Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (575 page)

She thought that Edward, after what she had said to him, must have committed suicide. She went out on to the gallery and listened; there was no sound in all the house except the regular beat of the great clock in the hall. But, even in her debased condition, she was not the person to hang about. She acted. She went straight to Edward’s room, opened the door, and looked in.

He was oiling the breech action of a gun. It was an unusual thing for him to do, at that time of night, in his evening clothes. It never occurred to her, nevertheless, that he was going to shoot himself with that implement. She knew that he was doing it just for occupation — to keep himself from thinking. He looked up when she opened the door, his face illuminated by the light cast upwards from the round orifices in the green candle shades.

She said:

“I didn’t imagine that I should find Nancy here.” She thought that she owed that to him. He answered then:

“I don’t imagine that you did imagine it.” Those were the only words he spoke that night. She went, like a lame duck, back through the long corridors; she stumbled over the familiar tiger skins in the dark hall. She could hardly drag one limb after the other. In the gallery she perceived that Nancy’s door was half open and that there was a light in the girl’s room. A sudden madness possessed her, a desire for action, a thirst for self-explanation.

Their rooms all gave on to the gallery; Leonora’s to the east, the girl’s next, then Edward’s. The sight of those three open doors, side by side, gaping to receive whom the chances of the black night might bring, made Leonora shudder all over her body. She went into Nancy’s room.

The girl was sitting perfectly still in an armchair, very upright, as she had been taught to sit at the convent. She appeared to be as calm as a church; her hair fell, black and like a pall, down over both her shoulders. The fire beside her was burning brightly; she must have just put coals on. She was in a white silk kimono that covered her to the feet. The clothes that she had taken off were exactly folded upon the proper seats. Her long hands were one upon each arm of the chair that had a pink and white chintz back.

Leonora told me these things. She seemed to think it extraordinary that the girl could have done such orderly things as fold up the clothes she had taken off upon such a night — when Edward had announced that he was going to send her to her father, and when, from her mother, she had received that letter. The letter, in its envelope, was in her right hand.

Leonora did not at first perceive it. She said:

“What are you doing so late?”

The girl answered: “Just thinking.”

They seemed to think in whispers and to speak below their breaths. Then Leonora’s eyes fell on the envelope, and she recognized Mrs Rufford’s handwriting.

It was one of those moments when thinking was impossible, Leonora said. It was as if stones were being thrown at her from every direction and she could only run. She heard herself exclaim: “Edward’s dying — because of you. He’s dying. He’s worth more than either of us....”

The girl looked past her at the panels of the half-closed door.

“My poor father,” she said, “my poor father.” “You must stay here,” Leonora answered fiercely. “You must stay here. I tell you you must stay here.”

“I am going to Glasgow,” Nancy answered. “I shall go to Glasgow tomorrow morning. My mother is in Glasgow.”

It appears that it was in Glasgow that Mrs Rufford pursued her disorderly life. She had selected that city, not because it was more profitable but because it was the natal home of her husband to whom she desired to cause as much pain as possible.

“You must stay here,” Leonora began, “to save Edward. He’s dying for love of you.”

The girl turned her calm eyes upon Leonora. “I know it,” she said. “And I am dying for love of him.”

Leonora uttered an “Ah,” that, in spite of herself, was an “Ah” of horror and of grief.

“That is why,” the girl continued, “I am going to Glasgow — to take my mother away from there.” She added, “To the ends of the earth,” for, if the last months had made her nature that of a woman, her phrases were still romantically those of a schoolgirl. It was as if she had grown up so quickly that there had not been time to put her hair up. But she added: “We’re no good — my mother and I.”

Leonora said, with her fierce calmness:

“No. No. You’re not no good. It’s I that am no good. You can’t let that man go on to ruin for want of you. You must belong to him.”

The girl, she said, smiled at her with a queer, far-away smile — as if she were a thousand years old, as if Leonora were a tiny child.

“I knew you would come to that,” she said, very slowly. “But we are not worth it — Edward and I.”

II
I

NANCY had, in fact, been thinking ever since Leonora had made that comment over the giving of the horse to young Selmes. She had been thinking and thinking, because she had had to sit for many days silent beside her aunt’s bed. (She had always thought of Leonora as her aunt.) And she had had to sit thinking during many silent meals with Edward. And then, at times, with his bloodshot eyes and creased, heavy mouth, he would smile at her. And gradually the knowledge had come to her that Edward did not love Leonora and that Leonora hated Edward. Several things contributed to form and to harden this conviction. She was allowed to read the papers in those days — or, rather, since Leonora was always on her bed and Edward breakfasted alone and went out early, over the estate, she was left alone with the papers. One day, in the papers, she saw the portrait of a woman she knew very well. Beneath it she read the words: “The Hon. Mrs Brand, plaintiff in the remarkable divorce case reported on p.
8.”
Nancy hardly knew what a divorce case was. She had been so remarkably well brought up, and Roman Catholics do not practise divorce. I don’t know how Leonora had done it exactly. I suppose she had always impressed it on Nancy’s mind that nice women did not read these things, and that would have been enough to make Nancy skip those pages.

She read, at any rate, the account of the Brand divorce case — principally because she wanted to tell Leonora about it. She imagined that Leonora, when her headache left her, would like to know what was happening to Mrs Brand, who lived at Christchurch, and whom they both liked very well. The case occupied three days, and the report that Nancy first came upon was that of the third day. Edward, however, kept the papers of the week, after his methodical fashion, in a rack in his gun-room, and when she had finished her breakfast Nancy went to that quiet apartment and had what she would have called a good read. It seemed to her to be a queer affair. She could not understand why one counsel should be so anxious to know all about the movements of Mr Brand upon a certain day; she could not understand why a chart of the bedroom accommodation at Christchurch Old Hall should be produced in court. She did not even see why they should want to know that, upon a certain occasion, the drawing-room door was locked. It made her laugh; it appeared to be all so senseless that grown people should occupy themselves with such matters. It struck her, nevertheless, as odd that one of the counsel should cross-question Mr Brand so insistently and so impertinently as to his feelings for Miss Lupton. Nancy knew Miss Lupton of Ringwood very well — a jolly girl, who rode a horse with two white fetlocks. Mr Brand persisted that he did not love Miss Lupton.... Well, of course he did not love Miss Lupton; he was a married man. You might as well think of Uncle Edward loving... loving anybody but Leonora. When people were married there was an end of loving. There were, no doubt, people who misbehaved — but they were poor people — or people not like those she knew. So these matters presented themselves to Nancy’s mind. But later on in the case she found that Mr Brand had to confess to a “guilty intimacy” with some one or other. Nancy imagined that he must have been telling some one his wife’s secrets; she could not understand why that was a serious offence. Of course it was not very gentlemanly — it lessened her opinion of Mrs Brand. But since she found that Mrs Brand had condoned that offence, she imagined that they could not have been very serious secrets that Mr Brand had told. And then, suddenly, it was forced on her conviction that Mr Brand — the mild Mr Brand that she had seen a month or two before their departure to Nauheim, playing “Blind Man’s Buff” with his children and kissing his wife when he caught her — Mr Brand and Mrs Brand had been on the worst possible terms. That was incredible.

Yet there it was — in black and white. Mr Brand drank; Mr Brand had struck Mrs Brand to the ground when he was drunk. Mr Brand was adjudged, in two or three abrupt words, at the end of columns and columns of paper, to have been guilty of cruelty to his wife and to have committed adultery with Miss Lupton. The last words conveyed nothing to Nancy — nothing real, that is to say. She knew that one was commanded not to commit adultery — but why, she thought, should one? It was probably something like catching salmon out of season — a thing one did not do. She gathered it had something to do with kissing, or holding some one in your arms.. ..

And yet the whole effect of that reading upon Nancy was mysterious, terrifying and evil. She felt a sickness — a sickness that grew as she read. Her heart beat painfully; she began to cry. She asked God how He could permit such things to be. And she was more certain that Edward did not love Leonora and that Leonora hated Edward. Perhaps, then, Edward loved some one else. It was unthinkable.

If he could love some one else than Leonora, her fierce unknown heart suddenly spoke in her side, why could it not be herself? And he did not love her.... This had occurred about a month before she got the letter from her mother. She let the matter rest until the sick feeling went off; it did that in a day or two. Then, finding that Leonora’s headaches had gone, she suddenly told Leonora that Mrs Brand had divorced her husband. She asked what, exactly, it all meant.

Leonora was lying on the sofa in the hall; she was feeling so weak that she could hardly find the words. She answered just:

“It means that Mr Brand will be able to marry again.”

Nancy said:

“But... but...” and then: “He will be able to marry Miss Lupton.” Leonora just moved a hand in assent. Her eyes were shut.

“Then...” Nancy began. Her blue eyes were full of horror: her brows were tight above them; the lines of pain about her mouth were very distinct. In her eyes the whole of that familiar, great hall had a changed aspect. The andirons with the brass flowers at the ends appeared unreal; the burning logs were just logs that were burning and not the comfortable symbols of an indestructible mode of life. The flame fluttered before the high fireback; the St Bernard sighed in his sleep. Outside the winter rain fell and fell. And suddenly she thought that Edward might marry some one else; and she nearly screamed.

Leonora opened her eyes, lying sideways, with her face upon the black and gold pillow of the sofa that was drawn half across the great fireplace.

“I thought,” Nancy said, “I never imagined.... Aren’t marriages sacraments? Aren’t they indissoluble? I thought you were married. .. and...” She was sobbing. “I thought you were married or not married as you are alive or dead.” “That,” Leonora said, “is the law of the church. It is not the law of the land....”

“Oh yes,” Nancy said, “the Brands are Protestants.” She felt a sudden safeness descend upon her, and for an hour or so her mind was at rest. It seemed to her idiotic not to have remembered Henry VIII and the basis upon which Protestantism rests. She almost laughed at herself.

The long afternoon wore on; the flames still fluttered when the maid made up the fire; the St Bernard awoke and lolloped away towards the kitchen. And then Leonora opened her eyes and said almost coldly:

“And you? Don’t you think you will get married?”

It was so unlike Leonora that, for the moment, the girl was frightened in the dusk. But then, again, it seemed a perfectly reasonable question. “I don’t know,” she answered. “I don’t know that anyone wants to marry me.”

“Several people want to marry you,” Leonora said.

“But I don’t want to marry,” Nancy answered. “I should like to go on living with you and Edward. I don’t think I am in the way or that I am really an expense. If I went you would have to have a companion. Or, perhaps, I ought to earn my living....”

“I wasn’t thinking of that,” Leonora answered in the same dull tone. “You will have money enough from your father. But most people want to be married.”

I believe that she then asked the girl if she would not like to marry me, and that Nancy answered that she would marry me if she were told to; but that she wanted to go on living there. She added:

“If I married anyone I should want him to be like Edward.”

She was frightened out of her life. Leonora writhed on her couch and called out: “Oh, God!...”

Nancy ran for the maid; for tablets of aspirin; for wet handkerchiefs. It never occurred to her that Leonora’s expression of agony was for anything else than physical pain.

You are to remember that all this happened a month before Leonora went into the girl’s room at night. I have been casting back again; but I cannot help it. It is so difficult to keep all these people going. I tell you about Leonora and bring her up to date; then about Edward, who has fallen behind. And then the girl gets hopelessly left behind. I wish I could put it down in diary form. Thus: On the 1st of September they returned from Nauheim. Leonora at once took to her bed. By the 1st of October they were all going to meets together. Nancy had already observed very fully that Edward was strange in his manner. About the 6th of that month Edward gave the horse to young Selmes, and Nancy had cause to believe that her aunt did not love her uncle. On the 20th she read the account of the divorce case, which is reported in the papers of the 18th and the two following days. On the 23rd she had the conversation with her aunt in the hall — about marriage in general and about her own possible marriage, her aunt’s coming to her bedroom did not occur until the 12th of November....

Thus she had three weeks for introspection — for introspection beneath gloomy skies, in that old house, rendered darker by the fact that it lay in a hollow crowned by fir trees with their black shadows. It was not a good situation for a girl. She began thinking about love, she who had never before considered it as anything other than a rather humorous, rather nonsensical matter. She remembered chance passages in chance books — things that had not really affected her at all at the time. She remembered someone’s love for the Princess Badrulbadour; she remembered to have heard that love was a flame, a thirst, a withering up of the vitals — though she did not know what the vitals were. She had a vague recollection that love was said to render a hopeless lover’s eyes hopeless; she remembered a character in a book who was said to have taken to drink through love; she remembered that lovers’ existences were said to be punctuated with heavy sighs. Once she went to the little cottage piano that was in the corner of the hall and began to play. It was a tinkly, reedy instrument, for none of that household had any turn for music. Nancy herself could play a few simple songs, and she found herself playing. She had been sitting on the window seat, looking out on the fading day. Leonora had gone to pay some calls; Edward was looking after some planting up in the new spinney. Thus she found herself playing on the old piano. She did not know how she came to be doing it. A silly lilting wavering tune came from before her in the dusk — a tune in which major notes with their cheerful insistence wavered and melted into minor sounds, as, beneath a bridge, the high lights on dark waters melt and waver and disappear into black depths. Well, it was a silly old tune....

It goes with the words — they are about a willow tree, I think: Thou art to all lost loves the best The only true plant found.

 
— That sort of thing. It is Herrick, I believe, and the music with the reedy, irregular, lilting sound that goes with Herrick, And it was dusk; the heavy, hewn, dark pillars that supported the gallery were like mourning presences; the fire had sunk to nothing — a mere glow amongst white ashes.... It was a sentimental sort of place and light and hour....

And suddenly Nancy found that she was crying. She was crying quietly; she went on to cry with long convulsive sobs. It seemed to her that everything gay, everything charming, all light, all sweetness, had gone out of life. Unhappiness; unhappiness; unhappiness was all around her. She seemed to know no happy being and she herself was agonizing....

She remembered that Edward’s eyes were hopeless; she was certain that he was drinking too much; at times he sighed deeply. He appeared as a man who was burning with inward flame; drying up in the soul with thirst; withering up in the vitals. Then, the torturing conviction came to her — the conviction that had visited her again and again — that Edward must love some one other than Leonora. With her little, pedagogic sectarianism she remembered that Catholics do not do this thing. But Edward was a Protestant. Then Edward loved somebody....

And, after that thought, her eyes grew hopeless; she sighed as the old St Bernard beside her did. At meals she would feel an intolerable desire to drink a glass of wine, and then another and then a third. Then she would find herself grow gay.... But in half an hour the gaiety went; she felt like a person who is burning up with an inward flame; desiccating at the soul with thirst; withering up in the vitals. One evening she went into Edward’s gun-room — he had gone to a meeting of the National Reserve Committee. On the table beside his chair was a decanter of whisky. She poured out a wineglassful and drank it off. Flame then really seemed to fill her body; her legs swelled; her face grew feverish. She dragged her tall height up to her room and lay in the dark. The bed reeled beneath her; she gave way to the thought that she was in Edward’s arms; that he was kissing her on her face that burned; on her shoulders that burned, and on her neck that was on fire.