Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (318 page)

CHAPTER I
V

ROBERT GRIMSHAW was pushing the electric button beside the Leicesters’ entry when, hat- less, the daylight falling on his ruffled hair, Dudley Leicester flung open the door and ran down the street.

“Oh, go after him; go after him!” Pauline cried from the hall.

If Dudley Leicester had done anything at all in his life it was to run at school. Thus it was a full minute before Grimshaw came to the door of the little dark hat-ironing shop, in the middle of which Leicester stood, leaning over the counter, holding by the waistcoat a small man with panic-stricken blue eyes. Afterwards he heard that Leicester had asked where his man Saunders was. But for the moment he had ceased to shake the little hatter. And then, suddenly, he asked:

“Are you the chap who rang up 4,259 Mayfair?”

“Sir! sir!” the little man cried out. Dudley Leicester shook him and shook him: a white band-box fell from the counter and rolled almost into the street.

“Are you? Are you?” Dudley Leicester cried out incessantly.

And when the little man screamed: “No! no!” Leicester seized the heavy rounded smoothing-iron and raised it to the height of his arm so that it struck the brown, smoked ceiling. The little man ducked beneath the counter, his agonized eyes gazing upwards.

But at Grimshaw’s cool, firm grasp upon his wrists, Leicester sank together. He passed his hand so tightly down his face that the colour left it, to return in a swift flush.

“I’ve got cobwebs all over my face.” he muttered, “beastly, beastly cobwebs.”

He did not utter another word. Grimshaw, taking him firmly by the arm above the elbow, led him back to his house, of which the white door still stood open.

The dark door of the snuggery at the end of the long passage closed upon Leicester and Pauline, as if upon a deep secret. In the hall, Robert Grimshaw remained standing, looking straight before him. It was, perhaps, the first time that he had ever meditated without looking at Peter, and the dog’s large and luminous eyes fixed upon his face were full of uneasiness. Robert Grimshaw had always looked mature. In the dreary illumination from the fanlight above the hall-door he seemed positively old. The healthy olive colour of his clear, pale complexion seemed to have disappeared in a deadly whiteness. And whilst he stood and thought, and whilst, having gone into the dining-room, he sat deep in a chair with Peter before him, the expression of his face deepened gradually. At each successive progress of his mind from point to point, his mouth, which was usually pursed as if he were pleasantly about to whistle — his mouth elongated itself minutely, until at last the lips turned downwards. He had been leaning back in his chair. He leaned suddenly forward as if with fear and irresolution. His eyes saw nothing when they rested upon the little brown dog that turned its quivering muzzle up to his face.

He rose and stood irresolutely. He went, setting down his feet very gently on the marble squares of the hall. It was as if he crept to the door of the room that held mystery. He could hear the voices of the servants and a faint clicking of silver being laid upon a tray. But from the room... nothing!

He stood listening for a long time, then gently he turned the handle and entered, standing near the door. Pauline Leicester was leaning over her husband, who was sunk deep into his chair. He had an odd, a grotesque aspect, of being no more than so many clothes carelessly thrown down. She looked for a moment round at Robert Grimshaw, and then again bent her tender face over her husband.

“Dudley, dear,” she said; “don’t you hear? It’s nothing. It’s all nothing. Listen!” She raised her voice to repeat: “It is all nothing. I have nothing against you.”

She remained seated on the arm of the chair, looking at him intently, mournfully, almost as Peter looked at his master, and the little dog paddling through the room stood up on its hind-legs to touch her hand with the tip of its tongue. She began to speak again, uttering the same words, repeating and repeating them, hoping that some at least would reach his brain. He sat entirely still, hunched together, his eyes looking as if they were veiled and long dead. Pauline had ceased speaking again, when suddenly he passed his hand down his face from brow to chin, and then, as if the sudden motion gave her the idea that his brain might again have become alert, she repeated:

“Listen, Dudley dear....”

Her voice, clear and minute, continuing in a low monotone, had the little flutings and little catches that so exactly and so exquisitely fitted the small quaintnesses of expression. And to Robert Grimshaw she appeared to look downwards upon Dudley, not as if she were expecting him to answer, but with a tender expression of a mother looking at a child many months before it can talk.

And suddenly she let herself down from the arm of the chair and glided over to where, in the gloom, Robert Grimshaw was standing beside the door. The little brown dog flapped after her over the floor.

“You had better go and get a doctor,” she said.

He answered hesitatingly: “Isn’t it a little early?” He added: “Isn’t it a little early to take it that he’s definitely ill?”

“Oh, I’ve known that he’s been definitely ill for a long time,” she answered. “I ought to have called in a doctor before, but I wanted to consult you, so I waited. It was wrong. As it turns out, it was wrong, too, my not letting you speak to Dudley instead of me. You think it would hurt my feelings to hear a doctor say that he is actually mad. But I’ve been through with it already. I know it. The only thing now is treatment, and the sooner it begins the better.”

Grimshaw’s face set sharply in its painful lines.

“Don’t say that he’s mad,” he said, in the most commanding accent she had ever heard him use.

“Just look at him,” she answered.

Dudley Leicester, with the air of a dissipated scarecrow ruined by gambling, was gazing straight in front of him, sunk deep in his chair, his eyes gazing upon nothing, his hands beating a tattoo upon the leather arms.”

