The Shadow Line - A Confession A Confession

THE SHADOW LINE THE SHADOW LINE A CONFESSION By JOSEPH CONRAD Worthy of my undying regard GARDEN CITT NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE COMPANY 1917 Copyright, 1917, by DOUBLEDAY, PAGE COMPANY All right reserved, including that of translation into foreign language, including the Scandinavian COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY METROPOLITAN MAGAZINE COMPANY To BORYS AND ALL, OTHERS WHO, LIKE HIMSELF, HAVE CROSSED IN EARLY YOUTH THE SHADOW LINE OF THEIR GENERATION WITH LOVE PART ONE THE SHADOW LINE Dautre fois, calme plat, grand miroir De mon dtsespoir. BAUDELAIRE ONLY the young have such moments. I dont mean the very young. No. The very young have, properly speaking, no moments. It is the privi lege of early youth to live in advance of its days in all the beautiful continuity of hope which knows no pauses and no introspection. One closes behind one the little gate of mere boyishness and enters an enchanted garden. Its very shades glow with promise. Every turn of the path has its seduction. And it isnt because it is an undiscovered country. One knows well enough that all mankind had streamed that way. It is the charm of universal experience from which one expects an uncommon or personal sensation a bit of ones own. One goes on recognizing the landmarks of the 4 THE SHADOW LINE predecessors, excited, amused, taking the hard luck and the good luck together the kicks and the halfpence, as the saying is the picturesque common lot that holds so many possibilities for the deserving or perhaps for the lucky. Yes. One goes on. And the time, too, goes on till one perceives ahead a shadow-line warning one that the region of early youth, too, must be left be hind. This is the period of life in which such moments of which Ihave spoken are likely to come. What moments Why, the moments of boredom, of weariness, of dissatisfaction. Rash moments. I mean moments when the still young are inclined to commit rash actions, such as getting married suddenly or else throwing up a job for no rea son. This is not a marriage story. It wasnt so bad as that with me. My action, rash as it was, had more the character of divorce almost of deser tion. For no reason on which a sensible person could put a finger I threw up my job chucked my berth left the ship pf which the worst that could be said was that she was a steamship and therefore, perhaps, not entitled to that blind loyalty which. . . . However, its no use try THE SHADOW LINE 5 ing to put a gloss on what even at the time I myself half suspected to be a caprice. It was in an Eastern port. She was an Eastern ship, inasmuch as then she belonged to that port. She traded among dark islands on a blue reef scarred sea, with the Red Ensign over the taffrail and at her masthead a house-flag, also red, but with a green border and with a white crescent in it. For an Arab owned her, and a Syed at that. Hence the green border on the flag. He was the head of a great House of Straits Arabs, but as loyal a subject of the complex British Empire as you could find east of the Suez Canal. World politics did not trouble him at all, but he had a great occult power amongst his own people. It was all one to us who owned the ship. He had to employ white men in the shipping part of his business, and many of those he so employed had never set eyes on him from the first to the last day. I myself saw him but once, quite accidentally on a wharf an old, dark little man blind in one eye, in a snowyrobe and yellow slippers. He was having his hand severely kissed by a crowd of Malay pilgrims to whom he had done some favour, in the way of food and money. His alms-giving, I have heard, was most exten 6 THE SHADOW LINE sive, covering almost the whole Archipelago...