Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (644 page)

“Did Mr. Latham tell you that he was a friend of ours?”

He answered evasively that he knew very little about Mr. Latham, except what he could see for himself — that Mr. Latham was very superior to the young men of fashion coming over in such numbers from England since the end of the war. That generation struck him as very crude and utterly uninteresting. It was different, as far as Mr. Latham was concerned. A situation had arisen which would make a little information as to his affairs very desirable.

“Desirable?” repeated Madame de Montevesso in a whisper.

“Yes, helpful. . . .”

The deliberate stress which he put on that word augmented Madame de Montevesso’s bewilderment.

“I don’t quite understand. In what way? Helpful for you — or helpful for Mr. Latham?”

“You see,” said the doctor slowly, “though our acquaintance was short my interest was aroused. I am a useful person to know for those who travel in Italy.”

Madame de Montevesso sank into a bergere, pointing at the same time to a chair which faced it. But the doctor, after a slight bow, only rested his hand on its high back. At the end of five minutes Adble was in possession of all the doctor knew about Cosmo’s disappearance. She sat silent, her head drooped, her eyes cast down. The doctor was beginning to feel restive when she spoke, without looking up.

“And this is the real motive for your visit here.”

The doctor was moved by the hopeless tone. It might have been an attempt to appear indifferent, but, only in a moment, she seemed to have become lifeless.

“Well,” he said, “on the spin: of the moment it seemed the only thing to do. . . . There is somebody in the next room. May I shut the door?”

“It’s only my maid,” said Madame de Montevesso. “She couldn’t hear us from there.”

“Well, then perhaps we had better leave the door as it is. It’s best to avoid all appearance of secrecy.” The doctor was thinking of Count Helion, but Madame de Montevesso made no sign. The doctor lowered his voice still more.

“I wanted to ask you if you had seen him yesterday — • last night. No? But he may have called without your knowledge.”

She admitted that it was possible. People had been sent away from the door on account of her father’s illness. There had been no reception in the evening. But Mr. Latham would have asked for her. She thought she would have been told. The doctor suggested that Mr. Latham might have asked for the Count. Madame de Montevesso had only seen her husband for a moment in her father’s bedroom the day before, and not at all yet this day. For all she knew he may have been away for the day on a visit in the country. “But I know nothing of his interests, really,” she said in a little less deadened voice.

She could not explain to the doctor that she was a stranger in that house; an unwilling visitor with an unsympathetic host whose motives one cannot help suspecting. Beyond the time she spent by arrange- ment every year at Count de Montevesso’s country-house she knew nothing of his life. What could have been the motives which brought him to Genoa, she had and could have not the slightest idea. She only felt that she ought not to have accepted his pressing invitation to this hired palazzo. But then she could not have come with her father to Genoa. And yet he could not have done without her. And indeed it seemed but a small thing. The alarming thought crossed her mind that, all unwittingly, she had taken a fatal step.

The doctor, who had quite an accurate notion of the state of affairs, hastened to say:

“After all,I don’t know that this is of any importance. I have heard that Mr. Latham was busy writing all yesterday. If he had come to Italy with some sort of purpose,” he continued as if arguing with himself, “one could ...” Then sharply: “You couldn’t tell me anything, could you?” he asked Ad£Ie.

“This is the first time I have seen him for ten years.” Madame de Montevesso raised her eyes, full of trouble, to the doctor’s face. “Since we were children together in Yorkshire. We talked of old times. Only of old times,” she repeated.

“Of course — very natural,” mumbled the doctor. He made the mental remark that one did not disappear like this after talking of old times. And aloud he said, “I suppose Mr. Latham made the acquaintance of Count de Montevesso.”

“Certainly.”

“I presume that they had an opportunity to have a conversation together.”

“I don’t think that Cosmo — that Mr. Latham made any confidences to Count de Montevesso.” While saying those words Adele looked the doctor straight in the face.

He was asking himself whether she could read his thoughts, when she got up suddenly and walked away to the window, without haste and with a grace of movement which aroused the doctor’s admiration. He could not tell her what he had in his mind. He looked irresolutely at the figure in the window. It was growing enigmatic in its immobility. He began to feel some little awe, when he heard unexpectedly the words:

“You suspect a crime?”

The doctor could not guess the effort which went to the uttering of those few words. It was the stunning force of the shock which enabled Adele de Montevesso to appear so calm. It was the general humanity of Doctor Martel’s disposition which dictated his answer.

“I suspect some imprudence,” he admitted in an easy tone. At that moment he drew the gloomiest view of Cosmo’s disappearance, from the sinister conviction that twenty-four hours was enough to arrange an assassination. “The difficulty is to imagine a cause for it. To find the motive. . . .”

Madame de Montevesso continued to face the window as if lost in the contemplation of a vast landscape. “And you came to look for it here,” she said.

“I don’t think I need to apologize,” he said, with a movement of annoyance like a man who has received a home thrust. “Of course I might have simply gone about my own affairs, which are of some importance to a good many people. My advice to Mr. Latham was to leave Genoa, since he did not seem to have any object in remaining and seemed to have a half-formed wish to visit Elba. I suggested Leghorn as the best port for crossing over.”

It was impossible to say whether the woman at the window was listening to him at all. She did not stir, she seemed to have forgotten his existence. But that immobility might have been also the effect of concentrated attention. He made up his mind to go on speak-ing.

“His mind, his imagination seemed very busy with Napoleon. It seemed to me the only reason for his travels.” He paused.

“I believe the only reason for Mr. Latham coming to Genoa was to see us.” Madame de Montevesso turned round and moved back towards the bergere. She was extremely pale. “I mean Father and myself,” she explained. “He came to see me the day before yesterday in the morning. I invited him to our usual evening reception. He stayed after everybody else was gone. I asked him to. But my father needed me and I had to leave Mr. Latham with Monsieur de Montevesso.”

The doctor interrupted her gently. “I know, Madame. I was in the Palazzo with the Marquis, in the very room, when he sent for your husband.”

“I forgot,” confessed Madame de Montevesso simply. “But Mr. Latham got back to his inn safely.”

“Yes. He was writing letters next day till late in the evening, and seems to have been spirited away in the middle of that occupation. But people like Mr. Latham are not spirited out of their bedrooms by main force. I advised the servant to wait till four o’clock, then I came straight here.”

“Till four o’clock,” repeated Madame de Montevesso under her breath.

The doctor, a man of special capacity in confronting enigmatical situations, showed himself as perplexed before this one as the most innocent of mortals.

“I don’t know. It seems to me that a man who puts on his hat and cloak before vanishing like this must turn up again. He ought to be given a chance to do so at any rate. He left all his money behind, too. 1 mean even to the small change.”

The glimpse of helpless concern in that man affected Adele with a feeling of actual bodily anguish. She got brusquely out of the berglre and moved into the middle of the room. The doctor, letting go the back of the chair, turned to face her.

“I am appalled,” she murmured.

This came out as if extracted from her by torture. It moved the doctor more than anything he had heard for years. His voice sank into a soothing murmur.

“I do believe, Madame, that if there had been a murder committed last night anywhere in this town I would have heard something about it this morning. My inn is just the place for such news. I will go back there now. I shall question his servant again. He may give us a gleam of light.”

Her intent, distressed gaze was unbearable, yet held him bouad to the spot. It was difficult to abandon a woman in that state! He became aware of the sound of voices outside the door. Some sort of dispute. He hastened to make his bow, and Madame de Montevesso, moving after him, whispered eagerly: “Yes! A gleam of light! Do let me know. I won’t draw a free breath till I hear something.”

Her extended arms dropped by her side a moment before the door flew open and Bernard was heard announcing with calm formality:

“Signorina Clelia.”

The doctor, turning away from Madame de Montevesso, saw “that little wretch” standing just within the room, evidently very much taken aback by the unexpected meeting. He guessed that she had snatched at some opportunity to escape from the old women. It had given her no time to pull on her stockings, a fact made evident by the shortness of the dark petticoat which, with a white jacket, comprised all her costume. She had managed to thrust her bare feet into a pair of old slippers, and her loose hair, tied with a blue ribbon at the back of her head, produced a most incongruous effect of neatness. Her invasion was alarming and inexplicable. The doctor, as he passed out, compressed his lips and stared fiercely with some idea of scaring her into good behaviour. She met this demonstration with a round stupid stare of astonishment. The next moment he found himself outside in the corridor alone with Bernard, who had shut the door quietly and remained with his back to it. The exasperated doctor looked him up and down coolly.

“How long have you been in the habit of hanging about your lady’s door, my friend?” he asked with ominous familiarity.

The simple-minded factotum of the London days, the love-lorn naive swain of the mulatto maid, was a figure of the past now. The doctor was confronted by a calm unmoved servant of much experience, somewhat inclining to stoutness, made respectable by the black well-fitting clothes. He did not flinch at the question, but he took his time. At last he said with the utmost placidity:

“Many years now. Pretty near all my life.”

The tone was well calculated to surprise the doctor. Taking advantage of the latter’s silence, Bernard paused before he continued reasonably: “Was I to let her rush in unannounced on Madame la Comtesse while you were there? I tried to send her away but she would think nothing of filling the air with her screams. I kept her back as long as it was prudent. . . .” He raised his open hand, palm outwards, warning the doctor to re- main silent, while with conscientious gravity he applied his big ear to the door. When he came away he did not apparently intend to take any further notice of the doctor, but stood there with an air of perfect rectitude.

“Is that your constant practice?” asked the astonished doctor, with curiosity rather than indignation. “Suppose I told on you,” he added with a glance at the door. “Suppose somebody else gave you away. . . .”

“You would not be thanked,” was the unexpected answer.

“I wouldn’t be believed — is that it? Well, I confess that I can hardly believe my own eyes.”

“Oh, you would be believed,” was the ready but dispassionate admission. Bernard’s trust in his interlocutor’s acutcness was not deceived.

“Do you mean that you have been found out already?” said the doctor in a changed tone. “Whew! You don’t say! Well, stranger things have happened. Whose old retainer are you?”

“I have always belonged to Madame la Comtesse,” said the old retainer without looking at the doctor, who, after some meditation, accepted the statement at its face value.

“I am staying at Cantelucci’s inn,” he said in an ordinary conversational tone. “And I would be glad to see you there any time you like to call. Especially if you had anything to tell me of Mr. Latham.” Bernard not responding in any way to that invitation, the doctor added, “You know what I mean?”

“Oh, yes, I know what you mean.” That answer came coldly from the lips of the respectable servant, who said nothing more while conscientiously escorting the doctor to the anteroom at the foot of the grand staircase. A little bowed old woman in black clothes clung to the balustrade half way down the marble steps, in the act of descending, while another, taller and upright, hovered anxiously on the landing above. Bernard’s scandalized, “Go away! Go back!” sounded irresistibly authoritative. The doctor had no doubt that it would send the two crones back to their lair, but he did not stop to see.

Bernard went up the staircase slowly to the first landing, where he watched the retreat of the two weird apparitions down a long and dim corridor. They were very much intimidated by this man in black and with a priestly aspect. One of them, however, made a stand, and screamed in an angry cracked voice, “Where’s the child? The child! We are looking for her.”

“Why don’t you take her back to your village and keep her there?” he cried out sternly. “I have seen her. She won’t get lost.”

A distant door slammed. They had vanished as if blown away by his voice; and Bernard with a muttered afterthought, “More’s the pity,” continued up one flight of stairs after another till he reached the wilderness of the garrets that once upon a time had been inhabited by a multitude of servants and retainers. The room he entered was low and sombre, with rough walls and a vast bare floor. His wife Aglae sat on the edge of the bed, with her hands in her lap and downcast eyes which she did not raise at his entrance. He looked at her with a serious and friendly expression before he sat down by her side. And even then she did not move. He took her tragic immobility in silence as a matter of course. His face, which had never been very mobile, had acquired with years a sort of blank dignity. It had been the work of years, of those married years which had crushed the last vestiges of pertness out of the more emotional Aglae. When she whispered to him, “Bernard, this thing kill me a little every day,” he felt moved to put his arm round his wife’s waist and made a mental remark which always occurred to him poignantly on such occasions, that she had grown very thin. In the trials of a life which had not kept its promise of contented bliss, he had been most impressed by the loss of that plumpness which years ago was so much appreciated by him. It seemed to give to that plaint which he had heard before more than once an awful sort of reality, a dreadful precision. ... A little. . . . Every day.