Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (348 page)

“Why, no, sure!” she interrupted him; “Fortune and alertness were upon your side.”

“And folly and misfortune upon the side of my rival, whosoever he be.”

“Why, Sir Francis,” Lady Eshetsford said, “have you not heard that Fortune is a woman, and that, in consequence, women fall to men whom Fortune does not favour? That is the secret of what is called womanly compassion.”

“It is the secret of womanly unwisdom,” he answered; “for is it not better to take the hand of a man whom Fortune favours, than of one—”

“Sir,” she said, “a gentleman cannot forward his suit by belittling his rival. So is a woman made, so contrary is she, that she will take the counterpart to you, allege you what you may.”

“If this man Bettesworth—” Sir Francis began, with disfavour in his tone.

“Sir Francis,” she laughed at him again, “Mr. Bettesworth has the virtue of priority to set against yours of alertness; you were the first with the picture — he with me. Which of you brought his eggs to the better market?”

“I swear,” Sir Francis said, “that when I purchased the picture I had no idea of who the original was; and it was a chance word from Mr. Bettesworth that put me upon the scent. So that, once more, you see how this fool throws away his whole fortune.”

“Why, no,” she answered; “surely if Mr. Bettesworth put you on the scent, the more credit to Mr. Bettesworth. And I would have you observe that you have missed a very fine opening for a compliment, since you might have said that you purchased the picture on account of your passion.” Sir Francis raised his shrinking eyes steadily to hers.

“Thus your ladyship knows?”

“Why, my ladyship must have known him the first!” she laughed at him. “It is in the nature of things that one should know of one’s own actions. But what is more important is that I know that your Worship knew, and so, puff! vanishes your passion into smoke.”

“Why, madam,” Sir Francis said, “I trust it is no offence?”

She made him a curtsey.

“Sure,’tis no offence,” she said, “to beg of me to put money into your purse, and to crown your brows with laurel of a successful achievement. And every woman is for sale to the highest bidder.”

“And do I not,” he asked, “bid as high as Mr. Bettesworth? Am I not worth so nearly what he is that the difference should hardly weigh down an apothecary’s scale?”

“You fall short,” she answered “by a hound or two here, by an acre or two there.”

“But shall I not travel a thousand miles or so further in the estimation of the world, and in place and profit?”

“Sir,” she answered, “when I said that every woman was for sale to the highest bidder, I did not state what coin the auctioneer set upon his lots.”

For the second time Sir Francis fell upon his knee.

“Madam,” he said, “I have put in my bid, and there is no other bidder. Let me give you earnest of my purchase,” and he caught her hand and pressed it to his lips.

There was a soft sound of hoofs upon the turf beyond the cedar tree. Lady Eshetsford saw the head and nostrils of a yellowish horse, and the figure and hat of a rider who held his whip on high. The horse rose, the figure was obscured; the beast clumsily topped the brown trunk, with all its feet together. It stood for a moment with its nostrils distended downwards, as if it were upon the top of a high bank and felt a panic fear. Then slowly and wearily it subsided to the grass, its forelegs crumpling together so that its near shoulder seemed to come first to the ground. Its rider part fell, part crawled, and part wrenched himself free, and with a slightly staggering gait, but still grasping his whip, ran towards them. The horse seemed to luxuriate for a moment in its recumbent position. Then wrenching its legs and its neck clumsily in the air, it got on its feet and trotted dispiritedly towards the gap in the yew hedge. Its movements were of a fatigue so utter that it seemed hardly to desire to escape. The head of Mr. Williams, the Methodist, gaunt, dishevelled and hatless, peered over the tree-trunk. From his own horse he had prudently descended. Mr. Bettesworth, because he desired to remove from his dress and countenance some at least of the traces of travel and privation that he had gone through, had entered the garden by a postern gate in the walls, in preference to the state entry in front of the Manor, which came by way of a bridge over the little river. He had been almost more cast down than it was possible for a man to be, and he was seeking his home with the instinct of a sick creature. Nevertheless, aware that Lady Eshetsford was beneath his roof, he desired to appear before her at least well washed and in a clean suit. But the sight of Sir Francis Dashwood, kneeling, and in possession of Lady Eshetsford’s hand, had roused him to a flicker of delirious fury; and, not caring in the least that he was riding no better than Mr. Jack Williamson’s old horse, and that it was very tired with more than ten days of incessant travel hither and thither, he had set the poor beast at the tree-trunk. Its fall had shaken and bewildered him. So that it was not the desire to count forty so much as a sheer lack of words that made him remain for some moments in a ghastly silence. His eyes rolled from the face of Sir Francis Dashwood to that of Lady Eshetsford. The flesh of his face had fallen away, so that his nose was very hooked; and his skin was gone very brown with weather and exposure.

