Джозеф Конрад - Suspense

“We have put her to bed,” she said, “but as to holding her down in it that was another matter. Maria is strong, but she got weary of it at last. We had to send for Father Paul. Shameless as she is, she would not attempt to get out of her bed in her nightdress before a priest. The Father promised to stay till we could fetch you to her, so I came down, but I dared not go further than the ante–room. A valet told me you had still a guest with you, so I sent him away and sat down to wait. The wretch to revenge himself on me put out the lights before he went.”

“He shall be flung out to–morrow,” said M. de Montevesso in a low tone.

“I hope I have done nothing wrong, Helion.”

“No,” said M. de Montevesso in the same subdued tone. He lent his ear to catch some slight sound on the other side of the door. But the stillness behind it was like the stillness of a sick–room to which people listen with apprehension. The old woman laid her hand lightly on the sleeve of the gorgeous coat. “You are a great man….”

“I am,” said Count Helion, without exultation.

The old woman, dragged out at the age of seventy from the depths of her native valley by the irresistible will of the great man, tried to find utterance for a few simple thoughts. Old age with its blunted feelings had alone preserved her from utter bewilderment at the sudden change; but she was overpowered by its greatness. She lived inside that palace as if enchanted into a state of resignation. Ever since she had arrived in Genoa, which was just five weeks ago, she had kept to the upper floor. Only the extreme necessity of the case had induced her to come so far downstairs as the white ante–room. She was conscious of not having neglected her duty.

“I did beat her faithfully,” she declared with the calmness of old age and conscious rectitude. The lips of M. de Montevesso twitched slightly. “I did really, though often feeling too weary to raise my arm. Then I would throw a shawl over my head and go out in the rain to speak to Father Paul. He had taught her to read and write. He is full of charity. He would shrug his shoulders and tell me to put my trust in God. It was all very well for him to talk like that. True, that on your account I was the greatest person for miles around. I had the first place everywhere. But now that you made us come out here just because of your fancy to turn the child into a contessa, all my poor senses leave my old body. For, you know, if I did beat her, being entrusted with your authority, everybody else in the village waited on a turn of her finger. She was full of pride and wilfulness then. Now, since you have introduced her amongst all those grandissimi signori, of whom she had only heard as one hears of angels in heaven, she seems to have lost her head with the excess of pride and obstinacy. What is one to do? The other day, on account of something I said, she fastened her ten fingers into my grey hair….” She threw her shawl off and raised her creased eyelids…. “This grey hair, on the oldest head of your family, Helion. If it hadn’t been for Maria she would have left me a corpse on the floor.” The mild bearing of the old woman had a dignity of its own, but at this point it broke down and she became agitated.

“Many a time I have sat up in my bed thinking half the night. I am an old woman. I can read the signs. This is a matter for priests. When I was a big girl in our village they had to exorcise a comely youth, a herdsman. I am not fit to talk of such matters. But you, Helion, could say a word or two to Father Paul. He would know what to do … or get the bishop … ”

“Amazing superstition,” Count Helion exclaimed in a rasping growl. “The days of priests and devils are gone,” he went on angrily, but paused as if struck with a sudden doubt, or a new idea. The old woman shook her head slightly. In the depths of her native valley all the days were alike in their hopes and fears, as far back as she could remember. She did not know how she had offended her brother, and emitted a sigh of resignation.

“What’s the trouble now?” Count Helion asked brusquely.

The old woman shrugged her shoulders expressively. Count Helion insisted. “There must be some cause.”

“The cause, as I am a sinner, can be no other but that young signore that came out with you, and to whom you bowed so low. I didn’t know you had to bow to anybody, unless perhaps to the king, who has come back lately. But then a king is anointed with holy oils! I couldn’t believe my eyes. What kind of prince was that?” She waited, screwing her eyes up at Count Helion, who looked down at her inscrutably, and at last condescended to say:

“That was an Englishman.”

She moaned with astonishment and alarm. A heretic! She thought no heretic could be good–looking. Didn’t they have their wickedness written on their faces?

“No,” said Count Helion. “No man has that and no woman either.”

Again he paused to think. “Let us go in now,” he added.

The big room (all the rooms in that palazzo were big unless they happened to be mere dark and airless cupboards) which they entered as quietly as if a sick person had been lying in there at the point of death, contained amongst its gilt furniture also a few wooden stools and a dark walnut table brought down from the farmhouse for the convenience of its rustic occupants. A priest sitting in a gorgeous arm–chair held to the light of a common brass oil lamp an open book, the shadow of which darkened a whole corner of the vast space between the high walls decorated with rare marbles, long mirrors and heavy hangings. A few small pieces of washing were hung out to dry on a string stretched from a window–latch to the back of a chair. A common brazero stood in the fire–place and, near it, a gaunt, bony woman dressed in black, with a white handkerchief on her head, was stirring something in a little earthen pot. Ranged at the foot of a dais bearing a magnificent but dismantled couch of state, were two small wooden bedsteads, on one of which lay the girl whom Cosmo knew only as “Clelia, my husband’s niece,” with a hand under her cheek. The other cheek was much flushed; a tangle of loose black hair covered the pillow. Whether from respect for the priest or from mere exhaustion, she was keeping perfectly still under her bed–clothes, pulled up to her very neck so that only her head remained uncovered.

At the entrance of the count the priest closed his book and stood up, but the woman by the mantel–piece went on stirring her pot. Count Helion returned a “ Bon soir , l’Abbé,” to the priest’s silent bow, put down the candelabra on a console, and walked straight to the bedstead. The other three people, the gaunt woman still with her pot in her hand, approached it too, but kept their distance.

The girl Clelia remained perfectly still under the downward thoughtful gaze of Count Helion. In that face, half–buried in the pillow, one eye glittered full of tears. She refused to make the slightest sound in reply to Count Helion’s questions, orders and remonstrances. Even his coaxings, addressed to her in the same low, harsh tone, were received in obstinate silence. Whenever he paused, he could hear at his back the old woman whispering to the priest. At last even that stopped. Count Helion resisted the temptation to grab all that hair on the pillow and pull the child out of bed by it. He waited a little longer, and then said in his harsh tone:

“I thought you loved me.”

For the first time there was a movement under the blanket. But that was all. Count Helion turned his back on the bed and met three pairs of eyes fixed on him with different expressions. He avoided meeting any of them. “Perhaps if you were to leave us alone,” he said.

They obeyed in silence, but at the last moment he called the priest back and took him aside to a distant part of the room where the brass oil lamp stood on the walnut–wood table. The full physiognomy of Father Paul Carpi with its thin eyebrows and pouting mouth was overspread by a self–conscious professional placidity that seemed ready to see or hear anything without surprise. Count de Montevesso was always impressed by it. “Abbé,” he said brusquely, “you know that my sister thinks that the child is possessed. I suppose she means by a devil.”