Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (481 page)

It is not to be imagined that he either starved or was even very much worried during this period of six months or so. Indeed, worry about money was a thing entirely foreign to his nature. He would have promised almost anyone at any moment two hundred and fifty pounds as a gift, and somehow or other, up to this time, he had always managed to make it good. And the hospitality of London was so profuse that although upon occasion he had to walk home from a dinner, he was never without a dinner to go to, though occasionally he couldn’t get a lunch for want of the money. As for breakfast, there was a very ugly old woman who came in every morning from the mews. She made him a cup of tea, cut him some bread-and-butter, and very perfunctorily put his bedroom in order, but that was all the attendance that he got.

It was part of his scrupulousness that he never used the Resiliens’ cars to take him from place to place, except when it might have been in the nature of an advertisement, just as it was possibly part of his unscrupulousness that he never troubled much about returning the hospitality that he had from one person or another. And it was probably part of the usual sunniness of his disposition that what for most men would have been sordid in his circumstances never troubled him in the least. It struck him rather as fun, or perhaps even as a rather British and business-like proceeding, to negotiate with the pawnbroker, though it is perfectly true that his negotiations worked out in his merely taking whatever was offered him.

Just every now and then it appeared to him quaint that he should pass for one of the best dressed and wealthiest young men in his particular set. That he did this he knew very well, because it was forced upon his attention from time to time. Thus, at one of his several clubs Mr. Reggie Wyndham approached him one day and asked him what sort of socks were likely to be worn next spring. Sergius Mihailovitch answered that he simply hadn’t the least idea. At this Mr. Wyndham rejoined:

“Oh, that’s nonsense; you know you’re the best dressed man in London. Some of us think you’re even over dressed; but, at any rate, I know half a dozen fellows wait till you put on something new and then go and order it.”

“So that I set the fashions?” Macdonald said; then he laughed, for, as a matter of fact, the state of his wardrobe was very much governed by accident, or by the will of Messrs. Zimmermann, who advanced money on portable property.

On another occasion the Earl of Portadown approached him at Lady Aldington’s and suggested that they should go shares in buying the lease of the Talavera Theatre and running it themselves, because it was said that Mr. Montagu Everard was giving up that flourishing business at the request of his wife. Portadown said that they would not need a capital of more than eighty or ninety thousand, and when Macdonald said that he couldn’t spare the money, Portadown answered resignedly:

“Well, I suppose it’s not very much in your line, but I thought you wouldn’t mind chucking the money away upon a little flutter.”

And Macdonald, who happened to have three coppers in his right trouser pocket, clinked the coins agreeably, and answered:

“My dear fellow, I’d willingly throw away all the capital I possess on anything that amused me, but I can’t imagine that running a theatre would be anything but a beastly grind.” And upon the whole Portadown was inclined to agree with him, and as Mr. Everard had not the least idea of selling the Talavera the matter fell through.

Just for minutes now and then it would come into Macdonald’s head to wonder whether he was not in what his wife would have called the halls of the gilded great by false pretences. And then again he would remember that he was actually a man of respectable substance. He was worth two thousand eight hundred pounds a year, and he was as well born as anybody he could possibly meet, whilst his official position and his own title gave him precedence on an equality with an English earl. There wasn’t anything technically the matter with him, for it was entirely his own affair if he chose to allow the Countess two thousand pounds a year, and if various other people without any claims swallowed up the greater part of the eight hundred pounds.

But if these things didn’t worry him at all, or worried him in the very least when he was tired with running about or rendered unwell by his housekeeper’s tea and bread-and-butter, which were things that he detested, he had other depressions enough. And his depressions came from that essential dark forest which is the heart of another. He had to come across so many basenesses, little and big, and so many mere selfishnesses, big or little, and whether these affected himself or merely other people, they troubled him beyond all reason. It was the one thing that really affected him. As a person with a training into which French literature and the French spirit had entered very largely he was perfectly able to stand as it were erect, and to say cynically, when he heard of basenesses or of cruelties: “
Cela vous donne une fière idée de l’homme!”

He was perfectly ready to avow that his fellow-beings were wolves, and that the only way to attain to prosperity and happiness was to be a kingwolf of some pack. But always at the bottom of his heart there was the feeling — it may have been part of his Russian blood or it may have been part of his English public-school training — the feeling that all humanity, if you could understand them, if you could get at them in the right way, were at least as chivalrous as himself. That a Russian Czar or a royal bureaucracy should execute a hundred and fifty thousand political prisoners a year did not disturb this serene philosophy. For that was part of their game — of their particular political game, and as you would expect nothing else, it was neither dishonest nor disappointing. It would be the same thing with a British squire who stole common land from his cottagers, or with a British workman who stuck his coat up a steampipe in order to ruin his employer’s costly machinery because his employer’s foreman had refused to let him steal three hundredweight of coal. That was the sort of thing that you expected.

And even from his Countess there was literally nothing that he didn’t in the end expect. The trouble was that he just simply couldn’t discover what her code of morals was. He never had been able to. He had at first taken her to be honourable, truthful, patient, with some sort of comprehension for humanity and particularly for himself. But one by one all these things went by the board. And, though he let it go at that, he couldn’t arrive at any fixed standard whatever. She seemed to be perpetually breaking out in a new place. He couldn’t have imagined that she would have been capable of sending Miss Dexter to him as she had done, and he couldn’t have imagined that she could have been capable of leaving the girl in the lurch as she did. That sort of thing gave him such severe shocks as to render him really ill. His mind was too sensitive to stand it, and for the time being he would be deprived almost of his senses and his power to control himself.

