Джозеф Конрад - Suspense

“Oh, yes, let us,” the other said lightly. “I am sure that when I wake up to–morrow all this will seem to me a dream. Even now I feel inclined to pinch myself.”

“What’s that for, in Heaven’s name?”

“It’s a saying we have in our country. Yes, you, your hermit, our talk and this very tower, all this will be like a dream.”

“I would say ‘nothing better’ if it was not that most people are only too ready to talk about their dreams. No, signore, let all this be to you of less consequence than if it were a tale of ghosts, of mere ghosts in which you do not believe. You forced yourself on me as if you were the lord of this place, but I feel friendly enough to you.”

“I didn’t ask for your friendship,” retorted the young traveller in a clear voice, so void of all offence that the other man accepted it for a mere statement of a fact.

“Certainly not. I spoke of my own feelings, and though I am, you may say, a new–comer and a stranger in my own native city, I assure you it is better to have me for a friend than for an enemy. And the best thing of all would be to forget all about me. It would be also the kindest thing you could do.”

“Really?” said Cosmo, in a tone of sympathy. “How can you expect me to forget the most extraordinary thing that ever happened to me in all my life?”

“In all your life! h’m! You have a long life before you yet, signorino.”

“Oh, but this is an adventure.”

“That’s what I mean. You have so many marvellous adventures before you, signorino, that this one is sure to be forgotten very soon. Then why not at once?”

“No, my friend, you don’t seem somehow a person one could easily forget.”

“I—God forbid … Good–night, signore.”

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the man in the cap bounded across the platform, dived into the black square opening on its landward side, and ran down the steps so lightly that not a sound reached the ears of the other. Cosmo went down the winding stair, but cautiously in the profound darkness. The door at the bottom stood open, and he stepped out on to the deserted jetty. He could see on it nothing in the shape of a fleeting shadow.

On the very edge of the shore a low little building with three arcades sent a dim gleam of light through its open door. It seemed to be a sort of guard–room, for there was a sentry, an Austrian soldier apparently, in a white coat. His duty, however, seemed to be concerned with the landing–steps in front of the guard–house, and he let the young traveller pass on as though he had not seen him at all. Dark night had settled upon the long quay. Here and there a dim street lamp threw a feeble light on the uneven stones which the feet of the young traveller with his springy walk seemed hardly to touch. The pleasurable sensation of something extraordinary having happened to him accelerated his movements. He was also feeling very hungry and he was making haste towards his inn to dine first, and then to think his adventure over, for there was a strong conviction within him that he certainly had had an adventure of a nature at the same time stimulating and obscure.

Cosmo Latham had an inborn faculty of orientation in strange surroundings, most invaluable in a cavalry officer, but of which he had never made much use, not even during the few months when he served as a cornet of horse in the Duke of Wellington’s army in the last year of the Peninsular campaign. There had been but few occasions to make use of it for a freshly–joined subaltern. It stood him in good stead that night, however, while making his way to his inn in a town in which he was a complete stranger, for it allowed him, with but little concern for the direction he took, to think of his home which he loved for itself, every stone and every tree of it—and of the two people he left there, whom he loved too, each in a different way: his father, Sir Charles, and his sister, Henrietta.

Latham Hall, a large straggling building showing traces of many styles, flanked by a romantic park, and commanding a vast view of the Yorkshire hills, had been the hereditary home of Lathams from the times before the great rebellion. That it escaped confiscation then might have been the effect of the worldly prudence of the Latham of the time. He probably took good care not to shock persons of position and influence. That, however, was not the characteristic of the later Lathams down to Sir Charles, Cosmo’s father.

