Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (226 page)

“Oh, it smells good enough,” Don said. “And I hope to derange a few more routines before I’ve done with things.”

Canzano leaned over to pat him on the back.

“My congratulations!” he said. “But have you thought of the poor stewards who must yawn and the poor wives of the Germans who must sit watching their husbands’
skat
for hours longer than it is legal for them?”

“No, I hadn’t,” Don said. “But one can’t refine for ever.”

Canzano looked at him with a sudden and radiant smile.

“My dear chap,” he said, “
mon bon vieux
! It’s good to hear you lay down the law in the old way.” Suddenly he touched Don’s hand on the table with his little finger.

“
Mon vieux
,” he repeated, “you needn’t avoid me any more...” And at Don’s hasty, finely insincere start of negation he continued: “Oh,
là, la!
Do not tell me that you have not tried to forget me because it was disagreeable to you to remember me. Why have you never written? Why did you never seek me out? Have I not been in Paris, in London, at the University of Oxford, at the University of Bonn? Might you not have found me at any minute? Weren’t there at least Christmas cards you might have sent? Do you believe I have not understood?”

Don got in an “Oh, well....” but Canzano was beforehand with him.

“I can tell you the very hour the idea came to you. It had missed you in Boston (it hadn’t missed me!): but it came into your head upon the boat when we returned together. We were leaning over the rail looking at the Scillies and the idea came to you. And then, when you received your letters you pretended you had business that called you to London. What was your business? Can you pretend that you had one? Not this lady — for after six years of you it is not
such
a lady that will look at you as this one does.
Hein?
Then what was your business? To remove from your mind a disagreeable thought!” Canzano began again.

“Look at me. Look at me very carefully!” And he pushed his face forward.

Don looked instead at the ash-trays on the table. “I know what you mean,” he said. “But it doesn’t seem to me to be very delicate.”

Canzano uttered a rather hard:

“
Hein.
Then we have different ideas of delicacy we two. I say it is better to settle clearly a thing. You wish to shirk it. But then it will be always there. For obviously you
must
see my mother in Boston. It is unavoidable. She is coming down from the Berkshires for nothing else but to see you. And as for delicacy! Isn’t it your duty to satisfy yourself? Isn’t it my duty to see that you do so? For her sake!”

It was at least Don’s pleasure — it was always his habit — to let this young man conduct their conversations as he pleased. In his presence Don contracted a power to listen that anyone else, when he talked to them, had to find for themselves. He simply couldn’t, in short, keep up with Canzano. And he didn’t care. He had always found it so pleasant to listen to Canzano’s topsy-turvy moralities that, even at meeting him again, he dropped naturally into his old indulgent part.

“And — as for indelicacy,” Canzano repeated, “I will take it upon my own shoulders: it is I who should suffer, on the point of my mother. Aren’t we, you and I, in what we might call a
comité de famille
— a family council? For you can’t,” he concluded, “get over the fact that — however it may be with regard to half-brothers — we’re certainly step-brothers.” He reached out his hand and again touched Don’s. “Then look at me minutely: scrutinise each of my features!”

He held once more his face towards Don, a little expressionlessly, as if he were sitting for a photograph. His eyes, when he wasn’t using the lids for purposes of expression, were singularly large and of a dark brown: his nose was very hooked but a little flattened at the extreme tip: the hairs of his moustache ran hard and perfectly horizontal from each side of the little hollow above his lips: and between his lips themselves, in the very centre, there showed a minute gleam of white teeth: his chin, which protruded slightly, seemed to form an almost perfect globe of firm flesh, very slightly bluish with the colour of his beard that ran up the sides of his cheeks to merge beneath the skin into the almost perfect pallor beneath his eyes and of his forehead. You couldn’t, when his face was still, fix him in the least, he was one of a thousand. But when he smiled, as he did the moment Don had finished his scrutiny, you felt at once a whole number of indefinite emotions — that you could trust him to lead a forlorn hope or would pardon him for running away; that you could trust him to take your womenkind to any theatre though conceivably he might — and you would rather like him to — make a commission out of the tickets; that you could trust him to have the most gratifying excuse for missing an appointment; that he would chat gaily with any beggar on any church step or run your motor-car as gaily over the same beggar five minutes later. But you could certainly trust him to keep you entertained; to behave as if you were really lovable and important, and to despise you a little.

“Well, then,” he said at last, “of whom do I remind you?”

And Don answered with irresistible conviction:

“Of your mother!”

Canzano laughed and leant back on the leather cushions.

“You can certainly say that if I’m not a bit like my father, who looked, you probably remember, like a blonde Titian in a cowboy’s hat, I look still less like
yours
, who had a nose like a gourd, the eyes of a raccoon and your — exactly your — long, low forehead.”

