Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (501 page)

He was really appalling.  Again his wandering stare went round the table, with an expression incredibly incongruous with the words.  It was as though he had borrowed those eyes from some idiot for the purpose of that visit.  He still held Doña Rita’s hand, and, now and then, patted it.

“It’s discouraging,” he cooed.  “And I believe not one of you here is a Frenchman.  I don’t know what you are all about.  It’s beyond me.  But if we were a Republic — you know I am an old Jacobin, sans-culotte and terrorist — if this were a real Republic with the Convention sitting and a Committee of Public Safety attending to national business, you would all get your heads cut off.  Ha, ha . . . I am joking, ha, ha! . . . and serve you right, too.  Don’t mind my little joke.”

While he was still laughing he released her hand and she leaned her head on it again without haste.  She had never looked at him once.

During the rather humiliating silence that ensued he got a leather cigar case like a small valise out of his pocket, opened it and looked with critical interest at the six cigars it contained.  The tireless femme-de-chambre set down a tray with coffee cups on the table.  We each (glad, I suppose, of something to do) took one, but he, to begin with, sniffed at his.  Doña Rita continued leaning on her elbow, her lips closed in a reposeful expression of peculiar sweetness.  There was nothing drooping in her attitude.  Her face with the delicate carnation of a rose and downcast eyes was as if veiled in firm immobility and was so appealing that I had an insane impulse to walk round and kiss the forearm on which it was leaning; that strong, well-shaped forearm, gleaming not like marble but with a living and warm splendour.  So familiar had I become already with her in my thoughts!  Of course I didn’t do anything of the sort.  It was nothing uncontrollable, it was but a tender longing of a most respectful and purely sentimental kind.  I performed the act in my thought quietly, almost solemnly, while the creature with the silver hair leaned back in his chair, puffing at his cigar, and began to speak again.

It was all apparently very innocent talk.  He informed his “dear Rita” that he was really on his way to Monte Carlo.  A lifelong habit of his at this time of the year; but he was ready to run back to Paris if he could do anything for his “chère enfant,” run back for a day, for two days, for three days, for any time; miss Monte Carlo this year altogether, if he could be of the slightest use and save her going herself.  For instance he could see to it that proper watch was kept over the Pavilion stuffed with all these art treasures.  What was going to happen to all those things? . . . Making herself heard for the first time Doña Rita murmured without moving that she had made arrangements with the police to have it properly watched.  And I was enchanted by the almost imperceptible play of her lips.

But the anxious creature was not reassured.  He pointed out that things had been stolen out of the Louvre, which was, he dared say, even better watched.  And there was that marvellous cabinet on the landing, black lacquer with silver herons, which alone would repay a couple of burglars.  A wheelbarrow, some old sacking, and they could trundle it off under people’s noses.

“Have you thought it all out?” she asked in a cold whisper, while we three sat smoking to give ourselves a countenance (it was certainly no enjoyment) and wondering what we would hear next.

No, he had not.  But he confessed that for years and years he had been in love with that cabinet.  And anyhow what was going to happen to the things?  The world was greatly exercised by that problem.  He turned slightly his beautifully groomed white head so as to address Mr. Blunt directly.

“I had the pleasure of meeting your mother lately.”

Mr. Blunt took his time to raise his eyebrows and flash his teeth at him before he dropped negligently, “I can’t imagine where you could have met my mother.”

“Why, at Bing’s, the curio-dealer,” said the other with an air of the heaviest possible stupidity.  And yet there was something in these few words which seemed to imply that if Mr. Blunt was looking for trouble he would certainly get it.  “Bing was bowing her out of his shop, but he was so angry about something that he was quite rude even to me afterwards.  I don’t think it’s very good for Madame votre mère to quarrel with Bing.  He is a Parisian personality.  He’s quite a power in his sphere.  All these fellows’ nerves are upset from worry as to what will happen to the Allègre collection.  And no wonder they are nervous.  A big art event hangs on your lips, my dear, great Rita.  And by the way, you too ought to remember that it isn’t wise to quarrel with people.  What have you done to that poor Azzolati?  Did you really tell him to get out and never come near you again, or something awful like that?  I don’t doubt that he was of use to you or to your king.  A man who gets invitations to shoot with the President at Rambouillet!  I saw him only the other evening; I heard he had been winning immensely at cards; but he looked perfectly wretched, the poor fellow.  He complained of your conduct — oh, very much!  He told me you had been perfectly brutal with him.  He said to me: ‘I am no good for anything, mon cher.  The other day at Rambouillet, whenever I had a hare at the end of my gun I would think of her cruel words and my eyes would run full of tears.  I missed every shot’ . . . You are not fit for diplomatic work, you know, ma chère.  You are a mere child at it.  When you want a middle-aged gentleman to do anything for you, you don’t begin by reducing him to tears.  I should have thought any woman would have known that much.  A nun would have known that much.  What do you say?  Shall I run back to Paris and make it up for you with Azzolati?”

He waited for her answer.  The compression of his thin lips was full of significance.  I was surprised to see our hostess shake her head negatively the least bit, for indeed by her pose, by the thoughtful immobility of her face she seemed to be a thousand miles away from us all, lost in an infinite reverie.

He gave it up.  “Well, I must be off.  The express for Nice passes at four o’clock.  I will be away about three weeks and then you shall see me again.  Unless I strike a run of bad luck and get cleaned out, in which case you shall see me before then.”

He turned to Mills suddenly.

“Will your cousin come south this year, to that beautiful villa of his at Cannes?”

Mills hardly deigned to answer that he didn’t know anything about his cousin’s movements.

“A grand seigneur combined with a great connoisseur,” opined the other heavily.  His mouth had gone slack and he looked a perfect and grotesque imbecile under his wig-like crop of white hair.  Positively I thought he would begin to slobber.  But he attacked Blunt next.

“Are you on your way down, too?  A little flutter. . . It seems to me you haven’t been seen in your usual Paris haunts of late.  Where have you been all this time?”

“Don’t you know where I have been?” said Mr. Blunt with great precision.

“No, I only ferret out things that may be of some use to me,” was the unexpected reply, uttered with an air of perfect vacancy and swallowed by Mr. Blunt in blank silence.

At last he made ready to rise from the table.  “Think over what I have said, my dear Rita.”

“It’s all over and done with,” was Doña Rita’s answer, in a louder tone than I had ever heard her use before.  It thrilled me while she continued: “I mean, this thinking.”  She was back from the remoteness of her meditation, very much so indeed.  She rose and moved away from the table, inviting by a sign the other to follow her; which he did at once, yet slowly and as it were warily.

It was a conference in the recess of a window.  We three remained seated round the table from which the dark maid was removing the cups and the plates with brusque movements.  I gazed frankly at Doña Rita’s profile, irregular, animated, and fascinating in an undefinable way, at her well-shaped head with the hair twisted high up and apparently held in its place by a gold arrow with a jewelled shaft.  We couldn’t hear what she said, but the movement of her lips and the play of her features were full of charm, full of interest, expressing both audacity and gentleness.  She spoke with fire without raising her voice.  The man listened round-shouldered, but seeming much too stupid to understand.  I could see now and then that he was speaking, but he was inaudible.  At one moment Doña Rita turned her head to the room and called out to the maid, “Give me my hand-bag off the sofa.”

At this the other was heard plainly, “No, no,” and then a little lower, “You have no tact, Rita. . . .”  Then came her argument in a low, penetrating voice which I caught, “Why not?  Between such old friends.”  However, she waved away the hand-bag, he calmed down, and their voices sank again.  Presently I saw him raise her hand to his lips, while with her back to the room she continued to contemplate out of the window the bare and untidy garden.  At last he went out of the room, throwing to the table an airy “Bonjour, bonjour,” which was not acknowledged by any of us three.

CHAPTER III

Mills got up and approached the figure at the window.  To my extreme surprise, Mr. Blunt, after a moment of obviously painful hesitation, hastened out after the man with the white hair.

In consequence of these movements I was left to myself and I began to be uncomfortably conscious of it when Doña Rita, near the window, addressed me in a raised voice.

“We have no confidences to exchange, Mr. Mills and I.”

I took this for an encouragement to join them.  They were both looking at me.  Doña Rita added, “Mr. Mills and I are friends from old times, you know.”

Bathed in the softened reflection of the sunshine, which did not fall directly into the room, standing very straight with her arms down, before Mills, and with a faint smile directed to me, she looked extremely young, and yet mature.  There was even, for a moment, a slight dimple in her cheek.

“How old, I wonder?” I said, with an answering smile.

“Oh, for ages, for ages,” she exclaimed hastily, frowning a little, then she went on addressing herself to Mills, apparently in continuation of what she was saying before.

. . .  “This man’s is an extreme case, and yet perhaps it isn’t the worst.  But that’s the sort of thing.  I have no account to render to anybody, but I don’t want to be dragged along all the gutters where that man picks up his living.”

She had thrown her head back a little but there was no scorn, no angry flash under the dark-lashed eyelids.  The words did not ring.  I was struck for the first time by the even, mysterious quality of her voice.

“Will you let me suggest,” said Mills, with a grave, kindly face, “that being what you are, you have nothing to fear?”

“And perhaps nothing to lose,” she went on without bitterness.  “No.  It isn’t fear.  It’s a sort of dread.  You must remember that no nun could have had a more protected life.  Henry Allègre had his greatness.  When he faced the world he also masked it.  He was big enough for that.  He filled the whole field of vision for me.”

