Complete Works of Ford Madox Ford, page 328
“I’ve come to put my new schemes before you,” he said, “if you can give me the time to listen.”
“Oh, go on,” Gerald answered. He remained lounging back in his own chair. Mrs Luscombe had crossed the room to the other side of the large, square desk and now she sat at it, leaning her elbows on the leather top and her chin upon her hands.
“My earnest desire,” Mr Gubb commenced, “is to extend our so meritorious enterprise. In putting my scheme before you I will be as brief as possible.” Mr Gubb’s voice was authoritative and assured. He regarded Gerald Luscombe as easy and good-humoured, entirely lacking in any business insight and quite easy to be led away from prudential considerations by a fine crop of humanitarian phrases. Hitherto Gerald had not refused him any single request. He regarded him as a milch cow, and at the bottom of his heart felt a certain contempt for him. “What I should like you to do,” he continued, “would be to build us another twenty cottages as similar as possible, architecturally, to those at present occupied by my Colony. By our Colony, I should say,” Mr Gubb corrected himself. “I should like them, however, to be somewhat modified internally with perhaps a larger living-room. And I should like them each to have attached to them a little more ground, say an acre apiece.”
“And the cost?” Gerald Luscombe asked.
Mrs Luscombe was anxiously regarding his face. Mr Gubb also looked at him. Luscombe had no expression whatever, and his eyes, intelligent and mild, like those of a spaniel, gazed over the brilliant bald head at the grained panelling of the door beyond. Mr Gubb leant forward in his chair to pass to him the large, blue paper.
“This,” he said, “contains Mr Major’s specifications for building twenty such cottages. Please peruse them carefully afterwards. But for the moment you will see that the gross cost of each cottage would be £625.”
“Making for the whole, £12,500,” Gerald Luscombe said. “And the land they stand upon?” he asked. “What do you allow for that?”
“Oh,” Mr Gubb said with assurance, “you have so much land. I haven’t thought you would consider that. Besides, agricultural land is worth practically nothing in this district. Let us say £10 an acre for the land, making another £200.”
“But it isn’t agricultural land, you know,” Gerald Luscombe said. “It would be building land. From two to three hundred pounds per acre is the price in this district or it would be if I allowed any villas to be built.”
“But these aren’t villas,” Mr Gubb answered. “This isn’t a commercial undertaking. You said, and you’ve always said, that you didn’t expect to make any profit out of the Simple Life.”
“Well, I didn’t expect to,” Gerald said, “and I haven’t: and I certainly never shall.”
“Then that’s all right,” Mr Gubb continued brusquely. “The capital sum I am asking you for immediately is £12,500.”
“And the rent you will propose to pay me per cottage?” Gerald Luscombe asked.
“Oh, the same as the others,” Mr Gubb answered. “Five shillings a week. Thirteen pounds a year.”
Gerald Luscombe said, “Well.”
“And of course,” Mr Gubb continued, and now he was preparing to get into his stride, “we shall then be able to add further Communal institutions. With the profits from the buildings that you will put up we shall proceed to erect in the first place a Communal library and reading-room, having attached to it a small gallery for the exhibition of pictures and works of Art. For although, hitherto, as is natural with the young community, our needs have been almost purely material, it should not be imagined that those finer things, the Arts, would not eventually come within our purview.” He addressed himself for a moment to Mrs Luscombe. “Our Library,” he said, “will contain only such serious books as will tend to improve the tone of mind of the readers. I shall begin it by presenting to it my own library of works upon economic, political and historical subjects. Fiction we shall entirely banish except perhaps for the works of Richardson and for one or two Utopian novelists such as Mr Wells, Mr Galsworthy and Mr Upton Sinclair. We desire, above all things, to communicate to our fellow workers a tone of earnestness and of serious attention to the problems of life. In this, madam, I feel that we shall earn your sincere commendation.”
Mrs Luscombe, who read a French novel for at least an hour and sometimes two every day after lunch, did not know what to say. Nevertheless she contrived to retain along with her silence an easy grace.
“And similarly,” Mr Gubb continued, “with the Fine Arts. We shall confine our exhibitions as much as possible to landscapes and to works of an idyllic nature. We shall thus inculcate in the young a love of nature, of peace, of comradeship and of brotherliness. Historical works we shall largely eschew. They are apt to deal too largely with kings and nobles and vain pomps. Though pictures of a symbolic nature, like those of the late Mr G. F. Watts with whom it was my privilege to pass several Sunday mornings, or those of Mr Walter Crane with whom I have frequently spoken upon the same platform; in short, symbolic pictures of all sorts we shall exhibit very freely. And from time to time we shall hold exhibitions of the works of our own painters and craftsmen.”
Again he bowed to Mrs Luscombe.
“I have observed, madam,” he said, “upon the walls of several of these apartments very charming proofs in aquarels of the skill of your hands. If you could be persuaded to lend some of these for exhibition, we should most certainly give them a very prominent place upon the walls.”
Mrs Luscombe, who had been taught water-colour painting by a very fifth-rate master in her Paris finishing school, was quite too well acquainted with the deficiencies and weaknesses of her productions to desire at all that they should be brought into the light of day. She contrived, however, by means of a gracious but quite mechanical smile, to inspire Mr Gubb with the idea that his compliment had found a billet. Strengthened and refreshed he proceeded with his scheme. He approached the subject of Cold Storage. Incidentally, he said, Cold Storage, by rendering the producer independent of the salesman and able to market his goods exactly when it pleased him, would drive the middleman almost entirely out of the world. At present, say, the producer of fat stock was bound to sell when and how it pleased the butcher. With Cold Storage he would be able to slaughter his beasts at their fattest and to keep the flesh until such time as the market prices were at their highest. And so it would be with all agricultural products. With the Colony the case would be somewhat different. They were not, that is to say, producers in the open market, nor did they seek to make a profit. But at certain times of the year, as Mrs Luscombe must well know, there was apt to be a glut of certain kinds of food. Thus the year before last the Colony produced two hundred and seventy bushels more of cherries than it could possibly consume. This surplus they had been obliged to dispose of to dealers at prices of an entirely contemptible kind. With Cold Storage they would be able to keep these cherries indefinitely, eating them all the year round, and even retaining some for the next year when there might come a shortage. And similarly with all the other fruits of the earth, as well as eggs, milk, butter and even fish. They would thus be rendered independent of the seasons as of the markets. The Cold Storage building which he proposed to erect would be operated by a small oil-engine, and since this would only be required during a portion of the day, the remainder of its power could be devoted to providing the Colony with electric light. They would also be able to install an electric bus in place of the motor-bus, which was ugly, noisy and expensive, and it was proposed to have at the disposal of such of the Colonists as desired it, one or even two electric typewriters.
And then, Mr Gubb said, his ideal would be perfected. All the other schemes were coming along as well as could be desired. The farm they were ready to take over at Michaelmas, and this, in addition to providing the Colony with wool, meat and other foods, would provide healthy, vigorous toil for many of their members. The problem of co-operative supply was nearly worked out, and thus there would be presented to the world the spectacle of a sane, virile, self-respecting community living in harmony with itself and at peace with its neighbours, engaged in health-giving pursuits and recreating themselves with sane, healthy pleasures, cultivating alike the Arts and the face of the earth, not only making a little oasis of perfect beauty in the midst of the grim sordidness of modem life, but, beautiful in itself and beautiful in all its members, pointing out with no hesitating note, but with a shrill insistence to all the rest of the world, the only possible, the only thinkable road towards social regeneration.
“Indeed, madam,” Mr Gubb approached the end of his peroration and once more addressed Mrs Luscombe, “I have to-day received proofs of two facts with only one of which I imagine you to be acquainted. As to the testimonial to my unworthy self, which is to be presented to me on Saturday, I have hardly any comment to make save that it brings tears of gratification to my eyes, tears which can only be the more numerous when I consider that the testimonial is not from my friends who know me so well, but from outsiders who can only judge the results of the work. This can only mean that the work itself is applauded: nay, that its example will be emulated. Indeed, here is actual Proof.”
And extending the letter which he had that morning received, Mr Gubb proceeded to read aloud the proposals of the directors of the East Croydon Garden City Ltd.
