Suspense: A Napoleonic Novel

by Joseph Conrad

After the peace of Amiens the Compte d'Artois, the representative of the exiled dynasty in England, having expressed the desire to have the Marquis always by his side, the Marquise and Adèle left Latham Hall for the poverty and the makeshifts of the life of well-nigh penniless exiles in London. It was as great a proof of devotion to his royal cause as any that could be given. They settled down in a grimy house of yellow brick in four rooms up a very narrow and steep staircase. For attendants they had a dark mulatto maid, brought as a child from the West Indies before the Revolution by an aunt of the Marquise, and a man of rather nondescript nationality called Bernard, who had been at one time a hanger-on in the country house of the D'Armands, but following the family in its flight and its wanderings before they had found refuge in England, had displayed unexpected talents as a general factotum. Life at Latham Hall had bored him exceedingly. The sense of complete security was almost too much for his patience. The regularity of the hours and the certitude of abundant meals depressed his spirits at times. The change to London revived him greatly, for there he had something to do and found daily occasion to display his varied gifts. He went marketing in the early morning, dusted the room he called the salon, cooked the meals, inspired and made happy by the large white smile of Mlle. Aglae, the Negress, with whom he was very much in love. At twelve o'clock, after tidying himself a bit, he would go in on the tips of his heavy square shoes and carry the Marquise from her room to the sofa in the salon with elaborate sureness and infinite respect, while Aglae followed with pillow, shawl, and smelling bottle, wearing a forced air of gravity. Bernard was acutely aware of her presence and would be certain—the Marquise once settled on her sofa—to get a flash of a white grin all to himself. Later Mlle. Adèle, white and fair, would go out visiting, followed by Aglae as closely as night follows day; and Bernard would watch them down the depths of the staircase in the hope of catching a sight of a quickly upturned dark brown face with fine rolling eyes. This would leave him happy for the rest of the afternoon. In the evening his function was to announce visitors who had toiled up the stairs: some of the first names in France that had come trudging on foot through the mud or dust of the squalid streets to fill the dimly lighted room which was the salon of the Marquise d'Armand. For those duties Bernard would put on a pair of white stockings, which Miss Aglae washed for him every second day, and encase his wide shoulders in a very tight green shabby jacket with large metal buttons. Miss Aglae always found a minute or two to give him a hasty inspection and a brush-down. Those were delightful instants. Holding his breath and in a state of rigid beatitude he turned about as ordered in gay whispers by his exotic lady-love. Later he would sit on a stool outside the closed door listening to the well-bred soft uproar of conversation; and when the guests began to depart he lighted them downstairs, holding a tallow dip in a small candlestick over the banister of the landing. When his duties for the day were over he made up for himself a bed on the floor of a narrow passage which separated the living rooms from a sort of large cupboard in which Miss Aglae reposed from her daily labours. Bernard, lying under a pair of thin blankets and with the tallow candle burning on the floor, kept slumber off till Miss Aglae stuck out her head tied up in an old red foulard—nothing but her head through the crack of the door—in order to have a little whispered conversation. That was the time when the servants exchanged their views and communicated to each other their ideas and observations. The black maid's were shrewder than the white factotum's. Being a personal attendant of the two ladies she had occasion to see and hear more than her admirer. They commented on the evident decline of the Marquise's health, not dolefully but simply as a significant fact of the situation; on the Marquis's manner of daily life which had become domestic and almost sedentary. He went out every day but now he never went away for weeks and months as he used to before. Those sudden and mysterious missions for which a misanthropic Yorkshire baronet had paid out of his own pocket had come to an end. A Marquis d'Armand could not be sent out as a common spy and there was now no court in Christendom that would dare to receive an emissary, secret or open, of the royal exiles. Bernard, who could read, explained these things shortly to Miss Aglae. All great folk were terrified at that Bonaparte. He made all the generals tremble. On those facts Miss Aglae would have it that he must be a sorcerer. Bernard had another view of Napoleonic greatness. It was nothing but the power of lies. And on one occasion after a slight hesitation he burst out: "Shall I tell you the truth about him. Miss Aglae?" The tied-up black head protruding through the crack of the door nodded assent many times in the dim light of the tallow dip. "Well then," continued Bernard with another desperate effort, "he is of no account."

Miss Aglae repressed with difficulty the loud burst of laughter which was the usual expression of her unsophisticated emotions. She had heard ladies and gentlemen in the salon express a very similar opinion of Bonaparte, but she thought suddenly of Miss Adèle and emitted a sigh.

"He seems to get him paw on the whole world, anyhow. What sort of a fellow is he, Bernard? You have seen him."

Bernard had seen the fellow. He assured Miss Aglae that he was a miserable shrimp of a man in big boots and with lank hair hanging down his yellow cheeks. "I could break him in two like a straw if I could only get him into my hands."

Believing it implicitly, the black maid suggested that Bernard should go and do it.

"I would go at once," said the faithful follower. "But if I went I would never see you again. He has always a hundred thousand men around him."

At this Miss Aglae, who had begun to smile, ended with a sigh of such a deeply sorrowful nature that Bernard assured her that the time would come, yes, some day the time would come when everybody would get back his own. Aglae was ready to believe this prophecy. But meantime there was Miss Adèle. That sweet child was now ready to get married, but everybody was so very poor. Bernard put on a sentimental expression in the dim light of the tallow dip, the flame of which swayed by the side of his straw mattress and made the shadow of his head, protected by a nightcap, dance too, high up the wall of the drafty passage. Timidly he muttered of love. That would get over all the difficulties.

"You very stupid man, Mr. Bernard. Love! What sort of trash you talk? Love don't buy fish for dinner." Then with sudden anxiety she inquired: "Have you got money for marketing to-morrow?" Bernard had the money. Not much, but he had the money. "Then you go out early and buy fish for dinner. This Madame la Marquise orders. Easier than killing an emperor," she continued sarcastically. "And take care fat woman in Billingsgate don't cheat you too much," she added with dignity before drawing her head in and shutting the door of her dark cupboard.

A month later, sitting upon his straw bed and with his eyes fixed on the door of Miss Aglae's cupboard, Bernard had just begun to think that he had done something to offend, and that he would be deprived of his whispered midnight chat, when the door opened, the head of the girl appeared in its usual position. It drooped. Its white eyeballs glistened full of tears. It said nothing for a long time. Bernard was extremely alarmed. He wanted to know in an anxious whisper what was wrong. The maid let him cudgel his brains for a whole minute before she made the statement that oh! she did not like the looks of a certain gentleman visitor in a "too-much-laced coat."

Bernard, relieved but uncomprehending, snatched the candlestick off the floor and raised it to the protruded head of the maid.