Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (227 page)

“You’re so ridiculously jealous of Oggie that you’re a little mad at times. Why, if you were a childless wife you couldn’t be worse. You’ve had the poor boy so tied to your skirts that it’s no wonder he’s as ridiculous as he is. And, goodness only knows, it isn’t easy for him to give you cause for jealousy. Why, he says himself that not a woman will look at him!”

Her aunt had dropped her tone of affectionate entreaty: she passed now even through the phase of paralysed indignation and came out into what Eleanor in her own mind was accustomed to call her snaky chill. She sat up rigidly, but her eyes looked at the floor which still, on its green, velvety pile, had large traces of face powder, and all she uttered was:

“You surpass even
yourself!
”

“I can’t help it, Aunt Emmeline,” Eleanor said, and she was vaguely aware that she would have liked to say: “It hurts me quite as much as it hurts you — but it’s for your own good.” She continued however: “I’m perfectly certain that Don’s entirely satisfied with my behaviour,” and at her aunt’s virulent titter: “I’m perfectly satisfied with my own behaviour. Augustus is a nuisance. I’m just civil to him and that’s an end of it!”

It is possible that if Aunt Emmeline had actually been a Greville Eleanor would not have spoken. It was, probably, because she wasn’t and had arrogated to herself that title that she had finally been goaded to speak. She had married a Greville — Eleanor’s uncle — but she was only a Corbyn; and it wasn’t for a Corbyn to tell a Greville how a Greville should behave beneath the eyes of Americans. And going along the corridors towards the outer air Eleanor smiled to herself. She hadn’t found that the Americans troubled themselves much even about a Greville! For positively a lady who had laid herself in the deck-chair next her own that morning had asked whether her father were not a Graecher from Indianapolis! The Graechers were noted for saying inordinately long graces, and she had taken Mr Greville’s habit of standing during the soup course, for some sort of religious exercise; she had also taken his long frock-coat for some sort of deacon’s uniform. And again Eleanor had had to smile when she replied that her father was not an American, was not a Graecher, was not a deacon or priest of any kind, but just a plain, ordinary English gentleman. It certainly was, it struck her, a very extraordinary thing to do. But then nearly everybody she knew was a little extraordinary. After all, couldn’t plain, good English people afford to be so?

Whilst she sat, perched on a white life-raft, on the top deck, as if on a sort of island, with Don and two young girls and a young man in a blue serge jumper playing deck-golf round her feet, she kept up a long conversation with Canzano about dancing, and in her private thoughts justified herself for having “spoken” to her aunt.

“After all,” Canzano would say — and she noticed that his white, duck-twill hat threw white reflections on to his smooth, olive cheeks—”it’s a foolish exercise to dance. Yes. And you are limp all next day. Yes. But a dead emotion is a tremendously precious thing.”

The sea all round them was boundlessly blue and hard: the air all round them was dry and crisp: the young men and young girls pushed broom-handles about the deck as if they were sweeping ice, and the continual click of the Marconi spark beneath their feet seemed to her the dominating sound. Canzano lay on his back beside her, his hands behind his head when she answered him, but each time that he spoke he rolled over on his elbow to see her. His canvas shoes were of an extravagant whiteness.

“I hate dead emotions,” Eleanor said. And the more she thought about it the more she was certain that in speaking to her aunt she had done exactly what was right. She had had to act. You couldn’t let people continue to behave as her aunt had begun. And it wasn’t as if this were a thing she could pass over — as she had done all the former disagreeableness of her aunt. Formerly she had kept her and her son at a distance. It had been quite easy. Now that Don had brought them all, rather extravagantly, together she had
had
to put them in their places. And it came into her head that at the very beginning she had told Augustus that it was only fair to let people know how they stood. If she had let her aunt imagine that she was going to be able to go on as she had begun it would be unfair, too...

“Dead emotions!” Canzano rolled himself onto his side to say: “You can allege that you hate them! But what else is there in life? Do you think you’ll ever be as happy as you were at some ball? — (when was it? Last year — the year before last? How do I know?) But on the night when you had, as the saying here is, the time of your life. Do you think that to-night — or any other night — the band will play as it played on
that
night? Do you ever expect — do you ever find — your anticipations come up to your memories?”

Eleanor looked reflectively down into his eyes.

“I’m afraid you’re a pessimist,” she said. And she returned again to her thoughts. She was glad that she had spoken to her aunt. It had put them all into their proper places. And she had meant for years to speak a word for poor Augustus. If he were — and he was very nearly — a miserable little wretch, it was, she hadn’t the least doubt, entirely the fault of his mother’s miserable jealousy. Her aunt had never even let him think a thought that was different from her own. And the poor boy had never had even the physical strength to stand up against his mother — not the voice, the mere lung power. He had always had sick headaches, neuralgias — she couldn’t think of anything more miserable than to have neuralgia and to be told by Aunt Emmeline that one was free to do what one liked. Free! He hadn’t even been free to change his newspaper. He wasn’t now! If only she had done him a good turn.... At any rate she had taken her own line!

Canzano, in the meantime, had sprung into a sitting posture beside her, with a motion so sharp that his white shoes had performed against the blue of the sea a flashing parabola.