Sir Charles’s unconventional individuality had never been understood by his country neighbours. Born endowed with a good intellect, a lively imagination, and a capacity for social intercourse, it had been his fate, owing to the idiosyncrasies of his own father, to spend his early youth in the depths of Yorkshire in surroundings not at all congenial to his taste. Later he served for a time in the Guards; but he very soon left the army to make an extended tour in France and Italy. In those last days before the Revolution le chevalier Latham obtained a great social recognition in Paris and Versailles amongst the very best people, not so much by his brilliance as by the depth of his character and the largeness of his ideas. But suddenly he tore himself away from his friendships and successes and proceeded to Italy. There, amongst the members of the English colony in Florence he met the two Aston girls and, for some reason or other, became a great favourite with their widowed mother. But at the end of some months he suddenly made up his mind to return home. During a long, sleepless night, which he spent pacing up and down in the agony of an internal struggle with himself in the magnificent rooms of his lodgings in Florence, he concluded that he would go home by sea. It was the easiest way of avoiding coming near Paris. He had heard not long before that the best friends he had made in the brilliant society he had frequented in France, the Marquis and the Marquise d’Armand, had a daughter born to them. At Leghorn, on the very eve of embarking, he had another struggle with himself—but he went by sea. By the time, when after a long sea passage, he put his foot on native soil, he had renounced the idea of hurrying on north to shut himself up in his country home. He lingered in London, disdainful and idle, and began reluctantly to fall into the ways of a man about town, when a friend returning from Italy brought him news that Miss Aston was going to marry a Tuscan nobleman of mature years, and, as a piece of queer Florentine gossip, that if the younger sister, Miss Molly Aston, had refused two suitors in quick succession, it was because she regarded herself in some way as being engaged to him—Charles Latham.

Whether stung by his conscience or urged by indignation, Sir Charles started impulsively for Italy, travelling across the south of France. It was a long road. At first he had been amazed, confounded and angry; but before he came to the end of his journey he had time to reflect upon what might have easily become an absurd and odious situation. He said to himself that a lot of bother of one sort and another would be saved by his marrying Molly Aston. He did so, to the applause of all right–minded people, and at the end of two years spent abroad came home with his wife to shut himself up in his ancestral hall, commanding the view of a wide and romantic landscape, which he thought one of the finest in the world.

Molly Aston had been beautiful enough in her time to inspire several vagrant poets and at least one Italian sculptor; but as Cosmo grew older he began to understand that his mother had been a nonentity in the family life. The greatest piece of self–assertion on her part was his name. She had insisted on calling him Cosmo because the Astons counted, far back in the past, an ancestress of Florentine origin, supposed to have been a connection of the Medici family. Cosmo was fair, and the name was all about him that he had received from his mother. Henrietta was a type of dark beauty. Lady Latham died when both her children were still young. In her life she adorned Latham Hall in the same way as a statue might have adorned it. Her household power was limited to the ordering of the dinner. With habits of meticulous order, and a marvellously commonplace mind, she had a temperament which, if she had not fallen violently in love at the age of eighteen with the man whom she married, would have made her fond of society, of amusement, and perhaps even of dissipation. But her only amusement and dissipation consisted in writing long letters to innumerable relations and friends all over the world, of whom, after her marriage, she saw but very little. She never complained. Her hidden fear of all initiative, and the secret ardour of her temperament, found their fulfilment in an absolute submission to Sir Charles’s will. She would never have dreamed of asking for horses for a visit in the neighbourhood, but when her husband remarked, “I think it would be advisable for you, my lady, to call at such and such a house,” her face would light up, she would answer with alacrity, “Certainly, Sir Charles,” and go off to array herself magnificently indeed (perhaps because of that drop of Medici blood), but also with great taste. As the years went on, Sir Charles aged more than he ought to have done, and even began to grow a little stout, but no one could fail to see that he had been a very handsome man in his time, and that his wife’s early infatuation for him was justified in a way. In politics he was a partisan of Mr. Pitt, rather than a downright Tory. He loved his country, believed in its greatness, in its superior virtue, in its irresistible power. Nothing could shake his fidelity to national prejudices of every sort. He had no great liking for grandees and mere aristocrats, despised the fashionable world, and would have nothing whatever to do with any kind of “upstart.” Without being gentle he was naturally kind and hospitable. His native generosity was so well known that no one was surprised when he offered the shelter of his Yorkshire house to a family of French refugees, the Marquis and the Marquise d’Armand with their little daughter, Adèle. They had arrived in England in a state of almost complete destitution, but with two servants who had shared the dangers and the miseries of their flight from the excesses of the Revolution.