Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (338 page)

Lydia shot another glance at him under her dark eyebrows.

“Sir,” she half laughed, “that would be monstrous well if this man were my father. But I thank God that he is neither parent nor begetter of me.”

In his instinctive maintenance of his dignity Mr. Bettesworth preserved a stiff silence. The flames rustled on the logs, Lydia stood still looking downwards, a strong wind blew against the window-panes. And suddenly, with gentle expiration of his breath, like a low whistle, Mr. Bettesworth uttered the words: “Polly Eshetsford.”

Lydia suddenly squared her shoulders, lifted her head, and with a gay laugh swept aside all semblance of shyness.

“I was even wondering,” she said, “how long it would take your Worship to discover how it was you deemed you had seen me before.”

“Well, whose child are you?” Mr. Bettesworth asked.

“Your Worship and I are by way of being cousins, or nephew and niece. I know not which it is. For her ladyship is my aunt, and you are her first cousin.”

“You are, then, the daughter of Jack Douglas of Blair Gowrie;” and slowly he adopted a less rigid attitude, relaxing his limbs so that his spine touched the back of the chair and his head rested on the top rail.

“Why, sit you down, little cousin,” he said suddenly. “Let us talk awhile.”

Lydia sat down upon a tall chair. She kicked her heels up and down, and her eyes danced with merriment.

“My father always meant to acknowledge me,” she said, “but he died, and my lady has always said that she would have me with her up in London Town but that I could not be in the same house with that brute, her husband; though, la! I do not see that it could have been worse than being as I am in the same house with this brute, Mr. Chuckel.” She broke off, and gazed at Mr. Bettesworth with a pert and adoring expression. “Chuckel,” she said, “will work you a mischief.”

“Child, child!” Mr. Bettesworth uttered remonstratively.

“Why,” Lydia continued, “he has been robbing the estates this fifteen year, and now he is very deep in debt; and now, my worshipful uncle, that you may not scrutineer his accounts, he will do a murder upon your Worship if he can.”

“Child,” Mr. Bettesworth said, and he lifted himself again into a position of more rigid dignity, “if, as you say, your stepfather has been robbing the estate, that will be detectable and he shall be hanged. But what can such a man do against such a man as I be?” and by that he had again rendered himself very formal and erect.

“Why,” Lydia said, with a little impish irreverence, “your Worship may be a very great man in the Shires and in London, but this is mid-Kent, and this Chuckel is much in league with smugglers and rough men. Beseech your Worship be careful, for I would not so soon lose so kind and so newly-found an uncle.”

Mr. Bettesworth regarded her with a sort of stiff indulgence. “Child,” he said, “you do not know your world. One word from a man in my position against a man in his would crush him as the foot of a cow will crush a frog in a pond.”

Lydia reflected for a moment. “Maybe your Worship will protect yourself,” she said; and suddenly she jumped up and seated herself on the carved arm of his high chair.

“Oh, uncle,” she said, “you will see to it that I come to London Town now that my lady’s husband is dead. I will have a glass coach and fine clothes, and footmen to run before and clear the way, and all that fine ladies have in London Town!”

“Child,” Mr. Bettesworth said, “no doubt all that is fitting and proper shall be done for you, and love-children to-day are often as well entreated as others. So that if it be proven that you are indeed the child of Jack Douglas—”

“Oh, proven!” she laughed. “Why, my mother hath a mort of papers and settlements; and I am
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the spit of my lady, all the world and your Worship hath a-proved that.”

“Well, I will reflect upon it,” he said, “and I will talk of it with Lady Eshetsford when again I see her.”

She was seated on the arm of the chair, and suddenly, leaning sideways, she put one arm round his neck and rested her head on his peruke.

“Oh, uncle,” she said, “take me to London Town at once. To-morrow, — very soon. You are the most splendid, the most magnificent, the most generous of men.”

“Well, I am generous as my duty bids me be,” he said. “I will think upon it. Your voice very much resembles that of your aunt.” And Mr. Bettesworth fell into musing, which was rendered the more soothing and the more comforting by the presence of this creature whose frank mendacity pleased his vanity, whose kinship to Lady Eshetsford pleased him since it suggested to him that she was in his neighbourhood. He desired to question Lydia as to Lady Eshetsford — to discover in what chair and in what room she habitually sat, to hear her praises said, and to discover what was her favourite walk in the grounds. But he refrained from asking these questions from a fear of revealing his passion. He was so unused to badinage and irreverence that it did not affect him disagreeably. He felt himself so great a man that Lydia’s frankness of address and her fingerings of his person arose, it seemed to him, from a mere charming ignorance, from a want of knowledge of polite usages. She was an illegitimate daughter of Lady Eshetsford’s brother, but in those days illegitimacy meant no more than the want of acknowledgment; and if he chose to acknowledge, or if he chose to persuade Lady Eshetsford to take her into her house, there was no reason why he should not regard her as a relation the more. And he imagined the girl acting as kinswoman and companion to his wife. For he had no doubt that Lady Eshetsford would become his wife.

If he prosecuted — and he intended to do it — his search for the model to Celia with an extreme tenacity, it was only with the intention of showing that he had the power to win the wager, — the wager itself might go. And with the warmth of the fire shed over him, agreeable and soothing, with the girl’s head on his own, her feet swinging from the arm of the chair, he began, like Major Penruddock, to review the situation. His tenacity in the search for Celia was only secondary, and supplemented the tenacity of his intention to overcome Lady Eshetsford. It was, as it were, a struggle that he had entered into against her much more than against his rivals in the wager. He intended to find, carry off, imprison, and even to extract a promise of marriage from the phantom model. Then, having the wager won and within his grasp, he would cast her from him by again pressing his suit with Lady Eshetsford. This would prove to her that he was capable of a difficult achievement, and — and that was where the obstinacy of his struggle with her came in — he would by that disprove her accusation.... She had said that when found the model for Celia would be to him as desirable in every way as herself.

This he took to mean that his passion for her was of so sudden a growth that it would transfer itself to the first object that came in his way. He could attach no other meaning to her words. But whilst this was in a way a challenge, it might be thought to afford a clue. It must mean that the model for Celia was of equal, or almost equal, rank with themselves. For Mr. Bettesworth thought that his cousin would do him the credit not to imagine that he would find attractive, or make a marriage with, anyone very much his inferior. It gave him a clue, but, at the same time, it was hardly credible. It was hardly credible that a lady of position would sit to a painter for a set-piece. That she should sit for her portrait would be usual and fashionable. But to sit in a prescribed position holding a hat and a basket, to go before the world as any “Celia” — that could only be done in a moment of recklessness. Yet he seemed to have her word for it that this model was of their condition, and the assurance appeared almost certainly to circumscribe his task. He had made very certain that the picture had not been painted in London. The woman who kept Mr. Hitchcock’s lodgings, not having Mrs. Hitchcock’s reasons for silence, and being devoured by a curiosity which Mr. Hitchcock’s secrecy had rendered only the more furious, had amply assured him that in London Mr. Hitchcock had painted the portraits of persons of quality and the better class of City madams. These he painted at the sitters’ houses, bringing them home to finish details of the costumes, and to paint I shoulders and hands from models whom he hired. And the woman was more certain of this since, the better to observe the movements of Mr. Hitchcock, and his behaviour towards his models, she had scratched a little hole in the plaster-work of Mr. Hitchcock’s garret, and was accustomed, daily, to apply her eye to this...

“Child,” Mr. Bettesworth said suddenly, “with what families of quality does my lady visit?”

Lydia ran off a string of names: the Knatchbulls, the Scotts, my Lord Wyndham, the Lord Mersham, and many others. She added that my lady kept a list of such people for her better remembering, and she fetched the book from a drawer in the table beyond the fireplace. This resourcefulness pleased Mr. Bettesworth. He sat with the volume upon his knees and ran his fingers down the pages, inquiring of Lydia as to each inscribed name, how many there were in family and what daughters. He came thus upon the names of five families of some quality within a radius of six miles. He judged it unlikely that any lady would have come from farther afield upon so light an errand as to sit to a painter. The rest of his plan of campaign consisted in the sending of his servants to make inquiries amongst the families of the farmers and their dependents. Mr. Roland Bettesworth was to inquire of attorneys, physicians, and the like. Mr. Williamson was to address himself to the shopkeepers of the town. He, himself, would call formally on those families that had been marked down as being of eligible birth and possessing daughters of due age. And suddenly Lydia, who was looking towards the uncovered windows, exclaimed —

“The man Chuckel is looking in upon us!” Against a translucent and liquid bar of light in the sky Mr. Bettesworth could certainly observe the blot of a dark figure, but the cockling window-glass, lit with many candles from within, reflected, dark and gleaming, a great many confusing undulations of light. Without showing perturbation or emotion of any sort, Mr. Bettesworth walked to the tall window. He threw it up, and the cool air of the night pervaded the tall room. It was by then a very dusky gloaming. He listened attentively, and caught the overtones of voices. This puzzled and slightly angered him, and he called out to know who they were on the terrace.

“Egad, Squire,” a voice answered him, “we are Simon Harcourt and Major Penruddock.”

“Will you be eavesdropping?” Mr. Bettesworth asked, rather coldly.

“Why, to be sure we would,” Major Penruddock answered gruffly.
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We are all set to make what advantage we can, one from another. And, to be sure, how could we tell but that the fair thing you held in your arms—”

“Sir,” Mr. Bettesworth said, “I call you to mind that the child was not in any arms of mine.”

“Well, then,” Major Penruddock said, “the fair thing that held you in her arms. How could we tell that she, herself, was not the very Celia?”

Mr. Bettesworth answered, “Sir, the child is my wife’s niece—” and then, suddenly checking himself, he brought out, with some confusion, “the niece of Lady Eshetsford! But,” he added, with some displeasure, “I had not awaited eavesdropping from men of quality.”

“Sir,” Major Penruddock said, “this is, as it were, a war, a campaign. We send out our spies, our vedettes. If your headquarters are not well guarded, that is your affair.”

“But Mr. Chuckel?” Mr. Bettesworth asked. “Where is Mr. Chuckel?”

He could, by that time, make out in the darkening twilight the forms of the two men, one of whom he could identify as Major Penruddock, the other of whom must be the Hon. Simon Harcourt. There was a moment’s pause before either of them replied, and then Mr. Harcourt said —

“The steward met us in the doorway. He would have conducted us into the house but, having seen within the window-panes as we appeared, we nimbly ran to get a closer view into your apartment.”

“Nevertheless,” Mr. Bettesworth said at a hazard, “I heard his voice talking with you even now.”

“Why,” Mr. Harcourt answered, “he was entreating us to come with him and not to spy upon your Worship.”

Mr. Bettesworth said “Hem!” beneath his breath. He set one hand upon the sill and, the window being very tall and the sill very broad, he vaulted suddenly out upon the terrace. In the darkness he came close up to them. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I shall have the honour to conduct you into the house, that your spying may be conducted with the more dispatch and comfort. And, for myself, I am very glad to think that these operations are to be undertaken with ungloved hands.”