Complete Works of Ford Madox Ford, page 178
Katharine cried out, ‘Ah!’
The King leapt to his feet.
‘Ho, I will arm,’ he said, and grew pale. For, with a sword in his hand or where fighting was, this King had middling little fear. But, even as the lion dreads a little mouse, so he feared secret rebellions.
‘Sire,’ Throckmorton said, and his face was towards Katharine as if he challenged her:
‘This is the very truth of the very truth, I call upon what man will to gainsay me. This day I heard in the city of London, at the house of the printer, John Badge — —’ and he repeated the speech of the saturnine man—’that “he would raise a thousand prentices and a thousand journeymen to shield Privy Seal from peril; that he could raise ten thousand citizens and ten thousand tenned again from the shires!”’
Katharine kept her eyes upon Throckmorton who, knowing her power to sway the King, nodded gravely and looked into her eyes to assure her that these words were true.
But the King, upon his feet, marched towards the door.
‘Let us arm my guard,’ he said. ‘I will play Nero to London town.’
Nevertheless Throckmorton kept his knees.
‘Majesty,’ he said, ‘I have this man in my keeping.’ And indeed, at his passing London Bridge he had sent men to take the printer and bring him to Hampton. ‘I pray your pardon that I took him lacking your warrant, and Privy Seal’s I dare not ask.’
The King stayed in his pacing.
‘Thou art a jewel of a man,’ he said. ‘By Cock, I would I had many like thee.’ And at the news that the head of this confederacy was taken his sudden fear fell. ‘I will see this man. Bring him to me.’
‘Sire,’ Katharine said, ‘we spoke even now of Cinna. Remember him!’
‘Madam,’ Throckmorton dared to speak. ‘This is the man that hath printed broadsides against you. No man more hateth you in land or hath uttered more lewdnesses of your chastity.’
‘The more I will have him pardoned,’ Katharine said, ‘that his Highness and all people may see how little I fear his lyings.’
Throckmorton shrugged his shoulders right up to his ears to signify that this was a very madness of Roman pardoning.
‘God send you never rue it,’ he said. ‘Majesty,’ he continued to the King, ‘give me some safe conduct that for half-an-hour I may go about this palace unletted by men of Privy Seal’s. For Privy Seal hath a mighty army of men to do his bidding and I am one man unaided. Give me half-an-hour’s space and I will bring to you this captain of rebellion to your cabinet. And I will bring to you them that shall mightily and to the hilt against all countervail and denial prove that Privy Seal is a false and damnable traitor to thee and this goodly realm. So I swear: Throckmorton who am a trusty knight.’
He was not minded to utter before Katharine Howard the names of his other witnesses. For one of them was the Chancellor of the Augmentations, who was ready to swear that Cromwell, upon the barge when they went in the night from Rochester to Greenwich, had said that he would have the King down if he would not wed with Anne of Cleves. And he had Viridus to swear that Cromwell had said, before his armoury, to the Ambassador of the Schmalkaldners, that ne King, ne Emperor had such another armoury, yet were there twenty score great houses in England that had better, all ready to arm to defend the Protestant faith and Privy Seal. These things he was minded to lay before the King; but before Kat Howard he would not speak them. For, with her mad fury for truth and the letter of Truth that she had gained from reading Seneca till, he thought, her brains were turned, she would begin a wrangle with him. And he had no time to lose; for his ears were pricked up, even as he spoke, to catch any breaking of the silence from the next room where Viridus held Lascelles at the point of his dagger.
The King said:
‘Go thou. If any man stay thee in going whithersoever thou wilt, say that thou beest upon my business; and woe betide them that stay thee if thou be not in my cabinet in the half of an hour with them ye speak of.’
Throckmorton rose stiffly to his feet; at the door he staggered for a moment, and closed his eyes. His cause was won; but he leant against the door-post and gazed at Katharine with a piteous and passionate glance, moving his fingers in his beard, as if he appealed to her in silence as with the eyes of a faithful hound, neither to judge him harshly nor to plead against him. This was the day of the most strain that ever was in his life.
