Джозеф Конрад - Suspense

“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 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 thought: “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 a 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 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—Adèle.”

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 déshabillé 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 Adèle, “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 looked at her face and 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 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.

Adèle 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 like 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.”