“I won’t have you say it,” Robert Grimshaw said fiercely.

“Well, the responsibility’s mine,” she answered, and her tiny lips quivered. “There’s my mother dead and Dudley mad, and I’m responsible.”

“No, I’m responsible,” Grimshaw said in a fierce whisper.

“Now come,” she answered; “if I hadn’t married Dudley, mother would never have had her pony-chaise or got pneumonia...”

“It was I that brought you together,” Grimshaw said.

“Oh! if you put it that way,” she answered; “there’s no end to who’s responsible. You may say it was the Brigstocks. But the immediate responsibility is mine. I ought to have called in a doctor sooner. I ought not to have given him this shock. Don’t think I’m going to be morbid about it, but that sums it up, and the only question is how the thing is to be put straight. For that we want advice, and soon. The only question is who’s to give it?”

“But what are the facts?” Robert Grimshaw asked.

“Oh! you know the facts,” she answered.

“I want a few details,” he responded, “to give to the man I go to. When did it begin? Have you seen any signs of fever? Has he been off his feed, and so 011?”

Pauline opened the door gently. She looked over her shoulder to see if Leicester had stirred. She held the door just ajar when she and Grimshaw were outside.

“I used to think,” she said, “even when we were engaged, that there was something a little strange about Dudley. It wasn’t an unpleasant strangeness. No, it was an attraction. He used to be absent in his manner at times. It was that gave me the idea that there might be something in him. It gave an idea that he really had a brain that stuck to something. Of course, when I twitted him with it, when I got really to know him, I discovered — but that was only after we were married — that he was only thinking about his health. But since we’ve been married he’s been quite different. I don’t believe you really know Dudley. He is very quiet, but he does observe things, and he’s got a little humour of his own. I don’t suppose anyone else has ever noticed it, but it is there. His fits of strangeness before we were married were very much like this. Not so wild, but still like this in kind.”

She opened the door and peeped in. Dudley Leicester was sitting where he had been.

“As to fever — no, I haven’t noticed that he’s had any fever. He’s eaten very well, except when these fits of gloom were on him; then it was almost impossible to get him to the table. I don’t know when I noticed it first. He came down for mother’s funeral, and it seemed to me to be natural that he should be depressed. But in between these fits he’s been so nice, so nice!

“I’ll phone to Sir William Wells,” Grimshaw said; “I’ll ‘phone at once.”

“Oh, don’t ‘phone. Go!” she answered.

He hesitated markedly:

“Well, then, have Saunders with you in the room,” he said, “or just outside the door.”

She looked up at him for a moment, her blue eyes wide.

“Oh,
that!
” she said. You don’t need to have the least fear for me. Don’t you understand — if he is mad, what it is that has driven him mad?”

He looked down upon her with a deep tenderness.

“I suppose it’s the shock,” he said.

“Oh no,” she answered. It isn’t that; it’s his feeling for me. Haven’t you heard him say a hundred times: ‘Poor little woman! she’s had such a beastly time!’ Don’t you understand? The quality of his love for me was his desire to protect me. It’s funny, isn’t it? — funny enough to make you cry. He thought I’d had such a bad time that it was up to him to keep every kind of trouble from me. He’s done something — with Etta Hudson. Well, and ever since he’s been dreading that it should get to my ears — and me in mourning for dear mother, and he alone and dreading — oh,
dreading.
And not a soul to speak to....”

Again she looked up into Grimshaw’s eyes — and he was filled with an intolerable pity. She smiled, quaintly and bravely.

“You see,” she said, “he was not afraid of what I should do but of what I should feel. I woke up and found him crying one night. Funny, isn’t it? that anyone should cry — about me. But I suppose he was feeling all that he thought I should feel. He was identifying himself with me. And now he’s like that, and I don’t feel anything more about it. But,” she added, “that ought to satisfy you that I’m quite safe.”

“Ah,” he said, “but so often — these strong passions take exactly the opposite turn. Do have Saunders handy.”

“Robert, dear,” she said, “if he’s mad enough for that, I should not mind his killing me. I should be glad.”

“Oh, dear child,” he answered, “would that be the way to help you to make a man of him?”

She reflected for a moment.

“Robert,” she said, “how right you always are! I seem to be so wise to myself until you prove how wrong I always am. I thought it the right way for me to speak to Dudley. If
I
only
had.
... And oh, Robert,” she said, “how good you are to us! How could we get on without you?”

He said suddenly, as if it were a military command:

“Don’t say that. I forbid it!” He added more softly: “I’ll go to Sir William Wells at once. Katya says he’s the best man of the kind in London.”

“She ought to know,” she said. “Yes; go quickly. I’ve kept you talking only so as to let you know all there is to know. It’s difficult for a wife to talk about these things to a doctor. He might not believe it if I said that Dudley was so fond of me. But
you
know, and you may make him believe it. For it all turns on that.... But I will have Saunders within call till you come back with him....”

She went into the room, and, having touched the bell, stood looking down upon her husband with a contemplation of an infinite compassion. In the light of the stained glass at the end of a long passage of gloom she brought tears into Grimshaw’s eyes, and an infinite passion and tenderness into his whole being. His throat felt loosened, and he gasped. It was a passion for which there was neither outlet nor expression. He was filled with a desire for action without having any guidance as to what it was that he desired to do.