Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (334 page)

There arose from the audience many queries, such as: “How now, what does this mean? Can we not go see the picture when we will? This is a hoax! Have you scraped the features a-purpose?”

Sir Francis Dashwood stood up from his seat and, facing them all, took with deliberation a pinch of snuff, coolly shaking out his lace ruffles.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “Mr. Bettesworth knows what I think none of you know, that I have stolen a march upon you all. This morning I purchased the picture of ‘Celia in her Arbour’; it is now in my strong-room, and neither Mr. Bettesworth nor any one of you shall see it again till our search is ended. Mr. Bettesworth sought to make himself my equal in the matter, but you see he has been frustrated.”

The Duke of Norfolk leaned forward in his chair and looked at the ground seriously. Mr. Simon Harcourt threw himself back, called out: “A catch! A catch!” and laughed uproariously. Mr. Penruddock rose cholerically from his chair, but the Duke said negligently —

“This is a small matter. We can all of us remember very well those features.” He screwed up his eyes with the air of a connoisseur and gazed at the blank space on the canvas. “That is misleading,” he said. “In the picture the face is much more round.”

“No, no; it was longer, for sure,” Mr. Simon Harcourt said, “and the tresses were much more black.”

“I am certain they could not have been more black,” Mr. Penruddock said. “On the contrary, they had on them the glow of burnished gold; black tresses could not go with the blue eyes that the picture had.”

“But the eyes of the picture were between grey and brown,” Mr. Simon Harcourt called out. “I am certain of that, for I remarked to Lady Deepcastle that the eyes were the very spit of her own.”

“But my Lady Deepcastle’s eyes are as sloes, a jetty black,” the gentleman said who had come with Mr. Penruddock. “She is Cornish like us: all Cornish eyes are black.”

“No,” Mr. Penruddock said, “some of them, like my own, are a deep blue; and the eyes of the portrait were blue.”

“At any rate,” Mr. Robert Howard said from behind the Duke of Norfolk, “we can be agreed upon it that the nose was a trifle crooked, for his Grace, with his exquisite taste, remarked upon it when he saw the picture.”

“His Grace’s taste is too exquisite,” Mr. Simon Harcourt laughed, “for I will swear that it was the straightest nose that ever I saw, and slightly tilted at the point.”

“No, by God!” Mr. Penruddock called out, “the nose was markedly aquiline. I remarked it at the time, for it was the sole defect of the picture.”

They had all crowded round the cloth which Mr. Bettesworth held before him, resting the top of it beneath his chin. An old servant in the livery of the Eshetsfords advanced slowly behind their backs and up the hall; the tears were streaming down his wrinkled face.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “my master, Sir John, died at five minutes past the hour in a godly manner, praying forgiveness from all whom he had injured.”

PART II
.

CHAPTER I
.

IT was fully ten days later, towards seven, on a very wet evening, that Mr. Bettesworth and his small company of riders dropped their reins on their horses’ necks in the inn-yard at Ashford. The performance of Sir John’s obsequies, in which, being Lady Eshetsford’s nearest male relative, he had performed such important duties as deciding where the scutcheons should be hung on the front of the house, holding the principal cords of the coffin-cloth, and making a compact with Sir John’s heir for the hiring of the house by Lady Eshetsford, had so long delayed him. Sir John’s heir, his nephew and the fifth baronet, was a poor man from Acryse in Kent, and it appeared likely that when the tangle of Sir John’s affairs should be unravelled there would be little or nothing for Sir Thomas. Indeed, the Manor of Ashford, which had once been Sir John’s, had passed into his lady’s hands as against money advanced by her to him, and it was certain that Ashford House in London would have gone the same road but for Sir John’s demise.

The Manor of Ashford and Ashford House itself were so much to Lady Eshetsford’s taste that,

possessing the one, she very much desired to pass her widowhood in the other. Thus, after bargaining spread over three days, it had been decided that until the house could be inventoried, valued, and the affairs of Sir John unravelled, Lady Eshetsford should continue to dwell there as Sir Thomas’s tenant; and in the meantime, for the period of her strict seclusion, Mr. Bettesworth put at her disposal his own house at Winterbourne Longa. And it was not until he had seen her set off in her coach drawn by eight horses, attended by twelve armed servants, that Mr. Bettesworth had permitted himself to set about the very urgent business of pursuing his search for the fair unknown.

