Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (403 page)

“Why, my lady,” Mr. Sorrell said, “I suppose you have not any robbers knocking about in the castle, and I am quite determined to send it by registered post to Mrs. Lee-Egerton as soon as we have done dinner. I suppose there is a post office somewhere near the castle?”

The Lady Blanche said that she did not know what sort of thing a
bureau de poste
was, but she thought that, after having witnessed the way the nuns had attempted to take the cross, the pilgrim would be an exceedingly foolish man to let it out of his possession at all.

“Well, there’s something in that,” Mr. Sorrell said; “but how in the world do you send letters and parcels if you haven’t got a post office?”

“My friend,” the lady said, “we send letters by trusted messengers if they are of importance, or if they are about trifling matters we send them by means of the chapmen that travel hither and thither selling merchandise. So that if you desire to send the cross to any destination you had better give it to me, and I will send it by a messenger that I can trust better than myself.”

“Why, my lady,” Mr. Sorrell said, “I think I won’t send it at all on second thoughts. I’ll keep it till I get up to town, and give it to Mrs. Egerton myself.”

“Then you had better,” the Lady Blanche said, “give it into my keeping, and I will have one of the stones from the wall of my bower taken out, and I will have a little cavity made behind; and I will lay the cross in there, and I will have the stone put back again, and it shall all be done up fair with mortar, so that no one shall know in what place it is.”

“Oh, I don’t think you need take so much trouble,” Mr. Sorrell said; “I suppose I shall be moving on this evening.”

“This evening!” the Lady Blanche exclaimed highly; “would you adventure yourself with that thing of great price into the mists and perils of the night that is all darkness, and where many robbers abound?”

“Dear lady,” Mr. Sorrell exclaimed humorously, “I have been very well protected so far, it seems, and I do not know what I have done that this protection should now cease.”

And this argument struck the lady as having great weight, for she asked:

“And have the angels of God indeed protected you? In what shape do they appear?”

“Oh, really, I can’t tell you that,” Mr. Sorrell said. “It’s all very mysterious. No doubt it will come out some day, but it’s a great deal more that I should care to explain.”

“Oh, holy man,” the Lady Blanche exclaimed, and her voice had in it a great deal more of reverence, “there must be no talk of your leaving this place. For here you shall stay for a long time, for many months and years. And you shall be treated like a prince, or like the Pope himself if he should come among us.”

“But my dear lady,” Mr. Sorrell argued, “I couldn’t possibly stop here more than a day. Let alone that I want to give this up to its owner, hasn’t it occurred to you that I’ve got work to do.”

“But oh, holy man,” the Lady Blanche said, “if you have angelic work to do, if you desire to spread enlightenment and knowledge, and to do such things as befit the holy, where could you do it better than here, which is a very evil place, and one where many stiff-necked and ignorant people much need teaching how to behave themselves in this world?”

“But really, madam,” Mr. Sorrell answered, “I don’t see how I could be expected to do a publisher’s work from this part of the earth. It’s perfectly true that I do, as far as I can, afford people the means of instruction and so, to the limit of my powers, improve the world, but I do it in the wholesale way with encyclopaedias and serious books. I don’t believe in novels and nonsense of that sort, unless I can be absolutely certain they’ll have a huge sale — so that I don’t publish more than four novels in a year, if so many. But you can see for yourself that I couldn’t possibly do that sort of thing here.”

The Lady Blanche was not listening to him, but was making in her mind a rapid calculation as to what was the value of the golden cross, whether as money or as a social asset.

“Oh, holy man,” she exclaimed, “if you will stay here you shall have a bower tricked out like the bower of the King of France. And assuredly, here you shall fare much better than you should with my cousin’s half-wife, for never at dinner shall there be fewer courses than four, each course of fourteen dishes; and never at supper less than three courses, each of nine dishes; and the least of your drinks shall be mead and nearly always the best wine from Romney and Bordeaux. And you shall have such garments as my lord wears, and four horses to ride abroad on; and you shall have hawks from Norway and of everything the best, such as my cousin’s half-wife could not possibly afford. And has she in her castle a bath, such as to-day you have tasted the merits of?”

“Of course, it’s a most excellent bath,” Mr. Sorrell said, “and I don’t in the least doubt your splendid hospitality, but I can’t possibly stay here. It’s out of the question.”

“Then if you cannot yourself stay,” the Lady Blanche said, “leave at least your cross here in safe keeping, for it must be obvious to you that I, who am the Lord of Egerton’s cousin and not his foolish and frivolous halfwife, am the proper keeper of the sacred emblem.”

“I’m really not going, you know,” Mr. Sorrell said with the most bland obstinacy in the world, “to give the cross up to anybody but Mrs. Egerton. I’m perfectly able to take care of it myself, and I’m just going to keep it hanging from my finger until the proper time comes.”

“Then are you not afraid,” the Lady Blanche said, “that I shall slay you and keep the cross for myself?”

“Oh, come,” Mr. Sorrell answered amiably, “people don’t do that sort of thing nowadays. Besides,” and he smiled as at a hidden witticism, “the protection that I spoke of will operate just as freely now as it has hitherto.”

And immediately she recognised the appropriateness of this contention. There seemed to remain nothing for it but an appeal to the reasonableness of her cousin’s half-wife, and from her she anticipated very little reasonableness at all. For the Lady Dionissia
was
young, of great levity, and of the most headstrong obstinacy, so that hitherto she had accepted none of the Lady Blanche’s suggestions, though the Lady Blanche, as the cousin of her husband by proxy, stood surely in the position of a feudal over-lord to a ward. And neglecting to talk any longer to Mr. Sorrell, the Lady Blanche remained plunged in a fit of abstraction.

On his part Mr. Sorrell had new food for reflection. The dark earnestness of the Lady Blanche seemed to him to remove at once all idea that she was playing a part; no actress could possibly have kept it up so well. And although she had submitted him to nothing but a personal gentleness, he could not help thinking that his cross, if not his person, was in very exceptional peril.

And suddenly he felt himself rather alone and rather lonely in this immense place, that spread its great grim walls far below and far around him, filled with unfamiliar men, speaking an unfamiliar tongue, the servants of this woman with the ferocious eyes and the hard voice. Mr. Sorrell was a man so modern that he could not get it into him to feel any sense of physical danger: he felt rather as he had felt on several occasions, when in rather questionable company, that he might be about to become the victim of some exceedingly skilful pocket-picking. But he did not see how, if he kept the ring carefully all the time upon his finger, they were going to get the cross out of his possession without offering him physical violence.

And to his moment of vague fear there succeeded a sort of elated amusement. After all, if they wanted to get the cross, they could not possibly get it off his finger without his consent during the day time, and at night he was quite capable of putting a chest of drawers or something of the sort in front of his bedroom door.

A great many sounds of trumpets came from the castle below to proclaim that supper was about to be set on the boards. The sun was just down below the hills, for at that harvest time of the year, when all men and women were wont to be in the fields helping to get in the oat -crop and the last of the hay, supper, which was usually at four, was not partaken of till after sunset.

It was not really dark, but blue shadows had fallen all over the long valley of the Wiley, mists were arising amongst the heavy foliage of the trees. The castle of Tamworth farther down the valley, showed enormous and purple, as if it blocked up all the passage way, and the houses of the little town of Wishford, which was beyond the bridge, being visible from that high place, showed their white mud sides all pink in the light reflected from the sky. From the top of the Portmanmote Hall, the gilded effigy of the Dragon of Wiley turned slowly in the capricious air of the evening, sending forth now a stream of light, and again being obscured. The cavalcade of the Lady Dionissia had reached the foot of the green knoll, and her trumpeter blew a turn of notes to demand admission to the castle of Coucy.

“So that you are determined,” the Lady Blanche said at last, “neither to stay here, nor to leave here the cross that you have brought?”

“My lady,” Mr. Sorrell answered, “this demands a great deal of attention. If this really is England of the year 1327, it is quite obvious that I can’t behave exactly as if it were 483 years later. But upon the whole, the lines of my action must be pretty well the same, and if I cannot put the cross into the hands of Mrs. Lee-Egerton, I certainly ought to keep it until I can put into the hands of some Egerton of Tamworth.”

“But you will not give it to the Lady Dionissia?” the Lady Blanche said eagerly.

“I think,” Mr. Sorrell answered, “that I probably shall not until all parties together are agreed as to whom I should confide it to.”

He considered once more, and then he continued:

“Of course, it’s a nuisance to have to carry this thing about with me, and I shouldn’t in the least object to getting rid of it. For there’s nothing in the world I hate so much as family quarrels; what we’ve all got to do is to kiss and make friends, and toss up, heads or tails.”

He paused, and again he spoke quickly:

“Now, there’s the very idea,” he said; “why don’t you toss up about it, you and the other lady, as to who shall have its custody until the gentlemen of Tamworth Castle come back?”

The Lady Blanche looked at him with wide and serious eyes.

“I do not very well understand you,” she said. “What is it you would have me do?”

“Oh, you take a penny,” Mr. Sorrell said, “a 10-centime piece, or a 25-franc one.”

“I don’t know what any of these things are,” the Lady Blanche said.

“Oh, hang it all!” Mr. Sorrell exclaimed; “then play a game of cards.”

“I do not know what that game is,” the Lady Blanche said.

“Well, what
do
you know?” Mr. Sorrell asked. “You must have a precious dull time of it in the evenings. Don’t you play bridge, or chess? Oh, hang it all! what’s an old-fashioned game? Well, now, what is it, cribbage, my old aunt plays? or draughts. Don’t you know
le jeu de dames?
”

“Assuredly I know the
jeu de dames”
the Lady Blanche said; but what would you have me do?”

“Oh, why,” Mr. Sorrell said, “play the best out of five games, and the winner to have the custody of the cross.”

“That I never would do,” the Lady Blanche exclaimed; “for my cousin’s half-wife is a much better player than I, and assuredly she would win!”

“Well,” Mr. Sorrell said, “you must think of something of the sort for yourself — something that you are fairly equal in, and let the winner be the winner in a proper and sportsmanlike manner.”

The Lady Blanche’s eyes became full of a smouldering fire, she broadened her broad chest, and erected her fierce head.

“Now indeed I see that you are a very holy man,” she said, “and if you will kiss me, you may kiss me.”

“But, I say,” Mr. Sorrell exclaimed, “is that a proper thing to do? What about your husband?”

“In the first place,” she answered, “it is a very proper thing to do, for it is the custom of this country, though I have heard it is not so in other lands, not even in the country of France. But it is obvious that a reward for favours should be paid, and this is a reward of a trifling kind for favours very great. And it is also obvious that upon making an acquaintance which is likely to become a dear friendship, some seal should be set upon the bond. But of these things I will let my old jongleur sing to you of an evening, so that you may become acquainted with the knightly customs of our country of England. And for my husband, he is away at the wars. If he were here, I do not think it is he that would grumble if you courteously saluted his wife; and if he did, you might very rightly put on your steel cap and take your sword and go at him, as he at you. For it would be a great discourtesy of him. But since he is not here, and I have not been kissed by a proper man these three months — or since the Knight of Steeple Langford rode by on his way to Barnstaple — I am not minded at all to consider my husband in the matter.”