Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (161 page)

“He said that you had been carrying on an intrigue with Miss Brede under pretence of helping her father. And that his wife had told him that her sister had been in love with you for a long time.”

It was as if for a moment the sunlight had become a blight; Gregory’s voice sounded distant and unimportant. He was explaining that he had not been able to stop Thwaite. George seemed to see Thwaite bursting into the board-room, his eyes blazing, his hands trembling as he remembered they had trembled when Mr. Brede had opposed his marriage. George had thought at the time that he was almost mad. Poor Dora! But all that was unimportant. Clara had loved him — for a long time. She must have loved him on the night when he had imagined himself playing the part of the eminent old man. A Scotch tune that Dora had hummed that night sounded suddenly in his mind:

“I’ve heard them lilting at our ewe-milking, Lasses a-lilting before the break o’ day...”

That was why she had run out and taken his part with the Moldavians. He seemed to hear her “I’m so sorry;
so
sorry,” when she had heard of his brusqueness to them. Her adorable and quaint humility, all the pleasantness of those immensely distant days came, like a tiny lull, back to him.

And with sudden emotion he remembered her: “Don’t you know you’re a great poet?” She had wanted to spur him on, to make a man of him.

Gregory was saying rigidly, and with a hard glint in his eyes: “Of course, I shall dismiss Thwaite now. I’ll take care he doesn’t get another appointment, too.”

George found himself answering, with fierce emphasis: “Yes, yes; let him feel it, Gregory.”

He was quivering with rage. The man had vilely defamed her. His breath hissed through his nostrils.

He couldn’t abandon her now! He made a motion as if to go swiftly to her. Then he remembered her father, and that he himself was ruined.

Gregory was patiently digging his stick into the turf.

“You’re very tired, Gregory,” he said. “You look ill.”

CHAPTER VII
.

MRS. Moffat had, two-days before, taken the great leap. Hailes, naturally, had pushed her to it. According to him, if anything were to be done with the Spanish plan it would have to be done quickly. The Duke of Medina’s Master of the Horse had written to him that someone was already in the market. The Duke of Seville’s
Portrait of a Manola,
his celebrated
Toreador preparing the coup de grace,
and half-a-dozen other Goya’s were already in England, bought, apparently, by some English Milor.

“Of course,” Hailes said, in his reasonable manner, “those are too high game for us. But it’s a bad sign. Someone
may
be in the market.”

He had paid increasing attentions to Mrs. Henwick, quite openly. He told her that she needed for her stories a strong local colour. Why not the starlight of old Madrid?

His openness increased the pangs of Mrs. Moffat; she became more insolent to him. He didn’t seem to notice it. It had flashed upon her that he regarded her as comparatively powerless — as, in short, not a very good speculation. Then Hailes received back his article from Thwaite.

“I really don’t see why you should put up with the fellow’s insolence,” he said.

The speech was a challenge and ultimatum.

She would have to lose him, or show her power by dismissing Thwaite.

They debated the matter in her panelled work-room with the green morocco furniture. Hailes said:

“He’s insolent; he’s an abject fool. He can’t make the paper pay. Now I—” He pressed down his collar, and erected his long neck. “I suppose your husband wants him?” he added.

Mrs. Moffat saw once and for all that Hailes’ price was either the editorship of the
Salon
or the money to finance his Spanish Exhibition. Her fingers twitched with doubt.

Hailes said: “George Moffat owes me a good turn. Subscriptions are literally pouring in.” He had started that testimonial to George, and he really considered he had put George under an obligation. He had taken a great deal of trouble; he had carried the paragraph round to all the papers. “I’ve routed up everyone who ever owed him a penny. He would be bound to make it all right with your husband.”

Mrs. Moffat hadn’t any illusions on that point. It was for her only a matter how far she herself could overawe Gregory. She remembered that he had never refused her anything in or out of reason, except the dismissal of Thwaite. But George was concerned in that.

When he had bought the paper she had regarded it as a present to her. She could have had it had she wanted it. She had played at editing it for some months. Then she had grown tired, and Thwaite had been appointed at the request of George.

She was quite unsure of the position; she was quite unsure of Gregory. She hadn’t the least idea of what was underneath his amiability. He had never really opposed anything she asked.