And gazing back at him, Katharine’s eyes were filled with pity, so sick he appeared to be.
‘Body of God!’ the King said in the silence that fell upon them. ‘Now I hold Cromwell.’
Katharine cried out, ‘Let me go; let me go; this is no world for me!’
He caught her masterfully in his arms.
‘This is a golden world, and thou a golden Queen,’ he said.
She held her head back from his lips, and struggled from him.
‘I may not find any straightness here. I can see no clear way. Let me go.’
He took her again to him, and again she tore herself free.
‘Listen to me,’ she cried, ‘listen to me! There have been broadsides printed against the truth of my body; there have been witnesses prepared against me. I will have you swear that you will read of these broadsides, and consider of these witnesses.’
‘Before God,’ he said, ‘I will hang the printers, and slay the witnesses with my fist. I know how these things be made.’ He shook his fist. ‘I love thee so that were they true, and wert thou the woman of Sodom, I would have thee to my Queen!’
She cried out ‘Ah!’
‘Child,’ he calmed himself, ‘I will keep my hands from thee. But I would fain have the kisses of thy mouth.’
She went to lean upon her table, for her knees trembled.
‘Let me speak,’ she said.
‘Why, none hinders,’ he answered her kindly.
‘I swear I do love thee, so that thy voice is as the blows of hammers upon iron to me,’ she said. ‘I may have little rest, save when I speak with thee, for that sustaineth thy servant. But I fear these days and ways. This is a very crooked riddle. So much I desire thee that I am tremulous to take thee. If it be a madness call it a madness, but grant me this!’
She looked at him distractedly, brushing her hands across her eyes.
‘It feels within my heart that I must do a penance,’ she said. ‘I have been wishful to feel upon my brow the pressure of the great crown. Therefore, grant me this: that I may not feel it. And be this the penance!’
‘Child,’ he said, ‘how may you be a Queen, and not crowned with pomp and state?’
‘Majesty,’ she faltered, ‘to prepare myself against that high office I have been reading in chronicles of the lives of them that have been Queens of England. It was his Grace of Canterbury that sent me these books for another purpose. But there ye shall read — in Asser and the Saxon Chronicles — how that the old Queens of Saxondom, when that they were humble or were wives coming after the first, sat not upon the throne to be crowned and sacred, but — so it was with Judith that was stepmother to King Alfred, and with some others whose names in this hurry I may not discover nor remember in my mind — they were, upon some holidays, shewn to the people as being the King’s wife.’
She hung her head.
‘For that I am humble in truth before the world and before my mother Mary in Heaven, and for that I am not thy first Queen, but even thy fifth; so I would be shewn and never crowned.’
She leaned back against the table, supporting herself with her hands against its edges; her eyes piteously devoured his face.
‘Why, child,’ he said, ‘so thou wilt be that fifth Queen; whether thou wilt be a Queen crowned or a Queen shewn, what care I?’
She no longer refused herself to his arms, for she had no more strength.
‘Mary be judge between me and them that speak against me,’ she said, ‘I can no more hold out against my joy or longings.’
‘Sha’t wear a hair shirt,’ he said tenderly. ‘Sha’t go in sackcloth. Sha’t have enow to do praying for me and thee. But hast no need of prayers.’ He lulled her in his arms, swaying on his feet. ‘Hast a great tongue. Speakest many words. But art a very child. God send thee all the joy I purpose thee. And, an thou hast sins, weight me further down in hell therewith.’
The light of the candles threw their locked shadows along the wall and up the ceilings. Her head fell back, her eyes closed, so that she seemed to be dead and her listless hands were open in her skirts.
