Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (471 page)

Kintyre explained that he had only come to fetch his cigar case. And at that moment the Countess herself came into the room, very splendidly attired in a ruby velvet dress.

When she entered, her face, as Kintyre made it out, was carefully arranged in an expression of contempt and of haughty reproof, so that he considered himself to be receiving the full force of her greeting for her husband. But the moment she perceived Kintyre, he seemed to see three separate expressions come over her vivid features. There was certainly disappointment about the lines of the mouth just as there was certainly a touch of tears in each of the hard eyes, and without doubt a touch, a sudden fire — of curiosity. Kintyre certainly thought the Countess the most extraordinary woman he had ever met. but he certainly thought that at that moment he understood her, as he considered himself to understand every woman. She had without doubt put on her extravagantly blazing dress for the sake of her husband’s eyes. She wished to prove how desirable she was, and at the same time she intended to make him what Kintyre would have called a hell of a scene.

But he simply had not come; that was why her eyes for a minute had had tears in them. The curiosity meant, he was perfectly certain, that she hoped he, Kintyre, had come as some sort of ambassador from her husband. He could tell perfectly well that this fierce and arrogant spirit was in the habit of raging up and down that room with the hard furniture. He imagined her pacing up and down like one of the great caged cats waiting for a man whose presence she passionately desired, and whom she would overwhelm with outrages the moment he appeared. And he never, Kintyre realised, came at all. And Kintyre knew, when he said that he himself came only to recover his cigar case, that he was inflicting upon her a severe wound. But in that moment he was so very much in the middle of an exciting affair that he hadn’t any time, coolly selfish as he was, for more psychology. For Her Excellency became at once calm and decided, and exclaimed:

“Oh, it was your cigar case? I thought it was Sergius Mihailovitch’s. So I sold it.”

The Duke exclaimed — he couldn’t think of anything else to exclaim:

“That’s very considerate!”

The Countess was quite composed. “Sergius Mihailovitch,” she said, “has no right to have such things. It was gold with a coronet of diamonds, and it had a button of one large ruby.”

“Oh, I know what it was like,” Kintyre said. “And I’ll allow that it was rather gorgeous, but it was a present from my mother. I should certainly not have bought such a thing.”

“Then you’ll admit,” the Countess said triumphantly, “that it wasn’t at all the sort of thing that was fitting for Sergius Mihailovitch’s position.”

“I shouldn’t at all like to dictate the conduct of Count Macdonald,” the Duke said. “I don’t know him well enough.”

“Well, I do,” the Countess said.

And in the silence that followed for a moment Miss Dexter, who sat upon the chest beside Kintyre, with her eyes very wide, and her lips apart, exclaimed:

“I think it perfectly thrilling that I should be allowed to be present at this interview. It’s a privilege.”

“It certainly is,” Kintyre said; “but it seems an odd one.”

“It’s not in the least odd!” the Countess exclaimed. “You’re both friends of Sergius Mihailovitch; you’re both members of the Smart Set. I wish Sergius Mihailovitch’s friends exactly to understand what I’m doing. I wish to act in public. I’ve nothing to be ashamed of. Nothing! Sergius Mihailovitch has no business with a cigar case like that. He has no business with cigars at all! They’re above his station!”

“But, my dear lady,” the Duke said, “his station is at least as good as my own.”

“I say nothing about that,” the lady said. “I only say that cigars are things I disapprove of. So, of course, when I saw a cigar case like that apparently in the possession of Sergius Mihailovitch...”

“But it wasn’t in the possession of Sergius Mihailovitch, you know,” the Duke said. “And even if it had been, you might pretty certainly have argued that he hadn’t bought it. Men practically never buy cigar cases like that. They’re nearly always presents from their women friends.”

“That’s what I thought,” the Countess said. “That’s why I sold this one.”

“But that wouldn’t have been the way to make yourself popular with your husband,” the Duke said.

“I haven’t the least desire to make myself popular with my husband,” the Countess said. “I only desire to drag him from his vicious courses.”

“But really,” Kintyre exclaimed, “this wasn’t a vicious course of Count Macdonald’s. It wasn’t even really a vicious course of mine. It’s all very complicated, and it will just show you how difficult these questions are. That cigar case was presented to me by my venerable mother because she wanted to redeem
me
from what she considered was a vicious course. If you’d opened that cigar case you’d have found that it was full of cheap cigarettes. That’s my vicious habit. I haven’t any taste in tobacco, and I prefer a cheap cigarette to the best cigar. That was a real grief always to my mother. She thought that cheap cigarettes were below my station. So she gave me that cigar case — and she made it as gorgeous as she could, dear old lady, — because she thought it would bribe me to smoke cigars. She gave it me as soon as I came into the title. It didn’t matter, she thought, so much what I smoked as long as I was a commoner. But when I became a Duke.. Kintyre broke off and gazed amiably at the Countess...” See how difficult you women make it for us men. I’ve tried honestly to smoke cigars. But I can’t! They make me sick. So I’ve to cram my mother’s cigar case with cheap cigarettes. And I can’t help thinking that it’s dishonourable of me. You see, whenever my mother sees me, she sees the cigar case, and it comforts her to think that I’m behaving in a manner proper to my station. But all the while I’m not. No, my dear lady, don’t exact from your men folk too high a standard. They can’t live up to it.”

