all, it seems to me, is that we two
who had so often discussed soberly the limits and methods of literary
composition should have believed for a moment that a piece of work in
the nature of an analytical confession (produced _in articulo mortis_
as it were) could have been developed and achieved in collaboration!
What optimism! But it did not last long. I seem to remember a moment
when I burst into earnest entreaties that all these people should be
thrown overboard without more ado. This, I believe, _is_ the real
nature of the crime. Overboard. The neatness and dispatch with which it
is done in Chapter VIII was wholly the act of my Collaborator’s good
nature in the face of my panic.
After signing these few prefatory words I will pass the pen to him in
the hope that he may be moved to contradict me on every point of fact,
impression, and appreciation. I said “the hope.” Yes, eager hope. For
it would be delightful to catch the echo of the desperate, earnest and
funny quarrels which enlivened those old days. The pity of it is that
there comes a time when all the fun of one’s life must be looked for in
the past.
J. C.
II
No, I find nothing to contradict, for, the existence of this story
having been recalled to my mind by a friend, the details of its birth
and its attendant circumstances remain for me completely forgotten, a
dark, blind-spot on the brain. I cannot remember the houses in which
the writing took place, the view from the windows, the pen, the table
cloth. At a given point in my life I forgot, literally, all the books
I had ever written; but, if nowadays I re-read one of them, though I
possess next to none and have re-read few, nearly all the phrases come
back startlingly to my memory and I see glimpses of Kent, of Sussex, of
Carcassonne--of New York, even; and fragments of furniture, mirrors,
who knows what? So that, if I didn’t happen to retain, almost by a
miracle, for me, of retention, the marked up copy of “Romance” from
which was made the analysis lately published in a certain periodical,
I am certain that I could have identified the phrases exactly as they
there stand. Looking at the book now I can hear our voices as we read
one passage or another aloud for purposes of correction. Moreover
I could say: This passage was written in Kent and hammered over in
Sussex; this, written in Sussex and worked on in Kent; or this again
was written in the downstairs café and hammered in the sitting room on
the first-floor, of an hotel that faces the sea on the Belgian coast.
But of “The Nature of a Crime” no phrase at all suggests either the
tones of a voice or the colour of a day. When an old friend, last
year, on a Parisian Boulevard said: “Isn’t there a story by yourself
and Collaborator buried in the So & So?” I repudiated the idea with a
great deal of heat. Eventually I had to admit the, as it were, dead
fact. And, having admitted that to myself, and my Collaborator having
corroborated it, I was at once possessed by a sort of morbid craving to
get the story re-published in a definitive and acknowledged form. One
may care infinitely little for the fate of one’s work and yet be almost
hypochondriacally anxious as to the form its publication shall take--if
the publication is likely to occur posthumously. I became at once
dreadfully afraid that some philologist of that Posterity for which one
writes, might, in the course of his hyena occupations, disinter these
poor bones and, attributing sentence one to writer A and sentence two
to B, maul at least one of our memories. With the nature of _those_
crimes one is only too well acquainted. Besides, though one may never
read comments one desires to get them over. It is indeed agreeable to
hear a storm rage in the distance and rumble eventually away.
Let me, however, since my Collaborator wishes it and in the name of
Fun that is to-day hardly an echo, differ from him for a shade as to
the nature of those passages of time. I protest against the word:
quarrels. There were not any. And I should like to make the note that
our collaboration was almost purely oral. We wrote and read aloud the
one to the other. Possibly in the end we even wrote _to_ read aloud the
one to the other: for it strikes me very forcibly that “The Nature of a
Crime” is for the most part prose meant for recitation, or of that type.
Anyhow, as the memory comes back to me overwhelmingly, I would read
on and read on. One begins with a fine propulsion. Sometimes that
would last to the end. But, as often as not, by a real telepathy, with
my eyes on the page and my voice going on I would grow aware of an
exaggerated stillness on the part of my Collaborator in the shadows.
It was an extraordinary kind of stillness: not of death: not of an ice
age. Yes, it was the stillness of a prisoner on the rack determined
to conceal an agony. I would read on, my voice gradually sticking to
my jaws. When it became unbearable I would glance up. On the other
side of the hearth I would have a glimpse of a terribly sick man,
of a convulsed face, of fingers contorted. Guido Fawkes beneath the
_peine forte et dure_ looked like that. You are to remember that we
were very serious about writing. I would read on. After a long time it
would come: “Oh!... Oh, oh!... Oh my God.... My dear Ford.... My dear
faller....” (That in those days was the fashionable pronunciation of
“fellow”.)
For myself, I would listen always with admiration. Always with an
admiration that I have never since recaptured. And if there were
admirablenesses that did not seem to me to fit in with the given
scene I could at least, at the end of the reading, say with perfect
sincerity: “Wonderful! _How_ you do things!...” before beginning on:
“But don’t you perhaps think....”
And I really do not believe that either my Collaborator or myself
ever made an objection which was not jointly sustained. That is not
quarrels. When I last looked through the bound proofs of _Romance_
I was struck with the fact that whereas my Collaborator eliminated
almost every word of action and eighty percent of the conversations by
myself, I supplied almost all the descriptive passages of the really
collaborated parts--and such softer sentiment as was called for. And
my Collaborator let them get through.
All this took place long ago; most of it in another century during
another reign; whilst an earlier but not less haughty and proud
generation were passing away.
F. M. F.
_The Nature of a Crime_
_The Nature of a Crime_
I
You are, I suppose, by now in Rome. It is very curious how present
to me are both Rome and yourself. There is a certain hill--you, and
that is the curious part of it, will never go there--yet, yesterday,
late in the evening, I stood upon its summit and you came walking
from a place below. It is always midday there: the seven pillars of
the Forum stand on high, their capitals linked together, and form one
angle of a square. At their bases there lie some detritus, a broken
marble lion, and I think but I am not certain, the bronze she-wolf
suckling the two bronze children. Your dress brushed the herbs: it was
grey and tenuous: I suppose you do not know how you look when you are
unconscious of being looked at? But I looked at you for a long time--at
my You.
I saw your husband yesterday at the club and he said that you would
not be returning till the end of April. When I got back to my chambers
I found a certain letter. I will tell you about it afterwards--but I
forbid you to look at the end of what I am writing now. There is a
piece of news coming: I would break it to you if I could--but there
is no way of breaking the utterly unexpected. Only, if you read this
through you will gather from the tenor, from the tone of my thoughts,
a little inkling, a small preparation for my disclosure. Yes: it is a
“disclosure.”
... Briefly, then, it was this letter--a business letter--that set me
thinking: that made that hill rise before me. Yes, I stood upon it
and there before me lay Rome--beneath a haze, in the immense sea of
plains. I have often thought of going to Rome--of going with you, in a
leisurely autumn of your life and mine. Now--since I have received that
letter--I know that I shall never see any other Rome than that from an
imagined hilltop. And when, in the wonderful light and shadelessness
of that noon, last evening, you came from a grove of silver poplars,
I looked at you--_my_ you--for a very long while. You had, I think,
a parasol behind your head, you moved slowly, you looked up at the
capitals of those seven pillars.... And I thought that I should
never--since you will not return before the end of April--never see you
again. I shall never see again the you that every other man sees....
You understand everything so well that already you must understand the
nature of my disclosure. It is, of course, no disclosure to tell you
that I love you. A very great reverence is due to youth--and a very
great latitude is due to the dead. For I am dead: I have only lived
through you for how many years now! And I shall never speak with you
again. Some sort of burial will have been given to me before the end
of April. I am a spirit. I have ended my relations with the world.
I have balanced all my books, my will is made. Only I have nothing
to leave--save to you, to whom I leave all that is now mine in the
world--my memory.
It is very curious--the world now. I walked slowly down here from
Gordon Square. I walked slowly--for all my work is done. On the way I
met Graydon Bankes, the K. C. It would have astonished him if he could
have known how unreal he looked to me. He is six feet high, and upon
his left cheek there is a brown mole. I found it difficult to imagine
why he existed. And all sorts of mists hurried past him. It was just
outside the Natural History Museum. He said that his Seaford Railway
Bill would come before Committee in June. And I wondered: what is
June?... I laughed and thought: why June will never come!
June will never come. Imagine that for a moment. We have discussed the
ethics of suicide. You see why June will never come!
You remember that ring I always wear? The one with a bulging, greenish
stone. Once or twice you have asked me what stone it was. You thought,
I know, that it was in bad taste and I told you I wore it for the sake
of associations. I know you thought--but no: there has never been any
woman but you.
You must have felt a long time ago that there was not, that there could
not have been another woman. The associations of the ring are not
with the past of a finished affection, or hate, or passion, with all
these forms of unrest that have a term in life: they looked forward to
where there is no end--whether there is rest in it God alone knows.
If it were not bad taste to use big words in extremities I would say
there was Eternity in the ring--Eternity which is the negation of all
that life may contain of losses and disappointments. Perhaps you have
noticed that there was one note in our confidence that never responded
to your touch. It was that note of universal negation contained within
the glass film of the ring. It is not you who brought the ring into my
life: I had it made years ago. It was in my nature always to anticipate
a touch on my shoulder, to which the only answer could be an act of
defiance. And the ring is my weapon. I shall raise it to my teeth, bite
through the glass: inside there is poison.
I haven’t concealed anything from you. Have I? And, with the great
wisdom for which I love you, you have tolerated these other things. You
would have tolerated this too, you who have met so many sinners and
have never sinned....
Ah, my dear one--that is why I have so loved you. From our two poles we
have met upon one common ground of scepticism--so that I am not certain
whether it was you or I who first said: “Believe nothing: be harsh to
no one.” But at least we have suffered. One does not drag around with
one such a cannon-ball as I have done all these years without thinking
some wise thoughts. And well I know that in your dreary and terrible
life you have gained your great wisdom. You have been envied; you too
have thought: Is any prospect fair to those among its trees? And I
have been envied for my gifts, for my talents, for my wealth, for my
official position, for the letters after my name, for my great and
empty house, for my taste in pictures--for my ... for my opportunities.
Great criminals and the very patient learn one common lesson: Believe
in nothing, be harsh to no one!
But you cannot understand how immensely leisurely I feel. It is one
o’clock at night. I cannot possibly be arrested before eleven to-morrow
morning. I have ten hours in which, without the shadow of a doubt, I
can write to you: I can put down my thoughts desultorily and lazily. I
have half a score of hours in which to speak to you.
The stress of every secret emotion makes for sincerity in the end.
