Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (340 page)

“But, brother,” Mr. Roland said, “may not Major Penruddock or Mr. Harcourt come before you with their plan of the bellman?”

“Brother,” Mr. Bettesworth answered, “it shall be your province to keep your ears very well open for any such attempt upon their part. And immediately upon their doing it you shall run yourself to the crier and bid him make my offer hard upon the heels of theirs. And inasmuch as it shall be to their profit to offer at the most a thousand or two thousand of pounds; and since my offer, as well as my estate and person, are undoubtedly to be preferred to either of theirs, I do not think we need much doubt the issue.”

Mr. Roland turned again towards the window, moving his hands in his breeches pockets and whistling gently between his teeth. He was envying his brother’s kingly complacency, and wondering whether it would be prudent to ask if the promise of ten thousand pounds attached itself to Maria alone, or would include any other lady with a like dowry to her back. And suddenly he ejaculated “Ha!” threw up the window, and, as his brother had done the night before, vaulted out on to the terrace. Mr. Bettesworth, without more haste than he imagined consorted with his dignity, walked across to the window and looked out. His brother was running down the steps. He crossed the lawn, plunged into the alley beside the water, and disappeared amongst the trees. Mr. Bettesworth returned to his chair. He recommenced to peruse Lady Eshetsford’s book of addresses. It was full early to go a-visiting, and he was composedly assured that since he was the centre of this affair any participant in mysteries must of necessity return to him and unravel. Besides, he could not imagine that his brother could have any affair of more importance in hand than the pursuit of a random petticoat. Or, possibly, Mr. Roland’s horse might have been brought round to the portico steps, and have been seen by him to be running away through the trees. And Mr. Bettesworth, having pressed Lady Eshetsford’s handwriting to his lips, sat in a reverie.

CHAPTER VI
I

MAJOR PENRUDDOCK and Mr. Harcourt having, out of a proper spirit of courtesy to their distinguished host, exceeded in his excellent Burgundy the limits of sobriety, had been unable to mount their horses on the preceding night, a very considerable portion of which they had passed under the dining-table; Mr. Chuckel having considerately loosened their neckcloths, and removed their finer ruffles and laces that they might not suffer, in so far as these ornaments were concerned, from one another’s spurs. Major Penruddock, indeed, with the luck or the foresight of an old campaigner, had slept with his head on the stomach of Mr. Jack Williamson; and having dreamed that he was at the battle of Orulleghem, where the British had made a forced and hurried retreat, he had kicked Mr. Harcourt awake under the impression that he was dealing with one of his subordinates. Mr. Harcourt had in turn awakened Major Penruddock; so that, having crawled on their hands and knees from under the obscurity of the long tablecloth, they found themselves, towards dawn, in the long dining-room, with the light just beginning to penetrate the shutters along with the sound of birds’ voices. The light, indeed, was just sufficient to permit them to replenish their glasses from the many half-filled bottles that, like a thin forest of pointed trees, covered the table, and to fall asleep once more in relatively comfortable arm-chairs. Mr. Bettesworth had been led, and Mr. Roland Bettesworth carried, to their beds, a fact which Major Penruddock described as damned effeminacy before he fell asleep. They awoke to find themselves alone in the room. Mr. Williamson having been summoned to appear before Mr. Bettesworth, and to receive his marching orders, Mr. Chuckel had leisure to return to these two gentlemen, to shake them, and to offer them each a tankard of small beer and a piece of toast, which was the Kentish fashion of obviating the effects of an overnight’s too great indulgence in Kentish fire. With his pallid face and his engrossed manner, Mr. Chuckel aided the languid gentlemen to adjust their costumes. He suggested even that a basin of cold water might be found mightily refreshing by their Worships, but they damned him and his ancestry and stood stretching themselves.

“Your Worships,” Mr. Chuckel said, when he thought that each of them was reasonably awake, “have you so far demeaned yourselves as to give any thought to my humble prayer and proposal?”

And it came into their dazed heads that the evening before, on the blue twilight of the terrace, just before Mr. Bettesworth had vaulted from the window, Mr. Chuckel had been making suggestions to them for the betraying of his temporary master.

“Oh, begone, dog!” Major Penruddock said. “What sort of a state is a gentleman in of a morning to consider of chicanery? You must come to him when he has a skinful of wine.”

