Джозеф Конрад - Suspense

The long window right down to the floor had remained open. Suddenly the sound of a drum reached Cosmo’s ears. Stepping out on a balcony he saw a company of infantry in white coats marching across a distant corner of the piazza. Austrians! Yes, their time had come. A voice behind him said: “The messenger is back, sir.” Cosmo stepped in and saw Spire empty–handed. “There’s a verbal answer, sir.”

“What is it? You haven’t spoken with the messenger, have you?”

“I have seen him, sir, but I got the message through the innkeeper. He speaks a little English. The lady would be glad to see you as soon after the fourth hour as possible. They have their own way of reckoning time, but as far as I can understand it, sir, it means something between ten and eleven. At any rate, it’s what Cantelucci says, and he can tell the time by an English watch all right.”

“Shut the window, Spire. I don’t want to hear that drum. Yes, it would mean as soon after ten as possible; but why has the fellow been so long? Is it very far?”

“No, sir, I think it’s quite close, really. He was so long because he has been trying to give your note to the lady herself, and there was some difficulty about it. The innkeeper tells me that instead of handing it to the porter the fellow got in through the kitchen door and was dodging about a passage for some time.”

Cosmo looked fixedly at Spire, whose face expressed no opinion whatever on those proceedings.

“Dodging in a passage,” repeated Cosmo. “But did he see the lady herself?”

“Apparently not, sir. Cantelucci slanged him for being so long, but he said he thought he was acting for the best. He would have been there yet, if a black woman hadn’t come along and snatched the letter out of his hand. It was she, too, who brought down the message from the lady.”

“Oh, yes,” said Cosmo, “Don’t you remember there was a black maid?”

“Yes, sir, I remember perfectly well, in the housekeeper’s room. She learned to talk English very quickly, but she was a little spitfire.”

“Was she?”

Spire busied himself in brushing Cosmo’s hat, while he remarked in an explanatory tone: “She could never understand a joke, sir.”

He attended Cosmo into the hall where Cantelucci, with his usual intense gravity and a deep bow, asked whether the signore would want a carriage. Cosmo, however, preferred walking, therefore the youth who had taken Cosmo’s note was directed to guide the English milor to the Palazzo Brignoli. He had a tousled head of hair, and wore a jacket that might have belonged at one time to a hussar’s uniform, with all its trimmings and buttons cut off, and a ragged hole in each elbow. His cheeks were sunken, his eyes rolled expressively, and his smile discovered a set of very sound teeth.

“Si, si, Palazzo Rosso,” he said.

Cantelucci explained in his imperturbable and solemn manner that the populace gave that name to the palace on account of the red granite of which it was built, and the thin–faced lad, bounding forward, preceded Cosmo across the piazza, looking over his shoulder from time to time. Cosmo’s doubts and apprehensions disappeared before the inevitable charm and splendour of the town. At the corner of a narrow lane and a small open space with some trees growing in the centre of it, the ragged guide stopped, and pointing at a dark and magnificent building, left him alone. Massive and sombre, ornate and heavy, with a dark aspect and enormous carvings, the palace where little Adèle was living had to Cosmo’s eye the air of a sumptuous prison. The portal with its heavy iron–studded doors was reached by a flight of shallow steps, a segment of a wide circle, guarded on each side by an enormous griffin seated, tensely alert with wing and claw, on a high and narrow pedestal. On ascending the steps Cosmo discovered that the heavy door was ajar, just enough to let him slip in; and, at once, from the gloom of the arched passage he saw the sunshine on the oleanders of the inner court flagged with marble, from whence a broad staircase ascended to the colonnaded gallery of the first floor.

Cosmo had seen no porter or other living soul, and there was no sound of any sort, no appearance of movement anywhere. Even the leaves of the oleanders kept perfectly still. In the light of the morning a slanting shadow cut the western wall into two triangles, one dark, the other glowing as with a red fire; and Cosmo remained for a moment spellbound by a strong impression of empty grandeur, magnificence and solitude.

A voice behind him, issuing from somewhere in the big gateway through which he had passed, cried: “Ascend, signore!” Cosmo began to mount the open staircase, embarrassed as though he had been watched by thousands of eyes. In the gallery he hesitated, for the several doors he could see remained closed, and the only sound that reached his ears was the gentle plashing of the fountain in the court below him.

Before he had made up his mind, the door in front of him opened fairly wide, but he could not see the person till he had entered an ante–room with narrow red and gilt settees ranged along its white walls. The door shut behind him, and turning round he confronted a dark, plump mulatto woman who was staring at him with an expression of intense admiration. She clapped her hands in ecstasy, and opening her mouth exhibited her white teeth in a low, cackling laugh.

“ Bon jour , Aglae,” said Cosmo readily.

The woman laughed again in sheer delight. “You remember my name, Mr. Cosmo! You quite frighten me, you grow so big. I remember you climb tree and throw nice ripe apple to the black girl….” Her eyes gleamed and rolled absurdly.

Cosmo was so strangely touched by this extremely slight reminiscence of his tree–climbing boyhood, that when she added, “That was a good time,” he was quite ready to agree, thereby provoking another burst of delightful laughter. But Aglae was controlling herself obviously. Her laughter was subdued. It had not the unbounded freedom of sound that used to reverberate exotically in the dark passages at the back of Latham Hall; though there, too, Aglae tried to subdue it in view of rebuke or sarcastic comments in the servants’ hall. It stopped suddenly and Aglae in a tone of sober respect wanted to know how the seigneur was? Cosmo said that his father was very well.

“He a very great gentleman,” commented Aglae. “I always tremble when I see him. You very fine gentleman too, Mr. Cosmo.”

She moved to one of the inner doors, but as Cosmo was following her she raised her hand to prevent him and opened the door only a little way, then came back and said in a lower tone, “It’s to hear the bell better when it rings,” she said. “Will you wait a little bit here?” she asked anxiously.

“I will,” said Cosmo; “but surely you don’t want to tremble before me. What is the matter?”

“Nothing at all is the matter.” Aglae tossed her head tied up in a bandana handkerchief with something of the spirit of the old days.

Cosmo was amused. “I no tremble before you,” she continued. “I always like you very much. I am glad with all my heart to see you here.”

All the time she turned her ear to the door she had left the least bit ajar. She had on a high–waisted white calico dress, white stockings and Genoese slippers on her feet. Her dark brown hands moved uneasily.

“And how is Madame la Comtesse?” asked Cosmo.

“Miss Adèle very well. Anyway she never says anything else. She very great lady now. All the town come here, but she wants to see you alone after all these years.”

“It’s very kind of her,” said Cosmo. “I was wondering whether she remembered me at all.”

Now the excitement of seeing him had worn off, he was surprised at the care–worn expression of the mulatto’s face. For a moment it seemed to him like a tragic mask, then came the flash of white teeth, strangely unlike a smile.