Silence is like a dam. When the flood is at its highest the dam
gives way. I am not conceited enough to think that I can sweep you
along, terrified, in the rush of my confidences. I have not the
elemental force. Perhaps it is just that form of “greatness” that I
have lacked all my life--that profound quality which the Italians
call _terribilita_. There is nothing overpowering or terrible in the
confession of a love too great to be kept within the bounds of the
banality which is the safeguard of our daily life. Men have been nerved
to crime for the sake of a love that was theirs. The call of every
great passion is to unlawfulness. But your love was not mine, and my
love for you was vitiated by that conventional reverence which, as to
nine parts in ten, is genuine, but as to the last tenth a solemn sham
behind which hide all the timidities of a humanity no longer in its
youth. I have been of my time--altogether of my time--lacking courage
for a swoop, as a bird respects a ragged and nerveless scarecrow.
Altogether a man of my time. Observe, I do not say “our time.” You are
of all time--you are the loved Woman of the first cry that broke the
silence and of the last song that shall mark the end of this ingenious
world to which love and suffering have been given, but which has in the
course of ages invented for itself all the virtues and all the crimes.
And being of this world and of my time I have set myself to deal
ingeniously with my suffering and my love.
Now everything is over--even regrets. Nothing remains of finite things
but a few days of life and my confession to make to you--to you alone
of all the world.
It is difficult. How am I to begin? Would you believe it--every time I
left your presence it was with the desire, with the necessity to forget
you. Would you believe it?
This is the great secret--the heart of my confession. The distance did
not count. No walls could make me safe. No solitude could defend me;
and having no faith in the consolations of eternity I suffered too
cruelly from your absence.
If there had been kingdoms to conquer, a crusade to preach--but no.
I should not have had the courage to go beyond the sound of your
voice. You might have called to me any time! You never did. Never.
And now it is too late. Moreover, I am a man of my time, the time is
not of great deeds but of colossal speculations. The moments when I
was not with you had to be got through somehow. I dared not face them
empty-handed lest from sheer distress I should go mad and begin to
execrate you. Action? What form of action could remove me far enough
from you whose every thought was referred to your existence? And as you
were to me a soul of truth and serenity I tried to forget you in lies
and excitement. My only refuge from the tyranny of my desire was in
abasement. Perhaps I was mad. I gambled. I gambled first with my own
money and then with money that was not mine. You know my connection
with the great Burden fortune. I was trustee under my friend’s,
Alexander Burden’s will. I gambled with a determined recklessness,
with closed eyes. You understand now the origin of my houses, of my
collections, of my reputation, of my taste for magnificence--which
you deigned sometimes to mock indulgently with an exquisite flattery
as at something not quite worthy of me. It was like a break-neck ride
on a wild horse, and now the fall has come. It was sudden. I am alive
but my back is broken. Edward Burden is going to be married. I must
pay back what I have borrowed from the Trust. I cannot. Therefore I am
dead. (A mouse has just come out from beneath one of the deed-boxes.
It looks up at me. It may have been eating some of the papers in the
large cupboard. To-morrow morning I shall tell Saunders to get a cat.
I have never seen a mouse here before. I have never been here so
late before. At times of pressure, as you know, I have always taken
my papers home. So that these late hours have been, as it were, the
prerogative of the mouse. No. I shall not get a cat. To that extent
I am still a part of the world: I am master of the fate of mice!) I
have, then, ten hours, less the time it has taken me to chronicle the
mouse, in which to talk to you. It is strange, when I look back on it,
that in all the years we have known each other--seven years, three
months and two days--I have never had so long as ten hours in which I
might talk to you. The longest time was when we came back from Paris
together, when your husband was in such a state that he could neither
see nor hear. (I’ve seen him, by-the-bye, every day since you have been
gone. He’s really keeping away from it wonderfully well; in fact, I
should say that he has not once actually succumbed. I fancy, really,
that your absence is good for him in a way: it creates a new set of
circumstances, and a change is said to be an excellent aid in the
breaking of a habit. He has, I mean, to occupy himself with some of the
things, innumerable as they are, that you do for him. I find that he
has even had his pass-book from the bank and has compared it with his
counterfoils. I haven’t, on account of this improvement, yet been round
to his chemist’s. But I shall certainly tell them that they _must_
surreptitiously decrease the strength of it.) That was the longest
time we have ever really talked together. And, when I think that in
all these years I haven’t once so much as held your hand for a moment
longer than the strictest of etiquette demanded! And I loved you within
the first month.
I wonder why that is. Fancy, perhaps. Habit perhaps--a kind of
idealism, a kind of delicacy, a fastidiousness. As you know very well
it is not on account of any moral scruples....
I break off to look through what I have already written to you. There
is, first, the question of why I never told you my secret: then,
the question of what my secret really is; I have started so many
questions and have not followed one of them out to the very end. But
all questions resolve themselves into the one question of our dear and
inestimable relationship.
I think it has been one of the great charms of our relationship that
all our talks have been just talks. We have discussed everything under
the sun, but we have never discussed anything _au fond_. We have
strayed into all sorts of byways and have never got anywhere. I try to
remember how many evenings in the last five years we have not spent
together. I think they must be less than a hundred in number. You know
how, occasionally, your husband would wake out of his stupors--or
walk _in_ his stupor and deliver one of his astonishingly brilliant
disquisitions. But remember how, always, whether he talked of free
love or the improvement in the breed of carriage-horses, he always
thrashed his subject out to the bitter end. It was not living with a
man: it was assisting at a performance. And, when he was sunk into
his drugs or when he was merely literary, or when he was away, how
lazily we talked. I think no two minds were ever so fitted one into
another as yours and mine. It is not of course that we agree on all
subjects--or perhaps upon any. In the whole matter of conduct we are so
absolutely different--you are always for circumspection, for a careful
preparation of the ground, for patience; and I am always ready to act,
and afterwards draw the moral from my own actions. But somehow, in the
end, it has all worked out in our being in perfect agreement. Later I
will tell you why that is.
* * * * *
Let me return to my mouse. For you will observe that the whole question
revolves, really, around that little allegorical mite. It is an omen:
it is a symbol. It is a little herald of the Providence that I do not
believe in--of the Providence you so implicitly seek to obey. For
instinctively you believe in Providence--in God, if you will. I as
instinctively disbelieve. Intellectually of course you disbelieve in a
God. You say that it is impossible for Reason to accept an Overlord; I
that Reason forces one to accept an Overlord; that Reason forces one
to believe in an Omnipotent Ruler--only I am unable to believe. We, my
dear, are in ourselves evidence of a design in creation. For we are the
last word of creation. It has taken all the efforts, all the birthpangs
of all the ages to evolve--you and me. And, being evolved, we are
intellectually so perfectly and so divinely fashioned to dovetail
together. And, physically too, are we not divinely meant the one for
the other? Do we not react to the same causes: should not we survive
the same hardships or succumb to the same stresses? Since you have
been away I have gone looking for people--men, women, children, even
animals--that could hold my attention for a minute. There has not been
one. And what purer evidence of design could you ask for than that?
I have made this pact with the Providence that I argue for, with the
Providence in whose existence I cannot believe--that if, from under
the castle of black metal boxes, the mouse reappear and challenge
death--then there is no future state. And, since I can find no
expression save in you, if we are not reunited I shall no longer exist.
So my mouse is the sign, the arbitrament, a symbol of an eternal life
or the herald of nothingness.
I will make to you the confession that since this fancy, this profound
truth, has entered my mind, I have not raised my eyes from the paper. I
dread--I suppose it is dread--to look across the ring of light that my
lamp casts. But now I will do so. I will let my eyes travel across the
bundles of dusty papers on my desk. Do you know I have left them just
as they were on the day when you came to ask me to take your railway
tickets? I will let my eyes travel across that rampart of blue and
white dockets.... The mouse is not there.
But that is not an end of it. I am not a man to be ungenerous in my
dealings with the Omnipotent: I snatch no verdict.
II
Last night it was very late and I grew tired, so I broke off my
letter. Perhaps I was really afraid of seeing that mouse again. Those
minute superstitions are curious things. I noticed, when I looked at
the enumeration of these pages to-night, I began to write upon the
thirteenth sheet--and that gives me a vague dissatisfaction. I read,
by-the-bye, a paragraph in a newspaper: it dealt with half-mad authors.
One of these, the writer said, was Zola; he was stated to be half mad
because he added together the numbers on the backs of cabs passing him
in the street. Personally, I do that again and again--and I know very
well that I do it in order to dull my mind. It is a sort of narcotic.
Johnson, we know, touched his street-posts in a certain order: that,
too, was to escape from miserable thoughts. And we all know how, as
children, we have obeyed mysterious promptings to step upon the lines
between the paving-stones in the street.... But the children have
their futures: it is well that they should propitiate the mysterious
Omnipotent One. In their day, too, Johnson and Zola had their futures.
It was well that Johnson should “touch” against the evil chance; that
Zola should rest his mind against new problems. In me it is mere
imbecility. For I have no future.
Do you find it difficult to believe that? You know the Burdens, of
course. But I think you do not know that, for the last nine years,
I have administered the Burden estates all by myself. The original
trustees were old Lady Burden and I; but nine years ago Lady Burden
gave me a power of attorney and since then I have acted alone. It was
just before then that I had bought the houses in Gordon Square--the one
I live in, the one you live in, and the seven others. Well, rightly
speaking, those houses have been bought with Burden money, and all my
pictures, all my prints, all my books, my furniture, my reputation as
a connoisseur, my governorship of the two charities--all the me that
people envy--have been bought with the Burden money. I assure you that
at times I have found it a pleasurable excitement.... You see, I have
wanted you sometimes so terribly--so terribly that the juggling with
the Burden accounts has been as engrossing a narcotic as to Zola was
the adding up of the numbers upon the backs of cabs. Mere ordinary work
would never have held my thoughts.
Under old Burden’s will young Edward Burden comes of age when he
reaches the age of twenty-five or when he marries with my consent.
Well, he will reach the age of twenty-five and he will marry on April
5. On that day the solicitors of his future wife will make their
scrutiny of my accounts. It is regarded, you understand, as a mere
formality. But it amuses me to think of the faces of Coke and Coke
when they come to certain figures! It was an outlaw of some sort, was
it not, who danced and sang beneath the gallows? I wonder, now, what
sort of traitor, outlaw, or stealthy politician I should have made in
the Middle Ages. It is certain that, save for this one particular of
property, I should be in very truth illustrious. No doubt the state
shall come at last in which there shall no more be any property. I was
born before my time.
For it is certain that I am illustrious save in that one respect.
