Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated)

by Joseph Conrad

  Spire thought that this would make his stay in Genoa very dull. At the same time he was convinced that his young master would alter his mind before very long and change to that other inn patronized by travellers of fashion. For himself he was not averse from a little quiet time. Spire was no longer young. Thirty years ago, before the War and before the Revolution, he had travelled with Sir Charles in France and Italy. He was then only eighteen, but being a steady and trustworthy lad was taken abroad to look after the horses. Sir Charles kept four horses in Florence, and Spire had often ridden on Tuscan roads behind Sir Charles and the two Misses Aston, of whom one later became Lady Latham. After the family settled in Yorkshire he passed from the stables to the house, acquired a confidential position, and whenever Lady Latham took a journey he sat in the rumble with a pair of double-barrelled pistols in the pockets of his greatcoat and ordered all things on the road. Later he became intermediary between Sir Charles and the stables, the gardens, and in all out-of-door things about the house. He attended Lady Latham on her very last drive, all the details for that lady’s funeral having been left to his management. He was also a very good valet. He had been called one evening into the library where Sir Charles, very gouty that day, leaning with one hand on a thick stick and with the other on the edge of a table, had said to him: “I am lending you to Mr. Cosmo for his travels in France and Italy. You will know your way about. And mind you draw the charges of the pistols in the carriage every morning and load them afresh.”

  Spire was then requested to help Sir Charles up the stairs and had a few more words said to him when Sir Charles stopped at the door of his bedroom.

  “Mr. Cosmo has plenty of sense. You are not to make yourself a nuisance to him.”

  “No, Sir Charles,” said the imperturbable Spire. “I will know how to look after Mr. Cosmo.”

  And if he had been asked, Spire would have been able to say that during the stay in Paris and all through France and Switzerland on the way to Genoa Mr. Cosmo had given him no trouble at all.

  Spire, still busy unpacking, glanced at his young master. He certainly looked very quiet now, leaning on his elbow with the firelight playing from below on his young thoughtful face with its smooth and pale complexion. “Very good-looking indeed,” thought Spire.-In that thoughtful mood he recalled very much the Sir Charles of thirty or thirty-five years ago. Would he too find his wife abroad? There had been women enough in Paris of every kind and degree, English and French and all sorts. But it was a fact that Mr. Cosmo sought most of his company amongst men, of whom also there had been no lack and of every degree. In that, too, the young man resembled very much his father. Men’s company. But were he to get caught he would get caught properly; at any rate for a time, reflected Spire, remembering Sir Charles Latham’s rush back to Italy, the inwardness of which had been no more revealed to him than to the rest of the world.

  Spire, approaching the candelabra, unfolded partly a very fine coat, then refolded it before putting it away on a convenient shelf. He had a moment of regret for his own young days. He had never married, not because there had been any lack of women to set their caps at him, but from a sort of half-conscious prudence. Moreover, he had a notion somehow or other that Sir Charles would not have liked it. Perhaps it was just as well. Now he was carefree, attending on Mr. Cosmo without troubling his head about who had remained at home.

  Spire, arranging the contents of a dressing case on the table, cast another sidelong look at the figure by the fire. Very handsome. Something like Sir Charles and yet not like. There was a touch of something unusual, perhaps foreign, and yet no one with a pair of eyes in his head could mistake Mr. Cosmo for anything but an English gentleman.

  Spire’s memories of his tour with Sir Charles had been growing dim. But he remembered enough of the old-time atmosphere to have become aware of a feeling of tension, of a suggestion of restlessness which certainly was new to him.

  The silence had lasted very long. Cosmo before the fire had not moved. Spire ventured on a remark.

  “I notice people are excited about one thing and another hereabouts, sir.”

  “Excited. I don’t wonder at it. In what way?”

  “Sort of discontented, sir. They don’t like the Austrians, sir. You may have noticed as we came along ...”

  “Did they like us when we held the town?”

  “I can hardly say that, sir. I have been sitting for an hour or more in the couriers’ room, with all sorts of people coming in and out, and heard very wild sort of talk.”

