“the curled moonWas like a little featherFluttering far down the gulf;”
“the curled moonWas like a little featherFluttering far down the gulf;”
and the round world, a caught fly, wrapped in a web of clouds, hung by a slender thread of some huge spider’s spinning. There was a dark mark upon it that spread and reddened until it seemed to be a stain of blood on a woman’s breast. She had been pale, but the colour had come again when he had kissedher. It was gone now. Was it all in the red that oozed between his fingers?
In the twilight of his senses stray thoughts fluttered and passed like white moths. Was that the roar of voices? The hall was full and they wanted him, but he could not play again. Love was best. He would stay in the garden with Olive.
What were they asking for? A nocturne—yes; it was getting dark, and the sea was rising—that was the sound of the sea.
The doctor Vincenzo had brought in rose from his knees and stood thoughtfully wiping his hands on a piece of lint.
“We must see about extracting the bullets later on. One went clean through his arm and so has saved us the trouble. As to her—I am not sure—but I think the injury may not be so serious as it now appears. She was evidently stunned. She must have struck her head against the table in falling.”
“Can they be moved?” the servant asked anxiously. “My master would not care to stay on here. Can you take them into your house, and—and not say anything?”
The doctor hesitated. He was a bald, grey-whiskered man, fat and flaccid. His cuffs were frayed and there were wine-stains on his shabby clothes. He was very poor.
“I should inform the authorities,” he said.
“Oh, I don’t think that is necessary. It would be worth your while not to.”
Jean’s fur coat had been thrown across a chair. The doctor eyed it carefully. It was worth more lire than he had ever possessed at one time.
“Very well,” he said. “The vineyard across the lane is mine. We can go to my house that way and take them through the gate without ever coming out on to the road. I will go and tell my housekeeper to get the rooms ready.”
Vincenzo’s face brightened. “I will go in the car to-night to fetch the master’s brother. He is very rich. It will be worth your while,” he repeated.
“He will be heavy to carry. Shall we be able to do it alone?”
“Via!” cried the little man. “I am very strong. Go now and come back soon.”
When the other had left the room he crouched down again on the floor at Jean’s feet. “Signorino! Signorino! Speak to me! Look at me!”
But there was no voice now, nor any that answered.
For a long while, it seemed, Jean was a spent swimmer, struggling to reach a distant shore. The cruel cross-currents drew him, great waves buffeted him, and the worst of it was they were hot. All the sea was bubbling andboiling about him, and the sound in his ears was like the roar of steam. There were creatures in the water, too; octopi, such as he had seen caught in nets by the Venetian fishermen and flung on the yellow sands of the Lido. He saw their tentacles flickering in the green curled edges of each wave that threatened to beat him down into the depths.
Vincenzo kept them off. He was always there, sitting by the door, and when he was called he came running to his master’s bedside.
“Where is she? Don’t let her be drowned! Don’t let the octopi get her! Vincenzo! Vincenzo!” he cried, and the good fellow tried to reassure him.
“Sia benedetto, signorino! They shall not have her. I will cut them in pieces with my knife.”
“What is the matter? I am quite well. Is it only the tyre? There is Orvieto, and the sun just risen. Is it still raining?”
“No, signorino. The sun shines and it has not rained for days. It will soon be May.”
Very slowly the tide of feverish dreams ebbed, and Jean became aware of the iris pattern on the curtains of the bed; of the ray of sunlight that danced every morning on the ceiling and passed away; of the old woman who gave him his medicine. She was kind, and he liked to see her sitting sewing bylamplight, and to watch her distorted shadow looming gigantic in an angle of the wall. Hilaire was there too, but sometimes he was called away, and then Jean would hear his uneven step going to and fro across an uncarpeted floor, and the sound of hushed voices in the next room.
“Hilaire, is—is it all right?”
“Yes, do not be afraid. Get well,” the elder man answered, but Jean still lay with his face turned to the wall. He was afraid. The longing to see Olive, to hold her once more in his arms, burned within him. He moved restlessly and laid his clenched hands together on the half-healed wound in his side.
One night he slept soundly, dreamlessly, as a child sleeps, and woke at dawn. He raised himself on his elbow in the bed and looked about him, and Vincenzo came to him at once and asked him what he wanted.
“Go out,” he said, “and leave me alone for a while.”
The green painted window-shutter was unfastened, and it swung open in the little wind that had sprung up. Jean saw the morning star shining, and the widening rift of pale gold in the grey sky above the hills. He heard the stirring of awakened life. Birds fluttered in the laurels. A boy was singing as he went to his work among the vines by the lake side:
“Ho da dirti tante cose.”
