Transcribed from the 1921 T. Fisher Unwin ,
A STORY BETWEEN TWO NOTES
by
JOSEPH CONRAD
Celui qui n’aconnu que des hommes
polis et raisonnables, ou ne connait pas
l’homme, ou ne le connait qu’a demi.Caracteres.
T. FISHER UNWIN, LTD.
LONDON: ADELPHI TERRACE
First published | August 1919 |
Reprinted | December 1919 |
Reprinted | October 1921 |
all rightsreserved
to
RICHARD CURLE
The pages which follow have been extracted from a pile ofmanuscript which was apparently meant for the eye of one womanonly. She seems to have been the writer’schildhood’s friend. They had parted as children, orvery little more than children. Years passed. Thensomething recalled to the woman the companion of her young daysand she wrote to him: “I have been hearing of youlately. I know where life has brought you. Youcertainly selected your own road. But to us, left behind,it always looked as if you had struck out into a pathlessdesert. We always regarded you as a person that must begiven up for lost. But you have turned up again; and thoughwe may never see each other, my memory welcomes you and I confessto you I should like to know the incidents on the road which hasled you to where you are now.”
And he answers her: “I believe you are the only one nowalive who remembers me as a child. I have heard of you fromtime to time, but I wonder what sort of person you are now. Perhaps if I did know I wouldn’t dare put pen topaper. But I don’t know. I only remember thatwe were great chums. In fact, I chummed with you even morethan with your brothers. But I am like the pigeon that wentaway in the fable of the Two Pigeons. If I once start totell you I would want you to feel that you have been thereyourself. I may overtax your patience with the story of mylife so different from yours, not only in all the facts butaltogether in spirit. You may not understand. You mayeven be shocked. I say all this to myself; but I know Ishall succumb! I have a distinct recollection that in theold days, when you were about fifteen, you always could make medo whatever you liked.”
He succumbed. He begins his story for her with theminute narration of this adventure which took about twelve monthsto develop. In the form in which it is presented here ithas been pruned of all allusions to their common past, of allasides, disquisitions, and explanations addressed directly to thefriend of his childhood. And even as it is the whole thingis of considerable length. It seems that he had not only amemory but that he also knew how to remember. But as tothat opinions may differ.
This, his first great adventure, as he calls it, begins inMarseilles. It ends there, too. Yet it might havehappened anywhere. This does not mean that the peopleconcerned could have come together in pure space. Thelocality had a definite importance. As to the time, it iseasily fixed by the events at about the middle years of theseventies, when Don Carlos de Bour