To-day young Edward Burden came here to the office to introduce me
to his _fiancée_. You observe that I have robbed her. The Burden
property is really crippled. They came, this bright young couple, to
get a cheque from me with which to purchase a motor-car. They are to
try several cars in the next three weeks. On the day before the wedding
they are to choose one that will suit them best--and on the wedding-day
in the evening they are to start for Italy. They will be coming towards
you.... Then no doubt, too, a telegram will reach them, to say that
in all probability motor-cars will be things not for them for several
years to come. What a crumbling of their lives!
It was odd how I felt towards _her_. You know his pompous, high
forehead, the shine all over him, the grave, weighty manner. He held
his hat--a wonderful shiny, “good” hat--before his mouth, for all
the world as if he had been in church. He made, even, a speech in
introducing Miss Averies to me. You see, in a sense, he was in a
temple. My office enshrined a deity, a divinity: the law, property,
the rights of man as maintained by an august constitution. I am for
him such a wonderfully “safe” man. My dear one, you cannot imagine how
I feel towards him: a little like a deity, a little like an avenging
Providence. I imagine that the real Deity must feel towards some of His
worshippers much as I feel towards this phœnix of the divines.
The Deity is after all the supreme Artist--and the supreme quality of
Art is surprise.
Imagine then the feeling of the Deity towards some of those who most
confidently enter His temple. Just imagine His attitude towards
those who deal in the obvious platitudes that “honesty is the best
policy,” or “genius the capacity for taking pains.” So for days the
world appears to them. Then suddenly: honesty no longer pays; the
creature, amassing with his infinite pains, data for his Great Work,
is discovered to have produced a work of an Infinite Dulness. That is
the all-suffering Deity manifesting Himself to His worshippers. For
assuredly a day comes when two added to two no longer results in four.
That day will come on April 5 for Edward Burden.
After all he has done nothing to make two and two become four. He has
not even checked his accounts: well: for some years now I have been
doing as much as that. But with his _fiancée_ it is different. She is
a fair, slight girl with eyes that dilate under all sorts of emotion.
In my office she appears not a confident worshipper but a rather
frightened fawn led before an Anthropomorphic Deity. And, strangely
enough, though young Burden who trusts me inspires me with a sardonic
dislike, I felt myself saying to this poor little thing that faced me:
“Why: I have wronged you!” And I regretted it.
She, you see, has after all given something towards a right to enjoy
the Burden estates and the Burden wealth; she has given her fragile
beauty, her amiability, her worship, no doubt, of the intolerable
Edward. And all this payment in the proper coin: so she has in a sense
a right....
Good-night, dear one, I think you have it in your power--you _might_
have it in your power--to atone to this little creature. To-morrow I
will tell you why and how.
III
I wrote last night that you have something in your power. If you wished
it you could make me live on. I am confident that you will not wish
it: for you will understand that capriciously or intolerably I am
tired of living this life. I desire you so terribly that now, even the
excitement of fooling Burden no longer hypnotizes me into an acceptance
of life without you. Frankly, I am tired out. If I had to go on living
any longer I should have to ask you to be mine in one form or other.
With that and with my ability--for of course I have great ability--I
could go on fooling Burden for ever. I could restore: I could make
sounder than ever it was that preposterous “going concern” the Burden
Estate. Unless I like to let them, I think that the wife’s solicitors
will not discover what I have done. For, frankly, I have put myself out
in this matter in order to be amusing to myself and ingenious. I have
forged whole builder’s estimates for repairs that were never executed:
I have invented whole hosts of defaulting tenants. It has not been
latterly for money that I have done this: it has been simply for the
sheer amusement of looking at Edward Burden and saying to myself:
“Ah: you trust me, my sleek friend. Well....”
But indeed I fancy that I am rich enough to be able to restore to
them all that I have taken. And, looking at Edward Burden’s little
_fiancée_, I was almost tempted to set upon that weary course of
juggling. But I am at the end of my tether. I cannot live without you
longer. And I do not wish to ask you. Later I will tell you. Or No--I
will tell you now.
You see, my dear thing, it is a question of going one better. It
would be easy enough to deceive your husband: it would be easier
still to go away together. I think that neither you nor I have ever
had any conscientious scruples. But, analysing the matter down to its
very depths, I think we arrive at this, that without the motives for
self-restraint that other people have we are anxious to show more
self-restraint than they. We are doing certain work not for payment
but for sheer love of work. Do I make myself clear? For myself I have
a great pride in your image. I can say to myself: “Here is a woman, my
complement. She has no respect for the law. She does not value what a
respect for the law would bring her. Yet she remains purer than the
purest of the makers of law.” And I think it is the converse of that
feeling that you have for me.
If you desire me to live on, I will live on: I am so swayed by you
that if you desire me to break away from this ideal of you, the breath
of a command will send me round to your side.
I am ready to give my life for this Ideal: nay more, I am ready to
sacrifice you to it, since I know that life for you will remain a very
bitter thing. I know, a little, what renunciation means.
And I am asking you to bear it--for the sake of my ideal of you. For,
assuredly, unless I can have you I must die--and I know that you will
not ask me to have you. And I love you: and bless you for it.
IV
I have just come in from _Tristan and Isolde_.
I had to hurry and be there for the first notes because you--my
you--would, I felt, be sitting beside me as you have so often. That,
of course, is passion--the passion that makes us unaccountable in our
actions.
I found you naturally: but I found, too, something else. It has always
a little puzzled me why we return to Tristan. There are passages in
that thing as intolerable as anything in any of the Germanic master’s
scores. But we are held--simply by the idea of the love-philtre:
it’s that alone that interests us. We do not care about the initial
amenities of Tristan and the prima donna: we do not believe in Mark’s
psychologising: but, from the moment when those two dismal marionettes
have drained unconsideringly the impossible cup, they become suddenly
alive, and we see two human beings under the grip of a passion--acting
as irrationally as I did when I promised my cabman five shillings to
get me to the theatre in time for the opening bars.
It is, you see, the love-philtre that performs this miracle. It
interests--it is real to us--because every human being knows what it
is to act, irrationally, under the stress of some passion or other. We
are drawn along irresistibly: we commit the predestined follies or the
predestined heroisms: the other side of our being acts in contravention
of all our rules of conduct or of intellect. Here, in Tristan, we see
such madness justified with a concrete substance, a herb, a root. We
see a vision of a state of mind in which morality no longer exists:
we are given a respite, a rest: an interval in which no standard of
conduct oppresses us. It is an idea of an appeal more universal than
any other in which the tired imagination of humanity takes refuge.
The thought that somewhere in the world there should be something that
I could give to you, or you to me, that would leave us free to do
what we wish without the drag of the thought of what we owe, to each
other, to the world! And after all, what greater gift could one give to
another? It would be the essential freedom. For assuredly, the philtre
could do no more than put it in a man’s power to do what he would do if
he were let loose. He would not bring out more than he had in him: but
he would fully and finally express himself.
Something unexpected has changed the current of my thoughts. Nothing
can change their complexion, which is governed not by what others do
but by the action which I must face presently. And I don’t know why I
should use the word unexpected, unless because at the moment I was very
far from expecting that sort of perplexity. The correct thing to say
would be that something natural has happened.
Perfectly natural. Asceticism is the last thing that one could expect
from the Burdens. Alexander Burden, the father, was an exuberant
millionaire, in no vulgar way, of course; he was exuberant with
restraint, not for show, with a magnificence which was for private
satisfaction mainly. I am talking here of the ascetic temperament which
is based on renunciation, not of mere simplicity of tastes, which
is simply scorn for certain orders of sensations. There have been
millionaires who have lived simply. There have been millionaires who
have lived sordidly--but miserliness is one of the supreme forms of
sensualism.
Poor Burden had a magnificent physique. The reserved abilities of
generations of impoverished Burdens, starved for want of opportunities,
matured in his immense success--and all their starved appetites too.
But all the reserve quality of obscure Burdens has been exhausted in
him. There was nothing to come to his son--who at most could have been
a great match and is to-day looked upon in that light, I suppose, by
the relations of his future wife. I don’t know in what light that young
man looks upon himself. His time of trial is coming.
Yesterday at eight in the evening he came to see me. I thought at first
he wanted some money urgently. But very soon I reflected that he need
not have looked so embarrassed in that case. And presently I discovered
that it was not money that he was in need of. He looked as though
he had come, with that characteristic gravity of his--so unlike his
father--to seek absolution at my hands. But that intention he judged
more decorous, I suppose, to present to me as a case of conscience.
Of course it was the case of a girl--not his _fiancée_. At first I
thought he was in an ugly scrape. Nothing of the kind. The excellent
creature who had accepted his protection for some two years past--how
dull they must have seemed to her--was perhaps for that reason
perfectly resigned to forego that advantage. At the same time, she was
not too proud to accept a certain provision, compensation--whatever you
like to call it. I had never heard of anything so proper in my life. He
need not have explained the matter to me at all. But evidently he had
made up his mind to indulge in the luxury of a conscience.
To indulge that sort of conscience leads one almost as far as indulged
passion, only, I cannot help thinking, on a more sordid road. A luxury
snatched from the fire is in a way purified, but to find this one he
had gone apparently to the bottom of his heart. I don’t charge him with
a particularly odious degree of corruption, but I perceived clearly
that what he wanted really was to project the sinful effect of that
irregular connection--let us call it--into his regulated, reformed,
I may say lawfully blessed state--for the sake of retrospective
enjoyment, I suppose. This rather subtle, if unholy, appetite, he
was pleased to call the voice of his conscience. I listened to his
dialectic exercises till the great word that was sure to come out
sooner or later was pronounced.
“It seems,” he said, with every appearance of distress, “that from a
strictly moral point of view I ought to make a clean breast of it to
Annie.”
I listened to him--and, by Heaven, listening to him I _do_ feel
like the Godhead of whom I have already written to you. You know,
positively he said that at the very moment of his “fall” he had thought
of what _I_ should think of him. And I said:
“My good Edward, you are the most debauched person I have ever met.”
His face fell, his soft lips dropped right down into a horseshoe. He
had come to me as one of those bland optimists _would_ go to his deity.
He expected to be able to say: “I have sinned,” and to be able to hear
the Deity say: “That’s all right, your very frank confession does you
infinite credit.” His deity was, in fact, to find him some way out of
his moral hole. I was to find him some genial excuse; to make him feel
good in his excellent digestion once more. That was, absolutely, his
point of view, for at my brutal pronouncement he stuttered:
“But--but surely ... the faults of youth ... and surely there are
plenty of others?...”