A pallor came over the face of Sir Francis. He rose to his feet and attempted to ask how Mr. Bettesworth’s health was, and how he had fared in his adventure. But the attempt met with no success, and his voice faltered and fell before he had completed his first sentence.

And even Lady Eshetsford was seized with a measure of consternation, so haggard was Mr. Bettesworth’s mien, and above all his eyes. She could not accuse herself of any wrong in receiving and rejecting the addresses of Sir Francis, but she could have wished that this man in the hour of his misfortune had not found them together, since it must needs, if only for a short time, seem to add to his misfortunes. Thus they all three remained in deep silence.

And suddenly Mr. Roland Bettesworth came sauntering round the house-end. Having had nothing better to do, Mr. Roland, upon parting from his brother, had ridden straight to Winterbourne, since it appeared to him that the business he had most in hand was that of courting Maria Trefusis. For the hatred that, for the time, he felt against his brother had only accentuated his desire to extract money from Mr. Bettesworth’s pockets, and he remembered Mr. Bettesworth’s promise to provide him with a wedding portion if he secured the hand of Lady Eshetsford’s ward. Thus he had taken but four days to reach Winterbourne, and in that house the story of Mr. Bettesworth’s misfortunes was at least a week old. For Mr. Roland conceived, with some justice, that the way to wean Maria from her affection for his brother was to hold that formerly princely person up to the ridicule that he had certainly incurred. In her own mind, knowing that Mr. Roland was, when it suited him, a very capable liar, Maria Trefusis reserved, at any rate for the time, her belief in his story. But Lady Eshetsford and the Signora gave it a very good credence. And, upon the whole, they were glad of it. For both these ladies were agreed that Mr. Bettesworth, although he was almost the perfection of a man, yet ran a great danger. Lady Eshetsford considered that godlike as he was — and his name was never off the two ladies’ lips — he was uninclined to make great effort, or any effort at all, except upon occasions of heroical prominence. Lady Eshetsford admired immensely the sword-play he had shown against her late husband. Still more did she admire the ready wit with which he had thought out the stipulations that he had imposed, for her protection, upon Sir John. Indeed, for these things she loved him and would be very content to marry him in the end.

But his wager at the Dilettante Society, which seemed to her a masculine foolishness beyond the folly of most men, a mere piece of contentious boastfulness, a declaration for the sake of notoriety that he would perform a feat for which he was in no way specially adapted, — this she regarded as the product of a tendency to vaingloriousness that might well cause him great troubles in after life.

The Signora, on the other hand, remembering the eccentricities of his uncle, dreaded that Mr. Bettesworth might become in turn such another, if he should grow accustomed to regard the world as a place which contained no checks for his overbearing will. He was, she was afraid, certain in the end to come up against such an obstacle as that thwarted desire to drive his coach up the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral that had sent Mr. Bettesworth, the uncle, back for good into the country. Here Mr. Bettesworth, senior, had been an obdurate tyrant to small people entirely under his control. He had been soured, cruel, harsh, and, owing responsibility to no one, he had given to his lightest whims the weight of the decrees of Jove. This fate she feared for Mr. Bettesworth himself.

Thus both of them welcomed Mr. Roland’s narrative. They saw in these circumstances a hope that Mr. Bettesworth might be so chastened by these misfortunes that he should become something resembling an ordinary man. And although both of them, being women, were determined that he should not lose the twenty thousand pounds that he was so ready to throw, as it were, into the gutter; and although both, because they loved him, were determined that he should incur no real ridicule, and that the laugh in the end should be on his side, both rejoiced that the attainment should be at the cost of some suffering.

CHAPTER III
.

YET at the sight of his attenuated features and shrunken eyelids, Lady Eshetsford felt more of pity than of elation; but she took it for a sign of distraction that his first words were neither for herself nor for Sir Francis, but for his brother, who, half turning to retreat, hung nevertheless upon his heel. Without either greeting or salute, Mr. Bettesworth asked abstractedly —

“Where are my men?”

“Be damned to you if I know!” Mr. Roland said. “Kicking their heels at Ashford, or hung upon the gallows. All’s one to me. I have left your service.”

“And my horse?” Mr. Bettesworth said. “Who had my horse?”

“Why, Jack Williamson had your horse,” Mr. Roland answered. “He rode away upon it from the inn. I have a letter from him to say that he is in Maidstone, lying in in great state at an inn under charge of a widow, who he says will marry him.”

Mr. Bettesworth commented, but rather as if he were speaking to himself.

“If I had had my horse I might have overtaken them. I came upon their tracks twice; once that

night at Charing, and once the day after next at Blackheath, but they rode too fast. I could not overtake them. Nor yet have I hanged Chuckel; his accounts were in order by the time I got back.”

He spoke with such a weariness, as of despair, that Lady Eshetsford was moved to say —

“You have ridden with neither men nor clothes, nor yet a good horse?”

“But,” he continued, ignoring her interruption, “I have yet a thing upon me.”

Attracted by the horse, which had run into the garden and was browsing upon the yew hedge, the Earl of Pembroke and Maria Trefusis came out upon the lawn. Maria tittered at sight of Mr. Bettesworth, but upon a glance from his eyes became suddenly stricken with panic. The Earl’s eyebrows were arched with curiosity, and then Mr. Bettesworth spoke with a sudden ferocity to Sir Francis.

“If nothing else is to come of this wager,” he said, “yet remains for me a word with you; and since there are gentlemen present, let us step apart.”

“Be damned if I will make one!” Mr. Roland said. “You may do your throat-cutting alone until you have made me an apology.”

Sir Francis became disordered in his face.

“Sir,” he said, “Mr. Bettesworth, my lord, this is surely not the time nor the place, nor is there any occasion given that I am aware of—”

The Earl regarded Sir Francis with his features made up to express a desire to be of assistance.

“Why, Sir Francis,” he said, “this lawn, as you will observe, is very neatly cut in two by that felled tree-trunk, so that there is a space set apart for gallant conversation. Moreover, I perceive beyond the tree the head of another gentleman, so that there are witnesses enough. And, without doubt, the ladies will go into the house, and warn no servants to interrupt us. I have never seen a time nor occasion more proper.”

“Why,” Mr. Bettesworth said harshly, “if he will not step apart, we will commence it here and now.”

Lady Eshetsford was of an exceeding pallor, but because she could not trust herself she did not speak; nor, indeed, since the occasion was one at once inevitable and proper, had she any desire to. She touched Maria upon the arm, and the two were gone round the house-end. The four men, considering themselves alone, were about to recommence their affair, when, perceiving the Signora Poppæa hobbling very slowly from the cut garden, the three who were actively engaged walked swiftly round the butt of the tree-trunk, for there was between it and the house-wall a space of some three feet. Mr. Roland went quickly towards the Signora, and having hurriedly informed her what was agate, he returned towards the others. He clambered, however, with some nimbleness on to the trunk of the tree, and having picked up a small piece of bark he began to chew it for the sake of its acrid flavour, and to whistle between his teeth. This was to show that he was a spectator, and not a participant. Finally, he slipped into a sitting posture, and sat kicking his heels very contentedly against the bark. The Methodist, Mr. Williams, was protesting that, as a minister of God, he could not be a second in a temporal duel. It was his province, he said, to act as assistant in spiritual duels, in which weak souls fought with the strong fiend.

“Why, you will make a legal witness if anything come of it,” the Earl said.

Mr. Bettesworth was stripping off his tarnished coat; the right breast of his waistcoat was very much torn, having been injured in the affray at Ashford. His coat, however, the Methodist had, to the best of his ability, patched up with needle and thread at the various inns at which they had halted, so that it was not so very bad, Mr. Williams being the son of the chief tailor of Ashford.

Sir Francis was still complaining that he did not know upon what occasion they were to fight.

“Sir,” the Earl said, “is an excuse ever needed for a fight? Let us take it that this gentleman is offended because your clothes are in better trim than his. In short, as I am the Earl of Pembroke, I am well satisfied that all things are fitting and proper.”

Mr. Bettesworth had thrown his coat over the arm of the attendant Methodist. And having divested himself of his own upper garments, Sir Francis threw them over Mr. Williams’ other arm. Mr. Bettesworth had nothing to say, and Sir Francis, being inwardly conscious of a tone of displeasure in the Earl’s voice, and conscious that all the reports of his demeanour upon this occasion would come from his lordship, extended his blade in silence. Mr. Bettesworth laid his own along it, and the Earl, holding the two together with the grave manner of a connoisseur, declared that there was but half an inch of difference between the two, and that the advantage lay with Sir Francis. Therefore Mr. Bettesworth, if he liked, might cry the encounter off till two blades of equal measure could be fetched.

Mr. Bettesworth muttered hoarsely that a kitchen knife would satisfy him. Nay, he would not delay the encounter if he held nothing more than one blade of a pair of scissors. His voice shook in his throat, and his eyes had grown suddenly bloodshot. It was decreed by the Earl that they should fight after the Hamborough manner. And in their waistcoats and shirt-sleeves of lawn, each with his sword out, the two stood back to back. They each took twenty paces, Mr. Bettesworth walking furiously and kicking out of his way the pieces of bark with which the lawn was covered. Sir Francis, however, paced circumspectly, and with the air of a man deep in reflection. Mr. Williams regarded them with rapt attention. Mr. Roland, perched on the trunk, still kicked his heels and whistled. The Earl rested his hand upon his sword-hilt and waited at attention. It was the rule in this kind of encounter that when the combatants were come each to the end of his allotted paces, they should stand with their swords drawn, each having his back to the other. Upon command to let go, they should turn upon their heels and approach as swiftly or as slowly as it pleased them.

They stood waiting a full minute by the Earl’s watch, for his lordship said that it was meet they should take their leisure to commend their souls to God. He put up his watch, but took a pinch of snuff, drew his sword, wherewith to strike up their blades if he deemed proper, and reflecting, with pleasure, that this might make a very pretty and prolonged mêlée, he cried out sharply —

“Fortune favour the bravest! Let go!”

Sir Francis came round very smartly, Mr. Bettesworth more clumsily, for he was stiff with riding, having come thirty-two miles that day upon a poor horse. Sir Francis stepped with a high and mincing gait, but Mr. Bettesworth suddenly ran. His steps were uneven, his mouth open, and a great rage had him by the throat, so that he had no saliva in his mouth. And faced by this fantastic and haggard vision, Sir Francis, who was most used to the concealments and the graces, hung back for a moment, though the rules prescribed that once being started neither combatant must halt or deviate by a hair’s-breadth from his course towards the other. It ran swiftly through his mind that this was monstrous and unfair, since if he kept his head he might have held his own for five minutes with the swordsman that Mr. Bettesworth was reputed to be; whereas, if he lost his nerve — and this indecent exhibition of ferocity was sufficient to make any gentleman lose his nerve — he was as good as dead meat. He cursed hurriedly under his breath. His opponent’s eyes, set fixedly upon him, seemed to grow as large as teacups; the opposing sword waved in circles. A sweat came over his face.

Suddenly Mr. Bettesworth’s hand seemed to plunge forward towards the earth, the sword curved through the air, his shoulder struck the earth, and, supine, with the impetus of his motion he pitched a full yard farther along the turf. With an extraordinary hurry of rage he scrambled on to his hands and knees; he attempted to rise, but with a loud exclamation of pain he sank down again. Having trodden sideways upon one of the pieces of bark, Mr. Bettesworth, in falling, had sprained his ankle.

“God help me!” he moaned, “I shall do no more fighting to-day. It is fate that I should appear a fool!”

Mr. Williams was bending over him with a deep solicitude; the Earl choked with visible chagrin.

“I am very much to blame,” he said; “it was my duty, as second, to have found a fitting place, and this was no fitting place for the encounter.”

Mr. Bettesworth’s face had become very pale. His eyes were closed with pain.

“I think,” Sir Francis came near to exclaim, “this day falls to me? There is no one to meet me. My heart goes out to Mr. Bettesworth with pity, but so it is.”

Mr. Bettesworth hissed through his closed teeth. “Prop me up against the tree,” he said harshly. “Give me my sword again, and see which of us goes hence!”

The Earl exclaimed, “Mr. Bettesworth! Mr. Bettesworth! I could not stand by and see this.”

And suddenly Mr. Roland Bettesworth slipped down from the tree-trunk. The Signora Poppæa was hobbling slowly around the butt; and at the upper window that looked down upon them, the sash suddenly grated up. Maria Trefusis was leaning out and laughing.

Mr. Roland walked leisurely to his brother’s back, where he sat upon the turf. “Let be,” he said to the Methodist. He put his hands under his brother’s armpits and dragged him along the grass. He propped Mr. Bettesworth’s back against the trunk, and pushed the hat straight upon his head.

“Let be,” he said, “you ill-fated fool! They shall not all of them have the laugh of us.”

He stalked slowly over to where Mr. Bettesworth’s sword lay upon the turf. When he had it in his hand, he moved the blade gently up and down in the air, balancing it with a look of disfavour.

“I am astonished,” he said to the Earl, “that my brother can do so well with a thing so heavy in the hilt. Nevertheless it must serve my turn, since my blade is six inches longer.”

“I protest,” Sir Francis said suddenly. “Is this another quarrel to be fixed on me?”

“Why, Sir Francis,” the Earl said,
“
hitherto there has been no quarrel, since your blades have not even touched, and it is the touching of blades that is the very essence of an encounter.”

“Besides,” Sir Francis continued, “I have no quarrel with Mr. Roland Bettesworth.”

“Sir Francis,” Mr. Roland said, “you have of late very much frequented this house of my family. And you have about you, perhaps upon your handkerchief, or upon your stockings, or I know not where, of perfume of orange peel or of ambergris, or perhaps it is no perfume at all. But with perfume, or the lack of perfume, you have very much offended my nostrils. And this, sure, is quarrel enough for any gallant man. If you need more quarrel, I will say things more particular, but this should be enough.”

“By my soul, a very handsome speech!” the Earl of Pembroke said.

Sir Francis drew his sword again, to show that he was ready to continue the combat, but he grumbled: “I protest this is very like an outlandish shambles. I have never seen so many people of so odd a description upon a field of honour.”

Mr. Bettesworth was propped against the tree-trunk; the Signora Poppæa, having hobbled so far, had gone down upon her knees beside his sprained ankle; the Wesleyan minister was still burdened with Mr. Roland Bettesworth’s outer garments, so that he appeared to stagger beneath his load; Maria Trefusis was leaning out of the window, with her elbows on the sill and her hands upon her chin; the Earl was looking up at her and laughing, so that he showed finely his large white teeth.