He put both his hands in his pockets and stretched forth his legs.

“
Tiens, mon ami,”
he-said, “I too had your ideas. But I’m convinced now. After all: consider! I’m twenty-eight: you thirty-three. I don’t say that my father and mother weren’t in Montana prospecting just after your mother deserted your father. But it is hardly probable. I repeat, it is hardly probable. I do not wish to speak evilly of
my
father, more than is necessary. But at the time
your
father wasn’t rich enough. You must remember that my father came of the Roman nobility. If they haven’t anything else, they’ve large ideas in money matters.”

“He’s still in the West?” Don asked.

“He’s still there,” Canzano answered. “The last I heard of him was that he had married — positively married — an Indian woman. But I think it is certain that now he will come to blackmail my mother in Boston. Therefore I go to protect her. I have probably a not very pleasant interview to go through with my father.”

He came out from this reflection with:

“So that, for the credit of the family, we may agree to the perfectly true facts.”

Don said:

“I’m not much accustomed to considering the credit of the family.” But the thought of Eleanor came into his mind.

“Why, it is all dead and gone,” he said.

Canzano laughed.

“Consider before you speak,” he added, “there’s a-huge mass of money. Heaven knows what sums your father won’t have left his widow!”

Don brushed his hand lightly across the table, as if, in brushing away the cigarette ash, he brushed away too the consideration of
that.

“He has left money — a decent sum — to his stepson too,” Canzano said.

“Oh, I don’t grudge you
that,”
Don answered; “you understand I quite expected you to have all my father’s money.”

Canzano raised his eyebrows at the statement, but he did not abandon his main line of argument.

“Let’s put it then,” he said, “that we’re immediately concerned for the honour of the family.” Don nodded.

“And the facts, for our public conversation, are the facts exactly as they took place.”

Don nodded again.

“That your mother divorced your father for incompatibilities of temper: that my mother divorced my father for infidelities innumerable: that after your mother was dead my mother married your father and that you and I are the best friends in the world.”

Don considered the matter and added seriously:

“I don’t see why we can’t add the comment that your mother behaved very creditably in not marrying my father till my mother was actually dead.”

“It certainly sounds less... less Transatlantic.” Canzano joyfully accepted Don’s offer. “But I daresay,” he reflected, after an instant, “that it’s really quite Italian. In a sense, I daresay, you don’t realise what it meant to my mother — she is the most wonderful woman in the world! — her marrying your father even after your mother was dead. I discussed it with her whilst you were in Boston. For, in our creed, the marriage wasn’t a marriage as long as my father was alive. She risked, in fact, damnation for your father’s sake. She’d have risked anything for his sake. But she wouldn’t do it whilst your mother lived.” He paused and added: “So that, even as your mother’s son, you haven’t a particular, scrupulous need to avoid either of us.”

And Don nodded his head.

CHAPTER IV
.

IT was on the afternoon of the day before they were to reach New York that Mrs Greville first manifested to Eleanor any symptoms of the peculiar methods that made the rest of the family call her “so terrible.” She had still upon her one of her fits of not letting servants wait on her. It had lasted from the moment she had set foot on the boat. They came on, these fits, for reasons that were difficult to discover, at irregular intervals, at periods usually the most inconvenient, and they were accepted by the rest of the family in much the same spirit as Mr Greville’s habit of standing at table. And it was in the same spirit accepted by Eleanor that she must answer her aunt’s call to help her in packing her cabin trunk for the landing. Largenosed, brown-featured, emaciated, and with long, bony fingers, whose joints were large and obstructed by many rings with green, red and yellow stones and a great deal of gold, Aunt Emmeline was constitutionally incapable of folding a dress or of making anything
“
go in” anywhere. At the same time, under the obsessions of her particular disease, she had the theory that when a maid packed your trunk you could never, for ever after, find anything that you happened to want. So that it became the duty of her relations to perform these services under her eyes, and it was whilst Eleanor, in the white, hopelessly-encumbered berth, was taking down a black silk petticoat from an electric light globe, where it hung, obscuring the view of a panel representing a very thin Orpheus raising his hand towards a highly-draped Eurydice, that her aunt brought out:

“I wonder dear Don doesn’t notice the way you behave with Augustus!”

Eleanor had both her hands engaged with the violet tape bindings of the petticoat, and she had in her mouth a turquoise brooch, which she had rescued from the hem where her aunt had stuck it, and which, for the moment, she dared not put down anywhere. It would be certainly lost. It was not therefore till she had folded the skirt in the tray that lay on the red satin counterpane, and having removed the brooch from her mouth had begun to search for her aunt’s jewel-case, which she found eventually beneath the very red mahogany cover of the green marble wash-hand stand, that she had time to answer: “I do think you might understand that I won’t say anything against Augustus to Don!”

