Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (217 page)

“Oh, you think about yourself a great deal too much,” Eleanor soothed him. “It’s all
rot!
”

Mr Greville appeared to be reflecting absently and deeply.

“In return,” he finally continued, “I wrote to Mr Kelleg that, considering the transient nature of American fortunes, I should infinitely prefer him to settle a definite four hundred a year in English Consols.”

Eleanor interjected:

“Oh, I say!” Mr Greville faced her then: he had been looking at young Kelleg.

“I did not mean to say that he wasn’t to leave your
fiancé
his interests too,” he said, “but I wanted to secure something definite.”

“I knew what you meant,” his daughter said. “I wasn’t afraid you would not do your best for us. I was thinking of Mr Kelleg’s feelings.”

“My dear child” — Don himself had a flash of inspiration—”your father’s point of view was just right. If my father was a reasonable man his feelings would not be hurt by
your
father’s doing his best for you. If he was not a reasonable man his feelings, in Mr Greville’s eyes, would not matter a cent.”

Mr Greville moved his head rigidly up and down. “I’ve exactly hit it,” Don appealed to him. “And of course my father would not mind. It’s the sort of thing he’d have to put up with every day over there. Distrust! Obviously no one ever trusted him except when they had to. And he’d never trust anybody but the sort of person he’d think a fool.” He leant his head back against the sofa cushions with a little air of being deserted now that Eleanor had gone over to her father’s side of the room. “After all,” he uttered, “the American business spirit in the matter of trustfulness is exactly that of the English lawyer. You do not trust anybody. You do not waste as much time over seals and tape (an English lawyer would not if it were not the way he made his money), but you put a mighty deal of mistrust into a half sheet of notepaper. And there’s a deal of a million dollars concluded.”

He was proceeding to speculate upon how this state of mind had arisen in the Transatlantic continent when he suddenly pulled himself up with:

“But I was trying to tell you my past — and to find out what my future’s likely to be!” He looked appealingly at Mr Greville. “Do,” he said, “tell us what my past has been. You do it so much better than I. Let us hear something definite.”

At this appeal Mr Greville did take the matter in hand. Having paused for precisely two minutes by the solemn clock at his back he then had the subject as well arranged in his head as would have been one of his reviews of a contemporary book. In the meanwhile Eleanor had had time to think that Don really
was
too self-conscious. A man
ought
not to be so much aware of his own mental attitudes. It was not exactly healthy. And she had a vague sense that she must work him out of the habit and a vague sense that that employment would afford her in the future many delightful opportunities for intimate self-revelations — for those splendid “You’s” and “I’s” that are, after all, the very food and staple of all love-scenes.

“I had” — Mr Greville commenced his review of the situation—” two things to settle in my mind: the first, whether this young man was materially fitted to support my daughter: the second, whether he was altogether sane and of well-formed character. As to the first you have heard part of what I did. I wrote to Mr Kelleg those two letters. One asked him what he intended to do for his son; upon his replying that he intended to leave all his ‘interests’ to Don, I replied that I should prefer him to put at least a small portion of it immediately into Consols so that his son should be certain of a sure income. Mr Kelleg’s reply to that letter was in these words: ‘I don’t see what my son has done for me. Why should I give him up part of my capital? He has not been son enough for me to want to assure him peace of mind for ever in England.’”

At this point Don leaned eagerly forward. He was about to offer a long comment. But when Mr Greville paused to let him speak, he seemed, to Eleanor’s eyes, to check himself violently, and her father, having waited for a sufficient interval, took up his own tale again.

He had replied to Mr Kelleg’s second letter that he himself was not interested in his prospective son-in-law’s peace of mind, but he was in his daughter’s. He proposed that Mr Kelleg should settle upon Eleanor just the sum that he himself was prepared to settle at his death — about four hundred pounds a year. Mr Kelleg had replied that that seemed a pretty square proposition, but he did not see why he should be concerned for Mr Greville’s daughter’s peace of mind. If she wanted his son she might take him with all his disadvantages.

“But he added in a postscript” — Mr Greville concluded this part of his review—”that he’d see that Eleanor
should
be properly provided for, quite outside any fluctuations of his or his son’s fortunes. He said that, for fear the matter might slip his memory, he’d already put into proper hands a sum of money — he did not say how much — for the benefit of Eleanor.”

It was at this point that Eleanor made her protest.

“Don’t you think,” she said to her father, “that you ought to have spoken to me before putting me upon the market?”

“Don’t you think,” Mr Greville asked, “that you ought to have spoken to me before falling in love?”

“But I couldn’t
help
falling in love!” —

“And I couldn’t help being interested in your future,” her father echoed her.
“
I’ve left you, as you’ll allow, a perfect liberty to dispose of your share of your personality. But there is my share too.”

His level and quite passionless tones indicated a so great depth of affection for his daughter that Don was moved to exclaim: “Bravo!”

And this indication of a fact that he had been indulging in a style of psychology — a style that was apparent even to Don, although, indeed, it was no more than a quite definite statement — this indication brought Mr Greville very sharply back to the necessity for sticking to definite things. He was quite convinced that, when it came to psychological analysis, he was better at it than his young friend, but he was not for the moment in the least inclined to make even so much concession to his young friend as to show a man of his own dignity indulging in anything at all so trifling as psychological speculations.