To Lady Eshetsford, in the shrouded anteroom, where she waited for her coach to draw up to the door, he had said, with a tremor of passion in his voice —

“Bid me abandon this search, which is a folly undertaken upon a too sudden impulse;” but, hooded all round, her face in deep black, and with her travelling mask in her hand ready to put on, she laughed at him ironically.

“Sir,” she said, “you did not, as you should have, count forty before you made this wager, and now you would, without counting forty, abandon it upon a too sudden impulse.”

“Madam,” Mr. Bettesworth said, “it is conceded between us that this wager is a folly.”

“Sir,” she answered, “it is not conceded between us that this wager is a folly, but if it were—”

“Madam, it is a folly,” Mr. Bettesworth said. “And I am certain that if the Signora Poppæa had been with me here in this Town she would not have let me fall into it. And having recognised its folly it would be in me a renewal of the folly to continue in it when I so much more desire—”

“Cousin,” Lady Eshetsford said, “the Signora Poppæa might have prevented you from laying this wager, but for my part I would have urged you to it, for I think it is one very proper for a gentleman to have made; and I am very certain (I am as certain of this as that death shall follow life) that if upon better acquaintance you shall make me the offer of your hand, I will not accept the offer until you shall have found the original of this picture. For certainly you shall taste and try before you buy. And I tell you that this lady will prove in every way my equal, whether in graces, in accomplishments, in stature, or in eligibility of marriage. If I did not know that this was so, surely I would be the first to bid you abandon this search; but I am certain that she will be every bit as much to your taste as I. In short, I will not marry you till you have found her.”

Mr. Bettesworth said —

“Madam, you have said, ‘If upon better acquaintance I will make you the offer of my hand.’ Madam, here, now, and without more acquaintance I make you that offer.”

“Sir,” Lady Eshetsford said, “I think it was the Signora Poppæa who enjoined upon you that at any crucial moment of your life before speaking you should count forty.”

Mr. Bettesworth said —

“Oh! from whom have you heard that?”

She smiled her mocking smile —

“Perhaps it was from your brother Roland,” she answered, “or perhaps from the Signora Poppæa.”

“You have been in communication with the Signora?” he asked.

“How,” she answered, “should one take up one’s quarters with a body of servants in a house that a lady reigns over and not be in communication with that lady? And how, since that lady’s chief occupation of mind is with you, should she not communicate about you?”

For a moment Mr. Bettesworth had a sense of dismay at the thought that these women, who were both potent, mysterious, and inscrutable, should lay their heads together to influence his destiny, but he stiffened his back and said —

“Madam, I have had the honour to offer you my hand.”

“And, sir,” she said, “I have had the honour to point out to you that before making me that offer you have not counted to that number of forty.”

“But this is folly,” he said.

“It is the only condition upon which I will listen to you,” she laughed.

Mr. Bettesworth swallowed in his throat, and then, accepting the inevitable, he stood in silence, his lips moving. From the street there began a prodigious clatter of hoofs and of wheels —

“You are too late,” Lady Eshetsford said. “My coach is at the door.”

She smoothed down her skirt, set her visor to her face, and was moving towards the entry.

He caught her with great violence in his arms, and, pulling down the mask, he covered her face with burning kisses. She forced herself gently free after a decent interval.

“Sir,” she said, “before committing that action too, you should have counted forty.”

He followed her towards the door, half stretching out his arms, with an ineffectual gesture, protesting that he hoped he had not ruined his cause by his too great passion.

“Sir,” she said, “before venturing that too, should you not have counted forty?”

She affixed her mask to her face, so that she appeared rather grim and sibylline.

“Sir,” she said, “if you desire to win me — although it is too much flattery, but I must needs believe it since you say so — the way to do it is to persevere in this search.”

“You would imply,” he said, “that to abstain would be to show a want of courage and perseverance. You would have me acquit myself like a man.”

“Why, there is that, too,” she said, “but there are sundry reasons.”