Mrs Greville leaned back upon the green velvet of the sofa, opened her eyes to an extraordinary size, and having angrily ejaculated: “You’re treading on the photograph of the Cathedral! How can you be so clumsy?” she brought out with a pained expression: “I never knew you to be disingenuous before. I’ve long had cause to consider you vain.”

At that moment, with some of the feeling of triumph that one has when one finds the thimble that a child, in the game, hides in unlikely places, Eleanor had lifted up the lid of the wash-hand stand. The problem then presented itself to her as to where she should place the jewel-case for safety; she couldn’t pack it, because her aunt would need all her jewels that evening. It was as much because this problem occupied her mind as because she couldn’t exactly understand what her aunt meant, or because she had any desire to irritate her by not retorting, that she retained a silence than which nothing could have been more irritating.

“I might call it by a worse name than vanity,” her aunt continued slowly; and again uttering the remark that Eleanor was standing on the photograph of her Cathedral, she continued: “It’s my duty to speak to you though I’m sure it’s distasteful. But dear Don is so patient and your father so obtuse that there’s no one else to do it.”

Eleanor — who had decided that, upon the whole, the basin was the best place for the jewels — remembered at this point that it was a family practice to try not to be irritated by what Aunt Emmeline said. For Aunt Emmeline had, besides the actual purport of her words, a power in her voice, in her whole bearing, to depress, or render frantic, most members of her family. And it was with just a heightening of her tone that she said:

“Don’s patient enough to put up with Augustus or anybody else. And I’ve told you that I certainly shan’t run down Augustus to him.”

She resumed command of her temper with a strong hand, and turned to consider the problem of how she should get rid of an ounce of face powder that her aunt had upset into one of her bedroom slippers. Her aunt didn’t raise her voice; she didn’t adopt any of the majestic gestures which sometimes marked her less serious emotions of indignation. Instead, she slowly shook her head and drew a deep breath.

“When you’ve learnt as much of men as I have,” she said, “you’ll know that these quiet and patient men are the most vindictive in the world if they’re once roused.” She leant forward. “You think you can do what you like with him, but you’ll find that when he does act he’ll be terribly revengeful.” And at this point she even stretched out her hand. “You’ll ruin us all: Augustus, me, your father — who can’t really afford this voyage — yourself, for you can’t ever expect at your age to make another match. And the poor young man himself. Heaven knows what he might not do! You know what terrible things these American millionaires’ sons are capable of!”

This struck Eleanor as a view so bizarre of Don’s character that she couldn’t help saying:

“Oh, you’d hardly notice that Don was a millionaire’s son at all!”

And the smile brought it upon her in full force; her aunt even leant forward to pick up the photograph that Eleanor still stood upon. Dusting it carefully with her handkerchief, Mrs Greville held the pasteboard extended at the end of her bony fingers with the great rings.

“That’s a specimen of it!” she continued. “That’s a specimen of the way you and Augustus — all young people of to-day — trample upon the finer feelings!” Would
she,
she continued, as a child, have trampled upon the picture of her almost mother’s beloved home? Yet she verily believed that Augustus would applaud Eleanor for doing it! And she asked what Augustus was doing at that moment. He ought to have been there, in the cabin, helping her to pack. What had become of the feelings of young people for their elders? What had become of the very feeling of the family? Did Augustus wait upon his mother as he ought to? No: he was dangling after the first petticoat that came across him! She ought to have tender reverence from her children, for, after all, wasn’t she all the mother that Eleanor had had for the last ten years. But both Augustus and she thought that she was to be fobbed off with servants! Servants were good enough for her! Any woman was good enough to pack her things. They did not — Eleanor and Augustus — in the least seem to see that it was their duty to set a good example to the people they were travelling among. What would these Americans think of them when they saw that Augustus hardly ever tucked the rugs round his mother’s feet? He hadn’t once, since he’d been on the ship, brought her her cup of chocolate in the morning as he’d been accustomed to ever since he was a boy. It was as much as he’d do if he sat beside her chair and read to her from lunch till tea...

“He’s travelling after all as Don’s solicitor.” Eleanor felt at last impelled to defend poor Augustus, for whose poor aching legs she felt a sympathetic twinge at the thought of the number of times they had been used in descending from the topmost deck to fetch her aunt’s vinaigrette.

“Then why doesn’t he remember it?” her aunt fixed her with. “He finds time enough to dance after you!”

And Mrs Greville gained so much strength from that retort that she was able to continue without even taking a breath.

“He talks to you all through meals: he’s got his eye on you all the rest of the time. He answers me in the most vacant manner, as if I weren’t worth listening to. I’ve had to ask waiters — paid servants — to fetch me cups of tea.”

“I wish to goodness,” Eleanor said — she had by now cleared the cabin of almost everything that could be tidied—”I wish to goodness you’d take him over to your side of the table. He worries me where he is.”

Mrs Greville swiftly erected her neck and her voice became deep.

“Never in my life would I do such a thing!” she said. “No one can ever accuse me of having been exacting. If people’s affections won’t induce them to serve me I despise their services.” Eleanor had, at this point, succeeded in tearing one of her aunt’s hair nets, which Mrs Greville had rather elaborately entangled in the fretwork above the mirror, whilst uttering a gasp of exasperation her aunt managed to continue speaking. (The spoilt hair net was a thing you could return to.) “It has been a firm principle throughout my life to leave everyone their freedom. You have never heard me speak of family ‘ties’ ! I would no more think of commanding Augustus to do his duty and sit — as he certainly ought — beside me instead of you, than...” Eleanor had succeeded in drawing one of her aunt’s hairs from an untidy bunch in a tidy, and holding it between two fingers, with her head sedulously bent above the invisible filaments, she was beginning the task of repairing the rent. So that it was almost more than her aunt could bear — it gave Eleanor such an air of throwing off a repartee with incredible ease — when she heard the girl utter:

“Then why do you make it so extremely unpleasant for
me
when he doesn’t attend to his ‘ties’ ?”

Aunt Emmeline’s jaw dropped so wide that the gold plate inside her lower teeth shone bizarrely in a chance ray of sunlight which pierced an eyelet hole in the canvas screen outside, shot through the porthole, impinged on the mirror, and struck back into Aunt Emmeline’s mouth. She paused silently for fully two seconds, whilst Eleanor held the hair net up to the light, cut off an invisible end with minute scissors, and again began her operations on a place that her aunt had torn the night before.

“Eleanor, my child,” her aunt uttered in a hollow and emotional tone of great tenderness, “this is very serious. Have you never considered that you belonged to a very distinguished family? Let me give you a little lesson. We are only women, but women have been listened to when they spoke from their proper places!” And with a voice full of tender concern, as of one speaking to a Magdalen, she entreated Eleanor to listen to her views of what the family relationship should be. It was founded upon Love: a fact to which she returned several times. And in the tones of her voice she seemed to be inviting Eleanor to return to a family fold whose canons she had outraged. However, by the time that Eleanor, having finished the hair net, and having found nothing more that she could pack away, had come to an erect position with her hands folded before her, Mrs Greville had once more diverged upon the fact that they were the only English on board. And Mrs Greville in particular was much observed — so that Eleanor’s behaviour too might at times be noticed.

“And let me repeat,” Mrs Greville prepared to approach her peroration, “that you and Augustus have neglected your duty to your family in a Way that I should have deemed incredible in a family like ours. For, when they haven’t been able to be distinguished, the Grevilles have never been noticeable. They’ve never been eccentric: they’ve behaved like a representative English family.” She repeated, however, that Eleanor and Augustus had shocked her. They hadn’t remembered, apparently, one of these things. She herself, Mrs Greville herself, had made sacrifices for Augustus that no one else would ever understand: even Eleanor’s father had made sacrifices for Eleanor. If Eleanor didn’t succeed in bringing off this marriage Mr Greville would undoubtedly suffer in pocket for the rest of his career. And let Eleanor remember what would become of her aunt if Don should repudiate the engagement!

Eleanor’s face — it was the first unoccupied moment she had had in which really to attend to her aunt’s words — assumed a gradual expression of incredulity that a little stiffened the fine curves of her cheek, so that she had the air of listening to sounds from a distance.

“As I’ve so much at stake,” Mrs Greville said, “I keep myself informed of the course of the market twice a day!” And she pulled out from the watch-pocket in her breast the buff-paper slip of a wireless telegram: “Kellegs are falling — and falling, and falling. I don’t know what it means. But dear Don has lent me the money to go on covering the deficit. He seems to regard it as a moral responsibility to do so. He insisted that I should take the money. Do you realise what it means for me if you and Augustus should cause him to grow vindictive? Do you realise that I — I — shall be left without a penny? I
must
go on till these shares rise. I
must.
I
must.
If you actually insist on flirting with Augustus: if you can’t do without him at your skirts: for God’s sake have the decency to wait until I’m safely out of this hole.”

Eleanor’s eyes had grown larger and larger.

“You mean,” she asked, “that I’m not to let Don see me flirt with Augustus till he’s lent you all the money you want?”

“I shall be ruined if Don turns against me now!” her aunt answered.

Eleanor uttered a slow: “Then all I can say is...” and hesitating whether to let her aunt have it or not, she couldn’t at last think it was right to spare her and she finished: