Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (437 page)

There seemed to have arisen between these two women, from the very sight of each other, one of those bitter hatreds of which only women are capable. And it was with a rudeness really extraordinary that Miss Peabody answered:

“No, I’ll certainly not take your word. No servant ever spoke the truth.”

“That’s because you’re used to American servants, miss, if I may make so bold,” Miss Jenkins answered. “We only export inferior ones to the United States. Her Ladyship and such-like keeps the best at home.”

“It’s no good talking.” Miss Peabody attempted to close the discussion. “I’m not the one to act precipitately. But I shall certainly act.”

“That was what I wanted to suggest, your Ladyship — I beg pardon — miss,” Miss Jenkins said; “but being so much with her Ladyship it seems to come natural-like. What I wanted to suggest was that you shouldn’t come to any determination for a day or two, and then you can keep an eye upon the major and these ladies, and see how they behave.”

At this point Miss Delamare exclaimed again:

“
Poor
old Teddy!”

“That’s precisely what I intend to do,” Miss Peabody said. “But don’t you imagine that it is at your suggestion. I
shall
keep an eye on these people. And if I observe anything in the least suspicious, I shall break off my engagement with Major Foster at once—”

“What!” the major exclaimed. “‘Isn’t it broken off already?”

“I shall break off my engagement at once,” Miss Peabody continued, “and then I shall go to Mr. Foster and tell him why; and that will be an end of
your
theatre, Miss Delamare, and
your
play, Mrs. Kerr Howe, and Major Foster will be cut out of his uncle’s will.”

“And very proper too, miss,” Miss Jenkins said. “I didn’t ask you to make a remark,” Miss Peabody exclaimed; and then she said clearly and distinctly: “Edward, you may kiss me — to show these ladies—”

The major started violently. “Oh!” he said, and he pointed to the door behind Miss Peabody’s back. “Oh! the dog! George Washington’s just run out of the door.”

Miss Peabody wavered for a moment, and then she turned towards the door. She disappeared, and they could hear her calling in the corridor:

“Georgie! Georgie!”

The major pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead.

“Thank Heaven, that taught me that lie,” he said.

“
Didn’t
the dog go out of the door?” Mrs. Kerr Howe asked.

“Not a bit,” the major answered cheerfully. “The little beast is under my bed. But if that lie hadn’t come into my head I should have had to kiss Olympia — and think how painful that would have been for all of you!”

And at that point Miss Jenkins remarked in her cool and business-like tones:

“I think, if you’ll excuse me, Mrs. Kerr Howe and Miss Delamare, you had better just go through that panel into Miss Delamare’s room, and then I’ll close it. If the dog is still here, it’s likely Miss Olympia will be coming back, and you’d better not be seen here again.”

“Oh, yes,” the major exclaimed energetically. “Good gracious! Go! Go!” And he positively pushed them through the opening. Miss Delamare smiled at him maliciously over her shoulder.

“Aren’t
you going to kiss us good night, Teddy?” she asked.

But Miss Jenkins fatefully extended her hand to the frame and the portraits of her Ladyship’s ancestors marched right across Miss Delamare’s face.

CHAPTER VIII
.

SHE stood looking at him, vaguely lighted from beside the panel, and, for the last time, he sank down into his chair.

“My girl,” he said, “you’ve saved my bacon.”

She answered, with her calm and superior intonation:

“I would not be so certain of that, sir.”

“Oh, I’ll be as careful as the grave,” he said confidently. “A night like this would have been enough to make Solomon himself a reformed character.”

In some way he read on her expressionless face an expression of dubiety.

“I don’t know, sir,” she said. “Of course, you may have done the right thing, treating the whole thing as a farce. I recognized what you were doing, sir, but a time seemed to come when it appeared better to tell the truth. That was why I came in. I hope you will excuse it, sir.”

He gave her a keen glance.

“
You
were listening all the time,” he said.

“I certainly was, sir,” she answered coolly.

“It seemed to be my duty, sir. I’m not in the least ashamed, sir.”

The major said:

“It’s the sort of thing that most servants would be ashamed of being caught at.”

“But you see, sir,” she answered, “I wasn’t caught. I just stepped in when it appeared to be useful. I
knew
something of the sort would happen. Something of the sort always does happen. And I wanted to be able to report to her Ladyship...” The major ejaculated:

“By God! you’re going to report the whole thing to Nancy Savylle.”

“Every word, sir,” Miss Jenkins answered calmly. “That is my duty.”

Again the major said: “Great heavens!”

“I don’t see,” Miss Jenkins said argumentatively, and with her eyes on the ground, “if you come to think of it, that you have done anything that would displease her Ladyship. You’ve tried to be faithful to Miss Olympia as was your duty, though a difficult one. And you’ve said nothing about her Ladyship that would not have made her a pleased and proud woman if she heard it. And you behaved very — very straightforwardly with the other ladies.” Miss Jenkins’s voice became rather low, and as if she were whispering reflectively, she said: “No, I cannot see that anything will displease her Ladyship.”

The major brightened suddenly. “Why, I believe you’re right,” he said. “I have been behaving rather creditably. Who would have thought that?” He remained thinking, and she remained looking down at him. And suddenly he began to feel emotions, quivers and thrills of emotions. He leant forward in his chair and said: “I say, what’s your name?”

She answered dutifully: “Yes, sir?”

And he exclaimed:

“Won’t you let me kiss you?” It appeared to him at the moment the most desirable, the most important thing in the world. She did not appear to be a servant; she did not appear even to be a woman — but she seemed to be a warmth, a force, a light, a magnet that was drawing him towards her. And it was like being awakened very early and roughly when with a dry voice she said: “Certainly not, sir.”

He said dully:

“No, I suppose not. But it’s as true as death that I’m desperately in love with you.”

“I daresay, sir,” she answered in a matter-of-fact tone. “But there’s Miss Olympia.”

He passed his hand down his forehead.

“Of course, there’s poor Olympia,” he said. “You wouldn’t throw Miss Olympia over?” Miss Jenkins asked. “Not even for her Ladyship?”

“No,” he answered. “No, I certainly couldn’t. When, just now, she talked as if she were going to have done with me — why my heart jumped in my side...”

“So that if Miss Peabody could be got to throw you...”

The major, who had been inspecting his boots, looked up at her.

“Now,” he said, “we can’t decently talk that over. It isn’t proper. I don’t want to seem to reprove you, but the lady is my affianced wife, and she has done nothing at all to deserve being talked over.”

“Not even just now?” the girl asked, with a touch of hardness. “When she was so outrageously rude...”

The major shook his head.

“No,” he answered decisively. “It was perfectly natural. It was perfectly legitimate. Circumstances looked very suspicious; there’s no denying it. She could not be asked to behave as if she were at a tea-party. She’s a good lady; she has been as kind to me as she knows how. I can’t have her talked over if you attracted me a million times as much.”

“I’m talking for her Ladyship,” the girl said. “I’m pleading for her Ladyship, if you like. I’m not ashamed. You had a moral duty to her Ladyship. When you went away you never swore to be faithful to her. But wasn’t it implied? Wasn’t it implied enough to keep her faithful to you for years and years? Wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?”

The major hung his head down.

“That sort of thing is rather all nonsense,” he said. “It isn’t three hundred years ago.”

“Oh, yes it is,” she answered; “in that it’s three hundred years. Nothing has changed since Jacob served for Rachel. You gave her Ladyship certain rights. You gave her the right to expect that you would ask her again. You never did. Then what’s to prevent her Ladyship saying things against Miss Peabody? What’s to prevent it? There are things to say against her. She’s taken away another woman’s man.”

“She didn’t know it,” the major said listlessly. “Didn’t know it!” the girl said, with a fierce contempt. “Of course she knows it. Of course she knows that she is a criminal.”

“Now drop that,” the major said harshly.

