Complete Works of Ford Madox Ford, page 333
Gerald Luscombe was standing in the porch in evening dress talking to a lady in severe attire with a strong face, short skirts and a boat-shaped bat.
“You say,” be was saying as Mr Everard reached them, “that he left Heidelberg ten days ago?”
“It’s just ten days,” Miss Stobhall said.
Luscombe perfunctorily introduced to her Mr Everard, who, intent on getting up to his room to dress, was trying to edge past them.
“You don’t happen to have seen Hamnet Gubb about the Settlement?” Mr Luscombe asked.
“Never heard of the gentleman,” Mr Everard said. “Shouldn’t know what he looked like if I had seen him.” And he hurried past them up to his room. He really had not much time. The ceremony of the evening was to begin at half-past eight, and it was at that moment a quarter to the hour. He would have, he saw, to go without his dinner. He flung off his motor coat, his undercoat, his waistcoat, and began to unknot his tie, when suddenly he exclaimed: “Good Lord! Hamnet Gubb!” And with an extraordinary scrambling movement he pushed his tie together again and hoisted on first his waistcoat and then his coat. He buttoned up the latter whilst he ran downstairs exclaiming, “What a day I’m having! Good Lord! What a day I’m having!”
Miss Stobhall was not upon the porch steps, neither, for the matter of that, was Gerald Luscombe in the diningroom, where Mrs Luscombe was engaged in dissecting the second of a pair of fowls.
“I think,” she said, “they must have gone into the study. I wish you’d tell Gerald the chickens are getting cold and ask Miss Stobhall to come in and have some dinner. She shouldn’t have called him out just in the middle of it. People are so inconsiderate.”
Mr Everard burst into the study where Gerald Luscombe, still holding his table napkin, was talking in a low tone to Miss Stobhall.
“Look here,” Mr Everard said, “isn’t this Gubb boy — didn’t you tell me he was married to Ophelia? Is he a little chap all falling to pieces like a wisp of hay, with gold eye-glasses?”
“That would be he,” Gerald Luscombe said. “Then you have seen him.”
“Why,” Mr Everard answered, “he was sitting on the milestone between here and the Green not three minutes ago. But,” he added, as Miss Stobhall made towards the door, “he just vanished into thin air. He went off over the Common. I don’t know which way and I don’t suppose you could possibly find him amongst the gorse at this time of night. Isn’t he a little bit off his chump?” Gerald Luscombe said, “If he’s in this neighbourhood I daresay I’ve got a clue to where he’s staying.”
But Miss Stobhall was talking to Mr Everard. “Of course he’s mad,” she said. “He’s as mad as a March hare. He’s an Individualist.”
“I don’t quite know what that is,” Mr Everard said. “Is it the same thing as the Peculiar People?”
“Oh, nonsense,” Miss Stobhall said. “An Individualist is everything that’s bad. It’s a person that believes in competition and doesn’t recognise that it’s his duty to consider himself as a part of the State.”
“Ah, that would be him,” Mr Everard said. “He seemed to think that I hadn’t got a right to walk along the road, though he didn’t say anything about competition. I shouldn’t think he’d be much good for that!”
“Did he seem very depressed?” Miss Stobhall asked. “Well,” Mr Everard said, “I don’t know what he’s generally like. He didn’t seem to me to be the sort of person that I should want to sit in the same funeral carriage with.”
“You see,” Miss Stobhall explained, “he took his ‘doctor’ at Heidelberg with distinction, and then as he wouldn’t go and enjoy himself as the other young people do, I took the occasion to talk to him seriously. And then he revealed to me the fact that he hadn’t the least intention of making use of his degree. He had no desire to be of service to society, and he didn’t care at all about earning a living. I spoke to him with a great deal of seriousness. Well, I mean, that I was really very angry. I let him know most of what I thought of him, you understand?”
“Oh, I think I understand,” Mr Everard said.
“I pointed out to him,” Miss Stobhall continued, “what is the duty of a man to Society as it is. I said to him that I had nephews of my own and that he couldn’t expect me to go on keeping him for ever in a state of idleness.”