Hailes said: “If you
cared
for me to take Thwaite’s place, I could do that and your work too. I could make a good thing of the
Salon.”

He saw himself quite clearly as Editor. The thing was a journalistic plum. It would
“
place” him for good and all. Thwaite had undoubtedly given the paper weight. It counted, if it didn’t sell. It was something that one could rise from; it would, in the end, be worth several Spanish projects. Mrs. Moffat had been used to overbearing Gregory. With a quiver of alarm she consented to overbear him once more. She had to if she were to keep Hailes’ allegiance; she
must
show that she could make it worth his while. She wrote the letter of dismissal to Thwaite. It had driven Thwaite mad. He had been convinced that George had got him dismissed, and he had gone nearly raving to “show up” George and Clara to Gregory.

Afterwards — on the afternoon before Gregory had gone down to George — an imperative telegram had come from Gregory to his wife. He himself had just faced Thwaite. She had to face Gregory.

Her heart had beaten violently all the way up in the train. She flounced haughtily into the Board-Room. Gregory, to her astonished alarm, greeted her with a sudden and as if unveiled tenderness that she didn’t in the least know what to do with. She thought he must be leading up to something abominable.

He explained, nervously and haltingly, fumbling with his button-holes. She had put him in a difficult and false position. “I’ve had, my dear, to tell Mr. Thwaite that
I
hadn’t dismissed him. I had passed my word to George not to.” He muttered, “Very awkward,” and looked intently at a blotter. His mouth opened.

Mrs. Moffat couldn’t get over her alarm; what was the man going to say now?

He dropped his head again.

“It’s most unfortunate,” he said,
“
most unfortunate.”

He considered blankly for a minute or two. It gave Mrs. Moffat more than time to collect herself. She sank into one of the cane chairs and dropped her reticule brilliantly on to the table.

“I told Mr. Thwaite” — Gregory looked up at her at last
—”
that it was a mistake — that, in fact, a clerk had misaddressed two letters; that yours hadn’t been meant for him at all. “Naturally” — he brought out with an immense effort—” the last thing I should wish would be to cross you or to give anyone the idea that we were at variance.”

Mrs. Moffat looked at him ironically.

“I don’t anticipate,” he added cheerfully, “that he or anyone else will think that.”

He stretched out his fumbling hand and patted her wrist. It flashed into Mrs. Moffat’s mind:

“Why, the man’s fond of me!”

His familiar and irritating gesture had suddenly given her this bizarre clue to his character.

He was fond of his wife. He had begun by thinking her more brilliantly and flashingly beautiful, more desirable and more admirable than he by any means deserved. He had simply gone on thinking it. She had a right to be proud and overbearing; it was part of what made him proud of her. He had never cavilled at her companions — her “own people.” They even suited his particular business very well. A brilliant, expensive, and not too scrupulous world with a large subsidiary fringe whose qualifications were the great wealth that made them desirable. To Mr. Frewer Hoey he had offered no objections; he had rather liked him. There wasn’t any harm in him, and Mrs. Moffat had undoubtedly needed both an assistant and someone to talk to. But he could not bear Hailes. He disliked him instinctively and with a blind rightness. He was perfectly convinced that Hailes, at least, wasn’t a fit companion for his wife. He was of the lower type. And after Hailes’ treatment of George he had been the more determined to be rid of him. With his same blind man’s insight he more than suspected his wife’s attachment to Hailes.

Mrs. Moffat did not lose any time over the wonderfulness of her discovery. She rearranged her skirts and said, with her high contemptuous voice:

“If I’m not to have the
Salon
to occupy me I shall want to do something. You can’t expect me to stifle at Woodlands.” She was going to make the most of her advantage. “I shall travel.”

Gregory, with a sort of instinctive humility, made a motion towards his cheque book. It was an habitual gesture.

“I shan’t be able to go with you,” he said.

“I’m going to Spain,” she announced. She was going to force Gregory to finance Hailes’ Spanish Exhibition.

Gregory raised his head sharply. He did not say anything.

“For some months,” she added.

His neck suddenly rose rigidly above his low collar. His lips moved as if he had caught at a phrase and missed it.

