Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (336 page)

“You will be wanting Lydia to gather those up,” Mrs. Chuckel continued, “and upon her refusal you will be fit to murder her again. Heigh-ho, this is a very pleasant family!”

Mr. Chuckel, in his black clothes, with his rice-white face, now sat still, his face leaning upon his hands.

“The cursedest luck!” he muttered. “The cursedest luck!”

“Spouse,” Mrs. Chuckel said, “if you must needs sup with the devil you should take to yourself a longer spoon. I have always said you were too much of a fool to play the villain with address.”

Mr. Chuckel smote the back of his palm upon the desk-lid. “God help me,” he said, “if I had but ten days more!”

Mrs. Chuckel laid her book into her lap. “How shall a lady read with you a-grunting there?” she said. She moved the cushion behind her head and settled down more luxuriously. “How should ten days help you?” she said.

“Ten days or thereabouts” he answered gloomily. “For I have put all the money that I borrowed of Sir John’s into the purchase of three luggersful of French silks that should be here then or thereabouts. And if but one of them escape the Preventives there shall be three times my borrowings to draw as soon as the goods shall reach Canterbury. But now” — and Mr. Chuckel’s voice came shrill with a vile rage—”this cursed, cold upstart, arrogant with his ‘God damn you’ air, this playsharper, this loud bully, this wench bumbler, this bench hopper, this fan-tearing masque flarer—”

“Husband,” Mrs. Chuckel said, “‘tis a very nice, noble, fantastical gentleman, and made me a grand, courtly bow upon the terrace this very morning.”

“ — and he will see my papers this day sennight, and upon my saying that they would take long to prepare, says he, curse him!’ I will even help you to prepare them myself,’ in his lackadaisical manner. For, quotha, he has had much practice in the careful scrutining of accounts of great estates. I do not believe that this is a grand gentleman. Grand gentlemen are more negligent. This is a lawyer’s pimp; this is a spy of the Pretender.”

“Spouse,” Mrs. Chuckel said, “this is a very high, lordly, and noble personage, upon a romantical errand such as only can be read of in novels and romances.”

“To hang me,” Mr. Chuckel said bitterly.

“Nay, spouse,” Mrs. Chuckel answered. “To hang you were only the plain duty of a Christian man, about which there would be nothing romantical nor fitted for novels by whatever pen. But here we shall see two arrays of gallant gentlemen set one against another in hostile battles; and there will be swordmanship and affrays and love-trysts, and more murders and ravishings than in ten of your
Spanish Friar.
Would God it were Lydia they would abduct, for then our fortunes would be made.”

“Please God,” Mr. Chuckel said, “that too much reading of foolish garbage has addled your weak brains, so you must to a Bedlam, and I shall be well rid of you.”

Mrs. Chuckel folded her hands languidly in her lap. “Can it be that you have not heard of the wager of twenty thousands pounds?” she said. “All the world is a-talk of it in London.”

“Beast, begone!” Mr. Chuckel exclaimed.

Mrs. Chuckel leaned farther back upon her cushions. “Why, it is the only way you may be saved from a halter,” she said, “if Major Penruddock or Mr. Harcourt should, upon an affair of honour, slay this Mr. Bettesworth; though, to be sure, I pray they may not, Mr. Bettesworth being so heroical that he should well rid himself of six opponents with the mere lightning of his glance.”

Mr. Chuckel suddenly stood up. “What is this?” he exclaimed. “Are you certain that Mr. Bettesworth is in a wager with these gentlemen?”

“The newest news-sheets from London speak of nothing else,” Mrs. Chuckel answered. “They have come here seeking a great heiress. That is the pity of it, for if it had not been a great heiress they might have taken Lydia or me.”

Mr. Chuckel stood leaning intently forward over his wife. “This is a mad tale,” he said; and then he added slowly, “But these gentlemen are here! What are we to think of this?”

He remained standing before his wife, his head hanging down over his chest. The low, dark room had a close smell of dampness, and a touch of the odour of hartshorn, for a drain from the stables ran just beneath the window in an open gutter against the wall of the house. His meditations were bitter enough, and he cursed himself for having been till lately too timid a villain. For a matter of twenty years — ever since he had married his wife — he had been in the employment of land-steward in Lady Eshetsford’s family, at first in Scotland and later here. Before his marriage he had been an attorney’s clerk, who, by means of extorting bribes from his master’s clients, had managed, in his free time, to cut a little dash in the parks and at the opera; for being a tailor’s son he could clothe himself cheaply and with effect But though he had been so long in control of accounts, and with much money passing between his fingers, his early habits had made him very petty in his peculations. He would take the price of a tree here, or of a few sacks of corn there; he would write a pound or two off the rent of a farmer, and say that the money had been excused on account of the bad seasons. And since he played cards with the farmers at the Ordinaries, and had habits of private debauchery, he had in all these years amassed no savings at all. But of late, growing intolerably weary of his wife, whom he detested, and of his daughter, who detested him, he had been taking toll more heavily of the estates; the idea having come into his head of making a plum and of absconding to a part of the country where he would not be known. Sir John, indeed, had become so soaked in brandy and so bemuzzed that there had seemed less fear of detection. So that the whole price of Sweet Corner, Stocks, and Gallows’ Woods being in his hands at once, Mr. Chuckel had placed it all in the hands of Thomas Wrangsley, the head of the Old Bourne gang of smugglers; a man much trusted and esteemed in the neighbourhood, where he had almost the rank, and considerably more than the wealth, of a small squire; consorting with the justices, the sheriffs, and even the judges of Assize, for all of whom he turned an honest penny out of the King’s pocket. The three hundred pounds had been to be invested in silks, brandies, hollands, and laces; and had the cargo been successfully run, — a thing of which there could be little doubt, since the Preventive officers were lazy and Mr. Wrangsley had them well bribed, — Mr. Chuckel stood to gain a matter of six times as much as he had laid out. With that Mr. Chuckel would have been able to live in ease and some luxury at Taunton, in Devonshire, for the rest of his days. But now was come this accursed Bettesworth!

If only he could be put out of the way! If only he could be put out of the way for but a short time, so that, the cargoes being landed and paid for, Mr. Chuckel could restore what he had borrowed from the estate. If only he could be given a good clout over the head, such as should keep him abed for a fortnight! — and Mr. Chuckel had run over in his mind the names of the poachers, deerstealers, and smugglers of the neighbourhood. But these were all very violent fellows; and Mr. Chuckel, being by nature a petty thief, dreaded an accidental murder. He had too much fear of ghosts, — a fear accentuated by long dwelling in those dark, rambling, and creaking apartments. Indeed, the rice-like pallor of his face was said to have arisen because he had found a ghost of Sir Anthony Eshetsford lying in his bed, smoking a Dutchman’s pipe, on the night after his arrival at Ashford Manor-house. But ghosts apart, Mr. Bettesworth was very well attended, there being with him his brother and Mr. Williamson, and each of them had a servant — not to mention the man cook, who might also show some fight. To raise a band of smugglers sufficient to overcome all these would be dangerous; for smugglers had their own form of honour, and could not be trusted, outside their own profession, not to turn informer. So that the information that Major Penruddock and Mr. Harcourt were not the friends, but the rivals, in a wager of Mr. Bettesworth, caused a sudden gleam of furious hope to come into the steward’s agate blue eyes.

The door bounded open before shrill ejaculations of delight; a young girl whirled into the room and came up against the chintzes on the tables.

“La! mother,” she exclaimed, “I ha’ seen him at Mr. Hitchcock’s. If only he would be my lover!”

