Transcribed from the 1921 T. Fisher Unwin by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org THE ARROW OF GOLD A STORY BETWEEN TWO NOTES BY JOSEPH CONRAD Celui qui n’a connu 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 RIGHTS RESERVED * * * * * TO RICHARD CURLE * * * * * FIRST NOTE The pages which follow have been extracted from a pile of manuscript which was apparently meant for the eye of one woman only. She seems to have been the writer’s childhood’s friend. They had parted as children, or very little more than children. Years passed. Then something recalled to the woman the companion of her young days and she wrote to him: “I have been hearing of you lately. I know where life has brought you. You certainly selected your own road. But to us, left behind, it always looked as if you had struck out into a pathless desert. We always regarded you as a person that must be given up for lost. But you have turned up again; and though we may never see each other, my memory welcomes you and I confess to you I should like to know the incidents on the road which has led you to where you are now.” And he answers her: “I believe you are the only one now alive who remembers me as a child. I have heard of you from time to time, but I wonder what sort of person you are now. Perhaps if I did know I wouldn’t dare put pen to paper. But I don’t know. I only remember that we were great chums. In fact, I chummed with you even more than with your brothers. But I am like the pigeon that went away in the fable of the Two Pigeons. If I once start to tell you I would want you to feel that you have been there yourself. I may overtax your patience with the story of my life so different from yours, not only in all the facts but altogether in spirit. You may not understand. You may even be shocked. I say all this to myself; but I know I shall succumb! I have a distinct recollection that in the old days, when you were about fifteen, you always could make me do whatever you liked.”