And Mr. Chuckel, with his deep silence and his toes turned out, acknowledged the justice of the remark by withdrawing from the room.

The morning sunlight streamed obliquely into the windows, striking in the one case upon the bust in black marble of Julius Cæsar, and in the other upon a small white marble dolphin that supported a naked baby. Mr. Harcourt stared with his lack-lustre eyes at the Major.

“Why, before God!” he said, “we have not consulted upon this swine’s proposals.”

Mr. Penruddock glared at Mr. Harcourt with a sleepy ferocity.

“You are to blame,” he said. “I am sure you are to blame; and you have extracted nothing from this Bettesworth puppy concerning his plans.”

“Major,” Mr. Harcourt said, “if you had not begun upon your plaguy long account of Dettingen I might have had the opportunity of worming all his secrets from Mr. Bettesworth.”

The Major displayed a sudden and astonishing placability.

“Why, to be sure,” he said, “when I get upon the subject of that glorious victory I am apt to grow eloquent, and when we consider his glorious Majesty’s disposition of the horse upon the wing—”

“Major,” Mr. Harcourt interrupted him, “with all due respect for your captaining of our present expedition, it appears to me that the time has come for a consultation as to our present campaign rather than a disquisition upon those, however glorious, that have gone before.”

“Why!” Major Penruddock said, “I am to blame in this, for it was the act of a foolish captain to have left so serious a piece of reconnaissance in the hands of one whom I very well knew to be an intolerable blabber and a wine-bibber. Therefore, very cordially, I absolve you from your share in this present failure.”

Mr. Harcourt bowed formally to the Major, and the conversational effort having exhausted each of them, they refreshed their senses in a temporary silence.

“As God’s my life,” Mr. Harcourt said, “I cannot feel my feet. I will not ride a plaguy beast back into the town.”

“Mr. Harcourt,” the Major said gravely, “you are in the right of it. Let us walk a few paces in the air to recover our composure.”

Their hats were laid side by side upon a white satin settee against the inner wall of the room, nevertheless to find them was a matter of some difficulty for these gentlemen. Nor did the open air much restore their faculties. They wandered side by side down the broad stone steps of the terrace; they were silent; they were as if in deep reverie, though from time to time one of them would deviate with a slight lurch from the straight path. Thus it appeared to them no more than a part of the general dreamy hallucination — it appeared to them in no wise out of the ordinary or surprising — when a maiden, her dark, half-powdered hair hanging over her shoulders, her petticoat very short, her bodice very low, ran past them at a slow pace, laughing, and looking back over her shoulder, to dodge sideways into the avenue of trees that bordered the water path. Presently, with three steps of a run and one of a wheezing halt, Mr. Jack Williamson also passed them and vanished among the trees. They continued their serious promenade, and, growing more vertiginous, neither ventured himself upon the danger of conversation.

Nevertheless, a rudimentary curiosity led them to follow generally in the direction that had been taken by that nymph and that satyr. They seemed to be in a poppied and agreeable world of romance. The sun shone genteelly, the grass was smooth, the fowls of the air uttered melodies, the carp moved slowly upon the surface of the smooth waters.

They approached more nearly to the kiosk at the end of the reservoir; they heard two voices; they perceived that a door was opened in the lichened stone of the temple. They pushed it more ajar, and huddling sideways, to enter simultaneously, they impeded each other’s entrance. Together they receded. By contrast with the sunlight outside this interior was dimmish. It was encumbered by strange objects that stuck up, that leaned against walls, that were dust-covered, that had musty and unusual odours. They staggered together back from the doorway, the eyes of both were round with astonishment, the mouths of both were open. Then —

“By God, Celia!” Major Penruddock exclaimed, and he was echoed with —

“Celia, by God!” from Mr. Harcourt.

Major Penruddock ceremoniously drew his sword, and with a formal and rather prancing movement stepped across the sill of the studio. The shock of discovery, he thanked God, had very expeditiously cleared his brain. He said —

“I claim, in having found Madam Celia, to have gained my portion of the wager.”

Mr. Williamson, perceiving a naked blade, had, as a first impulse, the motion to draw; but having his sword out, he found some difficulty in discovering words appropriate to the situation. Nevertheless, a sort of dim indignation forced from him —

“God help me, wasn’t it I who found her?” Lydia, with her hands behind her back, pulling at the strings of her stomacher, threw out a paralysing peal of gay laughter.