Her coach before the door was of green picked out in gold. It was covered with packages to the very roof, and the large springs behind were hung with hampers of food. She took with her two cooks, and eight armed horsemen who bore portmanteaux before and behind their saddles; two led horses bore her bedding, so that she and Maria might sleep in the coach if the inns on the road proved not to her liking; but the silver housings had been removed

from the furniture of her horses because she was in mourning, and the hammer-cloths were all of black. Trott, the maid, sat already in the coach; Maria had gone down the steps, avoiding the importunities of Mr. Roland, who had been superintending the stowing of the packages, and without another word spoken Lady Eshetsford disappeared into the body, the door being held open and closed by Mr. Jack Williamson. With a prodigious clatter upon the cobbles, with shouts from postilions and a great cracking of the bewigged driver’s whip, the coach, heaving and swaying its shoulders, got into a processional motion.

Mr. Bettesworth and his brother remained upon the steps, motionless, their hats in their hands; but when the coach, turning the corner, displayed the white face of Maria Trefusis leaning forward, Mr. Williamson raised the triangle of his hat high above his head and uttered shrill cheers. Beneath his chagrin Mr. Bettesworth noted that it was ill-mannered and gross to cheer the departing. He drew his heels smartly together, clapped on his hat, that let out a cloud of powder from his hair, and said —

“Gentlemen, we set out for Ashford this afternoon. We will lie to-night at Blackheath.”

CHAPTER II
.

BY God!” Mr. Simon Harcourt burst into the ordinary room to say to Mr. Penruddock, “he has come down with a posse, with a whole army of men.”

Mr. Penruddock was walking up and down the long, dim room. The dusk had fallen, the rain pattered on the widow-panes. Over each of the four dark doorways a stag’s head branched its shadowy horns up towards the shadowy ceiling. In the centre of a very long table were set a couple of bottles of claret, a couple of glasses, a couple of packs of cards. Above them a three-branched candlestick of plate sent out feeble rays into the obscurity. Their researches for the day being over, Major Penruddock and Mr. Harcourt had been minded to pass the rainy evening over the green cloth; and later, with a pair of foils.

“He? Who?” Mr. Penruddock asked. “His little Grace of Norfolk?”

“No, neither my cousin Norfolk nor yet Sir Francis, but Bettesworth. I have seen him get down from his horse. I think we shall be discomfited.”

But whereas Mr. Harcourt was cunning, Mr.

Penruddock was composed, having learned self-possession in the course of polite but tedious campaigns in the Low Countries.

“Why,” he said, “I think I would rather have him near us than far away.” He sat down at the table, poured out a glass of wine, smelt it, held it to the light, drank it, set his elbows on the green cloth and his chin upon his hands. “Now, let us hold a council of war,” he said. “This is a matter of no small complication.” He motioned with his hand for Mr. Harcourt to sit opposite him, and whilst that gentleman walked round the table, a long distance, sending the shadow of his wig travelling all round the dim walls, Mr. Penruddock, in full candlelight, took a pack in his hands and began searching them leisurely for the Court cards. He laid the four kings before him, and tapped them with a long finger-nail.

“Now observe,” he said, “this affair is a very complicated one; it will be all the better for a demonstration. In this matter there are four of us. Let us say that I, who am the ruddiest of all, am the king of hearts; now let us say that you, who are dark and roundish, are the king of clubs. Now in this particular quest of ours you and I are fast foes, for I have wagered that I will find our Celia, you wagering that I shall not. Here, now, is the king of spades; let him represent the Duke of Norfolk, who is dark and spare. Between his thin Grace and myself there is no essential hostility at all. For I am to find the lady and his Grace is to house her; and since, before she is found she cannot be housed, I can very properly aid his Grace. You, on the other hand, are the fast foe of his Grace as well as of myself, for you have betted Norfolk that you will, and he that you will not, fetch this lady to London. You, on the other hand, may well be friendly with Sir Francis Dashwood — for Sir Francis has wagered only that he will marry her, and your bringing her to Town will aid and in no way impede his design. Therefore—” and Major Penruddock took the four Court cards up again—”the king of hearts, myself, and the king of spades, being his Grace of Norfolk, are united by our several and common interests into one quarrel against the king of clubs, which is you, and the king of diamonds, whom we will style Sir Francis Dashwood — though Sir Francis is not fair enough to be a diamond man. Now—” and Mr. Penruddock poured out another glass of claret, drank it slowly, and surveyed with contentment the two pairs of cards.

“Oh, well made plan, man of camps and marches,” Mr. Harcourt laughed; “but so much had made itself manifest even to my intelligence. Is it not known to both of us that in this game I play not only my own hand, but represent also Sir Francis; and do you not hold an actual commission to watch events for the Duke of Norfolk? But the point is that here is come Mr. Bettesworth, with an immense army of men, ready to scour the whole country-side, where you and I have been kicking our heels with no achievement more than the bedevilling of a few serving-wenches.”

In the course of his leisurely search of the pack Major Penruddock had come upon the ace of spades. He laid it down upon the table before him and surveyed it solemnly.

“Why, we have achieved more than that,” he said. “Let us survey the whole situation.”

Mr. Harcourt threw himself back in his chair; his waistcoat was unbuttoned, and the tails of his coat drooped upon the sanded floor.

“Oh, la!” he said, “you are for ever reviewing the situation. This is the sixteenth time you have reviewed it in the sennight that we have been here.”

Mr. Penruddock gazed obdurately at the card beneath his nose.

“It is a habit pursued by all cautious gentlemen,” he said. “It aids my mind to perceive the new aspects of things and it avoids haste.”

“Certainly it avoids haste,” Mr. Harcourt said; “for we have done nothing, and I am sick to death of this mouldering hole.”

“My friend,” the Major said, with a slightly grim imperturbability, “it was not I who desired you to dog my footsteps. I discovered for myself, from the woman who kept his lodgings, that Mr. Hitchcock paints all his set pieces here in Ashford, painting portraits only in London Town.”

“Major,” Mr. Harcourt said, “if you discovered it, so did all of us. For each of us bribed the woman who keeps Hitchcock’s lodgings; and so, no doubt, this Bettesworth has done. It called for no uncommon sagacity.”

“Nevertheless,” the Major answered, “I was the first upon the field, and you have dogged my footsteps in a manner that no man less patient would have suffered. And what we have discovered so far I have discovered.”

“But I was always at your back and heard your questions,” Mr. Harcourt laughed.

The Major leaned half across the table.

“Sir, I am a patient man,” he said; “that, I think, is an approved fact. But, nevertheless, the time has come to review the situation.”

Mr. Harcourt gave a loud groan. “Oh, you will be at it,” he said.

“Sir,” the Major repeated formally, “if I do not give myself that pleasure I shall give myself the pleasure of running you through the waistcoat.”

Mr. Harcourt leaned back in his chair, quite motionless. “Oh, then, hold your review,” he said. “I had rather you did that than that I should see my vitals decorating the floor.”

The Major hemmed with grim satisfaction. “It is well that that is determined,” he said. “Now, attend.” He pitched the ace of spades on to Mr. Harcourt’s black satin breeches. “This ace of spades shall stand for Mr. Bettesworth. Now, though the four kings are divided into two parties, yet, as against the ace, they are all united. Now, Mr. Harcourt,” — the Major pointed a stiff forefinger at Mr. Harcourt’s waistcoat, as if to remind him that there the blade would go in,—”since this is a matter of combined motion I will take it upon me—’for I have had practice in directing operations — to be your commander in this matter. Imprimis, you shall no longer follow me about, for I am not of a mind to let you be hostile to me. On the contrary, you shall transfer your hostility to Mr. Bettesworth and shall follow his operations.

Mr. Harcourt held his head on one side.

“Gadzooks!” he said, “will you transfer me to a plaguy, ruffling swashbuckler, who kills his man a week and goes ringed round with bullies? This is the merest inhumanity.”

“If it would be more humane to dispatch you myself,” Mr. Penruddock said, “you have your choice.”

Mr. Harcourt played with one of his ringlets. “Well, it is a choice,” he said ironically.

The Major tapped the tablecloth with his nail. “It is manifest,” he said, “nay, it is even in a manner egregious, that by that very pleasure of your company which has saved you hitherto from affairs of the sword you will be enabled to save yourself from any rough encounter with Mr. Bettesworth. But that is your affair. Mine is that you should take your orders from me as your commander. And this you may do the more readily since thus you will be working for the good of us all.”

Mr. Harcourt grimaced slightly. Being small, round, of a full habit of body, and with no reach in the arm, he was one of those men who by adroitness of tongue, ready apologies, and by one or two definite exhibitions of the white feather, had hitherto avoided any duel; whilst his distinguished position at Court, his considerable wealth, and the amount of patronage he had at his disposal had prevented his incurring any serious obloquy.

“Sir,” he said, with a mixture of effrontery and of self-contempt, “as a member of His Majesty’s Privy Council, I take precedence and rank before a general. But since I am very convinced that your commandership will prosper the affairs of our small army, I place myself willingly in your hands. What are your commands?”

Major Penruddock began to speak with a conciseness that had in it a touch of ferocity —

“Hitherto you have attached yourself to my person. What precisely your motive may have been I shall not stay to inquire. For it is obvious that since I have come upon traces of this lady you cannot very well prevent my finding her, and thus losing your bet. Perhaps, however, your intention was to stab me in the back, or to rid yourself of me by some hired bully when I had found, or all but found, her.”

The Major squared his shoulders and looked at Mr. Harcourt. Mr. Harcourt brushed his knee, with an elegant wave of his ruffled hand.

“You will not, I presume,” he said, “immediately proceed to my execution if by pleading ‘not guilty’ to this intention I seem to decry the excellence of your deductions. But you should give me credit for the sense to know that one does not with immense ease disembarrass oneself of a swordsman as skilful or of one so determined as yourself. So that such a motive was no part of my scheme.”

The Major grunted with martial satisfaction.

“My scheme, in short, was very simple,” Mr. Harcourt continued. “It was no more than to follow you till you found my lady Celia, if possible to get before you, — but in any case to use such seductions as I possessed in order to the carrying of her off to the Town. But as a man of peace, and a gold-stick in waiting upon His Majesty, I could not allow violence to form any part of my schemes.”

“His Majesty is well served if there is no danger of strife,” the Major said; “and I am glad, for Mr. Bettesworth’s sake, that your disposition is not more formidable — for my orders are that you attend upon Mr. Bettesworth with the same assiduity, and in the same intention, as you have hitherto bestowed upon me; with this proviso, that you shall report to me every step that Mr. Bettesworth makes towards discovery, and that in case he should find the lady with any sudden expedition you shall send, hot-foot, a messenger to find me.”

“But,” Mr. Harcourt said, “if the discovery be already made it shall be too late for your purpose, and you will have lost your wager.”

“Not so,” Major Penruddock answered, “for I wagered only to find her, not to be the first that should do so. So that if I come upon her in Mr. Bettesworth’s arms you will pay me one thousand pounds.”

Mr. Harcourt’s eyebrows went up and his mouth down.

“But it is implied in the terms of the wager that you should be the first to make the discovery, otherwise you would win in any case, and without effort. Why, it would be sufficient supposing you should meet her walking in the Mall after she has married Sir Francis, and is patent to all the world.”

“Sir,” the Major said, “I shall certainly win in any case, and that meeting will be sufficient. In all the meetings we have had, if you will give yourself the trouble to read the minutes of them, you shall not make the discovery of any word of first finding. Of all this company of adventurers I am the only one that cannot lose, for if I meet her in the Park, or wear a favour at her wedding, I win the thousand pounds of you. If we all of us fail to find her, I lose, it is true, a thousand pounds to you. But I win five thousand from Mr. Bettesworth.”

Mr. Harcourt looked at Major Penruddock with his mouth open.

“And it was you who designed this wager,” he said.

“Surely it was I who designed this wager,” the Major said.
“
I have, you see, gained some skill in these things by my experience in the wars, which taught me the trick of reviewing the situation.”

Mr. Harcourt rose from his chair and, bowing ceremoniously to the Major, said, with his hand over his heart —

“Sir, in future I will go to school to you, and I hold the lesson that I have learnt cheap at the thousand pounds that I hope to have the honour of paying you.”