Джозеф Конрад - Suspense

“No, sir, he only came to talk to a young woman. I left him taking leave of her to come up to you, sir. I suppose he was the man you meant, sir?”

“Yes,” said Cosmo, “I have no doubt about it. He will probably turn up again.”

Spire admitted reluctantly that it was likely. He had been telling a long tale to that young woman. “She is very good–looking, sir.”

“Is she a servant here?”

“Oh, no, sir. She came in with that old cut–throat cobbler. They seem to be friendly. I don’t like the looks of the people in this house.”

“I wonder,” said Cosmo, “whether you could manage to obtain for me a quiet talk with that man on the next occasion he comes here.”

Spire received this overture in profound silence.

“Do you think you could?” insisted Cosmo.

A dispassionate raising of the eyebrows preceded the apparently irrelevant remark. “The worst of this house, sir, is that it seems open to all sorts of rabble.”

“I see. Well, try to think of some way, Spire. You may go now.”

Spire carrying the boots walked as far as the door, where he turned for a moment. “The only way I can think of, sir,” he said, “would be to make friends with that young woman.” Before Cosmo could recover from the surprise at the positive statement, Spire had gone out and had shut the door.

Cosmo slept heavily but fitfully, with moments of complete oblivion interrupted by sudden starts, when he would lie on his back with open eyes wondering for a moment where he was, and then fall asleep again before he had time to make a movement. In the morning the first thing he did was to scribble a note to the Countess de Montevesso to ask her permission to call that very morning. While writing the address he smiled to himself at the idea that it was, after all, the little Adèle whom he remembered but dimly, mostly as a fair head hovering near his father’s arm–chair in the big drawing–room, the windows of which opened on the western terrace. As a schoolboy during his holidays he saw the two girls, Adèle and his sister, mostly in the evening. He had his own out–of–door pursuits, while those girls stayed upstairs with their governess. Remembering how he used to catch glimpses of them, the fair and the dark, walking in the park, he felt a greater curiosity to see the Countess de Montevesso than if he had never seen her before. He found it impossible to represent her to himself grown up, married for years, the daughter of an ambassador.

When the family of d’Armand departed from Latham Hall, it was as if a picture had faded, a picture of faces, attitudes and colours, leaving untouched the familiar background of his Yorkshire home, on to which he could never recall them distinctly. He would be meeting a complete stranger, and he wondered whether that lady, who young as she still was, had lived through tragic times, and had seen so many people, would remember him at all. Him personally. For as to his home he had no doubt she had not forgotten; neither the stones, nor the woods, nor the streams. And as to the people, Cosmo had a distinct notion that she was more familiar with his father than he and Henrietta had ever been. His father was not a man whom anybody could forget. And that Countess de Montevesso, more difficult for him to imagine than a complete stranger, would remember his mother better than he could himself. She had seen so much more of her day after day for something like three years; whereas he was at home only at intervals, and while there took Lady Latham for granted, a kind, serene presence, beautifully dressed.

He handed the note to Spire with orders to send it off by one of the ragged idlers about the hotel–door. There would be an answer. Then approaching the window he perceived that he could not see very much out of it. It was too high above the piazza, which furthermore was masked by the jutting balconies. But the sky was blue with a peculiar deep brilliance, and the sunlight slanted over the roofs of the houses on the other side of the piazza. When he opened the window the keen pure air roused his vitality. The faint murmur of voices from below reached him very much as it had reached him downstairs the night before through the closed shutters of the dining–room, as if the population of the town had never gone to bed.

While Spire was serving his breakfast in his room he wondered what the Countess de Montevesso would look like. The same fair head, but higher above the ground, and with the hair no longer flowing over the shoulders, but done up no doubt most becomingly and perhaps turned darker with age. It would be the hair of the daughter of an ambassador, able to judge of men and affairs, a woman of position, a very fine lady. Perhaps just a fine lady; but the memory of the child came to him with renewed force, gracious, quiet, with something timid and yet friendly in all its gestures, with his father’s hand smoothing the fair hair…. No. Not merely a fine lady.

Cosmo had no inborn aptitude for mere society life. Though not exactly shy he lacked that assurance of manner which his good looks and his social status ought to have given him. He suspected there was too much mockery in the world, and the undoubted friendliness he had met with, especially from women, seemed to him always a little suspect, the effect not of his own merit, of which he had no idea, but of a shallow, good–natured compassion. He imagined himself awkward in company. The very brilliance of the entertainments, of which he had seen already a good many, was apt to depress his spirits. Often during a talk with some pretty woman he would feel that he was not meant for that sort of life, and then suddenly he would withdraw into his shell. In that way he had earned for himself the reputation of being a little strange. He was to a certain extent aware of it, but he was not aware that this very thing made him interesting. A gust of diffidence came over him while he was trying to eat some breakfast. “I really don’t want to see that countess,” he thought. Then remembering the intonation in his father’s voice when talking of Adèle, he wondered whether perchance he would find an uncommon personality. Cosmo had a profound belief in his father, though he was well aware that he had never understood him thoroughly…. But if she is a woman out of the common, he reflected further, then she can’t possibly be interested in a rough schoolboy, grown into a young man of no particular importance. No doubt she would be amiable enough….

“Clear away all these things, Spire,” he said; “and go downstairs to see if the messenger is back.”

The messenger was not back yet, and assisted by Spire, Cosmo began to dress himself with extreme care. The tying of his neckcloth was an irritating affair, and so was Spire’s perfectly wooden face while he was holding up the glass to him for that operation. Cosmo spoiled two neck–cloths and became extremely dissatisfied with the cut and colour of various articles of attire which Spire presented to him one after another. The fashions for men were perfectly absurd. By an effort of mind Cosmo overcame this capricious discontent with familiar things and finished his dressing. Then he sent Spire once more downstairs to inquire if the messenger was back. Obediently, Spire disappeared, but once gone it did not seem as though he meant to return at all. There was no Spire. There was no bell–pull in the room either.

Cosmo stuck his head out through the door. Absolute silence reigned in the well of the stairs. A woman in black, on her knees beside a pail of water and scrubbing the floor of the corridor, looked up at him. Cosmo drew his head in. She was a pitiful hag…. He was sure of a gracious reception, of course. He was also sure of meeting a lot of people of all sorts. He wondered what sort of society she received. Everybody, no doubt; Austrians, Italians, French; all the triumphant reactionaries, all the depressed heads bobbing up again after the storm, venomous, revengeful, oppressive, odious. What the devil had become of Spire?