Complete Works of Ford Madox Ford, page 27
Mr Ryland, whose ideas were swallowed up entirely by the financial columns of the newspaper, hardly spoke at all, except to abuse the soup at the beginning of the meal. About the same time he made some platitudinal remarks about the weather to Miss Tubbs, whom he wished to honour, after which he subsided into portentous silence. For Mr Ryland did not consider that women should have any ideas on politics, and his usual prandial conversation was limited to vague abuse of Mr Gladstone and Free Trade, that is, whilst he was with members of his own sex — among ladies he maintained a rigorous taciturnity.
Mrs Ryland, on the other hand, kept up a vigorous flow of conversation all by herself, to which Miss Tubbs lent a respectful attention. Mrs Ryland was well informed about every nothing that took place in this world, from the colour of the Duchess of Sandhurst’s last new dress to the ailments of their own kitchen cat. She even went so far as to consider that she had a sort of proprietary interest in music, on the strength of her daughter’s prowess in that art, but she was very careful never to air her ideas before Julia, though she did sometimes address her daughter on the subject.
Edith passed the night in a state of excitement that even her philosophy could not subdue, but in the morning at breakfast Mr Ryland still knew nothing about the all-important news. He announced his intention of bringing home with him to dinner his most important customer, Mr Kasker-Ryves, the great retail general merchant, who had shops all over the kingdom.
‘You must be very attentive to him,’ he said to his wife, ‘for he is by far the best customer I have, and as he is on the point of making large purchases I am anxious to please him as much as possible.’
A wish of Mr Ryland’s was unquestionable law in his household, for, quiet as he was, he insisted on being obeyed, with a firmness that quite overcame his wife, and even Edith.
Therefore Mrs Ryland made extraordinary efforts to improvise a splendid repast in honour of Mr Kasker-Ryves, for he was an old man; and as Mrs Ryland had a theory, more or less correct, that the only way to reach the heart of an old man is through his stomach, she engaged herself busily in the kitchen, superintending the making of certain dishes, and even in putting the finishing touches with her own hands to others.
Thus one may judge of her despair, when at the very heat of the work, when the success or non-success of one of her masterpieces was trembling in the balance, a servant came running down to say that the master had just come home and wished to see her in the library at once, without a moment’s delay. All flushed as she was from the heat of the fire, and with her hands still soiled with particles of flour and suet, Mrs Ryland ran upstairs.
Mr Ryland and Edith were already there, and he, standing with his back to the fire, began an once, without even clearing his throat, —
‘I have just received a telegram from Liverpool to say that “Hollebone & Clarkson” have failed for £400,000, of which it is supposed they will pay about half. This is very serious; but what makes matters worse, young Hollebone has, it seems, made over the reversion of the £200,000 left him in trust under his uncle’s will. Sudden and regrettable as this occurrence must needs seem ‘ — Mr Ryland always spoke like a book on occasions when he had time to round off his sentences beforehand—’there can be no doubts in your minds as to the course to be pursued, for I cannot allow my daughter to marry a beggar. I myself, indeed, am not sufficiently rich to afford a pittance large enough to support a second family. Mr Hollebone called on me this morning to state his prospects to me, and without hesitation I have broken off the engagement, and have promised, in my daughter’s name, that she would write him a formal letter breaking it off on her part. I, of course, offered to return any presents he may have made, but he declined the offer in a manner that certainly did him credit, and I did not see fit to press the matter. As it is as well to get rid of these details as soon as possible, you had better, Edith, sit down at once at the writing-table and write to Mr Hollebone. If you do not feel sufficiently confident in your own powers of epistolary composition, I will dictate a suitable letter.’
Poor Mrs Ryland, utterly powerless with the terrible news that had brought down so suddenly her castle of matrimonial and social success, could not collect her thoughts sufficiently to give them utterance; but, much in the same way as a drowning man counts the stars that shoot across his darkening eyes, she could not help noticing how pale Edith became, and how tightly her lips were pressed together, and knowing her nature to a certain extent, imagined that she would refuse to throw over her lover in so spiritless a manner. But, to her surprise, Edith walked over, without a word, to the writing-table, and taking pen and ink, began to write as calmly as if she were writing an invitation to lunch.