“So that here” — he resumed his review—” we have two definite facts.” Mr Collar Kelleg had announced his intention of leaving all his “interests” to Don: he had made, too, a deliberate statement that he had settled something — something probably handsome — upon Eleanor. (“I don’t imagine the man was lying.” Mr Greville put his reason for relying on Mr Kelleg’s word. “He’d probably not have an imagination that went beyond trying to surprise me with his generosity.”)

Upon the whole this relieved his doubts as to the pecuniary future of Eleanor and Don. There remained the question of the young man’s mental and moral fitness for partnership with his daughter. And Mr Greville once more unfolded his arms and, placing his knuckles upon his knees, surveyed the young man with direfully piercing eyes that, nevertheless, hardly saw the American’s face.

“Oh, don’t be very hard on Don,” Eleanor said.

“My dear,” Mr Greville said, “if I were going to be
very
hard on Don I should not be sitting here. I trust I’m always polite.”

“You’re always frightfully just,” Eleanor said. “No doubt that’s true politeness.”

“What has always alarmed me” — Mr Greville ignored her interruption—” what has always made me uncomfortable in dealing with American... manifestations is the American’s singular want of system. And it has struck me — it struck me at the very first when I made Don’s acquaintance — that he had a remarkably developed moral sense. I’ve noticed on several occasions that he’s been unreasonably kind...”

“He’s much too kind,” Eleanor said, and Mr Greville uttered the solitary word:

“Precisely!”

“And that means,” he pursued triumphantly, “that he hasn’t any kind of system in his morality.” He turned definitely upon Don. “You can’t get through life like that!” he said seriously and with an air of shaking his head ever so minutely.

“You mean,” Don said, “that Eleanor will never know where to have me?”

“That’s what your father means,” Mr Greville answered, “when he says that you’ll make Eleanor unhappy. I think you will myself,” he added. “Eleanor’s
my
daughter — and I know you’d give me the fidgets if I had much to do with you.”

Don said: “Oh!” in a grievous tone.

“The only chance,” Mr Greville pursued compassionately, “is that you may develop a backbone under her hands. After all you aren’t American. Your father was not, neither was your mother. Your father obviously had character enough. I’ve studied his history carefully and I’ve discovered that... Oh!” he turned upon Eleanor, “I haven’t been employing detectives to look up the, career of Mr Kelleg. But I
have
subscribed to a press-cutting agency. The American magazines are full of biographies of Mr Kelleg, and portraits, and demands for his indictment or suggestions for raising temples to him as
the
representative of the American frame of mind.” He turned his sharp features again upon the young man. “It is astonishing how equally they’re divided in opinions. I’ve collected 642 cuttings relating to your father. Of these, 340 clamour for his indictment and 302 eulogise his calmness in ‘crises.’”

“Well I guess,” Don said, “he hadn’t any nerves at all. I have heard him talking to my mother, who
was
a formidable proposition.”

“I’ll get you,” Mr Greville said, “to resume your own biography in a minute. In the meantime I’ll just put the dots upon some of your I’s.” He paused to recollect himself.

“You
were
born in Idaho. You
did
go to Hut. Montana. You
did
spend most of your time, very possibly, in the shop of a German barber.”

Don said: “Well, it’s fine to be corroborated!”

“The barber’s name was Kratzenstein,” Mr Greville said. “And he was your father’s most intimate friend. And it was he that your father relieved of the Great Cevanza Mine.”

Don leapt to his feet.

“By Jove,” he said, “the very first thing I’ve got to do is to make some sort of restoration to Kratzenstein.”

Mr Greville’s face assumed a remote air of disfavour and even Eleanor said:

“But surely there are more urgent things.”

“Only think of poor Kratzenstein!” Don said, “waiting for all these years.”

“We shall never get anywhere at this rate,” Mr Greville said, and he positively turned his head to look at the clock. Don was instantly full of contrition.

“Oh, let me get on with my biography,” he said. “I’ll be ever so short.” And he hurried out a great many facts. When his mother had separated from his father she had taken him to Bournemouth. That was because the children of her former master, the O’Something Don, had gone to a private school at Bournemouth. She wanted her son to become a gentleman — like the young Something Dons. He had done very well at the private school: he had had the time of his life too. When he was fourteen his mother had made a last attempt to live again with her husband. His father had come over from the States: they had travelled in a desultory way half over Europe, his mother quarrelling with his father all the way. Don had had a private allowance of fifty dollars a week and permission to buy anything that he wanted in Rome, Paris or Vienna. It seemed to him that there had not been a single thing he wanted in Rome or Paris. In Vienna he had wanted to buy a dancing gipsy to travel with them. But his mother had not allowed it. When they got back to New York his father had begun to build his famous palace, No. 1912 Fifth Avenue. And whilst it was in the building they had lived in a great hotel. They had had the whole of the first floor.
That
time Don considered to have been the most miserable he had ever spent. He had had no one to play with but the bell-boys and lift-attendants in the great, marble lounges. And the lift-boys had always been too busy to play any decent game. In the middle they would be called away to whirl up to the twenty-third floor. He could not, he said, to that day see a lift going up in a hotel without feeling miserable — so many of his games had been spoiled. At last his father had hired lift-boys to do nothing but play with him. Then he had discovered that he did not like lift-boys.