Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (63 page)

Hollebone smiled a somewhat sickly smile.

‘Appearances are deceptive,’ he said.

‘Anyhow, I wouldn’t mind being him,’ the other replied as he took his leave.

‘Nor I either,’ said Hollebone, thinking of his poison, and he went upstairs to Dr Hammond’s room.

Dr Hammond’s attitude had not changed since Hollebone saw him last, and Mary Ann was knitting beside the fire.

‘Look here, Mary Ann,’ he said, ‘you must go to bed to-night. You didn’t last night.’

‘Then I’m not a-goin’, Doctor Hollebone,’ she said defiantly.

But Hollebone said, —

‘Hush, now. Be quiet. I insist upon it.

I’m just going upstairs to unpack, and make myself comfortable for the night, and when I come down again you go out of the room, whether you like it or not, and if you’re a sensible girl you’ll go to bed. You won’t be of the least use to me, and you’re half asleep as it is now,’ and Mary Ann recognised the uselessness of proceeding any further in her defiance.

Accordingly, Hollebone retired to his room, and began to make himself as comfortable as possible to pass the night in the sickroom. He was still in his shirt sleeves, putting away in the drawers some of his clothes, from a portmanteau he had opened, when a knock came to the door.

‘Who’s there?’ he said somewhat angrily. ‘Come in.’

‘It’s on’y me — Maud,’ a plaintive voice said. ‘Vere wasn’t anyone to talk to downstairs, ‘cos Emma is puttin’ Rose to bed, and ve kitchen clock ticked so loud I was frightened, an’ so I earned to talk to you; but I’ll go away if you’re angry.’

‘Oh, no, I’m not, Maud dear,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know it was you. You can come in if you like to, and sit down while I’m putting my things away.’

‘But I don’t want to sit down
alo-an,’
she said reproachfully. ‘It isn’t laike sittin’ down properly.’

‘Isn’t it?’ he said, taking pity on her loneliness. ‘Well, wait a minute, until I’ve put my things away. Now then.’

And he seated himself in an arm-chair by the fire, that had been lit especially to air the room against his return. Little Maud was, with considerable expenditure of force, dragging a chair to the opposite side of the fireplace, when he stopped her.

‘You can sit on my knee if you like Pussy,’ he said, and she accepted his offer eagerly.

‘Oo!’ she said, with a little purr, ‘vis is what I laïke. You didn’t shave your-sef vis mornin’, an’ your chin is
all
bristles like a chestnut outside. I do-an’t maïnd, you know,’ she added reassuringly, ‘but I didn’t ibspect it, and it spraped my cheek.’

‘You didn’t ibspect, didn’t you?’ he said, rubbing his cheek against hers, with a pleasant feeling of companionship stealing over him. ‘Where’s that half of the sixpence that I was to have?’

‘He didn’t give me no sixpences,’ she said disappointedly.

‘Didn’t he? What a shame! What did he say?’

‘He only said, “Good God! it’s her sister,” and he turned first red, and ven whaïte, like a sweet vat you suck ve paint off of.’

‘Who was who’s sister?’ Hollebone asked, never having heard of any sister of Edith’s.

‘Me,’ Maud answered enigmatically.

‘Tell me all about it,’ said he, feeling hopelessly muddled.

‘I don’t know nuffing,’ she said, ‘ibsept vat he was lookin’ into ve faïre when I went into ve woom, just like you do when you’ve got ve dumps — and he didn’t hear me come in, an’ so ve gentleman what opened ve doah said, “If you please, sir, here’s ve little girl ‘at’s brought ve medsin, an’ she wants to give it you herself,” ‘cos I wouldn’t let him take it up. Well, an’ then the old gentleman looked round, just as if he didn’t know me at first, and ven his face got all wed, an’ he was sittin’ in an arm-chair, an’ his hands catched hold of ve arms quite taïght, and his head part came out in front, an’ his underneath part went back into ve chaïah, an’ ven he said, “Good God! it’s her sister,” an’ I said, “No, I’m Rose’s sister,” an’ ven he said, “Are you a devil sent by Fate? If not, for God’s sake don’t mention that name again,” an’ his voice was
so
funny, squeaky — just as if only half of it came out — an’ I was so fraïghtened vat I couldn’t answer, an’
ven
he said, “Damn it, Paton, go away, and don’t stand grinning at me. Don’t you see I want to be alone?” an’ I don’t fink Paton was
grinning
, ‘cos he was almost cryin’ when we got outside ve doah, an’ I was fraïghtened, so I went away too. But I’m not a devil sent by Fate — am I?—’cos a devil’s got horns an’ a tail; vat’s what Mary Ann says.’