I shook my head at him and panic was dropping out of his eyes: “Can’t
I marry Annie honourably?” he quavered. I took a sinister delight in
turning the knife inside him. I was going to let him go anyhow: the
sort of cat that I am always lets its mice go. (That mouse, by-the-bye,
has never again put in an appearance.)
“My dear fellow,” I said, “does not your delicacy let you see the hole
you put me into? It’s to my interest that you should not marry Miss
Averies and you ask me to advise you on the point.”
His mouth dropped open: positively he had never considered that when he
married I lost the confounded three hundred a year for administering
the Burden Trust. I sat and smiled at him to give him plenty of time to
let his mind agonize over his position.
“Oh, hang it,” he said.... And his silly eyes rolled round my room
looking for that Providence that he felt ought to intervene in his
behalf. When they rested on me again I said:
“There, go away. Of course it’s a fault of your youth. Of course
every man that’s fit to call himself a man has seduced a clergyman’s
daughter.”
He said:
“Oh, but there was not anything common about it.”
“No,” I answered, “you had an uncommonly good time of it with your
moral scruples. I envy you the capacity. You’ll have a duller one with
Miss Averies, you know.”
That was too much for him to take in, so he smoothed his hat.
“When you said I was ... debauched ... you were only laughing at me.
That was hardly fair. I’m tremendously in earnest.”
“You’re only play-acting compared with me,” I answered. He had the air
of buttoning his coat after putting a cheque into his breast pocket.
He had got, you see, the cheque he expected: my applause of his
successful seduction, my envy of his good fortune. That was what he had
come for--and he got it. He went away with it pretty bare-facedly, but
he stopped at the threshold to let drop:
“Of course if I had known you would be offended by my having recourse
to Annie’s solicitors for the settlement....”
I told him I was laughing at him about that too.
“It was the correct thing to do, you know,” were the words he shut the
door upon. The ass....
The phrase of his--that he had thought of me at the moment of his
fall--gives you at once the measure of his respect for me. But it gave
me much more. It gave me my cue: it put it into my head to say he was
debauched. And, indeed, that is debauchery. For it is the introduction
of one’s morals into the management of one’s appetites that makes
an indulgence of them debauchery. Had my friend Edward regarded his
seduction as the thing he so much desired me to tell him it was; a
thing of youth, high spirits--a thing we all do--had he so regarded
it I could not really have called it debauchery. But--and this is
the profound truth--the measure of debauchery is the amount of joy
we get from the indulgence of our appetites. And the measure of joy
we get is the amount of excitement: if it brings into play not only
all our physical but all our moral nature then we have the crucial
point beyond which no man can go. It isn’t, in fact, the professional
seducer, the artist in seduction that gets pleasure from the pursuit
of his avocation, any more than it is the professional musician who
gets thrills from the performance of music. You cannot figure to
yourself the violinist, as he fiddles the most complicated passage of
a concerto, when he really surmounts the difficulty by dint of using
all his knowledge and all his skill--you cannot imagine him thinking of
his adviser, his mother, his God and all the other things that my young
friend says he thought about. And it is the same with the professional
seducer. He may do all that he knows to bring his object about--but
that is not debauchery. It is, by comparison, a joyless occupation:
it is drinking when you are thirsty. Putting it in terms of the most
threadbare allegory--you cannot imagine that Adam got out of the fall
the pleasure that Edward Burden got out of his bite of the apple.
But Edward Burden, whilst he shilly-shallied with “Shall I?” and
“Sha’n’t I?” could deliciously introduce into the matter _all_ his
human relationships. He could think of me, of his mother, of the fact
that potentially he was casting to the winds the very cause for his
existence. For assuredly, if Edward Burden have a cause for existence
it is that he should not, morally or physically, do anything that would
unfit him to make a good marriage. So he had, along with what physical
pleasure there might be, the immense excitement of staking his all
along with the tremendous elation of the debate within himself that
went before. For he was actually staking his all upon the chance that
he could both take what he desired and afterwards reconcile it with
his conscience to make a good match. Well, he has staked and won. That
is the true debauchery. That, in a sense, is the compensating joy that
Puritanism gets.
V
I have just come in. Again you will not guess from where. From choosing
a motor-car with Burden and his _fiancée_. It seems incredible that
I should be called upon to preside at these preparations for my own
execution. I looked at hundreds of these shiny engines, with the
monstrously inflated white wheels, and gave a half-amused--but I can
assure you a half-interested--attention to my own case. For one of
these will one day--and soon now--be arrested in a long rush, by my
extinction. In it there will be seated the two young people who went
with me through the garages. They will sit in some sort of cushioned
ease--the cushions will be green, or red, or blue in shiny leather.
I think, however, that they will not be green--because Miss Averies
let slip to me, in a little flutter of shy confidence, the words: “Oh,
don’t let’s have green, because it’s an unlucky colour.” Edward Burden,
of course, suppressed her with a hurried whisper as if, in thus giving
herself away to me, she must be committing a sin against the house of
Burden.
That, naturally, is the Burden tradition: a Burden’s wife must possess
frailties: but she must feign perfection even to a trusted adviser of
the family. She must not confess to superstitions. It was amusing, the
small incident, because it was the very first attempt that little Miss
Averies has ever made to get near me. God knows what Edward may have
made me appear to her: but I fancy that, whatever Edward may have said,
she had pierced through that particular veil: she realizes, with her
intuition, that I am dangerous. She is alarmed and possibly fascinated
because she feels that I am not “straight”--that I might, in fact, be
a woman or a poet. Burden, of course, has never got beyond seeing that
I dress better than he does and choose a dinner better than his uncle
Darlington.
I came, of course, out of the motor-car ordeal with flying colours--on
these lines. I lived, in fact, up to my character for being orthodox in
the matter of comfort. I even suggested two little mirrors, like those
which were so comforting to us all when we sat in hansom cabs. That
struck Burden as being the height of ingenuity--and I know it proved to
Miss Averies, most finally, that I am dangerous, since no woman ever
looks in those little mirrors without some small motive of coquetry. It
was just after that that she said to me:
“Don’t you think that the little measures on the tops of the new
canisters are extravagant for China tea?”
That, of course, admitted me to the peculiar intimacy that women allow
to other women, or to poets, or to dangerous men. Edward, I know,
dislikes the drinking of China tea because it is against the principle
of supporting the British flag. But Miss Averies in her unequal battle
with this youth of the classical features slightly vulgarized, called
me in to show a sign of sympathy--to give at least the flicker of the
other side--of the woman, the poet, or the pessimist among men. She
asked me, in fact, not to take up the cudgels to the extent of saying
that China tea is the thing to drink--that would have been treason to
Edward--but she desired that her instinct should be acknowledged to the
extent of saying that the measures of canisters should be contrived to
suit the one kind of tea as well as the other. In his blind sort of
way Edward caught the challenge in the remark and his straight brows
lowered a very little.
“If you don’t have more than three pounds of China tea in the house in
a year it won’t matter about the measures,” he said. “We never use more
at Shackleton.”
“But it makes the tea too strong, Edward.”
“Then you need not fill the measure,” he answered.
“Oh, I wish,” she said to me, “that you’d tell Edward not to make me
make tea at all. I dread it. The servants do it so much better.”
“So,” I asked, “Edward has arranged everything down to the last detail?”
Edward looked to me for approval and applause.
“You see, Annie has had so little experience, and I’ve had to look
after my mother’s house for years.” His air said: “Yes! You’ll see our
establishment will be run on the very best lines! Don’t you admire the
way I’m taming her already?”
I gave him, of course, a significant glance. Heaven knows why: for it
is absolutely true that I am tired of appearing reliable--to Edward
Burden or any one else in the world. What I want to do is simply to
say to Edward Burden: “No, I don’t at all admire your dragging down a
little bundle of ideals and sentiments to your own fatted calf’s level.”
I suppose I have in me something of the poet. I can imagine that if
I had to love or to marry this little Averies girl I should try to
find out what was her tiny vanity and I should minister to it. In some
way I should discover from her that she considered herself charming,
or discreet, or tasteful, or frivolous, beyond all her fellows.
And, having discovered it, I should bend all my energies to giving
her opportunities for displaying her charm, her discreetness or her
coquetry. With a woman of larger and finer mould--with you!--I should
no doubt bring into play my own idealism. I should invest her with the
attributes that I consider the most desirable in the world. But in
either case I cannot figure myself dragging her down to my own social
or material necessities.
That is what Edward Burden is doing for little Miss Averies. I don’t
mean to say that he does not idealize her--but he sees her transfigured
as the dispenser of his special brand of tea or the mother of the sort
of child that he was. And that seems to me a very valid reason why
women, if they were wise, should trust their fortunes cold-bloodedly
and of set reason to the class of dangerous men that now allure them
and that they flee from.
They flee from them, I am convinced, because they fear for their
worldly material fortunes. They fear, that is to say, that the poet is
not a stable man of business: they recognise that he is a gambler--and
it seems to them that it is folly to trust to a gambler for life-long
protection. In that they are perhaps right. But I think that no woman
doubts her power to retain a man’s affection--so that it is not to
the reputation for matrimonial instability that the poet owes his
disfavour. A woman lives, in short, to play with this particular fire,
since to herself she says: “Here is a man who has broken the hearts
of many women. I will essay the adventure of taming him.” And, if she
considers the adventure a dangerous one, that renders the contest only
the more alluring, since at heart every woman, like every poet, is a
gambler. In that perhaps she is right.
But it seems to me that women make a great mistake in the value of the
stakes they are ready to pay in order to enter this game. They will
stake, that is to say, their relatively great coin--their sentimental
lives; but they hoard with closed fingers the threepenny bit which is
merely the material future.
They prefer, that is to say, to be rendered the mere presiding geniuses
of well-loaded boards. It is better to be a lady--which you will
remember philologically means a “loaf-cutter”--than to be an Ideal.
