At last Therese put a dish of fruit on the table, a small collection of oranges, raisins, and nuts. No doubt she had bought that lot very cheap and it did not look at all inviting. Captain Blunt jumped up. “My mother can’t stand tobacco smoke. Will you keep her company, mon cher, while I take a turn with a cigar in that ridiculous garden. The brougham from the hotel will be here very soon.”
He left us in the white flash of an apologetic grin. Almost directly he reappeared, visible from head to foot through the glass side of the studio, pacing up and down the central path of that “ridiculous” garden: for its elegance and its air of good breeding the most remarkable figure that I have ever seen before or since. He had changed his coat. Madame Blunt mère lowered the long-handled glasses through which she had been contemplating him with an appraising, absorbed expression which had nothing maternal in it. But what she said to me was:
“You understand my anxieties while he is campaigning with the King.”
She had spoken in French and she had used the expression “mes transes” but for all the rest, intonation, bearing, solemnity, she might have been referring to one of the Bourbons. I am sure that not a single one of them looked half as aristocratic as her son.
“I understand perfectly, Madame. But then that life is so romantic.”
“Hundreds of young men belonging to a certain sphere are doing that,” she said very distinctly, “only their case is different. They have their positions, their families to go back to; but we are different. We are exiles, except of course for the ideals, the kindred spirit, the friendships of old standing we have in France. Should my son come out unscathed he has no one but me and I have no one but him. I have to think of his life. Mr. Mills (what a distinguished mind that is!) has reassured me as to my son’s health. But he sleeps very badly, doesn’t he?”
I murmured something affirmative in a doubtful tone and she remarked quaintly, with a certain curtness, “It’s so unnecessary, this worry! The unfortunate position of an exile has its advantages. At a certain height of social position (wealth has got nothing to do with it, we have been ruined in a most righteous cause), at a certain established height one can disregard narrow prejudices. You see examples in the aristocracies of all the countries. A chivalrous young American may offer his life for a remote ideal which yet may belong to his familial tradition. We, in our great country, have every sort of tradition. But a young man of good connections and distinguished relations must settle down some day, dispose of his life.”
“No doubt, Madame,” I said, raising my eyes to the figure outside — ”Américain, Catholique et gentilhomme” — walking up and down the path with a cigar which he was not smoking. “For myself, I don’t know anything about those necessities. I have broken away for ever from those things.”
“Yes, Mr. Mills talked to me about you. What a golden heart that is. His sympathies are infinite.”
I thought suddenly of Mills pronouncing on Mme. Blunt, whatever his text on me might have been: “She lives by her wits.” Was she exercising her wits on me for some purpose of her own? And I observed coldly:
“I really know your son so very little.”
“Oh, voyons,” she protested. “I am aware that you are very much younger, but the similitudes of opinions, origins and perhaps at bottom, faintly, of character, of chivalrous devotion — no, you must be able to understand him in a measure. He is infinitely scrupulous and recklessly brave.”
I listened deferentially to the end yet with every nerve in my body tingling in hostile response to the Blunt vibration, which seemed to have got into my very hair.
“I am convinced of it, Madame. I have even heard of your son’s bravery. It’s extremely natural in a man who, in his own words, ‘lives by his sword.’”
She suddenly departed from her almost inhuman perfection, betrayed “nerves” like a common mortal, of course very slightly, but in her it meant more than a blaze of fury from a vessel of inferior clay. Her admirable little foot, marvellously shod in a black shoe, tapped the floor irritably. But even in that display there was something exquisitely delicate. The very anger in her voice was silvery, as it were, and more like the petulance of a seventeen-year-old beauty.
“What nonsense! A Blunt doesn’t hire himself.”
“Some princely families,” I said, “were founded by men who have done that very thing. The great Condottieri, you know.”
