Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (156 page)

“Oh, I don’t profess to,” he said, amiably. “But he’s a good fellow.”

Mrs. Moffat’s eyes blazed rather distrustfully at him.

“I’m sure
I
don’t know him,” she retorted.

They went down the steps to the closed door.

“You know” — Mrs. Moffat lowered her voice before she knocked—” there’s not a thing in the place that isn’t for sale — either someone’s security for a loan or maturing for the market.”

George said, soothingly: “That’s more than can be said for my house, and I’m not sure that it is not a pity.”

Gregory sat with his elbows propping him up over a table. He was sedulously examining the portrait of a lady. He did not look round when the door opened. The portrait, seen in perspective, had the dead black of a lace mantilla, and striking, rather crudely white highlights.

Mrs. Moffat said:
“
Here’s George,” and Gregory, with an automatic, hasty movement, dropped a green baize flap over the portrait. His face beamed round at his brother. It was as if to both husband and wife George were a guardian angel.

The door George closed on Mrs. Moffat; Gregory raised the flap from the portrait with a chuckling air, saying, “Pretty good, that.”

It displayed a lady of mature charms and vacuous good-nature, draped, head and shoulders, in Spanish lace, and with a disturbing, masterly indication of a quite uncondoned squint.

George asked, meditatively: “Goya?”

Gregory moved awkwardly round the room. He turned one of half-a-dozen canvases that showed dirty backs.

A long-horned bull stood elastically at bay before a shadowy escadrilla; the just-indicated forms of tier on tier of spectators shut them in. A shadowy, dead and disembowelled horse lay, crushing its picador, just behind the bull.

George pursed his lips. “That’s the Duke of Seville’s ‘
Bull-fight,’
” he said. It undoubtedly was that famous picture. Gregory, with a gesture of his thumb, made it plain that the other canvases were all from the same collection.

“You’re going to have a Spanish Exhibition at the Gallery?” George asked.

Gregory chuckled: “Don’t mention it — up above.”

The room — it resembled a butler’s pantry — was in the very basement of the house. There were thick iron bars before the windows, a large figured almanac facing them, a heavy safe built into the wall. The table was covered with baize to protect the frames of pictures placed upon it for inspection. It had for Gregory the home-feeling of his office at the Gallery.

He settled himself in a revolving chair and took a sheaf of letters from behind the portrait. George recognised the note that he himself had written about his own affairs.

Gregory made a curdling sound in his throat.

“You’re absolutely at the end of your tether, George,” he said.

George, leaning against the window-sill, tapped the walking-stick that he still held against the tiled floor. He said: “Ah!” He sat down facing his brother.

“As far as I’ve gone into the matter, you’ve nothing. Unless you’ve something in the bank.”

“Oh, I’ve a little in the bank,” George said.

Gregory said, “Um,”

Looking sideways at the floor, George tried to figure out what it meant to him. He was ruined. He was penniless. He had something in the bank — enough, perhaps, for two months’ house-keeping. Perhaps for three. He wondered a little how he was taking it. How
was
he taking it? What
did
it mean? He couldn’t tell. It meant nothing; not as much as if a road vanished uphill on the skyline. He hadn’t the least idea what was beyond. He looked at his brother.

“I can’t say I didn’t expect it,” he said. Half a dozen queer pictures of his future presented themselves to him.

Gregory said that the statement was only approximate.

“I suppose you’ve other obligations besides this precious undertaking?” He lifted, with an air of disfavour, the demand from the creditors of the Renaissance Press. “This is the principal, of course? You may, if it’s to be managed, compound it for a couple of thousand. That’s about the last of your capital.”

George said: “Ah!”

“You aren’t subsidising anything else?” Gregory asked.

George shook his head. He did not mean to speak. It had suddenly occurred to him that it might mean — that it must mean — his leaving his house.
“
Can’t — can’t something be arranged?” he interrupted his own thoughts. His voice had a shade of a tremble in it. It struck him that he was taking it very badly. He laughed:
“
But of course nothing can be arranged.”

