Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (499 page)

At that moment we all changed our attitude slightly.  Mills’ staring eyes moved for a glance towards Blunt, I, who was occupying the divan, raised myself on the cushions a little and Mr. Blunt, with half a turn, put his elbow on the table.

“I asked her what it was.  I don’t see,” went on Mr. Blunt, with a perfectly horrible gentleness, “why I should have shown particular consideration to the heiress of Mr. Allègre.  I don’t mean to that particular mood of hers.  It was the mood of weariness.  And so she told me.  It’s fear.  I will say it once again: Fear. . . .”

He added after a pause, “There can be not the slightest doubt of her courage.  But she distinctly uttered the word fear.”

There was under the table the noise of Mills stretching his legs.

“A person of imagination,” he began, “a young, virgin intelligence, steeped for nearly five years in the talk of Allègre’s studio, where every hard truth had been cracked and every belief had been worried into shreds.  They were like a lot of intellectual dogs, you know . . .”

“Yes, yes, of course,” Blunt interrupted hastily, “the intellectual personality altogether adrift, a soul without a home . . . but I, who am neither very fine nor very deep, I am convinced that the fear is material.”

“Because she confessed to it being that?” insinuated Mills.

“No, because she didn’t,” contradicted Blunt, with an angry frown and in an extremely suave voice.  “In fact, she bit her tongue.  And considering what good friends we are (under fire together and all that) I conclude that there is nothing there to boast of.  Neither is my friendship, as a matter of fact.”

Mills’ face was the very perfection of indifference.  But I who was looking at him, in my innocence, to discover what it all might mean, I had a notion that it was perhaps a shade too perfect.

“My leave is a farce,” Captain Blunt burst out, with a most unexpected exasperation.  “As an officer of Don Carlos, I have no more standing than a bandit.  I ought to have been interned in those filthy old barracks in Avignon a long time ago. . . Why am I not?  Because Doña Rita exists and for no other reason on earth.  Of course it’s known that I am about.  She has only to whisper over the wires to the Minister of the Interior, ‘Put that bird in a cage for me,’ and the thing would be done without any more formalities than that. . . Sad world this,” he commented in a changed tone.  “Nowadays a gentleman who lives by his sword is exposed to that sort of thing.”

It was then for the first time I heard Mr. Mills laugh.  It was a deep, pleasant, kindly note, not very loud and altogether free from that quality of derision that spoils so many laughs and gives away the secret hardness of hearts.  But neither was it a very joyous laugh.

“But the truth of the matter is that I am ‘en mission,’” continued Captain Blunt.  “I have been instructed to settle some things, to set other things going, and, by my instructions, Doña Rita is to be the intermediary for all those objects.  And why?  Because every bald head in this Republican Government gets pink at the top whenever her dress rustles outside the door.  They bow with immense deference when the door opens, but the bow conceals a smirk because of those Venetian days.  That confounded Versoy shoved his nose into that business; he says accidentally.  He saw them together on the Lido and (those writing fellows are horrible) he wrote what he calls a vignette (I suppose accidentally, too) under that very title.  There was in it a Prince and a lady and a big dog.  He described how the Prince on landing from the gondola emptied his purse into the hands of a picturesque old beggar, while the lady, a little way off, stood gazing back at Venice with the dog romantically stretched at her feet.  One of Versoy’s beautiful prose vignettes in a great daily that has a literary column.  But some other papers that didn’t care a cent for literature rehashed the mere fact.  And that’s the sort of fact that impresses your political man, especially if the lady is, well, such as she is . . .”

He paused.  His dark eyes flashed fatally, away from us, in the direction of the shy dummy; and then he went on with cultivated cynicism.

“So she rushes down here.  Overdone, weary, rest for her nerves.  Nonsense.  I assure you she has no more nerves than I have.”

I don’t know how he meant it, but at that moment, slim and elegant, he seemed a mere bundle of nerves himself, with the flitting expressions on his thin, well-bred face, with the restlessness of his meagre brown hands amongst the objects on the table.  With some pipe ash amongst a little spilt wine his forefinger traced a capital R.  Then he looked into an empty glass profoundly.  I have a notion that I sat there staring and listening like a yokel at a play.  Mills’ pipe was lying quite a foot away in front of him, empty, cold.  Perhaps he had no more tobacco.  Mr. Blunt assumed his dandified air — nervously.

