Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (47 page)

Hollebone having arranged that matter to the satisfaction of all concerned, the two young men walked away and began to reminisce.

‘Well, old boy,’ the lord began, when they were out of the hearing, ‘and how has the world been usin’ you?’

Hollebone replied that he had managed to rub along somehow, and asked for information about his noble companion’s career.

‘Oh, I,’ said that noble peer, ‘I’ve been sowing my wild oats ever since the old Earl my uncle died. I’ve been going the pace regularly. Played the very doose with my money. The dad gives me a pretty liberal allowance. I don’t mind telling you he ain’t any too flush himself, and so the year before last I had a regular smash up with my duns, well on towards six figures, and the dad said he wouldn’t give me another monkey. If I wanted to live I should have to stop in his house, and give in my accounts weekly — pretty stiff on me, wasn’t it? However, I was pretty sick of my life, and so I tried to reform, and as the dad and my mother were going to yacht it round the world, and the other fellows chaffed me rather about my reforming, I thought I’d go with ‘em. You see the governor wanted to save a little, and so he let the house in Grosvenor Square, and stuck a regular deuce of a bailiff at Tatton here, and then we went.’ Twasn’t half so dull as you might have thought — really, now, I ain’t joking — an’ we saw all sorts of queer things — mummies and pyramids, and cannibals and monks and monkeys, and all the things one sees when one goes round the world. You haven’t been? Ought to go, ‘tain’t half so bad, really. Well, I went overland across America, and the dad and the mater went round. They took up the Earl and Countess of Stene — your flame, you know. I never could get on with Trix, nor Stene neither for that matter, and so I left at San Francisco and went overland to New York, and on the cars, that’s what they call the trains, you know, over there, an’ it takes a whole week to get across. Well, on the cars there was an old bloke and his daughter, who’d been doin’ the world too, and was also going right through, an’ so I thought it wouldn’t be a bad thing to have a flirtation, specially as she was a regular stunner, and so I made myself agreeable to the old bloke, but blow me if I didn’t fall slap in love with the girl. I didn’t know I had a heart before — but somehow there was somethin’ about that girl that quite took my breath away, and so — But the funny part of it was, tho’ p’r’aps you won’t believe me, she had read a lot of books, and knew about poetry and painting and suchlike things that one usually thinks are snobbish; and, really it’s gospel truth, what with one thing and another, when she talked about that sort of thing I really felt such a fool not to know anything about it that I, joking aside, read some poetry on the sly, by a feller called Rossetti. Ever hear of him? No, really? Have you read some of him? Well, and the funny part of it was that some of it seemed to sort of fit me the way I felt to a T. And there was one poem about the Blessed Damozel. Know that, too? Well, it goes —

The Blessed Damozel leaned out from the goldbarred gates of Heaven,

She had three lilies in her hand, and the stars in her hair were seven,

And her eyes —

Well I don’t know how it goes on, but I know it seemed to me he must be talking of Muriel, and somehow I felt awf’ly bad about her — awf’ly — though she was a Yank. ‘Pon my word I really fell in love with her, though you won’t believe it. I didn’t know, and I shouldn’t have cared if I had known, that her father was the richest man in the States — almost. His name is Gubb.

