Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (478 page)

Aldington looked at her with the same grin — it was all the expression that he had.

“Well, by God,” he said, “living with me has made you a damned good plucked one!”

“I dare say it is living with you that has done it;” she said, “but the point is, what will you take?”

Aldington said: “Oh, damn it!” and she imagined that she perceived in his tone an air of aggrievement. He remained looking at her for quite a long time, his blue eyes having reddish rims and being entirely expressionless. He might have been thinking nothing; he might have been making the deep and long calculations that one imagines a bull to make when it gazes at you for a long time.

And at last he said — and this time there was no doubting the aggrievement of his tone:

“Oh, hang it all, old girl, don’t you remember that I am a gentleman?”

“I don’t see how I can,” Emily answered; and his face really fell. “You’ve forged my cheques for that woman; you’ve behaved like a brute to me. How can I remember that you’re a gentleman?”

“But I am; damn it, I am,” Aldington answered. “If I forged your cheques it was because I wanted the money and I took it; if I behaved like a brute to you it was because I wanted to do it and I did it. That’s what you’ve just been saying; you talked about a cook-maid. Hang it all, have I had a better time than you or than a cook- maid? Good Lord, no! Don’t you understand that living with you is worse than anything any cook-maid ever had to put up with?”

Lady Aldington considered him for a minute. “Oh, you poor devil!” she said.

“Good Lord,” Aldington went on again, “if I wanted your money I’d go on forging cheques. I will if I do. But as for putting a price on your liberty... no, I — am not that sort of swine.”

“Oh, but, Aldington,” she exclaimed, “what will you do? You have got all those expensive habits! You can’t get on without..

“Good Lord,” he interrupted her, “what a queer devil a woman is! What does it matter to you what I get on without or what I don’t get on without?”

“But I shouldn’t like to think,” she exclaimed, “of your having to do without the things you are used to. You must let me...”

“Pack of nonsense!” he exclaimed. “If you want your liberty you can divorce me to-morrow. I shan’t defend it; that’s an end of the business.”

“But how are you going to get on?” she asked.

“Oh, good Lord,” he answered, “I don’t know! What does it matter? I’ll find somebody else’s cheques to forge. There’s the entailed property; I can always raise a bit more on that. My mother’s jointure will be falling in some day. I can always blackmail her for a hundred or two. But as for hanging on to you when you don’t want to be hung on to — no, I am not that sort.”

Emily remained for some time gazing abstractedly at a silhouette of her great-grandfather, the eighth Duke of Kintyre, an absurd figure in a huge pot-hat that hung beside one of her wardrobes....

“I don’t understand it all,” she said; “I thought it was going to be so difficult, and you’re making it so easy.”

“Oh, just stick it down in your account books that I’m a gentleman,” he answered. “I remember hearing you and that young fool Tony Wellman arguing in that silly way of yours about what a gentleman was. But I can tell you. It doesn’t matter what he does, and it doesn’t matter what he thinks. But if you come to think of me I’ll tell you what you’ll think. You’ll say I ragged you and I bullied you. But there was some sort of tag that we had to translate at Harrow. I don’t know whether it was Latin or whom it was about. I’ve got no memory. But what it said was that nothing in this life became him like the leaving it. That’s what you’ve got to stick down about me. You won’t want to stick it down because you’ve always loathed me, but you’ve got to do it.”

“Oh, I’ll stick it down,” she said.

“Well, then, that’s an end of it,” he answered; “that’s an end of the whole rotten jackpot. We shan’t, thank God, ever have to see each other again! I guess I don’t ever want to speak to you again. But you can’t stick it down that I wanted to keep you away from a man you wanted. I’m not that sort of a loafer. Nothing in our joint life is going to become me like the leaving it. It’s you that have got to feel mean, if either of us has to.”

“I believe I do feel a little mean,” Emily answered, “though I don’t in the least see why I should.”

Heavy and ungracious, Aldington seemed to waver on his large feet, as if he wasn’t quite certain whether he had anything more to say.

