Complete Works of Ford Madox Ford, page 133
He saw the words “Not to be” scrawled across the prospect. But it is at once the solace and the curse of mankind that one must for ever picture the just impossible as the supremely desirable — that one must always imagine the place where such things might be, the place beyond the horizon, at the back of beyond.
He was married; he could not take her. He was ruined; it pained him even to think of bringing Clara Brede even near a sort of indigence. He repeated to himself the words: “One doesn’t take a woman to the back of beyond without the prospect of good meals” — they were Carew’s words. He repeated to himself: “One doesn’t take a woman to the back of beyond in any case,” which were his own. But he lay contemplating the landscape of that land where there is no more evil, somewhere in sheltered hollows or beneath an immense sky, or beside a vast and silent sea.
One does not do it. But if a cataclysm could overwhelm the things that one doesn’t, that, being true to oneself, one can’t do? He wondered how she would make the sacrifice. How would she face it? Calmly, without a doubt: without any doubt quite reasonably. It might not be much of a sacrifice. It came suddenly into his head: “And she? Does she care for me?”
He ran through in his mind all that he had to go upon: a few blushes, a few smiles, a great deference to his opinion. He numbered many hundreds of the smallest incidents. He remembered her: “If the man isn’t worth writing about it makes it all the worse that you have written so tremendously well about him” — the earnestness with which she had said it. That might mean either a great feeling for him or a great censure for all his doings — for his essential dilettantism. Only two mornings before when he had passed the window he had seen her clipping the stems of flowers to put in a vase. He entered the passage, and he saw the swift flash of her skirt as she ran up the stairs, evidently away from him. That might mean that she saw too much of him, or that she had been wearing an apron, and wanted to appear before him only at her best. The room, at any rate, had been full and fragrant of clove pinks; the day before he had said they were his favourite flower. But clove pinks filled all the beds in July.
She read always any book that he mentioned with favour; but he was supposed to be an authority of literature, a kind of professor. All these small incidents became torturing enigmas of the first importance; each one, he felt desperately, if he could get at what lay behind, would solve definitely and for good all that was to be known.
And, as the lustrous night ran on, things solved themselves. She cared; she would come. She would face the sacrifice; it would be no sacrifice. They would be beyond the horizon, in a land where there is no evil to be feared. It came to that in the delicate stillness of the dawn.
In the morning he saw himself again — growing old, penniless, failing and falling; with ties that cannot be broken; unloved — and face to face with what one does not do.
CHAPTER IV.
THREE days later Thwaite was back in Wickham. George had anticipated a great deal of pleasure; things would run smoothly now until the very end. It was to be the very end. He had already sold his house; he would disappear without any fuss, without any leave-takings, as if he were just going abroad for a time. He was going to walk quietly out of the front door. “Things” — his affairs had turned out even worse than he had expected or Gregory had hoped. He was stripped almost bare. He had sold his house; it fetched just enough to pay his own creditors and those of the Renaissance Press. There were a few hundreds over. He hadn’t made any fuss about it. Gregory found a purchaser for the house as it stood. The purchaser was naturally an American; but he was neither hideously rich nor singularly outrageous; he came quite quietly to look over the property. He was small and dark; a comfortable man who wanted to “retire.” He found his native State unpleasing for the purpose. He appreciated George’s taste in furniture, but insisted on knocking off a little of the purchase price because the drains were not in first-class repair. That was the final comment on the chief labour of George’s life. A London valuer had already paid a discreet visit of appraisement.
The American, at their pleasant parting — George expressed hopes for his future in the town — declared himself proud to be the successor of the author of Wilderspin. It came out then that Mr. Beale was undoubtedly booming George’s work. As the little, friendly, dark man put it: “Over there at home they have Wilderspin with their breakfast cakes and syrup. It hits you in the eye all over the page the moment you open the Herald.”
George laughed. It was a little drop of bitter the more to be the “Author of Wilderspin” the work he would least want to be remembered by. The American’s lawyers were set to work at that meticulous inspection of old deeds that is called “completing the purchase.” At the thought of their attitudes, George remembered Gregory’s rapt face and back bowed above the same parchments. Years ago he had completed his purchase of the ramshackle and rat-ridden old barrack. It was now the mellow house he was leaving for good. At any rate, he didn’t make any fuss about it. Nobody, so far, even thought of smelling a rat. At the bottom of that, too, there was Clara Brede; it was she who was not to know of the breakdown of the fine fabric until it was all over. It was undoubtedly for her that he was carrying on until the very end. He was afraid of himself, afraid of the strain that, more and more, her companionship had put upon him. On one of the inevitable drives in the warm dusk to fetch her father back from his parish she had happened to say, after a long interval of silence:
“You are very good to us. I don’t know why.” She had lately, as if she were exhausted, given up her attempts to keep George at his work.
The wheels had turned slowly in the soft, sunken lanes; the driver had been somnolent on the box, they were climbing a hill at sunset. She had spoken slowly and seriously, as if after much reflection on a matter that claimed her attention and puzzled her. He had been very good to them; she didn’t know why.
She had not afterwards broken the long, unbearable silence; her shoulder had been touching his as they sat. It was as if he were entirely pervaded by her being; by the irradiation of her life.
Afterwards, in the light of the upper roads, George had thanked the Gods that had given him power to remain silent, just to sit still. But the strain had been too great. That evening he had written to Gregory: “Sell the house if anyone’s fool enough to buy.” And, coming back from the post, he had turned in at the Bredes’ gate.
He gave a little dinner to celebrate the return of Thwaite and Dora. It was to be the last of his gatherings under that roof. It had been one of Mr. Brede’s bad days. Dora was nervous and constrained. She cast apprehensive glances at her husband’s handsome, overcast face. A cold chill of dislike passed from Thwaite to Clara.
There was no fusing of lights, no effect at all. The great drooping roses on the white table were each solitary; the magnificent beams overhead seemed fantastic and out of place. It was the last time they would have a chance of impending over his revelry. He roused himself to talk gallantly to Dora; his voice, sounding alone, seemed to him futile and irritating. Dora said she had enjoyed herself very much. “Oh, very much.” She found nothing else to say.
Afterwards Dora and Clara went out into the garden; Thwaite’s eyes followed them suspiciously and gloomily. Their voices sounded for a little near the open window, intimately low and comprehending each other with that comprehension between women that is given to neither husband nor lover. Mr. Brede gazed in moody silence at his dessert plate.
Thwaite began to talk irritably of his subeditor on the Salon. During Thwaite’s absence he had inserted a great many columns of his personal friends’ rhapsodical effusions.
“You can’t trust anyone,” Thwaite said.
George, with his warm affection for his disciple, shifted his seat closer.
“It will all come right,” he said, “now you’re back.”
Thwaite, with an added gloom, muttered:
“And that means that I shall have to be away from here for ever so long.”
George laughed: “Oh, you can trust us to look after Dora.”
Thwaite glanced nervously and suspiciously towards the open window. The voices of Clara and Dora had died away on the lower paths.
Mr. Brede interpolated suddenly: “Mind — that wine-glass at your elbow, Moffat.” He relapsed into gloom.
George mentioned that he had all but finished his book.
Thwaite said: “Oh.”
He broke out: “I shall take two rooms in town. To take Dora to.”
George had been hesitating whether or not to tell Thwaite of his approaching departure. He decided that Thwaite had already worries enough. He told him, instead, of the article on Spanish Art that Hailes had asked to have inserted in the Salon.
Thwaite ejaculated: “Oh, that ass. You surely don’t want me to insert him.”
George waved his hand non-committally. He rather wanted to help Hailes because he was such an amusing scoundrel, “I shall send it back to-morrow,” Thwaite said.
Afterwards, in the garden, Thwaite liberated his soul to George. He mistrusted Clara’s influence on his wife. The two men, walking up and down on the path in front of the house, talked in low tones. A thick quickset hedge separated them from the dark lawn; they had glimpsing suggestions of it through high, clipped arches. Clara and her sister seemed to have been swallowed up in the remote black depths of the paths among the trees. George was in a great trouble of mind.
“But, surely—” he began. He couldn’t find anything to say. A family quarrel, so black, so odious and so unhappy, gave him a more complete disgust with life itself. He made a great effort, trusting to his age, his prestige, his delicacy, and his great services to Thwaite.
“My dear fellow,” he said,” my dear fellow, Dora is very fond of her sister.”
Thwaite in the darkness made a small obdurate sound.
George added: “It’s — don’t you see? — it’s a great responsibility to take. To sew dissension between two sisters, to break up a family so united.”
Thwaite maintained his silence; they stepped regularly up and down the path beneath the brilliantly lit windows. George took Thwaite’s arm affectionately. Thwaite, with his delicacy, his sympathy, his human imagination, could not in the end fail to come to a better frame of mind. “You’re tired, you’re worried,” he said. “But you can’t really mean—”
Thwaite said grimly: “What have I got to do with Dora’s family? They’re nothing to me. What have I in common with such people?” It was the “artistic exclusiveness.” He regarded them as mere outsiders. Why should he trouble about them. He did not want to know them.
That view became appallingly clear to George. He said gently: “But Dora?” Thwaite did not answer. Suddenly he said:
“I don’t approve of Clara. I’ve been hearing a great deal about her. I don’t like her ideas. It’s not an influence I like Dora to be under.” His tone was peremptory and decisive. Dora, in fact, had told him Clara’s secret. She had been so convinced that he, too, would see the romantic side of it. Hadn’t she married him because he was romantic? They had been at the time leaning over the balcony of a mediocre hotel facing one of the Paris stations, where everything was as grey, as dull and as noisy as in Euston Square. It had slipped out. He had said, “Ah.” He hadn’t spoken to her about it. Now he was speaking.
It flashed suddenly upon George that “Clara’s views” might mean that she was prepared to face being taken to the back of beyond. She might have spoken to Dora in that way of the relations of man and woman.
“I don’t think,” he said quickly, “that you have any right to speak of Clara.”
Thwaite said: “I don’t speak without the book.”
“To me, I mean,” George said, hotly. “I’m a stranger; I’m an outsider. You’ve heard what you have heard in confidence from your wife.”
He had come to a pause at one end of the path, and was speaking quickly. He gripped hard on Thwaite’s arm. It occurred to him that he was frightfully angry with Thwaite — with Thwaite, of all men in the world; and that in the darkness Thwaite seemed to be sneering at him. He finished hotly:
“I don’t consider you’ve the right, and I certainly will not listen to you.”
He did not want to listen; it seemed to him that next moment Thwaite might reveal to him that Clara was in love with him. He didn’t — he didn’t want to hear.
“Clara has never spoken against you to Dora,” he said. He was sure of that.
“She has no call to,” Thwaite said. “I haven’t swindled her.”
There was a great and increasing bitterness in his tone.
George pressed his arm more tightly. It was as if he wanted to hold his disciple.
“For heaven’s sake,” he said, agitatedly, “for heaven’s sake don’t let such a miserable cause give rise to all this unhappiness.”
Thwaite raised his voice: “I shall stick out for Dora’s rights. I shall force her to do it herself. I’m master in my own house.” George remembered how light-heartedly and confidently he had forced Thwaite on the Bredes — against the father’s will, and against Clara’s.
He said, miserably: “But not in such a quarrel; for a little money! Clara has such a noble spirit.”
Thwaite pulled his arm from George’s grasp, and with amazing violence flashed upon him: “Does that infernal woman think I wouldn’t pay you?” There was an exclamation like a sob from the other side of the hedge; a quick sound of footsteps. Dora came with a certain rigidity and stillness through one of the cut arches. Both men were silent as her feet sounded on the gravel. She touched her husband’s arm.
“We had better go now,” she said. There was not much of the inestimable gift of youth in her voice. She and her sister had been coming over the turf behind the hedge. The night had been very still; Thwaite had been shouting. They hadn’t missed a word. They both went away from George, and he felt as if tragedy went with them.
It certainly stayed with him as he walked instinctively back into the house. It was as if out there he could see Clara — a dim figure through the denseness of the hedge and through the darkness of the night — and it was as if every one of Thwaite’s words had been horrible and undeserved blows upon her silent figure. She must have been there; she must have heard and must have felt the bitterness of having to ensue the pitiless hatred that pursued her into the hearts of her own sister and her own friend.
He went back into the house. He wanted not to have to face her; not to have any explanation; any scene with a personal element. He was more than saddened. A dead misery must have descended upon Dora’s head by this time. He seemed to see the two of them arriving at their little house, that with so much joy, so short a time ago, had received its toylike finishing touches.
It was Dora’s first admission to the intimate personality of her husband. He began to rave at her, too. He was going to take her away from her sister; he was going to knock these ideas out of her head. He was going to speak to her father. An abominable intrigue was going on between her sister and George Moffat. That was what George Moffat had been up to all along. It was a scandal. They had conspired to rob him of Dora’s money. To Dora it was like death.
It was something like it to George, too. He stood for a long time pondering over it. His drawing-room, lit up with many candles, lay rich and glowing round his solitary meditation. The portentous “Troth bideth frendshepe,” scrawled across the flamboyant bookcase, greeted him fantastically with its inscrutable, incomprehensible message. Truth had certainly outbided most of his friendships — and this too. In Thwaite’s tone there had been a bitterness of outrage, of insult against himself. He could not understand why. But in this case, as in so many others, the worry and fret of circumstance had been too much for old friendship. And he had passed his word for Thwaite; he had blindly pitchforked him into the Brede family; he was responsible. It was a miserable business. He sighed rather heavily and went back to Mr. Brede.
The great clergyman raised his head from an abstracted scrutiny of the shiny table-cloth; he smiled almost gaily as George entered the room.
“I’ve taken a resolution,” he said. His smile gave George a momentary and warm feeling of satisfaction. Young Scraithe, the Vicar here, had asked him to give a sermon to the Volunteers on Sunday. He was going to do it. There was a sort of heavy firmness in his speech.
He went on to explain, rather animatedly, pushing the wine-glasses aside to allow room for the gestures of his arms, that during dinner he had been immersed in doubts. He hadn’t dared to face the idea of officiating again.
“But what you said to me on Monday came into my mind. I’ll do it.”
What George had said on Monday was one of George’s innumerable platitudes — that a man who can’t do his work may just as well die. Of all the time and the innumerable words that he had expended in the service of Mr. Brede, this copybook phrase, dropped by chance to fill in a chain of ideas, had proved his salvation!
It seemed to amount to salvation.
“Yes, by Jove,” he said, “if I can’t do my work, I may as well die. I’m going to do it. I’ve been malingering and shirking too long.” He straightened his gigantic back, and looked with a certain tenderness at George.
“You’re a good fellow, Moffat,” he said. “I don’t know why you do it.”
A certain look in his eyes — a certain similarity of his tone reminded George overwhelmingly of Clara. He wondered why he had done it now that it was at an end. Because with Mr. Brede’s sermon on Sunday evening it would be at an end. He arranged with himself to walk over to the Junction after he had heard that Mr. Brede was safely through. He would catch the last train and the night-boat.
