Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (627 page)

“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.”

“Latham is my name,” said Cosmo, “and I only set foot in Italy for the first time in my life two days ago.”

The doctor jerked his head sideways.

“Latham, eh? Yorkshire?”

“Yes,” said Cosmo, smiling.

“To be sure. Sir Charles ...”

“That’s my father.”

“Yes, yes. Served in the Guards. I used to know the doctor of his regiment. Married in Italy. I don’t remember the lady’s name. Oh, those are old times. Might have been a hundred years ago.”

“You mean that so much history has been made since.”

“Yes, no end of history,” assented the doctor, but checked himself. “And yet, tell me, what does it all amount to?”

Cosmo made no answer. Cantelucci having brought the wine while they talked, the doctor filled two glasses, waited a moment as if to hear Cosmo speak, but as the young man remained silent he said:

“Well, let us drink then to Peace.”

He tossed the wine down his throat while Cosmo drank his much more leisurely. As they set down their empty glasses they were startled by a roar of a tremendous voice filling the vaulted room from end to end in order to “let Their Honours know that the boat was at the steps.” The doctor made a faint grimace.

“Do you hear the voice of the British lion, Mr. Latham?” he asked peevishly. “Ah, well, we will have some little peace now here.”

Those officers at the naval table who had to go on board rose in a body and left the room hastily. Three or four who had a longer leave drew close together and began to talk low with their heads in a bunch. Cosmo glancing down the room seemed to recognize at the door the form of the seaman whom he had met earlier in the evening. He followed the officers out. The other diners, the sombre ones, and a good many of them with powdered heads, were also leaving the room. Cantelucci put another dish on the table, stepped back a pace with a bow, and stood still. A moment of profound silence succeeded the noise.

“First rate,” said Doctor Martel to Cosmo, after tasting the dish, and then gave a nod to Cantelucci, who made another bow and retreated backwards, always with a solemn expression on his face.

“Italian cooking, of course, but then I am an old Italian myself. Not that I love them, but I have acquired many of their tastes. Before we have done dining you will have tasted the perfection of their cookery, north and south, but I assure you you are sharing my dinner. You don’t suppose that the dishes that come to this table are the same the common customers get.”

Cosmo made a slight bow. “I am very sensible of the privilege,” he said.

“The honour and the pleasure are mine, I assure you,” the doctor said in a half-careless tone and looking with distaste towards the small knot of officers with a twenty-four hours’ leave who had finished their confabulation and had risen in a body like men who had agreed on some pleasant course of action. Only the elderly lieutenant lagging a little behind cast a glance at his two countrymen at the little table and followed his comrades with less eager movements.

“A quarter of a tough bullock or half a roast sheep are more in their way, and Cantelucci knows it. As to that company that was sitting at the other table, well, I daresay you can tell yourself what they were, small officials or tradesmen of some sort. I should think that emptying all their pockets — and they were how many, say twenty — you couldn’t collect the value of one English pound at any given time. And Cantelucci knows that too. Well, of course. Still he does well here, but it’s a poor place. I wonder, Mr. Latham, what are you doing here?”

“Well,” said Cosmo with a good-humoured smile, “I am just staying here. Just as you yourself are staying here.”

“Ah, but you never saved Cantelucci’s life, whereas I did and that’s the reason why I am staying here: out of mere kindness and to give him an opportunity to show his gratitude. . . . Let me fill your glass. Not bad, this wine.”

“Excellent. What is it?”

“God knows. Let us call it Cantelucci’s gratitude. Generous stuff, this, to wash down those dishes with. Gluttony is an odious vice, but an ambition to dine well is about the only one which can be indulged at no cost to one’s fellow men.”

“It didn’t strike me,” murmured Cosmo absently, for he was just then asking himself why he didn’t like this pleasant companion, and had just come to the conclusion that it was because of his indecisive expression wavering between peevishness and jocularity with something else in addition, as it were, in the background of his handsome, neat, and comfortable person. Something that was not aggressive nor yet exactly impudent. He wondered at his mistrust of the personality which certainly was very communicative but apparently not inquisitive. At that moment he heard himself addressed with a direct inquiry.

“You passed, of course, through Paris?”

“Yes, and Switerzland.”

“Oh, Paris. I wonder what it looks like now. Full of English people, of course. Let’s see, how many years is it since I was last there? Ha, lots of heads rolled off very noble shoulders since. Well, I am trying to make my way there. Curious times. I have found some letters here. Duke of Wellington very much disliked, what? His nod is insupportable, eh?”

“I have just had a sight of the Duke two or three times,” said Cosmo. “I can assure you that everybody is treating him with the greatest respect.”

“Of course, of course. All the same I bet that all these foreigners are chuckling to themselves at having finished the job without him.”