The Inheritors by Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford
CHAPTER TEN
Before noon of the next day I was ascending the stairs of the new housein which the Duc had his hermitage. There was an air of secrecy in thebroad publicity of the carpeted stairs that led to his flat; a hush inthe atmosphere; in the street itself, a glorified _cul de sac_ that raninto the bustling life of the Italiens. It had the sudden sluggishnessof a back-water. One seemed to have grown suddenly deaf in the midst ofthe rattle.
There was an incredible suggestion of silence--the silence of a privatedetective--in the mien of the servant who ushered me into a room. He wasthe English servant of the theatre--the English servant that foreignersaffect. The room had a splendour of its own, not a cheaply vulgarsplendour, but the vulgarity of the most lavish plush and purple kind.The air was heavy, killed by the scent of exotic flowers, darkened bycurtains that suggested the voluminous velvet backgrounds of certain oldportraits. The Duc de Mersch had carried with him into this place ofretirement the taste of the New Palace, that show-place of his that wasthe stupefaction of swarms of honest tourists.
I remembered soon enough that the man was a philanthropist, that hemight be an excellent man of heart and indifferent of taste. He must be.But I was prone to be influenced by things of this sort, and feltdepressed at the thought that so much of royal excellence should weighso heavily in the wrong scale of the balance of the applied arts. Iturned my back on the room and gazed at the blazing white decorations ofthe opposite house-fronts.
A door behind me must have opened, for I heard the sounds of aconcluding tirade in a high-pitched voice.
"_Et quant a un duc de farce, je ne m'en fiche pas mal, moi_," it saidin an accent curiously compounded of the foreign and the _coulisse_. Amuttered male remonstrance ensued, and then, with disconcertingclearness:
"_Gr-r-rangeur--Eschingan--eh bien--il entend. Et moi, j'entends, moiaussi. Tu veux me jouer contre elle. La Grangeur--pah! Consoles-toiavec elle, mon vieux. Je ne veux plus de toi. Tu m'as donne de tes salesrentes Groenlandoises, et je n'ai pas pu les vendre. Ah, vieux farceur,tu vas voir ce que j'en vais faire._"
A glorious creature--a really glorious creature--came out of anadjoining room. She was as frail, as swaying as a garden lily. Her greatblue eyes turned irefully upon me, her bowed lips parted, her nostrilsquivered.
"_Et quant a vous, M. Grangeur Eschingan,_" she began, "_je vais vousdonner mon idee a moi ..._"
I did not understand the situation in the least, but I appreciated theawkwardness of it. The world seemed to be standing on its head. I wasovercome; but I felt for the person in the next room. I did not knowwhat to do. Suddenly I found myself saying:
"I am extremely sorry, madam, but I don't understand French." Anexpression of more intense vexation passed into her face--her beautifulface. I fancy she wished--wished intensely--to give me the benefit ofher "_idee a elle_." She made a quick, violent gesture of disgustedcontempt, and turned toward the half-open door from which she had come.She began again to dilate upon the little weaknesses of the personbehind, when silently and swiftly it closed. We heard the lock click.With extraordinary quickness she had her mouth at the keyhole: "_Peeg,peeg_," she enunciated. Then she stood to her full height, her facebecame calm, her manner stately. She glided half way across the room,paused, looked at me, and pointed toward the unmoving door.
"_Peeg, peeg_," she explained, mysteriously. I think she was warning meagainst the wiles of the person behind the door. I gazed into her greateyes. "I understand," I said, gravely. She glided from the room. For methe incident supplied a welcome touch of comedy. I had leisure forthought. The door remained closed. It made the Duc a more real personfor me. I had regarded him as a rather tiresome person in whom a pompousphilanthropism took the place of human feelings. It amused me to becalled _Le Grangeur_. It amused me, and I stood in need of amusement.Without it I might never have written the article on the Duc. I hadstarted out that morning in a state of nervous irritation. I had wantedmore than ever to have done with the thing, with the _Hour_, withjournalism, with everything. But this little new experience buoyed meup, set my mind working in less morbid lines. I began to wonder whetherde Mersch would funk, or whether he would take my non-comprehension ofthe woman's tirades as a thing assured.
The door at which I had entered, by which she had left, opened.
He must have impressed me in some way or other that evening at theChurchills. He seemed a very stereotyped image in my memory. He spokejust as he had spoken, moved his hands just as I expected him to movethem. He called for no modification of my views of his person. As a ruleone classes a man so-and-so at first meeting, modifies theclassification at each subsequent one, and so on. He seemed to be allaffability, of an adipose turn. He had the air of the man of the worldamong men of the world; but none of the unconscious reserve of mannerthat one expects to find in the temporarily great. He had in its place akind of sub-sulkiness, as if he regretted the pedestal from which he haddescended.
