Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (518 page)

“Take this fancy out and trample it down in the dust,” she said in a tone of timid entreaty.

“Heroically,” I suggested with the sarcasm of despair.

“Well, yes, heroically,” she said; and there passed between us dim smiles, I have no doubt of the most touching imbecility on earth.  We were standing by then in the middle of the room with its vivid colours on a black background, with its multitude of winged figures with pale limbs, with hair like halos or flames, all strangely tense in their strained, decorative attitudes.  Doña Rita made a step towards me, and as I attempted to seize her hand she flung her arms round my neck.  I felt their strength drawing me towards her and by a sort of blind and desperate effort I resisted.  And all the time she was repeating with nervous insistence:

“But it is true that you will go.  You will surely.  Not because of those people but because of me.  You will go away because you feel you must.”

With every word urging me to get away, her clasp tightened, she hugged my head closer to her breast.  I submitted, knowing well that I could free myself by one more effort which it was in my power to make.  But before I made it, in a sort of desperation, I pressed a long kiss into the hollow of her throat.  And lo — there was no need for any effort.  With a stifled cry of surprise her arms fell off me as if she had been shot.  I must have been giddy, and perhaps we both were giddy, but the next thing I knew there was a good foot of space between us in the peaceful glow of the ground-glass globes, in the everlasting stillness of the winged figures.  Something in the quality of her exclamation, something utterly unexpected, something I had never heard before, and also the way she was looking at me with a sort of incredulous, concentrated attention, disconcerted me exceedingly.  I knew perfectly well what I had done and yet I felt that I didn’t understand what had happened.  I became suddenly abashed and I muttered that I had better go and dismiss that poor Dominic.  She made no answer, gave no sign.  She stood there lost in a vision — or was it a sensation? — of the most absorbing kind.  I hurried out into the hall, shamefaced, as if I were making my escape while she wasn’t looking.  And yet I felt her looking fixedly at me, with a sort of stupefaction on her features — in her whole attitude — as though she had never even heard of such a thing as a kiss in her life.

A dim lamp (of Pompeiian form) hanging on a long chain left the hall practically dark.  Dominic, advancing towards me from a distant corner, was but a little more opaque shadow than the others.  He had expected me on board every moment till about three o’clock, but as I didn’t turn up and gave no sign of life in any other way he started on his hunt.  He sought news of me from the garçons at the various cafés, from the cochers de fiacre in front of the Exchange, from the tobacconist lady at the counter of the fashionable Débit de Tabac, from the old man who sold papers outside the cercle, and from the flower-girl at the door of the fashionable restaurant where I had my table.  That young woman, whose business name was Irma, had come on duty about mid-day.  She said to Dominic: “I think I’ve seen all his friends this morning but I haven’t seen him for a week.  What has become of him?”

“That’s exactly what I want to know,” Dominic replied in a fury and then went back to the harbour on the chance that I might have called either on board or at Madame Léonore’s café.

I expressed to him my surprise that he should fuss about me like an old hen over a chick.  It wasn’t like him at all.  And he said that “en effet” it was Madame Léonore who wouldn’t give him any peace.  He hoped I wouldn’t mind, it was best to humour women in little things; and so he started off again, made straight for the street of the Consuls, was told there that I wasn’t at home but the woman of the house looked so funny that he didn’t know what to make of it.  Therefore, after some hesitation, he took the liberty to inquire at this house, too, and being told that I couldn’t be disturbed, had made up his mind not to go on board without actually setting his eyes on me and hearing from my own lips that nothing was changed as to sailing orders.

“There is nothing changed, Dominic,” I said.

“No change of any sort?” he insisted, looking very sombre and speaking gloomily from under his black moustaches in the dim glow of the alabaster lamp hanging above his head.  He peered at me in an extraordinary manner as if he wanted to make sure that I had all my limbs about me.  I asked him to call for my bag at the other house, on his way to the harbour, and he departed reassured, not, however, without remarking ironically that ever since she saw that American cavalier Madame Léonore was not easy in her mind about me.

As I stood alone in the hall, without a sound of any sort, Rose appeared before me.

“Monsieur will dine after all,” she whispered calmly.

“My good girl, I am going to sea to-night.”

