Some Do Not . . ._ A Novel - Ford Madox Ford [132]
Valentine's affection had, indeed, survived even Edith Ethel's continued denigrations of Tietjens--for Edith Ethel regarded Tietjens as a clog round her husband's neck, if only because he was a very unpopular man, grown personally rather unpresentable and always extremely rude to the geniuses on Fridays. Edith Ethel, however, never made these complaints that grew more and more frequent as more and more the distinguished flocked to the Fridays, before Macmaster. And they ceased very suddenly and in a way that struck Valentine as odd.
Mrs Duchemin's grievance against Tietjens was that, Macmaster being a weak man, Tietjens had acted as his banker until, what with interest and the rest of it, Macmaster owed Tietjens a great sum: several thousand pounds. And there had been no real reason: Macmaster had spent most of the money either on costly furnishings for his rooms or on his costly journeys to Rye. On the one hand Mrs Duchemin could have found Macmaster all the bric-à-brac he could possibly have wanted from amongst the things at the rectory, where no one would have missed them and, on the other, she, Mrs Duchemin, would have paid all Macmaster's travelling expenses. She had had unlimited money from her husband, who never asked for accounts. But, whilst Tietjens still had influence with Macmaster, he had used it uncompromisingly against this course, giving him the delusion--it enraged Mrs Duchemin to think!--that it would have been dishonourable. So that Macmaster had continued to draw upon him.
And, most enraging of all, at a period when she had had a power of attorney over all Mr Duchemin's fortune and could, perfectly easily, have sold out something that no one would have missed for the couple of thousand or so that Macmaster owed, Tietjens had very forcibly refused to allow Macmaster to agree to anything of the sort. He had again put into Macmaster's weak head that it would be dishonourable. But Mrs Duchemin--and she closed her lips determinedly after she had said it--knew perfectly well Tietjens' motive. So long as Macmaster owed him money he imagined that they couldn't close their doors upon him. And their establishment was beginning to be a place where you met people of great influence who might well get for a person as lazy as Tietjens a sinecure that would suit him. Tietjens, in fact, knew which side his bread was buttered.
For what, Mrs Duchemin asked, could there have been dishonourable about the arrangements she had proposed? Practically the whole of Mr Duchemin's money was to come to her: he was by then insane; it was therefore, morally, her own. But immediately after that, Mr Duchemin having been certified, the estate had fallen into the hands of the Lunacy Commissioners and there had beno further hope of taking the capital. Now, her husband being dead, it was in the hands of trustees, Mr Duchemin having left the whole of his property to Magdalen College and merely the income to his widow. The income was very large; but where, with their expenses, with the death duties and taxation, which were by then merciless, was Mrs. Duchemin to find the money? She was to be allowed, under her husband's will, enough capital to buy a pleasant little place in Surrey, with rather a nice lot of land--enough to let Macmaster know some of the leisures of a country gentleman's lot. They were going in for Shorthorns, and there was enough land to give them a small golf-course and, in the autumn, a little--oh, mostly rough!--shooting for Macmaster to bring his friends down to. It would just run to that. Oh, no ostentation. Merely a nice little place. As an amusing detail the villagers there already called Macmaster 'squire' and the women curtsied to him. But Valentine Wannop would understand that, with all these expenses, they couldn't find the money to pay off Tietj ens. Besides,