Джозеф Конрад - Suspense

The doctor left the Palazzo about an hour after Cosmo (but not by the same staircase), and on his way to his inn gave rein to his indignation. Did the stupid brute imagine that he had any sort of claim on his services? Ah, he wanted that popinjay removed from Genoa! Indeed! And what the devil did he care for it? Was he expected to arrange a neat little assassination to please that solemn wooden imbecile? The doctor’s sense of self–importance was grievously hurt. Even in the morning, after a good night’s rest, he had not shaken off the impression. However, he was reasonable enough not to make Cosmo in any way responsible for what he defined to himself as the most incredibly offensive experience of his life. He only looked at him when he came to lunch with a sort of acid amusement, as the being who had had the power to arouse a passion of love in the primitive soul of that curious little savage. As the meal proceeded, the doctor seemed to notice that his young countryman was somehow changed. He watched him covertly. What had happened to him since last evening? Surely he had not been smitten himself by the little savage who under no circumstances could have been made fit to be a housemaid in an English family.

After he had been left by Cosmo alone in the dining–room, the doctor’s body continued to loll in the chair, while his thoughts continued to circle around that funny affair, which you could not say whether it was love at first sight or a manifestation of some inherited lunacy. Quite a good–looking young man. Out of the common, too, in a distinguished way. Altogether a specimen of one’s countrymen one could well be proud of, mused further the doctor, whose tastes had been formed by much intercourse with all kinds of people. Characteristically enough, too, he felt for a moment sorry in his grumpy contemptuous way for the little dishevelled savage with a hooked nose and burning cheeks, and her thin sticks of bare arms. The doctor was humane. The origin of his reputation sprang from his humanity. But his thought, as soon as it left Clelia, stopped short as it were before another image that replaced it in his mind. He had remembered the Countess de Montevesso. He knew her of old, by sight and reputation. He had seen her no further back than last night by the side of the old marquis’s chair. Now he had seen the Count de Montevesso himself, he could well believe all the stories of a lifelong jealousy. The doctor’s hard, active eyes stared fixedly at the truth. It was not because of that little savage that gloomy self–tormenting ass of a drill–sergeant to an Indian prince wanted young Latham removed from Genoa. Oh dear, no. That wasn’t it at all. It was much more serious.

Before he walked out of the empty dining–room, Dr. Martel concluded that it would be perhaps just as well for young Latham not to linger too long in Genoa.

Cosmo having returned to his room sat down again at the writing–table: for was not this day to be devoted to correspondence? Long after the shade had invaded the greater part of the square below he went on, while the faint shuffle of footsteps and the faint murmur of voices reached him from the pavement below like the composite sound of agitated insect life that can be heard in the depths of a forest. It required all his courage to keep on, piling up words which dealt exclusively with towns—roads—rivers—mountains—the colours of the sky. It was like labouring the description of the scenery of a stage after a great play had come to an end. A vain thing. And still he travelled on. Having at last descended into the Italian plain (for the benefit of Henrietta), he dropped his pen and thought: “At this rate I will never arrive in Genoa.” He fell back in his chair like a weary traveller. He was suddenly overcome by that weary distaste a frank nature feels after an effort at concealing an overpowering sentiment.

But had he really anything to conceal? he asked himself.

Suddenly the door flew open and Spire marched in with four lighted candles on a tray. It was only then that Cosmo became aware how late it was. “Had I not better tear all this up?” he thought, looking down at the sheets before him.

Spire put two candlesticks on the table, disposed the two others, one each side of the mantel–piece, and was going out.

“Wait!” cried Cosmo.

It was like a cry of distress. Spire shut the door quietly and turned about, betraying no emotion. Cosmo seized the pen again and concluded hastily: “I have been in Genoa for the last two days. I have seen Adèle and the marquis. They send their love. You shall have lots about them in my next. I have no time now to tell you what a wonderful person she has become. But perhaps you would not think so.”

After he had signed it, the thought struck him that there was nothing about Napoleon in his letter. He must put in something about Napoleon. He added a P.S.: “You can form no idea of the state of suspense in which all classes live here, from the highest to the lowest, as to what may happen next. All their thoughts are concentrated on Bonaparte. Rumours are flying about of some sort of violence that may be offered to him, assassination, kidnapping. It’s difficult to credit it all, though I do believe that the congress in Vienna is capable of any atrocity. A person I met here suggested that I should go to Livorno. Perhaps I will. But I have lost, I don’t know why, all desire to travel. Should I find a ship ready to sail for England in Livorno, I may take passage in her and come home at once by sea.”

Cosmo collected the pages, and while closing the packet asked himself whether he ought to tell her that? Was it the fact that he had lost all wish to travel? However, he let Spire take the packet to the post, and during the man’s absence took a turn or two in the room. He had got through the day. Now there was the evening to get through somehow. But when it occurred to him that the evening would be followed by the hours of an endless night, filled by the conflict of shadowy thoughts that haunt the birth of a passion, the desolation of the prospect was so overpowering that he could only meet it with a bitter laugh. Spire, returning, stood thunder–struck at the door.

“What’s the matter with you? Have you seen a ghost?” asked Cosmo, who ceased laughing suddenly and fixed the valet with distracted eyes.

“No, sir, certainly not. I was wondering whether you hadn’t better dine in your room.”

“What do you mean? Am I not fit to be seen?” asked Cosmo captiously, glancing at himself in the mirror as though the crisis through which he had passed in the last three or four minutes could have distorted his face. Spire made no answer. The sound of that laugh had made him lose his conventional bearing; while Cosmo wondered what had happened to that imbecile, and glared at him suspiciously.

“Give me my coat,” he said at last. “I am going downstairs.”

This broke the spell, and Spire, getting into motion, regained his composure.

“Noisy company down there, sir. I thought you might not like it.”

Cosmo felt a sudden longing to hear noise, lots of it, senseless, loud, common, absurd noise; noise loud enough to prevent one from thinking, the sort of noise that would cause one to become, as it were, insensible.

“What do you want?” he asked savagely of Spire, who was hovering at his back.

“I am ready to help you with your coat, sir,” said Spire, in an apathetic voice. He had been profoundly shocked. After his master had gone out, slamming the door behind him, he busied himself with a stony face in putting the room to rights before he blew out the candles, and left it to get his supper.

“Didn’t you advise me this morning to go to Livorno?” asked Cosmo, falling heavily into the chair. Dr. Martel was already at the table, and, except that he had changed his boots for silk stockings and shoes, he might not have moved from there all the afternoon.