“Of course her movements are commented on in the most exclusive drawing-rooms and also in other places, also exclusive, but where the gossip takes on another tone.  There they are probably saying that she has got a ‘coup de coeur’ for some one.  Whereas I think she is utterly incapable of that sort of thing.  That Venetian affair, the beginning of it and the end of it, was nothing but a coup de tête, and all those activities in which I am involved, as you see (by order of Headquarters, ha, ha, ha!), are nothing but that, all this connection, all this intimacy into which I have dropped . . . Not to speak of my mother, who is delightful, but as irresponsible as one of those crazy princesses that shock their Royal families. . . “

He seemed to bite his tongue and I observed that Mills’ eyes seemed to have grown wider than I had ever seen them before.  In that tranquil face it was a great play of feature.  “An intimacy,” began Mr. Blunt, with an extremely refined grimness of tone, “an intimacy with the heiress of Mr. Allègre on the part of . . . on my part, well, it isn’t exactly . . . it’s open . . . well, I leave it to you, what does it look like?”

“Is there anybody looking on?” Mills let fall, gently, through his kindly lips.

“Not actually, perhaps, at this moment.  But I don’t need to tell a man of the world, like you, that such things cannot remain unseen.  And that they are, well, compromising, because of the mere fact of the fortune.”

Mills got on his feet, looked for his jacket and after getting into it made himself heard while he looked for his hat.

“Whereas the woman herself is, so to speak, priceless.”

Mr. Blunt muttered the word “Obviously.”

By then we were all on our feet.  The iron stove glowed no longer and the lamp, surrounded by empty bottles and empty glasses, had grown dimmer.

I know that I had a great shiver on getting away from the cushions of the divan.

“We will meet again in a few hours,” said Mr. Blunt.

“Don’t forget to come,” he said, addressing me.  “Oh, yes, do.  Have no scruples.  I am authorized to make invitations.”

He must have noticed my shyness, my surprise, my embarrassment.  And indeed I didn’t know what to say.

“I assure you there isn’t anything incorrect in your coming,” he insisted, with the greatest civility.  “You will be introduced by two good friends, Mills and myself.  Surely you are not afraid of a very charming woman. . . .”

I was not afraid, but my head swam a little and I only looked at him mutely.

“Lunch precisely at midday.  Mills will bring you along.  I am sorry you two are going.  I shall throw myself on the bed for an hour or two, but I am sure I won’t sleep.”

He accompanied us along the passage into the black-and-white hall, where the low gas flame glimmered forlornly.  When he opened the front door the cold blast of the mistral rushing down the street of the Consuls made me shiver to the very marrow of my bones.

Mills and I exchanged but a few words as we walked down towards the centre of the town.  In the chill tempestuous dawn he strolled along musingly, disregarding the discomfort of the cold, the depressing influence of the hour, the desolation of the empty streets in which the dry dust rose in whirls in front of us, behind us, flew upon us from the side streets.  The masks had gone home and our footsteps echoed on the flagstones with unequal sound as of men without purpose, without hope.

“I suppose you will come,” said Mills suddenly.

“I really don’t know,” I said.

“Don’t you?  Well, remember I am not trying to persuade you; but I am staying at the Hôtel de Louvre and I shall leave there at a quarter to twelve for that lunch.  At a quarter to twelve, not a minute later.  I suppose you can sleep?”

I laughed.

“Charming age, yours,” said Mills, as we came out on the quays.  Already dim figures of the workers moved in the biting dawn and the masted forms of ships were coming out dimly, as far as the eye could reach down the old harbour.

“Well,” Mills began again, “you may oversleep yourself.”

This suggestion was made in a cheerful tone, just as we shook hands at the lower end of the Cannebière.  He looked very burly as he walked away from me.  I went on towards my lodgings.  My head was very full of confused images, but I was really too tired to think.

