Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated)

by Joseph Conrad

  Whoever she was she seemed not to be aware of his presence. Cosmo did not know whether to wait in silence or say something, or merely warn her by a slight cough. What a stupid position, he thought. At that moment the lady put the pen down and rose from her chair brusquely, yet there was a perceptible moment before she turned round and advanced towards him. She was tall. But for the manner of his introduction, which could leave no room for doubt, the impression that this could not be the lady he had come to see would have been irresistible. As it was Cosmo felt apologetic, as though he had come to the wrong house. It occurred to him also that the lady had been from the very first aware of his presence. He was struck by the profundity of her eyes, which were fixed on him. The train of her blue robe followed on the floor. Her well-shaped head was a mass of short fair curls, and while she approached him Cosmo saw the colour leave her cheeks, the passing away of an unmistakable blush. She stopped and said in an even voice:

  “Don’t you recognize me?”

  He recovered his power of speech but not exactly the command of his thoughts, which were overwhelmed by a variety of strong and fugitive impulses.

  “I have never known you,” he said with a tone of the profoundest conviction.

  She smiled (Cosmo was perfectly sure that he had never seen that sort of smile or the promise even of anything so enchanting), and sank slowly on to a sofa whose brocaded silk, gray like pure ashes, and the carved frame painted with flowers and picked with gold, acquired an extraordinary value from the colour of her dress and the grace of her attitude. She pointed to an armchair, close by. Cosmo sat down. A very small table of ebony inlaid with silver stood between them, her hand rested on it; and Cosmo looked at it with appreciation, as if it had been an object of art, before he raised his eyes to the expectant face.

  “Frankly,” he said, “didn’t you think that a complete stranger had been brought into the room?”

  He said this very seriously, and she answered him in a light tone. “For a moment I was afraid to look round. I sat there with my back to you. It was absurd after having been imprudent enough to let you come in the morning. You kept so still that you might have been already gone. I took fright, I jumped up, but I need not have hesitated. You are still the same boy.”

  Cosmo paid very little attention to what she said. Without restraint and disguise, in open admiration he was observing her with all his might, saying to himself,

  “Is it possible — this — Adele!” He recollected himself, however, sufficiently to murmur that men changed more slowly and perhaps less completely than women. The Countess de Montevesso was not of that opinion, or, at any rate, not in this case.

  “It isn’t that at all. I know because I used to look at you with that attention worthy of the heir of the Latham name, whereas you never honoured the French girl by anything more than a casual glance. Why should you have done more? You had the dogs, the horses, your first gun. I remember the gun. You showed it to both of us, to your sister and myself, while we were walking in the park. You shouted to us and came across the grass, brandishing your gun, while the governess — I don’t remember her name — screamed at you, Oh mon dieul N’apjtroachez pasI You paid not the slightest attention to her. You had a flushed face. Of course her screaming frightened us at first, and just as we were preparing to get very interested in your gun you walked off with a look of contempt.”

  “Did I behave so badly as that?” said Cosmo, feeling suddenly very much at ease with that lady with whom he had never even exchanged a formal greeting. She had grown more animated. As he was very fond of his sister he answered her numerous questions about Henrietta with interest and pleasure. From that subject the lady on the sofa, who may or may not have been Adele d’Armand at one time, went on putting a series of questions about the house and all the people in it in a manner that proved a precise and affectionate recollection of those days. The memory of the countryside seemed to have been cherished by her too, and Cosmo’s heart warmed to the subject. She remembered certain spots in the park and certain points of view in the neighbourhood as though she had left them but a year before. She seemed not to have forgotten a single servant in the house. She asked after Spire.

  “I have got him with me,” said Cosmo. “Of course he has grown elderly.”

  He almost forgot to whom he was speaking. Without associating her very distinctly with the child Adele, he was taking the Countess de Montevesso for granted. He delighted in seeing her so quiet and so perfectly natural. The first effect of her appearance persisted, with only the added sense of the deep dark blue of her eyes, an impression of living profundity that made his thoughts about her pause. But he was unconsciously grateful to her for the fact that she had never given him a moment of that acute social awkwardness from which he used to suffer so much; though there could not be the slightest doubt that the little Adele (if there had ever been a little Adele) was now a very fine lady indeed. But she loved the old place and everything and everybody in it. Of that too there could be no doubt. The few references she made to his mother touched and surprised Cosmo. They seemed to imply some depth in her which he, the son, and Henrietta, the daughter, had failed to penetrate. In contrast with that, Cosmo remarked that after the inquiry after Sir Charles’s health, which was one of her first questions, his father was not mentioned again.

  “Are you going to make a stay in Genoa?” she asked after a pause.

  “A few days,” said Cosmo, in an irresolute tone, because he did not know what answer was expected to this inquiry, the first which had nothing to do with Yorkshire. His interest in the rest of Italy was, he perceived, very small. But by the association of ideas he thought suddenly of the passing hours. He raised his eyes to a faintly engraved brass disc with black hands hung on the wall above one of the two doors at that end of the room which he was facing. The black hands pointed to eleven, but what prevented his eyes from returning at once to the delighted contemplation of the Countess de Montevesso was the fact that the door below the clock seemed to have moved slightly.

  “I intend to see something of Italy,” he said. “My time really is my own, I have nothing special to do. It seems to me that the principal object of my journey has been attained now. I don’t think my father would be surprised to hear that I had turned back after leaving Genoa.”

  The Countess looking up at this, their eyes remained fastened together for a time and Cosmo thoughtt “What on earth am I saying?” He watched her lips move to form the words which quite frightened him.

  “Did Sir Charles give you a message for me?”

  He thought he had brought this on himself. It was & painful moment. It lasted long enough to give the Countess time to assume an expression of indifference, startling after the low tone of her question.

  “No,” said Cosmo truthfully. “I have only a message for your father.” He waited a moment. “But I will tell you one of the last things Henrietta told me. She told me that when you were married my father could think of nothing for days but you.”

  He did not venture to look at her; then added impulsively, “My father loved you dearly. We children could see it very well, Ad-”

  “Why don’t you finish my name?” her seductive voice asked.

  Cosmo coloured. “Well, you know, I never heard you really called by any other name. It came naturally since I suppose you must be — Adele.”

  Madame de Montevesso, who had been hanging on his lips, was surprised by Cosmo raising his eyes to stare intensely into the part of the room behind her back. Just as he was making his apology he had noticed the door under the clock swing open without any sound at all; and there entered quite noiselessly, too, and with something ambiguous in the very motion, a young girl (nothing could have been more unexpected) in a sort of dishabille of a white skirt and a long pink jacket of some very thin stuff which had a silky shimmer. She made a few steps and stopped. She was rather short, her hair was intensely black and drawn tightly away from her forehead. Cosmo felt sure (though he couldn’t see) that it
was done in one long plait at the back. Her face was a short oval, her chin blunt, her nose a little too big and her black eyes perfectly round. Cosmo had the time to notice all this because astonishment prevented him from looking away. The girl advanced slowly if with perfect assurance, and stared unwinkingly at Cosmo, who in the extremity of his embarrassment got up from his chair. The young girl then stopped short and for a moment the three persons in the room preserved an absolute immobility. Then the Countess glanced over her shoulder leisurely and addressed Cosmo.

  “This is Clelia, a niece of my husband.” Cosmo made a deep bow to the possessor of the round black eyes. “I didn’t know of her existence till about a fortnight ago,” added Madame de Montevesso carelessly. The round-eyed girl still staring hard made a curtsey to Cosmo. “My husband,” went on Adele, “has also two old aunts living here. I have never seen them. This house is very big.”

  Cosmo resumed his seat and there was a moment of silence. The girl sat down in the chair before the writing table sideways, folded her arms on its back, and rested her chin on her hands. Her round eyes examined Cosmo with a sort of animal frankness. He thought suddenly that it was time to bring his visit to an end. He would have risen at once but for the Countess de Montevesso beginning to speak to him, still in English. She seemed to have guessed what was passing through his mind.

  “Don’t go yet for a moment,” she said, in a perfectly unconcerned voice, then paused. “We were talking about your father.”

  “As to him,” said Cosmo, “I have nothing more to say. I have told you all the truth as far as I am certain of it.”

  She inclined her head slowly and in the same level voice:

  “The Court is here and most of the foreign ambassadors. We are waiting here for the arrival of the Queen of Sardinia, who may or may not come within the next month or so. This is considered a good post of observation, but there is very little to observe just now from the diplomatic point of view. Most of us have exhausted almost all emotions. Life has grown suddenly very dull. We gossip a little about each other; we wait for the end of the Vienna Congress and discuss the latest rumour that floats about. Yes. The play is over, the stage seems empty. If I were you I would stay a little longer here.”

  “I certainly mean to stay here for some time,” declared Cosmo with sudden resolution.

  “That’s right,” she continued in the same indifferent tone. “But wait a few days before you write home. You have awakened old memories in me. Inconceivably distant,” she went on in a voice more expressionless than ever, “and the dormant feelings of what seems quite another age.”

  Cosmo smiled at this. The girl with round eyes was keeping perfectly still with her watchful stare. Madame de Montevesso seemed to read Cosmo’s thoughts.

  “Yes,” she insisted. “I feel very old and everything is very far. I am twenty-six and I have been married very nearly ten years now.”

  Cosmo, looking at her face, thought that those had been the most agitated ten years of European history. He said, “I have no doubt that Yorkshire must seem very far away to you.”

  “I suppose you write very often home?” she said.

  Cosmo defended himself from being one of those people who write letters about their travels. He had no talent for that; and then what could one write to a young girl like Henrietta and to a man as austere as his father, who had so long retired from the world? Cosmo had found it very difficult. Of course he took care to let them know pretty often that he was safe and sound.