  “What can you know about its wildness?”

  “To look at their faces was enough. It’s a funny place, that room downstairs,” went on Spire, rubbing with a piece of silk a travelling looking-glass mounted cunningly in a silver case which when opened made a stand for it. He placed it exactly in the middle of a little table and turned round to look at his master. Seeing that Cosmo seemed disposed to listen he continued : “It is vaulted like a cellar and has a little door giving into a side street. People come in and out as they like. All sorts of low people, sir, facchini and carters and boatmen and suchlike. There was an old fellow came in, a gray-headed man, a cobbler, I suppose, as he brought a bagful of mended shoes for the servants of the house. He emptied the lot on the stone floor, sir, and instead of trying to collect his money from the people that were scrambling for them he made them a speech. He spouted, sir, without drawing a breath. The courier-valet of an English doctor staying here, a Swiss I think he is, says to me in his broken English: 4He would cut every Austrian throat in this town.’ We were having a glass of wine together and I asked him, ‘And what do you think of that?’ And he says to me, after thinking a bit, ‘I agree with him. . . / Very dreadful, sir,” concluded Spire with a perfectly unmoved face.

  Cosmo looked at him in silence for a time. “It was very bold talk if that is what the man really said,” he remarked. “Especially as the place is so public as you say it is.”

  “Absolutely open to the street, sir; and that same Swiss fellow had told me just before that the town was full of spies and what they call sbirri that came from Turin with the King. The King is staying at the Palace, sir. They are expecting the Queen of Sardinia to arrive any day. You didn’t know, sir? They say she will come in an English man-of-war. That old cobbler was very abusive about the King of Piedmont too. Surely talk like that can’t be safe anywhere.”

  Spire paused suddenly and Cosmo Latham turned his back to the fire.

  “Well, and what happened?” he asked with a smile.

  “You could have heard a pin drop,” said Spire in equable tones, “till that Signor Cantelucci — that’s the padrone of this inn, sir ... “

  “The man who lighted me up?” said Cosmo.

  “Yes, sir. ... I didn’t know he was in the room till suddenly he spoke behind my back telling one of the scullions that was there to give the man a glass of wine. And what the old fellow must do but raise it above his head and shout a toast to the Destructor of the Austrians before he tossed it down his throat. I was quite astonished, but Signor Cantelucci never turned a hair. He offered his snuffbox to that doctor’s courier and myself and shrugged his shoulders. ‘It was only Pietro,’ he said, ‘ a little mad’ — he tapped his forehead, you know, sir. The doctor’s courier sat there grinning. I got suddenly uneasy about you, sir, and went out to the front door to see whether you were coming. It’s very different from what it was thirty years ago. There was no talk in Italy of cutting foreigners’ throats when Sir Charles and I were here. It was quite a startling experience.”

  Cosmo nodded. “You seem impressed, Spire. Well, 1 too had an experience, just as the sun was setting.”

  “I am sorry to hear that, sir.”

  “What do you mean? Why should you be sorry?”

  “I beg your pardon, sir, I thought it was something unpleasant.”

  Cosmo had a little laugh. “Unpleasant? No! Not exactly, though I think it was more dangerous than yours, but if there was any madness connected with i
t, it had a very visible method. It was not all talk either. Yes, Spire, it was exciting.”

  “I don’t know what’s come to them all. Everybody seems excited. There was not excitement in Italy thirty years ago when I was with Sir Charles and took four horses with only one helper from this very town to Florence, sir.”

  Cosmo with fixed eyes did not seem to hear Spire’s complaining remark. He exclaimed: “Really it was very extraordinary,” so suddenly that Spire gave a perceptible start. He pulled himself together and asked in a purely business tone:

  “Are you going to dine in your room, sir? Time is getting on.”

  Cosmo’s mood too seemed to have changed completely.

  “I don’t know. I am not hungry. I want you to move one of those screens here near the fire and place a table and chair there. I will do some correspondence to-night. Yes, I will have my dinner here, I think.”

  “I will go down and order it, sir,” said Spire. “The cook here is a Frenchman who married a native and…”

  “Who on earth is swearing like this outside?” exclaimed Cosmo, while Spire’s face also expressed astonishment at the loud burst of voices coming along the corridor, one angry, the other argumentative, in a crescendo of scolding and expostulation which, passing the door at its highest, died away into a confused murmur in the distance of the long corridor.

  “That was an English voice,” said Cosmo. “I mean the angry one.”

  “I should think it’s that English doctor from Tuscany that has been three or four days here already. He has been put on this floor.”

  “From what I have been able to catch,” said Cosmo, “he seems very angry at having a neighbour on it. That must be me. Have you heard his name?”

  “It’s Marvel or some such name. He seems to be known here; he orders people about as if he were at home. The other was Cantelucci, sir.”

  “Very likely. Look here, Spire. I will dine in the public room downstairs. I want to see that angry gentleman. Did you see him, Spire?”

  “Only his back, sir. Very broad, sir. Tall man. In boots and a riding coat. Are you going down now, sir? The dinner must be on already.”

  “Yes,” said Cosmo, preparing to go out. “And by the by, Spire, if you ever see in the street or in that room downstairs, where everyone comes in and out as you say, a long fellow wearing a peculiar cap with a tassel, just try to find out something about him; or at any rate let me know when you have seen him. . . . You could perhaps follow him for a bit and try to see where he goes.”

  After saying those words Cosmo left the room before Spire could make any answer. Spire’s astonishment expressed itself by a low exclamation, “Well, I never!”

  PART II

  I

  Cosmo descended into a hall now empty and with most of its lights extinguished. A loud murmur of voices guided him to the door of the dining room. He discovered it to be a long apartment with flat pilasters dividing its whitewashed walls, and resembling somewhat a convent’s refectory. The resemblance was accentuated by the two narrow tables occupying its middle. One of them had been appropriated by the British naval officers, had lights on it, and bristled with the necks of wine bottles along its whole length. The talk round it was confused and noisy. The other, shorter, table accommodated two rows of people in sombre garments who at first glance struck Cosmo as natives of the town and belonging to a lower station in life. They had less lights, less wine, and almost no animation. Several smaller tables were ranged against the walls at equal intervals, and Cosmo’s eye was caught by one of them because of the candles in the sconce on the wall above it having been lighted. Its cloth was dazzlingly white, and Signor Cantelucci with a napkin in his hand stood respectfully at the elbow of its sole occupant, who was seated with his back to the door.

  Cosmo was under the impression that his entrance had been unobserved. But before he had walked half the length of the room Signor Cantelucci, whose eyes had never ceased darting here and there while his body preserved its deferential attitude at the elbow of the exclusive client, advanced to meet him with his serious and attentive air. He bowed. Perhaps the signore would not mind sharing the table of his illustrious countryman.

  “Yes, if my countryman doesn’t object,” assented Cosmo readily. He was absolutely certain that this must be the doctor of whom Spire had spoken.

  Cantelucci had no doubt that His Excellency’s company would be most welcome to his illustrious countryman. Then stepping aside, he added under his breath: “He is a person of great distinction. A most valued patron of mine. . . .” The person thus commended, turning his head ensconced in the high collar of his coat, disclosed to Cosmo a round face with a shaved chin, strongly marked eyebrows, round eyes, and thin lips compressed into a slightly peevish droop which, however, was at once corrected by an attempt at a faint smile. Cosmo, too, produced a faint smile. For an appreciable moment they looked at each other without saying a word while Cantelucci, silent too, executed a profound bow.

  “Sit down, sir, sit down,” said the elder man (Cosmo judged him to be well over forty), raising his voice above the uproar made by the occupants of the naval table and waving his hand at the empty chair facing his own. Tt had a high carved back showing some traces of gilding, and the silk which covered it was worn to rags. Cosmo sat down while Cantelucci disappeared and the man across the table positively shouted, “I am glad,” and immediately followed that declaration by an energetic “Oh damn!” He bent over the table: “One can’t hear oneself speak with that noisy lot. All heroes, no doubt, but not a single gentleman.”