“But all this is perfectly thrilling!” Miss Dexter exclaimed to Kintyre. “But why didn’t you tell me you were a duke, at first? It would have made it all so much easier to understand. And I do so much want to understand everything. Don’t you see, I should have been able to take such a much more intelligent interest if I’d known from the start that you were one of the dissolute and worthless Smart Set that Mrs. Macdonald has told me so much about.”

“Oh, well, I am a beastly duke,” Kintyre said. “And it you’ll just take time you can revise your impressions all right.”

“You know,” Miss Dexter continued, “all this struggle is perfectly thrilling to me.”

“What struggle?” Kintyre asked.

“Oh,
the
struggle,” Miss Dexter answered; “the one that’s going on between you of the Smart Set and Mrs. Macdonald here for the possession of her husband. It’s an epic contest!”

Kintyre reflected for a minute. “I should think Macdonald wouldn’t like it,” he said; “I should think he’d dislike it extremely — to have it conducted so much in public.”

“It doesn’t matter what he likes or dislikes,” the Countess said decidedly. “If he wants to have to do with me, he’s got to consider what I approve of.”

The Duke said nothing. The Countess looked at Miss Dexter.

“If you want to get a true impression of the case, you’ve got to consider that the Duke is lying all the time,” she said; “he is trying to shield his cousin Lady Aldington.”

Miss Dexter said: “Oh, you’re a cousin of
the
Lady Aldington who is going to be the co-respondent.”

“The legal term for the guilty woman,” the Countess said grimly, “is intervener, not co-respondent.”

The Duke sat very still. At last he asked: “And what has poor Emily done, pray?”

“Oh, I dare say,” the Countess said, “that you think that if I give you information about the case you’ll be able to lie a way out of it. But you can’t. I’ve seen their goings-on with my own eyes. You can’t bribe me out of the witness box.”

“You know,” the Duke said slowly. “I don’t know much about the case. I didn’t even know there was any case....”

“Of course you’d say that!” the Countess exclaimed. With her high colour, her penetrating glance, and her back square against the door, she was aware, from the look in Kintyre’s hardy dark eyes, that she looked extremely handsome. And Kintyre laughed:

“I don’t know anything about it,” he said, “but I believe my cousin Emily is as innocent as a dewdrop.”

“Oh, I know your innocent women!” the Countess said. “She’s a poor, weak, little fool. I don’t bear her any malice. But she has got to go through with it. I’m really sorry for her; for one day Sergius Mihailovitch will throw her over and come back to me. He’s bound to!”

Kintyre looked at the floor. “I should say he was,” he said, “and that makes it all the more of a pity that you should alienate his affections by bringing absurd charges now. At least, for the life of me, I believe they’re absurd charges.”

“A judge and jury won’t think they’re absurd charges,” the Countess said, with a high scorn. “She’s been to his rooms at night. I’ve seen her. I’ve kept watch.”

“The deuce you have!” Kintyre exclaimed.

“I’ve seen it with my own eyes,” she went on, and her excitement began to grow. “I saw them meet in a dark passage. And I saw them come back four hours afterwards. And I saw her go into his detestable rooms. Do you suppose I don’t know what his detestable rooms are for?”

Kintyre was really exceedingly puzzled. He couldn’t doubt the lady’s entire sincerity.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “I don’t really understand how she could possibly have found the time since he has been back. I was looking at her engagement book only just now, and I assure you that from the day after we all came back from Wiesbaden there has not been a single night that she hasn’t had some sort of Congress or public meeting or dinner of her own. Not a single night!”

The Countess looked at him with a hard, ironic exaltation. “That may be true,” she said. “I dare say he has had enough of her. I suspected as much.” And then she added slowly: “You were careful to say that her ladyship was engaged every night from the night after the one on which we came back from Wiesbaden.” Her voice became slower and slower. “The night I mean was the night on which we came back. Yes, I suspected that he had had enough of her. He has not been nearly so assiduous since. That was why I pitied her and was kind to her when she called with you the other day. She may try to bribe him back with cigar cases. But she won’t get him. He doesn’t even take care of what she gives. He drops it in the grass for me to find. I dare say he wanted me to find it, so as to be able to boast of his conquest. But I have done the right thing. I’ve sold it. And I’ve paid the money to my lawyers. Sergius Mihailovitch will be legally responsible for the costs of the case, and he won’t be able to pay them, so that he won’t be able to complain if I’ve sold the disgusting thing.”

The Duke was looking at the floor. The lady spoke with so much conviction. And he was so used to the frailties of human nature in divorce cases that for a moment he believed that he must himself be a little mad. It was almost as if his own cigar case didn’t belong to himself.

“Didn’t you notice,” he asked slowly, “that the coronet on the case was a duke’s?”

“I did,” she answered. “And that woman calls herself the Duchess of Batalha.”

“But the arms!” Kintyre said; “the arms were my arms.”

“So are the arms of the Duchy of Batalha,” the Countess answered. “You can’t get out of it in that way.”

Kintyre delivered a long, hard glance to the lady’s dress.

“I don’t know whether you’ll believe that I am the sort of man not to care twopence whether my cousin is in a divorce case or not?”

“Oh, I can quite believe you’re that sort of man,” she answered.

“Then perhaps you believe,” he tried it on, “that I’m the sort of man who’d prefer not to see
you
make an unholy fool of yourself.”

“I don’t know about that,” she answered dubiously.

“A most unholy fool,” the Duke said. He looked at the ground and continued to talk musingly. “At first I believed that you had got hold of something against Emily Aldington. But you haven’t! You’ve simply made an uncommonly silly fool of yourself over that. The silliest sort of fool! You’ve just mistaken the lady.”