  Adele could see this point of view. She seemed amused by the innocent difficulties of a young man having no one but a father and a sister to write to. She ascertained that he had no intimate friend left behind to whom he could confide his impressions. Cosmo said he had formed none of those intimacies that induce a man to share his innermost thoughts and feelings with somebody else.

  “Probably your father was like that too,” said Madame de Montevesso. “I fancy he must have been very difficult to please, and still more difficult to conquer.”

  “Oh, as to that,” said Cosmo, “I can safely say I’ve never been conquered,” and he laughed boyishly. He confessed further that he had the habit of thinking contradictorily about most things. “My father was never hl*e that,” he concluded.

  The gravity with which she listened to him now disconcerted him secretly. At last she nodded and opined that his difficulties had their source in the liveliness of his sympathies. He declared that he suffered most at times from the difficulty of making himself understood by men of his own age.

  “And the women?” she asked quietly.

  “Oh, the women!” he said, without the slightest levity. “One would not even try.” He raised his eyes and, obeying a sudden impulse, added: “I think that perhaps you could understand me.”

  “That would be because I am so much older,” she said. Cosmo discovered in her delicately modelled face, with all its grace and freshness of youth, an interrogative profundity of expression, the impress of the problems of life and the conflicts of the soul. The great light of day had treated her kindly. Bathed in the sunshine entering through the four windows, she appeared to him wonderful in the glow of her complexion, in the harmony of her form and the composed nobility of her attitude. He felt this wonderfulness of her whole person in some sort physically, and thought that he had looked at her too long. He glanced aside and met the dark girl’s round unwinking stare of a cat ready to fly at one. She had not moved a hair’s breadth, and Cosmo felt reluctant to take his eyes off her exactly as though she had been a fierce cat. He heard the voice of the Countess de Montevesso and had to turn to her.

  “Well, wait a few days before you write home about . . . Genoa.”

  “I had a mind to begin a letter yesterday,” he said.

  “What? Already! Only a few hours after your arrival!”

  “Yes. Henrietta is very anxious to hear everything relating to the Emperor Napoleon.”

  Madame de Montevesso was genuinely surprised. Her voice lost its equable charm while she asked what on earth could he have had to tell of Napoleon that he could not have written to her from Paris.

  “Yes. He is in everybody’s thoughts and on everybody’s lips there,” he said. “Whenever three people come together he is the presence that is with them. But last night ...”

  He was on the point of telling her of his adventure 011 the tower when she struck in:

  “The Congress will put an end to all that presently.” It checked Cosmo’s expansiveness and he said instead: “It’s very possible. But last night on arriving here I experienced a curious sensation of his nearness. I went down in the evening to look at the Fort.”

  “He isn’t certainly very far from here. And what are your feelings about him?”

  “Oh,” he rejoined lightly, “as about everything else in the world — contradictory.”

  Madame de Montevesso rose suddenly, saying: “I won’t ask you, then, as to your feelings about myself.” Cosmo stood up hastily. He was a little the taller of the two but their faces were nearly on a level. “I should like you to make up your mind about me before you take up your traveller’s pen,” continued Adele. “Come again this evening. There will be a few people here; and, as you have said, when a fe* people come together just now Napoleon is always with them, an unseen presence. But you will see my father Do you remember him at all?”

  Cosmo assured her that he remembered the Marquis d’Armand perfectly. He was on the point of making hia parting bow when Madame de Montevesso, with the two words “d VAnglaise,” put out her hand. He took it and forgot himself in the unexpected sensation of this contact. He was in no haste to release it when to his extreme surprise, with a slight movement of her eyes towards the girl at the writing table, Madame de Montevesso said:

  “Did you ever see anything like that?”

  Cosmo was taken completely aback. He dropped her hand. He did not know what to say, and even if it was proper for him to smile. Madame de Montevesso continued in a voice betraying n
o sentiment of any kind: “I can never be sure of my privacy now. Do you understand that I am her aunt? She wanders all over this palazzo very much like a domestic animal, only more observant, and she is by no means an idiot. Luckily she knows no language but Italian.”

  They had been moving slowly towards the other end of the room, but now Madame de Montevesso stopped and returned Cosmo’s parting bow with a slight inclination of her head. Before passing round the screen between him and the door Cosmo glanced back. The girl on the chair had not stirred.

  He had half a hope that the mulatto maid would be waiting for him. But he saw no one. As he crossed the courtyard he might have thought himself leaving an uninhabited house. But the streets through which he made his way to his inn were thronged with people. The day was quite warm. Already on the edge of the pavements, here and there, there was a display of flowers for sale; and at every turn he saw more people who seemed carefree, and the women with their silken shoes and the lace scarves on their heads appeared to him quite charming. The plaza was a scene of constant movement. Here and there a group stood still, conversing in low voices but with expressive gestures. As he approached his hotel he caught an evanescent sight of the man he had met on the tower. His cap was un- mistakable. Cosmo mended his pace but the man had disappeared; and after looking in all directions Cosmo went up the steps of the inn. In his room he found Spire folding methodically some clothes.