Джозеф Конрад - Suspense

“Sit down, mon enfant ,” were the first words spoken, and Cosmo obeyed, facing the arm–chair into which the marquis had dropped. A white meagre hand set in fine lace moved the candelabra on the table, and Cosmo good–humouredly submitted to being contemplated in silence. This man in a splendid coat, white–headed, and with a broad ribbon across his breast, seemed to have no connection whatever with his father’s guest, whom as a boy he remembered walking with Sir Charles amongst damp shrubberies, or writing busily at one end of the long table in the library of Latham Hall, always with the slightly subdued mien of an exile, and an air of being worried by the possession of unspeakable secrets which he preserved even when playing at backgammon with Sir Charles in the great drawing–room. Cosmo, returning the gaze of the tired eyes, remarked that the ambassador looked old, but not at all senile.

At last the marquis declared that he could detect the lineaments of his old friend in the son’s face, and in a voice that was low and kindly put a series of questions about Sir Charles, about London and his old friends there; questions which Cosmo, especially as to the latter, was not always able to answer fully.

“I forget! You are still so young,” said the ambassador, recollecting himself. This young man sitting here before him with a friendly smile had his friends amongst his own contemporaries, shared the ideas and the views of his own generation which had grown up since the Revolution, to whom the Revolution was only an historical fact, and whose enthusiasms had a strange complexion, for the undisciplined hopes of the young make them reckless in words, and sometimes in actions. The marquis’s own generation had been different. It had had no inducement to be reckless. It had been born to a settled order of things. Certainly a few philosophers had been indulging for years in subversive sentimentalism, but the foundations of Europe seemed unshakable. He noticed Cosmo’s expectant attitude and said:

“I wonder what my dear old friend is thinking of all this.”

“It is not very easy to get at my father’s thoughts,” confessed Cosmo. “After all, you must know my father much better than I do, Monsieur le Marquis.”

“In the austerity of his convictions your father was more like a republican of ancient times,” said the marquis seriously. “Does that surprise you, my young friend? … ” Cosmo shook his head slightly…. “Yet we always agreed very well. Your father understood every kind of fidelity. The world had never known him, and it will never know him now. But I, who approached him closely, could have nothing but the greatest respect for his character and for his far–seeing wisdom.”

“I am very glad to hear you say this,” interjected Cosmo.

“He was a scornful man,” said the marquis, then paused and repeated once more: “Yes. Un grand dédaigneux . He was that. But one accepted it from him as one would not from another man, because one felt that it was not the result of mean grievances or disappointed hopes. Now the old order is coming back, and whatever my old friend may think of it, he had his share in that work.”

Cosmo raised his head. “I had no idea,” he murmured.

“Yes,” said the marquis. “Indirectly, if you like. All I could offer to my princes was my life, my toil, the sacrifice of my deepest feelings as husband and father. I don’t say this to boast. I could not have acted otherwise. But for my share of the work, risky, often desperate and continuously hopeless as it seemed to be, I have to thank your father’s help, mon jeune ami . It came out of that fortune which some day will be yours. The only thing in all the activities the penetrating mind of your father was not scornful of was my fidelity. He understood that it was above the intrigues, the lies, the selfish stupidities of that exile’s life which we all shared with our princes. They will never know how much they owe to that English gentleman. When parting with my wife and child I was sustained by the thought that his friendship and care were extended over them and would not fail.”

“I have heard nothing of all this,” said Cosmo. “Of course, I was not ignorant of the great friendship that united you to him. This is one of the things that the world does know about my father.”

“Have you brought a letter for me?” asked the marquis. “I haven’t heard from him for a long time. After we returned to France, through the influence of my son–in–law, communications were very difficult. Ten years of war, my dear friend, ten years.”

“Father very seldom takes a pen in hand now,” said Cosmo, “but … ”

The marquis interrupted him. “When you write home, my dear friend, tell him that I never gave way to promptings of mean ambition or an unworthy vanity. Tell him that I twice declined the embassy of Madrid which was pressed on me, and that if I accepted the nomination as a commissioner for settling the frontiers with the representatives of the Allied Powers, it was at the cost of my deepest feelings, and only to serve my vanquished country. My secret missions had made me known to many European statesmen. I knew I was liked. I thought I could do some good. The Russians, I must say, were quite charming, and you may tell your father that Sir Charles Stewart clothed his demands in the form of the most perfect politeness; but all those transactions were based after all on the right of the strongest. I had black moments, and I suffered as a Frenchman. I suffered….”

The marquis got up, walked away to the other end of the room, then coming back dropped into the arm–chair again. Cosmo was too startled by this display of feeling to rise. The ambassadorial figure in the laced coat exhaled a deep sigh. “Your father knows that, unlike so many of the other refugees, I have always remained a Frenchman. One would have paid any price almost to avoid this humiliation.”

Cosmo was gratified by the anxiety of a king’s friend to, as it were, justify himself before his father. He discovered that even this old Royalist had been forced, if only for a moment, to regret the days of Imperial victories. The marquis tapped his snuff–box, took a pinch of snuff, and composed himself.

“Of course, when this Turin mission was unexpectedly pressed on me, I went to the king himself, and explained that having refused a much higher post, I could not think of accepting this one. But the king pointed out that this was an altogether different position. The King of Sardinia was his brother–in–law. There was nothing to say against such an argument. His majesty was also good enough to say that he was anxious to grant me any favour I might ask. I didn’t want any favours, but I had to think of something on the spur of the moment, and I begged for a special right of entrée on days on which there are no receptions. I couldn’t resist so much graciousness,” continued the marquis. “I have managed to keep clear of prejudices that poison and endanger the hopes of this restoration, but I am a Royalist, a man of my own time. Remember to tell your father all this, my dear young friend.”

“I shall not fail,” said Cosmo, wondering within himself at the power of such a strange argument, yet feeling a liking and respect for that old man torn between rejoicing and sorrow at the end of his troubled life.

“I should like him to know too,” the marquis said in his bland and friendly voice, “that Monsieur de Talleyrand just before he left for Vienna held out to me the prospect of the London Embassy later. That, certainly, I would not refuse, if only to be nearer a man to whom my obligations are immense and only equalled by the affection I had borne towards him through all those unhappy years.”

“My father,” began Cosmo—“I ought to have given you his message before—told me to give you his love, and to tell you that when you are tired of your grandeurs there is always a large place for you in his house.”