And in this they are obviously wrong. If a woman can achieve the
obvious miracle of making a dangerous man stable in his affections she
may well be confident that she can persuade him to turn his serious
attention to the task of keeping a roof over her head. Certainly,
I know, if I were a woman which of the two types of men I would
choose. Upon the lowest basis it is better for all purposes of human
contracts to be married to a good liar than to a bad one. For a lie
is a figurative truth--and it is the poet who is the master of these
illusions. Even in the matter of marital relations it is probable
that the poet is as faithful as the Edward Burdens of this world--only
the Edward Burdens are more skilful at concealing from the rest of
the world their pleasant vices. I doubt whether they are as skilful
at concealing them from the woman concerned--from the woman, with her
intuition, her power to seize fine shades of coolness and her awakened
self-interest. Imagine the wife of Edward Burden saying to him, “You
have deceived me!” Imagine then the excellent youth, crimsoning,
stuttering. He has been taught all his life that truth must prevail
though the skies fall--and he stammers: “Yes: I have betrayed you.” And
that is tragedy, though in the psychological sense--and that is the
important one--Edward Burden may have been as faithful as the ravens,
who live for fifteen decades with the same mate. He will, in short,
blunder into a tragic, false position. And he will make the tragedy
only the more tragic in that all the intellectual powers he may possess
will be in the direction of perpetuating the dismal position. He will
not be able to argue that he has not been unfaithful--but he will be
able to find a hundred arguments for the miserable woman prolonging
her life with him. Position, money, the interests of the children, the
feelings of her family and of his--all these considerations will make
him eloquent to urge her to prolong her misery. And probably she will
prolong it.
This, of course, is due to the excellent Edward’s lack of an
instinctive sympathy. The poet, with a truer vision, will in the same
case, be able to face his Miss Averies’ saying: “You have deceived
me!” with a different assurance. Supposing the deflection to have been
of the momentary kind he will be able to deny with a good conscience
since he will be aware of himself and his feelings. He will at least
be able to put the case in its just light. Or, if the deflection be
really temperamental, really permanent, he will be unable--it being
his business to look at the deeper verities--to lie himself out of the
matter. He will break, strictly and sharply. Or, if he do not, it may
be taken as a sign that his Miss Averies is still of value to him--that
she, in fact, is still the woman that it is his desire to have for his
companion. This is true, of course, only in the large sense, since
obviously there are poets whose reverence for position, the interest of
children or the feelings of their friends and relatives, may outweigh
their hatred of a false position. These, however, are poets in the
sense that they write verse: I am speaking of those who live the
poet’s life; to such, a false position is too intolerable to be long
maintained.
But this again is only one of innumerable side-issues: let me return
to my main contention that a dinner of herbs with a dangerous man is
better than having to consume the flesh of stalled oxen with Edward
Burden. Perhaps that is only a way of saying that you would have done
better to entrust yourself to me than to---- (But no, your husband
is a better man than Edward Burden. He has at least had the courage
to revert to his passion. I went this afternoon to your chemists and
formally notified them that if they supplied him with more than the
exactly prescribed quantity of that stuff, I, as holding your power of
attorney, should do all that the law allows me to do against them.)
Even to the dullest of men, marrying is for the most part an
imaginative act. I mean marrying as a step in life sanctioned by law,
custom and that general consent of mankind which is the hall-mark of
every irrational institution. By irrational I do not mean wrong or
stupid. Marriage is august by the magnitude of the issues it involves,
balancing peace and strife on the fine point of a natural impulse
refined by the need of a tangible ideal. I am not speaking here of
mere domestic peace or strife which for most people that count are a
question of manners and a mode of life. And I am thinking of the peace
mostly--the peace of the soul which yearns for some sort of certitude
in this earth, the peace of the heart which yearns for conquest, the
peace of the senses that dreads deception, the peace of the imaginative
faculty which in its restless quest of a high place of rest is spurred
on by these great desires and that great fear.
And even Edward Burden’s imagination is moved by these very desires and
that very fear--or else he would not have dreamt of marrying. I repeat,
marriage is an imaginative institution. It’s true that his imagination
is a poor thing but it is genuine nevertheless. The faculty of which
I speak is of one kind in all of us. Not to every one is given that
depth of feeling, that faculty of absolute trust which _will not_ be
deceived, and the exulting masterfulness of the senses which are the
mark of a fearless lover. Fearless lovers are rare, if obstinate, and
sensual fools are countless as grains of sand by the seashore. I can
imagine that correct young man perfectly capable of setting himself
deliberately to worry a distracted girl into surrender.
VI
I don’t know why, to-night in particular, the fact that I am a dead man
occurs to me very insistently. I had forgotten this for two whole days.
If any one very dear to you has ever been _in extremis_ at a distance
and you have journeyed to be at the last bedside, you will know how
possible this is--how for hours at a time the mind will go wandering
away from the main fact that is drawing you onwards, till suddenly it
comes back: someone is dying at a distance. And I suppose one’s I is
the nearest friend that one has--and my I is dying at a distance. At
the end of a certain number of days is the deathbed towards which I am
hurrying--it is a fact which I cannot grasp. But one aspect grows more
clear to me every time I return to this subject.
You remember that, when we have discussed suicide, we have agreed that
to the man of action death is a solution: to the man of thoughts it
is none. For the man of action expresses himself in action, and death
is the negation of action: the man of thought sees the world only in
thoughts, and over thought death exercises no solution of continuity.
If one dies one’s actions cease, one’s problem continues. For that
reason it is only in so far as I am a man of action that I shall be
dying. You understand what I mean--for I do not mean that it is my
actions that have killed me. It is simply because I have taken refuge
from my thoughts in action, and because after April 5 that refuge will
be closed to me, that I take refuge in a final action which, properly
speaking, is neither action nor refuge.
And perhaps I am no man of action at all, since the action in which I
have taken refuge is properly speaking no action at all, but merely
the expression of a frame of mind. I have gambled, that is to say I
have not speculated. For the speculator acts for gain: the gambler in
order to interest himself. I have gambled--to escape from you: I have
tried to escape from my thoughts of you into divining the undivinable
future. For that is what gambling is. You try for a rise: you try for a
fall--and the rise or the fall may depend on the momentary madness of a
dozen men who declare a war, or upon the rain from heaven which causes
so many more stalks of wheat to arise upon so many million square
inches of earth. The point is that you make yourself dependent upon
caprice--upon the caprice of the weather or upon the movement in the
minds of men more insane than yourself.
To-day I have entered upon what is the biggest gamble of my whole
life. Certain men who believe in me--they are not Edward Burdens,
nevertheless they believe in me--have proposed to me to form a corner
in a certain article which is indispensable to the daily life of the
City. I do not tell you what it is because you will assuredly witness
the effects of this inspiration.
You will say that, when this is accomplished, it will be utterly
uninteresting. And that is literally true: when it is done it will
be uninteresting. But in the multiplicity of things that will have
to be done before the whole thing is done--in the waiting for things
to take effect, in the failures perhaps more than in the successes,
since the failures will imply new devising--in all the meticulous
thought-readings that will be necessary, the interest will lie, and in
the men with whom one is brought into contact, the men with whom one
struggles, the men whom one must bribe or trick.
And you will say: How can I who am to die in fourteen days embark upon
an enterprise that will last many months or many years? That, I think,
is very simple.
It is my protest against being called a man of action, the
misconception that I have had to resent all my life. And this is a
thought: not an action: a thought made up of an almost infinite number
of erring calculations. You have probably forgotten that I have founded
two towns, upon the south coast: originated four railways in tropical
climates and one in the west of England: and opened up heaven knows how
many mines of one kind or another--and upon my soul I had forgotten
these things too until I began to cast about in my mind. And now I go
to my death unmindful of these glories in so far as they are concrete.
In that sense my death is utter: it is a solution. But, in so far as
they are my refuges from you they remain problems to which, if my
ghost is to escape you, I must return again and again.
In dying I surrender to you and thus, for the inner self of myself,
death is no ending but the commencement of who knows what tortures. It
is only in the latent hope that death is the negation of consciousness
that I shall take my life. For death, though it can very certainly end
no problem, may at least make us unconscious of how, eventually, the
problem solves itself. That, you see, is really the crux of the whole
thing--that is why the man of action will take refuge in death: the
man of thought, never. But I, I am the man of neither the one nor the
other: I am the man of love, which partakes of action and of thought,
but which is neither.
The lover is, perhaps, the eternal doubter--simply because there is no
certain panacea for love. Travel may cure it--but travel may cause to
arise homesickness, which of all forms of love is the most terrible. To
mix with many other men may cure it--but again, to the man who really
loves, it may be a cause for still more terrible unrest, since seeing
other men and women may set one always comparing the beloved object
with the same thing. And, indeed, the form that it takes with me--for
with me love takes the form of a desire to discuss--the form which
it takes with me renders each thing that I see, each man with whom I
speak, the more torturing, since always I desire to adjust my thoughts
of them by your thoughts. I went down the other day--before I had
begun to write these letters to you and before I knew death impended
so nearly over me--to the sea at P--. I was trying to get rid of you.
I sat in the moonlight and saw the smacks come home, visible for a
minute in the track of the moon and then no more than their lights in
the darkness. The fishermen talked of death by drowning mostly: the
passage of the boats across that trail of light suggested reflections,
no doubt trite. But, without you to set my thoughts by, I could get no
more forward: I went round and round in a ring from the corpses fished
up in the nets to the track of the moon. And since walking up and down
on the parade brought me no nearer to you, I did not even care to move:
I neither meditated nor walked, neither thought nor acted. And that is
real torture.
It was the next morning that I heard that young Burden desired that his
_fiancée’s_ solicitors should scrutinise the accounts of the Burden
Trust--and Death loomed up before me.
You will ask: why Death? Why not some alternative? Flight or prison?
Well: prison would be an unendurable travelling through Time, flight,
an equally unendurable travelling through Time with Space added. Both
these things are familiar: Death alone, in spite of all the experience
that humanity has had of Death, is the utterly unfamiliar. For a
gambler it is a _coup_ alluring beyond belief--as we know neither what
we stake nor what we stand to win. I, personally, stand to win a great
deal, since Life holds nothing for me and I stake only my life--and
what I seek is only forgetfulness of you, or some sort of eventual and
incomprehensible union with you. For the union with you that I seek is
a queer sort of thing; hardly at all, I think, a union of the body, but
a sort of consciousness of our thoughts proceeding onwards together.
That we may find in the unending Afterwards. Or we may find the Herb
Oblivion.
Either of these things I desire. For, in so far as we can dogmatise
about Death we may lay it down that Death is the negation of Action
but is powerless against Thought. I do not desire Action: and at the
same time I do not fear Thought. For it is not my thoughts of you that
I fear: left alone with them I can say: “What is she more than any
other material object?” It is my feelings that wear out my brain--my
feelings that make me know that you are more than every material object
living or still, and more than every faith dead or surviving. For
feeling is neither Thought nor Action: it is the very stuff of Life
itself. And, if Death be the negation of Life it may well be the end of
consciousness.
The worst that Death can do to me is to deliver me up for ever to
unsatisfied longings for you. Well, that is all that Life has done,
that is all that Life can do, for me.