‘I should begin,’ said Mr Ryland, taking one of his hands from under his coat tails, ‘Dear Mr Hollebone — My father having—’
But Edith interrupted him. Neither her father nor mother recognised her voice.
‘Thank you, father, I will write the letter my own way, if you please.’
Mr Ryland, always scrupulously polite, accepted her amendment, and put his hand once more behind his coat tails, having no further need of its assistance in accentuating his rhetorical effusion thus untimely cut short. For some moments there was silence, as the pen scratched its way remorselessly over the paper. Mrs Ryland was still too paralysed to speak, and indeed, even when she was able to think, she did not at the moment see her way to saying anything, for as a rule Mrs Ryland was a person of few words.
The scratching of the pen ceased, and Edith handed the paper to her father, and then, turning round in her chair, waited as he read it, driving her pen nervously into the blotting-paper the while. Mr Ryland put on his gold-rimmed glasses and began to read the letter. Even as he read the first word his eyelids rose in surprise, but nevertheless he held his peace and read on. When his eyes had travelled down the page once, he tapped the paper with his finger-nail impatiently and looked at his daughter. Mr Ryland, as a rule, in his family life had invariably driven everything before him, even when he had come in contact with the submissive obstinacy of his child. But his eyes, which were magnetically drawn to his daughter’s, perceived such a look in them that he knew that unless he made an effort his power was over. For there is an expression of smouldering fire that comes on occasion even into green-brown eyes, and in them it is more impressive than in dark eyes, for the very reason that it comes so seldom. Mr Ryland, who was a man that did nothing without deliberation, laid the letter down on the writing-table and took out his watch. He cleared his throat.
‘I had not anticipated,’ he began, ‘any opposition to my wishes from you, Edith, for even Mr Hollebone was reasonable enough to see the impropriety of forcing you to comply with your engagement, and of dragging you, with himself, into a state of beggary, but as it is, I say you shall not, and I repeat it. You shall not marry him so long as I have any power in the matter. Of course after my authority over you expires you will be at liberty legally to pursue what course you like, but I forbid my daughter to marry Mr Hollebone — when, and if she does so, she ceases to be my child.’
And with this ‘Dixi’ Mr Ryland shut the case of his watch, and putting it back in his pocket, turned to Mrs Ryland.
‘It is time to go up and dress for dinner. Mr Kasker-Ryves will be coming very shortly, and it is important that we should receive him as well as possible,’ and he walked out of the room; but before the door closed he turned back and said,’ Oh, by-the-bye, I meant to say that Mr Ryves is going to bring his son to dinner. I quite forgot it until this minute,’ and he retired once more.
This was, as it were, the last straw to poor Mrs Ryland’s mental back.
‘Oh, good gracious,’ she said, ‘isn’t it enough that we’ve got the old man coming to dinner, but he must needs bring his son too, and quite unexpectedly, and at such a time, and — it’s all your fault, Edith. Why didn’t you have young Blackburn when he proposed? or there was Salmon, or Danecourt — you might have had them all three — and what have you written in this letter to annoy your father so?’
Mrs Ryland advanced to the table, seized the letter, and read aloud, —
‘DEAREST CLEM, — They have just found out at home that you are ruined, and they want to make me give you up, but I will never do so — never — and I will just wait until I can marry you in spite of them.’
But Mrs Ryland lost her patience here, and even began to cry hysterically, —
‘What have I done?’ she said. ‘What have I done to have such a daughter? Oh dear! oh dear!’ But seeing that Edith made no reply, and only sat looking with a far-away expression at the fire, she gave up the struggle and left the room, with a carriage indicative at once of grief, contempt, and aggrieved maternity. But Edith sat and smiled at the fire. It was a difficult thing for her to realise if she felt glad or sorry at the turn affairs had taken; but for a moment she felt exultant tinglings in her veins, as is the way with one who has just carried the day against an obstinate opponent. But we have it on the primal authority of Plato that nothing in Nature takes place without a reaction ensuing, and with Edith reaction came with afterthought. She, with hands pressing against her chin, and eyes gazing moodily at the fire, mused thus. Be it understood that, since she had received the letter on the night before from Hollebone, she had been in a state of enthusiasm for a love-in-a-cottage existence, and indeed she had almost come to the conclusion that his having been ruined was rather a benefit than otherwise. To the interview with her father she had looked forward with indifference, for she foresaw well what would take place therein, and she had inherited, and even in a concentrated degree, her father’s determination of character, so that she feared him even less than he did her.
‘I have determined, that come what may, I will make money — not a little money, but heaps and heaps, by hook and by crook, so that when I am of age and can marry Clem I — shall not make him poorer than he is. Not that I mind his being ruined,’ she added, sticking obstinately to the ‘loaf of bread with contentment’ that she had taken as her standard of beatitude.
She was very young, remember, and was not even mentally precocious enough to have reached that stage in the psychological career when one begins for a time to be pessimistic, doubting that one possesses a genius for one’s art; and never having had any necessity to earn money, or, rather, to keep herself by the money she earned, she looked upon the earning of it as a very minor obstacular detail in the road to her becoming a millionairess, the admired of the World, and raising ‘her Clem’ to affluence.
Conceit is rather a hard word to apply to this overweening self-reliance of untried youth — call it rather inexperience and vagueness of ideas. However, in spite of that, although she looked upon her fiddle and her art as the most probable means of earning fortune, she was not altogether oblivious of the fact that with even her talents there might be considerable obstacles to her achieving fabulous riches with very little exertion. But she dismissed every doubt from her mind at the thought of the happiness that would ensue to her in the Great Hereafter, and of the happiness it would give Clem, for Clem was always uppermost in her dreams, and her whole life had been one long dream hitherto. The rough awakening must come sooner or later; but I do not hold that sorrows seem the harder by the contrast, for if a man’s youth is wilted and warped, God preserve him from an old age — for how will he do without the remembrance of secret, hot, young joys that he can croon over to warm himself on the cold journey as he nears the Shadowland.
But Edith ran lightly upstairs to dress for dinner.
Before she had quite finished her toilet the Kasker-Ryves, father and son, had arrived, and when she came down to the drawing-room the dinner had just been announced.
Mr Kasker-Ryves, senior, had been engaged in a dissertation on the merits of samples of cotton in the raw that he had seen at Mr Ryland’s mills the day before, and he hardly desisted from it when Edith was introduced to him. Mrs Ryland, Julia Tubbs, and the young man were standing together at the other end of the room, but the general exodus that the announcement of dinner caused rendered it impossible that Edith should form an opinion as to the appearance of either father or son.
The position of the seats at the table had a great effect on the future history of Edith. They were arranged thus — Edith sat facing Ryves fils, on her right hand was Ryves the father, on the left of young Ryves was Julia, whilst Mr Ryland was near the father, and Mrs Ryland had the son at her left hand.
During the pause that ensued the moment after they were seated, Edith had shot a quick glance, first at her father and then her mother, to see how they looked after the occurrence in the study, and she could not help confessing to herself an admiration for the wonderful way her father bore himself. Although she well knew her father to be a handsome man, it seemed to her that she had never known him look so positively magnificent as he did that night. His finely cut features and peaked beard, bravely grizzled, that it showed well against his florid face, gave him more the appearance of a poet than of a business man; moreover, his eyes were dark and piercing, fitted rather for foretelling the rise and fall of the passions than of stocks and shares. As to her mother, the old air of nonchalant languor lay on her face, and formed a mask to her emotions more opaque than wax.
The dinner began, and as no one addressed her for a moment or two, she had liberty to steal glances at the visitors. The first thing that struck her was the great similarity between father and son, which would indeed have been almost ludicrously striking had it not been that the old man’s hair was white already; but there was one difference that Edith, however, was not able to note, namely, that whereas the older man was handsome, seen from any point, the younger could only produce a favourable impression when seen from the front and right-hand side. Owing to a habitual miscalculation in the parting of his hair, the natural, devilish hardness of heart and overbearingness of spirit were visible in the disproportionately large size and pointed, forward thrust of the nose. Edith therefore read in the face of the blonde young man opposite her ‘Nobleness of thought.’ Julia, on the left of him, read ‘Innate and unconquerable selfishness.’ Now there was nothing in the left-hand view of the father that could detract from the opinion that he was the most amiable and loveable of septuagenarians, who combined in himself all the airs of ‘grand seigneur’ with the bluff heartiness of a fine old English gentleman.
First impressions carried the day with both Edith and Julia, for Edith was sufficiently simple to be guided by outward appearance, and Julia was sufficiently penetrating to be a very good disciple of Lavater.
Therefore Edith took a liking to the son, and fell right away in love with the father, after the fashion of young girls with well-preserved old men of seventy, or thereabouts, for Mr Ryves’ precise age was known to nobody.
Julia was much neglected during the progress of dinner, for Mrs Ryland monopolised the whole of the conversation and the attention of the young Kasker-Ryves at her end of the table, and old Mr Ryves divided himself in a most wonderful way, seeming at one and at the same moment to keep up an incomprehensible financial conversation with Mr Ryland and to be narrating small pithy anecdotes and paying the most outrageously personal compliments to Edith, which Edith received as graciously as was possible.
One of those sudden lulls, inevitable in all conversations, interrupted the flow of soul, and the clink of dishes outside the door became painfully audible. Julia began to wonder who would speak first, when suddenly Mr Ryves broke the silence, shaking his head mournfully.
‘I was very sorry to hear of the failure of Hollebone this morning, more especially as the late Mr Hollebone was a particular business friend of mine. I have met his son once or twice, and have always found him a very pleasant young fellow. Perhaps a trifle too abstracted for a business man.’
Mr Ryland raised his eyebrows and shot a glance at his daughter.
‘Abstractedness and idealism are hardly good qualities in anyone, business man or not,’ he said slowly.
Julia ground her teeth.
‘A man who can torture his daughter like that,’ she said to herself, ‘is only fit to be a Chief Inquisitioner, or to be hung.’
Edith’s head was bent over her plate.
‘That is rather a hard dictum,’ said Mr Kasker-Ryves softly.
‘I certainly consider young Hollebone’s signing away his private fortune to pay his business debts a piece of the most unpardonable and quixotic honesty,’ Mr Ryland retorted, enclosing the point of his beard with his hand.
‘There I must needs find myself at issue with you, Mr Ryland,’ said Mr Ryves, raising his voice. ‘I consider it a most noble and praiseworthy action, for, apart from the fact that the payment of debts must be a sine quâ non to an honest man, when you come to consider the fact that the clients of Hollebone’s banking and insurance business are largely constituted of poor people who would starve if their little all were suddenly snatched from them—’
‘Oh, confound the poor,’ said Mr Ryland, smilingly, out of patience. ‘If every business man were to take the bread out of his own mouth to stuff it into the mouths of the poor the country would become a greater hell upon earth than it is at present.’
‘My dear sir,’ said Mr Kasker-Ryves, with a marvellous expression of horror on his face, ‘how can you, as an employer of labour, talk in this heartless way of the working man who put the bread into your and my mouth? No, say what you will, I consider it a magnificent action on young Hollebone’s part.’
(‘I really don’t know which is the greater scoundrel, in his way, the man who despises his fellow-men so shamefully or that old wretch who, whilst notoriously sweating hundreds of his employees to death, professes these noble sentiments, which, by-the-bye, poor little Edie is drinking in with might and main.’ This aside from Julia.)