AN ENGLISH GIRL
An English Girl first appeared in 1907, following Ford’s successful non-fiction studies of England The Soul of London (1905) and The Spirit of the People (1907). According to Ford, An English Girl was written, “as a variation on a book of essays to give the effect of a tour in the United States,” hoping to repeat his previous success in a fictional format. The novel was greatly inspired by American novelist Henry James’ “international” novels, concerning the representation of an American character through contrast with the English and the Continental.
The novel opens in England with the news that Don Collar Kelleg, an expatriate American, has become the richest citizen in the world. Sickened by the means in which his late father had acquired his immense fortune, the young and idealistic Don journeys across the Atlantic with his fiancée Eleanor Greville, the “English Girl” of the title, to atone for his father’s wrongs. In New York, Kelleg is repelled and disillusioned by the materialism of the United States; whilst his fiancée learns to overlook the brashness of Americans and enjoys spending her time there. Eventually, Kelleg returns with the Eleanor to England where he finds himself uneasy due to his failure.
As a novel, An English Girl was not successful, earning little critical attention, though it does present successful impressionistic accounts, including a particularly celebrated portrayal of a ship’s arrival in New York harbour, as well as vibrant depictions of the atmosphere of midtown Manhattan and a steamer trip to Coney Island.
Henry James (1843-1916), the leading novelist of his time, was a source of inspiration to Ford, who received help from the great master during his early years as a novelist.
CONTENTS
PART I. THE AMAZING DEATH.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
PART II. BETWEEN SHORES.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
PART III. THE SOLID LAND.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
PART IV. THICKER THAN WATER.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
TO
FRAU REGIERUNGSRAT
EMMA GOESEN
WHO RETURNED FROM NEW YORK MORE THAN A GENERATION AGO AND HAS SINCE BEATEN THE AUTHOR THIRTY-ONE TIMES OUT OF THIRTY-TWO GAMES OF CHESS
THIS WITH AFFECTION
PART I. THE AMAZING DEATH.
CHAPTER I.
THE first thing he said when she came into the room was:
“My father is dead,” and the announcement stayed her at the door, her hands falling to her side, open, as if, though a moment before they would have known their place and have lain upon the two shoulders of the man she was to marry, now, so new a creature did this announcement make him seem, that she had, at least for a moment, to hesitate as to whether he could still belong to her. It was under the definite spell of that feeling that she uttered the words:
“Oh dear!” — words that implied more than anything else—” tell me all: tell me the worst!”
And he was so sensitive to her moods that he, too, neither made to take her into his arms nor to utter an endearment.
“I am the richest citizen in the world, for what it’s worth,” he said, with a flavour of scorn, as if he were quoting the words of a man for whom he had an infinite contempt.
She sank down upon one of the hard-seated, fine, mahogany chairs before she uttered the word “How — !” But she was unable to furnish any adjective. The situation was beyond her: she could say neither “How tremendous!”
“How terrible!” nor yet “How magnificent!”
You may guess at a person’s character very efficiently by considering his first abstract remark upon any given happening. Tall, rather dark, with rounded cheeks, hair arranged high on her head, tight-fitting park dress, and a slow, elastic gait, and with her self-control and her clear lines — she was called Eleanor Greville — you could not deny the epithet “fine” to her, or to the room or to the atmosphere that surrounded her. And four days before she would at least have been ready to give as much insight into her personality: she would at least have been able to utter some moralisation if she had heard that overwhelming wealth had fallen to the share of any of her intimates.
But, from the Monday on which the first news of his father’s death had been cabled from across the water, she had seemed to be lifted out of contact with her own personality. The death had been denied on Tuesday, re-affirmed on the Wednesday by indignant Transatlantic journalists, and redenied on the Thursday by vastly more indignant Wall Street authorities, who claimed to have “seen him” the night before. So that she had not known whether it would be necessary for her to face the new position, terrible or beneficent, till that moment. She had not faced it: neither had he given her any assistance.