“What am I going to do with Madame?” she murmured to herself.  “She will insist on returning to Paris.”

“Oh, have you heard of it?”

“I never get more than two hours’ notice,” she said.  “But I know how it will be,” her voice lost its calmness.  “I can look after Madame up to a certain point but I cannot be altogether responsible.  There is a dangerous person who is everlastingly trying to see Madame alone.  I have managed to keep him off several times but there is a beastly old journalist who is encouraging him in his attempts, and I daren’t even speak to Madame about it.”

“What sort of person do you mean?”

“Why, a man,” she said scornfully.

I snatched up my coat and hat.

“Aren’t there dozens of them?”

“Oh!  But this one is dangerous.  Madame must have given him a hold on her in some way.  I ought not to talk like this about Madame and I wouldn’t to anybody but Monsieur.  I am always on the watch, but what is a poor girl to do? . . . Isn’t Monsieur going back to Madame?”

“No, I am not going back.  Not this time.”  A mist seemed to fall before my eyes.  I could hardly see the girl standing by the closed door of the Pempeiian room with extended hand, as if turned to stone.  But my voice was firm enough.  “Not this time,” I repeated, and became aware of the great noise of the wind amongst the trees, with the lashing of a rain squall against the door.

“Perhaps some other time,” I added.

I heard her say twice to herself: “Mon Dieu!  Mon, Dieu!” and then a dismayed: “What can Monsieur expect me to do?”  But I had to appear insensible to her distress and that not altogether because, in fact, I had no option but to go away.  I remember also a distinct wilfulness in my attitude and something half-contemptuous in my words as I laid my hand on the knob of the front door.

“You will tell Madame that I am gone.  It will please her.  Tell her that I am gone — heroically.”

Rose had come up close to me.  She met my words by a despairing outward movement of her hands as though she were giving everything up.

“I see it clearly now that Madame has no friends,” she declared with such a force of restrained bitterness that it nearly made me pause.  But the very obscurity of actuating motives drove me on and I stepped out through the doorway muttering: “Everything is as Madame wishes it.”

She shot at me a swift: “You should resist,” of an extraordinary intensity, but I strode on down the path.  Then Rose’s schooled temper gave way at last and I heard her angry voice screaming after me furiously through the wind and rain: “No!  Madame has no friends.  Not one!”

PART FIVE

CHAPTER I

That night I didn’t get on board till just before midnight and Dominic could not conceal his relief at having me safely there.  Why he should have been so uneasy it was impossible to say but at the time I had a sort of impression that my inner destruction (it was nothing less) had affected my appearance, that my doom was as it were written on my face.  I was a mere receptacle for dust and ashes, a living testimony to the vanity of all things.  My very thoughts were like a ghostly rustle of dead leaves.  But we had an extremely successful trip, and for most of the time Dominic displayed an unwonted jocularity of a dry and biting kind with which, he maintained, he had been infected by no other person than myself.  As, with all his force of character, he was very responsive to the moods of those he liked I have no doubt he spoke the truth.  But I know nothing about it.  The observer, more or less alert, whom each of us carries in his own consciousness, failed me altogether, had turned away his face in sheer horror, or else had fainted from the strain.  And thus I had to live alone, unobserved even by myself.

But the trip had been successful.  We re-entered the harbour very quietly as usual and when our craft had been moored unostentatiously amongst the plebeian stone-carriers, Dominic, whose grim joviality had subsided in the last twenty-four hours of our homeward run, abandoned me to myself as though indeed I had been a doomed man.  He only stuck his head for a moment into our little cuddy where I was changing my clothes and being told in answer to his question that I had no special orders to give went ashore without waiting for me.

Generally we used to step on the quay together and I never failed to enter for a moment Madame Léonore’s café.  But this time when I got on the quay Dominic was nowhere to be seen.  What was it?  Abandonment — discretion — or had he quarrelled with his Léonore before leaving on the trip?

My way led me past the café and through the glass panes I saw that he was already there.  On the other side of the little marble table Madame Léonore, leaning with mature grace on her elbow, was listening to him absorbed.  Then I passed on and — what would you have! — I ended by making my way into the street of the Consuls.  I had nowhere else to go.  There were my things in the apartment on the first floor.  I couldn’t bear the thought of meeting anybody I knew.

The feeble gas flame in the hall was still there, on duty, as though it had never been turned off since I last crossed the hall at half-past eleven in the evening to go to the harbour.  The small flame had watched me letting myself out; and now, exactly of the same size, the poor little tongue of light (there was something wrong with that burner) watched me letting myself in, as indeed it had done many times before.  Generally the impression was that of entering an untenanted house, but this time before I could reach the foot of the stairs Therese glided out of the passage leading into the studio.  After the usual exclamations she assured me that everything was ready for me upstairs, had been for days, and offered to get me something to eat at once.  I accepted and said I would be down in the studio in half an hour.  I found her there by the side of the laid table ready for conversation.  She began by telling me — the dear, poor young Monsieur — in a sort of plaintive chant, that there were no letters for me, no letters of any kind, no letters from anybody.  Glances of absolutely terrifying tenderness mingled with flashes of cunning swept over me from head to foot while I tried to eat.

“Are you giving me Captain Blunt’s wine to drink?” I asked, noting the straw-coloured liquid in my glass.

She screwed up her mouth as if she had a twinge of toothache and assured me that the wine belonged to the house.  I would have to pay her for it.  As far as personal feelings go, Blunt, who addressed her always with polite seriousness, was not a favourite with her.  The “charming, brave Monsieur” was now fighting for the King and religion against the impious Liberals.  He went away the very morning after I had left and, oh! she remembered, he had asked her before going away whether I was still in the house.  Wanted probably to say good-bye to me, shake my hand, the dear, polite Monsieur.

I let her run on in dread expectation of what she would say next but she stuck to the subject of Blunt for some time longer.  He had written to her once about some of his things which he wanted her to send to Paris to his mother’s address; but she was going to do nothing of the kind.  She announced this with a pious smile; and in answer to my questions I discovered that it was a stratagem to make Captain Blunt return to the house.

“You will get yourself into trouble with the police, Mademoiselle Therese, if you go on like that,” I said.  But she was as obstinate as a mule and assured me with the utmost confidence that many people would be ready to defend a poor honest girl.  There was something behind this attitude which I could not fathom.  Suddenly she fetched a deep sigh.

“Our Rita, too, will end by coming to her sister.”

The name for which I had been waiting deprived me of speech for the moment.  The poor mad sinner had rushed off to some of her wickednesses in Paris.  Did I know?  No?  How could she tell whether I did know or not?  Well!  I had hardly left the house, so to speak, when Rita was down with her maid behaving as if the house did really still belong to her. . .

“What time was it?” I managed to ask.  And with the words my life itself was being forced out through my lips.  But Therese, not noticing anything strange about me, said it was something like half-past seven in the morning.  The “poor sinner” was all in black as if she were going to church (except for her expression, which was enough to shock any honest person), and after ordering her with frightful menaces not to let anybody know she was in the house she rushed upstairs and locked herself up in my bedroom, while “that French creature” (whom she seemed to love more than her own sister) went into my salon and hid herself behind the window curtain.

I had recovered sufficiently to ask in a quiet natural voice whether Doña Rita and Captain Blunt had seen each other.  Apparently they had not seen each other.  The polite captain had looked so stern while packing up his kit that Therese dared not speak to him at all.  And he was in a hurry, too.  He had to see his dear mother off to Paris before his own departure.  Very stern.  But he shook her hand with a very nice bow.

Therese elevated her right hand for me to see.  It was broad and short with blunt fingers, as usual.  The pressure of Captain Blunt’s handshake had not altered its unlovely shape.

“What was the good of telling him that our Rita was here?” went on Therese.  “I would have been ashamed of her coming here and behaving as if the house belonged to her!  I had already said some prayers at his intention at the half-past six mass, the brave gentleman.  That maid of my sister Rita was upstairs watching him drive away with her evil eyes, but I made a sign of the cross after the fiacre, and then I went upstairs and banged at your door, my dear kind young Monsieur, and shouted to Rita that she had no right to lock herself in any of my locataires’ rooms.  At last she opened it — and what do you think?  All her hair was loose over her shoulders.  I suppose it all came down when she flung her hat on your bed.  I noticed when she arrived that her hair wasn’t done properly.  She used your brushes to do it up again in front of your glass.”