But Life can do so much more that is worse. Believe me when I say that
I dread imprisonment--and believe me when I say that I do not dread
disgrace. For you know very well that it is true when I say that I
positively chuckle at the thought of the shock my fall would give
to all these unawakened intelligences of this world. You know how I
despise Edward Burden for trusting in me; you know how I have always
despised other people who trusted in established reputations. I don’t
mean to say that I should not have liked to keep the game up, certainly
I should, since in gambling it is more desirable to win than to lose.
And it is more amusing to fool fools than to give them eye-openers. But
I think that, in gambling, it is only a shade less desirable, _per se_,
to lose than to win. The main point is the sensation of either; and the
only valid objection to losing is that, if one loses too often one has
at last no longer the wherewithal to gamble. Similarly, to give people
eye-openers is, _per se_, nearly as desirable as to fool them. It is
not quite so desirable, since the game itself _is_ the fooling. But
the great objection in _my_ case is that the eye-opener would once and
for all put an end to the chance of my ever fooling them again. That,
however, is a very small matter and what I dread is not that. If people
no longer trusted in me I could no doubt still find an outlet for my
energies with those who sought to take advantage of my abilities,
trusting to themselves to wrest from me a sufficient share of the
plunder that they so ardently desire, that I so really have no use for.
No, I seek in Death a refuge from exposure not because exposure
would cripple my energies: it would probably help them: and not
because exposure would mean disgrace; I should probably find ironical
satisfaction in it--but simply because it would mean imprisonment.
That I dread beyond belief: I clench my fingers when, in conversation,
I hear the words: “A long sentence.” For that would mean my being
delivered up for a long time--for ever--to you. I write “for ever”
advisedly and after reflection, since a long subjection, without
relief, to that strain would leave upon my brain a wound that must
prove ineffaceable. For to be alone and to think--those are my terrors.
One reads that men who have been condemned for long years to solitary
imprisonment go mad. But I think that even that sad gift from
Omnipotent Fate would not be mine. As I figure the world to myself,
Fate is terrible only to those who surrender to her. If I surrendered,
to the extent of living to go to prison, then assuredly the future must
be uniformly heavy, uniformly doomed, in my eyes. For I would as soon
be mad as anything else I can think of. But I should not go mad. Men go
mad because of the opportunities they miss: because the world changes
outside their prison walls, or because their children starve. But I
have no opportunities to miss or take: the changes of the world to me
are nothing, and there is no soul between whom and starvation I could
stand.
Whilst I am about making this final disposition of my properties--let
me tell you finally what I have done in regard to your husband himself.
It is a fact--and this I have been keeping up my sleeve as a final
surprise for you--that he is almost cured....
But I have just received an incomprehensible note from Edward Burden.
He asks me for some particulars as to his confounded estate and whether
I can lend him some thousands of pounds at short notice. Heaven knows
what new scrape this is that he’s in. Of course this may precipitate my
crash. But whatever happens, I shall find time to write my final words
to you--and nothing else really matters....
VII
I haven’t yet discovered what Edward Burden is doing. I have found him
a good round sum upon mortgage--the irony of the position being that
the money is actually his whilst the mortgage does not actually exist.
He says that what he is doing with the money will please me. I suppose
that means that he’s embarking upon some sort of speculation which he
imagines that I would favour. It is odd that he should think that I
find gratification in his imitating myself.
But why should I concern myself with this thing at all? Nothing in the
world can ever please or displease me any more. For I have taken my
resolve: this is my last night upon earth. When I lay down this pen
again, I shall never take up any pen more. For I have said all that I
can say to you. I am utterly tired out. To-night I shall make up into
a parcel all these letters--I must sit through the night because it is
only to-morrow morning that I shall be able to register the parcel to
you--and registering it will be my last act upon the habitable globe.
For biting through the glass in the ring will be not an action, but the
commencement of a new train of thought. Or perhaps only my final action
will come to an end when you read these words in Rome. Or will that be
only thought--the part of me that lives--pleading to you to give your
thoughts for company. I feel too tired to think the matter out!
Let me, then, finish with this earth: I told you, when I finished
writing last night, that Robert is almost cured. I would not have
told you this for the sake of arrogating to myself the position of a
saviour. But I imagine that you would like the cure to go on and, in
the case of some accident after my death, it might go all to pieces
once more. Quite simply then: I have been doing two things. In the
first place I have persuaded your chemists to reduce very gradually the
strength of chloral, so that the bottles contain nearly half water. And
Robert perceives no difference. Now of course it is very important that
he shall not know of the trick that is being so beneficently played on
him--so that, in case he should go away or for one reason or another
change his chemists, it must be carefully seen to that instead of pure
chloral he obtains the exactly diluted mixture. In this way he may be
brought gradually to drinking almost pure water.
But that alone would hardly be satisfactory: a comparatively
involuntary cure is of little value in comparison with an effort of the
will. You may, conceivably, expel nature with a fork, but nothing but
a passion will expel a passion. The only point to be proved is whether
there exists in your husband any other passion for the sake of which he
might abandon his passion for the clearness of vision which he always
says his chloral gives him. He has not, of course, the incentives usual
to men: you cannot, in fact, “get” him along ordinary lines.... But
apart from his physical craving for the drug he _has_ that passion
for clearness of intellect that he says the drug gives him--and it is
through that, that at last, I have managed to hit his pride.
For I have put it to him very strongly that one view of life is just
as good as another--no better, no worse, but just the same. And I have
put it to him that his use of chloral simply limits for him the number
of views of life that he might conceivably have. And, when you come to
think of all the rhapsodies of his that we have listened to, I think
that that piece of special pleading is sufficiently justified. I do
indeed honestly believe that, for what it is worth, he is on the road
to salvation. He means to make a struggle--to attempt the great feat of
once more seeing life with the eyes that Fate originally gave to him.
This is my legacy to _you_: if you ask me why I have presented you
with this man’s new identity--since it _will_ mean a new identity--I
must answer that I simply don’t know. Why have we kept him alive all
these years? I have done it no doubt because I had nothing to give
you. But you? If you have loved me you must have wished him--I won’t
say dead--but no more there. Yet you have tried too--and I suppose
this answer to the riddle is simply the answer to the whole riddle
of our life. We have tried to play a supremely difficult game simply
because it sanctified our love. For, after all, sanctification arises
from difficulties. Well, we have made our way very strait and we have
so narrowed the door of entrance that it has vanished altogether. We
have never had _any_ hope of a solution that could have satisfied us.
If we had cared to break the rules of the game, I suppose we could
have done it easily enough--and we could have done it the more easily
since neither you nor I ever subscribed to those rules. If we have
not it was, I think, simply because we sought the difficulty which
sanctifies.... Has it been a very imbecile proceeding? I am most
uncertain. For it is not a thing to be very proud of--to be able to say
that for a whole lifetime, one has abstained from that which one most
desired. On the other hand, we have won a curious and difficult game.
Well--there it is--and there is your legacy. I do not think that there
is anything else for me to write about. You will see that, in my will,
I have left everything I possess to--Edward Burden. This is not because
I wish to make him reparation, and it’s not because I wish to avoid
scandal: it is simply because it may show him--one very simple thing.
It will show him how very nearly I might have made things come right.
I have been balancing my accounts very carefully, and I find that,
reckoning things reasonably against myself, Edward Burden will have a
five-pound note with which to buy himself a mourning-ring.
The being forced to attend to my accounts will make him gasp a
good deal. It will certainly shake his belief in all accepted
reputations--for he will look on the faces of many men each “as
solid as the Bank of England,” and he will think: “I wonder if you
are like----?” His whole world will crumble--not because I have been
dishonest, since he is coldblooded enough to believe that all men
may be dishonest. But he will tremble because I have been able to
be so wildly dishonest and yet to be so successfully respectable.
He won’t even dare to “expose” me, since, if he did that, half of
the shares which he will inherit from me would suffer an eclipse of
disreputability, would tumble to nothingness in value--and would damage
his poor pocket. He will have to have my estate set down at a high
figure; he will have to be congratulated on his fortunate inheritance,
and he will have, sedulously, to compound my felony.
You will wonder how I can be capable of this final cruelty--the most
cruel thing that, perhaps, ever one man did to another. I will tell
you why it is: it is because I hate all the Edward Burdens of the
world--because, being the eternal Haves of the world, they have made
their idiotic rules of the game. And you and I suffer: you and I, the
eternal Have Nots. And we suffer, not because their rules bind us, but
because, being the finer spirits, we are forced to set ourselves rules
that are still more strict in order that, in all things, we may be the
truly gallant.
But why do I write: “You will wonder how I can be capable of this.” You
will have understood--you who understand everything.
_Eight in the morning._--Well: now we part. I am going to register the
parcel containing all these letters to you. We part: and it is as if
you were dropping back--the lost Eurydice of the world--into an utter
blackness. For, in a minute, you will be no more than part of my past.
Well then: good-night.
VIII
You will have got the telegram I sent you long before you got the
parcel of letters: you will have got the note I wrote you by the same
post as the letters themselves. If I have taken these three days to
myself before again writing to you it has been because I have needed to
recover my power of thinking. Now, in a way, I have recovered it--and
it is only fair to say that I have devoted all my thoughts to how the
new situation affects you--and you in your relations to me.
It places me in your hands--let that be written first and foremost. You
have to decree my life or my death. For I take it that now we can never
get back again into our old position: I have spoken, you have heard me
speak. The singular unity, the silence of our old life is done with
for good. There is perhaps no reason why this should not be so: silence
is no necessary part of our relationship. But it has seemed to make a
rather exquisite bond between us.
It must, if I am to continue to live--it must be replaced by some other
bond. In our silence we have seemed to speak in all sorts of strange
ways: we have perhaps read each other’s thoughts. I have seen words
form themselves upon your lips. But now you must--there is no way out
of it--you _must_ write to me. You must write to me fully: all your
thoughts. You must, as I have done, find the means of speech--or I can
no longer live....
I am reprieved!
I don’t know if, in my note to you, I explained exactly what had
happened. It was in this way. I was anxious to be done with my world
very early and, as soon as eight o’clock struck, I set out for the
post-office at the corner to register that parcel of letters for you.
Till the task was accomplished--the last I was to perform on earth--I
noticed nothing: I was simply in a hurry. But, having given the little
fagot into the hands of a sleepy girl, I said to myself suddenly:
“Now I _am_ dead!” I began suddenly as they say of young children, to
“notice.” A weight that I had never felt before seemed to fall away
from me. I noticed, precisely, that the girl clerk was sleepy, that, as
she reached up one hand to take the parcel over the brass caging, she
placed the other over her mouth to hide a yawn.
And out on the pavement it was most curious what had befallen the
world. It had lost all interest: but it had become fascinating, vivid.
I had not, you see, any senses left, but my eyesight and hearing.
Vivid: that is the word. I watched a newsboy throw his papers down an
area, and it appeared wonderfully interesting to discover that _that_
was how one’s papers got into the house. I watched a milkman go up
some doorsteps to put a can of milk beside a boot-scraper and I was
wonderfully interested to see a black cat follow him. They were the
clearest moments I have ever spent upon the earth--those when I was
dead. They were so clear because nothing else weighed on my attention
but just those little things. It was an extraordinary, a luxuriant
feeling. That, I imagine, must have been how Adam and Eve felt before
they had eaten of the fruit of knowledge.
Supposing I had tacitly arranged with myself that I would die in the
street, I think I should still have walked home simply to dally longer
with that delightful feeling of sheer curiosity. For it was sheer
curiosity to see how this world, which I had never looked at, really
performed before utterly unbiassed eyes.
That was why, when I got home, I sent away the messenger that brought
to me Edward Burden’s letter; there was to be no answer. Whatever
Burden’s query might be I was not going to commit myself to any other
act. My last was that of sending off the parcel to you.
My opening Burden’s letter when the messenger had gone was simply a
part of my general curiosity. I wanted to see how a Burden letter would
look when it no longer had any bearings at all for me. It was as if I
were going to read a letter from that dear Edward to a man I did not
know upon a subject of which I had never heard.
And then I was reprieved!
The good Edward, imagining that I was seriously hurt at his
having proposed to allow his wife’s solicitors to superintend my
stewardship--the good Edward in his concern had positively insisted
that all the deeds should be returned to me absolutely unchecked. He
said that he had had a hard fight for it and that the few thousands he
had borrowed from me had represented his settlement, which he had thus
paid in specie....
It chimed in wonderfully with his character, when I come to think of
it. Of course he was disciplining Miss Averies’ representatives just as
he had disciplined herself in the matter of China tea of which I have
written to you. And he had imagined that I was seriously hurt! Can you
figure to yourself such an imbecile?
But, if you permit me to continue to live, you will be saving the poor
fool from the great shock I had prepared for him--the avalanche of
discovery, the earthquake of uncertainty. For he says in that so kind
way of his that, having thus shown his entire confidence in me--in
the fact, that is, that Providence is on the side of all Burdens--he
will choose a time in the future, convenient for me, when he will go
thoroughly with me into his accounts. And inasmuch as his wedding-tour
will take him all round the world I have at least a year in which
to set things straight. And of course I can put off his scrutiny
indefinitely or deceive him for ever.
I did not think all these things at once. In fact, when I had read
his letter, so strong within me was the feeling that it was only a
mental phenomenon, a thing that had no relation with me--the feeling of
finality was so strong upon me that I actually found myself sitting in
that chair before I realized what had occurred.
What had occurred was that I had become utterly and for good your
property.
In that sense only am I reprieved. As far as Edward Burden is concerned
I am entirely saved. I stand before you and ask you to turn your thumb
up or down. For, having spoken as I have to you, I have given you a
right over me. Now that the pressing necessity for my death is over I
have to ask you whether I shall plunge into new adventures that will
lead me to death or whether I am to find some medium in which we may
lead a life of our own, in some way together. I was about to take my
life to avoid prison: now prison is no more a part of my scheme of
existence. But I must now have some means of working towards you or
I must run some new and wild risk to push you out of my thoughts. I
don’t, as you know, ask you to be my secret mistress, I don’t ask you
to elope with me. But I say that you _must_ belong to me as much in
thought as I have, in this parcel of letters, been revealed and given
over to you. Otherwise, I must once more gamble--and having tasted of
gambling in the shadow of death, I must gamble for ever in that way. I
must, I mean, feel that I am coming towards you or committing crimes
that I may forget you.
My dear, I am a very tired man. If you know what it was to long for
you as I have longed for you all these years, you would wonder that I
did not, sitting in that chair, put the ring up to my teeth, in spite
of Burden’s letter, and end it. I have an irresistible longing for
rest--or perhaps it is only your support. To think that I must face
for ever--or for as long as it lasts--this troublesome excitement
of avoiding thoughts of you--that was almost unbearable. I resisted
because I had written these letters to you. I love you and I know you
love me--yet without them I would have inflicted upon you the wound of
my death. Having written them I cannot face the cruelty to you. I mean
that, if I had died without your knowing why, it would have been only
a death grievous to you--still it is the duty of humanity and of you
with humanity to bear and to forget deaths. But now that you must know,
I could not face the cruelty of filling you with the pain of unmerited
remorse. For I know that you would have felt remorse, and it would have
been unmerited since I gave you no chance or any time to stretch out
your hands to me. Now I give it you and wait for your verdict.
For the definite alternatives are these: I will put Burden’s estate
absolutely clear within the year and work out, in order to make safe
money, the new and comparatively sober scheme of which I have written
to you: that I will do if you will consent to be mine to the extent of
sharing our thoughts alone. Or, if you will not, I will continue to
gamble more wildly than ever with the Burden money. And that in the
end means death and a refuge from you.
So then, I stand reprieved--and the final verdict is in your hands.
APPENDIX
A Note on “Romance”
Writing to his Collaborator in a letter published in the _Transatlantic
Review_ for January, 1924, Mr. Conrad makes the following ascription of
passages in the work above named:
First Part, yours; Second Part, mainly yours, with a little by me on
points of seamanship and suchlike small matters; Third Part, about 60
percent mine with important touches by you; Fourth Part, mine with
here and there an important sentence by you; Fifth Part practically
all yours, including the famous sentence at which we both exclaimed:
“This is Genius,” (Do you remember what it is?) with perhaps half a
dozen lines by me....
Mr. Conrad’s recollections--except for the generosity of his two
“importants”--tally well enough with those of his Collaborator if
conception alone is concerned. When it comes however to the writing the
truth is that Parts One, Two, Three and Five are a singular mosaic of
passages written alternately by one or other of the collaborators. The
matchless Fourth Part is both in conception and writing entirely the
work of Mr. Conrad.
Below will be found the analysis of “Romance.” Any student of
literature with an ear for prose will hardly need these underlinings,
for Mr. Conrad’s definitenesses of statement stand out amongst his
Collaborator’s more English keyings down so that when one of his half
sentences bursts into the no doubt suaver prose of the other it is as
if the page comes to life and speaks.
Every collaboration is a contest of temperaments if it be at all
thoroughly carried out; and this collaboration was carried out so
thoroughly that, even when the book came to the proof stage, the
original publishers, half way through the printing, sent the MS. back
to the authors. They were still making innumerable corrections.
Originally conceived, in the attempt to convey realistically a real
story of adventure recorded in a State Trial, as the thin tale of a
very old man--and this before the question of collaboration arose--the
book contains of its first version only the two opening sentences--and
the single other sentence: “And, looking back, we see Romance!” In
between lay to say the least of it almost unbelievable labours--a
contest of attrition lasting over several years. For insofar as this
collaboration was a contest of wills it was a very friendly one; yet
it was the continual attempt on the part of the one collaborator to
key up and of the other to key down. And so exhausting was the contest
that in the course of the years two definite breakdowns occurred. In
the first the robuster writer let the book called “The Inheritors” just
go and it remains a monument as it were of silverpoint, delicacies
and allusiveness. The second breakdown is recorded in the Fourth Part
of “Romance,” sketches for which were written over and over--and then
over--again, until the weaker brother, in absolute exhaustion, in
turn let it go at that. So, to mark those breaking points, you have
the silverpoint of “The Inheritors” set against the, let us say,
oil-painting of this matchless Fourth Part.
“The Nature of a Crime” should have become a novel treating of the
eternal subject of the undetected criminal--a theme which every writer
for once or twice in his life at least contemplates in a world in which
the fortunate are so very often the merely not found out. The courage
of few writers carries them even beyond the contemplation; in this case
the joint courages of the authors went as far as what you may read.
The passage from the Fifth Part of “Romance” printed below contains the
“famous sentence” as to which Mr. Conrad writes: “We both exclaimed:
‘This is genius’.”
Joseph Conrad in Italics; F. M. Hueffer in Roman type.
_Part One: Chapter One._
_To yesterday and to-day I say my polite “vaya usted con dios.”
What are these days to me?_ But that far-off day of my romance,
when from between _the blue and white bales in Don Ramon’s darkened
storeroom, at Kingston_, I saw the door open before the figure of _an
old man with the tired, long, white face_, that day I am not likely
to forget. I remember _the chilly smell of the typical West Indian
store_, the indescribable _smell of damp gloom, of locos, of pimento,
of olive oil, of new sugar, of new rum; the glassy double sheen of
Ramon’s great spectacles, the piercing eyes in the mahogany face_,
while the tap, tap, tap of a cane on the flags went on behind the
inner door; _the click of the latch; the stream of light_. The door,
petulantly thrust inwards, struck against some barrels. I remember
the rattling of the bolts on that door, and _the tall figure_ that
appeared there, _snuff-box in hand. In that land of white clothes
that precise, ancient, Castilian in black was something to remember.
The black cane that had made the tap, tap, tap dangled by a silken
cord from the hand whose delicate blue-veined, wrinkled wrist ran
back into a foam of lawn ruffles._ The other hand paused in the act
of conveying a pinch of snuff to the nostrils of the _hooked nose
that had, on the skin stretched tight over the bridge, the polish of
old ivory; the elbow pressing the black cocked hat against the side;
the legs, one bent, the other bowing a little back_--this was the
attitude of Seraphina’s father.
Having imperiously thrust the door of the inner room open, he
remained immovable, with no intention of entering, and called in
a harsh, aged voice: “Señor Ramon! Señor Ramon!” and then twice:
“Seraphina--Seraphina!” turning his head back.
_Then for the first time I saw Seraphina, looking over her father’s
shoulder._ I remember her face of that day; _her eyes were grey--the
grey of black, not of blue. For a moment they looked me straight
in the face, reflectively, unconcerned, and then travelled to the
spectacles of old Ramon._
This glance--remember I was young on that day--had been enough to set
me wondering what they were thinking of me; what they could have seen
of me.
“But there he is your Señor Ramon,” she said to her father, _as if
she were chiding him for a petulance in calling_; “your sight is not
very good, my poor little father--there he is, your Ramon.”