‘No, you’re not; you’re a very nice little girl. Now just you say your poetry for me.’

‘Oh, I’ve learnt some new poetry while you were away. Shall I say vat?’

‘Yes, say the new, by all means,’ said Hollebone abstractedly, and she began:

‘Fire, fire,’ said the crier,

‘Where, where?’ said Mrs Blair?

‘Upstairs,’ says Mrs Mears.

‘Are you sartin?’ says Mrs Martin.

‘Gandy says it ought to be, “Are you certain?” says Mrs Merton,” but that isn’t right, is it?’

‘Eh, what? No, not at all. Go on, it’s very pretty.’

‘But that’s all,’ she said.

‘Well, say something else. Say” The stars were falling fast.”’

‘But it isn’t the
stars
, it’s the dew.’

‘Oh, never mind, fire away.’

And the child started off in her singsong voice, leaving him time to think and rack his brains to find out who ‘her sister’ could possibly be, or why the name ‘Rose’ could affect Mr Ryves so powerfully. But he could make nothing out of his thoughts, only, as Maud said at the close of the sitting, —

‘You haven’t been
half
naïce to-night. You haven’t been finking about me at all. I made a
lot
of mistakes in “Dwink, pwetty cweature,” on purpose an’ you didn’t take any notice.’

‘Didn’t I, Pussy? Nevermind. Go, and let Mary Ann put you to bed.’

‘Cawwy me downstairs,’ she said, and he obeyed her, after which he returned to spend the night in the sickroom, and a dreary long night it proved, with no sound to break the silence but the stentorian breathing of the old doctor and the sound of the waves, which the wind, itself occasionally rising to a shriek, bore down to his ears, and with nothing to occupy either mind or body save occasionally to moisten the lips of the unconscious dying man.

And thus through the night his thoughts took up his time, and shook his whole frame with a mad desire to do something — anything to stave off those terrible thoughts. Towards six a little light seemed filtering in over the shutter, and in the wish for a moment of action he threw open the window and watched the sun come over the sea — a hemisphere of gold on a sea of motionless lead — and he was just noting how the yellow was letting its tints swim almost imperceptibly over the east when a cessation of sound in the room behind caught his ear.

‘Yesterday was the end of a year for me,’ he said aloud, ‘and to-day is the beginning of eternity for poor Dr Hammond. When will my turn come for a change in life?’

The sun had risen fully — above the gold-dappled blue of the sea’s restless swinging it hung, round and glowing, in a cloudless sky. A new day had begun, but Hollebone drew down the blind and shut out its joyous light. The sparkle of the sun on the hoar-frosted land below consorted ill with the gloom on his soul. Whether it consorts well or ill with the presence of death, who can say?

Be that as it may, he drew down the blind to shut out the light, but the day had dawned, and grew brighter in spite of it.

CHAPTER X
.

A quiet resting from all jealousy. — Old Play.

AS Maud had said, Mr Ryves turned first red and then white. Perhaps it was as well for her peace of mind that she did not see the look that came into his face after the door had closed behind her. There might have been another night’s rest ruined. Children have strange fancies, it may be not stranger ones than other people have, but they are less chary of imparting them. Mr Ryves was hard pressed by a fancy that night. Paton was of opinion that he had gone mad, for, on making some excuse to go into the room, he saw his master sitting in a chair, with an expression of horror on his face such that Paton had never dreamt of as possible. Paton had been brought up in excessively polite circles, and at ordinary times would have said that an expression of horror on anyone’s face was terribly bad form; but there was something about his master’s face that precluded all thought of form, bad or otherwise. It made Paton shudder, and it takes a good deal to make a well - bred upper-servant shudder — and Paton had been known not to wince when he had observed an absent-minded guest at his master’s table make use of a steel knife with his fish, which demonstrates clearly that his nerves were excellent. But this was something else, and Paton felt for a moment that ice-water was trickling down his spinal column.

That was what he felt at viewing Mr Kasker-Ryves’s face from the side, as he gazed at the fire. But when his master suddenly turned it towards him his knees shook and his tongue clave to the roof of his mouth, for there was a passion, heatless and white, in the face that held the venomous spirit of a million oaths in its oval casket of flesh.

‘Paton,’ said a voice — a voice Paton had never heard before—’ Paton, why can you not leave me in peace?’

‘Oh, sir,’ said Paton, ‘how could I leave you in such a state?’

‘What do you mean?’ the voice said, and a pair of eyes, that had for the moment been wandering vaguely, turned suddenly on him with a glare like that in the eyes of a dying eagle. ‘What do you mean? Don’t you see the death in my face? You would let a dog die in peace, would you not?’

Paton realised that his master was speaking to him, for the first and last time, as one man speaks to another, and knew that he should leave his master alone with the past; but his limbs seemed to refuse their functions, and he remained, trembling. Again the glare came into the cold eyes, which glanced from him to the door, and Paton, feeling that his master was treating him now as a dog, slunk out of the room, and closed the door behind him. Outside, he paused, and putting his finger between his teeth, bit it almost to the bone, in the hope that the pain would drive out of his remembrance the look of death in his master’s face.

A slight grating noise came from the lock of the door behind him, and he shuddered once again.

‘Good Lord!’ he said, ‘there was no need to lock the door. I wouldn’t go into
that
room again — no, not for a king’s ransom.’

Mr Kasker-Ryves had returned to his seat, and remained gazing at the fire. There was a cold feeling round his heart, and by it he knew that his soul was shivering before the relentless approach of the Almighty; and the shivering of his soul made itself manifest in a shuddering that had taken hold of his body.

The hours flew by, or did they crawl? He could hardly tell whether each minute had a thousand feet, or whether the hours had pinions that outsped the wind. He did not know even whether he would rather they should pass fast or slowly.

True, every minute that died away left him nearer to his death; but then he felt that death itself would be preferable to the agony of dread that he then suffered, and superadded to the agony of mind was the physical pain of his body’s decay; but, more than all things else, the thought that he had hastened his death by his own mad hatred of his wife made him feel a frantic grief.

‘If I had not been foolhardy enough to come down here I might have stood some chance of recovering,’ he said, bitterly repentant of his folly; ‘but here, the very sight of this place is enough to kill me. Why should it have been this place of the whole world? And then the sight of that child nearly killed me. For the moment I really thought it must have been a ghost, it was so exactly like
her
little sister — and then the name she mentioned. It must be one of her sister’s children, and if so I should like to leave them a little money to keep them from want. I can’t leave it in my will — at least it would want witnessing — but Jemmy would see to it if I merely express the wish in a codicil, without witnesses. Yes, I will do it.’

And he arose from his seat and went into his wife’s bedroom to fetch the will, which was in his dressing-case, carefully locked up. The door opened direct from his room into hers, and thus he had not very far to go; but even the slight movement made his brain swim so that he could hardly stand. He trod very softly, after his wont, and opened the door noiselessly.

Edith was kneeling on the floor, with her face hidden in her hands, and by her side lay the violin, smashed to fragments.

Mr Kasker-Ryves smiled to himself.

‘She seems to have only just found it out. How she must be suffering now, and it’s only a matter of time which of us dies first. I wonder if she has heard me come in?’

He stood for a moment watching her complacently, and revelling in the thought that, old though he was, he still had the power to torture somebody; but even as he was at the height of his joy a flamelike pain darted across his chest from side to side, stopping his breath for the time, and leaving him panting and trembling before this new proof that his time was drawing in.

Once again the shuddering pervaded his being. A terrible dread had seized on him, a horror of going out of the world hated by one who had striven so long and earnestly to do right towards himself, and who might have loved him and cherished him tenderly but for his own cruelty.

‘What have you done with my poison?’ she said fiercely, noticing his presence in the room. ‘Where is it? Give it me. Let me kill myself. Oh, my dear poison that I treasured so,’ and once more she covered her face with her hands and burst into hysterical sobs.

The question made him tremble the more. He saw now how hard he had pressed her, and that he had driven her to wish to take her own life, even as he had done to her who had loved him long ago — and even as he had loved the one without knowing it, so he recognised that he now loved the other. But there she sat sobbing at his feet.

‘Edith,’ he said very softly, but she sobbed on in silence. ‘Edith,’ he repeated in an agony of desire for love. ‘Edith,
please
look up,’ and she uncovered her glorious face, wet with tears, and he knew that she hated him — now, after he had striven so long for it — now, when all he had to live for was to remove that hatred, for when one has but a few short hours to live things show themselves with all too startling clearness in their true light.

‘Sir,’ she said, epitomising her feelings in the hopeless tone of her voice, ‘sir, you are my husband — and I obey you.’

‘Oh, but, Edith,’ he said, trembling so that his lips hardly framed the words he would have them say, ‘do you not
— can
you not love me too?’

‘My God,’ she said, with a great desolate powerlessness, ‘how
can
I love a man who could do that?’ and she pointed to the broken Stradivarius.

‘Oh, Edith,’ he said, reckless of truth now that he wished to regain her love. ‘Edith — and it was out of my love for you that I broke it, in the mere madness of jealousy at the thought that you should love another.’

Perhaps it was that her vanity was soothed, it having been grievously wounded by her lover; perhaps it was the sight of her husband’s anguish, or the ever-predominant thought that she had wronged him and deserved any punishment, made her tone a little softer when she spoke again, after a pause.

‘But it was so cruel of you to bring me down here to taunt me with my marriage vows at the sight of my — of him who used to love me.’

And without hesitation he spoke, adopting an expression of surprise.

‘To taunt you with your marriage vows!’ he said. ‘Oh, Edith, how
could
you think me capable of such baseness. I brought you down here in repentance at my jealousy, that you might be comforted by the sight of him, and I even let him put his arms round you, and left you alone with him — do you think that was
pleasant
to me? What other motive could I possibly have? You have misjudged me — indeed and indeed you have.’

Edith turned white for a moment.

‘I thought — I thought—’ she faltered, and burst into tears, and still kneeling, she caught at his hand and kissed it passionately. ‘Oh, my husband, my husband,’ she sobbed, ‘forgive me. I have wronged you so deeply, and so much, and I can never atone for it; but oh, I have suffered a great deal, and I am very wretched,’ and she pressed his hand to her forehead, and would not let him draw it away though he tried.

He stood and racked his poor failing brains for an answer to her craving for forgiveness. He would fain have had her rise from her knees, because it seemed to him now that he should be the one to kneel to her, and for very want of words he held his peace, and she went on, turning up her tear-wet face yearningly to him, —

‘Oh, my husband,’ she said, ‘forgive me, forgive me. I have wronged you very, very deeply, but you are great and noble enough to pardon even that. Oh, say you will forgive.’

‘My dearest,’ he said, ‘what
have
I to forgive? You have been the truest of wives to me, and I — I have hurt your feelings at times. If there is anyone to be forgiven, it is I.’

But she cut him short, wringing her hands.

‘Oh, no, no, no. It is I. You have been the noblest and best of husbands, and I have sinned against Heaven, and against the name of wife. For oh, I could not help loving
him.
I sinned very, very heavily in marrying you. It was betraying you, for I did not love you then. I wanted to get your money. It was terrible, mean, contemptible, vile, there is no other word for it, and even
he
despises me for it, and I — I love him still. And is not that a sin in me? And I was even base enough to hate
you
at times, even a moment ago. I thought — oh, believe me, I did think that you were treating me cruelly and hardly in bringing me down here. I was even wicked enough to believe that you had done it to tempt me and torment me, and you are so good and noble, and have been so very kind to me, and I — I am too base to exist. Oh, forgive me, forgive me, if you can, such grievous sins — do, do, for the love of Christ,’ and she held her head averted downwards for shame before his gaze, and thought of Magdalen and the Redeemer, and he bent over her and put his arms round her.

‘Oh, Edith, Edith, my dearest, truest wife, I cannot, I dare not tell you how I have wronged you, for fear you should hate me, and I am yearning for your love — a very little love. Oh, say that you can pardon me.’

But she held her face downwards and sobbed.

‘I have nothing to forgive. You are too noble for me to dare to love. But — but I do love you, as one should love a God, and — I would like you to kiss me, to show that you forgive me before I die. It would make me die a little happier—’

‘Please kiss me, to let me know that you forgive me,’ and she held up her face to him.

For a moment he hesitated, fearing lest the touch of his lips should contaminate her, and then bending over her, he kissed her reverently, as one would kiss a sacred relic. And she let her head fall forward with a feeling of awe, and of her own great unworthiness before this godlike man.

He felt his brain was failing, and turning on his heel, left the room, after having hastily seized the dressing-case he had come in search of; but in spite of the agitation of his mind he forced himself to sit down and write the codicil to his will. It was a singular trait in his character that he was too nervous to trust his will in the hands of his solicitors, but invariably carried it about with him, in order that he might at any moment add a codicil.

In reinserting the will into its place he noticed the poison that he had taken from Edith, and which he had, for greater safety, hidden in the case.

‘What a good thing it was that I took the precaution to abstract that poison from her keeping, poor girl,’ he said. ‘I am glad that that crime is spared to me. I wouldn’t like to have two lives on my conscience, and yet I suppose I have ruined a great many people’s lives — a great many — it’s a horrible thought. But it’s all over — it’s too late to do anything now. Oh, how ill I feel, and my throat is parched.’