Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (639 page)

“We priests, M. le Comte, are recommended not to enter into discussion of theological matters with people who, whatever their accomplishments and wisdom, are not properly instructed in them. As to anything else I am always at Monseigneur’s service.”

He gave this qualification to Count Helion because it was not beyond the bounds of respect due from a poor parish priest to a titled great man of his province.

“Have you been much about amongst the town people?” asked Count Helion.

“I go out every morning about seven to say mass in that church you may have noticed near by. I have visited also once or twice an old friend from my seminary days, a priest of a poor parish here. We rejoice together at the return of the Holy Father to Rome. For the rest I had an idea, Monseigneur, that you did not wish me to make myself prominent in any way in this town.”

“Perhaps I didn’t. It may be convenient, though, to know what are the rumours current amongst the populace. That class has its own thoughts. I suppose your friend would know something of that.”

“No doubt. But I can tell you, Monseigneur, what the people think. They think that if they can’t be

Genoese as before, they would rather be French than Piedmontese. That, Monseigneur, is a general feeling even amongst the better class of citizens.”

“Much would they gain by it,” mumbled Count de Montevesso. “Unless the Other were to come back. Abbe,” he added sharply, “is there any talk of him coming back?”

“That indeed would be a misfortune.” Father Carpi’s tone betrayed a certain emotion which Count Helion noticed, faint as it was.

“ Whatever happens you will have always a friend in me,” he said, and Father Carpi acknowledged the assurance by a slight inclination of his body.

“Surely God would not allow it,” he murmured uneasily. But the stare of his interlocutor augmented his alarm. He was still more startled when he heard Count de Montevesso make the remark that the only thing which seemed to put a limit to the power of God was the folly of men. He had too poor an opinion of Count de Montevesso to be shocked by the blasphemy. To him it was only the proof that the Count had been very much upset by something, some fact or some news.

“And people are very foolish just now both in Paris and in Vienna,” added Count de Montevesso after a long pause.

It was news then. Father Carpi betrayed nothing of his anxious curiosity. The inward unrest which pervaded the whole basin of the Western Mediterranean was strongest in Italy perhaps and was very strong in the heart of Father Carpi, who was both an Italian and a priest. Perhaps he would be told something! He almost held his breath, but Count de Montevesso took his head between his hands and said only:

“One is pestered by folly of all sorts. Abbe, see whether you can bring that child to reason.”

However low in the scale o! humanity Father Carpi placed the Count de Montevesso, he never questioned his social position. Father Carpi was made furious by the request, but he obeyed. He approached the rustic bedstead and looked at the occupant with sombre disgust. Nothing was obscure to him in the situation. If he couldn’t teil exactly what devil possessed that creature he remembered perfectly her mother, a rash sort of girl who was found drowned years ago in a remarkably shallow pond amongst some rocks not quite a mile away from the presbytery. It might have been an accident. lie had consented to bury her in consecrated ground not from any compassion, but because of the revolutionary spirit which had penetrated even the thick skulls of his parishioners and probably would have caused a riot and shaken the precarious power of the Church in his obscure valley. He stood erect by the head of the couch, looking down at the girl’s uncovered eye whose sombre iris swam on the glistening white. He could have laughed with contempt and fury. He regulated his deep voice so that it reached Count de Montevesso at the other side of the room only as a solemn admonishing murmur.

“You miserable little wretch,” he said, “can’t you behave yourself? You have been a torment to me for years.”

The sense of his own powerlessness overcame him so completely that he felt tempted for a moment to throw everything up, walk out of the room, seek refuge amongst sinners that would believe either in God or in the devil.

“You are a scourge to us all,” he continued in the same equable murmur. “If you don’t speak out, you little beast, and put an end to this scene soon I will exorcise you.”

The only effect of that threat was the sudden immobility of the rolling eye. Father Carpi turned towards the Count.

“It is probably some sort of malady,” he said coldly. “Perhaps a doctor could prescribe some remedy.”

Count Helion came out of his listless attitude. A moment ago a doctor was in the house in conference with M. le Marquis. Perhaps he was still there. Count Helion got up impetuously and asked the Abbe to go along to the other side and find out.