  He leaned back and waited till the outburst of noisy mirth had died out at the officers’ table. The corners of his mouth drooped again and Cosmo came to the conclusion that that face in repose was decidedly peevish.

  “I don’t know what they have got to be so merry about,” the other began, with a slight glance at the naval table and leaning forward again towards Cosmo. “Their occupation is gone. Heroes are a thoughtless lot. Yet just look at that elderly lieutenant at the head of the table. Shabby coat. Old epaulette. He doesn’t laugh. He will die a lieutenant — on half pay. That’s how heroic people end when the heroic times are over.”

  “I am glad,” said Cosmo steadily, “that you recognize at least their heroism.”

  The other opened his mouth for some time before he laughed, and that gave his face an expression of somewhat hard jollity. But the laugh when it came was by no means loud and had a sort of ingratiating softness.

  “No, no. Don’t think I am disparaging our sea service. I had the privilege to know the greatest hero of them all. Yes, I had two talks with Lord Nelson. Well, he was certainly not ...”

  He interrupted himself and raising his eyes saw the perfectly still gaze of Cosmo fastened on his face. Then peevishly:

  “What I meant to say was that he at least was indubitably a hero. I remember that I was very careful about what I said to him. I had to be mighty careful then about what I said to anybody. Someone might have put it into his head to hang me at some yard-arm or other.”

  “I envy you your experience all the same,” said Cosmo amiably. “I suppose your conscience was clear?”

  “I have always been most careful not to give my conscience any license to trouble me,” retorted the other with a certain curtness of tone which was not offensive;

  “and I have lived now for some considerable time. I am really much older than I look,” he concluded, giving Cosmo such a keen glance that the young man could not help a smile.

  The other went on looking at him steadily for a while, then let his eyes wander to a door in a distant part of the long room as if impatient for the coming of the dinner. Then giving it up:

  “A man who has lived actively, actively I say, the last twenty years may well feel as old as Methuselah. Lord Nelson was but a circumstance in my life. I wonder, had he lived, how he would have taken all this.”

  A slight movement of his hand seemed to carry this allusion outside the confines of the vaulted noisy
room, to indicate all the out-of-doors of the world. Cosmo remarked that the hand was muscular, shapely, and extremely well cared for.

  “I think there can be no doubt about the nature of his feelings if he were living.” Cosmo’s voice was exactly non-committal. His interlocutor grunted slightly.

  “H’m. He would have done nothing but groan and complain about anything and everything. No, he wouldn’t have taken it laughing. Very poor physique. Very. Frightful hypochondriac. ... I am a doctor, you know.”

  Cantelucci was going to attend himself on his two guests. He presented to the doctor a smoking soup tureen enveloped in a napkin. The doctor assumed at once a business-like air, and at his invitation Cosmo held out his plate. The doctor helped him carefully.

  “Don’t forget the wine, my wine, Anzelmo,” he said to Cantelucci, who answered by a profound bow. “I saved his life once,” he continued after the innkeeper had gone away.

  The tone was particularly significant. Cosmo, partly repelled and partly amused by the man, enquired whether the worthy host had been very ill. The doctor swallowed the last spoonful of soup.

  “Ill,” he said. “He had a gash that long in his side and a set of forty-pound fetters in his legs. I cured both complaints. Not without some risk to myself, as you may imagine. There was an epidemic of hanging and shooting in the South of Italy then.”

  He noticed Cosmo’s steady stare and raised the corners of his mouth with an effect of geniality on his broad rosy face.

  “In ‘99, you know. I wonder I didn’t die of it too. I was considerably younger then and my humane instincts, early enthusiasms, and so on had led me into pretty bad company. However, I had also pretty good friends. What with one thing and another I am pretty well known all over Italy. My name is Martel — Doctor Martel. You probably may have heard. . . .”

  He threw a searching glance at Cosmo, who bowed non-committally, and went on without a pause: “I am the man who brought vaccine to Italy, first. Cantelucci was trying to tell me your name but really I couldn’t make it out.”