Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (52 page)

(‘Better love can no man show, than that he lay down his life for his friend.’)

But Hollebone, in tribulation of spirit, said, —

‘Oh, please, please don’t thank me. If you must, won’t you thank God for — for — because — I don’t know how to express it, you know, but something or other?’ and he left the room. The sight of the old man’s grief had unnerved him, and he felt singularly light-headed, only calming himself by a great effort of mind. In the interests of hygiene, to which even sentiment must nowadays give way, he proceeded thereupon to his room to change his things, and it fell about by chance that he came across, in the pocket of his best coat, wherein it had lain for ten days, the letter which Gandon had given him on that eventful day which had seen his hopes tower aloft, and fall supine.

This letter, from curiosity, and from a desire to occupy his thoughts, he opened.

It bore an earl’s coronet, and was from Lord Tatton.

His lordship was writing in a style of the most tragic and desperate, in a handwriting of the most sprawling. Muriel had, so he said, been informed by the backbiters and scoundrels who objected so strongly to his lordship’s reform that his lordship had been, to phrase it mildly, carrying on a flirtation with Mrs Ryves, and that Muriel, believing the calumny, had ‘chucked him overboard.’ His lordship would, moreover, be much obliged if his friend the distinguished chemist would inform him whether chloroform or prussic acid was the most expeditious and pleasant poison for dogs, and so forth.

Hollebone, in his bitterness of spirit, sat down and began a letter, running, —

‘From what I know of Mrs Kasker-Ryves, she would be only too glad to betray her husband, as she has betrayed everyone else that she knows — your humble servant among the number — but, knowing you, it is needless to say that I think the whole thing a lie — and your lady love will probably be thinking the same thing by this time. As to Mrs Ryves, if there was anyone in the world who deserves the punishment that Dante assigns to traitors in his inferno, and whom I hate more cordially—’

But at this moment Mary Ann knocked at the door to say that the supper was ready, and that the children were waiting for him. He therefore finished dressing himself with all speed.

During the meal he forced himself to listen to the conversation of the children, which ran in this way, Maud loquitur, —

‘I wonder what becomes of us when we dies?’

To which Gandon answered, —

‘Why, you know, our stomachs and bodies turn into dust, and our souls go to Heaven or ve Bad Place.’

‘I s’pose God sewed us up and painted us,’ Maud reflected.

Gandon asked, —

‘Why?’

“Cos else ve dust’d fall out, like it does wiv dollies,’ and Gandon assented gravely.

After the supper Hollebone was to tell them stories, which, in his fear of thinking over other matters, he did gladly, to an even later hour than was usual.

Nevertheless, in spite of his various subterfuges, the time came when, having exhausted every sort of occupation, he opined it better to go to bed and attain oblivion in sleep.

Of all places in the world, and of all divisions of time, bed and the night envelop the most unlucky wights. For in bed, even though one may read in vain attempts to divert the mind from dismal prospects, yet the eyes
will
wander from the page to the golden flame of the candle, seeking a solution for the troubles to come; and Hollebone in despair, having extinguished his light, lay in the dark, staring listlessly at the leaden grey squares of the windows, and listening as the wind, fresh from over the sea, battered and rattled against the casement.

‘How I hate her,’ he said to himself. ‘I loathe her as I would a snake, and yet — It seems to be getting lighter outside, or it may be my eyes are becoming more accustomed to the darkness. Yes — I hate her. She has betrayed me, and made a fool of me, for everyone to scoff at,’ and yet, deep down in his heart, he felt that he was doing her an injustice in his mind; but for long hours he tossed and turned, trying to think of other things, or striving with might and main to believe that he hated his beloved. But as his weariness gained upon him the truth forced itself upon him in spite of himself, and his last minute of consciousness before falling to rest found him writhing feebly in agony of mind, and praying to God that in his dreams at least he might be united to her — and then a cold sweat burst out over him, and with it the blessed rest came down from Heaven and bathed his soul with its foretaste of Death.

But in the morning when all is grey, and wounds stiffen for lack of blood, came back the wish to hate his love, and through the day, in its train, followed lack of thought and striving to forget in heavy toil the labours of his mind, so that at night, from sheer weariness of body, whereto his agony of mind added threefold, he fell into dreamless sleep, and sometimes in his revulsions of feeling he hated her, and at other times could not but love — and thus his days revolved, his passions wearing out in their regular rotation a deep groove which rendered their course the more certain.

CHAPTER VII
.

Quien se casa por amores. — Spanish Proverb.

AS a personal opinion, born of experience, the writer would venture to lay down dogmatically that
Fifine at the Fair
is hardly literature that one should attempt whilst in a state of strong mental excitement, and I am bound to state that to a certain extent Edith was responsible for the terrible awakening that followed her doing so.

The poor girl, being perfectly certain that she was dying (though, as Julia forcibly expressed it, that was all ‘bunkum’ ), must needs get up and dress herself within a very short period of Julia’s departing on her expedition to Dymchurch. For within her mind a burning fever was raging, akin to the fury that at times seizes a caged tigress, and her distress was doubled by the knowledge that she had placed herself in the cage, and had wilfully shot the bolts. Her mind had at last succumbed to the strain on it, and temporarily, at least, she could not refrain from allowing her thoughts to fix themselves on Clement, and with the tendency innate in all of us when we commit what we consider to be a crime, in the vain hope of finding some palliation for her sin, she cast about in her mind for some reason that should make her misdeed seem the less grievous, and so, having travelled long in the far-reaching blue desert of her mind, seeking for some little excuse for her shortcomings and shrinkings under temptation, and finding none, she must needs create a false one for herself.

Therefore she had formulated the theory that she was dying. It was, of course, a pretty, childish little idea, but then children have a way of getting enjoyment out of trifles, and Edith was, in ideas at least, a child of no experience in this life, and for petty grief at separation from her love she must find some petty remedy, a quack nostrum for her pain at heart.

But now
that
remedy was beginning to lose its effect, until, acting as an opiate does, her thinking over Clement and his virtues had brought on a fit of wild impatient restlessness that drove all thought of death completely out of her mind.

If a comparative physiognomist had thought it worth while at that stage of her life to carefully study her face he would have noticed that in the quarter-oval sweep of her face from ear to chin there was a slight deficiency in the place where the muscles of the jaw should have been strongest, and her eyes were sufficiently deep set to allow of a light’s rising in them such as had never yet had occasion to appear, but the space for the muscles of the jaw was ample, and it would need but a little contradiction to cause the light to rise into the grey-brown eyes, and it is this force of the jaw that is the cause, and the light in the eyes that is the sign of strength of character in mankind.

On the morning of the day on which Julia went to Dymchurch Mr Kasker-Ryves sat reading to his wife, reading an ordinary novel of the yellow back type. But, somehow, a disquieting suspicion had for some days been arising in his mind, and it recurred to him over and over again, after the fashion of disquieting suspicions, and with a view to setting his mind finally at rest on the subject he took the novel merely as a vehicle for giving a general tirade on the subject of the way people make love in novels.

‘Upon my word,’ he said at last, throwing the book down, ‘I could write a better novel myself. I know if I were a girl and a fellow came to me and talked as this man does I should throw something at him. Well, just think of it. That
isn’t
the way young men go on when they’re making love, is it, dear?’

Edith turned her eyes downwards, and a hot flush spread slowly over her cheeks.

‘No, I s’pose it isn’t,’ she said, with a forced laugh, and Mr Kasker-Ryves laughed in return, a forced laughed too; but then he was a much better actor than she, and
his
laugh sounded quite genuine.

‘Oh, well,’ he said cheerfully, ‘I
do
hate leaving a book unfinished when one’s once begun it, and we may as well finish it. There are only two more chapters.’

And he went on reading. But Edith, had she been paying any attention, would have noticed that he was not reading with one half of his former elegance and expression. The fact is Mr Kasker-Ryves was gnashing his mental teeth (and one can’t read very well when one is doing that) for he had felt certified that his suspicion was confirmed.

No doubt he was correct in the conclusion he had arrived at, but nevertheless he was wrong in the facts that he used to certify himself, for, had he cared to think of it,
any
girl would blush at being asked a question as to how a young man makes love — the very nature of the question calls for a blush whether the girl has been a flirt or steadfast in love — but, then, Mr Ryves did not allow such a consideration to enter his head.

Mr Kasker-Ryves was determined to think that his wife was in love, and he would have thought so even though she had never blushed, for would not that have been a sure sign of meretricious composure?

Therefore, when he saw the deep flush mantling her erstwhile pale cheeks, a hatred, demoniacal in its intensity gripped his heart. For some says it had been preparing itself, but now it burst forth. Mr Kasker-Ryves, however, was a cautious man, and did nothing without deliberation, and therefore he went on with the reading for the moment, although the hand wherewith he held the book was trembling so much with suppressed fury that he had some difficulty in seeing the print. Indeed so enraged was he that, although he would fain have desisted from reading, he could not think of even the most trivial excuse for leaving off, and so he read on until he had quite regained his composure and a servant entered with a telegram.

He tore open the envelope.

‘H’m,’ he said, and then his face brightened.

‘Oh,’ he went on, ‘here’s a telegram from Jemmy to say that he’ll be here by the one-three train. It’s now twelve. Dear me, I’ve been reading to you for two hours. I hope I haven’t tired you.’

But she answered, —

‘Oh no, it was delightful, and I’m feeling much better to-day. I will try and get up after Dr Long has been here.’

And Mr Kasker-Ryves answered gladly, —

‘Oh, I
am
pleased to hear you say so. Only, be careful and don’t overdo it. I shall take the carriage over to the station and get some lunch there, at the Mitre, if he’s late. It’s such a long way that I’m afraid I should be too late for the train if I waited for lunch here. I suppose you will be all right until I come back. I sha’n’t be late.’

