Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (514 page)

I recognized the phrase.  Mother and son talked of each other in identical terms.  But perhaps “exquisitely absurd” was the Blunt family saying?  There are such sayings in families and generally there is some truth in them.  Perhaps this old woman was simply absurd.  She continued:

“We had a most painful discussion all this morning.  He is angry with me for suggesting the very thing his whole being desires.  I don’t feel guilty.  It’s he who is tormenting himself with his infinite scrupulosity.”

“Ah,” I said, looking at the mangled dummy like the model of some atrocious murder.  “Ah, the fortune.  But that can be left alone.”

“What nonsense!  How is it possible?  It isn’t contained in a bag, you can’t throw it into the sea.  And moreover, it isn’t her fault.  I am astonished that you should have thought of that vulgar hypocrisy.  No, it isn’t her fortune that cheeks my son; it’s something much more subtle.  Not so much her history as her position.  He is absurd.  It isn’t what has happened in her life.  It’s her very freedom that makes him torment himself and her, too — as far as I can understand.”

I suppressed a groan and said to myself that I must really get away from there.

Mrs. Blunt was fairly launched now.

“For all his superiority he is a man of the world and shares to a certain extent its current opinions.  He has no power over her.  She intimidates him.  He wishes he had never set eyes on her.  Once or twice this morning he looked at me as if he could find it in his heart to hate his old mother.  There is no doubt about it — he loves her, Monsieur George.  He loves her, this poor, luckless, perfect homme du monde.”

The silence lasted for some time and then I heard a murmur: “It’s a matter of the utmost delicacy between two beings so sensitive, so proud.  It has to be managed.”

I found myself suddenly on my feet and saying with the utmost politeness that I had to beg her permission to leave her alone as I had an engagement; but she motioned me simply to sit down — and I sat down again.

“I told you I had a request to make,” she said.  “I have understood from Mr. Mills that you have been to the West Indies, that you have some interests there.”

I was astounded.  “Interests!  I certainly have been there,” I said, “but . . .”

She caught me up.  “Then why not go there again?  I am speaking to you frankly because . . .”

“But, Madame, I am engaged in this affair with Doña Rita, even if I had any interests elsewhere.  I won’t tell you about the importance of my work.  I didn’t suspect it but you brought the news of it to me, and so I needn’t point it out to you.”

And now we were frankly arguing with each other.

“But where will it lead you in the end?  You have all your life before you, all your plans, prospects, perhaps dreams, at any rate your own tastes and all your life-time before you.  And would you sacrifice all this to — the Pretender?  A mere figure for the front page of illustrated papers.”‘

“I never think of him,”  I said curtly, “but I suppose Doña Rita’s feelings, instincts, call it what you like — or only her chivalrous fidelity to her mistakes — ”

“Doña Rita’s presence here in this town, her withdrawal from the possible complications of her life in Paris has produced an excellent effect on my son.  It simplifies infinite difficulties, I mean moral as well as material.  It’s extremely to the advantage of her dignity, of her future, and of her peace of mind.  But I am thinking, of course, mainly of my son.  He is most exacting.”

I felt extremely sick at heart.  “And so I am to drop everything and vanish,” I said, rising from my chair again.  And this time Mrs. Blunt got up, too, with a lofty and inflexible manner but she didn’t dismiss me yet.

“Yes,” she said distinctly.  “All this, my dear Monsieur George, is such an accident.  What have you got to do here?  You look to me like somebody who would find adventures wherever he went as interesting and perhaps less dangerous than this one.”

She slurred over the word dangerous but I picked it up.

“What do you know of its dangers, Madame, may I ask?”  But she did not condescend to hear.

“And then you, too, have your chivalrous feelings,” she went on, unswerving, distinct, and tranquil.  “You are not absurd.  But my son is.  He would shut her up in a convent for a time if he could.”

“He isn’t the only one,” I muttered.

“Indeed!” she was startled, then lower, “Yes.  That woman must be the centre of all sorts of passions,” she mused audibly.  “But what have you got to do with all this?  It’s nothing to you.”

She waited for me to speak.

“Exactly, Madame,” I said, “and therefore I don’t see why I should concern myself in all this one way or another.”

