Complete Works of Ford Madox Ford, page 42
Here, however, a slight check awaited him, for he found to his dismay that Hollebone was taking a holiday, although he might be expected soon to return.
This was an untoward circumstance for which Mr Kasker-Ryves had not been prepared. and it upset the plans he had formed. Not that he was by any means foiled, only it laid him under the unpleasant necessity of delaying his most effective stroke. Moreover, he was beginning to feel uneasy as to his power of bearing the associations that sprung up at every turn of the roads, for he recognised very well that the mere mention of the place, if it had not actually caused his late attack of apoplexy, had at least precipitated it.
Nevertheless, his daring had carried him thus far, and his doggedness would not allow him to turn back. Moreover, the frenzied hatred of his wife supported him in his waiting, and ‘tout vient à lui qui sait attendre.’
CHAPTER IX.
Journeys end in lover’s meetings
Every wise man’s son doth know.
SHAKESPEARE.
IF one were to view Hollebone’s case from his own point of view, one would find it difficult to deny that he had been very hardly used by Edith.
Believing that he was ruined, she had calmly and quietly thrown him over and married a millionaire, and what made it worse, she had never even broken off her engagement with him.
That was the long and short of it, viewed dispassionately, and he saw very plainly that she was so mean and despicable a character that it was absolutely his duty to loathe and renounce her, to drive her very image from his heart. That was a debt he owed to society, and yet he could not bring himself to pay it, and it remained unpaid throughout the spring on into the summer — past it, and now the autumn was wending its way through the land, and still her image remained uneffaced in his heart. Perhaps its outlines were a little softened by the friction of time passing over it, but that very softness rendered it the sweeter and the more seductive — for was it not his duty to contemn her, inasmuch as it is the duty of every man to despise another who has committed a crime, and is it not the greatest of crimes to break a true man’s heart and ruin his life — to ruin it, not to take it, but to maim it, and make it drag out its existence in a crippled state?
‘For,’ as he said to himself continually, ‘if it were not for this cursed passion for a wanton, heartless girl I might now be studying hard, benefiting mankind and the great cause of science, and paving the way to greatness for myself. But as it is, this love, this opiate emasculates me and paralyses the engines of my brain. I can do no work, and yet it will not let me rest, wearing me out with longing for the unattainable — for what is worthless even when attained.’ And thus the months rolled round, and found him and left him still at Dymchurch, working steadfastly at his practice — steadfastly, and yet endlessly — for to what end should he tend? He was rich, richer than he needed to be now. That was part of the delightful irony of Fate. Some people are, as all the world knows, born with a silver spoon in their mouths, but then, what was the use of it to Hollebone? He did not in the least wish for money, and by natural consequences money came pouring in — here, there, and everywhere. The house of Hollebone, Clarkson & Co. had never had such runs of luck as it had during that half-year. A patent he had taken out some years before for making turmeric a fast dye was suddenly taken up by an American house, who offered him a tremendous sum for his patent rights. Moreover, the Dymchurch practice grew under his auspices, but of that he was glad on account of the benefit that accrued to old Dr Hammond, whose health seemed materially improved.
Towards the end of September there came a letter from his Cousin Kate, at Blackstone Edge, to say that his Aunt Joan was seriously ill from a cold she had taken, and then, a few days later, a telegram begging him to come up and see his aunt at once, as her illness had taken a turn for the worse, and she might be expected to die at any moment.
Hollebone showed the telegram to his partner, who willingly assented to his going.
‘I can manage the practice very well singlehanded just now. I’m feeling so much better. If I were you I should take a regular holiday, before the heavy winter work begins. It will set you up. Say three weeks. I shall be able to get along well enough without you for that time.’
And Hollebone answered, —
‘Oh, thank you very much, Dr Hammond, but I will come back as soon as I can; it won’t do to let you break down.’
But Dr Hammond laughed.
‘Oh, I am very well now — better than I have been for a long time — and I insist on your taking a fortnight at least.’
And Hollebone consented, on condition that he should be sent for as soon as Dr Hammond felt any strain from the work.
On arriving at Blackstone Edge he found his aunt in a much worse state than he had expected, and his practised instinct told him that she could hardly be expected to live through the night, for congestion of the lungs had set in long before, and now her delirium was at its height. His prediction was verified, for before morning she was dead. He and his cousin were watching with her when the end came; and although his own grief under ordinary circumstances would have been not unmeasured, yet Kate’s agony of mind was so terrible to see that it entirely unnerved him. She abandoned herself, indeed, so entirely to her anguish that he was at last obliged almost to use force to drag her from the room. Such pain of mind he had never witnessed before — it seemed as if every sob would shake her to pieces.
Nor was her grief by any means feigned, for somehow Miss Hallbyne’s gentle sweetness had won its way to her heart, whilst she, unaware of its presence, was still hoping for her death, and not even hoping alone but praying therefor.
Be that as it may, Hollebone had much ado, when the day of the funeral came, to keep her from throwing herself into the grave with the coffin. The whole country-side was there to do honour to Miss Hallbyne, and at sight of Kate’s grief the women, and even the ladies wept outright — and never before did men think themselves, ay, and swear at themselves some five minutes later, for being such blasted sentimental fools as those who happened to see her then.
After the funeral there remained much for Hollebone to see to, for he and Kate were the sole remaining relatives of Miss Hallbyne. As for Miss Hallbyne’s fortune, after several bequests to servants and friends had been deducted, there remained nearly a quarter of a million of pounds, valuing the Hall and grounds at a very low rate, and this was to be divided equally between Kate and Hollebone, in whatsoever manner they should agree to between themselves as expedient and convenient. Thus was Hollebone, almost unwillingly, again possessed of another by no means inconsiderable supplementary fortune. It was as if at his birth Fate had thrust the silver spoon into his mouth out of sheer wantonness. In the meantime there was a good deal for him to do — small matters connected with the estate, and even household orders, to which his cousin was too grief-stricken to attend. Kate had always held the post of housekeeper to her aunt, and the servants, finding her now too distracted to give them any attention, came to Hollebone for advice, to which it is needless to say they did not attend; and it was the same with the gamekeepers and the land steward — in fact he was suddenly dropped into the position of a lord of the manor, without the least idea of how to discharge his duties, until, in the course of a single week, everything was in an inextricable muddle. At the end of that time, however, Kate’s grief allowed her once more to take an interest in the affairs, and as if by magic confusion vanished before her touch, in a way that made Hollebone feel excessively stupid and ashamed of the way he had mismanaged everything. Moreover, when the press of affairs was off his hands, and he had nothing to do but to write a few letters to the lawyers who were arranging the probate of the will, it suddenly dawned upon him to doubt the propriety of his remaining in the house any longer. But the remembrance of the fact that his cousin was in love with him shot into his mind and drove away all thoughts of that. She was very lovely, and seemed to have grown more so since he had seen her last, and somehow a flirtation would do very well to fill up the week that Dr Hammond had allowed him as holiday. A week was hardly time to do anything in, or to go anywhere for that matter. It would, moreover, serve Edith right if he were to go a little further in the matter than a mere flirtation, and Kate’s beauty certainly seemed to grow upon him — it had that quality about it. Besides which, it would really be doing her a service to occupy her mind and keep her from thinking of the loss of her aunt. Thus he remained lounging about the Hall, and there could be no doubt that his cousin loved him — it was manifest in her every action — and Hollebone took great joy in watching how she treated him; and so the days flew round, and love itself springing up in him, for his cousin’s beauty was enhanced by the longing at her heart, in which was a void left by her aunt’s death. Thus on the last day of the week Hollebone found himself in the evening seated in a chair near the fire, with his eyes seeking in vain to discern his cousin’s figure, as she sat a little remote from the light that the fire threw out — for it was the beginning of November at the time, and late in the evening at that, yet the lights were not lit. They had been talking of things indifferent, but yet with softened voices. Outside, the wind was sobbing, and rising and falling, wailing and throbbing mournfully, like a soul longing after the impossible, and even at times shrieking shrilly as it drove its way into some crack or cranny, rising and falling rhythmically like the beating of a great pulse, with a sound that forced itself on the ear, making one warn oneself to be content with the things that be, howsoever unfortuitous, lest in venturing forth on some new enterprise one should lose one’s way in the outer darkness, at the mercy of the blustering wind. So the wind seemed to cry to Hollebone, but at the same time his heart was filled with a vague, mighty longing.
‘Through the winter we are so exposed here that the wind is never still — never,’ Kate said suddenly, but oh, so softly, so gently, her voice betraying by its modulation the desire in her soul, as though she would have had the words tell him more than they said.
His lips were even then trembling to form the words to tell of his own love for her, for the love within him was groping vainly round in its blindness, groping for someone to catch and clasp, and to him it seemed as if she, with her fairness of form, her gentle sadness of soul, and softness of voice, was the woman he was seeking. The ‘never’ of her speech called up an echo of a ‘never’ that he himself had so often enunciated of late months, and at this moment, when, had he spoken the words he was trying to frame, the course of their lives would have turned — who knows to what? — the fire shifted with a grating noise, and a brave shower of sparks shot downwards from underneath the grate, whilst up the chimney a flickering flame danced and trembled and then died away, and with it died away his love for the silent figure that it lit up for the moment. For that shifting of the fire had brought into his mind a host of reminiscences that had for the time almost entirely faded.
‘It is just a year ago,’ he thought, ‘since I saw the fire shift like that. Yes! to-morrow evening it will be just a year, and that night was the last night I saw my love, and I shall never see her again — never, never, never,’ and it seemed as if the wind without had caught the word on its rustling wings, as, with a great sigh, it buffeted past the house end and left momentary silence behind it.
‘I shall never see her again,’ he said once more, ‘never hear her sweet voice on the air, never mark the oval sweep from ear to chin, never look into the deep, true eyes, never see the lights and shadows play in her hair, never catch her little frown and shake of the head, meant for me alone to see when there were other people by.’ And every little trick of her expression and manner of shooting glances through her dark eyelashes came back to him with startling clearness, till once again the world without seemed darker by the contrast. And then another thought forced itself upon him.
‘She has been very false to me,’ he said, ‘wanton and untruthful, and she has ruined my life, and yet how easy it is to be the same, for is it not possible that I have in the same way bruised and torn poor Kate’s heart. And yet Kate has never said she loved me, or I that I loved her.’ Nevertheless, he knew that every word she had of late said to him, and every look of hers that he had caught, had made manifest and had been meant, half involuntarily, to express her love for him, and he knew he had not been entirely guiltless of responding.
‘What a brute I have been!’ he said to himself. ‘As bad, every bit, as Edith; and yet what can I do to make amends to her? If I professed to love her it would be even worse. The best thing will be to leave at once, and hope she will forget in time.’
Indeed Kate’s heart was almost bursting with her love, and as she sat still in her chair she drove her finger-nails into the soft white palms of her hands in her agony of mind.
‘I shall have to return to Dymchurch tomorrow, Kate,’ Hollebone said as gently as possible.
‘Oh, don’t, please, don’t,’ she said suddenly, with such anguish of tone that each word struck his heart and made it quiver. He had sacrificed her feelings on the altar of his vanity, and the pangs she suffered exacted a heavy penalty from him. Under the circumstances he thought it kinder not to notice what she had said.
‘You see,’ he went on, ‘I must get back soon, or poor old Dr Hammond will be breaking down altogether,’ and as if to aid him in his difficulty a servant came in at that moment with a telegram for him. He held it to the light of the fire and read it. It ran: —
‘Please come back at once. Have had serious accident. — HAMMOND.’
‘Ah, well,’ Kate said, with forced cheerfulness, ‘I suppose you will have to go. But you will not be able to get off to-night. The last train is already gone. It is nearly seven — at least it will have gone by the time you reach the railway,’ and Hollebone assented, in a voice that Kate knew rung the death bell of her hopes. Nevertheless, in forlorn hope, she was unusually fascinating and brilliant that night — so much so indeed that he for a moment hesitated in his determination, and indeed, although he set forth almost before daylight next morning, yet even on the journey he wavered several times. It would have been so convenient, pleasant, and above all things expedient, to tell his cousin that he loved her, and to ask her to marry him. It would be like life itself to her, and his life was already finished, or at least the sweetness of it was over, and only the dregs remained. Why not go back to his cousin, marry and settle down as a country gentleman to the end of the chapter? Why not? Well, to be sure, he had taken a through ticket to Blyth-borough, and his luggage was labelled there, and it would be a horrible nuisance to stop it. That was his principal reason for not returning to gladden Kate’s heart, and besides, an afterthought came to back up his resolve, poor Dr Hammond was waiting for him, and the practice would be ruined if he turned back — and the train rattled on through the country, with provoking noise and ostentation, as it seemed to him, and yet covering little ground. There was nothing whatever in the paper. He read everything, even the leading articles and the advertisements.
‘Good Lord, what an annoying thing a newspaper is,’ he yawned. ‘Whenever one wants something to occupy one’s mind nothing ever happens, not even a collision or an Irish Member to call Mr Balfour a bloodthirsty murtherer. Only two advertisements in the agony column, and both in cipher. Well, there’s court and society. “Her Majesty the Queen drove out to-day accompanied by—” Oh, well, that’s court. How about society? Nobody’s in town. Hello! “We regret to announce that Mr Kasker-Ryves, the eminent philanthropist and leader of society, whose wife’s entertainments were such a feature of last season, had a slight attack of apoplexy on Monday last at his town house in Park Place, where they have been detained on account of his indisposition. They left town on Friday for their Yorkshire estate, where Mr Ryves, junior, has been entertaining the usual large number of guests for the shooting.” Well, well, Edith seems to be going the right way to work to kill her husband, becoming a leader of society, and all that sort of thing. It’s funny that a girl who always seems so tender and true in every word she said can be such an incarnate fiend. However, I’m glad I left Blackstone Edge as soon as I did. I shouldn’t like to see her again. I wonder how it is I didn’t hear they were down there. They must have been at Blackstone Hall since Friday, and it’s Tuesday to-day.’
By this time, however, he had arrived at the third change of trains in the journey, and here he fortified himself with a society magazine and a luncheon basket, and thus provided he journeyed tranquilly on to Hailesworth, where the fifth and last change occurred, and at last he sat in the exaggerated tramcars that do duty as trains between that town and Blythborough. Nevertheless that paragraph in the paper had had a more serious effect on his mind than he cared to acknowledge or think of. Somehow the seeing her name in print had given his nerves a shock that no amount of thinking about her could possibly have caused, and it made him feel ill and more than ever tired of his life. Arrived at Blythborough, he found Gandon awaiting him on the platform. The day was not yet so dark but that he could see that Gandon’s face was decidedly discoloured about the mouth.