“I warn you,” he pronounced huskily, “that if you go to Spain with Hailes I shall divorce you.”

Mrs. Moffat laughed contemptuously.

“You’re perfectly absurd,” she said. “I went to dozens of places with Hoey.”

Gregory said: “I warn you.”

His neck remained rigidly erect; he had an odd air of menacing like a wild beast listening to a distant footfall. His lips folded and creased one on another; his eyes gleamed. Mrs. Moffat quite literally did not know her husband.

He gave her a couple of days to reflect upon the matter. With her verdict hanging over him he sat talking to George in the brilliant study. He was afraid, too, for his brother. He had understood that something lamentable was in progress; he feared, as George had discerned, that George might do “something irrevocable.” He did not mention the matter of his wife and Hailes. And George never gathered that one more of his protégés had caused unhappiness in yet another family. ‘He had enough to think of with Thwaite and the Bredes. Eventually he had to plead for Thwaite, himself.

Gregory said, implacably: “I won’t shelter a man speaking like that of you.”

“Oh, I’ve unhappiness enough to answer for,” George said. He dropped his head dejectedly. Gregory’s face took an expression of immense concern. He could not bear to see George despond.

“Don’t you see” — George spoke lucidly and musically—” it’s such a muddle. The only string that you can in any way pull out of the tangle ends at me. I’ve caused an immense amount of misery. Oh, with the best intentions.” Gregory was moving his hands in a dumb show of remonstrance. “I am at the bottom of it all, however you look at it. I foisted Thwaite on to poor Dora; I forced him insanely on the family. Quite without any will of mine, I’m responsible for Clara’s attitude to him. Perhaps she gauged him better than I did, and he would not have paid me. I know, as a rule, she is unerringly right, by instinct. But say she’s in the wrong — I’m none the less miserably at the bottom of that. I foisted that miserable Hailes on Ella — and Hailes got her to dismiss him.”

He spoke with a certain
entrain
; with even a certain zest. Clara Brede loved him. He sat alone with that precious and tender fact; other sorrows and the miseries of others seemed to grow small in that light. It was as if they too were tenderly pathetic, and as if he had had restored to him some of his power to do good, some of his buoyancy, some of his heart. He leaned his head back on the cushions of the chair, he was so soon to sit in it no more, Gregory said in a shocked and agitated voice:
“
No, no, you aren’t responsible for Hailes.” ‘—’

George interrupted:
“
She rather carried him off? True! He deserted me, if you like. But I ought not to lay people open to the risk of meeting such creatures in my house. But let Thwaite off, there’s a good fellow. That is, if he’s useful to you.”

“Oh, he’s useful,” Gregory said. He added:
“
Why don’t you open your telegram?” It worried his business mind to think that his brother might mislay something needing an answer.

George slowly tore the envelope open.

“Yes, let Thwaite alone,” he said, with the pink enclosure between finger and thumb,
“
this is only something about my boat to-night — let him alone. After all there was a possibly logical scheme in his abominable suspicions. I don’t pardon him anything. But let poor little Dora have a chance — for my sake. I’m responsible.”

He leaned his impressive head back again on his chair; his searching eyes gazed through the sumptuous backs of his rows of books, into an infinite distance. “Worry about money,” he said to himself. In the end it all came to that. It had brought out an undesirable sirain in him, too. If he had been able to go on living, there would have been no shock or parting. That had shaken the even surface of things into strange shapes; it had forced him to see that he loved her, and to know that she loved him. He had never needed money; he had never valued it. But now... One couldn’t take a girl, reared as Clara had been reared, nurtured as she had been, into dishonour, without a decent chance of maintaining her. He hadn’t any illusions on the point. He was too old. They couldn’t think of a month of bliss and then suicide. It wasn’t in Clara Brede’s nature; it wasn’t in his.

Gregory was saying: “I’ll do as you like about Thwaite. But if he owes you money, you must be paid. I shall give him a receipt when Miss Brede pays you.”

His brother’s intense and nervous battling for his interests struck George as oddly and pleasantly ludicrous. It was pleasing to have a champion so grim and so ardent. It reminded him of Clara. It was the sort of thing that in her had seemed so pleasantly, so amusingly — and so fatally — attractive. She, too, had fought for him silently and ardently!