She was shorter than Lady Eshetsford by half an inch, but she had dark eyes full of levity, her upper lip peaked upwards like a bow, her cheeks were very high coloured, the black ringlets fell on to her shoulders, which were bare, because, in the heat of running home across the park, she had pulled off her gaudy red - and - blue neckerchief. She was panting and dancing her feet up and down. In his meditations Mr. Chuckel suddenly smote his thigh and stiffened his back: “By God!” he said. “By God!”

“And, oh!” Lydia exclaimed, “if I only had him for a lover he would be better than either Major Penruddock or Mr. Harcourt!”

Mr. Chuckel gazed suspiciously from the girl to his wife.

“What,” he said, “you have been talking of these things already?”

“La!” Lydia said, — she had pulled off her sun-hat and was toying with its knotted strings,—”what else have mother and I to talk about?”

The spasm of a frown went over Mr. Chuckel’s pallid brow. He had remembered that Mr. Bettesworth had said that that evening he would talk with this Lydia. He crushed his hat down upon his head. “Understand ye this,” he said. “You shall not speak with Mr. Bettesworth alone without my being by, or I will swinge you so that you shall not lie easy abed this fortnight.”

Lydia’s dark brows came suddenly down into a tense, straight line, her eyes enlarged, her mouth grew rigid with hatred. “An’ ye did that,” her voice quivered harshly, “an’ ye lay a finger on me I will stick your eyes out with my bodkin.”

Mrs. Chuckel raised her eyes contemptuously upon her husband. “Are we to grow virtuous now?” she said with languid irony. “This last three years you have been growling me to get Lydia off upon some gentleman, but there is no gentleman here rich enough nor fine enough. And now that there comes this Mr. Bettesworth, with his horses and his men, and his glass coaches and houses in London—”

Mr. Chuckel pressed both his hands to his temples. “Was ever man so cursed?” he said.

“Mr. Bettesworth is the finest gentleman I have ever seen,” Lydia said. “He wore a blue coat, and his sword-head was all of gold, and his ruffles were of finer point than any of my lady’s. I ran away at once upon his coming, for I had only on this linsey-woolsey rag, but I will go for the rest of my time in my sprigged silk against my chance meeting him; and I will put flour in my hair, and cut the roses off the south wall for my bosom, and then I shall be another guess maiden than in this dish-clout of a kitchen wench.”

A bitter sneer came into the mouth and voice of Mr. Chuckel. “This Mr. Bettesworth,” he sneered. “How do you know he is Mr. Bettesworth? For my part I am not certain he is Mr. Bettesworth at all. I have had no letter. I had no letter to announce his approach—”

“Why,” Mrs. Chuckel said, “you know very well that the post-messenger was robbed and murdered upon Charing Heath upon the very night before the letter should have reached here.”

“But that is not to say,” her husband answered, “that he had a letter.”

“But you had a letter bidding you entreat my lady’s cousin well. Would you have us think that this fine gentleman, so lordly in his airs, so gracious in his appearance, is no more than a thief or an impostor or a Papist?” Lydia exclaimed, with a high scorn.

“For her ladyship’s cousin I will not entirely deny him,” Mr. Chuckel said; “but in the first place the letter was very ill-scrawled — worse scrawled than her ladyship even is accustomed to scrawl—”

“Why, it was written in haste, as her ladyship was about to step into her coach,” Lydia protested highly.

“ — so that,” Mr. Chuckel ignored her interruption, “the letter itself may be a cheat. Or, again, her ladyship has many cousins, and some such as her ladyship would not well wish to acknowledge. For they sojourn abroad with the Pretender, and so acquire these high and flowing French airs, and this talk about pictures, such as no honest English gentleman is accustomed to practise—”

His wife spoke with a singular intonation of deep scorn —

“Who are you to talk of the gentry, who have never spoken to a gentleman but walking backwards, bent double, with your hat brushing the floor? Now I, who lived amongst them, until the weary day when I married you—”

“Mr. Chuckel spat out at her a”
You
” of such venom and loathing that she became silent under her rouge.