Inconsistent as it was in her, she could not help saying to herself discontentedly, ‘He cares for his son much more than he cares for me, and he will run off and leave me even when I’m ill to welcome him back.’ But that was only due to injured vanity in her, not jealousy of her stepson.

Aloud she said, —

‘Oh no, I daresay I shall manage well enough.’

Nevertheless she grew more unhappy than ever, so that at last she worked herself into such a passion of impatience that her muscles trembled in her fierce thirst for action, and arising, she dressed herself and tried the effect that walking backwards and forwards in her room would have on her nerves. Now a good straight level walk, with say a couple of miles of hill work in it, will take the devil out of anyone, even a girl in love, for it acts as a sedative or counter-irritant; but a walk up and down in a room, even though a spacious one, has the exactly reverse effect, for the constant stoppage and turning sets the brain in a whirl, and the thoughts a-dancing like motes in a sunbeam. Thus by the time Dr Long arrived she had worked her fever up considerably.

The doctor was a shrewd man, and knew as well as she did what was the nature of her disorder, but naturally did not think fit to reveal his knowledge; and inasmuch as, in the opinion of Dr Long, it is an absolute necessity for a professional man never to abstain from giving a prescription when called in to a case, he prescribed for her mild sedatives, but ‘not poppy nor mandragora,’ etc., etc., as he knew very well, and so he let the fever run its course, allowing his patient her own sweet will to a large extent. However, to keep up his show of authority, he reproved her gravely for having got up without his permission, and then took his leave.

‘If that girl doesn’t leave off fretting she’ll fret herself to death — only, she’s rather too young to care so
very
much as all that for anyone,’ he said to himself.

Edith, however, ate her lunch with a slight amount of relish, and since she had raged herself into a semi-exhausted condition, afterwards feeling in a somewhat more pensive state of mind, established herself on a window seat in the second library and looked out into the fog. Without, the yellowness seemed tear inducing, and made the very trees, in the dankness, have a white, lustreless teardrop hanging at every branch end. But Edith was in no weeping mood, for she was finding soured joy from the very depths of the caverns of her pensiveness. Few who are not pessimists can imagine the cosy feeling of completeness that there is in pessimism, for it has many joys of its own unknown and undreamt of by the busy optimist world without, and Edith’s vanity was flattered by the thought that Fate was against her. She felt pleased that it should take so much trouble as to be so completely and consistently her foe in everything, and this feeling of a proprietary right to Fate soothed her, and calmed her to such a degree that, trusting too fully in her powers, she determined to take a book and read. Now this determination is always fatal to one’s piece of mind, or at least it was so with Edith. But that fact had never struck her, at least in the right light, and opening one of the folding-doors that led into the first library, she entered and took down
Fifine at the Fair
, and with this in her hand she returned to the second library, neglecting to close the folding-door, which was unfortunate, because it left her in a draught between it and the fireplace, to obviate which she drew a screen round the back of her chair, a comfortable bamboo lounge.

Clement and she had been accustomed to employ themselves at times of an evening with improving their minds by reading together various classical authors. Indeed, one of the things which had attracted him to her, in the first place, was a discussion that had taken place between them as to the relative merits of Dante and Petrarch, in which she had espoused, with perhaps a little too much warmth, the claims of the latter; in the first place, the personality of Petrarch was to her more attractive than the austerity of Dante’s, besides which, by a coincidence, she had a curious love of the
Sonata Petrarca.
These literary evenings had been to both of them a source of joy, although after a time the literature suffered considerably from interludes — when Julia happened to absent herself. This, by-the-bye, is a digression, but I meant to impress upon the reader the fact that
Fifine at the Fair
was full of associations to Edith — not so much from the significance of the poem itself, but because it had been the last of the books they had thus read together, and it was full of a sense of sweet regrets and lingering kisses.

And so, with the pleasantness of recollection, the comfort of the lounge, the warmth of the fire, and the soothing feeling of exhaustion after her late storm of passions, she fell asleep, and lay dreaming calmly, without foreboding.

Julia could never discover afterwards what had occurred to change the bent of Edith’s mind so entirely in the course of a single day.

‘Why, whatever have you been doing with yourself, Edie?’ she said. ‘If you’d been reading Schopenhauer’s remarks against our sex all night long, and then took it into your head to revenge yourself by a violent attack on your own account on the other side, you couldn’t be worse than you are. You see it really don’t pay for a girl to be took that way — always looks a little foolish, doncher know? A girl ain’t supposed to have a right to ideas — on anything in particular.’

‘Well, but, Ju,’ Edith interrupted, ‘how was he looking?’

‘Who d’you mean? Oh, him. Well, he looked about as sick as a bear with a sore head, and he could hardly stand.’

‘Is he — is he fretting?’ she said, blushing in spite of herself.

‘Why, no, it’s not so much that — it’s overwork. You see he’d been riding all day long, and it’d made his legs a little stiff.’

‘And did he know anything about my — my being—’

‘Oh, no, he didn’t know anything at all about it. You see you’d made him promise never to ask anyone about you, and so he hadn’t.’