“Ho da dirti tante cose.”
It seemed to Jean that he too had many things to say to the woman he loved. He called to her faintly, in a weak, hoarse voice: “Olive!”
After a while he heard her answering him from the next room.
“Jean! Oh, Jean!”
He lay still, smiling.
EDINBURGHCOLSTON AND CO. LIMITEDPRINTERS
THE BLUE LAGOON
ByH. DE VERE STACPOOLE,
Author of “The Crimson Azaleas,” etc. 6s.
TheTimessays: “Picturesque and original ... full of air and light and motion.”TheDaily Telegraphsays: “A hauntingly beautiful story.”TheGlobesays: “Weirdly imaginative, remote, and fateful.”TheEvening Standardsays: “A masterpiece.... It has the gift of the most vivid description that makes a scene live before your eyes.”TheSunday Timessays: “A very lovely and fascinating tale, by the side of which ‘Paul and Virginia’ seems tame indeed.”TheMorning Leadersays: “It is a true romance, with an atmosphere of true romance which few but the greatest writers achieve.”TheWorldsays: “Original and fascinating.”TheNottingham Guardiansays: “A singularly powerful and brilliantly imagined story.”TheDaily Chroniclesays: “Many able authors, an unaccountable number, have written about the South Sea Islands, but none that we know has written so charmingly as Mr. de Vere Stacpoole in ‘The Blue Lagoon.’”
TheTimessays: “Picturesque and original ... full of air and light and motion.”
TheDaily Telegraphsays: “A hauntingly beautiful story.”
TheGlobesays: “Weirdly imaginative, remote, and fateful.”
TheEvening Standardsays: “A masterpiece.... It has the gift of the most vivid description that makes a scene live before your eyes.”
TheSunday Timessays: “A very lovely and fascinating tale, by the side of which ‘Paul and Virginia’ seems tame indeed.”
TheMorning Leadersays: “It is a true romance, with an atmosphere of true romance which few but the greatest writers achieve.”
TheWorldsays: “Original and fascinating.”
TheNottingham Guardiansays: “A singularly powerful and brilliantly imagined story.”
TheDaily Chroniclesays: “Many able authors, an unaccountable number, have written about the South Sea Islands, but none that we know has written so charmingly as Mr. de Vere Stacpoole in ‘The Blue Lagoon.’”
T. FISHER UNWIN, 1 ADELPHI TERRACE, LONDON
T. FISHER UNWIN, Publisher,
WORKS BY JOSEPH CONRAD
I.
AN OUTCAST OF THE ISLANDS
Crown 8vo.,cloth,6s.
“Subject to the qualifications thus disposed of (videfirst part of notice), ‘An Outcast of the Islands’ is perhaps the finest piece of fiction that has been published this year, as ‘Almayer’s Folly’ was one of the finest that was published in 1895.... Surely this is real romance—the romance that is real. Space forbids anything but the merest recapitulation of the other living realities of Mr. Conrad’s invention—of Lingard, of the inimitable Almayer, the one-eyed Babalatchi, the Naturalist, of the pious Abdulla—all novel, all authentic. Enough has been written to show Mr. Conrad’s quality. He imagines his scenes and their sequence like a master; he knows his individualities and their hearts; he has a new and wonderful field in this East Indian Novel of his.... Greatness is deliberately written; the present writer has read and re-read his two books, and after putting this review aside for some days to consider the discretion of it, the word still stands.”—Saturday Review
“Subject to the qualifications thus disposed of (videfirst part of notice), ‘An Outcast of the Islands’ is perhaps the finest piece of fiction that has been published this year, as ‘Almayer’s Folly’ was one of the finest that was published in 1895.... Surely this is real romance—the romance that is real. Space forbids anything but the merest recapitulation of the other living realities of Mr. Conrad’s invention—of Lingard, of the inimitable Almayer, the one-eyed Babalatchi, the Naturalist, of the pious Abdulla—all novel, all authentic. Enough has been written to show Mr. Conrad’s quality. He imagines his scenes and their sequence like a master; he knows his individualities and their hearts; he has a new and wonderful field in this East Indian Novel of his.... Greatness is deliberately written; the present writer has read and re-read his two books, and after putting this review aside for some days to consider the discretion of it, the word still stands.”—Saturday Review
II.
ALMAYER’S FOLLY
Second Edition.Crown 8vo.,cloth,6s.
“This startling, unique, splendid book.”Mr.T. P. O’Connor, M.P.