It was on the following day that he sought the advice of the Duke’s solicitors, Messrs. Lumsden and Lumsden. The particular Mr. Lumsden that he saw was a young alert man, with a touch of the Jew in his appearance, though actually he was not a Jew at all. But he wore a navy blue tie with many white spots upon it. He listened with attention whilst Macdonald concisely and seriously gave an account of his interview with Mr. Buss, the Countess’s solicitor. Macdonald related how he had said that he was perfectly ready to sign the deed of separation as it stood, and how appalled Mr. Buss had immediately become; and he related that Mr. Buss had become still more appalled when he had said that he wanted the Countess to have exactly all that she asked, and how Mr. Buss had quite literally fallen down when he had said that he didn’t in the least want to marry anyone in the world. And Sergius Mihailovitch was aware of feeling exceedingly naïve before this young man when he explained that he was still perfectly bewildered and could not in the least understand what it all meant.

“And what does it really mean?” he asked.

Mr. Lumsden gave a perfunctory glance at the deed itself and then burst into a fit of laughter that lasted several minutes. He couldn’t stop himself. When he was quiet Sergius Mihailovitch continued:

“I ought to add that although at the time I hadn’t the least idea of marrying any one, to-day I distinctly wish to do so, though of course I haven’t any prospect of its coming off.”

Mr. Lumsden pushed the deed a little further away. “Oh, that will be all right, that’ll be all right,” he said confidently and comfortingly. “I don’t in the least want to know whether you want to many or not. I will fix it all up for you with Mr. Buss. It will be perfectly easy.”

“But what does it all mean?” Sergius Mihailovitch asked.

Mr. Lumsden evaded the question. He began to ask for details as to what facilities Sergius Mihailovitch could give the Countess for divorcing him. Had there been any act of cruelty? Could Sergius Mihailovitch throw a teacup at the Countess? And when Macdonald said that he certainly couldn’t do anything of the sort, Mr. Lumsden sighed slightly and said that it would have to be desertion. “Now, what about adultery?”

“Oh, look here,” Macdonald said, “that’s your business! You’ve got to arrange all that.”

“Well, you’ve got to be at our disposal,” Mr. Lumsden said, “more particularly at the disposal of Mr. Buss. As we’re obliging them he’s bound to make the circumstances such as will not be disagreeable to you. Now, about the desertion. Of course you’ve got to stop the Countess’s allowance until she files her petition.”

Macdonald exclaimed angrily: “I’m damned if I will!”

“But, my dear sir,” Mr. Lumsden exclaimed,
“
you’ve got to! That’s the law. You can’t help the Countess to what she wants if you don’t commit an offence against her. And you’ve either got to hit her or stop her money for form’s sake. There’s no third way, but you can just take your choice of those two.”

“But if I do stop her money,” Macdonald said, “you’ve got to explain with absolute clearness to Mr. Buss that it
is
for form’s sake.”

“Oh! of course, of course,” Mr. Lumsden said soothingly. “Then there’s really nothing more to be talked about. You’ll put yourself quite at the disposal of Mr. Buss. That means to say that you’ll stop at the same hotel in Brighton — that’s the best place — with any female you like to pick up anywhere. And you’ll enter your name in the hotel books as Count and Countess Macdonald or Mr. and Mrs. Thompson — whichever you like; but the former’s better, because it saves much of the expense of identification by waiters and chambermaids.”

“But I’m hanged if I’ll drag in my name — the name of my ancestors...” Macdonald was beginning hastily.

“Then make it Mr. and Mrs. Thompson,” Mr. Lumsden said quickly. “Don’t pray get excited. This is what the law asks. You’ve got to satisfy the law.”

Macdonald remained silent.

“Of course you’ve got to have your name dragged in,” Mr. Lumsden said. “It will be in the papers. If we don’t defend — and we shan’t — the papers won’t pay much attention to it; but you’ve certainly got to have your name dragged in.”

Macdonald simply bowed his head. “All right,” he exclaimed after some time, “I shan’t make any fuss. It’s to be exactly as you want.”

“Then that’s all,” Mr. Lumsden said. He pushed the deed still further from him. “This document isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. The Court will grant the Countess a third of your income, and your furniture and effects will revert to you.”

“But I’ve already said,” Macdonald exclaimed, “that I want the Countess to have the whole of my income from the Russian Government, and she’s to keep all the things.”

“That’s a matter of private arrangement afterwards,” Mr. Lumsden said; “it’s nothing whatever to do with the law. We can’t make an agreement before the divorce, because that would be collusion and it would stop everything.”

“But what’s the meaning of this agreement, then?” Macdonald said almost violently. “What does it
mean?
”

A queer as if inward smile passed over the face of Mr. Lumsden.

“It means,” he said, “that by English law..

“I don’t want to hear about English law,” Macdonald said. “It appears to be a disgusting thing. Here you’ve got two people perfectly willing to separate, and it can’t be done without one or other of them consenting to make what the English law would consider a beast of himself.”

“Well, I’m not here to talk about English law,” Mr. Lumsden said, “neither are you; but unless you let me explain what the English law is, I can’t tell you what this document means.”

Macdonald remained silent, and then Mr. Lumsden tentatively continued: