In the course of that phrase I noticed her wince just the least bit. Oh, yes, she winced; but at the end of it she smiled easily.
“No, I didn’t know. So she told you her story! Oh, well, I suppose you are very good friends. A goatherd — really? In the fairy tale I believe the girl that marries the prince is — what is it? — a gardeuse d’oies. And what a thing to drag out against a woman. One might just as soon reproach any of them for coming unclothed into the world. They all do, you know. And then they become — what you will discover when you have lived longer, Monsieur George — for the most part futile creatures, without any sense of truth and beauty, drudges of all sorts, or else dolls to dress. In a word — ordinary.”
The implication of scorn in her tranquil manner was immense. It seemed to condemn all those that were not born in the Blunt connection. It was the perfect pride of Republican aristocracy, which has no gradations and knows no limit, and, as if created by the grace of God, thinks it ennobles everything it touches: people, ideas, even passing tastes!
“How many of them,” pursued Mrs. Blunt, “have had the good fortune, the leisure to develop their intelligence and their beauty in aesthetic conditions as this charming woman had? Not one in a million. Perhaps not one in an age.”
“The heiress of Henry Allègre,” I murmured.
“Precisely. But John wouldn’t be marrying the heiress of Henry Allègre.”
It was the first time that the frank word, the clear idea, came into the conversation and it made me feel ill with a sort of enraged faintness.
“No,” I said. “It would be Mme. de Lastaola then.”
“Mme. la Comtesse de Lastaola as soon as she likes after the success of this war.”
“And you believe in its success?”
“Do you?”
“Not for a moment,” I declared, and was surprised to see her look pleased.
She was an aristocrat to the tips of her fingers; she really didn’t care for anybody. She had passed through the Empire, she had lived through a siege, had rubbed shoulders with the Commune, had seen everything, no doubt, of what men are capable in the pursuit of their desires or in the extremity of their distress, for love, for money, and even for honour; and in her precarious connection with the very highest spheres she had kept her own honourability unscathed while she had lost all her prejudices. She was above all that. Perhaps “the world” was the only thing that could have the slightest checking influence; but when I ventured to say something about the view it might take of such an alliance she looked at me for a moment with visible surprise.
“My dear Monsieur George, I have lived in the great world all my life. It’s the best that there is, but that’s only because there is nothing merely decent anywhere. It will accept anything, forgive anything, forget anything in a few days. And after all who will he be marrying? A charming, clever, rich and altogether uncommon woman. What did the world hear of her? Nothing. The little it saw of her was in the Bois for a few hours every year, riding by the side of a man of unique distinction and of exclusive tastes, devoted to the cult of aesthetic impressions; a man of whom, as far as aspect, manner, and behaviour goes, she might have been the daughter. I have seen her myself. I went on purpose. I was immensely struck. I was even moved. Yes. She might have been — except for that something radiant in her that marked her apart from all the other daughters of men. The few remarkable personalities that count in society and who were admitted into Henry Allègre’s Pavilion treated her with punctilious reserve. I know that, I have made enquiries. I know she sat there amongst them like a marvellous child, and for the rest what can they say about her? That when abandoned to herself by the death of Allègre she has made a mistake? I think that any woman ought to be allowed one mistake in her life. The worst they can say of her is that she discovered it, that she had sent away a man in love directly she found out that his love was not worth having; that she had told him to go and look for his crown, and that, after dismissing him she had remained generously faithful to his cause, in her person and fortune. And this, you will allow, is rather uncommon upon the whole.”
“You make her out very magnificent,” I murmured, looking down upon the floor.
“Isn’t she?” exclaimed the aristocratic Mrs. Blunt, with an almost youthful ingenuousness, and in those black eyes which looked at me so calmly there was a flash of the Southern beauty, still naïve and romantic, as if altogether untouched by experience. “I don’t think there is a single grain of vulgarity in all her enchanting person. Neither is there in my son. I suppose you won’t deny that he is uncommon.” She paused.