“This startling, unique, splendid book.”
Mr.T. P. O’Connor, M.P.
“This is a decidedly powerful story of an uncommon type, and breaks fresh ground in fiction.... All the leading characters in the book—Almayer, his wife, his daughter, and Dain, the daughter’s native lover—are well drawn, and the parting between father and daughter has a pathetic naturalness about it, unspoiled by straining after effect. There are, too, some admirably graphic passages in the book. The approach of a monsoon is most effectively described.... The name of Mr. Joseph Conrad is new to us, but it appears to us as if he might become the Kipling of the Malay Archipelago.”—Spectator
“This is a decidedly powerful story of an uncommon type, and breaks fresh ground in fiction.... All the leading characters in the book—Almayer, his wife, his daughter, and Dain, the daughter’s native lover—are well drawn, and the parting between father and daughter has a pathetic naturalness about it, unspoiled by straining after effect. There are, too, some admirably graphic passages in the book. The approach of a monsoon is most effectively described.... The name of Mr. Joseph Conrad is new to us, but it appears to us as if he might become the Kipling of the Malay Archipelago.”—Spectator
THE BEETLE.A MYSTERY
ByRICHARD MARSH. Illustrated.
Eleventh Edition. 6s.
TheDaily Graphicsays: “‘The Beetle’ is the kind of book which you put down only for the purpose of turning up the gas and making sure that no person or thing is standing behind your chair, and it is a book which no one will put down until finished except for the reason above described.”TheSpeakersays: “A story of the most terrific kind is duly recorded in this extremely powerful book. The skill with which its fantastic horrors are presented to us is undeniable.”
TheDaily Graphicsays: “‘The Beetle’ is the kind of book which you put down only for the purpose of turning up the gas and making sure that no person or thing is standing behind your chair, and it is a book which no one will put down until finished except for the reason above described.”
TheSpeakersays: “A story of the most terrific kind is duly recorded in this extremely powerful book. The skill with which its fantastic horrors are presented to us is undeniable.”
T. FISHER UNWIN, 1 ADELPHI TERRACE, LONDON
Transcriber's NoteText in languages other than English is preserved as printed.Minor punctuation errors have been repaired.The following amendments have been made:Page164—Jocopo amended to Jacopo—"... one of the old houses in the Borgo San Jacopo, ..."Page197—mysogynists amended to misogynists—"Olive laughed. “Commend me to misogynists henceforth.”"Page216—newsvenders amended to newsvendors—"... and the narrow streets were echoing now to the hoarse cries of the newsvendors ..."Page228—Babbuino amended to Babuino—"They went by way of the Via Babuino across the Piazza di Spagna, ..."Page293—anyrate amended to any rate—"... I am sure he never would, or, at any rate, he would ..."Page297—it's amended to its—"... its gnawing, tearing, animal ferocity was appalling."Second advert page—decidely amended to decidedly—"This is a decidedly powerful story ..."
Transcriber's Note
Text in languages other than English is preserved as printed.
Minor punctuation errors have been repaired.
The following amendments have been made:
Page164—Jocopo amended to Jacopo—"... one of the old houses in the Borgo San Jacopo, ..."Page197—mysogynists amended to misogynists—"Olive laughed. “Commend me to misogynists henceforth.”"Page216—newsvenders amended to newsvendors—"... and the narrow streets were echoing now to the hoarse cries of the newsvendors ..."Page228—Babbuino amended to Babuino—"They went by way of the Via Babuino across the Piazza di Spagna, ..."Page293—anyrate amended to any rate—"... I am sure he never would, or, at any rate, he would ..."Page297—it's amended to its—"... its gnawing, tearing, animal ferocity was appalling."Second advert page—decidely amended to decidedly—"This is a decidedly powerful story ..."
Page164—Jocopo amended to Jacopo—"... one of the old houses in the Borgo San Jacopo, ..."
Page197—mysogynists amended to misogynists—"Olive laughed. “Commend me to misogynists henceforth.”"
Page216—newsvenders amended to newsvendors—"... and the narrow streets were echoing now to the hoarse cries of the newsvendors ..."
Page228—Babbuino amended to Babuino—"They went by way of the Via Babuino across the Piazza di Spagna, ..."
Page293—anyrate amended to any rate—"... I am sure he never would, or, at any rate, he would ..."
Page297—it's amended to its—"... its gnawing, tearing, animal ferocity was appalling."
Second advert page—decidely amended to decidedly—"This is a decidedly powerful story ..."