It was in an almost tempestuous tone that she made me observe that we were not living in the fifteenth century. She gave me also to understand with some spirit that there was no question here of founding a family. Her son was very far from being the first of the name. His importance lay rather in being the last of a race which had totally perished, she added in a completely drawing-room tone, “in our Civil War.”
She had mastered her irritation and through the glass side of the room sent a wistful smile to his address, but I noticed the yet unextinguished anger in her eyes full of fire under her beautiful white eyebrows. For she was growing old! Oh, yes, she was growing old, and secretly weary, and perhaps desperate.
CHAPTER III
Without caring much about it I was conscious of sudden illumination. I said to myself confidently that these two people had been quarrelling all the morning. I had discovered the secret of my invitation to that lunch. They did not care to face the strain of some obstinate, inconclusive discussion for fear, maybe, of it ending in a serious quarrel. And so they had agreed that I should be fetched downstairs to create a diversion. I cannot say I felt annoyed. I didn’t care. My perspicacity did not please me either. I wished they had left me alone — but nothing mattered. They must have been in their superiority accustomed to make use of people, without compunction. From necessity, too. She especially. She lived by her wits. The silence had grown so marked that I had at last to raise my eyes; and the first thing I observed was that Captain Blunt was no longer to be seen in the garden. Must have gone indoors. Would rejoin us in a moment. Then I would leave mother and son to themselves.
The next thing I noticed was that a great mellowness had descended upon the mother of the last of his race. But these terms, irritation, mellowness, appeared gross when applied to her. It is impossible to give an idea of the refinement and subtlety of all her transformations. She smiled faintly at me.
“But all this is beside the point. The real point is that my son, like all fine natures, is a being of strange contradictions which the trials of life have not yet reconciled in him. With me it is a little different. The trials fell mainly to my share — and of course I have lived longer. And then men are much more complex than women, much more difficult, too. And you, Monsieur George? Are you complex, with unexpected resistances and difficulties in your être intime — your inner self? I wonder now . . .”
The Blunt atmosphere seemed to vibrate all over my skin. I disregarded the symptom. “Madame,” I said, “I have never tried to find out what sort of being I am.”
“Ah, that’s very wrong. We ought to reflect on what manner of beings we are. Of course we are all sinners. My John is a sinner like the others,” she declared further, with a sort of proud tenderness as though our common lot must have felt honoured and to a certain extent purified by this condescending recognition.
“You are too young perhaps as yet . . . But as to my John,” she broke off, leaning her elbow on the table and supporting her head on her old, impeccably shaped, white fore-arm emerging from a lot of precious, still older, lace trimming the short sleeve. “The trouble is that he suffers from a profound discord between the necessary reactions to life and even the impulses of nature and the lofty idealism of his feelings; I may say, of his principles. I assure you that he won’t even let his heart speak uncontradicted.”
I am sure I don’t know what particular devil looks after the associations of memory, and I can’t even imagine the shock which it would have been for Mrs. Blunt to learn that the words issuing from her lips had awakened in me the visual perception of a dark-skinned, hard-driven l
ady’s maid with tarnished eyes; even of the tireless Rose handing me my hat while breathing out the enigmatic words: “Madame should listen to her heart.” A wave from the atmosphere of another house rolled in, overwhelming and fiery, seductive and cruel, through the Blunt vibration, bursting through it as through tissue paper and filling my heart with sweet murmurs and distracting images, till it seemed to break, leaving an empty stillness in my breast.
After that for a long time I heard Mme. Blunt mère talking with extreme fluency and I even caught the individual words, but I could not in the revulsion of my feelings get hold of the sense. She talked apparently of life in general, of its difficulties, moral and physical, of its surprising turns, of its unexpected contacts, of the choice and rare personalities that drift on it as if on the sea; of the distinction that letters and art gave to it, the nobility and consolations there are in aesthetics, of the privileges they confer on individuals and (this was the first connected statement I caught) that Mills agreed with her in the general point of view as to the inner worth of individualities and in the particular instance of it on which she had opened to him her innermost heart. Mills had a universal mind. His sympathy was universal, too. He had that large comprehension — oh, not cynical, not at all cynical, in fact rather tender — which was found in its perfection only in some rare, very rare Englishmen. The dear creature was romantic, too. Of course he was reserved in his speech but she understood Mills perfectly. Mills apparently liked me very much.
