Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (352 page)

He spoke with an undertone of contempt, as if these were no duties for the man of spirit that he had been. “With your aid,” he continued, “I shall do all these very well.”

The Signora shook her head, of which the double chin and the great pendent cheeks rubbed flaccidly upon her collar-bone.

“Why, I am a very old woman,” she said, “very fat, very lame, very much touched in the wind; I shall not remain to guide you very long. I think I could guide you better than another, for I have so long studied your temper and observed your moods. But if I cannot give you the best, I will attempt to provide for you that which in my estimation comes next; but to have it you must go again to London, and that to-morrow.”

Mr. Bettesworth said, with a touch of weary resignation, “I have said that I will not go again to London, and go I will not. I am in this more determined than is the mariner’s needle toward the Pole.” The Signora smiled at his waistcoat buttons.

“A very little piece of iron,” she said, “will deflect that needle from its allegiance;” and fumbling in her stomacher, which she could not look down upon, she succeeded in extracting a small billet folded to resemble a necktie. She untwisted it tranquilly, her fat hands lying upon her lap.

“My friend,” she said, “it is very well that you should give attention to the matters of your estate. Nevertheless it is the custom of the country, which should be observed, and it scoureth off rust from the brain, which should be avoided, that great lords should pass a portion of their times in the metropolitan city of their country, and that they should take to themselves helpmeets and raise children that shall not be brutish.”

She had by now untwisted the note until it was a flat sheet of paper. She held it out to him.

“If you are not any longer minded to curse alike the Tritons of the seas and the little minnows of the river pools — if, in short, the advice of an old woman always more ready to laugh than to weep may weigh with you,” she said,—”I would have you read this.”

Mr. Bettesworth cast his eyes along the lines, suddenly clutched his brows, and with deliberation, but with his eyes staring, snuffed the two candles. He had read the words —

“Lydia Chuckel is not the true ‘Celia,’ which am only I. And, for my part, I am ready to dine with Mr. Bettesworth at the dinner of the Dilettante Society, which shall be given next Sunday, in four days.”

The letter was signed “Celia.”

Mr. Bettesworth’s mouth had become exceedingly dry, so that his tongue seemed to rasp and hiss when he uttered the words, “What significance has this?” The Signora had clasped her crutch, and was making motions with her elbows and knees to hoist herself from her deep chair. Leaning over her lap, she wheezed jovially —

“Why, without doubt Celia has been smitten by your fine eyes. She has selected you from among the others to reward with her laurels.”

When she was half out of her chair, and bent nearly double, she paused to grunt. “But this I know, that this is the true Celia, and this I advise you, to follow her advice.”

She was by now up to her feet, and leaning on her crutch, panted a little with the exertion.

“But what shall I think? — what shall I say? — how act?” Mr. Bettesworth exclaimed, holding out his hands to detain her. She waddled, however, laboriously away, and when he followed her she pressed him back with the end of her fan.

“Why,” she said, “I have fostered you enough. I have been the best friend that ever you had. But I will not advise you as to how you should act in any given instance, and I never have. In that your inclinations and your heart must be your guide. Stay here in the shadows and reflect.” She shuffled from the room with an engrossed determination, waving her hands before her as if they had been the flappers of a young duck, to constrain him to silence. Mr. Bettesworth began to pace up and down in the vast and shadowy apartment, halting a little over his sprained ankle. Caesars regarded him with immobile features, the tiers of books disappeared into the obscurity. Once he approached the candles and, bending down, read the letter over again. Expressions of suspicion, of dejection, of elation, of timidity, and of pride crossed and recrossed his face. He grasped the letter firmly in his hand and squared his shoulders, and the light from the candles gave to his curls a little border as of filaments of fire.

CHAPTER VI
.

HIS eyes when he looked round upon Lady Eshetsford had in them again something of the human. She advanced very slowly, with a face of almost supernatural gravity. Her arms were closed over her closed fan; her body above the hips swayed in the approved fashion; and at each step her black widow’s cap, that towered over her head like the central one of the Prince of Wales’ feathers, nodded formally.

“Madam—” Mr. Bettesworth stuttered, and then he became silent, in order to regain control over himself. She regarded him with a grave scrutiny — there was hardly a fold round the corners of her lips.

“Sir,” she said, “I understand that you have for the second time been perusing the intricacies of my steward’s accounts, and that you now have the man ripe for hanging.”

Mr. Bettesworth made a little gesture with his right hand; he erected himself to the fullest height that he could assume.

“Madam,” he said, and he extended towards her the letter that she made no motion to take, “I have to announce to you that I hold in my hands the model for the picture of ‘Celia in her Arbour,’

and I have in consequence, for the second time, to make you the offer of my hand, and, still more, of my heart.”

Her arms remaining crossed, with the proper motion of her hand she slowly opened her fan so that it covered her lips, and from its shelter, as if from over the glacis of a fortress, she still regarded his handsome and glowing costume and scrutinized his face.

“Cousin,” she said, “you are aware that in marrying me you will be losing your wager?”

He drew himself up still more in his most princely fashion; he pushed out his padded chest so that he had the appearance of a pouter pigeon, and upon his coat, as if with a radiant iridescence, the silver brocade shone and scintillated with each movement.

“Madam,” he said, “it has been my purpose from the first to win this wager so that it lay within my hand, and then to cast it away as it were a tribute to your charm and to the affection that I have for you; by making the marriage with you and so forfeiting the rewards of the wager.”

She appeared, still holding the fan before her lips, to settle down into the very earth, and there came from behind her fan a little soft and sibilant sound. Mr. Bettesworth would have considered that it was a titter, but since his curls in his obeisance were upon a level with the paste buckles of his white satin breeches he was unable to scrutinize her features.

“A compliment so considerable,” said Lady Eshetsford, “merits a reward the greatest that I have in my power. Nevertheless,” she continued, “it will be fresh in your memory, or perhaps it will not, that along with my hand, for what it is worth, I made a certain condition — namely, that you should have seen this Celia, whom I consider to be in every part my equal, and that you should have preferred me to her.”

Mr. Bettesworth’s silvered and shining sleeve came up towards his heart in a gesture as nearly as possible of real passion and irritation.

“Polly,” he said, “I am assured that this Celia is smitten with a passion for me, therefore I can believe that she would be ready to accept my hand. Moreover, I have here a letter from her that assures me that she is ready to partake of a dinner of the Dilettante Society. Now, since I may not very well take her to this dinner without having found her, I may take it that she is willing to discover herself. And since she is willing to go thither with me, I may take it that when she is there I may be said to have fetched her. Thus it is in my power to find, fetch, wed, and in consequence to house her. So that I may in truth say that I have won this wager, but that to attain you I have thrown it away.”

“Friend,” she said, “I am not set to deny it; and indeed, since I have more secret knowledge of this cause than you, I can the more exactly confirm you in the details of it. You have won this Celia, and I hear it from her own lips. Nevertheless the winning of me depended on one condition that I have made—”

He made a little inarticulate expression of impatience, lifting up his hands towards her.

“Why,” she said, “I am not of such a mulish
 
obstinacy as I would have you tied down for ever by my whims; and if you would assure me — and I take it as a very great honouring of me, and one that fills me with pride and pleasure — if you would assure me that I am the one woman that can confer happiness upon you, why, I very willingly take your assurance, and trust only that your knowledge of your own heart is such that you may be in the right of it. Nevertheless, measure for measure is good merchandise, and if you will not have me upon that condition I would have you have me upon another.”

Minute by minute pride, assurance, and selfsatisfaction were reawakening in Mr. Bettesworth. He had been very sufficiently shaken, so that there remained in the recesses of his brain sufficient traces of a species of numbness. These resulted in a sort of timidity before Lady Eshetsford; thus it was rather in a tone of pleading and prodigality that he brought out the words —

“Upon any condition that you will, whether of settlements, of place, or of manner of livelihood—”

“Why,” she said, “later we will talk of settlements and these things, and I warn you that in them I shall show myself of considerable strictness. For it is not that I doubt of your prodigality towards myself, which I am sure would be very enormous, but that I misdoubt your generosity to the rest of the world. I would not have you desist from such attempts as that you should aid this Mr. Williams to prove whether he is orthodox or heterodox, or even that you should aid a picker-up of sticks to prove her right so to do. Nor, indeed, would I have you abstain from asserting by law your own prerogative to drive a coach and pair up the steps of the Metropolitan Church of London. This lasts appears to me to be laudable and fitting in a gentleman: the two former are a sort of madness such as, to all appearances, men must needs burn their fingers with. And men being men, I have very little against it that they should meddle with things that do not concern them. So that against the spending of a reasonable proportion of your substance in such matters I have very little to say, though you would do better, perhaps, to spend it on the making of an Italian garden here, such as they have at Wilton House. But I have heard it reported that you have said that upon the effort to establish the cause of Mr. Williams and some stick-picking drab you will expend even the whole of your estate. And from my knowledge of you, I can perceive that upon some such objects — even though upon those it should not so fall out — you might very well expend enough if not to beggar at least to cripple yourself and me. So I warn you that since this would not aid us to dwell together in such amity as I hope we shall attain to, I warn you that when the time for settlements shall come my lawyers shall be as exacting as if they were the ministers of the States-General negotiating with the King of France!”

Mr. Bettesworth swept all these considerations aside with one wave of his hand, meaning that on the one part he was ready to throw all that he possessed into Lady Eshetsford’s lap, and that on the other he was confident that he could very excellently minister to and care for their common interests.

“We shall live,” Lady Eshetsford continued, “for one-third of the year in Bettesworth House in London, letting my house which I hire from Sir John’s heirs revert again to them; and for the other two-thirds of the year we will be for the one half here and for the other half at Ashford Manor-house, this more or less according as where we shall find it the pleasanter to live. But these are not the conditions, neither, that I desire to extract from you.”

“Polly,” Mr. Bettesworth interrupted, “do not trouble me any more with your conditions, but take them where you will and how, and tell me no more of it. For the truth is that I have passed through such dark periods that I thought I should not again have the courage to hold up my head to look you in the face or to talk to you of love.”

“Why,” Lady Eshetsford said, “you have been very tardy in paying your addresses to me.”

“Oh!” he exclaimed, and there was a touch of badgered torment in his face, “do not believe that it was more than that I felt too humbled and an object of too much ridicule to come into your presence as a suitor.”

“Well, I will take that to be the reason,” she answered.

“Laughter appeared to sound in my ears. I was mocked of all men, it appeared to me. I considered only of how I might revenge myself; I considered only that you too must mock with the rest.”

“Well, I laughed a little,” she said.

“And,” he continued, “if I have now in a short span of time recovered myself sufficiently to have the assurance to pour out my passion to you, I would have you consider that I am still in no condition to meditate upon any other actions or to think upon any other things. So that I know that I have gained you, I will leave to you the making of such conditions as you will, and be assured that I will ratify them; and if you will pledge my word to other men, why, pledge it; or if you would expend money, expend it. In short, I will give you, as it were, the power of attorney to do what you will so long as I may do no more than the simple assuring you that you are the most adorable of creatures.”

She took, for the first time, her fan down from her mouth so that he could perceive her slight, mocking smile.

“That would be very well,” she said, “if it were not that the conditions that I prescribe demand at least as much action from you as from me.”

“But consider,” he pleaded, “that I am a very weary man.”

“Why, consider,” she said, “that you must take the road to-night at midnight, and that I have some work for you to do even before then if you will.”

“My ankle,” Mr. Bettesworth said, “will not permit me to ride with any comfort. You are to remember that it is only to-day that for the first time I have walked without a stick.”

“Friend,” Lady Eshtsword said, “you are to remember that this is a matter of bargaining for my hand, against which several ankles should not be weighed in the balance. Moreover, it is a matter of fourteen days since you fell.”

Mr. Bettesworth exclaimed, “Fourteen days!” with a look of extreme astonishment.

“Your Worship,” Lady Eshtsford laughed, “has been so wandering amongst clouds of gloom that you have forgotten the passage of time. Nevertheless Sir Francis Dashwood has been much earlier cured of his sore wound in the shoulder, for six days ago I saw him; although he was not fit to go out of doors, he was yet well enough to drive a very hard bargain.”

A spasm of jealousy contracted Mr. Bettesworth’s brows.

“Why,” he exclaimed, “if he is well enough to ride, so will I be; I will ride where you will and when.”

“Cousin,” her ladyship answered, “maybe there shall be no necessity for it, for my coach has in it two slung beds, and Maria shall not go to London, and Trott may ride in the rumble.”

Mr. Bettesworth passed his hand across his brows. “If,” he said, “this be a matter of winning a wager I am very well content to let it go.”

“That am not I,” she answered. “For, in the first place, I am not willing to take a man with a lost wager on his back, for it is the nature of men to be cowed when they have failed in the sight of all the world, and a cowed husband is not very much to my taste.”

“What made you with Sir Francis Dashwood?” Mr. Bettesworth muttered.

“Your Worship,” she said, “it was a little matter of purchase of property which, since your Worship was lost in the glooms and vapours, I employed myself upon to pass the time. Moreover, I desired to know how it fared with Sir Francis; for the time of the wager being suspended only during such time as he could not go abroad, I desired to be advised that he did not sneak into the open air and so steal a march upon the four days that remained to you.”

Mr. Bettesworth felt closing round him invisible toils that he had neither the strength nor the desire to escape from.

“Madam,” he said, “but this wager—”

“Moreover,” she continued her own speech, “I have had Wilton House very closely watched in the interim, and I have the assurance of the Earl of Pembroke, who is our good friend, that Sir Francis has not set foot out of doors until this morning, thus, by the terms of the wager, from midnight you have ninety-six hours to win it in.”