Some Do Not . . ._ A Novel - Ford Madox Ford [112]
'I don't mind your putting it straightforwardly,' Christopher said. He considered the base of the fountain that was half full of leaves. This civilization had contrived a state of things in which leaves rotted by August. Well, it was doomed!
'If you were a pimp living on women,' Mark repeated, 'it was no good making a will. You might need uncounted thousands to keep you straight. You were to have 'em. You were to be as debauched as you wanted, but on clean money. I was to see how much in all probability that would be and arrange the other legacies to scale...Father had crowds of pensioners...'
'How much did father cut up for?' Christopher asked. Mark said:
'God knows...You saw we proved the estate at a million and a quarter as far as ascertained. But it might be twice that. Or five times!...With steel prices what they have been for the last three years it's impossible to say what the Middlesbrough district property won't produce...The death duties even can't catch it up. And there are all the ways of getting round them.'
Christopher inspected his brother with curiosity. This brown-complexioned fellow with bulging eyes, shabby on the whole, tightly buttoned into a rather old pepper-and-salt suit, with a badly rolled umbrella, old race-glasses, and his bowler hat the only neat thing about him, was, indeed, a prince. With a rigid outline! All real princes must look like that. He said:
'Well! You won't be a penny the poorer by me.' Mark was beginning to believe this. He said:
'You won't forgive father?'
Christopher said:
'I won't forgive father for not making a will. I won't forgive him for calling in Ruggles. I saw him and you in the writing-room the night before he died. He never spoke to me. He could have. It was clumsy stupidity. That's unforgiveable.'
'The fellow shot himself,' Mark said. 'You usually forgive a fellow who shoots himself.'
'I don't,' Christopher said. 'Besides, he's probably in heaven and don't need my forgiveness. Ten to one he's in heaven. He was a good man.'
'One of the best,' Mark said. 'It was I that called in Ruggles though.'
'I don't forgive you either,' Christopher said.
'But you must,' Mark said--and it was a tremendous concession to sentimentality--'take enough to make you comfortable.'
'By God!' Christopher exclaimed. 'I loathe your whole beastly buttered toast, mutton-chopped, carpet-slippered, rum-negused comfort as much as I loathe your beastly Riviera-palaced, chauffeured, hydraulic-lifted, hot-house aired beastliness of fornication...' He was carried away, as he seldom let himself be, by the idea of his amours with Valentine Wannop, which should take place on the empty boards of a cottage, without draperies, fat meats, gummy aphrodisiacs...'You won't,' he repeated, 'be a penny the poorer by me.'
Mark said:
'Well, you needn't get shiny about it. If you won't you won't. We'd better move on. You've only just time. We'll say that settles it...Are you, or aren't you, overdrawn at your bank? I'll make that up, whatever you damn well do to stop it.'
'I'm not overdrawn,' Christopher said. 'I'm over thirty pounds in credit, and I've an immense overdraft guaranteed by Sylvia. It was a mistake of the bank's.'
Mark hesitated for a moment. It was to him almost unbelievable that a bank could make a mistake. One of the great banks. The props of England.
They were walking down towards the Embankment. With his precious umbrella Mark aimed a violent blow at the railings above the tennis lawns, where whitish figures, bedrabbled by the dim atmosphere, moved like marionettes practising crucifixions.
'By God!' he said, 'this is the last of England...There's only my department where they never make mistakes. I tell you, if there were any mistakes made there there would be some backs broken!' He added: 'But don't you think that I'm going to give up comfort, I'm not. My Charlotte makes better buttered toast than they can at the club. And she's got a tap of French rum that's saved my life over and over again after a beastly wet day's racing. And she does it all on the five hundred I give her and keeps herself clean and tidy on top of it. Nothing like a Frenchwoman for managing...By God, I'd marry the doxy if she wasn't a Papist. It would please her and it wouldn't hurt me. But I couldn't stomach marrying a Papist. They're not to be trusted.'