“No,” she assented with a weary air, “except that you might ask yourself what is the good of tormenting a man of noble feelings, however absurd.  His Southern blood makes him very violent sometimes.  I fear — ”  And then for the first time during this conversation, for the first time since I left Doña Rita the day before, for the first time I laughed.

“Do you mean to hint, Madame, that Southern gentlemen are dead shots?  I am aware of that — from novels.”

I spoke looking her straight in the face and I made that exquisite, aristocratic old woman positively blink by my directness.  There was a faint flush on her delicate old cheeks but she didn’t move a muscle of her face.  I made her a most respectful bow and went out of the studio.

CHAPTER IV

Through the great arched window of the hall I saw the hotel brougham waiting at the door.  On passing the door of the front room (it was originally meant for a drawing-room but a bed for Blunt was put in there) I banged with my fist on the panel and shouted: “I am obliged to go out.  Your mother’s carriage is at the door.”  I didn’t think he was asleep.  My view now was that he was aware beforehand of the subject of the conversation, and if so I did not wish to appear as if I had slunk away from him after the interview.  But I didn’t stop — I didn’t want to see him — and before he could answer I was already half way up the stairs running noiselessly up the thick carpet which also covered the floor of the landing.  Therefore opening the door of my sitting-room quickly I caught by surprise the person who was in there watching the street half concealed by the window curtain.  It was a woman.  A totally unexpected woman.  A perfect stranger.  She came away quickly to meet me.  Her face was veiled and she was dressed in a dark walking costume and a very simple form of hat.  She murmured: “I had an idea that Monsieur was in the house,” raising a gloved hand to lift her veil.  It was Rose and she gave me a shock.  I had never seen her before but with her little black silk apron and a white cap with ribbons on her head.  This outdoor dress was like a disguise.  I asked anxiously:

“What has happened to Madame?”

“Nothing.  I have a letter,” she murmured, and I saw it appear between the fingers of her extended hand, in a very white envelope which I tore open impatiently.  It consisted of a few lines only.  It began abruptly:

“If you are gone to sea then I can’t forgive you for not sending the usual word at the last moment.  If you are not gone why don’t you come?  Why did you leave me yesterday?  You leave me crying — I who haven’t cried for years and years, and you haven’t the sense to come back within the hour, within twenty hours!  This conduct is idiotic” — and a sprawling signature of the four magic letters at the bottom.

While I was putting the letter in my pocket the girl said in an earnest undertone: “I don’t like to leave Madame by herself for any length of time.”

“How long have you been in my room?” I asked.

“The time seemed long.  I hope Monsieur won’t mind the liberty.  I sat for a little in the hall but then it struck me I might be seen.  In fact, Madame told me not to be seen if I could help it.”

“Why did she tell you that?”

“I permitted myself to suggest that to Madame.  It might have given a false impression.  Madame is frank and open like the day but it won’t do with everybody.  There are people who would put a wrong construction on anything.  Madame’s sister told me Monsieur was out.”

“And you didn’t believe her?”

“Non, Monsieur.  I have lived with Madame’s sister for nearly a week when she first came into this house.  She wanted me to leave the message, but I said I would wait a little.  Then I sat down in the big porter’s chair in the hall and after a while, everything being very quiet, I stole up here.  I know the disposition of the apartments.  I reckoned Madame’s sister would think that I got tired of waiting and let myself out.”

“And you have been amusing yourself watching the street ever since?”

“The time seemed long,” she answered evasively.  “An empty coupé came to the door about an hour ago and it’s still waiting,” she added, looking at me inquisitively.

“It seems strange.”

“There are some dancing girls staying in the house,” I said negligently.  “Did you leave Madame alone?”

“There’s the gardener and his wife in the house.”

“Those people keep at the back.  Is Madame alone?  That’s what I want to know.”

“Monsieur forgets that I have been three hours away; but I assure Monsieur that here in this town it’s perfectly safe for Madame to be alone.”

“And wouldn’t it be anywhere else?  It’s the first I hear of it.”

“In Paris, in our apartments in the hotel, it’s all right, too; but in the Pavilion, for instance, I wouldn’t leave Madame by herself, not for half an hour.”

“What is there in the Pavilion?” I asked.

“It’s a sort of feeling I have,” she murmured reluctantly . . . “Oh!  There’s that coupé going away.”

She made a movement towards the window but checked herself.  I hadn’t moved.  The rattle of wheels on the cobble-stones died out almost at once.

“Will Monsieur write an answer?” Rose suggested after a short silence.

“Hardly worth while,” I said.  “I will be there very soon after you.  Meantime, please tell Madame from me that I am not anxious to see any more tears.  Tell her this just like that, you understand.  I will take the risk of not being received.”

She dropped her eyes, said: “Oui, Monsieur,” and at my suggestion waited, holding the door of the room half open, till I went downstairs to see the road clear.

It was a kind of deaf-and-dumb house.  The black-and-white hall was empty and everything was perfectly still.  Blunt himself had no doubt gone away with his mother in the brougham, but as to the others, the dancing girls, Therese, or anybody else that its walls may have contained, they might have been all murdering each other in perfect assurance that the house would not betray them by indulging in any unseemly murmurs.  I emitted a low whistle which didn’t seem to travel in that peculiar atmosphere more than two feet away from my lips, but all the same Rose came tripping down the stairs at once.  With just a nod to my whisper: “Take a fiacre,” she glided out and I shut the door noiselessly behind her.

The next time I saw her she was opening the door of the house on the Prado to me, with her cap and the little black silk apron on, and with that marked personality of her own, which had been concealed so perfectly in the dowdy walking dress, very much to the fore.

“I have given Madame the message,” she said in her contained voice, swinging the door wide open.  Then after relieving me of my hat and coat she announced me with the simple words: “Voilà Monsieur,” and hurried away.  Directly I appeared Doña Rita, away there on the couch, passed the tips of her fingers over her eyes and holding her hands up palms outwards on each side of her head, shouted to me down the whole length of the room: “The dry season has set in.”  I glanced at the pink tips of her fingers perfunctorily and then drew back.  She let her hands fall negligently as if she had no use for them any more and put on a serious expression.

“So it seems,” I said, sitting down opposite her.  “For how long, I wonder.”

“For years and years.  One gets so little encouragement.  First you bolt away from my tears, then you send an impertinent message, and then when you come at last you pretend to behave respectfully, though you don’t know how to do it.  You should sit much nearer the edge of the chair and hold yourself very stiff, and make it quite clear that you don’t know what to do with your hands.”

All this in a fascinating voice with a ripple of badinage that seemed to play upon the sober surface of her thoughts.  Then seeing that I did not answer she altered the note a bit.

“Amigo George,” she said, “I take the trouble to send for you and here I am before you, talking to you and you say nothing.”

“What am I to say?”

“How can I tell?  You might say a thousand things.  You might, for instance, tell me that you were sorry for my tears.”

“I might also tell you a thousand lies.  What do I know about your tears?  I am not a susceptible idiot.  It all depends upon the cause.  There are tears of quiet happiness.  Peeling onions also will bring tears.”

“Oh, you are not susceptible,” she flew out at me.  “But you are an idiot all the same.”

“Is it to tell me this that you have written to me to come?” I asked with a certain animation.

“Yes.  And if you had as much sense as the talking parrot I owned once you would have read between the lines that all I wanted you here for was to tell you what I think of you.”

“Well, tell me what you think of me.”

“I would in a moment if I could be half as impertinent as you are.”

“What unexpected modesty,” I said.

“These, I suppose, are your sea manners.”

“I wouldn’t put up with half that nonsense from anybody at sea.  Don’t you remember you told me yourself to go away?  What was I to do?”

“How stupid you are.  I don’t mean that you pretend.  You really are.  Do you understand what I say?  I will spell it for you.  S-t-u-p-i-d.  Ah, now I feel better.  Oh, amigo George, my dear fellow-conspirator for the king — the king.  Such a king!  Vive le Roi!  Come, why don’t you shout Vive le Roi, too?”

“I am not your parrot,” I said.

“No, he never sulked.  He was a charming, good-mannered bird, accustomed to the best society, whereas you, I suppose, are nothing but a heartless vagabond like myself.”