“Absolutely,” I said in a perfectly conventional tone, I was now on my mettle that she should not discover what there was humanly common in my nature. She took my answer at her own valuation and was satisfied.
“They can’t fail to understand each other on the very highest level of idealistic perceptions. Can you imagine my John thrown away on some enamoured white goose out of a stuffy old salon? Why, she couldn’t even begin to understand what he feels or what he needs.”
“Yes,” I said impenetrably, “he is not easy to understand.”
“I have reason to think,” she said with a suppressed smile, “that he has a certain power over women. Of course I don’t know anything about his intimate life but a whisper or two have reached me, like that, floating in the air, and I could hardly suppose that he would find an exceptional resistance in that quarter of all others. But I should like to know the exact degree.”
I disregarded an annoying tendency to feel dizzy that came over me and was very careful in managing my voice.
“May I ask, Madame, why you are telling me all this?”
“For two reasons,” she condescended graciously. “First of all because Mr. Mills told me that you were much more mature than one would expect. In fact you look much younger than I was prepared for.”
“Madame,” I interrupted her, “I may have a certain capacity for action and for responsibility, but as to the regions into which this very unexpected conversation has taken me I am a great novice. They are outside my interest. I have had no experience.”
“Don’t make yourself out so hopeless,” she said in a spoilt-beauty tone. “You have your intuitions. At any rate you have a pair of eyes. You are everlastingly over there, so I understand. Surely you have seen how far they are . . .”
I interrupted again and this time bitterly, but always in a tone of polite enquiry:
“You think her facile, Madame?”
She looked offended. “I think her most fastidious. It is my son who is in question here.”
And I understood then that she looked on her son as irresistible. For my part I was just beginning to think that it would be impossible for me to wait for his return. I figured him to myself lying dressed on his bed sleeping like a stone. But there was no denying that the mother was holding me with an awful, tortured interest. Twice Therese had opened the door, had put her small head in and drawn it back like a tortoise. But for some time I had lost the sense of us two being quite alone in the studio. I had perceived the familiar dummy in its corner but it lay now on the floor as if Therese had knocked it down angrily with a broom for a heathen idol. It lay there prostrate, handless, without its head, pathetic, like the mangled victim of a crime.
“John is fastidious, too,” began Mrs. Blunt again. “Of course you wouldn’t suppose anything vulgar in his resistances to a very real sentiment. One has got to understand his psychology. He can’t leave himself in peace. He is exquisitely absurd.”
I recognized the phrase. Mother and son talked of each other in identical terms. But perhaps “exquisitely absurd” was the Blunt family saying? There are such sayings in families and generally there is some truth in them. Perhaps this old woman was simply absurd. She continued:
“We had a most painful discussion all this morning. He is angry with me for suggesting the very thing his whole being desires. I don’t feel guilty. It’s he who is tormenting himself with his
infinite scrupulosity.”
“Ah,” I said, looking at the mangled dummy like the model of some atrocious murder. “Ah, the fortune. But that can be left alone.”
“What nonsense! How is it possible? It isn’t contained in a bag, you can’t throw it into the sea. And moreover, it isn’t her fault. I am astonished that you should have thought of that vulgar hypocrisy. No, it isn’t her fortune that cheeks my son; it’s something much more subtle. Not so much her history as her position. He is absurd. It isn’t what has happened in her life. It’s her very freedom that makes him torment himself and her, too — as far as I can understand.”
I suppressed a groan and said to myself that I must really get away from there.
Mrs. Blunt was fairly launched now.
“For all his superiority he is a man of the world and shares to a certain extent its current opinions. He has no power over her. She intimidates him. He wishes he had never set eyes on her. Once or twice this morning he looked at me as if he could find it in his heart to hate his old mother. There is no doubt about it — he loves her, Monsieur George. He loves her, this poor, luckless, perfect homme du monde.”
The silence lasted for some time and then I heard a murmur: “It’s a matter of the utmost delicacy between two beings so sensitive, so proud. It has to be managed.”
