Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (316 page)

“Ah! I know you’ve some final message for me, and you went round to my rooms, and Jervis told you I’d come on here.”

She was quite a different Ellida from the plaintive lady in the Park. Her lips were parted, her eyes sparkled, and she held her arms behind her back as if she were expecting a dog to jump up at her.

“Ah! You think you know everything, Mr. Toto,” she said; “but,
je vous le donne en mille
, you don’t know what I’ve come to tell you.”

“I know it’s one of two things,” Grimshaw said, smiling: “Either Kitty’s spoken, or else Katya has.”

“Oh, she’s more than spoken,” Ellida cried out. “She’s coming. In three days she’ll be here.”

Robert Grimshaw reflected for a long time.

“You did what you said you would?” he asked at last.

“I did what I said I would,” she repeated. “I appealed to her sense of duty. I said that, if she was so good in the treatment of obscure nervous diseases — and you know the head- doctor-man over there said she was as good a man as himself — it was manifestly her duty, her duty to mother’s memory, to take charge of mother’s only descendant — that’s Kitty — and this is her answer: She’s coming — she’s coming with a patient from Philadelphia.... Oh! she’s coming. Katya’s coming again. Won’t it make everything different?”

She pulled Robert Grimshaw by the buttonhole over to the window, and began to speak in little sibilant whispers.

And it came into Dudley Leicester’s head to think that, if Katya Lascarides was so splendid in the treatment of difficult cases, she might possibly be able to advise him as to some of the obscure maladies from which he was certain that he suffered.

Robert Grimshaw was departing that day for the city of Athens, where for two months he was to attend to the business of the firm of Peter Lascarides and Co., of which he was a director.

CHAPTER III
.

WITH her eyes on the grey pinnacles of the Scillies, Katya Lascarides rose from her deck- chair, saying to Mrs. Van Husum:

“I am going to send a marconigram.”

Mrs. Van Husum gave a dismal but a healthy groan. It pleased Katya, since it took the place of the passionately pleading “Oh, don’t leave me — don’t leave me!” to which Katya Lascarides had been accustomed for many months. It meant that her patient had arrived at a state of mind so normal that she was perfectly fit to be left to the unaided care of her son and daughter-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Clement P. Van Husum junior, who resided at Wantage. Indeed, Mrs. Van Hu sum’s groan was far more the sound of an elderly lady recovering from the troubles of sea-sickness than that which would be made by a neurotic sufferer from the dread of solitude.

Katya, with her tranquil and decided step, moved along the deck and descended the companion forward to where the Marconi installation sent out its cracklings from a little cabin surrounded by what appeared a schemeless jumble of rusty capstans and brown cables. With the same air of pensive introspection and tranquil resolve she leaned upon the little slab that was devoted to the sender of telegrams, and wrote to her sister Ellida, using the telegraphic address of her husband’s office:

“Shall reach London noon to-morrow. Beg you not to meet ship or to come to hotel for three days. Writing conditions.”

And, having handed in this message through the little shutter to the invisible operator, she threaded her way with the same pensiveness between the capstans and the ropes up the companion and on to the upper deck where, having adjusted the rugs around the dozing figure of Mrs. Van Husum in her deck-chair, she paused, with her grey eyes looking out across the grey sea, to consider the purplish islands, fringed with white, ‘the swirls of foam in the greeny and slate-coloured waters, the white lighthouse, and a spray-beaten tramp- steamer that, rolling, undulating, and battling through the long swell between them and the Scillies, was making its good departure for Mexico.

Tall, rounded, in excellent condition, with slow but decided actions, with that naturally pale complexion and clean-cut run of the cheek-bone from chin to ear which came to her with her Greek parentage, Katya Lascarides was reflecting upon the terms of her letter to her sister.

From the tranquillity of her motions and the determination of her few words, she was to be set down as a person, passionless, practical, and without tides of emotion. But her eyes, as she leant gazing out to landwards, changed colour by imperceptible shades, ranging from grey to the slaty-blue colour of the sea itself, and her brows from minute to minute, following the course of her thoughts, curved slightly upwards above eyes that expressed tender reminiscences, and gradually straightened themselves out until, like a delicate bar below her forehead, they denoted, stretched and tensile, the fact that she had arrived at an inflexible determination.

In the small and dusky reading-room, that never contained any readers, she set herself slowly to write.

“MY DEAR ELLIDA” (her letter ran), “I have again carefully read through your report of what Dr. Tressider says of Kitty’s case, and I see no reason why the dear child should not find it in her to speak within a few weeks — within a month even. Dr. Tressider is certain that there is no functional trouble of the brain or the vocal organs. Then there is just the word for it — obstinacy. The case is not so very uncommon: the position must be regarded psychologically rather than by a pathologist. On the facts given me I should say that your little Kitty is indulging in a sort of dramatic display. You say that she is of an affectionate, even of a jealously affectionate, disposition. Very well, then; I take it that she desires to be fussed over. Children are very inscrutable. Who can tell, then, whether she has not found out (I do not mean to say that she is aware of a motive, as you or I might be) — found out that the way to be fussed over is just not to speak. For you, I should say, it would be almost impossible to cure her, simply because you are the person most worried by her silence. And similarly with the nurses, who say to her: ‘Do say so- and-so, there’s a little pet!’ The desire to be made a fuss of, to occupy the
whole
mind of some person or of many persons, to cause one’s power to be felt — are these not motives very human? Is there any necessity to go to the length of putting them down to mental aberration?”

Katya Lascarides had finished her sheet of paper. She blotted it with deliberate motions, and, leaving it face downwards, she placed her arms upon the table, and, her eyelashes drooping over her distant eyes, she looked reflectively at her long and pointed hands. At last she took up her pen and wrote upon a fresh sheet in her large, firm hand:

“I am diagnosing my own case!”

Serious and unsmiling she looked at the words; then, as if she were scrawling idly, she wrote:

“Robert.”

Beneath that:

“Robert Hurstlett Grimshaw.”

And then:

“Greek:
sas agapo
.”

She heaved a sigh of voluptuous pleasure, and began to write, “I love you! I love you! I love you...” letting the words be accompanied by deep breaths of solace, as a very thirsty child may drink. And, having written the page full all but a tiny corner at the bottom, she inscribed very swiftly and in minute letters:

“Oh, Robert Grimshaw, why don’t you bring me to my knees?”

She heaved one great sigh of desire, and, leaning back in her chair, she looked at her words, smiling, and her lips moving. Then, as it were, she straightened herself out; she took up the paper to tear it into minute and regular fragments, and, rising, precise and tranquil, she walked out of the doorway to the rail of the ship. She opened her hand, and a little flock of white squares whirled, with the swiftness of swallows, into the discoloured wake. One piece that stuck for a moment to her forefinger showed the words:

“My own case!”

She turned, appearing engrossed and full of reserve, again to her writing.

“No,” she commenced, “do not put down this form of obstinacy to mental aberration. It is rather to be considered as a manifestation of passion. You say that Kitty is not of a passionate disposition. I imagine it may prove that she is actually of a disposition passionate in the extreme.
But all her passion is centred in that one desire
— the desire to excite concern. The cure for this is not medical; it is merely practical. Nerve treatment will not cure it, nor solicitude, but feigned indifference. You will not touch the spot with dieting; perhaps by... But there, I will not explain my methods to you, old Ellida. I discussed Kitty’s case, as you set it forth, very fully with the chief in Philadelphia, and between us we arrived at certain conclusions. I won’t tell you what they were, not because I want to observe a professional reticence, but simply so that, in case one treatment fails, you may not be in agonies of disappointment and fear. I haven’t myself much fear of non-success if things are as you and Dr. Tressider say. After all, weren’t we both of us as kiddies celebrated for fits of irrational obstinacy? Don’t you remember how one day you refused to eat if Calton, the cat, was in the dining-room? And didn’t you keep that up for days and days and days? Yet you were awfully fond of Calton.... Yes; I think I can change Kitty for you, but upon one condition — that you never plead for Robert Grimshaw, that you never mention his name to me. Quite apart from any other motive of mine — and you know that I consider mother’s example before anything else in the world — if he will not make this sacrifice for me he does not love me. I do not mean to say that you are to forbid him your house, for I understand he dines with you every other day. His pleadings I am prepared to deal with, but not yours, for in you they savour of disrespect for mother. Indeed, disrespect or no disrespect, I will not have it. If you agree to this, come to our hotel as soon as you have read it. If you disagree — if you won’t, dear, make me a solemn promise — leave me three days in which to make a choice out of the five patients who wish to have me in London, and then come and see me, bringing Kitty.

“Not a word, you understand — not one single word!

“On that dreadful day when Robert told us that father had died intestate and that other — I was going to add ‘horror,’ but, since it was mother’s doing, she did it, and so it must have been right — when he told us that we were penniless and illegitimate, I saw in a flash my duty to mother’s memory. I have stuck to it, and I will stick to it. Robert must give in, or I will never play the part of wife to him.”

She folded her letter into the stamped envelope, and, having dropped it deliberately into the ship’s letter-box, she rejoined Mrs. Van Husum, who was reading “The Mill on the Floss,” on the main deck.

PART III
.

CHAPTER I
.

IN the shadow of a huge mulberry-tree, upon whose finger-like branches already the very light green leaves were beginning to form a veil, Katya Lascarides was sitting in a deck- chair. The expression upon her face was one of serenity and of resigned contentment. She was looking at the farmhouse; she was knitting a silk necktie, a strip of vivid green that fell across her light grey skirt. With a little quizzical and jolly expression, her hands thrust deep into the pockets of cream-coloured overalls, Kitty Langham looked sideways for approval at her aunt. She had just succeeded in driving a black cat out of the garden.

They lived down there in a deep silence, Katya never speaking and eliciting no word from the child. But already the child had made concessions to the extent of clearing her throat or emitting a little “Hem!” when she desired to attract her aunt’s attention; but her constant occupation was found in the obstinate gambols of a pet lamb — a “sock,” as the farm- people called it — which inhabited the farmhouse, bleated before the door, or was accustomed by butting to send the garden-gate flying back upon its hinges.

This creature, about one-third the size of a mature ram, was filled with obstinacies apparently incomprehensible; it was endowed with great strength and a considerable weight. With one push of its head it would send the child rolling several feet along the grass; it would upset chairs in the dining-room; it bleated clamorously for milk at all meals when Kitty had her milk and water.

Against its obstinacies Kitty’s was valiant but absolutely useless. With her arms round its neck — a little struggling thing with dark eyes and black hair, in her little white woollen sweater — she would attempt to impede the lamb’s progress across a garden-bed. But the clinching of her white teeth availed nothing at all. She would be dragged across the moist earth, and left upon her back like a little St. Lawrence amongst the flames of the yellow crocuses. And at these struggles Katya Lascarides presided with absolute deafness and with inflexible indifference; indeed, after their first meeting, when Ellida Langham had brought the child with her nurse to the gloomy, if tranquil, London hotel, where Katya had taken from Mrs. Van Husum a parting which lasted three days, and ended in Mrs. Van Husum’s dissolving into a flood of tears — at the end of that meeting Ellida had softly reproached Katya for the little notice she had taken of what was, after all, the nicest child in London.

But cool, calm, tall, and dressed in a grey that exactly matched her eyes, Katya “took charge.” And, during the process, whilst she said, “I shall want this and that,” or “The place must be on a hill; it must face southwest; it must be seven miles from the sea; it must be a farm, with plenty of live-stock but no children,” Ellida watched her, silent, bewildered, and admiring. Tt seemed so improbable that she should have a sister so professional, so practical, so determined. Yet there it was.

And then they descended, Katya and Kitty alone, into the intense silence of the farm that was found. It was on a hill; it faced southwest; it was seven miles from the sea, and the farmer’s wife, because she was childless, surrounded herself with little animals whose mothers had died.

And there the child played, never hearing a word, in deep silence with the wordless beasts. This had lasted three weeks.

The gate was behind Katya’s back as she smiled at the rolling hills below the garden. She smiled because the night before she believed she had overheard Kitty talking to the lamb; she smiled because she was exhausted and quivering and lonely. She knitted the green necktie, her eyes upon the April landscape, where bursts of sunlight travelled across these veil-like films of new leaves that covered tenderly the innumerable hedgerows.

And suddenly she leaned forward; the long fingers holding the knitting-needles ceased all motion. She had heard a footstep — and she knew every footstep of the farm....

He was leaning over the back of her chair; she saw, against the blue when she opened her eyes, his clear, dark skin, his clear, dark contemplative eyes. Her arms slowly raised themselves; her lips muttered unintelligible words which were broken into by the cool of his cheek as she drew him down to her. She rose to her feet and recoiled, and again, with her arms stretched straight before her, as if she were blind and felt her way, her head thrown back and her eyes closed, an Oriental with a face of chiselled alabaster. And with her eyes still closed, her lips against his ear as if she were asleep, she whispered:

“Oh, take me! Take me! Now! For good....”

But these words that came from her without will or control ceased, and she had none to say of her own volition. There fell upon them the silent nirvana of passion.

And suddenly, vibrant, shrill, and interrupted by sobs and the grinding of minute teeth, there rose up in the child’s voice the words:

“Nobody must be loved but me. Nobody must be loved but me.”

They felt minute hands near their knees; they were parted by a little child, who panted and breathed through her nostrils. They looked at each other with eyes into which, very slowly, there came comprehension. And then, over the little thing’s head, Katya repeated:

“Nobody must be loved but me. Nobody must be loved but me.” And with a quick colour upon her cheeks and the wetness of tears in her eyes, “Oh, poor child!” she said.

For in the words the child had given to her she recognized the torture of her own passion.

That night quite late Katya descended the stairs upon tiptoe. She spoke in a very low voice:

“The little thing’s been talking, talking,” she said, “the quaintest little thoughts. I’ve seen it coming for days now. Sometimes I’ve seen her lips moving. She’s the most precise enunciation in the world.”

“I wired Ellida this afternoon,” Robert Grimshaw said.

“Then Ellida will be down here by the last train?” Katya answered, and he commented: “We’ve only got an hour.”

“But little Kitty,” she was beginning.

“No, no,” he interrupted. “Nobody must be talked about but us. Nobody must be talked about but us. I’m as glad as you or Ellida or Paul could possibly be about Kitty, but now that I have got you alone at last you’re bound to face the music.”

“But little Kitty?” Katya said. She said it, however, only for form’s sake, for Robert Grimshaw’s gentle face was set in a soft inflexibility, and his low tones she knew would hold her to the mark. She had to face the music. In the half-darkness his large eyes perused her face, dark, mournful and tender. The low, long farmhouse room with its cheap varnished furniture was softened by the obscure light from the fire over which he had been standing for a very long hour.

“Is it the same terms, then?” he asked slowly, and she answered:

“Exactly the same.” — s He looked down at the fire, resting his hand on the chimney-piece. At last she said: “We might modify it a little;” and he moved his face, his eyes searching the obscurity in which she stood, only one of her hands catching the glow from the fire.

“I cannot modify anything,” he said. “There must be a marriage, by what recognized rite you like, but — that.”

Her voice remained as level as his, expressing none of the longing, the wistfulness, that were in her whole being.

“Nobody knew about mother,” she said. “Nobody seems to have got to know now.”

“And you mean,” he said, “that now you consent to letting nobody know it about you?

“You did succeed,” she evaded him, “in concealing it about mother. It was splendid of you! At the time I thought it wasn’t possible. I don’t know how you managed it. I suppose nobody knows about it but you and me and Ellida and Pauline.”

“You mean,” he pursued relentlessly, “you mean that now you consent to letting nobody know it about you? Of course, besides us, my solicitor knows — of your mother.”

“At the first shock,” she said, “I thought that the whole world must know, and so I was determined that the whole world should know that I hadn’t deserted her memory. She paused for a wistful moment, whilst inflexibly he reflected over the coals.” Have you,” she said, “the slightest inkling of why she did it?”

He shook his head slowly; he sighed.

“Of course I couldn’t take you even on those terms — that nobody knew,” he said, with his eyes still averted. Then he turned upon her, swarthy, his face illumined with a red glow. The slow mournfulness of their speeches, the warmth, the shadow, kept him silent for a long time. “No,” he said at last, “there isn’t a trace of a fact to be found. I’m as much in the dark as I was on that day when we parted. I’m not as stunned, but I’m just as mystified.”

“Ah!” she said, “but what did you feel — then?”—”Did you ever realize,” he asked, “how the shock came to me? You remember old Partington, with the grey beard? He asked me to call on them. He sat on the opposite side of his table. He handed me the copy of some notes your father had made for their instructions as to his will. It was quite short. It ran: ‘You are to consider that my wife and I were never married. I desire you to frame a will so phrased that my entire estate, real and personal, should devolve upon my two daughters, Ellida and Katharine, without revealing the fact that they are illegitimate. This should not be difficult, since their mother’s name, which they are legally entitled to bear, was the same as my own, she having been my cousin.” Grimshaw broke off his low monologue to gaze again at her, when he once more returned his eyes to the coals. “You understand,” he said, “what that meant to me. It was handed to me without a word; and after a long time Partington said: ‘You understand that you are your uncle’s heir-at-law — nothing more.”

Katya whispered: “Poor old Toto!”

“You know how I honoured your father and mother,” he said. “They were all the parents I ever knew. Well, you know all about that.... And then I had to break the news to you.... Good God!”

He drew his hands down his face.

“Poor old Toto!” Katya said slowly again. “I remember.”

“And you won’t make any amends?” he asked.

“I’ll give you myself,” she said softly.

He answered: “No! no!” and then, wearily, “It’s no good.”

“Well, I did speak like a beast to you,” she said. “But think what a shock it was to me — mother not dead a month, and father not four days, and so suddenly — all that. I’ll tell you how I felt. I felt a loathing for all men. I felt a recoiling from you — a recoiling, a shudder.”

“Oh, I know,” he said, and suddenly he began to plead: “Haven’t you injured me enough? Haven’t I suffered enough? And why? — why? For a mad whim. Isn’t it a mad whim? Or what? I can understand you felt a recoil. But...”

“Oh, I don’t feel it now,” she said; “you know.”

“Ah yes,” he answered; “but I didn’t know till to-day, till just now when you raised your arms. And all these years you haven’t let me know.”

“How did you know?” she asked. “How did you know that I felt it? But, of course, you understand me even when I don’t speak.’’

“It’s heaven,” he said, “to know that you’ve grown out of it. It has been hell to bear the thought....”

“Oh, my dear!...” she said.

“Such loneliness,” he said. “Do you know,” he continued suddenly, “I came back from Athens? I’m supposed to be a strong-minded man — I suppose I am a strong- minded man — but I turned back the moment I reached Greece because I couldn’t bear — I could not bear the thought that you might still shudder at my touch. Now I know you don’t, and...”

“Ellida will be here soon,” Katya said. “Can’t you hear her train coming down the valley... there...? And I want to tell you what I’ve found out about mother. I’ve found it out, I’ve made it out, remembering what she said from day to day. I’ll tell you what it was — it was trustfulness. I remember it now. It was the mainspring of her life. I think I know how the very idea came into her mind. I’ve got it down to little details. I’ve been inquiring even about the Orthodox priests there were in England at the time. There wasn’t a single one! One had just died suddenly, and there did not come a successor for six months. And mother was there. And when she was a young thing, mother, I know, had a supreme contempt — a bitter contempt — for all English ideas. She got over it. When we children were born she became the gentlest being. You know, that was what she always was to me — she was a being, not a woman. When she came into the room she spread soothing around her. I might be in paroxysms of temper, but it died out when she opened the door. It’s so strong upon me that I hardly remember what she looked like. I can’t remember her any more than I can conceive of the looks of a saint. A saint! — well, she was that. She had been hot- tempered, she had been contemptuous. She became what you remember after we were born. You may say she got religion.”