He had explained to her that the report of his father’s death might be true: it might be just the discovery of a genuine newspaper-writer anxious to provide his journal with the earliest report of a good “story.” Or it might be a lie invented by his father’s enemies who desired to “bear” his father’s interests. Or it might be a lie spread abroad by his father himself. And he had explained to her how it might be made to suit his father’s turn to “bear” his own interests. She was not lacking in intelligence sufficient to grasp the idea of such a manoeuvre, if she had not an exact knowledge, beforehand, of how it would be worked. She was shut off by the necessity of her life with a father who was called “trying” by most people who knew him — a father whose death, if it might have caused some satisfaction to a world that sent a certain class of learned books out for “review,” would certainly not have sent the prices of varied stocks tumbling down all over the world.
For the mere rumour of her lover’s father’s death — the rumour thus unconfirmed, denied, re-affirmed and re-denied with violent asseverations — had undoubtedly effected that. She knew it from her Cousin Augustus, who, a solicitor with a too-limited capital, had, upon the very Monday night, dashed down from town to get from her, with cousinly force, some sort of what he called “pointer.” Things, he said, were “falling” all over the place: they went down in London and they went down in Yokohama. As for what things were doing in the continent that lies westward, between London and Yokohama, he said the report of it beggared description. It had given to her belief in human nature one severe shaking at least. Her Aunt Emmeline, a lady of fifty-two, dessicated and thin-lipped, who more than any of the family had been able to indicate by dogged silence a disapproval of her engagement to “an American” — though to be sure you could not possibly have told that this particular American was anything but a very gentle and unassuming anybody else — her Aunt Emmeline had come to her between tears and outraged indignation to assure her that if Eleanor’s lover’s father were dead she would be literally beggared.
It put a new light upon the fact — she had discovered it whilst her aunt had been spending last Christmas with them — that her aunt received by post a journal called the Investor’s Guide. No one had ever exactly known how her Aunt Emmeline’s money had been invested: one associated her so definitely with a family solicitor’s advice: she took her needs to be so small that it was incredible that she should have tried speculation — and speculation of the wildest sort.
It came, in fact, to this quiet girl of thirty or so as a revelation — as the shock of an earthquake might have done. It revealed to her her aunt as possessed of a perfect abyss of cupidity — though she could not in the least imagine what she would propose to do with money when she had it. It had worried her, too — this revelation — because it seemed to show that the influence of her lover’s father had spread from the town with a queer name where he resided even to the decorous and quite ordinary Red Hill, where her aunt’s creeper-bedecked villa offered a small white drive to the impeccable suburban street.
For her aunt had announced that since Eleanor’s engagement she had decided to follow the fortunes of the Charles Collar Kelleg companies: she had speculated in the shares of the enterprises that — according to the Investor’s Guide — C. Collar Kelleg sustained with his voice from Kellegville, Ma. It was not enough for her to say to her aunt that her lover dissociated himself from his father, his father’s enterprises, and — as far as he decently could — from his father’s State. It did not even mitigate her aunt’s wrath when Eleanor said that she herself, in the course of her long intimacy with the son, had only four times heard him mention his father’s name. Her aunt had the crushing reply that if her fiancé had not been his father’s son she would never have let herself be drawn into speculating — on the cover system — in the Kelleg group of companies.
That announcement had, in a sense, relieved the girl’s mind. It meant that her aunt might be a solitary speculator on this side of the water. For of late so considerably had the name of Collar Kelleg figured in the world as that of an engineer of combines, a breaker of American railway laws, or an amateur of the Fine Arts, that she had come to fear that each inhabitant of each ivy-covered house that she called on in Canterbury, Kent, England, was concerned in the fate of — was certain to be ruined by — C. Collar Kelleg, of Kellegville, Ma., U.S.A. Only a fortnight before she had taken her lover to a garden-party at one of the Canons’ houses. And when she had introduced him to the Canon himself, the Canon — a wearied-looking cleric with side whiskers and a not too new coat, a clergyman reported to be in difficulties even with his butcher — the Canon had said:
