Джозеф Конрад - Suspense

Cosmo was surprised at the sudden movement of the marquis, who leaned over the arm of his chair and put his hand over his eyes. For a time complete silence reigned in the room. Then Cosmo said:

“I think somebody is scratching at the door.”

The marquis sat up and listened, then raising his voice: “You may come in.”

The man in black clothes entering through the hidden door stopped at some distance in a respectful attitude. The marquis beckoned him to approach, and the man bending to his ear, said in a low tone which was, however, audible to Cosmo, “He is here.” The marquis answered in an undertone, “He came rather early. He must wait,” at which the man murmured something which Cosmo could not hear. He became aware of the marquis looking at him irresolutely before he said:

“My dear boy, you will have to make your entrance into my daughter’s salon together with me. I thought of sending you back the way you came, but as a matter of fact the passage is blocked…. Bring him in and let him sit here after we are gone,” he directed the man in black, and Cosmo only then recognised Bernard, the servant of proved fidelity in all the misfortunes of the d’Armand family. Bernard withdrew without responding in any way to Cosmo’s smile of recognition. “In my position,” continued the marquis, “I have to make use of agents more or less shady. Those men often object to being seen. Their occupation is risky. There is a man of that sort waiting in the corridor.”

Cosmo said he was at the marquis’s orders, but the ambassador remained in the arm–chair tapping the lid of his snuff–box slightly.

“You saw my daughter this morning, I understand.” Cosmo made an assenting bow. Madame de Montevesso had done him the honour to receive him in the morning.

“You speak French very well,” said the marquis. “I don’t really know why the English are supposed to be bad linguists. We French are much worse. Did you two speak French together?”

“No,” said Cosmo, “we spoke in English. It was Madame de Montevesso’s own choice.”

“She hasn’t quite forgotten it, has she?”

“It struck me,” said Cosmo, “that your daughter has forgotten neither the language nor the people nor the sights of her early life. I was touched by the fidelity of her memory and the warmth of her feelings.”

His own tone had warmth enough in it to make the marquis look up at him. There was a short pause. “None of us are likely to forget those days of noble and infinite kindness. We were but vagrants on a hostile earth. My daughter could not have forgotten! As long as there is anybody of our name left … ”

The marquis checked himself abruptly, but almost at once went on in a slightly changed tone. “But I am alone of my name now. I wish I had had a son so that gratitude could have been perpetuated from generation to generation and become a traditional thing between our two families. But this is not to be. Perhaps you didn’t know I had a brother. He was much younger than myself, and I loved him as though he had been my son. Directly I had placed my wife and child in safety, your father insisted on giving me the means to return to France secretly in order to try and save that young head. But all my attempts failed. It fell on the scaffold. He was one of the last victims of the sanguinary madness of that time…. But let us talk of something else. What are your plans, my young friend?”

Cosmo confessed that he had no plans. He intended to stay in Genoa for some time. Madame de Montevesso had been good enough to encourage him in that idea, and really there was such a feeling of leisure in the European atmosphere that he didn’t see why he should make any plans. The world was enjoying its first breathing–time. Cosmo corrected himself—well, no, perhaps not exactly enjoying. To be strictly truthful he had not noticed much feeling of joy…. He hesitated a moment, but the whole attitude of the marquis was so benevolent and encouraging that he continued to take stock of his own sensations, and continued in the same strain. There was activity, lots of activity, agitation perhaps, but no real joy. Or at any rate, no enjoyment. Not even now after the foreign troops had withdrawn from France and all the sovereigns of the world had gone to Vienna.

The marquis listened with profound attention. “Are those your impressions, mon cher enfant ? Somehow they don’t seem very favourable. But you English are very apt to judge us with severity. I hear very little of what is going on in France.”

The train of his own thoughts had mastered Cosmo, who added, “What struck me most was the sense of security….” He paused for an instant and the ambassador, bending forward in the chair with the air of a man attempting an experiment, insinuated gently:

“Not such a bad thing, that sentiment.”

In the ardour of his honesty Cosmo did not notice either the attitude or the tone, though he caught the sense of the words.

“Was it of the right kind?” he went on, as if communing with himself, “or was it the absence of sound thought, and almost of all feeling? Monsieur le Marquis, I am too young to judge, but one would have thought, listening to the talk one heard on all sides, that such a man as Bonaparte had never existed.”

“You have been in the society of returned exiles,” said the marquis after a moment of meditation, “You must judge them charitably. A class that has been under the ban for years lives on its passions and on prejudices whose growth stifles not only its sagacity but its vision of the reality.” He changed his tone. “Our present Minister for Foreign Affairs never communicates with me personally. The only personal letter I had from him in the last four months was on the subject of procuring some truffles that grow in this country for the king, and there were four pages of most minute directions as to where they were to be found and how they were to be packed and transmitted to Paris. As to my dispatches, I get merely formal acknowledgments. I really don’t know what is going on, except through travellers who naturally colour their information with their own desires. Monsieur de Talleyrand writes me short notes now and then, but as he has been himself for months in Vienna he can’t possibly know what is going on in France. His acute mind, his extraordinary talents, are fit to cope with the international situation, but I suppose he too is uneasy. In fact, my dear young friend, as far as I can judge, uneasy suspense is the prevailing sentiment all round the basin of the Mediterranean. The fate of nations still hangs in the balance.”

Cosmo waited a moment before he whispered: “And the fate of some individual souls perhaps.”

The ambassador made no sound till after a whole minute had elapsed, and then it was only to say:

“I suppose that like many of your young and even old countrymen, you have formed a project of visiting Elba.”

Cosmo at once adopted a conversational tone. “Half–formed at most,” he said. “I was never one of those who like to visit prisons and gaze at their fellow–beings in captivity. A strange taste indeed! I will own to you, Monsieur le Marquis,” he went on boyishly, “that the notion of captivity is very odious to me, for men, and for animals too. I would sooner look at a dead lion than a lion in a cage. Yet I remember a young French friend of mine telling me that we English were the most curious nation in the world. But as you said, everybody seems to be doing Elba. I suppose there are no difficulties?”

“Not enough difficulties,” said the ambassador blandly. “I mean for the good of all concerned.”

“Ah,” said Cosmo, and repeated thoughtfully, “All concerned! The other day in Paris I met Mr. Wycherley on his way home. He seemed to have had no difficulty at all, not even in Elba. We had quite a long audience. Mr. Wycherley struck me as a man of blunt feelings. Apparently the emperor—after all the imperial title is not taken away from him yet.”