“A criminal,” the girl continued. “Isn’t it criminal for a woman of her type to take a man of yours? Doesn’t she know that if she were worthy of the name of a woman she ought to put you back again? In her heart she knows it. In her heart she felt bad. When she was talking to me or to little Miss Delamare she was odious and rude and hateful. Why? Because she felt wicked, evil, criminal.... She saw you standing beside me or her — and she knew that it was one like us that ought to be your proper mate...”

“Now drop that,” the major exclaimed harshly. “Do you understand? That is not talk for the servants’ hall. I’ve got to behave honourably.”

“What do you know of the servants’ hall?” she said bitterly. “What do you know of honour, for the matter of that?”

“I’ve got my rules,” the major said. “Now you go!”

“Rules!” she repeated harshly. “Yes, rules that will let a woman sicken and pine and long and linger as — as her Ladyship has done. And wake up in the night and in the morning there would be her pillow wet for the servants to find and know the shameful truth that she was crying for a man that cared more for his rules than all her tears! That’s the thing that shames a woman! And you never came, and you never wrote, and you never thought...”

“Damnation!” the major really screamed. “Was it me that should go running to a woman I couldn’t support? Was it me that should go running to a woman with castles and jewels and titles to her name?”

“Yes, damn your Irish honour!” she cried out; “and damn your black novel-reading Papist pride! It was your duty to come crawling to the woman you adored; it was your duty to give her the pride and joy of tending you. And you — you — you — you give it to another woman. To a wicked stranger that gets all the joy and the pride of tending you who’ve lived like a hero, and ruined your poor eyes like a scholar, and ruined your life and hers, God help her, like the black evil fool that you are.”

“Now, by the seven wounds of God.. the major shouted. And then he fell back against the cushions of his chair and began to laugh long and longer and feebly like a child.” And isn’t this the grand comedy!” he said. “Here’s you and here’s me, and the two of us working ourselves into epileptical passions, when in the hearts of us we’re both of us agreeing the one with the other, and for all I know admiring the other more than is good for us — at least it’s true of me — and —

and—” He stood up suddenly and stretched out his hand. “And it’s taking my hand you will be doing!” he exclaimed; “for I’m no more than a poor Irish fool, that will be always in the wars like the father before me, and his fathers for ever and ever! And where it will all end, God in his mercy knows! But I’m sick enough and sore enough to make it good and soothing to me to touch the hand of a good woman that’s your own self!”

She put her own hand swiftly behind her back.

“You’re agreeing with me,” she said, “but not I with you. I don’t agree that honour demanded what you’ve done, which is what you have been trying to trepan me into saying. I don’t agree, and I will never take you by the hand, Major Brent Foster, and you have no right to ask it of a poor servant — until your hand is laid in her Ladyship’s in the pledge of marriage. And that I will work for, and that, by the grace of God, I will bring about.”

The major, whose moods altered like the sky in April, looked at her with laughing eyes.

“Well, the blessing of God go with you,” he said. “But keep this in your obstinate, pretty, lovely head, that never will I ask her Ladyship that question until Miss Olympia gives me up as freely and as frankly as you refused me the kiss I — asked of you.”

“She shall do it with ten times the loathing that I did,” Miss Jenkins exclaimed, “if I have to burn down this old place to bring it about.” The major suddenly stretched himself.

“It’s time you were remembering our place,” he said. “My girl, this is more like the bogs of Galway than the eastern end of God-fearing Hampshire. We’ve forgotten ourselves, and that is the truth of it.”

Miss Jenkins drew herself up and smoothed her apron.

“You wanted some hot water, sir,” she said “I’ll put it outside your door and knock, for you will be wanting to get to bed.”

“Oh, don’t spoil me,” the major said.

“It is what her Ladyship would wish, sir,” she answered.

When she was gone the major took off his coat and then loosened his collar. He pulled down the brass blower before the great fireplace, for the fire was out, and a weary noise of wind came from the great chimney. “So that there...” he was beginning to say. And then he threw up his hands, and an expression of awe-struck panic came into his face. “By Heaven!” he called out. “With all this talk of honours and morals, four women have asked me to kiss them this night, and not once have I brought it off.”