“Oh yes,” he exclaimed at last, “you can do this if you like! I’m a confounded waster, and Mrs. Montmorency is six times worse than I am. And there are the three children. Supposing you settled three thousand pounds a year on Matilda Montmorency. No, don’t settle it; have your solicitors to pay it quarterly, and stop it if you hear she’s tried to mortgage it in any kind of way at all. And let the three children have five hundred a year each for life after the mother’s death. That won’t inconvenience you?”

“No, it won’t inconvenience me,” Emily said. “I think it makes me feel rather obliged to you.”

He looked at her threateningly. “Mind you leave it at that,” he said; “mind you understand that I don’t ask it as the price of your liberty. I ask it so as to give you a chance of obliging me, and that puts you under an obligation to me because you want to oblige me. You will have a better taste in your mouth.”

“Well, I’m not saying that I am not grateful,” Emily answered.

Aldington squared his shoulders and breathed deeply.

“Then, thank God, it’s over!” he said. “I feel as if I’d dropped a beastly big knapsack.” And he went out of the room.

CHAPTER I
I

BUT in however quiet and civilised a manner all this might be arranged, there was no getting away from talk about it, so that the only person who was at all interested in these subterranean matters and who did not know that Lady Aldington was divorcing her husband — the only person who was quite ignorant of it was Sergius Mihailovitch himself. This came about from the peculiar nature of his relation with Emily. He must have seen her certainly every day, and on some days two or three times, but he never really once saw her alone. He would indeed have lunched with her alone at Leicester House but for the fact that when that day came he had been engaged for his duel at Boulogne — death and the hazard of death having precedence of all lunches and the hazard of love. Thus it might be said that in all the things that they could know of each other beneath public eyes they were extremely intimate. Kintyre had really taken that side of the matter in hand. He had fixed up his cousin’s engagement book for her.

He wasn’t a man that did very much entertaining of his own, though now and then he gave a dinner, or in the summer took people to race meetings on a coach. But he had at his orders at least a dozen subservient hostesses who would give entertainments when he wanted them, and ask anybody whom he wanted to have asked. Thus he saw to it that Emily was asked for every night of her life, and that Sergius Mihailovitch was asked on the same nights. And he saw to it too that Macdonald and his cousin were sent down to dinner together. And once that sort of thing is started it continues itself. There wasn’t any lack of people who wanted to have Lady Aldington, and they were all of them glad enough to get Sergius Mihailovitch.

It considerably extended Emily’s visiting list. It made her coachman familiar with parts of London that they had never thought of officially penetrating into. They went into Bayswater, and they went into Hampstead, and they even went into Bloomsbury. And in extending Lady Aldington’s visiting list it extended, too, her view of life.

For until about this date it can’t have been said that she was much more than something like the energetic wife of an extremely lax clergyman. Aldington, that is to say, had the duties of his station; he was a landowner and a peer of a great Whig line. He didn’t attend to any of his duties, and so Emily had conceived that it was for her to take them over. She had, moreover, the duties of her own station — of her immense wealth, of her slum properties, and of her never-ending “interests.” So that, what with attending to the social duties of the two incapacitated Radical cabinet ministers, what with clearing out the rookeries in Glasgow, and conscientiously looking after the administration of hospitals, she simply hadn’t had any personal life at all in the ten years of her marriage to Aldington. Of that sort of semi-public life she knew almost everything. She was as well able to manage a committee as a bank clerk was to manage his fountain- pen. This had given her the touch of coldness and hardness with which she had managed Mr. Dexter. It wasn’t so much that she was rude as that she had only just time enough in which to do all that she had to do. She couldn’t afford to be bothered by listening to the protestations of Mr. Dexter or of anybody else. A meeting was a thing convened to do a certain amount of work. At every meeting there would be a number of persons with a number of different kinds of selfishness. These people had to be silenced somehow or the meeting couldn’t do its work. So that to any such meeting she always went fully advised of what she wanted, and perfectly determined to ignore anything that wasn’t in the nature of a sensible objection to one or other of her determinations.