“You found that enough?” asked Mills.

“Why ask now?” she remonstrated.  “The truth — the truth is that I never asked myself.  Enough or not there was no room for anything else.  He was the shadow and the light and the form and the voice.  He would have it so.  The morning he died they came to call me at four o’clock.  I ran into his room bare-footed.  He recognized me and whispered, ‘You are flawless.’  I was very frightened.  He seemed to think, and then said very plainly, ‘Such is my character.  I am like that.’  These were the last words he spoke.  I hardly noticed them then.  I was thinking that he was lying in a very uncomfortable position and I asked him if I should lift him up a little higher on the pillows.  You know I am very strong.  I could have done it.  I had done it before.  He raised his hand off the blanket just enough to make a sign that he didn’t want to be touched.  It was the last gesture he made.  I hung over him and then — and then I nearly ran out of the house just as I was, in my night-gown.  I think if I had been dressed I would have run out of the garden, into the street — run away altogether.  I had never seen death.  I may say I had never heard of it.  I wanted to run from it.”

She paused for a long, quiet breath.  The harmonized sweetness and daring of her face was made pathetic by her downcast eyes.

“Fuir la mort,” she repeated, meditatively, in her mysterious voice.

Mills’ big head had a little movement, nothing more.  Her glance glided for a moment towards me like a friendly recognition of my right to be there, before she began again.

“My life might have been described as looking at mankind from a fourth-floor window for years.  When the end came it was like falling out of a balcony into the street.  It was as sudden as that.  Once I remember somebody was telling us in the Pavilion a tale about a girl who jumped down from a fourth-floor window. . . For love, I believe,” she interjected very quickly, “and came to no harm.  Her guardian angel must have slipped his wings under her just in time.  He must have.  But as to me, all I know is that I didn’t break anything — not even my heart.  Don’t be shocked, Mr. Mills.  It’s very likely that you don’t understand.”

“Very likely,” Mills assented, unmoved.  “But don’t be too sure of that.”

“Henry Allègre had the highest opinion of your intelligence,” she said unexpectedly and with evident seriousness.  “But all this is only to tell you that when he was gone I found myself down there unhurt, but dazed, bewildered, not sufficiently stunned.  It so happened that that creature was somewhere in the neighbourhood.  How he found out. . . But it’s his business to find out things.  And he knows, too, how to worm his way in anywhere.  Indeed, in the first days he was useful and somehow he made it look as if Heaven itself had sent him.  In my distress I thought I could never sufficiently repay. . . Well, I have been paying ever since.”

“What do you mean?” asked Mills softly.  “In hard cash?”

“Oh, it’s really so little,” she said.  “I told you it wasn’t the worst case.  I stayed on in that house from which I nearly ran away in my nightgown.  I stayed on because I didn’t know what to do next.  He vanished as he had come on the track of something else, I suppose.  You know he really has got to get his living some way or other.  But don’t think I was deserted.  On the contrary.  People were coming and going, all sorts of people that Henry Allègre used to know — or had refused to know.  I had a sensation of plotting and intriguing around me, all the time.  I was feeling morally bruised, sore all over, when, one day, Don Rafael de Villarel sent in his card.  A grandee.  I didn’t know him, but, as you are aware, there was hardly a personality of mark or position that hasn’t been talked about in the Pavilion before me.  Of him I had only heard that he was a very austere and pious person, always at Mass, and that sort of thing.  I saw a frail little man with a long, yellow face and sunken fanatical eyes, an Inquisitor, an unfrocked monk.  One missed a rosary from his thin fingers.  He gazed at me terribly and I couldn’t imagine what he might want.  I waited for him to pull out a crucifix and sentence me to the stake there and then.  But no; he dropped his eyes and in a cold, righteous sort of voice informed me that he had called on behalf of the prince — he called him His Majesty.  I was amazed by the change.  I wondered now why he didn’t slip his hands into the sleeves of his coat, you know, as begging Friars do when they come for a subscription.  He explained that the Prince asked for permission to call and offer me his condolences in person.  We had seen a lot of him our last two months in Paris that year.  Henry Allègre had taken a fancy to paint his portrait.  He used to ride with us nearly every morning.  Almost without thinking I said I should be pleased.  Don Rafael was shocked at my want of formality, but bowed to me in silence, very much as a monk bows, from the waist.  If he had only crossed his hands flat on his chest it would have been perfect.  Then, I don’t know why, something moved me to make him a deep curtsy as he backed out of the room, leaving me suddenly impressed, not only with him but with myself too.  I had my door closed to everybody else that afternoon and the Prince came with a very proper sorrowful face, but five minutes after he got into the room he was laughing as usual, made the whole little house ring with it.  You know his big, irresistible laugh. . . .”