“A pessimist. I!
Jamais de la vie!”
he said. “My dear half-sister! Don’t imagine that I’m the sort of person that your Don oughtn’t to have to do with.
I
shan’t spoil him.”

“You couldn’t, you know, anyhow,” Eleanor laughed. “Nothing could!”

Don looked up from his broom-handle at the moment and embraced the two of them in his fine and friendly smile.

“We’re winning all along the line,” he called out. “Five up and seven.”

“Ah, he’d be the biggest creature in the world if he wasn’t a poet,” Canzano uttered to her. He drew up his knees to the level of his chin that his feet might avoid the slide of a leaden disk. “But I want you to examine me carefully so that you mayn’t find it necessary to forbid him to know me.”

Eleanor said:

“Oh,
he’s
free enough.”

“Who is not?” Canzano asked; and as she didn’t answer he continued: “Don’t think I’m a pessimist if I tell you to treasure your dead emotions. They’re the best things we’ve got. I’m a person who savours life: I enjoy it immensely. It’s a good world: there’s a good sun in the sky. It’s all good. But isn’t it made immensely better because of such good memories as you’ve got?”

Eleanor said that for herself she looked forward, but he shook his head.

“If you did you’d be much more masculine than feminine. And I can’t believe you are. Women almost always look back: men of action always look forward. Now I’m a man — God forbid that I should say of taste — but one who lives to taste life. So I’ve got the taste of the past still in my mouth and the taste of the present on my lips.”

Eleanor looked at him seriously, with wide eyes and with a certain affection, because he was such a very good friend of Don’s.

“I believe,” she uttered, “that it would be a very good thing for some people” — and her eyes sought Don’s figure—”if they had a little of your philosophy.”

Canzano stretched himself a little, looked at his white shoes and rested an elbow upon the life-raft.

“By avoiding unpleasant things I find that life is very good,” he continued his own speech.

“Well,” she answered him humorously, “I don’t find life at all troublesome.”

“You’re perfectly happy?” and he surveyed her with a pleasant incredulity.

“I’m perfectly — happy,” she answered, and she glanced at the dark blue sea, at the light blue sky, at Don, at the deck quoits and the volume of smoke that blew away to their right.

“Don’t you worry?” he asked, with the incredulity still in his voice.

“I don’t know what worry is,” she answered him confidently. “If you know what your duty is it’s simple to do it.”

He mused:

“Well, well: it’s simpler to avoid it! But still...”

He looked at her unfurrowed, fresh cheeks; at her unruffled, full figure; at her brown, round and confident eyes, and she made upon him such a full impression of tranquillity, of opulence and strength that he said:

“I don’t think I’ve ever really known any of your countrywomen, or are you an exception?”

Eleanor looked at her shoulders.

“Of course,” she answered, “I am open to receive compliments. But I’m not in the least exceptional, mentally. In my class there are thousands like me.”

“One sees you, you know,” he said, “in droves all round our monuments — in Italy I’m speaking of — with red books and anxious faces and bags slung round their necks by straps.”

“Oh,” she answered seriously, “I don’t think that the ones with red books and anxious faces are of my class at all — and I’m absolutely certain that the ones with bags aren’t even my countrywomen.”

“They
speak
English, you know,” he said.

“Even that’s a matter of opinion,” she answered him.

He reflected gaily for a moment, appearing to dig the tip of his nose into his moustache, and gazing down it as if for the sheer pleasure of the contemplation.

“So that,” he arrived at his conclusion, “you’re, according to your own showing, at least as wise as I. You have at least as good a time — and you do, in addition, your duty. That, no doubt,” he started again, clasping the striped cuff of one wrist with a delicate, long-haired hand, “that, no doubt, gives you an excellent appetite for dinner.”

“Why,” Eleanor said, and she laughed, “I’m as unromantic as you could wish. Sound wind and limb.”

He suddenly removed his white hat.

“And what in the world,” he said, “can be more romantic than a beautiful woman with a good appetite, if she can tell good food from bad? And I hope you’re serious about that.”

“Oh, I like the best of everything,” Eleanor said, and she added, with her eyes on Don, who at that moment was waving his hand to induce a coy disk to glide faster along the deck, “I generally get it!”

“Heavens, what an idyll!” he uttered. “The best of everything and you haven’t a care.”

“I certainly haven’t a care,” she answered, “unless....” And he caught her up swiftly with the word repeated interrogatively: “Unless it’s Don’s too great scrupulousness.”

“Oh, don’t say anything against
him!
” he uttered. “He’s the best creature in the world.” She thanked him with her eyes for that praise and continued:

“It’s only at close quarters — in the family, as you might say — that he’s apt to create worries.”

“But, my dear,” he said, figuring astonishment, “don’t
I
know all about it? Hasn’t he been in
my
family for years. And, believe me, my step-brother has cleared all the worries out of my path.”

She said:

“Do you use the word step-brother seriously?” And through a sort of bewilderment the suspicion that she’d had all along — though she hadn’t felt called upon to question Don, and Don hadn’t enlightened her — the suspicion took a firm hold upon her.

It gave him the opening that, quite desultorily, he had been angling for, and his story put together all the little bits of material that she had noted for herself.

“I think Don has acted quite rightly in letting
you
tell me,” she said, as she gave him her hand to acknowledge his brotherhood. “After all, it was
your
story.” And he answered: