Complete Works of Ford Madox Ford, page 327
“Dancing!” Miss Egmont exclaimed.
“Yes,” Mr Bransdon answered, “dancing! Haven’t you heard her talk about her career? Well, that’s what she’s going to do. That sort of thing where they have long curtains on the stage and a chap plays a grand piano. Classical music, you know. And she’ll skip round in white muslin as she does round the maypole here.”
“But,” Miss Egmont said, “is that the sort of life...?”
“Oh, you can trust me to look after that,” Mr Bransdon said. “I can play the duenna. I’ll see about it. And there’s thousands in it, too.”
“I don’t think I quite like—” Miss Egmont began.
“Now see here,” Mr Bransdon continued. “This is a job for me,” and he struck his night-shirt on the chest with his hairy hand. “What else is the child to do? She’s learned printing, but what’s the good of printing? And she’s learned all this Simple Life yap, but that makes her about as sick as it makes me. She can’t do anything with music, she’s never been taught. She’s had no training for a business life. She couldn’t teach in a school, she’s too ignorant. The only thing she could do, the only single thing she’s really learned is to skip around a maypole. And, by the grace of God there’s a chance for her to do it and she’s going to take the chance.”
“But,” Miss Egmont said, “the — the temptations!”
“My dear good Cordelia,” Mr Bransdon said, “where do you get your ideas from? “Jessica’s First Prayer” or “The Lamplighter?” I tell you, Ophelia will be herded and marshalled and chaperoned and snapped off to the theatre and snapped off back. She couldn’t have it done better if she were in a convent.”
“But Hamnet Gubb!” Miss Egmont exclaimed.
Mr Bransdon gave her a long, hard, speculative stare.
‘You should have thought of that,” he said, “before you and Gubb planted the poor child upon me.”
He looked at her once more, and then he shook his hairy finger at her face.
“You talk of temptations,” he said with a bitter gravity. “The temptations of the theatre! Pah!” And he snorted heavily. “What are they compared with the temptations of a place like this, where you’re all slack, all without backbones, all half loafers? I tell you what it is, the place is a sink, and if God Almighty doesn’t wipe all this sort of person off the face of England, it’s because He means the poor old country to go right down into the limbo of forgotten races!”
CHAPTER II
WITH footsteps of extreme elation Mr Gubb walked over the springy turf of the common towards Coombe Luscombe. He was going to keep his appointment with Gerald and he was going to propose a really vast extension of his scheme, for which Mr Luscombe should find the necessary capital as a loan bearing no interest.
The maypole was very white, the fines of the tennis court very straight. From inside the bathing shed came splashes and such gentle cries of delight as the Simple Lifers permitted themselves. The sky was very blue, the sun shone upon the little red houses with their white railings, and from overhead thrilled down the voices of innumerable larks, singing above field after field of the immense space.
And surely, Mr Gubb thought, now was the time to strike, for now was the hour of his own — his own personal triumph. He had been selected, he had been singled out for distinction, he was to stand upon a public platform, to receive praise from exalted people, whilst from below plaudits should arise. After so many years of mole-work, of obscure toil, he was to ensue a personal fame. It was as if his head were to be encircled with a laurel wreath. Mr Gubb thought in these phrases because in his brains there ran always the more turgid specimens of the great Bransdon’s prose. And, indeed, Mr Gubb’s mind was so saturated by his leader’s verbiage that by now even in ordinary conversation he dropped into passages of prose poem. So that sometimes of late the Colonists had been presented with the singular spectacle of Mr Gubb speaking in Mr Bransdon’s prose to Mr Bransdon, who began to use more and more his old vocabulary which was half that of the mercantile quarterdeck and half that of American bar-loafers.
But Mr Gubb’s satisfaction was not that day to be limited to the mere reception in the future of a testimonial. For close to the milestone at the edge of the road, where also there is a parish boundary stone, the two leaning their heads together as if in confidential communion, Mr Gubb perceived the postman, who at sight of him fumbled in his sack and waved a rather large white envelope. Towards it Mr Gubb deflected his steps.
“I thought as how this might be of some service to you, Mr Gubb, sir,” the postman said. He was a freckled boy with narrow eyes resembling those of a pig.
“I don’t know. Why?” Mr Gubb said.
“Anything, sir, as I could do to be of service, sir—” the postman continued.
“Well, what is it?” Mr Gubb asked. He was tearing open the end of a long envelope such as is used for holding foolscap sheets of paper.
“Nothing, sir, but such as any little services you might need, such as bringing packets of tobacco or tintacks and the like out of Guildford — ?”
On the letter Mr Gubb read the heading of Paul Sand - with, the publisher and friend of Mr Luscombe, who had built and occupied the most enormous villa in the residential part of that neighbourhood. The postman stood before him in an attitude of submission, and Mr Gubb glanced down the first page of typewritten matter. He had thought at first that this was a mere circular about books or the offer of an encyclopaedia upon reduced terms for the Communal library that Mr Gubb had not yet had time to start, but he caught words such as “yourself” and “leaving everything to your entire discretion,” and suddenly his heart gave a great leap.
The sun shone; the voices of the larks thrilled down all round him like rain; the postman waited before him, silent and submissive. For a moment Mr Gubb stood with his feet on the turf and his head, as it were, above the skies. Then he sat down on the milestone. For here was achievement. Here was fame.
The letter from the great publisher, who was understood to have made the most of his money in commercial enterprises apart from his concern with books, this incredible letter offered Mr Gubb the entire social and organising control of an affair that Mr Sandwith called The Bast Croydon Garden City Ltd. And almost more than the offer was the tone, cordial, impressed and loftily courteous, of the writer. Mr Sandwith spoke of the considerable favour that his committee would consider it if Mr Gubb would merely read their proposal and then put himself into communication. And he even pointed out that the original idea of the syndicate had come to them from the notice that the Simple Life Limited had occasioned. And they understood that this enterprise was solely the outcome of Mr Gubb’s brain.
Descending to details the letter begged to inform him that The East Croydon Garden City Limited was a syndicate formed by several gentlemen of wealth and position. The chairman of the concern was Mr Sandwith himself, the managing director Sir Joshua Sebag, and the directors included Mr Montague Govan, M.P., one of the Junior Lords of the Treasury, and the Right Honourable the Earl Croydon, from whom the syndicate had purchased a tract of land well watered, upon a south slope of the downs, with commanding views, covering 895 acres, and running right down to the railway line. They proposed to model their rules for tenants upon Sir Gubb’s, and they hoped in this way not only to ensure commercial success, but also to elevate the moral tone of the rural districts and to point the way to great social developments. With these objects they knew that Mr Gubb would be heartily in sympathy. And whilst they were prepared to allow him complete control they could not, in a letter, do more than sketch the proposition that they were in a position to make him. Briefly, he was offered a seat on the Board of Management, a certain proportion of the shares of the company and a salary to be settled at an interview and according to the amount of time he could be persuaded to devote to their enterprise.
And sitting upon a milestone Mr Gubb gave way to a joy so deep that it was almost a sorrow. Here was the crowning testimony of success, authentic, undeniable. It was like the closing of a phase, when he had toiled at obscure details in a personal obscurity. Now he was going to be a different man, celebrated, courted. And the letter would be more than a mere testimonial: it would be an argument. For he was going to attempt to extract that morning from Gerald Luscombe a large — even a very large sum of money. And it should be normally a great inducement that he could prove that hard-headed business men believed not only in his work but in the possibility of profits, not only in the merit of the work but in his business ability. He could not believe that Gerald would have any argument to offer against him. He wanted to build more cottages for the Colony, he wanted to take in more land to farm, he wanted to build a Cold Storage Works, an Electric Light Plant and a Communal Reading-room. He had not, even at that moment, the remotest idea of accepting the new offer. He knew that his time and his energies would be entirely taken up by the Simple Life Limited. That was his work: that was his child. The other would be a competing concern and he found that he could not prevent himself from hoping that it might not succeed.
Suddenly the postman said:
“Be you a-going to prosecute, Mr Gubb, sir?”