Having finished the perusal he paused to recover his breath and to survey the faces of Mr and Mrs Luscombe. Gerald only said, “A very handsome proposal. I congratulate you. I suppose you’ll accept it?” Mrs Luscombe was looking at her husband.
“Accept it!” Mr Gubb exclaimed with a note of enthusiasm. “Do you think I shall desert you at this critical moment? Do you think that I am the sort of man who, having set his hand to the plough, looks back? No, no. My duty is here and to you. Have no fear of that.”
“Well, I should take a day or two to think of it,” Mr Luscombe said. “Don’t reject the offer precipitately.”
“Now that,” Mr Gubb addressed Mrs Luscombe, “is so exactly like your kind and considerate husband! I may say that it would have been impossible, that it would have been improbable in the highest degree that I could ever have found anyone with whom I could have worked more cordially or whose co-operation could have been more freely given or more delightful to receive. Mr Luscombe, madam, is a man of men. Mr Luscombe has a heart of gold.”
Mrs Luscombe, shuddered slightly and looked at her husband, arching her eyebrows. She could not understand. She could not begin to understand how Gerald could sit in the same room with this little man who positively set her teeth on edge.
Luscombe, however, was only showing two of his white teeth beneath his heavy moustache in a quite comical and good-humoured smile.
“Oh, come, come!” he said.
“But it’s true. It’s all true. It’s absolutely true,” Mr Gubb asseverated to Mrs Luscombe. “When the history of this movement comes to be written — and we are this day lighting in England such a torch as by God’s grace shall never be put out — the name of Luscombe shall be written in gold upon the scroll of glory. For though to life a soul is necessary, yet also is life impossible without a body. This body has been supplied by my friend, Luscombe, for I am sure that by now I may call him my friend. Without the place upon which it could arise there never could have arisen this beautiful, spiritual body whose silver limbs, when all the world sleeps, gleam white in the light of the stars. Our motto is: ‘Onward now, onward ever,’ and splendid against the wind from the dawn-star we shall march.”
At this point the inspiration from Mr Bransdon died down on the lips of Mr Gubb, and after a moment or two of stuttering he said:
“It only remains to settle the preliminary details.” Luscombe was about to speak when Mr Gubb continued:
“I have drawn up a trust-deed. Perhaps you will find it convenient to come down to my office and to discuss some of the minor matters? It would be so pleasant to be able to announce the extension of the Colony at the meeting on Saturday.”
“I’ve got, you know,” Gerald said, “£162 at your disposal.”
“Oh,” Mr Gubb answered cheerfully, “the conveyancing won’t cost anything like as much as that. I’m fully qualified to act as solicitor and I shall do it all as cheaply as possible.”
“I mean,” Gerald said, and he looked Mr Gubb directly in the eyes, “that beyond that sum I sha’n’t have a halfpenny at your disposal.”
“Oh, come, come,” Mr Gubb said. “If you haven’t got the money immediately ready it’s quite easy to get an overdraft at your bank as against shares or title deeds. A willing heart will always find out a way.”
“The trouble is,” Gerald Luscombe said, “that I haven’t got a willing heart. I promised you to spend, and if necessary to lose, £5000, upon this experiment. I’ve spent £4838. You can have the balance but not a penny more. I’m not satisfied with the experiment and I never shall be. It hasn’t acted well and it doesn’t promise to act well. I want to have nothing more to do with it.” Mrs Luscombe heaved an immense sigh of relief.
Mr Gubb’s jaw suddenly dropped. “Not acted well?” he said. “You never said you wanted to make a profit. But even if you do there is money in it. If there wasn’t Mr Sandwith and those others who are hard business men wouldn’t be putting all this money into the East Croydon Garden City Ltd.”
“My dear man,” Gerald Luscombe said, “I’m not a tradesman. They are. That’s the difference.”
“But then—” Mr Gubb ejaculated.
“I don’t want to make money out of it but I don’t want to lose any more. I haven’t got the money to lose, and if I had I consider your scheme so absolutely detrimental that I wouldn’t put a penny into it.”
“Detrimental!” Mr Gubb ejaculated.
“Absolutely detrimental, physically and morally,” Gerald answered. “But let us take the things by detachments. Here is your proposition. You ask me to build twenty cottages at a cost of £12,500. You offer me in return a rent of £13 a year apiece or £260 in all. This is at a rate of something more than two per cent, and I have to knock off a considerable further sum for depreciation and rates. I haven’t exactly worked it out but it amounts to about one and a half per cent. My money as it is at present invested brings me in about four and a half per cent. You will see, therefore, if you take the trouble to think of it, that you are asking me to make you a personal present of two-thirds of the capital sum.”
“Me a present!” Mr Gubb gasped. And confronted with Gerald Luscombe’s astonishing insight into the weakness of his plans Mr Gubb felt a deeper and deeper sinking as if physical portions of his interior were being struck with small felt hammers.
“Oh, yes, it’s to you personally,” Luscombe continued. “But we’ll come to that later. You have asked me for £8383 as a present on behalf of the capital amount for building the cottages. You ask me, in addition, to sell you building land worth £6000 for the sum of £200, that is to say, that you ask me for a further present of £5800. Later on you will come to me for the money to build your library and your Cold Storage. This you will pay back to me when the profits of the Simple Life Limited will have exceeded ten per cent, per annum. They will never exceed ten per cent, per annum because you will go on extending the Colony with my money and continuing to keep the profits below ten per cent. The Communal buildings that you now propose to set up will cost me anything between three and five thousand pounds. It is true they will remain my property but they will be absolutely of no value to me. I hope you follow me? You have therefore asked me to make you a present of a sum of between fifteen and eighteen thousand pounds. I am not a millionaire. I am not a lunatic. I am not even a philanthropist, except for the first five thousand pounds that you have already had. I am just a country landowner anxious to do my duty unobtrusively.”
Mrs Luscombe gazed at her husband, her eyes enormous with admiration and astonishment. She had never expected it of him, she had not thought he had it in him, and when it came out her astonishment was only the greater to notice how exactly like himself he seemed. He wasn’t in the least excited. He spoke gently, evenly, amiably, rather like a bland politician explaining to the House of Commons as overwhelmingly as possible the finances of the year. She thought it was only her own father who could so accurately and so surely have taken hold of a very complicated position.
Around the base of Mr Gubb’s nose two plaques of paleness were coming into being and slowly spreading on to his cheeks.
“It isn’t true,” he gasped. “It’s all false, absolutely false. I would have paid you rent for the new Communal buildings. I’ll pay you rent for the old ones.”
“I’m very glad to hear it,” Gerald answered. “You certainly ought to. Now let us consider how the £5000 I’ve already dropped on you has been dropped. I’ve spent on the old cottages, in restoring and redecorating them for your tenants £1800.”
“I put up the rent for you,” Mr Gubb snapped.
“You did,” Gerald Luscombe answered. “My labourers were paying me three and sixpence a week. You pay me five shillings. That means an increase of one and sixpence a week, making £74 a year in all. The interest on £1800 at four per cent, is £72. On the original cottages I gain therefore £2 a year. Let us say £50 in capitalised money. For the original tenants I’ve had to build...”
“You didn’t have to build,” Mr Gubb said harshly. Gerald smiled amiably. “That’s how you see it,” he said. “But some of the families have been our tenants for three hundred years. I couldn’t turn them adrift to find cottages four or five miles off. So I had to build for them. Ten double cottages at £1000 apiece cost me £10,000. The rent per cottage is three and sixpence a week, £8, 14s a year, that is to say, or £174 a year for the lot. I make them a present of the land they stand on and the water-supply that all the cottagers detest. I lose, therefore, on my capital from this source, putting the capital as being worth four per cent., £226 a year. This is already something over £5000. But determining to be generous to you and taking the interest at only two and a half per cent., and estimating that you will some day pay me some rent—” Mr Luscombe broke off to say to his wife, “Just hand me the paper that your right arm’s on.” He continued, “You will see here the exact basis of my calculations, and you will observe that, though I have behaved with great generosity in the Capital Account, there remains over the £162 that I have already spoken of to you.”
