THE COMPLETE SHORT STORIES OF JOSEPH CONRAD. Джозеф Конрад
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may imagine! And the evening before he had declared himself indisposed. She just hurried on some clothes and flew down to him. One would be anxious for less. He loves her, but not very intelligently. He had been up all night, fully dressed, the poor old man, perfectly exhausted! He wasn't in a state to invent a plausible story.... What a confidant you chose there!... My husband was furious! He said: 'We can't interfere now.' So we sat down to wait. It was awful. And this poor child running over here publicly with her hair loose. She has been seen by people in the fields. She has roused the whole household, too. It's awkward for her. Luckily you are to be married next week.... Adèle, sit up. He has come home on his own legs, thank God.... We expected you to come back on a stretcher perhaps—what do I know? Go and see if the carriage is ready. I must take this child to her mother at once. It isn't proper for her to stay here a minute longer."
General D'Hubert did not move. It was as though he had heard nothing. Madame Léonie changed her mind.
"I will go and see to it myself," she said. "I want also to get my cloak... Adèle..." she began, but did not say "sit up." She went out saying in a loud, cheerful tone: "I leave the door open."
General D'Hubert made a movement towards the divan, but then Adèle sat up and that checked him dead. He thought, "I haven't washed this morning. I must look like an old tramp. There's earth on the back of my coat, and pine needles in my hair." It occurred to him that the situation required a good deal of circumspection on his part.
"I am greatly concerned, mademoiselle," he began timidly, and abandoned that line. She was sitting up on the divan with her cheeks unusually pink, and her hair brilliantly fair, falling all over her shoulders—which was a very novel sight to the general. He walked away up the room and, looking out of the window for safety, said: "I fear you must think I behaved like a madman," in accents of sincere despair.... Then he spun round and noticed that she had followed him with her eyes. They were not cast down on meeting his glance. And the expression of her face was novel to him also. It was, one might have said, reversed. Her eyes looked at him with grave thoughtfulness, while the exquisite lines of her mouth seemed to suggest a restrained smile. This change made her transcendental beauty much less mysterious, much more accessible to a man's comprehension. An amazing ease of mind came to the general—and even some ease of manner. He walked down the room with as much pleasurable excitement as he would have found in walking up to a battery vomiting death, fire, and smoke, then stood looking down with smiling eyes at the girl whose marriage with him (next week) had been so carefully arranged by the wise, the good, the admirable Léonie.
"Ah, mademoiselle," he said in a tone of courtly deference. "If I could be certain that you did not come here this morning only from a sense of duty to your mother!"
He waited for an answer, imperturbable but inwardly elated. It came in a demure murmur, eyelashes lowered with fascinating effect.
"You mustn't be méchant as well as mad."
And then General D'Hubert made an aggressive movement towards the divan which nothing could check. This piece of furniture was not exactly in the line of the open door. But Madame Léonie, coming back wrapped up in a light cloak and carrying a lace shawl on her arm for Adèle to hide her incriminating hair under, had a vague impression of her brother getting-up from his knees.
"Come along, my dear child," she cried from the doorway.
The general, now himself again in the fullest sense, showed the readiness of a resourceful cavalry officer and the peremptoriness of a leader of men.
"You don't expect her to walk to the carriage," he protested. "She isn't fit. I will carry her downstairs."
This he did slowly, followed by his awed and respectful sister. But he rushed back like a whirlwind to wash away all the signs of the night of anguish and the morning of war, and to put on the festive garments of a conqueror before hurrying over to the other house. Had it not been for that, General D'Hubert felt capable of mounting a horse and pursuing his late adversary in order simply to embrace him from excess of happiness. "I owe this piece of luck to that stupid brute," he thought. "This duel has made plain in one morning what might have taken me years to find out—for I am a timid fool. No self-confidence whatever. Perfect coward. And the Chevalier! Dear old man!" General D'Hubert longed to embrace him, too.
The Chevalier was in bed. For several days he was much indisposed. The men of the empire, and the post-revolution young ladies, were too much for him. He got up the day before the wedding, and being curious by nature, took his niece aside for a quiet talk. He advised her to find out from her husband the true story of the affair of honour, whose claim so imperative and so persistent had led her to within an ace of tragedy. "It is very proper that his wife should know. And next month or so will be your time to learn from him anything you ought to know, my dear child."
Later on when the married couple came on a visit to the mother of the bride, Madame la Générale D'Hubert made no difficulty in communicating to her beloved old uncle what she had learned without any difficulty from her husband. The Chevalier listened with profound attention to the end, then took a pinch of snuff, shook the grains of tobacco off the frilled front of his shirt, and said calmly: "And that's all what it was."
"Yes, uncle," said Madame la Générale, opening her pretty eyes very wide. "Isn't it funny? C'est insensé—to think what men are capable of."
"H'm," commented the old émigré. "It depends what sort of men. That Bonaparte's soldiers were savages. As a wife, my dear, it is proper for you to believe implicitly what your husband says."
But to Léonie's husband the Chevalier confided his true opinion. "If that's the tale the fellow made up for his wife, and during the honeymoon, too, you may depend on it no one will ever know the secret of this affair."
Considerably later still, General D'Hubert judged the time come, and the opportunity propitious to write a conciliatory letter to General Feraud. "I have never," protested the General Baron D'Hubert, "wished for your death during all the time of our deplorable quarrel. Allow me to give you back in all form your forfeited life. We two, who have been partners in so much military glory, should be friendly to each other publicly."
The same letter contained also an item of domestic information. It was alluding to this last that General Feraud answered from a little village on the banks of the Garonne:
"If one of your boy's names had been Napoleon, or Joseph, or even Joachim, I could congratulate you with a better heart. As you have thought proper to name him Charles Henri Armand I am confirmed in my conviction that you never loved the emperor. The thought of that sublime hero chained to a rock in the middle of a savage ocean makes life of so little value that I would receive with positive joy your instructions to blow my brains out. From suicide I consider myself in honour debarred. But I keep a loaded pistol in my drawer."
Madame la Générale D'Hubert lifted up her hands in horror after perusing that letter.
"You see? He won't be reconciled," said her husband. "We must take care that he never, by any chance, learns where the money he lives on comes from. It would be simply appalling."
"You are a brave homme, Armand," said Madame la Générale appreciatively.
"My dear, I had the right to blow his brains out—strictly speaking. But as I did not we can't let him starve. He has been deprived of his pension for 'breach of military discipline' when he broke bounds to fight his last duel with me. He's crippled with rheumatism. We are bound to take care of him to the end of his days. And, after all, I am indebted to him for the radiant discovery that you loved me a little—you sly person. Ha! Ha! Two miles, running all the way!... It is extraordinary how all through this affair that man has managed to engage my deeper feelings."
THE END
FALK:
A REMINISCENCE
Several of us, all more or less connected with the sea, were dining in a small river-hostelry