“Prosecute?” Mr Gubb started out of his reverie to say, “Prosecute what?”
“It was my brother Earnest as got the teeth knocked down his throat.”
“What? Where?” Mr Gubb asked. His mind had gone travelling in fields so altogether different that the attack on Mr Bransdon the night before had become quite obscured in his thoughts. “Oh,” he said, “your brother Earnest!” And then as recollection came back to him, “It was a most outrageous, a most abominable thing,” he said. “Do you understand that this is England?”
The postman cocked his peak cap further over his nose. “Why, so it is, sir,” he said. “But Bill Hurlock he says how that he’s heard tell of the English lion, but protect him from the Russian bear. His jaw, he do think, do be broken in three places.”
“A civilised country!” Mr Gubb continued his own train of thought. “You understand? And such outrageous breakings in to houses at night! Why, if it had been Russia—” He found it difficult to work himself into a proper intonation of disgust. He felt himself too happy and prosperous.
“We chaps in the Blue Anchor,” the postman said, “ thought that no good couldn’t come of it.”
“Apparently then,” Mr Gubb said, “you had premeditated the matter.”
“If you could have heard them come back, sir, screaming and howling, and my brother Earnest with the blood pouring from his mouth and Hurlock crawling along the road on his hands and knees, not fit to stand and his mouth all blue with finger marks where Mr Bransdon gripped him, you’d have felt a pity, sir. You’d have felt a pity. Why, sir, ‘twere a fearful night. And then they unchained that other Booshan — him with the knives and pistols, and him corned flusk into the Blue Anchor screaming and howling in a language no man could understand, and roaring for drink and chasing us over the common!”
“Why, what’s all this about?” Mr Gubb said.
“That’s how it was, sir,” the postman answered. “We sitting quiet and whist and my brother Earnest with a basin of water to swab his teeth out into, and then that mad Rooshan comes rushing along with his pistols and knives and all. And when we’d run home there wasn’t a one of us that slept that night for thinking that they heard him breathing hard through the keyhole.”
“Well, what do you expect?” Mr Gubb said. “You didn’t get more than you deserved.”
“No, but if my brother Earnest’s got to go to gaol and Bill Hurlock too—” And the postman stretched out one hand in an attitude of intercession. “You’re the top one amongst them,” he said. And Mr Gubb immediately felt an emotion of considerable pleasure. These people, too, recognised him in his place as a guiding spirit.
“If so be you wouldn’t prosecute, sir,” the postman said. He added after a pause, “If it isn’t quite in human nature to recognise all them others as the Quality, they being as how you might say weak in the knees and earning their livings the same as us folk, we can see that you be the master and quite the gentleman. But we’ll give our word and swear it solemn, too, that we’ll treat them all and you, too, sir, just as if you was the Quality and do little things for you, such as fetch cigarettes from Guildford and the like.”
“Well,” Mr Gubb said, “I’ll think about it. Mr Bransdon is lying at death’s door. If he dies your friends will have to stand their trial for murder, and you too, and any of the others who talked about it beforehand will be accessories before the fact.”
The postman said, “Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord!”
“But if,” Mr Gubb continued, “he recovers I will consider whether you haven’t all been sufficiently punished. If he doesn’t, you’ll have to deal with the law, which is no concern of mine.”
And before this postman could get these aspects of the matter into his brain, Mr Gubb, who had risen from his milestone, ambled determinedly off in the direction of Coombe Luscombe.
Gerald Luscombe was sitting in his study. Before the fireplace stood his wife and by the arm of the chair his boy Bill. He had been teaching Bill how to tie a fly. Bill was home for a couple of days from his preparatory school for Harrow, and Mrs Luscombe was watching the pair of them engrossed in their occupation.
Luscombe looked at the clock.
“You’ll have to be off in a minute,” he said. “Mr Gubb is coming to talk business.”
Bill’s face expressed disgust and distaste.
“That oily beast of a man!” he said. “Why do you have anything to do with him when it’s my holidays?”
“Oh, it won’t be a long interview,” Mr Luscombe answered. “You can stop here if you want to. It may teach you something about the estate.”
“Oh, Gerald,” Mrs Luscombe said, “you aren’t going to do any more for the Simple Life? It takes up too much of your time as it is.”
Gerald only laughed, and Mrs Luscombe, perhaps because she really did see less of him than had formerly been the case, thought he had the most attractive smile of any man she had ever met.
“If you pop on to your bicycle,” Gerald Luscombe addressed his son, “you can slip down to the station and see if my Field has come. These holidays throw everything out. And I’ll promise to be free of Mr Gubb by the time you come back.”
Bill pulled a catapult from his pocket and drew the elastic back gloatingly.
“I might get a pot at one of their bare legs on the way,” he said.
“You do, and see what a hiding you’ll get,” Mr Luscombe answered.
“Polly’s thrown Everard over,” Mrs Luscombe said almost before the door closed behind her son.
Luscombe leaned back in his deep chair. “That makes the seventh time, doesn’t it?” he said. “What will the poor devil have to give her to make it up on this occasion?”
“Oh, I fancy it’s done for good,” his wife answered. “Everard was here in the car this morning to tell me. He says that he’s had enough of it.”
“Well, so he has,” Luscombe answered. “It would have been three times too much for me.”
“Polly,” Mrs Luscombe continued, “has told him that he’s too unbearably vulgar. She says she couldn’t possibly go through life with him. It appears that he dropped an ‘h’ at their last Thursday. At least she says he did.”
“Oh, that’s all nonsense,” Mr Luscombe said. “It just shows Polly’s ignorance. Everard speaks in a north-country way sometimes, but he no more drops his ‘h’s’ than a Frenchman would call a pig a schwein. It’s out of the picture.”
Mrs Luscombe rubbed her upper lip meditatively with the paper knife.
“Is he too vulgar?” she asked. “Too vulgar for anything? You see, he was always so much about at Father’s that I got used to him.”
“That’s just it,” Gerald said. “One does get so used to him and I think that proves perhaps that he can’t be vulgar.”
“But still,” Mrs Luscombe said, “as regards one’s friends — ?”
“Oh, one’s friends,” Gerald said. “They don’t matter. They’ll swallow him. They’d swallow him if he wore boots with spurs on. You see, he’s got a heart of gold. He’s got a sack of gold, too. One for every night of the year. And he’s really the best-natured fellow in the world. You’ll find his name on every one of their blessed subscription lists. It doesn’t matter what they’re for.”
“Oh, I’m so glad you don’t think we ought to drop him,” Mrs Luscombe said.
“Drop him?” Gerald asked. Why should we?”
“Oh, he looked in this morning to ask,” Mrs Luscombe said. “That was what he came for. You see, poor fellow, I can’t put it exactly as he put it, but what it amounted to was, that if he was going to be dropped by us on that account he’d make up to Polly again. If he wasn’t, he wouldn’t.”
“What did you say?” Gerald asked.
“Oh, I told him,” Mrs Luscombe said, “that as far as I was concerned I’d always thought it a most unsuitable match, but I couldn’t answer for you.”
“Oh, well, you can,” Gerald answered.
“I saw him going past the house,” Mrs Luscombe continued, “with Ophelia Bransdon in his motor.”
“He would, naturally,” Gerald answered. And he added, “I daresay your sister would be all right if one could get the bang of her. But I never could understand which could be the right side to begin upon. She seems to be prickly all over, like a horse-chestnut.”
“Well, I daresay this will be a lesson to her,” Mrs Luscombe said. And just at that moment Mr Gubb was announced.
“You needn’t go,” Gerald exclaimed to his wife. “There’s nothing you can’t hear and very possibly it would interest you.”
In his blue reefer suit with his white shirt and his red satin bow, which he now always wore for business interviews, Mr Gubb with his pink, clean-shaven face and his pink, bald head, appeared bursting with prosperity. He did not lose a minute in getting to business, but seating himself plumply on the front edge of a saddlebag chair he pulled out from his breastpocket two white papers and a blue one.