“Take a hght with you. All the lights are out down there. Knock at the Marquis’s door and inquire from Bernard, and if the doctor is still there bring him along.”

Father Carpi went out hastily and Count de Montevesso, keeping the women outside, paced the whole length of the room. The fellow called himself a doctor whatever else he might have been. Whether he did any good to the child or not — Count de Montevesso stopped and looked fixedly at the bed — this was an extremely favourable opportunity to get in touch with him personally. WTio could tell what use could be made of him in his other capacities, apart from the fact that he probably could really prescribe some remedy? Count de Monte-vesso’s heart was softened paternally. His progress from European barrack-rooms to an Eastern palace left on his mind a sort of bewilderment. He even thought the girl attractive. There she was, a prey of some sort of illness. He bent over her face and instantly a pair of thin bare arms darted from under the blankets and clasped him round the neck with a force that really surprised him. “ 1 hat one loves me,” he thought. He did not know that she would have hung round anybody’s neck in the passion of obtaining what she wanted. He thought with a sort of dull insight that everybody was a little bit against her. He abandoned his neck to the passionate clasp for a little time, then disengaged himself gently.

“ What makes you behave like this? “ he asked. “ Do you feel a pain anywhere?”

No emotion could change the harshness of his voice, but it was very low and there was an accent in it which the girl could not mistake. She sat up suddenly with her long wild hair covering her shoulders. With her round eyes, the predatory character of her face, the ruffled fury of her aspect, she looked like an angry bird; and there was something bird-like in the screech of her voice.

“Pain? No. But if I didn’t hate them so I would like to die. I would ...”

Count de Montevesso put one hand at the back of her head and clapped the other broad palm over her mouth. This action surprised her so much that she didn’t even struggle. When the Count took his hands away she remained silent without looking at him.

“Don’t scream like this,” he murmured harshly but with obvious indulgence. “Your aunts are outside and they will tell the priest all about it.”

Clelia drew up her knees, clasped her hands round them outside the blanket, and stared.

“It is just your temper!” suggested Count Helion reproachfully.

“All those dressed-up witches despise me. I am not frightened. And the worst of them is that yellow-haired witch, your wife. If I had gone in there in my bare feet they could not have stared more down on me. ... I shall fly at their faces. I can read their thoughts as they put their glasses to their eyes. ‘What animal is this?’ they seem to ask themselves. I am a brute beast to them.”

A shadow seemed to fall on Count de Montevesso’s face for the moment. Clelia unclasped her fingers, shook her fists at the empty space, then clasped her legs again. These movements, full of sombre energy, were observed silently by the Count de Montevesso. He uttered the word “ Patienza,” which in its humility is the word of the ambitious, of the unforgiving who keep a strict account with the world; a word of indomitable hope. “You wait till you are a little older. You will have plenty of people at your feet; and then you will be able to spurn anybody you like.”

“You mean when I am married,” said Clelia in a faraway voice and staring straight over her knees.

“Yes,” said the Count de Montevesso, “but you will first have to learn to be gentle.”

This recommendation apparently missed the ear for which it was destined. For a whole minute Clelia seemed to contemplate some sort of vision with her predatory and pathetic stare. One side of her nightgown had slipped off her shoulder. Suddenly she pushed her scattered hair back, and extending her arm towards Count Helion patted him caressingly on the cheek.

When she had done patting him he asked, unmoved: “Now, what is it you want?”

She was careful not to turn her face his way while she whispered: “I want that young signor that came today to make eyes at my aunt.”

“Impossible.”

“Why impossible? I was with them in the morning. They did nothing but look at each other. But I went for him myself.”

“That Englishman! You can’t have an Englishman like this. I am thinking of something better for you, a marquis or a count.”

This was the exact truth, not a sudden idea to meet a hopeless case.

“You have hardly had time to have a good look at him,” added Count Helion.

“I looked at him this evening with all my eyes, with all my soul. I would have sat up all night to look at him. But he got up and turned his back on me. He has no eyes for anybody but my aunt.”

“Did you speak together, you two?”

“Yes,” she said, “he sat down by me and all those witches stared as if he had been making up to a monster. Am I a monster? He too looked at me as if I had been one.”

“Was he rude to you?” asked the Count de Montevesso.

“He was as insolent as all the people I have seen since we came to this town. His heart was black as of all the rest of them. He was gentle to me as one is gentle to an old beggar for the sake of charity. Oh, how I hated him.”

“Well, then,” said Count de Montevesso in a harsh unsympathetic tone, “you may safely despise him.”

Clelia threw herself half out of bed on the neck of Count Helion, who preserved an unsympathetic rigidity though he did not actually repulse her wild and vehement caress.

“Oh, dearest uncle of mine,” she whispered ardently into his ear, “he is handsome! I must have him for myself.”

There was a knocking at the door. Count Helion tore the bare arms from his neck and pushed the girl back into bed.

“ Cover yourself up,” he commanded hurriedly. He arranged the blanket at her back. “Lie still and say nothing of all this, and then you need have no fear.

But il you breathe a word of this to anybody, then . . . Come in,” he shouted to the renewed knocking and had just time to shake his finger at Clelia menacingly before the Abbe and the doctor entered the room.

PART III

I

Cosmo walked away with no more than one look back, just before turning the corner, at the tensely alert griffins guarding the portals of the Palazzo. At the entrance of his inn a small knot of men on the pavement paused in their low conversation to look at him. After he had passed he heard a voice say, “This is the English milord.” He found the dimly lit hall empty and he went up the empty staircase into the upper regions of silence. His face, which to the men on the pavement had appeared passionless and pale as marble, looked at him suddenly out of the mirror over the fireplace, and he was startled as though he had seen a ghost.

Spire had been told not to wait for his return. His empty room had welcomed him with a bright flame on the hearth and with lighted candles. He turned away from his own image and stood with his back to the fire looking downwards and vaguely oppressed by the profound as if expectant silence around him. The strength and novelty of the impressions received during that day, the intimacy of their appeal, had affected his fortitude. He felt mortally weary and began to undress; but after he got into bed he remained for a time in a sitting posture. For the first time in his life he tasted of loneliness. His father was at least thirty-five years his senior. An age! His sister was just a young girl. Clever, of course. He was very fond of her, but the mere fact of her being a girl raised a wall between them. He had never made any real friends. He had nothing to do; and he did not seem to know what to think of anything in the world. Now, for instance there was that vanquished fat figure in a little cocked hat. . . . Still an emperor.

Cosmo came with a start out of a deep sleep that seemed to have lasted only a moment. But he knew at once where he was, though at first he had to argu^ himself out of the conviction of having parted from Count Helion at the top of a staircase less than five minutes ago. Meantime he watched Spire flooding the room with brilliant sunshine, for the three windows of the room faced east.

“Very fine morning, sir,” said Spire over his shoulder. “Quite a spring day.”

A delicious freshness flowed over Cosmo. It did not bring joy to him, but dismay. Daylight already! It had come too soon. He had had no time yet to decide what to do. He had gone to sleep. A most extraordinary thing! His distress was appeased by the simple thought that there was no need for him to do anything. After drinking his chocolate, which Spire received on a tray from some woman on the other side of the door, he informed him that he intended to devote the whole day to his correspondence. A table having been arranged to that end close to an open window, he started writing at once. On retiring without a sound Spire left the goose-quill flying over the paper. It was past noon before Cosmo, hearing him come in again on some pretence or other, raised his head for the first time and dropped the pen to say: “Give me my coat, I will go down to the dining room.”

By that time the murmur of voices in the piazza had died out. The good Genoese had gone indoors to eat. Coming out of his light-filled room Cosmo found the corridors cold and dark like subterranean passages cut in rock, and the hall downstairs gloomy like a burial vault. In contrast with it the long dining room had a festive air, a brilliancy that was almost crude. In a corner where the man who called himself Doctor Martel had his table this glare was toned down by half-closed shutters and Cosmo made his way there. Cantelucci’s benefactor, seated sideways with one arm thrown over the chair’s back, took Cosmo’s arrival as a matter cf course, greeted him with an amiable growl, and declared himself very sharp set. Presently laying down his knife and fork he enquired what Cosmo had been doing that morning. Writing? Really? Thought that perhaps Cosmo had been doing the churches. One could see very pretty girls in the morning, waiting for their turn at the confessional.