Mr. Williamson felt that he was a very ill-used man. With halting steps and a strong disinclination for running, he had pursued Miss Chuckel round a stable-yard, through an overgrown herb garden, into an untended maze of holly trees. He saw her white garments through the spines of such a bush. She was waiting, laughing, and undetermined as to upon which side to brush past him, just outside his asthmatic grasp. He was panting, and his chest rustling, when suddenly she appeared to come to a determination. She set off at a slow trot towards a gap in the holly hedge, looking backwards over her shoulder as a dog does to ensure that it is being followed.

Lydia Chuckel had indeed arrived at the resolution of her life — at the resolution that ultimately turned her into the famous Mrs. Thynne about twenty years later — the Mrs. Thynne of whose following, enormous and composed of panting gallants and beaux, Mr. Jack Williamson was so exactly prophetic. It was mainly because, even in the enclosed gardens, the air had in it a slight bite for her uncovered shoulders and lightly clad limbs. She thought, in fact, that it was too cold to be out of doors without a dress, and Mr. Jack Williamson could not obviously afford her sufficient running exercise. Dark,
insouciante
, not quite tall enough as yet for what was then considered perfect symmetry, Lydia Chuckel, with her charms and her moods, was no more than a savage, with the gifts of a savage and a savage’s intuition. She had already realised that to pass herself off as “Celia” would be to ensure for herself a great many advantages. Where Celia’s dress was she knew very well, and her histrionic instinct made her thirst to assume for a time the pensive role of a gentle charmer beneath umbrageous boughs, but she was very loath; she had sufficient of the savage’s intuitive fear to avoid going direct to Mr. Bettesworth and saying, “I am Celia,” for when the fraud — if it were a fraud — was discovered this would mean that the immediate wrath of Mr. Bettesworth would shower straight over her shoulders, whereas if the discovery could be made by another — and who better than Mr. Jack Williamson? — if the discovery of herself in the pink-and-white frock, with the hair drooping upon the shoulders, the broad pink ribbon strings and the little strawberry frail — if this discovery could be made, proclaimed, asseverated and reasseverated by Mr. Williamson... she would need neither to affirm nor to deny. She could say that, La! she didn’t know. She could feign an animated, a childish, a charming imbecility, an attractive feminine ignorance of Mr. Hitchcock’s work. She could say that she had sat to him so many times, and for the life of her she couldn’t remember whether she had sat for “Celia in her Arbour.” She had sat certainly for “Celia at her Dressing-table,”

“Celia at her Mantua-maker’s,” at the Gipsies’ encampment, and at the attempted abduction. But for the rest...la! she couldn’t tell! By the time when she was unmasked — if she was to be unmasked — she would be able to act this little scene with the most absolute naturalness. She tingled, indeed, to her finger-ends with the desire to be given the opportunity to act this little scene. She would be able to say that they had seen her, that they had taken their own conclusion, that she had made no claims. And by that time she hoped to have established such a dominion over Mr. Bettesworth’s affections that...

She tripped slowly along, her shoulders shining, her curls patting upon them like shaken clusters of grapes. She ran slowly enough, not to make hope die in the heart of Mr. Williamson, who panted behind, and fast enough to keep well out of his hot grasp. At her first starting from the house, she had taken from the nail the key of Mr. Hitchcock’s pavilion, for she was accustomed to shut herself up there amongst the deserted easels and dusty stuffs to read her mother’s novels by the hour, to rouge her cheeks and paint her eyes before the mirror in which Mr. Hitchcock was accustomed to view the canvas upon his easel, and to consume secret stores of sweetmeats that she stole from her mother and from Mrs. Hitchcock’s open cupboards.

Slipping with perfect self-possession and a tranquil mind by Mr. Harcourt and Major Penruddock, she passed obliquely across them and into the trees in order to afford them a more favourable view of her person, and in the long line of the tree-trunks she dropped to a walk in order to permit them the more easily to follow her. This was not so much because she intended that they should identify her as Celia, but because she desired to be pursued, to have her limbs admired and her person coveted. It was this position of affairs, this clear panorama, which Mr. Roland Bettesworth had observed when, uttering his ejaculation, he had vaulted through the window on to the flagstones of the terrace.