Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (459 page)

The Countess opened her book and read four lines.
“
I shall certainly not go,” she added. “You can make up your mind to that.”

“Then I must go,” Macdonald said,
“
and say that you are overcome by train sickness.”

“Then what will they think,” the lady said, “of a man who leaves his wife when she is ill to go and revel in the luxuries of the smart set?”

“I don’t suppose,” Macdonald said, “that I care, as you would say, a damn for what they think. I should care if you were ill. But you won’t be, you know.”

The Countess turned her eyes frigidly down upon her book.

“I can only say,” she commented, “that I disapprove of the whole thing, and there’s an end of it.”

Macdonald smiled gaily out of the window at the immense slow reaches of the Rhine. A long silence reigned; the train, smooth and purposeful, ran on almost without noise. And then, quite suddenly, the Countess began to speak with a wildness of passion.

“What does it all mean?” she asked. “I don’t understand it! When I first knew you I could influence you. Now it seems that my influence over you has passed away. Why? What does it all mean? Why don’t you think as I think any more? It’s terrible, all this! It’s killing me.” Touched by a pathetic — a nearly tragic note in her voice, Macdonald hesitated for a moment.

“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s a mystery. Or it isn’t. But it’s no good talking about it.”

“You
ought
to think as I do,” she said. “You did so once. Now you don’t. Your whole mind is taken up with vanities... with frivolities.”

“
They’re only the symbols, you know,” he said gently. “But what are they the symbols of?” she asked, with a desolate rising in her voice. “Only of things that I don’t stand for. Only of things that are despicable. Why have you changed? For you’ve utterly changed. I know nothing of you now. Why do you shut up all your thoughts from me? Haven’t I always been ready to help you?” He looked at her with a sudden nervousness. “No,” he said at last, “you have never been ready to help me. Never to anything that I wanted. You have wanted to keep, me down to your...”

“But what have you wanted?” she uttered, with a tragic exasperation. “What more could you have wanted?

I have kept a house together for you whilst you have been dissipating your means on disastrous follies. I have struggled..

“My dear,” he said, “it was you who pushed me to these disastrous follies. Or no! that’s not quite fair to you. But you approved of them. I should not have ‘dissipated my means’ if the process had not had your approval. I don’t throw it up in your face, but don’t throw it up in mine.”

“But what are you going to do?” she asked. “What are we going to live on?”

“I am nominated an extra aide-de-camp to the Emperor,” he answered; “there will be two thousand a year for you. I should never have taken the place if I had not had the duty to provide for you.”

“And you,” she said sharply, “what do you make out of it?”

“Did you ever know me make anything out of anything?” he asked slowly.

“You’re so changed,” she answered. “How do I know that you may not be changed in that too? You are always running about with these dissolute people.”

“I shall make nothing out of it,” he commented. “There will be the money for you. And rooms at the Embassy.’.

“And do you think I can live at the Embassy,” she asked violently, “in that insanitary place with all those dissolute or idle persons?”

“I don’t know,” he answered. “You can if you elect to. You have the right. But it’s generally only regarded as a form of words, and you draw an allowance for lodgings.”

“And what about you?” she asked fiercely. “You speak as if we had no interests in common.”

“It doesn’t matter about me,” he said.

Again she directed one of her long, hard glances at him. “You mean that we are no longer to live together?” she asked slowly.

“It’s altogether in your hands,” he answered. “If you think that your dignity asks for the tribute of my presence, I shall be there.”

“It’s impossible that we should go on living together!” she exclaimed; and from a faint smile, full of hatred, that was round the corners of her mouth, he knew that she was setting a trap for him. He did not, however, care to temporise, and he replied simply:

“I think that I must agree with you at last. I have never wanted to, as you know. But I think it has come to that at last. I can’t stand these continual discussions. I am at this moment at the end of my tether.”

“You’re always saying that,” she retorted contemptuously. “If you were a man instead of what you are, you would show some signs of excitement. I simply don’t believe that you are feeling any sort of excitement at all. You are incapable of feeling.”

“I am sitting here and you are insulting me,” Macdonald said. “Of course I am quiet. But take it which way you will. Either your insults reach me, in which case you are killing me, or else I am so indifferent to you that you do not exist for me. In either case the inference is the same.”

“You mean that we must part?” she asked from a dry throat.

“You’ve been asking for it for years,” he rejoined.

She said, in so low a voice that it seemed as if she were reflecting upon some distant prospect:

“You have never spoken to me like that before.”

“It had to come,” he answered.

And she knew him well enough to recognise that though his voice was as low as her own he was certainly labouring under intense excitement. Indeed, she knew that, with what she called his effeminately excitable nature, he was probably on the verge of being so unmanned as to risk an illness. She didn’t therefore raise her voice when she leaned forward rather stiffly to ask:

“And how, then, are we to live?”

“You, of course,” he answered, “will live just as you please. There’s that money.”

“But you,” she asked, “what are you going to live on? And where?”

“I really haven’t thought of it,” he said.

“Think of it now,” she answered.

“I have only had time to think of you,” he said.

“I can manage for myself very well,” she said. “But I insist on knowing what you intend to do.”

“I’m going,” he said, with a slight hesitation, “to manage the London branch of the Resiliens Motor Company» I understand there’s a room in their offices that I can have. I dare say you can let me have a bed. Or I can buy one. I haven’t thought about it more than that.” His voice tailed off into irresolution.

“You know,” she said distinctly, “that I have always disapproved of motor cars.”

“I didn’t know,” he answered. “There are so many things you disapprove of.”

“They are simply a luxury of the idle rich,” she said.

“Oh, come,” he answered. “The company that is employing me sells as many heavy waggons for goods as it does private cars.”

“I don’t approve of it,” she repeated definitely. “And you must understand distinctly that if you take this up I shall regard it as a sign that you want to break with me for good.”

“It won’t be that,” he said vaguely.

“I shall regard it as that,” she answered; and he slightly opened his hands in a little gesture that said that he could not help it.

“You’ve told me again and again,” he said, “for years... that I ought to be of use in the world. Now I’m going to do it. Besides, I am going to make a living.”

“There are better ways of making a living,” she said, and gradually her contemptuousness was growing too strong for her. “Worthier ways than by becoming a parasite of the idle rich. Besides, there is the income you have spoken of from the Russian Government.”

“I don’t choose,” he replied, “to take an income from my country for doing nothing.”

“But you think I’m contemptible enough to take it?” she asked bitterly.

“It’s obviously my duty to make you the offer,” he answered. “I should prefer you not to take it. But I have no right to ask you to share hardships for the sake of my conscience when we are no longer in sympathy.”

“I certainly should not think of doing so,” she answered. And then, as before, she dropped into a long reflection. Suddenly she exclaimed:

“This woman...” and then she stopped again.

“There isn’t any woman,” Macdonald said in a tone of intense weariness. “What has put it into your head that there is a woman?”

“It’s your idea, then” — she evaded his question—”it’s your idea that at Charing Cross we drive off in separate cabs? I go to Putney and you to wherever your offices are?”

“I haven’t any idea at all,” he replied. “All I have said is that if you’re still of opinion that we can’t live together any more...”

“No, I can’t stand you,” she answered; “you are maddening to me. Everything you say. Everything you think.”

“Then we may as well drive off in separate cabs,” he said.

She waited for him to say more and at last she asked:

“And that’s all?” There was in her tone an extraordinary ironic laughter and bitterness.

“That’s all,” Macdonald repeated wearily. “If you think that your dignity requires me to live with you, we can occupy the same suite in the Embassy or anywhere else that’s fairly well in town. It will not suit my position to go on living in Putney.”

“You know very well,” she answered hatefully, “that I can’t and won’t live in town. I will not countenance unsanitary conditions with my presence among them. It would be against my conscience. You are determined to cut yourself off from me by suggesting it.”

“You suggested it yourself, you know,” Macdonald said. “I have stood out against the idea for years. It’s I that have kept us together.”

“I dare say,” she said incredulously. Her tone roused an uncontrollable moment of anger in her husband.

“But this is intolerable,” he said. And his eyes gleamed dangerously. “Do you mean to say you have never suggested that we should separate? Do you dare to say it?” —

“Well, you need not swear at me,” she said. “All that I am pointing out now is that you are not very eager to retain my society. Of course, when I made those proposals before I was only setting a trap for you. I had a right to set a trap for you. You have always deceived me. It is impossible that you should have had the ideas you have had lately and have moved in the society you’ve frequented without becoming deceitful. I can’t say that I have found you out in any specific lies, but Conservative ideas and the smart set go with it.’’

“But how can you,” Macdonald asked in a voice that was almost a groan—” how can you use a phraseology that is so intolerably vulgar? Or how can we live together if you will? You have surely — haven’t you? — lived for long enough with my friends to know that you can’t express these things in the language of the cheap newspapers.”

“You have Conservative ideas, and you live with the smart set now,” the Countess said coldly. “You can’t get away from that, whatever language I was refined enough to use. And you want to get rid of me now in order to plunge into a whirl of dissipation. Do you suppose I don’t know enough of the world to know what your having a room at your office means?”

Macdonald really groaned. The train was slowing down and running so close to the bank of the Rhine that only the water was visible from the carriage window.

“Of course, if it was only a trap,” he said, “if you did not really want us to separate, there’s an end of the matter. And if you insist upon it, I will manage to live in Putney or one of the other suburbs.”