PART TWO

CHAPTER I

Sometimes I wonder yet whether Mills wished me to oversleep myself or not: that is, whether he really took sufficient interest to care.  His uniform kindliness of manner made it impossible for me to tell.  And I can hardly remember my own feelings.  Did I care?  The whole recollection of that time of my life has such a peculiar quality that the beginning and the end of it are merged in one sensation of profound emotion, continuous and overpowering, containing the extremes of exultation, full of careless joy and of an invincible sadness — like a day-dream.  The sense of all this having been gone through as if in one great rush of imagination is all the stronger in the distance of time, because it had something of that quality even then: of fate unprovoked, of events that didn’t cast any shadow before.

Not that those events were in the least extraordinary.  They were, in truth, commonplace.  What to my backward glance seems startling and a little awful is their punctualness and inevitability.  Mills was punctual.  Exactly at a quarter to twelve he appeared under the lofty portal of the Hôtel de Louvre, with his fresh face, his ill-fitting grey suit, and enveloped in his own sympathetic atmosphere.

How could I have avoided him?  To this day I have a shadowy conviction of his inherent distinction of mind and heart, far beyond any man I have ever met since.  He was unavoidable: and of course I never tried to avoid him.  The first sight on which his eyes fell was a victoria pulled up before the hotel door, in which I sat with no sentiment I can remember now but that of some slight shyness.  He got in without a moment’s hesitation, his friendly glance took me in from head to foot and (such was his peculiar gift) gave me a pleasurable sensation.

After we had gone a little way I couldn’t help saying to him with a bashful laugh: “You know, it seems very extraordinary that I should be driving out with you like this.”

He turned to look at me and in his kind voice:

“You will find everything extremely simple,” he said.  “So simple that you will be quite able to hold your own.  I suppose you know that the world is selfish, I mean the majority of the people in it, often unconsciously I must admit, and especially people with a mission, with a fixed idea, with some fantastic object in view, or even with only some fantastic illusion.  That doesn’t mean that they have no scruples.  And I don’t know that at this moment I myself am not one of them.”

“That, of course, I can’t say,” I retorted.

“I haven’t seen her for years,” he said, “and in comparison with what she was then she must be very grown up by now.  From what we heard from Mr. Blunt she had experiences which would have matured her more than they would teach her.  There are of course people that are not teachable.  I don’t know that she is one of them.  But as to maturity that’s quite another thing.  Capacity for suffering is developed in every human being worthy of the name.”

“Captain Blunt doesn’t seem to be a very happy person,” I said.  “He seems to have a grudge against everybody.  People make him wince.  The things they do, the things they say.  He must be awfully mature.”

Mills gave me a sidelong look.  It met mine of the same character and we both smiled without openly looking at each other.  At the end of the Rue de Rome the violent chilly breath of the mistral enveloped the victoria in a great widening of brilliant sunshine without heat.  We turned to the right, circling at a stately pace about the rather mean obelisk which stands at the entrance to the Prado.

“I don’t know whether you are mature or not,” said Mills humorously.  “But I think you will do.  You . . . “

“Tell me,” I interrupted, “what is really Captain Blunt’s position there?”

And I nodded at the alley of the Prado opening before us between the rows of the perfectly leafless trees.

“Thoroughly false, I should think.  It doesn’t accord either with his illusions or his pretensions, or even with the real position he has in the world.  And so what between his mother and the General Headquarters and the state of his own feelings he. . . “

“He is in love with her,” I interrupted again.

“That wouldn’t make it any easier.  I’m not at all sure of that.  But if so it can’t be a very idealistic sentiment.  All the warmth of his idealism is concentrated upon a certain ‘Américain, Catholique et gentil-homme. . . ‘”

The smile which for a moment dwelt on his lips was not unkind.

“At the same time he has a very good grip of the material conditions that surround, as it were, the situation.”

“What do you mean?  That Doña Rita” (the name came strangely familiar to my tongue) “is rich, that she has a fortune of her own?”

“Yes, a fortune,” said Mills.  “But it was Allègre’s fortune before. . . And then there is Blunt’s fortune: he lives by his sword.  And there is the fortune of his mother, I assure you a perfectly charming, clever, and most aristocratic old lady, with the most distinguished connections.  I really mean it.  She doesn’t live by her sword.  She . . . she lives by her wits.  I have a notion that those two dislike each other heartily at times. . . Here we are.”