In his slow commercial English he apologised for having kept mewaiting; he had been taking the air of this fine morning, he said. Hemumbled the words with his eyes on my waistcoat, with an air thataccorded rather ill with the semblance of portentous probity that hisbeard conferred on him. But he set an eye-glass in his left eyeimmediately afterward, and looked straight at me as if in challenge.With a smiling "Don't mention," I tried to demonstrate that I met himhalf way.
"You want to interview me," he said, blandly. "I am only too pleased. Isuppose it is about my Arctic schemes that you wish to know. I will dowhat I can to inform you. You perhaps remember what I said when I hadthe pleasure of meeting you at the house of the Right Honourable Mr.Churchill. It has been the dream of my life to leave behind me a happyand contented State--as much as laws and organisation can make one. Thisis what I should most like the English to know of me." He was a dulltalker. I supposed that philanthropists and state founders kept theirbest faculties for their higher pursuits. I imagined the low, recedingforehead and the pink-nailed, fleshy hands to belong to a new Solon, alatter-day AEneas. I tried to work myself into the properly enthusiasticframe of mind. After all, it was a great work that he had undertaken. Iwas too much given to dwell upon intellectual gifts. These the Ducseemed to lack. I credited him with having let them be merged in his onenoble idea.
He furnished me with statistics. They had laid down so many miles ofrailways, used so many engines of British construction. They had taughtthe natives to use and to value sewing-machines and European costumes.So many hundred of English younger sons had gone to make their fortunesand, incidentally, to enlighten the Esquimaux--so many hundreds ofFrench, of Germans, Greeks, Russians. All these lived and moved inharmony, employed, happy, free labourers, protected by the most rigidlaws. Man-eating, fetich-worship, slavery had been abolished, stampedout. The great international society for the preservation of Polarfreedom watched over all, suggested new laws, modified the old. Thecountry was unhealthy, but not to men of clean lives--_hominibus bonaevoluntatis_. It asked for no others.
"I have had to endure much misrepresentation. I have been callednames," the Duc said.
The figure of the lady danced before my eyes, lithe, supple--a statueendued with the motion of a serpent. I seemed to see her sculpturedwhite hand pointing to the closed door.
"Ah, yes," I said, "but one knows the people that call you names."
"Well, then," he answered, "it is your task to make them know the truth.Your nation has so much power. If it will only realise."
"I will do my best," I said.
I saw the apotheosis of the Press--a Press that makes a State Foundersuppliant to a man like myself. For he had the tone of a deprecatingpetitioner. I stood between himself and a people, the arbiter of thepeoples, of the kings of the future. I was nothing, nobody; yet here Istood in communion with one of those who change the face of continents.He had need of me, of the power that was behind me. It was strange to bealone in that room with that man--to be there just as I might be in myown little room alone with any other man.
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"I will do my best," I said.
"Ah, yes, do," he said, "Mr. Churchill told me how nicely you can dosuch things."
I said that it was very kind of Mr. Churchill. The tension of theconversation was relaxed. The Duc asked if I had yet seen my aunt.
"I had forgotten her," I said.
"Oh, you must see her," he said; "she is a most remarkable lady. She isone of my relaxations. All Paris talks about her, I can assure you."
"I had no idea," I said.
"Oh, cultivate her," he said; "you will be amused."
"I will," I said, as I took my leave.
I went straight home to my little room above the roofs. I began at onceto write my article, working at high pressure, almost hysterically. Iremember that place and that time so well. In moments of emotion onegazes fixedly at things, hardly conscious of them. Afterward oneremembers.
I can still see the narrow room, the bare, brown, discoloured walls, theincongruous marble clock on the mantel-piece, the single rickety chairthat swayed beneath me. I could almost draw the tortuous pattern of thefaded cloth that hid the round table at which I sat. The ink was thick,pale, and sticky; the pen spluttered. I wrote furiously, anxious to bedone with it. Once I went and leaned over the balcony, trying to hit ona word that would not come. Miles down below, little people crawled overthe cobbled street, little carts rattled, little workmen let down casksinto a cellar. It was all very grey, small, and clear.
Through the open window of an opposite garret I could see a sculptorworking at a colossal clay model. In his white blouse he seemed big, outof all proportion to the rest of the world. Level with my eyes therewere flat lead roofs and chimneys. On one of these was scrawled, in big,irregular, blue-painted letters: "_A bas Coignet_."
Great clouds began to loom into view over the house-tops, rounded,toppling masses of grey, lit up with sullen orange against the palelimpid blue of the sky. I stood and looked at all these objects. I hadcome out here to think--thoughts had deserted me. I could only look.
The clouds moved imperceptibly, fatefully onward, a streak of lightningtore them apart. They whirled like tortured smoke and grew suddenlyblack. Large spots of rain with jagged edges began to fall on the leadfloor of my balcony.
I turned into the twilight of my room and began to write. I can stillfeel the tearing of my pen-point on the coarse paper. It was a hindranceto thought, but my flow of words ignored it, gained impetus from it, asa stream does at the breaking of a dam.
I was writing a paean to a great coloniser. That sort of thing was in theair then. I was drawn into it, carried away by my subject. Perhaps I letit do so because it was so little familiar to my lines of thought. Itwas fresh ground and I revelled in it. I committed myself to that kindof emotional, lyrical outburst that one dislikes so much on re-reading.I was half conscious of the fact, but I ignored it.
The thunderstorm was over, and there was a moist sparkling freshness inthe air when I hurried with my copy to the _Hour_ office in the Avenuede l'Opera. I wished to be rid of it, to render impossible all chance ofrevision on the morrow.
I wanted, too, to feel elated; I expected it. It was a right. At theoffice I found the foreign correspondent, a little cosmopolitan Jewwhose eyebrows began their growth on the bridge of his nose. He waseffusive and familiar, as the rest of his kind.
"Hullo, Granger," was his greeting. I was used to regarding myself asfallen from a high estate, but I was not yet so humble in spirit as torelish being called Granger by a stranger of his stamp. I tried tofreeze him politely.
"Read your stuff in the _Hour_," was his rejoinder; "jolly good I callit. Been doing old Red-Beard? Let's have a look. Yes, yes. That's theway--that's the real thing--I call it. Must have bored you to death ...old de Mersch I mean. I ought to have had the job, you know. Mybusiness, interviewing people in Paris. But _I_ don't mind. Much ratheryou did it than I. You do it a heap better."
I murmured thanks. There was a pathos about the sleek little man--apathos that is always present in the type. He seemed to be trying toassume a deprecating equality.
"Where are you going to-night?" he asked, with sudden effusiveness. Iwas taken aback. One is not used to being asked these questions afterfive minutes' acquaintance. I said that I had no plans.
"Look here," he said, brightening up, "come and have dinner with me atBreguet's, and look in at the Opera afterward. We'll have a real nicechat."
I was too tired to frame an adequate excuse. Besides, the little man wasas eager as a child for a new toy. We went to Breguet's and had a reallyexcellent dinner.
"Always come here," he said; "one meets a lot of swells. It runs awaywith a deal of money--but I don't care to do things on the cheap, notfor the _Hour_, you know. You can always be certain when I say that Ihave a thing from a senator that he is a senator, and not an old womanin a paper kiosque. Most of them do that sort of thing, you know."
"I always wondered," I said, mildly.
"That's de Sourdam I nodded to as we came in, and that old chap there isPluyvis--the Affaire man, you know. I must have a word with him in aminute, if you'll excuse me."
He began to ask affectionately after the health of the excellent Fox,asked if I saw him often, and so on and so on. I divined with amusementthat was pleasurable that the little man had his own little axe togrind, and thought I might take a turn at the grindstone if he managedme well. So he nodded to de Sourdam of the Austrian embassy and had hisword with Pluyvis, and rejoiced to have impressed me--I could see himbubble with happiness and purr. He proposed that we should stroll as faras the paper kiosque that he patronised habitually--it was kept by afellow-Israelite--a snuffy little old woman.
I understood that in the joy of his heart he was for expanding, forwasting a few minutes on a stroll.
"Haven't stretched my legs for months," he explained.
We strolled there through the summer twilight. It was so pleasant tosaunter through the young summer night. There were so many little thingsto catch the eyes, so many of the little things down near the earth;expressions on faces of the passers, the set of a collar, the quaintforeign tightness of waist of a good bourgeoise who walked arm in armwith her perspiring spouse. The gilding on the statue of Joan of Arc hada pleasant littleness of Philistinism, the arcades of the Rue de Rivolibroke up the grey light pleasantly too. I remembered a little shop--alittle Greek affair with a windowful of pinch-beck--where I had beengiven a false five-franc piece years and years ago. The same villainousold Levantine stood in the doorway, perhaps the fez that he wore was thesame fez. The little old woman that we strolled to was bent nearlydouble. Her nose touched her wares as often as not, her mittened handssought quiveringly the papers that the correspondent asked for. I likedhim the better for his solicitude for this forlorn piece of flotsam ofhis own race.
"Always come here," he exclaimed; "one gets into habits. Very honestwoman, too, you can be certain of getting your change. If you're astranger you can't be sure that they won't give you Italian silver, youknow."
"Oh, I know," I answered. I knew, too, that he wished me to purchasesomething. I followed the course of her groping hands, caught sight ofthe _Revue Rouge_, and remembered that it contained something aboutGreenland. I helped myself to it, paid for it, and received my justchange. I felt that I had satisfied the little man, and felt satisfiedwith myself.
"I want to see Radet's article on Greenland," I said.
"Oh, yes," he explained, once more exhibiting himself in the capacity ofthe man who knows, "Radet gives it to them. Rather a lark, I call it,though you mustn't let old de Mersch know you read him. Radet got sickof Cochin, and tried Greenland. He's getting touched by the Whites youknow. They say that the priests don't like the way the Systeme's playinginto the hands of the Protestants and the English Government. So theyset Radet on to write it down.
"Seems quite funny to be buying books," he said. "I haven't read a thingI've bought, not for years."
We reached the Opera in time for the end of the first act--it was Aida,I think. My little friend had a free pass all over the house. I had notbeen in it for years. In the old days I had always seen the stage from agreat height, craning over people's heads in a sultry twilight; now Isaw it on a level, seated at my ease. I had only the power of the Pressto thank for the change.
"Come here as often as I can," my companion said; "can't do withoutmusic when it's to be had." Indeed he had the love of his race for it.It seemed to soften him, to change his nature, as he sat silent by myside.
But the closing notes of each scene found him out in the cool of thecorridors, talking, and being talked to by anyone that would vouchsafehim a word.
"Pick up a lot here," he explained.
After the finale we leaned over one of the side balconies to watch thecrowd streaming down the marble staircases. It is a scene that I nevertire of. There is something so fantastically tawdry in the colouredmarble of the architecture. It is for all the world like a triumph ofornamental soap work; one expects to smell the odours. And the torrentof humanity pouring liquidly aslant through the mirror-like light, andthe spaciousness.... Yes, it is fantastic, somehow; ironical, too.
I was watching the devious passage of a rather drunken, gigantic, floridEnglishman, wondering, I think, how he would reach his bed.
"That must be a relation of yours," the correspondent said, pointing. Myglance followed the line indicated by his pale finger. I made out theglorious beard of the Duc de Mersch, on his arm was an old lady to whomhe seemed to pay deferential attention. His head was bent on one side;he was smiling frankly. A little behind them, on the stairway, there wasa space. Perhaps I was mistaken; perhaps there was no space--I don'tknow. I was only conscious of a figure, an indescribably clear-cutwoman's figure, gliding down the way. It had a coldness, aself-possession, a motion of its own. In that clear, transparent,shimmering light, every little fold of the dress, every little shadow ofthe white arms, the white shoulders, came up to me. The face turned upto meet mine. I remember so well the light shining down on the face, nota shadow anywhere, not a shadow beneath the eyebrows, the nostrils, thewaves of hair. It was a vision of light, theatening, sinister.
She smiled, her lips parted.
"You come to me to-morrow," she said. Did I hear the words, did her lipsmerely form them? She was far, far down below me; the air was alive withthe rustling of feet, of garments, of laughter, full of sounds that madethemselves heard, full of sounds that would not be caught.
"You come to me ... to-morrow."
The old lady on the Duc de Mersch's arm was obviously my aunt. I did notsee why I should not go to them to-morrow. It struck me suddenly andrather pleasantly that this was, after all, my family. This old ladyactually was a connection more close than anyone else in the world. Asfor the girl, to all intents and, in everyone else's eyes, she was mysister. I cannot say I disliked having her for my sister, either. Istood looking down upon them and felt less alone than I had done formany years.
A minute scuffle of the shortest duration was taking place beside me.There were a couple of men at my elbow. I don't in the least know whatthey were--perhaps marquises, perhaps railway employees--one never cantell over there. One of them was tall and blond, with a heavy,bow-shaped red moustache--Irish in type; the other of no particularheight, excellently groomed, dark, and exemplary. I knew he wasexemplary from some detail of costume that I can't remember--his glovesor a strip of silk down the sides of his trousers--something of thesort. The blond was saying something that I did not catch. I heard thewords "de Mersch" and "_Anglaise_," and saw the dark man turn hisattention to the little group below. Then I caught my own namemispronounced and somewhat of a stumbling-block to a high-pitchedcontemptuous intonation. The little correspondent, who was on my otherarm, started visibly and moved swiftly behind my back.
"_Messieurs_," he said in an urgent whisper, and drew them to a littledistance. I saw him say something, saw them pivot to look at me, shrugtheir shoulders and walk away. I didn't in the least grasp thesignificance of the scene--not then.
"What's the matter?" I asked my returning friend; "were they talkingabout me?" He answered nervously.
"Oh, it was about your aunt's Salon, you know. They might have beengoing to say something awkward ... one never knows."
"They really _do_ talk about it then?" I said. "I've a good mind toattend one of their exhibitions."
"Why, of course," he said, "you ought. I really think you _ought_."
"I'll go to-morrow," I answered.