Really I didn’t do it for the ‘oof, I swear it, and so, one day I went down on my knees to her and told her, and she said she’d have me — but I felt so bad about it that I told her I’d been rather a rough lot during five years or so, and she said that if I really loved her, and all that sort of thing y’know, she didn’t care what I’d done so long as it wasn’t downright damned, and I ain’t been that altogether — and so the long and short of it was I wrote to the pater about it, and he said he didn’t mind. To tell the truth, he was only too glad I should bring a little cash into the family, and we’ve got blood enough to do for half a hundred Yanks even, and so we were engaged. I was almost afraid it wasn’t me but the title Muriel cared for. But one night, Ryves, this fellow’s son — he’s a damned beast — yes, I can’t help it, though Muriel made me promise not — he is a
damned
beast — well, he and Tuppence, and the Duke, they’re all in the same boat, it happened that they were all in New York together on some devilry, and they heard what was on the cards, and so they came and made me — yes, they
made
me — I was sorter ashamed to refuse — come and make a night of it like old times, and the beasts they made me squiffey — regularly squiffey, although I took precious little on purpose; but they doctored everything I took, and put gin in my whisky instead of water, and then they took me and laid me on her doorstep, an’ I lay there all through the night, ‘cos the bobby who found me knew I was too drunk to walk and he was too lazy to send for an ambulance. Well, in the morning, what with the drink and the fear that Muriel would chuck me over, I was in a high fever, and I simply was a candidate for Bedlam for three weeks, an’ through it all Muriel nursed me like an angel — and made herself ill over it, too. An’ then they sent me off to England, and Muriel is to follow in three weeks’ time, and in a month we’re to be married. Meanwhile I’ve come down here just to keep out of harm’s way, ‘cos I can’t trust myself. And now you know all about it, old boy, and I’ve made a virtuous resolve. I don’t know how it’ll please you. I’m going to hang on to you for three weeks, and go only where you go, ‘cos I know you were always a steady-goin’ fellow, and you’ll keep me in the right groove. Somehow or other I can’t keep in it myself.’

Hollebone smiled.

‘I’m afraid you won’t have much of a time with me,’ he said. ‘Hadn’t you better hang on to old Mr Kasker-Ryves. He’d keep you straighter than ever I should, and he’s a jolly old fellow from all accounts, and you’d find me rather dull company.’

His lordship shook his head.

‘I have been trying him for a week,’ he said, ‘but he’s so wrapped up in his wife that it’s rather dull hearing him rave about nothing but her. Otherwise he’s a good old fellow enough, and he gets on well with anyone. T’other day he had a poacher brought before him, and instead of stickin’ the man in quod he gave him a lecture on the cruelty of wiring hares instead of shooting them, and then told him he might go, and he was to ask the steward to give him work on Blackstone if he found any difficulty in getting it. Brent, that’s our bailiff, told me he’s reclaimed quite a lot of blackguards that way, and made them decent members of society. Jolly old boy, too, don’t preach at all, and knows a lot of good stories that he can tell even before his wife. I know I’ve written some of ‘em down so that I can tell’ em to Muriel, ‘cos although tellin’ stories is awful bad form, somehow Muriel seems to like it — an’ I don’t know any stories that one can tell a girl, doncher know? — but I told her one, you know, about the Texas Ranger an’ Hell an’ the sulphur, an’ she laffed — she did, ‘pon my word. Yes, old Ryves is a good old boy, even though he is rather a bore when he gets on the subject of his wife — but, then, fellers are rather that way, ain’t they? I mean when they’re really in love. But I tell you what it is, his son — the young ‘un they call him, an’ he looks it, but he’s over forty if he’s a day — he’s a regular out an’ out blackguard, even though I ain’t been particularly squeamish. He really is. I’d no more let him speak to Muriel, or to any decent girl, than I’d — I’d knock his head off first. He used to be in the reg. when I was there, before I got my title y’know and had to move when the dad cut off the supplies; but that feller, he was such a blackguard out an’ out that the boys cut him, and you know fellers in a regiment ain’t — well, any too starched that away. Funny that such a good father should have such a frightful son. I say, old boy, you won’t give me away, will you?’

‘As how?’ asked Hollebone.

‘I mean what I told you about Muriel. Somehow it sorter slipped out natural like to you,’ cos we were always so much together at school, an’ I almost felt like old times. Tell you what it is, old boy, when you get in love, I mean like I am, you feel bad all over. I know, when I thought she was going to chuck me after all, it wasn’t a pain in the mind so much, but I felt as if someone had stuck a fish-hook in my throat and was pulling it. An’ now, even though I’ve only been away from her three weeks, I feel sore all over. You don’t know what it is to be in love — I mean real, not as the fellers are about a gal.’

Hollebone groaned in his spirit.

‘I know all about it,’ he said wearily.

‘No, do you, honour bright? Look here now, you tell me all about it. You let me run on and pump me dry and never tell me a word.’

‘Well, I really haven’t got anything to tell you,’ said Hollebone. ‘I just heard her play at a concert she gave, and somehow or other I regularly “flopped.” That was the long and short of it.’

‘Well, but what sort of concert was it — charity, or a drawing-room thing of the mamma?’ asked his lordship.

‘Why, neither; just a concert she gave — a professional.’

‘Oh, come, Holly, that’s too good,’ said his lordship ruefully. ‘Do you really mean to say you’re going to marry a music-hall singer or a bally-gal, you who were always so flush of tin? Not but what I’ve known people of that sort who kept quite straight, too,’ he added apologetically, seeing that his friend’s face was clouded over.

‘Look here,’ said Hollebone, disengaging himself from his friend’s arm, at which that youth looked the picture of ingenuous surprise. ‘Look here, your lordship, I don’t know whether you are speaking like this to be purposely insulting to me, but by Heaven’ — Hollebone was working himself into a frightful temper—’ by Heaven, if you do not this instant apologise for what you have said I will knock you down — upon my word and honour as an Englishman. Edith is a lady whom you are not fit to speak to. What do you mean by it? Do you think you can dare to speak to me like this because I am ruined, bankrupt, dishonoured, anything you like?’

His lordship answered, quite clearly and frankly, —

‘Now, look here, Clem, don’t be a fool. I didn’t mean to insult you, or the lady either. I give you my word, by all that’s sacred. I didn’t, and I don’t even know now what I have said to annoy you so awfully, really.’

Clement was hardly to be appeased so soon. He immediately launched out into a vein of very flimsy sarcasm at his lordship’s expense, which his lordship took very humbly, for to tell the truth he, although like us all at heart very selfish, yet was trying to mend his ways, and even open out his views against the narrowness of his ignorance, rather than prejudice, under the light that had streamed into him from the West. Of course, too, Clement should have made allowances for the young lord’s bringing up, and not have let out at him in his fine vein of sarcasm — of which, to do him justice, he repented immediately afterward — besides which the poor fellow had been having a bad time of it for the last three months, and having someone at last on whom he could vent his wrath, and whose feelings he felt confident he could hurt, he did it to the very best of his ability, and then leaned his back moodily against the gate that led into the highroad, at which they had by this time arrived, staring into the snow, awaiting his lordship’s reply, which ran thus: —

‘My dear fellow, ‘pon my word I think you’re right, and that people that go in for art and po’try and music, and that sort of thing, are really better than fellows like us, that is, like me I mean, who do nothing but loaf. I never looked at it that way before y’know, and it comes rather strange, and it just fits in with what Muriel says too, and so I suppose it
must
be right. I say you don’t think that if I had a music-master, an’ swatted awfully hard for three weeks, I should learn to play the music for her songs when she sings?’

An unwilling smile flickered over the face of Hollebone.

‘No, I don’t think you could, your lordship,’ he said.

‘How long would it take me, do you think?’ (anxiously). ‘I would like to give Muriel a surprise.’

Hollebone was thawing rapidly.

‘It’s just possible,’ he said gravely, ‘that if you practised very hard indeed in two years’ time you might be able to make a very bad accompanist, but you’d have to go at it very hard indeed.’

His lordship’s face fell dismally.

‘You ain’t jokin’?’ he asked.’ It looks so jolly easy. All these things do. It always seemed as if it’d be the easiest thing in the world to play the piano or make some po’try. I
did
try to make some once, but I got stuck first line. I couldn’t find a word to rhyme with Muriel except Escurial — that’s the place in Spain where they’ve got a lot of nigger writings — Moors, they call ‘em — not the Scotch sort — but, then, Muriel and Escurial wouldn’t fit together, ‘cos if I said