In almost the same cold way she had considered her relations with Sergius Mihailovitch. She hadn’t any doubt that she wanted to marry him, and she determined to be in a position to do so whether he was or wasn’t. So she simply spoke to her husband and instructed her solicitors without ever having spoken to Macdonald himself. It was an odd, cold, obstinate way of going about things; it was the sort of thing that makes foreigners speak of the English as having a spleen. And she hadn’t any moral scruples of any kind. She felt in herself precisely that she was a public officer with public work to do, and that as long as she did her public work, what she did privately was just her personal reward if she liked it when she got it. She probably could not have put it into words — or she would never have thought of putting it into words — but within her was the feeling that that was what distinguished her as an aristocrat from the rest of the world. A great lady did what she wanted, and it was right; other women had to have standards because they had to have standards. She couldn’t have imagined any other way of looking at it.

Kintyre’s dinners, however, introduced her into an entirely new world. She came across dishes that she would never have imagined, and points of view that she never believed to have existed. It wasn’t that many of Kintyre’s friends were Bohemians; it was simply that all of them were irresponsible. With a certain sort of shyness she came across ladies whose blood, titles or positions were certainly the equal of her own; and they would have extravagantly blonde heads, high voices, and views about the opera. She came across men who were certainly the superior of Aldington in both blood and position; and these men ran theatres, conducted Bohemian clubs, or gave all their attentions to one form or another of fashionable mysticism. And the odd thing, as far as she herself was concerned, was that as far as she could see there was nothing really wrong with these people.

From her old standpoint, which was that of a district visitor on a scale so gigantic that she seemed in a wholesale way to district-visit the entire empire — from her own standpoint it had been almost criminal to think of such a thing as an opera at all. But here she came across ladies of position whose whole mind seemed to be given up to collecting attendances at the opera for all the world as if they were collecting postage stamps. Why, six of Kintyre’s friends went off in a body to Budapesth, men and women mixed up in order to attend the production of an Egyptian fantasia by an Hungarian composer called Gay-Korskaoff, with words by an Italian poet called D’Annunzio.

Lady Aldington really had never imagined that such a thing would be possible, yet one of the gentlemen who made this journey was a British ex-prime minister, who paired for the purpose. It is perfectly true that this gentleman was of a political opinion opposed to that of Lady Aldington’s friends, but although she had heard him speak at least twenty times she hadn’t been expecting to find him a member of what the Countess Macdonald would have called the idle and dissolute Smart Set.

Yet what Lady Aldington had seriously considered to be the duty of serious people in mid-October and early November was to shoot pheasants. Serious people bore the burden of the empire, of the poor, and of the administration of trades and industries for nine or ten months in the year. Now and then they shot pheasants in order to recover their healths. They visited each other in country houses for this purpose, and when they weren’t actually amongst the fusillades of the dripping covert sides they were discussing serious matters in the smoking-room or even at the dinner-table. That late autumn and early winter she had her usual house parties for her usual three big shoots at Aldington Towers. She had her usual guests, except for the fact that Aldington was not there, and Macdonald and Kintyre, and Mr. and Mrs. Pett, and Mr. and Miss Dexter, and the King of Galizia and the Queen-Mother were.

The laws of the country demanded that Aldington should not sleep beneath the same roof as his wife, but Lady Aldington’s very efficient solicitors — Aldington was employing no solicitors at all — decided that it was just possible that Aldington should show himself at some of her political teas. Emily wanted this, because she wanted to delay talk for as long as possible. It wasn’t that she disliked talk, but simply that if there was much of it it might make it necessary for her to have an understanding with Sergius Mihailovitch, and with a feeling of shyness she didn’t want to come to an understanding with him before she was in a position of absolute liberty. So that whilst she was giving her shoots, Aldington was understood to be absent on business in Nova Scotia — and, indeed, Aldington had gone to Nova Scotia with Mrs. Montmorency on the suggestion of Lady Aldington’s solicitors. In this way there was established what is called legal desertion on the part of Aldington.

But, in the queer way that lawyers have of regarding these things, her ladyship’s excellent solicitors could not see anything against her ladyship’s husband being present at her tea parties. It was to be imagined that his lordship in removing his effects from Leicester House must have occasion for conversation with her, to which not even the King’s Proctor could take exception.

Thus, quite frequently enough to confuse the social commentators, the large and awkward figure of Aldington was seen in the background of his wife’s guests. And, moving about near him there was also to be seen the form of the unconscious Sergius Mihailovitch.

It wasn’t so much that Sergius Mihailovitch was really obtuse, but simply that the sort of thing was entirely unfamiliar to his foreign mind. He would never have thought of it; indeed, it would have seemed rather obnoxious to him. He would not have wanted to be in the same room with Aldington in these circumstances. So that when the light did burst upon him it gave him one of several of his bad days. But it came rather slowly.

There was a firm of solicitors called Holland and Buss who had twice written to him asking him to make an appointment for some purpose that they did not specify. Macdonald, imagining that they wished to propose to him some business deal connected with the Resiliens Motor Car Company, did not answer their letters, for he thought they might just as well say what they wanted before wasting his time. But something like a fortnight later he received a bulky and registered letter that, although his correspondence was very heavy, seemed to claim his attention, because it was marked “private” and his business secretary had not opened it. He tore the envelope negligently, and then perceived a sheet of writing paper with the heading of Messrs. Holland and Buss. And along with it came a quantity of bluish-grey paper, endorsed on the folded back in a rather faint type-writing, all in capital letters: “Draft of a Deed of Separation between H.E. the Countess Margaret Macdonald and Count Sergius Mihailovitch Macdonald, Aide-de-camp to H.I.M. The Emperor of Russia, etc., etc.” And in their letter Messrs. Holland and Buss begged His Excellency to call on them for the purpose of discussing this document. Macdonald did not look at the deed, but he stood for a moment reflecting. Then he told his secretary to strike out any engagements that he might have for that afternoon, and to telephone to those gentlemen that he was coming to see them at once.

Mr. Buss was a sleepy, untidy gentleman, in a grey coat, with erect grey hair, a reddish hooked nose. He was rather stout, and at first he seemed to regard the whole matter as an immense joke. He became, however, decidedly concerned as soon as Macdonald placed upon the table the draft deed.

Sergius Mihailovitch said: “You can make this out as soon as you like, and I’ll sign it.”

Mr. Buss leant a little forward over his table and chuckled. He said that if Macdonald would give him the name of his solicitor they could discuss the matter. Macdonald said that he didn’t want any discussion. He hadn’t got a solicitor of his own.

“I haven’t looked at the deed,” he said. “I don’t in the least know what it contains, but I am ready to sign it whatever it is.”

Mr. Buss sat up rigidly in his chair. He did not appear to believe his ears, and gradually a look of concern came into his eyes.

“But I say,” he exclaimed, “look here, you know — !”

“It’s perfectly simple,’’ Macdonald said.” I will give Her Excellency exactly whatever she asks. I won’t discuss anything, because any discussion of the sort would be unpleasant to me.”

“But—” Mr. Buss exclaimed.

“That’s really an end of the matter,” Macdonald said; and he rose from his chair to go.

“But, look here!” Mr. Buss exclaimed energetically, and, rising from his chair, he almost fell backwards over its arm in his excitement. “We can’t do business like that. Such a way of coming to an agreement has never been heard of in all the history of the divorce courts!”

“Then it’s got to be heard of now,” Macdonald said. “You understand that I wish the Countess to have everything that she desires. Or can’t you understand that?”

“But really,” Mr. Buss protested, “I must insist on your consulting a solicitor. It simply can’t be done like this. Supposing — supposing...” And Mr. Buss wavered for a moment. Then he went on with relief: “Supposing that in after years there should be any question of the document. It might be held to be harsh and unconscionable.”

“But there will never be any question of the document,” Macdonald said.

“But your heirs might object?” Mr. Buss protested.

“I haven’t got any heirs,” Macdonald answered. “I just want you to understand that I want her Excellency to have every stick that she asks for.”