_The warm reflection of the light behind her, gilding the curve of
her face from ear to chin, lost itself in the shadows of black lace
falling from dark hair that was not quite black. She spoke as if the
words clung to her lips; as if she had to put them forth delicately
for fear of damaging the frail things._
* * * * *
_Part One: Chapter Five._
_Macdonald cleared his throat, with a sound resembling the coughing
of a defective pump, and a mere trickle of a voice_ asked:
“_Hwhat evidence have ye of identitee?_”
_I hadn’t any at all and began to finger my buttonholes as
shame-faced as a pauper before a Board. The certitude dawned upon me
suddenly that Carlos, even if he would consent to swear to me, would
prejudice my chances._
I cannot help thinking that _I came very near to being cast adrift
upon the streets of Kingston. To my asseverations Macdonald returned
nothing but a series of minute “humphs.” I don’t know what overcame
his scruples; he had shown no signs of yielding, but suddenly turning
on his heel_ made a motion with one of his flabby white hands. I
understood it to mean that I was to follow him aft.
The decks were covered with a jabbering turmoil of negroes with
muscular arms and brawny shoulders. All their shining faces seemed to
be momentarily gashed open to show rows of white, and were spotted
with inlaid eyeballs. The sounds coming from them were a bewildering
noise. They were hauling baggage about aimlessly. _A large soft
bundle of bedding nearly took me off my legs._ There wasn’t room for
emotion. Macdonald laid about him with the handle of the umbrella a
few inches from the deck; but the passage that he made for himself
closed behind him.
_Suddenly, in the pushing and hurrying, I came upon a little clear
space beside a pile of boxes. Stooping over them was the angular
figure of Nichols, the second mate. He looked up at me, screwing his
yellow eyes together._
_“Going ashore,” he asked, “long of that Puffing Billy?”_
“What business is it of yours?” I mumbled sulkily.
_Sudden and intense threatening came into his_ yellow _eyes_.
_“Don’t you ever come to_ you know where,” _he said; “I don’t want no
spies on what I do. There’s a man there’ll crack your little backbone
if he catches you. Don’t yeh come now. Never.”_
* * * * *
_Part Four: Chapter One._
In my anxiety to keep clear of the schooner which, for all I know to
this day, may not have been there at all, I had come too close to
the sand, so close that I heard soft, rapid footfalls stop short in
the fog. A voice seemed to be asking me in a whisper:
“Where, oh, where?”
Another cried out irresistibly, “I see it.”
It was a subdued cry, as if hushed in awe.
My arm swung to and fro; the turn of my wrist went on imparting the
propelling motion of the oar. All the rest of my body was gripped
helplessly in the dead expectation of the end, as if in the benumbing
seconds of a fall from a towering height. And it was swift, too.
I felt a draught at the back of my neck--a breath of wind. And
instantly, as if a battering ram had been let swing past me at many
layers of stretched gauze, I beheld, through a tattered deep hole
in the fog, a roaring vision of flames, borne down and swimming up
again; a dance of purple gleams on the strip of unveiled water, and
three coal black figures in the light.
One of them stood high on lank black legs, with long black arms
thrown up stiffly above the black shape of a hat. The two others
crouched low on the very edge of the water, peering as if from an
ambush.
The clearness of this vision was contained by a thick and a fiery
atmosphere, into which a soft white rush and swirl of fog fell like
a sudden whirl of snow. It closed down and overwhelmed at once the
tall flutter of the flames, the black figures, the purple gleams
playing round my oar. The hot glare had struck my eyeballs once, and
that melted away again into the old, fiery stain on the mended fabric
of the fog. But the attitudes of the crouching men left no room
for doubt that we had been seen. I expected a sudden uplifting of
voices on the shore, answered by cries from the sea, and I screamed
excitedly at Castro to lay hold of his oar.
He did not stir, and after my shouts, which must have fallen on the
scared ears with a weird and unearthly note, a profound silence
attended us--the silence of a superstitious fear: And, instead of
howls, I heard, before the boat had travelled its own short length,
a voice that seemed to be the voice of fear itself asking, “Did
you hear that?” and a trembling mutter of an invocation to all the
saints. Then a strangled throat trying to pronounce firmly, “The soul
of the dead Inglez. Crying for pain.”
Admiral Rowley’s seamen, so miserably thrown away in the
ill-conceived attack on the bay, were making a ghostly escort to our
escape. Those dead boats’-crews were supposed to haunt the fatal
spot, after the manner of spectres that linger in remorse, regret,
or revenge, about the gates of departure. I had blundered; the fog,
breaking apart, had betrayed us. But my obscure and vanquished
country-men held possession of the outlet by memory of their courage.
In this critical moment it was they, I may say, who stood by us.
We, on our part, must have been disclosed, dark, indistinct, utterly
inexplicable; completely unexpected; an apparition of stealthy
shades. The painful voice in the fog said:
“Let them be. Answer not. They shall pass on, for none of them died
on the shore--all in the water. Yes, all in the water.”
* * * * *
_Part Five: Chapter One._
“_Why have I been brought here your worship?_” I asked with a great
deal of firmness.
_There were two figures in black, the one beside, the other behind a
large black table. I was placed in front of them between two dirty
soldiers, in the centre of a large, gaunt room, with bare, dirty
walls, and the arms of Spain above the judge’s seat._
_“You are before the Juez de la Primera Instancia,” said the man in
black beside the table. He wore a large and shadowy tricorn. “Be
silent, and respect the procedure.”_
It was, without doubt, excellent advice. _He whispered some words in
the ear of the Judge of the First Instance. It was plain enough to
me that the judge was quite an inferior official, who merely decided
whether there was any case against the accused_; he had, even to his
clerk, an air of timidity, of doubt.
_I said: “But I insist on knowing....”_
_The clerk said: “In good time....” And then_, in the same tone of
disinterested official routine, _he spoke to the Lugareño, who, from
beside the door_, rolled very frightened eyes _from the judges and
the clerk to myself and the soldiers_--“Advance.”
_The judge, in a hurried, perfunctory voice, put questions to the
Lugareño; the clerk scratched with a large quill on a sheet of paper._
“_Where do you come from?_”
“_The town of Rio Medio, excellency._”
“_Of what occupation?_”
“_Excellency--a few goats._...”
“_Why are you here?_”
“_My daughter, excellency, married Pepe of the posada in the
Calle._...”
_The judge said, “Yes, yes,”_ with an unsanguine impatience. The
Lugareño’s dirty hands jumped nervously on the large rim of his limp
hat.
“_You lodge a complaint against the señor there._”
_The clerk pointed the end of his quill towards me._
_“I? God forbid, excellency,” the Lugareño bleated._ “The Alguazil
of the Criminal Court instructed me to be watchful....”
* * * * *
_Part Five: The End._
_A long time after a harsh voice said_:
“_Your excellency, we retire, of course, from the prosecution._”
_A different one directed_:
“_Gentlemen of the jury you will return a verdict of ‘Not
Guilty’._...”
_Down below they were cheering uproariously because my life was
saved. But it was I that had to face my saved life. I sat there, my
head bowed into my hands. The old judge was speaking to me in a tone
of lofty compassion_:
“_You have suffered much, as it seems, but suffering is the lot of us
men. Rejoice now that your character is cleared; that here in this
public place you have received the verdict of your country-men that
restores you to the liberties of our country and the affection of
your kindred. I rejoice with you who am a very old man at the end of
my life._...”
_It was rather tremendous, his deep voice, his weighted words.
Suffering is the lot of us men.... The formidable legal array, the
great powers of a nation, had stood up to teach me that, and they had
taught me that--suffering is the lot of us men!_
* * * * *
_It takes long enough to realise that someone is dead at a distance.
I had done that. But how long, how long it needs to know that the
life of your heart has come back from the dead._ For years afterwards
I could not bear to have her out of my sight.
Of our first meeting in London all I can remember is a speechlessness
that was like the awed hesitation of our overtried souls before the
greatness of a change from the verge of despair to the opening of a
supreme joy. The whole world, the whole of life, with her return had
changed all around me; it enveloped me, it enfolded me so lightly as
not to be felt, so suddenly as not to be believed in, so completely
that that whole meeting was an embrace, so softly that at last it
lapsed into a sense of rest that was like the fall of a beneficent
and welcome death.
_For suffering is the lot of man_, but not inevitable failure or
worthless despair which is without end--suffering, the mark of
manhood, which bears within its pain a hope of felicity like a jewel
set in iron....
Her first words were:
“You broke our compact. You went away from me whilst I was sleeping.”
Only the deepness of her reproach revealed the depth of her love, and
the suffering she too had endured to reach a union that was to be
without end--and to forgive.
_And, looking back, we see Romance--that subtle thing that is
mirage--that is life. It is the goodness of the years we have lived
through, of the old time when we did this or that, when we dwelt here
or there. Looking back it seems a wonderful enough thing that I who
am this and she who is that, commencing so far away a life that after
such sufferings borne together and apart, ended so tranquilly there
in a world so stable--that she and I should have passed through so
much, good chance and evil chance, sad hours and joyful, all lived
down and swept away into the little heap of dust that is life. That,
too, is Romance._
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NATURE OF A CRIME ***
Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will
be renamed.
Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United
States without permission and without paying copyright
royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™
concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following
the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use
of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very
easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation
of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project
Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you may
do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected
by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark
license, especially commercial redistribution.
START: FULL LICENSE
THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
Project Gutenberg™ License available with this file or online at
www.gutenberg.org/license.
Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg™
electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in your
possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
Project Gutenberg™ electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person
or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works if you follow the terms of this
agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg™
electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the
Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the individual
works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
that you will support the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting
free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg™
works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
Project Gutenberg™ name associated with the work. You can easily
comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg™ License when
you share it without charge with others.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
other Project Gutenberg™ work. The Foundation makes no
representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
country other than the United States.
1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must appear
prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg™ work (any work
on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the
phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed,
performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws
of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is
derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg™
trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
will be linked to the Project Gutenberg™ License for all works
posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
beginning of this work.
1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg™
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg™.
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg™ License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg™ work in a format
other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official
version posted on the official Project Gutenberg™ website
(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain
Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the
full Project Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™ works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
provided that:
• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the method
you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, but he has
agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation.”
• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™
License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™
works.
• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
receipt of the work.
• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than
are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of
the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set
forth in Section 3 below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
cannot be read by your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right
of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
without further opportunities to fix the problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO
OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in
accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
or any Project Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, or
additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any
Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg™
Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
from people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg™’s
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™ collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg™ and future
generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.
Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.
The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500 West,
Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up
to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website
and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation
Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread
public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular state
visit www.gutenberg.org/donate.
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate.
Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
Gutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could be
freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
distributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose network of
volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
edition.
Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
facility: www.gutenberg.org.
This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
