Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (55 page)

‘I married you, as you know, against my parents’ wishes.’

‘And can you love an old man like me?’

‘Should I have married you if I did not; besides, whom should a woman love, honour (God help me!), and obey if not her husband?’ This latter part was said half scornfully and half as a child would say a well-learnt task.

‘Well, then, my dear, obey me like a dutiful wife, and let the maid undress you, and go to bed and try to sleep. I will have the blue room made ready for myself, for fear of disturbing you.’

Nevertheless she knew from his voice that the concession was only made to show her that he had the power to make it. She obeyed his behest quietly enough, not so much from realising the hopelessness of refusal, but from numbness of thoughts, the reaction after the over-great excitement, and passively allowed the maid to assist her in undressing. Only, she said to her at the last, —

‘Put the lights quite out, please. Oh, and Parker, when Dr Long comes say that I am asleep and begged not to be disturbed.’

The maid answered, —

‘Yes, madam,’ and shutting the door, left her to darkness and her thoughts.

Where would be the profit to detail these thoughts, which came up to the surface of her mind, like dross on the surface of a seething crucible of molten gold, until at last she fell asleep?

Mr Ryves, on the other hand, went to bed in high spirits. His mind was so tired by the work he had given it during the day that he fell asleep without need of his opiate, and woke in the morning in quite a jovial mood. Edith, in her restlessness, was already up and pacing her room when he went in to her, but he could see for himself what a night of terror she must have passed. Nevertheless she received him quite calmly, so much so that any more generous opponent would have admired her braveness and self-control. But generosity was an ingredient absolutely wanting in Mr Ryves’s character. All he said to himself was: ‘H’m. It’s beginning to tell. But what a little fool she is to try to conceal her feelings from me. Anyhow, I don’t mind. The harder she works herself the sooner she will die, and it must be hard work for a girl like that to restrain herself so much. It would be a relief to her if she raved a little — anyhow this sort of thing will wear her out so much the faster.
Tant mieux
’ — and he began to reprove her for getting up in an unfit state before the doctor had been to see her. She accepted his reproach in meek silence, excusing herself by saying that she felt much better, and did not wish to get into a habit of indulging herself by lying in bed. They descended therefore to breakfast, and afterwards the young man departed to make a round of the estate, but Mr Ryves remained, taking upon himself the sweet task of entertaining his wife. She now wondered no longer at his brilliant elucidation of social and metaphysical questions, and during the whole morning she paid but little attention to him or the book he was reading. She was engaged in settling in her mind the exact size of the sin she had committed in listening to her husband’s recital the night before, and after a time she arrived at the conclusion that the sin was not one of a very great enormity, for she had been to a certain extent actuated in not coming forward at once on awakening by uncertainty as to her reception by her stepson, whom she had not seen since her marriage, besides which she had been anxious to prove in her own case the truth of the proverb about eavesdroppers. The morning seemed interminable, though the doctor’s visit broke it a little. He, however, did not stop long, and only advised her to be careful not to overexert herself. To this succeeded another interval of watching the hands creep round the clock face and waiting in breathless agony for the striking of the hours, until at last Julia returned, and Edith hoped to get a little relief in the confiding of her woes to her friend. How badly she fared, and how despair followed on despair has been already recorded in these pages, in the course of a conversation, to the which, if it be not impressed on his memory, let the reader turn back.

CHAPTER VIII
.

Ha de vivir con dolores. — Spanish Proverb.

MR KASKER-RYVES was by no means inclined to let his wife rest over long, and on the morning of the day following Julia’s return he appeared at the lunch-table, according to his wont, with the day’s copy of the
Times
in his hand.

‘Any news?’ asked his son.

‘Nothing in particular. Consols have risen three-quarters. Atchison and Topeka’s have fallen a little — otherwise nothing in particular. Now, if you’re ready I’ll say grace.’

The lunch proceeded in silence for a time, until Mr Ryves began, —

‘There’s another centenarian immortalised in the
Times
to-day—”Died at the age of 103.”’

‘Seems to be rather a mortality among centenarians now,’ his son remarked.

‘Yes, doesn’t there. It’s the weather that does it. By-the-bye, you may reasonably expect to see me figuring in the list some of these days — in about twenty years’ time.

Dr Long said as much yesterday when I saw him. Oh, and I meant to tell you, it’s also in to-day’s
Times.
Hollebone, Clarkson & Co.’s creditors have accepted a composition of ten shillings in the pound as a composition temporarily, so that they are comparatively firmly established again. The firm is worth about two hundred thousand pounds at least, so the
Times
says, and they are
sometimes
right. I s’pose you don’t know anything about it, Jemmy?’

His son shook his head.

‘Nothing at all,’ he said.

He was wondering in his mind if it were possible for his father to have forgotten what he had told him on the subject the night before.

‘Oh, by-the-bye, Edith,’ that innocent old gentleman babbled on, turning his looks towards his wife, ‘you might put Mr Hollebone down on my visiting-list. I struck him off when they failed. He’s quite a nice young man, and has a good idea of music. When we go up to town next week you must begin to think seriously of playing the hostess. I know it’s rather an undertaking, but it will give you something to think about, and besides you’ll be finding it very dull down here all alone with only me as a companion.’

Edith smiled — Edith could smile very sweetly when she liked, but this was rather a bitter smile.

‘I — oh, no, not at all,’ she said, with an attempted imitation of the
blasé
airs she had seen on other girl’s faces. It was not a bad attempt either, but still it was hardly good enough to deceive Julia. ‘You see,’ she went on, ‘I’m not particularly fond of town, but still the country does get rather dull after a time.’

Mr Kasker-Ryves was considerably annoyed at the non-success of his attempt on her peace of mind. It was to a certain extent mortifying to him to have given himself the trouble of taunting his wife with a lover whom she did not care about, for so he had determined in his mind.

To account for Edith’s coldness on the subject of Hollebone is easy, for, with the natural tendency of fair-brown haired women, who by some racial accident not uncommon in so mixed a nation as ours, have inherited a certain but insufficient amount of strongmindedness, Edith was somewhat hysterical in character, given to obeying her moods and impulses unduly, and it had happened that on the particular morning when Mr Kasker-Ryves had broached the subject she had made up her mind that she hated her lover, and, unlike himself, when she had once decided to make up her mind to hate him, hate him she did, and with remarkable intensity — but, then, it passed away in a day or two.

Thus Mr Kasker-Ryves had to a certain extent failed, and he knew it; but such was his persevering nature that he at once set to work to build up a theory — or rather, to prove an old one. It took him several days to arrive at the idea, indeed it would have taken an ordinary man — one who possessed a conscience, that is — a much longer time to arrive at, since it was an idea which should in nature not occur to anyone who was not bent heart and soul on evil.

The fact is Mr Kasker-Ryves’s hatred of his wife had grown to be nothing less than a mania; besides which it diverted his mind to see his wife’s unhappiness, and Mr Ryves’s mind wanted diverting, because, in spite of his braggadocio libertinism, there was one event of his life that he repented of, and that one memory insisted on catching him at odd moments when his mind was otherwise unoccupied.

A terrible period of tribulation of mind ensued for Edith that season in London. A rustle and glitter — a sensation of rushing in an express train through masses of diamonds, gilding silk, and insincerity — in everything but insincerity, in that everyone was sincere. In her mind there was a constant war; but although she was pestered and pestered by men — of all grades, classes, and conditions — the war was all about Hollebone. Of course at times she hated him, but the phases of hatred grew fewer and fewer, and the intervals between whiles larger and larger; but it was not so much that that troubled her as the fact that her theory of morals had received a severe blow — in fact, her whole moral system had been shaken by her husband’s revelations, and she began to grow cynical, which is as a rule a bad sign in a girl — or in anyone for that matter — for as a general rule cynicism is the outward and visible sign to show that an inward and spiritual crime has been committed by the cynic. That, at anyrate, was the case with Edith — and the crime that she had committed was no new one, and one that has doubtless been committed by many millions of people, namely, that of thinking of her lover. Whether it was a very great crime or not is not for me to say; but poor Edith thought it was, and eagerly snatched up the armour of cynicism, saying, ‘They all do it — I sin in a goodly company.’ Nevertheless even these magic words did not soothe her. She was very miserable, and at all times and in all places her misery would force itself upon her, and at times with overwhelming force.

She was no lady, about that there can be no doubt; for, is not the first qualification of a lady that she should be able to bear tortures, mental, and even physical, without expressing on her face any indications of emotion? Therefore Edith was no lady — but there was some hope for her — she was but just out of her teens. In a very few years she might have become an automaton — and a very pretty one at that. As it was, she was so insignificant that, although all the world knew her, it took very little trouble to invent scandal about her — of course there was a good deal flying around in the air, but hardly anyone took the trouble to think of it.

Her beauty ensured her a certain number of attendants, but they were mostly
very
young men — and as all the world knows it is the duty which every well-bred Very Young Man owes to society to be utterly
blasé
— to take no interest in anything — not even cookery, and cookery is the conversation stock of the most
blasé
of all — women and horses being almost entirely tabooed. Captain Wrigley, V.C., summed the whole matter up in this way, standing with his back to the club fire: —

‘As a matter of fact, Mrs R. isn’t worth talking about, except as Mrs
R.
Some of you fellows can go and make love to her if you like. For my part I shall leave her for a year or so. She’ll keep, and be all the better for sobering down a bit. She’s a schoolgirl.’

‘I laike playing with a schoolgirl. It’s some fun just to see ‘em blush.’ This from another.

‘Do you, now? I say, can’t any of you fellows think of a new drink?’

‘You might try water!’

‘No!
Do
fellows ever drink water?’

And so Mrs Ryves was dismissed in much the same way by everyone, that is to say, everyone who was anyone. Of course there were some men fools enough to ‘flop’ over her, but they were all men of no account in society. Nevertheless she always had a plentiful following of men who liked playing with schoolgirls, pleasantly conceited creatures, who each and everyone of them imagined that the clouds that occasionally flew across her fair face were either fabricated to fascinate him or were caused by his own shortcomings, and they rather wondered that Mr Ryves should place such implicit confidence in his wife when there were such
very
fascinating men about; but then Mr Ryves was a little old-fashioned, and was used to society before they had appeared on the scene. Hideously improbable as it may seem, the well-hidden conscience of some of them were unearthed by a feeling of shame at the wrong they were doing Edith’s husband. For, as I have observed before, Mr Ryves was a man whom
everybody
loved. However, to most of the members of her court shame was an entirely new sensation, and in them a new sensation took the place of pleasure. Perhaps that was why they did not ‘leave off from following after her’; and although Edith very emphatically gave out that ‘followers were not allowed,’ she found a certain amount of enjoyment in setting her court down member by member. To be sure she did it in a somewhat
outré
fashion, but then, as I have said before, she was not a lady, a real lady, that is, and although some people set her very
outre
ness down as a mannerism — a mannerism is a striving after originality, and certainly originality is not ladylike, say what one will.

In the meantime Mr Ryves looked and smiled benignly at his wife’s suitors, and this annoyed them. It seemed to them as if his smile implied proprietary pride, sneering at them that they the youth and beauty of the land had allowed him, an old, old man, to carry off from them so priceless a pearl of promise, therefore they redoubled their efforts, and became indeed quite outrageous, until suddenly Kasker-Ryves withdrew his wife from out their midst, just as the goddesses of older times were in the habit of doing with their favourite heroes when hard pressed. The gentlemen of her court were by no means astonished, they only looked at one another, winked, wondered who the happy man was, called Sir Charles Russell a lucky dog, and waited for the papers with a certain amount of interest. As a matter of fact they showed a great deal of disappointment when nothing came of it. Mr Kasker-Ryves was ill and a great physician was called in, all the Ryves’ engagements were cancelled, and Mrs Ryves had entirely disappeared, being only occasionally seen in the park. Society was annoyed and disappointed, it felt itself done out of a
cause célébré
, and it interviewed the great physician.

‘What was the matter with Mr Kasker-Ryves?’

‘Mr Ryves had a complication of slight diseases.’

‘Was there anything wrong with his heart?’

The great physician quite understood society’s innuendo, and itched to knock society down. As a general rule he had no objection to retailing scandal, both to dowagers and at his club, but he had seen Mrs Ryves, and understood the thing was impossible, and in the great physician the man was not quite sunk in the gentleman, About society ladies he had no objection to retailing any amount of scandal, that being indeed almost the sole use of a society lady, but he recognised at once that Edith was not a lady of that class, and did not deserve to be treated as such. Nevertheless, although he would have liked to knock society down, he refrained, thinking it excessively probable that in such a case society would dispense with his services. Therefore he answered that Mr Kasker-Ryves had nothing the matter with his heart, he suffered considerably from gout in his feet, and that Mrs Ryves was nursing him assiduously. Society was extremely disgusted.

‘It’s always the way,’ it said. ‘We’ve suffered frightfully from the introduction of shopkeepers into our midst. They know how to behave up to a certain point well enough, but after that — This is a case in point. If this girl had known her duty, we might have had a lovely divorce case. But we’re in the hands of parvenues entirely now. It would have been so exciting, too; they’d surely have had the Prince of Hesse-Katzenberg-Hohmuth in the witness-box, and it’s just possible the C.K. — only think of it.’

And society almost decided to scratch the Ryves’s off its visiting list. But it reconsidered its decision on considering its growing and grown-up daughters, and Mr Kasker-Ryves’s millions, his eighty years, and his unmarried son, although, to be sure, the son was r
ather
— but, then, young men must sow their wild oats — and three and a half millions at least. Yes, it would never do to strike the father off, and besides, George is growing up, and Mr Kasker-Ryves is getting old. Mrs Kasker-Ryves is pretty sure to have considerable pickings. So perhaps it would be as well to be civil to her too. One never knows what may happen nowadays. Therefore Mrs Kasker-Ryves was not refused admittance into polite society. Not that she would have very much minded the prohibition, for she was otherwise engaged. Mr Ryves’s reason for withdrawing his wife from view was not a sudden access of jealousy, but of gout. It was, moreover, not the gout itself, but one of its prevenant circumstances. It came about in this way. By a curious physico-mental affinity the gout invariably heralded its approach with him some days before its arrival by an effervescence of the mind, in which ideas and revelations bubbled up unceasingly, and during these periods Mr Ryves saw — not the evil of his ways, for his ways had no evil, but the mistakes he had made or was making. The fit first struck him one morning when he returned with his wife towards three from a ball, the fifth they had been to that week, and Mr Ryves observed with considerable satisfaction that Edith was looking excessively haggard and worn out.