“And quite right, too, madam,” Mr Everard said.
“He didn’t seem to take much notice,” Miss Stobhall continued, “but next morning he had gone. I thought, of course, he’d perhaps gone for a long walk, but I heard nothing from him that day nor the next nor the next, and then as he hadn’t any money with him and doesn’t know what to do with money if he has it, I began to get very uneasy. I went to the police but they couldn’t find out anything. I don’t suppose they took much trouble over an Englishman. And then about a week later I heard from a friend of Hamnet’s in Heidelberg that he had heard from a common friend of theirs who was a student in Bonn. Hamnet seems to have walked down the Rhine, living, I suppose, like a tramp. His Bonn friend said that he had eaten an enormous breakfast, that he seemed very healthy and cheerful and rather more madly visionary than usual. The friend bought him a ticket on the English steamer for London, and that was the last we’ve heard of him.”
Miss Stobhall paused to take breath.
Luscombe began once more — he had been trying to fit a word in whenever Miss Stobhall paused or whenever Mr Everard interrupted: “I think I can tell you—” when Miss Stobhall started once more.
“Of course I left Heidelberg at once,” she said, “and here I am. It’s absolutely essential that he must be kept away from Ophelia. Don’t you think so?” she addressed Gerald Luscombe. “The marriage ought to be dissolved at once.”
“Oh, I’ll see to that,” Mr Everard said heartily.
“I don’t suppose,” Miss Stobhall said, “that he will offer any objection.”
“Oh, I’m pretty certain he won’t,” Mr Everard answered. “From what he said about her I should think he hadn’t treated her at all properly. I don’t think he deserves any sympathy at all.”
“Well, what in the world’s it got to do with you?” Miss Stobhall said. “What’s your connection with Ophelia Bransdon?”
“Only,” Mr Everard said mildly, “that I am constituted her agent. She is going to appear at the Bloomsbury Empire as a trial turn on Monday week.”
“Well, goodness, man,” Miss Stobhall said, “get her out of the way as quickly as you can. I should think if you could have the great Bransdon and that Gubb as clown and pantaloon, too, your fortune would be made. But this doesn’t help me to find Hamnet.”
“If you’ll just let me get a word in,” Mr Luscombe said mildly, “I think I can tell you pretty certainly where he is.”
“Good Lord, man!” Miss Stobhall said. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“I’ve been trying to, you know,” Gerald said, “ever since you’ve got here. Hunt, my keeper, told me that for the last day or so he’s seen traces of a couple of tramps in Old Cod’s Kiln. I’m pretty certain that’s where Hamnet Gubb spends the night. I didn’t know who it was, but I told the keeper to let them alone if he didn’t see any signs of their being after the game.”
“You didn’t say he had a friend with him.” Mr Everard addressed Miss Stobhall.
“Oh, I think the other man,” Gerald answered, “is a chap called Brandetski. You know he left one of the cottages the other day. Hunt says one of them’s a fair, slight man that he’s never seen before and the other’s certainly the Russian. I think I should have had them moved on if I hadn’t been pretty certain they were some of the Lifers trying to be more simple still.”
“Old Cod’s Kiln!” Miss Stobhall said. And once more she was moving towards the door. “That’s the cottage where old Cod, the charcoal-burner lives? In Thingham Wood, near the Quarry?”
“Old Cod’s been dead about eighteen months,” Gerald answered, “and I had the cottage shut up after his death. It isn’t really fit to be lived in. But sometimes tramps use it for a night or two until Hunt moves them on. I don’t like having the poor beasts chivvied about, but of course they do lead to disorders. I think I shall have it pulled down when your young friend gives up his tenancy.” Miss Stobhall buttoned up her right glove.
“I’m going there at once,” she said. “Oh, I can find the way all right. There’s a perfectly straight path from the public house through the bushes. Old Cod used it every night.”
She had reached the door when Gerald said meditatively, “By the bye, if you see Brandetski you might tell him that his wife and a sort of Russian police official are on his track. They’re at the Bransdons’ now. He may want to cut the country and I’d just as soon have him arrested somewhere else.”
“All right,” Miss Stobhall said. “I’ll tell him.” And she left the room with her usual abrupt brusqueness.
“I say,” Mr Everard said to Gerald Luscombe as soon as the door had closed, “you seem to know a thing or two. How did you know those Russians had arrived?”
“Oh, Bransdon’s been up here,” Mr Luscombe said. “He asked me to give you a message. I can’t make very much out of it and Bransdon said the whole story was so dark and disgusting that he didn’t want to give me details. He said it wasn’t a credit to his family. But from what I can make out, Brandetski was some sort of police spy who robbed his wife and something else and the Russian Government wants him — not to imprison him — but to take him back into service again. And his wife wants to forgive him and all that sort of thing.”
“Well, I don’t see,” Mr Everard said, “why you sent him that message to clear out if nothing formidable is going to happen to him.”
“Well, I don’t see,” Gerald answered, “why I should help the Russian Government to get its spies back. Bransdon seems to think it’s a disgusting business, and he knows something about it. I should think it was, without knowing anything at all.”
Mr Everard looked at Luscombe with some admiration. “You’re rather a corker,” he said. “It’s a pity you’re not in business.”
“Oh — and,” Luscombe recollected himself, “what Bransdon said was, that I was particularly to tell you that the Russian man has sealed up the door of Brandetski’s room. I don’t know what that has to do with you just as I don’t know what the Russian official expected to get by it. These chaps never seem to think that our police methods aren’t the same as theirs. I fancy we could get him for entering the Johnsons’ cottage if Mrs Johnson could be made to prosecute? It would be rather a lark.” Mr Everard said, “I don’t exactly see what use that information is to me.” He asked after a pause, “Do you really know anything that goes on about here?”
“Oh, pretty well,” Luscombe answered. “You see I’ve got a head keeper and four men under him, and the police see a great deal more than you think they see, and I’m the local J.P. and they report to me.”
Mr Everard said, “Oh!”
“You London chaps,” Mr Everard continued, “think that an open Common is a beautiful sort of place to conduct your private affairs on but there are ears in a most extraordinary way in the gorse bushes and you never know who isn’t on the opposite side of a hedge.”
“Then I don’t wonder,” Mr Everard said, “that you’re disgusted with these Simple Lifers. I seem to have been living in a sort of nightmare all the afternoon listening to their goings-on. I’m used to complications but...”
“Oh, it isn’t really that I object so much to,” Gerald said. “It’s the slackness of the whole lot of them. They blow all the trumpets and beat all the drums in the world and what’s the result of it? Nothing whatever! I’ve never lived in any London suburb, but if there’s any London suburb more ordinary and more useless than my village of Luscombe Green, I don’t believe it can go on existing. It couldn’t, because people couldn’t live there.” Mr Everard reflected for a moment. “I’m hanged if I don’t think you’re right,” he said. “That’s really about all there is to it.”
“That’s about all there is to it,” Gerald Luscombe corroborated him. “All the same I don’t see why you should choose the vent-ways as a proper place in which to hang a coral necklace round Ophelia Bransdon’s neck.”
“Oh, I say!” Mr Everard said. “You haven’t been spying on me?”
“Oh, come!” Gerald said. “How can you call it spying if you choose the centre of a four-cross road with Common all round it, to pay respectful attentions to charming young ladies, when a quiet country gentleman happens to be riding home from seeing the sheep washed on an outlying portion of his estate called The High Fields?”
“Oh, it was only you!” Mr Everard said with relief. “It wasn’t a lot of keepers and gossiping fools!”
“Ah the same,” Gerald laughed, “you’d be in a pretty rotten hole if Hamnet Gubb were like some husbands. In fact, I’d take a little care still if I were you until you get the marriage dissolved, if you do get it dissolved! You never know what mayn’t happen.”
“Oh, rot!” Mr Everard exclaimed. “I’m the lady’s agent. And if a theatrical lady’s agent mayn’t....”
Suddenly he stopped and felt his waistcoat above his heart. “Jove!” he said “I think I see what Bransdon sent that message to me about. Look here, you get me a bit of shammy leather and a piece of clean tissue paper. Where in the world should I be if I hadn’t got a head that could think about six things at once!”
Just at that moment Mrs Luscombe put her head in at the door. “Gerald, dear,” she said, “what on earth are you going to do about dinner? Father and mother and I are all ready to go.”
‘Jove!” Mr Everard exclaimed. “I sha’n’t be able to get dressed. Here, Bill, run upstairs and fetch me down my motor-coat. The key of the school-room’s in it. Good Lord! Good Lord! And Luscombe, there’s a dear, find me that tissue paper.”
In the hall Mr and Mrs Melville stood side by side nervously at the foot of the staircase. Mrs Melville was a little stiff in her best black evening gown, with a black lace cap on her grey hair and a black lace scarf round her thin throat. It was the first County function that they had been invited to since their elopement. The Countess Croyden, consulted by Mrs Lee, had, with her own hand, written them a special invitation.
CHAPTER VI
OLD Cod’s Kiln stood in a deserted gravel pit, a very ancient cottage of whitened mud with a high, over-hanging and dishevelled thatch. Old Cod had been the last of the charcoal-burners of East Surrey. His trade had deserted him, his kiln itself had fallen in. Brambles filled the quarry, overran the garden of the cottage and sent great briars up on to the very thatch. And in the moonlight, whilst Hamnet Gubb sat upon the doorstep and watched Cyril Brandetski sharpen his dagger upon his boot sole, the whole place was dappled with the shadows of the high fir trees that everywhere surrounded them.
“Nominally, you know,” Hamnet was saying, “I am Ophelia’s husband.”
Brandetski looked at him with the contemptuous tenderness that is affected by all Russians towards the demented and the afflicted of God. Brandetski felt the point of his dagger with his thumb: his teeth gleamed.
“Bien!” he said in French. “If you were not the mari-complaisant — yes, the most complaisant of the world — it is you that should feel the point of this blade. As it is, it shall be another. Yes, and to-night, too.”
“That,” Hamnet Gubb exclaimed, “demonstrates to you what fatal things are all human institutions, what evil passions they all breed, and what an accursed being they have made man in the eyes of Nature and the God who framed her. Everywhere around us are men with weary eyes running upon futile errands, who snatch from one another futile things that human institutions permit them to retain until someone less weary-eyed can be found to snatch them away. I sit here remote, aloof. There is the moonlight and the sound of the wind in the tops of the pine trees. Almost I might have found peace, yet almost by reason of human institutions again, I might ridiculously and lamentably have lost it. In herself what could be more futile than Ophelia as a possession?”
Brandetski uttered a loud snarl.
“Yet nominally she is my property,” Hamnet Gubb continued. “By law I might order her to live here or there, to associate or not to associate with this or that person. And for that reason you might very well be cherishing murderous thoughts against me. Yes, even putting them into execution. Yet, what are all my needs in life? Six feet of the clay soil of the cottage that I he upon and I do not even need to possess them. One six foot is as good to me as another. If you desire the space that I already occupy I am ready to move to another space. And you would kill me for my nominal possession of Ophelia whom I have not so much as kissed in my life. And nominally I may say to her, ‘Do this!’ or ‘Do that!’ It is a right given me by a human institution.”
Brandetski laid the dagger down upon the step in the moonlight. “My friend,” he said, “speak of something else.”
“And all this riot and nonsense,” Hamnet continued with entire equanimity, “for the possession of a girl who I — have heard, and I can well believe it, is vain, idle, greedy, garrulous, jealous, with a bad heart....”
Brandetski stood up with his back to the moon. “My friend,” he said, “that I may not strangle you I will move myself to a distance. I will go and drink water at the spring and pray for the consummation of what I desire. All these days I am fevered, I am tom with agony...”
In the moon shadow the white of his eyes gleamed. He made an inarticulate gesture and a crawling sound came from his throat.
“My friend,” Hamnet Gubb said, “I have nothing against you, only I wish you did not so perpetually smell of paraffin.”
The Russian shrieked, clenched his fist to the sky, turned, sprang over the low gate, crashed through the brambles and then disappeared amongst the black shadows of the firwood.
