Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (39 page)

‘I’ve heard that several times before,’ said Hollebone feebly.

‘Have
you
really?’
she answered. ‘Now, if I were a man and a person called me an idiot I should knock him down, and that would teach him never to do so again.’

‘Oh, Miss Tubbs, you really are too dreadfully sharp,’ with a sort of agonised emphasis on the cognomen.

‘What a frightful thing it is to have a name like mine. It sort of shuts me up when anyone uses it. One can’t be sarcastic when one’s opponent can retort, “Oh, Miss Tubbs,” as you do, and I’m sure it half ruins our concerts when one sees one of Brahms’s Hungarian dances, arranged for violin — Miss Ryland accompanied by Miss Tubbs — why, it makes people laugh when they think of a tub in connection with a dance. I’m sure when I die “tubs” will be found on my heart.’

‘Well, at all events Edie and I will weep tubs-full of tears,’ said Hollebone, with the air of one who has made a home-thrust.

‘Will you really?’ she said. ‘Good of you, I’m sure. I’ll just run up and take my things off. You’ll have to see about laying the cloth. The housemaid is out, and Martha’s in a temper. I noticed her sniffing as she opened the door. I suppose you can manage to do it between you. I sha’n’t be very long,’ and she ran upstairs.

The other two proceeded into the next room and set about the difficult operation of laying the cloth for supper. But Hollebone was more hindrance than help, and at last he was told to leave it alone. He therefore established himself in a leaning attitude against the sideboard, in such a position that she was bound to stumble over his feet every time she went past to put anything on the table. At last a detail of the arrangements caught his eye, and his face assumed an expression of annoyance.

‘What are you laying for four for?’ he asked. ‘There are only three of us. You haven’t been and invited anyone else, have you?’

‘Only the girl who’s got the floor above. She’s a singer, and she’s going on the tour with us, so we’re bound to be a little chummy now. don’t you see?’

‘Well, but hasn’t she got an old frump of a mother, no end of a nuisance?’ asked Hollebone, his face assuming longer and longer proportions.

‘Oh, no, dear; her mother’s gone to visit some friends in the country, and so we had to ask her down — you see, she’s all alone.’

‘Well, it’s a dreadful bore. We shall have to be so dreadfully stiff with her in the room. Miss Tubbs is a jolly girl, and one can have a lark with her, but this other one’s sure to be a nuisance.’

Edith smiled.

‘There, there,’ she said, ‘don’t get in a rage about it. Now, I’ve finished the cloth, and we’ll go into the next room and I’ll tease you into a good temper. Come along.’

Hollebone did as he was told, protesting all the time, and he refused to stop for whatever she said. However, when they were once safely established, he in a chair and she on the hearthrug at his feet, she adopted a commanding tone of voice.

‘Now, stop grumbling at once, or I won’t speak to you again this evening, and I insist on your telling me this instant why you came so late to-day.’

‘Well, dear,’ he said, ‘I had meant to have come round this morning as it was your birthday, but Clarkson came in and kept me all the morning, and then old Professor Webb turned up just before lunch, and I had to entertain him all the afternoon, but I got rid of him as soon as I could.’

‘But who is Clarkson?’ she asked petulantly.

‘Clarkson is my junior partner. You see, when my father died he left me the firm, but he said I was such a fool at business that I had better sleep, and so he made Clarkson junior partner. Clarkson was for a long time our head clerk, and my father knew he would be the best man to keep the business going. So he’s the junior acting partner, and I’m the senior sleeping partner. Now you know all about it.

‘I knew all that before. But what had Clarkson to say that kept you so long?’

‘Oh, nothing in particular, except that our business prospects are getting rather gloomy. Ever since the year before last — you remember when I went over to America? — oh, no, that was before we were engaged — well, that year the manager of our New York house appropriated some hundreds of thousands of dollars and bolted — Heaven only knows where. We never saw a penny of the money again. That was bad enough, but ever since then the house has been suffering a frightful series of losses from the bad weather. That fell upon the Liverpool branch — the underwriter’s side of the business, you know — and Clarkson says that very unpleasant rumours are circulated about us in the City, and our credit is getting rather shaky. However, it’s not so very bad as to be any great danger of ruin.’

‘Oh, you poor dear,’ said Edith, after she had heard him through. ‘I suppose you must be very much worried about it?’

‘Oh, it’s not so bad as all that,’ he said, with a laugh. ‘But, still, it might get so.’

‘At any rate you’ve got your chemical and medical knowledge to fall back upon, and if the worst comes to the worst you can set up as a doctor, and I can give music lessons.’

‘Well, I’m afraid you’d make a good deal more than I should. But I don’t think your parents would consent to let you marry me if I was a beggar.’

She rubbed her chin reflectively.

‘No, I don’t think they would
consent
, but I’d marry you in spite of them.’

‘I’m afraid the law would have something to say to that, wouldn’t it?’

‘That is true. We should have to wait until I am of age at any rate — but then we are going to do that as it is, so it won’t make much difference.’

‘However, there’s no need to think about that just now. Here comes Miss Tubbs.’

Miss Tubbs just put her head in at the door. ‘Supper’s ready, I say, you two. If you want anything to eat you’d better come in, unless you prefer to live on Love.’

‘If you lived on the Love you get, Ju, you’d have a precious lean and hungry look, I can tell you.’

‘Funny girl,’ said Julia irrelevantly. ‘I’m a little peckish.’

‘Told you so. You’ve got the hungry look already, the leanness will come shortly. Come along, Clem, let’s go in.’

When they were seated Hollebone said, —

‘Where’s Miss Wimple from upstairs? Aren’t we going to wait for her?

‘Oh, Mr Hollebone, I’m shocked at you. Making inquiries about someone else to flirt with when you’ve got two of us already. Horrible! As it happens, Miss Wimple has got a bad headache and can’t come down.’ Hollebone’s face brightened visibly.

‘Thank goodness for small mercies,’ he ejaculated, but a postman’s knock drowned his voice.

‘Post, Ju,’ said Edith; ‘I’ll get the letters first,’ and a rush ensued for the door.

Who got the letters Hollebone did not see; but he heard ejaculations from outside, and presently they both came back.

‘Here’s pleasant news,’ Edith said, displaying a letter. ‘Our only man singer has gone and married our soprano, and they’ve gone off to America for the honeymoon — besides, the ‘cellist has got the scarlet fever. That about stops our tour — doesn’t it, Julia?’ And Julia nodded.

‘Quite right, too,’ Hollebone said. ‘I’m very glad. I’m sure you would have lost a great deal of money over it. Concerts like yours never pay.’

‘You’re a most unsympathetic boy,’ said Edith, ‘and I shall go off to Manchester to my father and mother to-morrow, and take Julia with me to stop for a month just to punish you. That’ll be nice, won’t it, Ju? We’ll start the day after to-morrow.’

‘I’m so glad,’ said Hollebone. ‘Now I shall be able to do a good month’s work at last.’

‘If I were you I should jilt him for uttering such rank heresy,’ Julia said.

But Edith only smiled.

The rest of the meal passed off in alternate silence and storms of aggressive remarks from Miss Tubbs, but at its conclusion that young lady retired discreetly upstairs, saying that poor Miss Wimple was very dull and wanted reading to, and thus the field was left clear to the two in the drawing-room.

Conversation went on between them in low tones, occasionally broken into by short quarrels, but after a time it showed a disposition to lapse into gazing more or less sentimentally into the fire.

‘Won’t you play me something, Edie?’ Hollebone said, rousing himself from a brown study.

‘Why, suttinly,’ she said. ‘I’d almost forgotten about your present. Shall I play solo, or call Julia down?’

‘Oh, play a solo, dear,’ he said.

She took up the violin as tenderly as if it were a baby, and having tuned it, began suddenly Tartini’s ‘Trillo del Diavolo.’ Hollebone, as a rule, did not admire the violin as a solo instrument, nor did he, as a rule, admire diabolical music like the ‘Trillo,’ which was, indeed, inspired by a recollection on Tartini’s part of the Prince of Darkness’s own playing; but none of these considerations weighed with him on this occasion. He was in Heaven when he could watch the earnestness of her face as she bent her eyes down to the strings and swayed to and fro with the music.

‘I never knew Edith had so much character or determination in her face as she has tonight. As a rule, fair girls like her have not much force expressed in their faces, but it is the music that brings out her soul. Oh, how lovely she is!’ and he began to rhapsodise.

When she was nearly through, the door opened softly behind her, as she faced him, and Miss Tubbs appeared. She seemed quite spellbound, and waited till the piece was finished in rapt astonishment.

‘Why, Edith,’ she said, as the player let the violin drop from her shoulder, smiling, ‘I never heard you play so magnificently; your tone is really wonderful to-night.’

‘It isn’t my fault,’ said Edith, her eyes almost sparkling with delight — limpid brown eyes seldom really flash. ‘It’s the fiddle — Clem’s present — a real Strad.’

‘Oh, is
that
all?’ said Julia incredulously.

‘No, but it is really a Strad. Isn’t it, Clem?’ she said, appealing to Hollebone. ‘Look inside and you’ll see the label; besides, you’ve only got to listen to the tone of it. That will tell you right off.’

Julia looked at Hollebone.

‘Why, really,’ she said, ‘you must be either Monte Cristo or mad — or very much in love, which is worse than either.’

Hollebone smiled vaguely, hardly knowing whether the remark was intended as a compliment or the reverse.

‘Play something else, Edie, and let Miss Tubbs accompany you — something soft — that little minuet of Brahms’s; that’ll sound lovely after the Diavolo thing.’

They complied with his request, and his delight was marred only by one thought, that it should ever come to an end. But it did.

‘If I had anyone to give me presents like that,’ said Miss Tubbs suddenly, ‘I think I should go mad with the excitement of wondering what the next thing would be.’

‘But that isn’t all he has given me,’ Edith said suddenly.

‘Good Lord! what is his other piece of folly?’ said Miss Tubbs.

‘Well, he has given me a bottle of a new poison that he’s invented himself.’

Miss Tubbs cast an even greater glance of amazement at Hollebone.

‘But what on earth is Edie to do with it?’ she asked him.

‘Why, it has taken me five years to discover and mature it, and it is the strongest poison in the world, and I thought Edie would like to have it as a souvenir.’

‘I know one thing it’ll come in handy for,’ said Edie, with a laughing glance at Hollebone.

‘It will do to kill my future husband if he ill-treats me.’

‘After that I think I’d better leave,’ said Hollebone jocularly, as he rose to take his departure.