It was time for me to say something. There was a challenge in the reposeful black eyes resting upon my face. I murmured that I was very glad to hear it. She waited a little, then uttered meaningly, “Mr. Mills is a little bit uneasy about you.”
“It’s very good of him,” I said. And indeed I thought that it was very good of him, though I did ask myself vaguely in my dulled brain why he should be uneasy.
Somehow it didn’t occur to me to ask Mrs. Blunt. Whether she had expected me to do so or not I don’t know but after a while she changed the pose she had kept so long and folded her wonderfully preserved white arms. She looked a perfect picture in silver and grey, with touches of black here and there. Still I said nothing more in my dull misery. She waited a little longer, then she woke me up with a crash. It was as if the house had fallen, and yet she had only asked me:
“I believe you are received on very friendly terms by Madame de Lastaola on account of your common exertions for the cause. Very good friends, are you not?”
“You mean Rita,” I said stupidly, but I felt stupid, like a man who wakes up only to be hit on the head.
“Oh, Rita,” she repeated with unexpected acidity, which somehow made me feel guilty of an incredible breach of good manners. “H’m, Rita. . . . Oh, well, let it be Rita — for the present. Though why she should be deprived of her name in conversation about her, really I don’t understand. Unless a very special intimacy . . .”
She was distinctly annoyed. I said sulkily, “It isn’t her name.”
“It is her choice, I understand, which seems almost a better title to recognition on the part of the world. It didn’t strike you so before? Well, it seems to me that choice has got more right to be respected than heredity or law. Moreover, Mme. de Lastaola,” she continued in an insinuating voice, “that most rare and fascinating young woman is, as a friend like you cannot deny, outside legality altogether. Even in that she is an exceptional creature. For she is exceptional — you agree?”
I had gone dumb, I could only stare at her.
“Oh, I see, you agree. No friend of hers could deny.”
“Madame,” I burst out, “I don’t know where a question of friendship comes in here with a person whom you yourself call so exceptional. I really don’t know how she looks upon me. Our intercourse is of course very close and confidential. Is that also talked about in Paris?”
“Not at all, not in the least,” said Mrs. Blunt, easy, equable, but with her calm, sparkling eyes holding me in angry subjection. “Nothing of the sort is being talked about. The references to Mme. de Lastaola are in a very different tone, I can assure you, thanks to her discretion in remaining here. And, I must say, thanks to the discreet efforts of her friends. I am also a friend of Mme. de Lastaola, you must know. Oh, no, I have never spoken to her in my life and have seen her only twice, I believe. I wrote to her though, that I admit. She or rather the image of her has come into my life, into that part of it where art and letters reign undisputed like a sort of religion of beauty to which I have been faithful through all the vicissitudes of my existence. Yes, I did write to her and I have been preoccupied with her for a long time. It arose from a picture, from two pictures and also from a phrase pronounced by a man, who in the science of life and in the perception of aesthetic truth had no equal in the world of culture. He said that there was something in her of the women of all time. I suppose he meant the inheritance of all the gifts that make up an irresistible fascination — a great personality. Such women are not born often. Most of them lack opportunities. They never develop. They end obscurely. Here and there one survives to make her mark even in history. . . . And even that is not a very enviable fate. They are at another pole from the so-called dangerous women who are merely coquettes. A coquette has got to work for her success. The others have nothing to do but simply exist. You perceive the view I take of the difference?”
I perceived the view. I said to myself that nothing in the world could be more aristocratic. This was the slave-owning woman who had never worked, even if she had been reduced to live by her wits. She was a wonderful old woman. She made me dumb. She held me fascinated by the well-bred attitude, something sublimely aloof in her air of wisdom.
I just simply let myself go admiring her as though I had been a mere slave of aesthetics: the perfect grace, the amazing poise of that venerable head, the assured as if royal — yes, royal even flow of the voice. . . . But what was it she was talking about now? These were no longer considerations about fatal women. She was talking about her son again. My interest turned into mere bitterness of contemptuous attention. For I couldn’t withhold it though I tried to let the stuff go by. Educated in the most aristocratic college in Paris . . . at eighteen . . . call of duty . . . with General Lee to the very last cruel minute . . . after that catastrophe end of the world — return to France — to old friendships, infinite kindness — but a life hollow, without occupation. . . Then 1870 — and chivalrous response to adopted country’s call and again emptiness, the chafing of a proud spirit without aim and handicapped not exactly by poverty but by lack of fortune. And she, the mother, having to look on at this wasting of a most accomplished man, of a most chivalrous nature that practically had no future before it.
“You understand me well, Monsieur George. A nature like this! It is the most refined cruelty of fate to look at. I don’t know whether I suffered more in times of war or in times of peace. You understand?”
I bowed my head in silence. What I couldn’t understand was why he delayed so long in joining us again. Unless he had had enough of his mother? I thought without any great resentment that I was being victimized; but then it occurred to me that the cause of his absence was quite simple. I was familiar enough with his habits by this time to know that he often managed to snatch an hour’s sleep or so during the day. He had gone and thrown himself on his bed.
“I admire him exceedingly,” Mrs. Blunt was saying in a tone which was not at all maternal. “His distinction, his fastidiousness, the earnest warmth of his heart. I know him well. I assure you that I would never have dared to suggest,” she continued with an extraordinary haughtiness of attitude and tone that aroused my attention, “I would never have dared to put before him my views of the extraordinary merits and the uncertain fate of the exquisite woman of whom we speak, if I had not been certain that, partly by my fault, I admit, his attention has been attracted to her and his — his — his heart engaged.”
It was as if some one had poured a bucket of cold water over my head. I woke up with
a great shudder to the acute perception of my own feelings and of that aristocrat’s incredible purpose. How it could have germinated, grown and matured in that exclusive soil was inconceivable. She had been inciting her son all the time to undertake wonderful salvage work by annexing the heiress of Henry Allègre — the woman and the fortune.
There must have been an amazed incredulity in my eyes, to which her own responded by an unflinching black brilliance which suddenly seemed to develop a scorching quality even to the point of making me feel extremely thirsty all of a sudden. For a time my tongue literally clove to the roof of my mouth. I don’t know whether it was an illusion but it seemed to me that Mrs. Blunt had nodded at me twice as if to say: “You are right, that’s so.” I made an effort to speak but it was very poor. If she did hear me it was because she must have been on the watch for the faintest sound.
“His heart engaged. Like two hundred others, or two thousand, all around,” I mumbled.
“Altogether different. And it’s no disparagement to a woman surely. Of course her great fortune protects her in a certain measure.”
“Does it?” I faltered out and that time I really doubt whether she heard me. Her aspect in my eyes had changed. Her purpose being disclosed, her well-bred ease appeared sinister, her aristocratic repose a treacherous device, her venerable graciousness a mask of unbounded contempt for all human beings whatever. She was a terrible old woman with those straight, white wolfish eye-brows. How blind I had been! Those eyebrows alone ought to have been enough to give her away. Yet they were as beautifully smooth as her voice when she admitted: “That protection naturally is only partial. There is the danger of her own self, poor girl. She requires guidance.”
I marvelled at the villainy of my tone as I spoke, but it was only assumed.
“I don’t think she has done badly for herself, so far,” I forced myself to say. “I suppose you know that she began life by herding the village goats.”
Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) Page 405