It ran tumultuously through his head that it must mean that. Some time ago — a long time — he had reasoned it out calmly enough that when the crash came he would have to leave his house and his little town. Then he had concluded that he would not mind it much. Now he was face to face with it.

Gregory was putting him through an examination that worried him a good deal. Had he many debts? Oh! some — the usual ones. A fairly heavy bookseller’s bill. He remembered several dozen of Pouilly, and some of Chambertin. (They had had both wines for Thwaite’s wedding. He had given Dora a complete little library, too. Prettily bound. The shelves had cost a great deal.
They
weren’t paid for.) Something to his tailor? — Practically nothing: not twenty pounds. Something to his tobacconist.

“You don’t smoke,” Gregory said.

“Oh, I give cigars for Christmas presents — and tobacco for the villagers. Snuff, too.”

“For the old women?” Gregory asked, cheerfully.

George nodded. It was rather appalling the way bills mounted up. There must be a couple of hundred.... More, perhaps. He remembered half-a-dozen small accounts he had promised to pay for a man called Dean, who wrote sonnets, and was starving.

“And your debtors?” Gregory asked. George frowned. “Oh, my lending’s always been a figure of speech,” he said.

“You gave,” Gregory said.

“You must know me by this time,” George said.

Gregory beamed at him attentively.

CHAPTER VII
.

THRASHED out fairly fully, the matter ended in a certain indefiniteness. Things might turn out rather better than Gregory had estimated; they might — very much worse. Gregory had made a trip to town for the purpose of inspecting the books of the Renaissance Press.

“I don’t know if you realise,” he said, “what this precious agreement amounts to.” It amounted to George’s being responsible for all the losses. Hailes and, in a lesser degree, Spendle would have taken all the profits had there been any. “Mr. Hailes,” Gregory said grimly, “likes speculating with other people’s money. I can’t quite say whether you’ll be sold up or not. You may be just able to find the money.”

George rose nervously from his chair.

“I say very probably you won’t be sold up,” Gregory said.

George looked through him, a great way away.

“But even if you aren’t,” Gregory advanced a point, “you can’t go on living where you are.”

George began to pace swiftly up and down.

“My personal expenses are nothing.”

“But you’ve always someone in the house,” Gregory pushed the matter. He had always disapproved of George’s hospitality. George stopped angrily in front of him.

“My dear chap,” he said sharply,
“
that’s a pure superstition.”

“Haven’t you anyone now?” Gregory asked. George answered, “No.” Then he stopped confusedly.

He had suddenly remembered that at that moment Carew, Clara Brede’s South American cousin, would almost certainly be reining his horse in before George’s own steps. He would just have returned from his tour among the cathedrals. “At least—” he added.

Gregory said: “Ah!”

George swerved nervously in his stride. He felt intensely irritated.

“It’s only some fool. An absolute
cretin.”
What, in fact, was he doing with such a creature in his house. What did the man mean by being there at all? He had an image of the bearded, jaunty colossus, swinging with his horseman’s stride down his — George’s — own steps and along the clear, quiet streets to the Brede’s cottage. To pay his court to Clara Brede!

He said quickly: “Well, there’s nothing to be made of this discussion. I must get back.” He held out his hand to Gregory. He wanted most intensely to be home.

Gregory shook his head minutely.

“Your house would sell well,” he said. George ignored the question.

“I have found you a purchaser. I’ve got the exact person. You could pay off all the mortgages and just live abroad.”

George said: “I couldn’t think of it.”

The firmness of his own voice surprised him. He was disturbed so as to be hardly conscious of speaking. “I couldn’t think of it,” he repeated. “I must get home. I must get home at once.”

Gregory, rising ungracefully in his chair, seemed to have grown quite small and a long way away. The room itself didn’t matter at all.

Mr. Hailes was saying, exactly two stories above them:

“You really think he can be got to speak for me to your husband,” and Mrs. Moffat was answering:

“Oh, you don’t
know
George.”

They both of them had an air of panic-stricken conspirators with their heads together. They were in Mrs. Moffat’s work-room — all shagreen bolstered arm-chairs and dark panelling.

“After all,” Hailes went on re-assuredly,
“
I don’t see why he should bear me any ill-will. It’s the fortunes of war. The Press
ought
to have succeeded. It isn’t as if I had done anything dishonourable.”

Mrs. Moffat, leaning her chin on her wrist, asked:

“What were you working at with Felicia?”

Mr. Hailes replied with excellent nonchalance:

“Oh, she’s been writing some nonsense for the
Lady’s Magazine.
She asked me to correct the proofs.”

Mrs. Moffat shot an intensely distrustful glance at his unconcerned face. She wanted to discover what untruth lay hidden beneath what she knew to be the transparent veracity of Hailes’ words.

“I should have thought she wouldn’t have wanted to worry you,” she said.

“Oh, I don’t mind,” Hailes answered in the same tone.

They began to answer letters, and to arrange when the local clergy might dine at the house, “We shall have to put the garden party for the 6th,” Hailes said, with his air of competency. “Is Colonel Williams an Honourable, or is it his wife?” He opened a scarlet reference book.

Mrs. Moffat’s fingers drummed on the inlaid green leather of the writing table.

“What, after all, is at the bottom of your transaction with George?” she asked.

Hailes, with the same unconcern, marking with a pale finger his place in the book, explained: “Oh, he wanted to make money. I thought it would be a good thing. I introduced Spendle to him. Some of those presses have earned fabulous sums. I’m afraid this hasn’t, though. I don’t see what he has against me.”

Mrs. Moffat said: “Oh, it isn’t George. It’s how Gregory will take the matter.”

Hailes looked at her interrogatively.

“Gregory will have all the papers in his hands by this time.” She did not for a moment believe in her secretary’s clean hands in the matter.

“Oh,
I
don’t appear in any papers,” Hailes answered. He had taken care of that.

“Gregory worships George,” Mrs. Moffat said.

Hailes ejaculated negligently, “Oh!” After five minutes of reflection he asked: “Has he been saying anything more against me?”

“Oh, Gregory’s never
said
anything at all,” Mrs. Moffat answered. “Nothing, except that, once. It’s precisely his not saying anything—”

Hailes interjected: “Then perhaps I’d better clear out.”

“You mean altogether?” Mrs. Moffat shot at him.

She, like George, was face to face with it — with what she had dreaded. But she wasn’t prepared to accept that sort of bankruptcy.

“I don’t want to cause unpleasantness,” Hailes yawned at her.

She couldn’t, she wasn’t going to, accept this. It was obvious to her that Hailes had a price; that he wanted, as it were, an advance of wages. What
did
he want? What was it? She swished her skirts together with a certain violence of assertion.

“Unpleasantness,” she said blackly. “What do you mean by that? Gregory knows better than to speak to me.”

Hailes got up slowly. He clinked the keys in his trouser pockets, and sauntered towards the tall window.

“Oh, I didn’t know,” he said.

He quite literally didn’t know what Mrs. Moffat wanted. He accepted his post of paid servant, and did his easy work easily until he could see a chance of bettering himself. He wanted to make money; he supposed Mrs. Moffat wanted him to make it for her. That was why she kept him. But it was an extraordinary family. He stood looking out of the window. Mrs. Moffat gave a long look of superacute hatred at his unconscious back.

What did
she
want of him? She hadn’t even yet figured it out. What does a woman want of a man? Admiration? A tacit and continuous acknowledgment of wonder? Sympathy, perhaps, and, above all, no betrayal of a desire to slacken the binding chain, the tie, whatever its nature. That above all; and at the very least a pretence that one is the only woman that counts — the pretence, however shallow, however easy to pierce. And Hailes hadn’t made the least shadow of a pretence of the sort. She absolutely refused to believe that that was his real attitude. He had adopted it; he wanted to screw something out of her — something more.

She perfectly accepted his mercenary nature. It was part of him; it was perhaps part of his attraction. I suppose that what she really wanted was some acknowledgment of a personal attraction, an “influence” over him. If by playing him with a gilt bait, by luring him on, she could wring from him some acknowledgment that would be absolutely independent of the money factor. If! That, in fact, would be the triumph.

She said at last: “And the Spanish scheme? What would become of that?”

Hailes gnawed at his moustache. “We don’t seem to get more forward with it,” he said. “It isn’t worth while, with our resources. We ought to have been there and back.”

“It will have to be for the next season,” Mrs. Moffat said. “We can’t go before September.”

He surveyed her with some interest. “I thought you had dropped the idea,” he said. He pondered a little. “With the money we have — I’ve reckoned it out — we couldn’t make any kind of a show.”

Mrs. Moffat hazarded another card. “I daresay I could find another five hundred” — and, at Hailes’ minute shrug of the shoulders—” or a thousand, perhaps.” The prospect of a long, warm journey in Spain with Hailes had suddenly opened out before her as extremely desirable — a thing to thaw out all sorts of coolness.

Hailes drew the creases out of his waistcoat, ricking his neck back. He began to speak slowly:
“
The fact is we want much more capital.” He was rather mystified; he couldn’t see why Mrs. Moffat should suddenly blow hot after having for months blown extremely cold. He supposed she was suddenly in want of money for some reason unknown to him. “The idea’s too good to spoil. It’s my own, after all. I’ve studied the subject.” He reexplained the details to Mrs. Moffat. “If now you’d go to Mrs. Henwick—” he broke off suddenly.

Mrs. Moffat started into stiffness. “I couldn’t think of it,” she said.

Hailes, still chasing small creases out of his dark suit, said that he couldn’t see why. Mrs. Henwick was the soul of good nature.

“I couldn’t think of it,” Mrs. Moffat repeated.

Hailes said:
“
Oh, well,” and turned again to the window. He said, uninterestedly: “There they both are, George Moffat and your husband, looking at the strawberry beds. Why, Mrs. Henwick’s coming round the corner, too.” It occurred to him that Mrs. Moffat simply didn’t want to let Mrs. Henwick share in the good thing.

“You need only borrow the money. She needn’t stand in,” he returned to the charge. “I’m sure she’d lend it. If there’s any delicacy about it I would speak to her myself.”

“I’ve told you I couldn’t think of it.” Mrs. Moffat repeated with a touch of her old disdain. She had suffered a good deal on seeing Hailes and Mrs. Henwick, as it were, cheek by jowl on the window seat. She was not yet prepared even to think of Felicia as a possible rival. But she certainly was not going to throw opportunities in his way.

“We shall simply have to drop it,” she said, icily.

Hailes continued his survey of the sunny garden with the three figures parading the paths. He answered, negligently: “Oh, very well. By Jove, Mrs. Henwick is showing George Moffat those absurd proofs of hers. Oh, very well, but the idea’s too good, almost, to be lost.”

“You can do as you please about that,” Mrs. Moffat said. She felt an intense disgust with herself for having stooped without conquering this oaf. Who was he? What was he? “You’d better go and order the tea — in the square drawing-room,” she added.

Hailes, chuckling slightly to himself at this sign of his employer’s displeasure — it was always a sign of displeasure to make her secretary perform some slightly menial office — was yet remotely perturbed at the idea of meeting George. “It’s an extraordinary household,” he said to himself. “I wonder now what she
does
want — what she
is
getting at.” He wondered, too, if it would be possible to meet Mrs. Henwick in the shrubbery after tea.

Left to herself, Mrs. Moffat exclaimed: