Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (160 page)

It was Dora’s first admission to the intimate personality of her husband. He began to rave at her, too. He was going to take her away from her sister; he was going to knock these ideas out of her head. He was going to speak to her father. An abominable intrigue was going on between her sister and George Moffat. That was what George Moffat had been up to all along. It was a scandal. They had conspired to rob him of Dora’s money. To Dora it was like death.

It was something like it to George, too. He stood for a long time pondering over it. His drawing-room, lit up with many candles, lay rich and glowing round his solitary meditation. The portentous “Troth bideth frendshepe,” scrawled across the flamboyant bookcase, greeted him fantastically with its inscrutable, incomprehensible message. Truth had certainly outbided most of his friendships — and this too. In Thwaite’s tone there had been a bitterness of outrage, of insult against himself. He could not understand why. But in this case, as in so many others, the worry and fret of circumstance had been too much for old friendship. And he had passed his word for Thwaite; he had blindly pitchforked him into the Brede family; he was responsible. It was a miserable business. He sighed rather heavily and went back to Mr. Brede.

The great clergyman raised his head from an abstracted scrutiny of the shiny table-cloth; he smiled almost gaily as George entered the room.

“I’ve taken a resolution,” he said. His smile gave George a momentary and warm feeling of satisfaction. Young Scraithe, the Vicar here, had asked him to give a sermon to the Volunteers on Sunday. He was going to do it. There was a sort of heavy firmness in his speech.

He went on to explain, rather animatedly, pushing the wine-glasses aside to allow room for the gestures of his arms, that during dinner he had been immersed in doubts. He hadn’t dared to face the idea of officiating again.

“But what you said to me on Monday came into my mind. I’ll do it.”

What George had said on Monday was one of George’s innumerable platitudes — that a man who can’t do his work may just as well die. Of all the time and the innumerable words that he had expended in the service of Mr. Brede, this copybook phrase, dropped by chance to fill in a chain of ideas, had proved his salvation!

It seemed to amount to salvation.

“Yes, by Jove,” he said, “if I can’t do my work, I may as well die. I’m going to do it. I’ve been malingering and shirking too long.” He straightened his gigantic back, and looked with a certain tenderness at George.

“You’re a good fellow, Moffat,” he said. “I don’t know why you do it.”

A certain look in his eyes — a certain similarity of his tone reminded George overwhelmingly of Clara. He wondered why he
had
done it now that it was at an end. Because with Mr. Brede’s sermon on Sunday evening it would be at an end. He arranged with himself to walk over to the Junction after he had heard that Mr. Brede was safely through. He would catch the last train and the night-boat.

It was at an end. He felt a warm glow of satisfaction. He had carried through a difficult, but surely not a thankless task. He felt, too, a warm liking for the great, uncouth and passionate man who sat opposite him. Perhaps it was only because he was Clara’s father; perhaps because of the likeness, the curious family similarity that is like a familiar voice speaking unmistakably, but through a veil. There was in them both the same passionate steadfastness in what they had in hand, a certain imperviousness to outside influence, and at the same time a persuasibility — a docility when they thought the persuader was to be trusted in.

“I shall be able to touch some of them up.” Mr. Brede was referring to his sermon. “Make them see things. An awakener, an eye opener is needed somewhere in days like these.” He was speaking buoyantly and confidently.

For George a certain glow came into the room; it was as if, after all, on this last evening there was again a touch of success, a last glimmer of the sun.

Behind his back Clara Brede came in. He did not look round. “Tracts
against
the Time,” Mr. Brede chuckled, “that’s what’s needed.”

George knew that Clara Brede, with her habitual patient movement, was sitting down to listen to their discussion. Suddenly Mr. Brede reached across to pat her hand clumsily.

The gesture carried George’s eyes with it to Clara herself. She was looking at him.

“You’re a good girl, Clara,” Mr. Brede said. “Very patient with me.”

She turned her eyes upon her father; they were a little starred, as it she had been crying. Her face was rather pale. George felt his familiar but more deep emotion of intolerable pitifulness. He was at the bottom of this grief of hers; he had brought it into her life.

“I think,” she said, slowly, “if Mr. Moffat can be so patient with us all, it’s no great merit in me to do my duty.” Mr. Brede again, and as if confirmatorily, patted her hand. “
He
set me the example.”

George read in her eyes a gratitude for having left her alone in the garden. She had suffered a great deal to hear Thwaite abusing her to George. But she didn’t care, because George had defended her. She had heard him say she had a noble spirit.

CHAPTER V
.

It was as if from cellar to roof of his great house not an association remained appreciable or poignant. The centre of his life had changed from it to the Bredes’ cottage; the whole of his past had grown dim and entirely negligible. It hadn’t mattered more than the merest passing of time; it hadn’t been a life, it was the merest dallying with trifles and with triflers. It seemed impossible that he could have spent years of his time in amassing the immense dead-weight of the house and its contents. He had given the best of his life to it. Now it had crushed him with its beams, its mullioned windows, its groined stones; it, and what it represented — the frame of mind, the profuse and unreflecting giving; the parasites it had attracted to him.

He went leisurely from room to room collecting his more personal relics; a few books, some small sketches of his father’s, a portrait or two, some drawers full of old letters from his wife. He was neither very dazed nor very regretful. He acknowledged that for this reaping he had sown. He was not going to yelp.

In this disturbing of old and dusty corners, this burning of old papers, a rather onerous solitude descended upon him. He recognised with some gratitude his own loneliness, his want of dependents, of responsibilities. There was no one to care very much, except perhaps Clara and perhaps her father. Not even Thwaite.

Thwaite had driven him away a little earlier than he had expected, a day or two — perhaps a week. He had meant to have had again a few of the good old talks. Now that wasn’t any more possible. He would have to write to Thwaite — to make one final attempt to get him back to reason. He had been fond of the man. Even yet he was not going to believe that he would not find
some
way to touch him.

Thwaite had gone to London and had taken Dora with him. They had left a message that they would not be back for a week. In a week George would be in a small town in the North of Italy.

It was a place that he had visited two or three times. There was a small and rather presentable
pension
where they cooked bearably enough; the ruins of a Roman circus; some shady walks by the side of the Adige. That was to be the end of him. After the final settlings up there would remain enough to keep him for a year or two; after that the gods must provide, or kind death, or his pen.

He stuck to his image of
“
walking out” — there was no reason why he should not. He was going to send his small baggage by rail in the morning of the Sunday, and he was going to walk away by himself, after taking a swift leave of the Bredes at their supper. Mr. Brede would just have delivered his sermon. George felt still a warm satisfaction at the thought. There at least was one thing he had not bungled.

He had figured it all out, down to the minute details. He would have handsome cheques in his waistcoat pockets for his servants who were to be engaged by his successor. On the Saturday night after his supper — it would be the last he would take there — he discovered that he had no labels for his luggage.

On his way to the Bredes, he turned in at the infinitesimal grocer’s shop, whose lamps made a brilliant spray in the dusky street. The shop was full of the hard-featured villagers huddled together before the swift passage across the counter of the Saturday-night packages. A sudden hush fell on it, and all the faces turned to George. A ferret-eyed woman with a battered straw hat and an unsightly basket on her arm threw back her head and laughed shrilly. Small nudges of elbows passed among them all. George was used to the black and bitter envy of all villagers for all the “Quality,” but he was astonished at the more than usually candid want of concealment. An old man with singularly heavy boots and a thin fringe of hair beneath his chin touched his hat, groped up his small parcel of tobacco, and hobbled with grotesque haste out of the shop. He was followed by all the others. A solitary yell of laughter went up from outside, and the faces of the village boys appeared glued against the windows.

The grocer, a diminutive and stout, beady-eyed man, whisked away a copy of the local paper that sprawled its coarse type across the counter. He produced with an apologetic air a small bill—” for embrocation for your housekeeper, forgotten when we sent in the account to-day.” George paid it and made his purchase.

“We’ve had dealings a great many years,” the grocer said, with a friendly and inane smile. “I trust I’ve given satisfaction.” He wished George good-night with
empressement.

At the top of the descending street George caught, whirled against the sky, the swift and sinister flash of the great light on the French coast. He paused and looked at it; that, too, he was seeing for the last time from that place. He was going a long way beyond that horizon.

He made his way to the Bredes’ cottage. The familiar and hoarse giggling voice went up from the hardly distinguishable, lounging group of young men at the church-yard corner.

“There’s old, ‘That’s-what-you-want.’”

Another commented more shrilly:
“
What’s
‘e
want now.” There was a roar of laughter.

It added a little to his sadness. That was the best that could be done for him, in his own town, after so many years. Clara was alone; her father was preparing his sermon. She smiled when George entered.

CHAPTER VI
.

IT really seemed to amount to no more than the mere leaving a woman, and walking away from a house. He looked forward to the time when it would be all over, to a quiet and grey expanse of unnoteworthy days. It was as if he were getting off very cheaply — too cheaply. It was, in fact, all over already; he passed a good night. He had finished all his preparations; he had before him only a few hours of nothing to do — of sunshine, of intense leisure, and then hurried farewells. It was a quite still Sunday morning; there wasn’t a quiver of wind in the cottage climbing roses. He walked towards the Bredes’. Not a soul was in the wide, swept streets; the sheep in the churchyard meditated among the tomb stones; on the ridge of the church roof a long row of starlings was aligned and motionless, as if they, too, in the heavens observed the decencies of the Sabbath. He was going to spend his last day with the Bredes.

Clara Brede was standing in the gate-way. She had one hand across her forehead; she was quite obviously waiting for him. She held, drooping limply, the country paper; her face was hard and drawn; there were on it little lines that George did not recognise. She said suddenly:

“What is this?”

And George had to face, as if thrust accusingly up at him, a paragraph copied from a London journal. It began:

“The world of letters will be deeply concerned to learn of the great financial losses sustained by Mr. George Moffat,” and it gave accurately enough a detailed account of George’s position. In his swift and gasping glance George caught that his “magnificent house in which so many men of letters and the arts had spent unforgettable hours had already been disposed of, and that we understand he is leaving immediately for the South of France.” He even saw the words, “Renaissance Press.” He breathed a heavy sigh of exasperation.

“Is it true?” Clara asked.

He did not look at her face; he kept his eyes on the paper. He learned dazedly that his many friends were organising a testimonial to him; that Prince Nicholas of Moldavia had headed the list with a munificent donation in return for George’s services to Moldavia. Even the balalaika was there.

Clara said in a constrained tone: “It’s rather cruel of you not to have told us, isn’t it?”

He read that the secretary and organiser was Mr. C. T. Hailes. This grotesque and horrible affair was Hailes’
“
good turn.” He had given the paragraph to the papers; that was why it was so accurate.

“It’s rather cruel of you, isn’t it,” she repeated, “not to have told us?”

Her voice had a cold ring of accusation. It came suddenly and dismally into his mind that it was rather cruel.

“A servant showed it to me last night,” she said.

She had learned the news from a servant. Her dry and dim eyes showed him that she had had a bad night. Standing in the gateway she had made no move to let him pass; she was stopping the way, and he realised, with a sudden pang, that he was not to spend his last morning with her. Her pallid face seemed to blaze accusingly at him like a white flower in the shadow of a moonlight night.

She hated him. She had hated him all through an interminable night. A servant had brought her the paper with a little giggle just after George had left. He had been talking to her calmly and very pleasantly. He had been concealing this wicked thing even then. And she had thought he had cared for her; she had thought he was interested in her. She was a laughing-stock to herself. She, Clara Brede! He had been raising a public subscription; he hadn’t even come to them. He was too distinguished! He had been kind to them, as he might be to the lower animals. She understood what the artist’s pride is. She and her father were Philistines; they were outsiders — people you didn’t talk to about your private affairs. And she had thought he was interested in her. And she loved him. Ah, heavens! by what right could men make women love them, and then treat them like dust? By what right; by what force? How did they dare to smile; to be amiable; to behave as if they were attentive and interested, when they meant nothing?

She said bitterly:
“
My father must not know till after his sermon.” She had to keep all shocks off him. How was she to keep
this. “
He is preparing it for to-night.”

George said:
“
No, no,” and then, “I’m sorry. I thought — I had thought—” It struck him like a calamity that he had never thought of her feelings. He had wanted to keep his image in her eyes as prospering, as buoyant, as untouched. He had left her to learn the truth from a servant. The thought of her father, sitting absorbed and intent, as if caged up in his tiny room, contented and relieved of gloom, became suddenly poignant to him, like the figure of a man unconscious and threatened by an assassin’s knife.

He said quickly:
“
No, no! don’t let him know and then: “I’m going away to-night.”

It was as if something swift and deadly passed from her eyes to his, as if she had struck him. Her lips moved, twitching convulsively. He dropped his eyes like a culprit.

He heard her say:
“
Yes, I must keep it from him.” Her voice was low and as if abstracted. “He was very — we were both — very — very — fond—”

It was as if he only remembered it afterwards. He had been horribly upset; he had been casting about for some consoling word that would be convincing. She had already turned away; he had caught at her hand. He had said: “I didn’t tell you because I loved you.” She had snatched her hand passionately and hatefully from his fingers and had gone. From the bedroom window, that, among rose-leaves, stood open above his head, he heard the sound of sudden, suddenly hushed sobbing.

There was a footstep on the gravel behind him. A boy put a telegram into his hand. He did not look at it. It seemed odd that a telegram should be delivered on a Sunday, till he recollected that it wasn’t quite ten o’clock. A carriage rattled past behind his back. He couldn’t understand what he had done.

He heard confused sounds from the carriage behind him. It stopped. He recognised a familiar voice. Why must people bother him now? He turned swiftly and saw his brother. Gregory was advancing, blinking in the bright sunlight. His hand was held nervously out, his beaming smile was shaded right down to the eyes by an old, broad-brimmed, grey hat.

He said:
“
I wasn’t certain when you were going. But I don’t want to be in the way.” He looked at the Bredes’ cottage.

“Oh, we’ll go home,” George answered.

He seemed to be turning, with a finger on his lips, from beside some death-bed. The low, yellow cottages, embroidered with joyous creepers, looked, in the vivid light, as if they smiled ironically and had become strange and hostile.

Gregory said: “You didn’t let me know what you were going to do.”

It came into George’s head that his brother must have been afraid that he was going to commit suicide.

Gregory seemed plunged in intense meditations. He paused at George’s gate and absently inspected the latch. His face was intent and abstracted; there were deep lines about the mouth. His shoulders stooped more than ever. He said:
“
You had an article sent you by that man Hailes.”

George drew a deep breath. That horrible man was at the bottom of this misery. And he had told Clara Brede that he loved her. It filled him with a sudden horror. He said: “Yes, I gave the article to Thwaite. I think Thwaite sent it back.”

Gregory came to a stop and drove his stick into the turf at the side of George’s drive. He pondered for a long time over the little hole.

George felt horribly sick and ill. It came back more and more insistently that he had told Clara that he loved her. It had slipped out. He had hardly realised it at the time. He had hardly heard himself speak, because he had been so moved. Now the words seemed to shout at him. Perhaps, though, she hadn’t heard. She had been so angry. Or she might regard his words as-only a figure of speech — a way of excusing himself by saying he was fond of her. Certainly he hadn’t meant to make her a declaration.

They were standing still, just before his house. The many windows were dimmed and cloudy. It was as if they reproached him like eyes. The garden walls at the wings looked sordid in the deep shadow of the trees. And he had lived in that house all these years, to find that he could not hold his tongue at a pinch.

Gregory said: “You know Hailes got Thwaite dismissed from the
Salon?”

George said, “Oh!” He didn’t care. His eyes roved away among his trees, as if for a place in which to hide from the light.

Gregory seemed to be chuckling. He turned his glasses on George in a blank and mutely observant gaze: “My wife — Ella — dismissed him.”

George said: “Dismissed Thwaite.” It suddenly occurred to him what that would mean for Dora. He said:

“You surely didn’t allow it?”

Gregory in his turn looked away among the trees. “Do you know if Thwaite drinks?” he asked.

George walked agitatedly up to him. He asked what it meant. He wanted to get to the bottom of it quickly, without any delay. He had too much else to think of.

Gregory looked at him searchingly again. “Thwaite thought — he insisted to me that
you
got him dismissed.”

George hadn’t even the power to utter
“
I.” His hands opened. The telegram that he was holding dropped on to the ground. His brother stooped to restore the orange envelope to him.

“You haven’t read that,” he said, with the mechanical air of the man of business.
“
Is it important?”

“I don’t know,” George said. “I’ve too many worries to want to see a new one.”

“Thwaite made an extraordinary scene in my office,” Gregory muttered.
“
He said that his wife’s sister—”

George said:
“
Good God!”

“I couldn’t stop him,” Gregory said.
“
I didn’t feel certain that I ought to. He would have been telling my porters.”

George clenched his fists with a fury that was quite new to him. “What — what — what did the scoundrel say?” He quivered.

Gregory dropped into the dry manner of a solicitor. “From what I could ascertain — the man wasn’t particularly coherent — his grievance was against Miss Brede. About her mother’s legacy to Mrs. Thwaite. I remember you mentioned some of the particulars to me—”

In the midst of his immense anger George remembered too. He had passed his word to Gregory that Thwaite would be the last person in the world to make trouble about that very thing.

“She intended,” Gregory went on, “to devote the money to paying off a debt that Thwaite had incurred — to you.”

George said: “Dora did?”

Gregory added: “No, Miss Brede.”

A certain horror came slowly into George’s eyes.

“Clara meant the money for me,” he said. It flashed across him that Thwaite, in the garden, had said:
“
Does she think I don’t mean to pay you—”

“For me,” he said.

Gregory laid his hand timidly on George’s arm. He gave up the effort to speak like a lawyer.

“I listened to the man because he spoke of having commenced an action against Miss Brede. I thought you ought to know what he had to allege. I didn’t want to interfere.” He was stuttering with emotion.

It occurred to George, slowly and inevitably, that there was in the world an immense and lamentable affair of which he was the centre.

Gregory cast his eyes appealingly over the grey face of the house and up to the tops of the trees. He dropped into his dry mode of speech once more.

“Thwaite’s theory was that you had influenced my wife to dismiss him at the instigation of Miss Brede — out of revenge for his having commenced the action against her.” George said with an accent of sick horror:
“
She hadn’t even told me.”

It was nothing short of horror. He was realising very vividly that another man, incensed and not master of his tongue, was going about the world levelling a vile accusation against Clara Brede. It was going on...