I found myself suddenly on my feet and saying with the utmost politeness that I had to beg her permission to leave her alone as I had an engagement; but she motioned me simply to sit down — and I sat down again.
“I told you I had a request to make,” she said. “I have understood from Mr. Mills that you have been to the West Indies, that you have some interests there.”
I was astounded. “Interests! I certainly have been there,” I said, “but . . .”
She caught me up. “Then why not go there again? I am speaking to you frankly because . . .”
“But, Madame, I am engaged in this affair with Doña Rita, even if I had any interests elsewhere. I won’t tell you about the importance of my work. I didn’t suspect it but you brought the news of it to me, and so I needn’t point it out to you.”
And now we were frankly arguing with each other.
“But where will it lead you in the end? You have all your life before you, all your plans, prospects, perhaps dreams, at any rate your own tastes and all your life-time before you. And would you sacrifice all this to — the Pretender? A mere figure for the front page of illustrated papers.”‘
“I never think of him,” I said curtly, “but I suppose Doña Rita’s feelings, instincts, call it what you like — or only her chivalrous fidelity to her mistakes — ”
“Doña Rita’s presence here in this town, her withdrawal from the possible complications of her life in Paris has produced an excellent effect on my son. It simplifies infinite difficulties, I mean moral as well as material. It’s extremely to the advantage of her dignity, of her future, and of her peace of mind. But I am thinking, of course, mainly of my son. He is most exacting.”
I felt extremely sick at heart. “And so I am to drop everything and vanish,” I said, rising from my chair again. And this time Mrs. Blunt got up, too, with a lofty and inflexible manner but she didn’t dismiss me yet.
“Yes,” she said distinctly. “All this, my dear Monsieur George, is such an accident. What have you got to do here? You look to me like somebody who would find adventures wherever he went as interesting and perhaps less dangerous than this one.”
She slurred over the word dangerous but I picked it up.
“What do you know of its dangers, Madame, may I ask?” But she did not condescend to hear.
“And then you, too, have your chivalrous feelings,” she went on, unswerving, distinct, and tranquil. “You are not absurd. But my son is. He would shut her up in a convent for a time if he could.”
“He isn’t the only one,” I muttered.
“Indeed!” she was startled, then lower, “Yes. That woman must be the centre of all sorts of passions,” she mused audibly. “But what have you got to do with all this? It’s nothing to you.”
She waited for me to speak.
“Exactly, Madame,” I said, “and therefore I don’t see why I should concern myself in all this one way or another.”
“No,” she assented with a weary air, “except that you might ask yourself what is the good of tormenting a man of noble feelings, however absurd. His Southern blood makes him very violent sometimes. I fear — ” And then for the first time during this conversation, for the first time since I left Doña Rita the day before, for the first time I laughed.
“Do you mean to hint, Madame, that Southern gentlemen are dead shots? I am aware of that — from novels.”
I spoke looking her straight in the face and I made that exquisite, aristocratic old woman positively blink by my directness. There was a faint flush on her delicate old cheeks but she didn’t move a muscle of her face. I made her a most respectful bow and went out of the studio.
CHAPTER IV
Through the great arched window of the hall I saw the hotel brougham waiting at the door. On passing the door of the front room (it was originally meant for a drawing-room but a bed for Blunt was put in there) I banged with my fist on the panel and shouted: “I am obliged to go out. Your mother’s carriage is at the door.” I didn’t think he was asleep. My view now was that he was aware beforehand of the subject of the conversation, and if so I did not wish to appear as if I had slunk away from him after the interview. But I didn’t stop — I didn’t want to see him — and before he could answer I was already half way up the stairs running noiselessly up the thick carpet which also covered the floor of the landing. Therefore opening the door of my sitting-room quickly I caught by surprise the person who was in there watching the street half concealed by the window curtain. It was a woman. A totally unexpected woman. A perfect stranger. She came away quickly to meet me. Her face was veiled and she was dressed in a dark walking costume and a very simple form of hat. She murmured: “I had an idea that Monsieur was in the house,” raising a gloved hand to lift her veil. It was Rose and she gave me a shock. I had never seen her before but with her little black silk apron and a white cap with ribbons on her head. This outdoor dress was like a disguise. I asked anxiously:
“What has happened to Madame?”
“Nothing. I have a letter,” she murmured, and I saw it appear between the fingers of her extended hand, in a very white envelope which I tore open impatiently. It consisted of a few lines only. It began abruptly:
“If you are gone to sea then I can’t forgive you for not sending the usual word at the last moment. If you are not gone why don’t you come? Why did you leave me yesterday? You leave me crying — I who haven’t cried for years and years, and you haven’t the sense to come back within the hour, within twenty hours! This conduct is idiotic” — and a sprawling signature of the four magic letters at the bottom.
While I was putting the letter in my pocket the girl said in an earnest undertone: “I don’t like to leave Madame by herself for any length of time.”
“How long have you been in my room?” I asked.
“The time seemed long. I hope Monsieur won’t mind the liberty. I sat for a little in the hall but then it struck me I might be seen. In fact, Madame told me not to be seen if I could help it.”
“Why did she tell you that?”
“I permitted myself to suggest that to Madame. It might have given a false impression. Madame is frank and open like the day but it won’t do with everybody. There are people who would put a wrong construction on anything. Madame’s sister told me Monsieur was out.”
“And you didn’t believe her?”
“Non, Monsieur. I have lived with Madame’s sister for nearly a week when she first came into this house. She wanted me to leave the message, but I said I would wait a little. Then I sat down in the big porter’s chair in the hall and after a while, everything being very quiet, I stole up here. I know the disposition of the apartments. I re
ckoned Madame’s sister would think that I got tired of waiting and let myself out.”
“And you have been amusing yourself watching the street ever since?”
“The time seemed long,” she answered evasively. “An empty coupé came to the door about an hour ago and it’s still waiting,” she added, looking at me inquisitively.
“It seems strange.”
“There are some dancing girls staying in the house,” I said negligently. “Did you leave Madame alone?”
“There’s the gardener and his wife in the house.”
“Those people keep at the back. Is Madame alone? That’s what I want to know.”
“Monsieur forgets that I have been three hours away; but I assure Monsieur that here in this town it’s perfectly safe for Madame to be alone.”
“And wouldn’t it be anywhere else? It’s the first I hear of it.”
“In Paris, in our apartments in the hotel, it’s all right, too; but in the Pavilion, for instance, I wouldn’t leave Madame by herself, not for half an hour.”
“What is there in the Pavilion?” I asked.
“It’s a sort of feeling I have,” she murmured reluctantly . . . “Oh! There’s that coupé going away.”
She made a movement towards the window but checked herself. I hadn’t moved. The rattle of wheels on the cobble-stones died out almost at once.
“Will Monsieur write an answer?” Rose suggested after a short silence.
“Hardly worth while,” I said. “I will be there very soon after you. Meantime, please tell Madame from me that I am not anxious to see any more tears. Tell her this just like that, you understand. I will take the risk of not being received.”
She dropped her eyes, said: “Oui, Monsieur,” and at my suggestion waited, holding the door of the room half open, till I went downstairs to see the road clear.
It was a kind of deaf-and-dumb house. The black-and-white hall was empty and everything was perfectly still. Blunt himself had no doubt gone away with his mother in the brougham, but as to the others, the dancing girls, Therese, or anybody else that its walls may have contained, they might have been all murdering each other in perfect assurance that the house would not betray them by indulging in any unseemly murmurs. I emitted a low whistle which didn’t seem to travel in that peculiar atmosphere more than two feet away from my lips, but all the same Rose came tripping down the stairs at once. With just a nod to my whisper: “Take a fiacre,” she glided out and I shut the door noiselessly behind her.
Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) Page 406