Complete Works of Ford Madox Ford, page 335
There came from the audience a few cries of “Shut up, and sit down!”
“I can’t sit down,” Ophelia answered. “I’m standing on the third rung from the top of a ladder. I wasn’t allowed to enter the hall. None of the Lifers were allowed to enter the hall. That will show you how they view the proceedings. If they weren’t the meekest set of sheep on God’s earth they’d have pulled the building down, stone by stone, before they’d have let it be employed for this purpose.”
“Oh, stop it, Ophelia!” Mr Bransdon exclaimed. “That’s quite enough of it and a great deal too much.”
“I’m not going to stop it, father,” Ophelia called back, and her voice had in it something shrill and joyous like the crow of a cock at dawn. “You know you disagree with the whole thing as much as I do, and they only dragged you up there on that platform by the scruff of the neck. Ladies and gentlemen,” she continued, “I am Mr Gubb’s disciple. Such as you see me he made me. He has always taught me that I should speak out at all times and upon all occasions when I perceived a wrong. Well, I perceive a very great wrong. That lady on the platform — Mrs Lee — has claimed to be the life and soul of the Colony. I am, at any rate, its voice, though this is the last time that I shall speak for it. And I tell you this thing is a sham and a fraud from the beginning. It’s all a sham! It’s all a fraud! The life we lead is a detestable imitation of something that never has been lived. The Lifers are a collection of week-kneed, irresolute, ineffectual individuals. But even they have discovered that they just want to be let alone.”
The Earl Croydon looked round for guidance from Mr Everard, but Mr Everard was just disappearing through the little door at the back of the platform, and Mr Gubb, who had been pink and had become red, by now was a ghastly white. He muttered sicklily, “Ophelia!”
“Oh, I’m not going to blow you up,” Ophelia said.
It’s just the system that I’m attacking. Who are the poor creatures that Mr Gubb has got together? They’re just the failures who can’t face life. They’re round-shouldered, most of them: they’re generally dirty, but they’re all just people who’ve dropped out of things, and they’re all, all of them, afraid to face life. So they make a lot of rules to justify their useless existences. They want to drag you down to their own level of slackness and shabbiness, because then they’d have a chance of shining. They can’t dress well, so they say it’s immoral to do so. They can’t make any money, so they say that’s immoral, too. Look here,” and Ophelia suddenly extended her right arm, “the man who can’t face the life of his day is a coward. That’s all there is to it. He oughtn’t to have free newspaper advertisements: he oughtn’t to have testimonials. He ought to be turned out into some sort of dirty backwoods and left to live his ignominious, useless, nameless existence. He ought to be made to realise that he’s on a lower plane of civilisation: he ought to be prevented from perpetuating his kind: he ought to be blown out, extinguished and forgotten.”
At this point Ophelia withdrew her head from the window and could be observed outside to look towards the ground and exclaim, “No, I’m not coming down.” She reintroduced her head once more, her eyes flashing and sparkling. “What we want to-day is Life. It’s what all of you want. It’s what I want. It’s what even Mr Gubb there wants. We want Life: we want red blood: we want courage: we want to get the weaklings under us and make them do our work. That’s what Mr Gubb has done. That’s what all of you have applauded him for doing. Well, he’s got the Lifers under him. He’s tyrannised over them for years, and that Cigar-case and the advertisement that he’ll get in the newspapers are his reward. I don’t blame him. He’s got a right to live Ms own life just as I’ve got a right to lead mine. But the Lifers don’t like it. They don’t like anything he’s made them do lately: they hate all this Communal business: they hate hopping round the maypole, and they know they look like fools. I tell you they don’t want to combine: they want to slink away into their holes and not wash. Mr Gubb’s theories are all very well as theories, but you can’t get the human material to work it with. The only sort of men who are fit to work a real live community are the sort of men who are running the world as it is. They’re content with it: they’re alive. All that remains for Mr Gubb to get hold of is the slacker who drops out. You can’t make a combination out of them, because they’re Individualists. They want to be left alone. That’s what they want. They’re no good because they’re the useless stuff of the world. You none of you lead the Simple Life. You’re not such fools, but you applaud Mr Gubb because he’s a successful slave-driver.”
At this point Ophelia gave a little shriek. Her face became full of alarm: her eyes stared at the opposite wall: her hands gripped the framework of the window on which she was leaning. Then slowly she disappeared.
A buzz rose up amongst the audience. They had at first been merely puzzled, thinking that this was part of the extraordinary sort of proceedings that they ought to expect from anything connected with the Simple Life. After that they had become puzzled, and later on, when Ophelia’s meaning had got a little bit above their heads, they were pleased by the sight of a pretty woman in an unusual position.
Mr Gubb, however, was used to the heckling of Scotch audiences of old. He faced the people beneath him, smiling amiably and holding up one hand...
An immediate silence fell.
“Well now,” that’s a good thing,” Mr Gubb said cheerfully. “That young lady, my friend Bransdon’s daughter, has given me something to talk about: otherwise I should have had nothing but just the one word ‘thanks’ to say.” And as Mr Gubb smiled at his joke a ripple of laughter went through the audience. “Now,” Mr Gubb said, with a glance at the window, “if the young lady isn’t coming back we can get to business.” There was one more laugh, and then Mr Gubb went on to tell them the story of the Simple Life. He was practical and business-like: he was pathetic: he was moral, and in a torrent of words he flattered his audience as to the immense things that by supporting him there, on that night, they were doing for the unborn future. Through their example the green earth should smile. Owing to them “Praise God!” would once more be sung fervently from beneath every steeple in the land. For thousands Life would again become worth living, and myriads of unborn babes would bless their names as through ages the founders of colleges and chapels had been daily praised by the anthems of choirs. And then, adapting the phraseology of Mr Bransdon, Mr Gubb in his peroration swept the audience away with him. For the first time he knew that he had them: for the first time he knew that he held them. He overwhelmed them with pathos: he awed them with moral fervour: he made them feel oilily happy with almost more than oriental flattery.
After him the Eight Honourable Mr Ygon was listened to with fidgety inattention and Mr Bransdon himself hardly got a hand. It was, indeed, the day of Mr Gubb’s crowning mercy, for Mr Gubb was accustomed to think of himself as resembling Oliver Cromwell.
Finally the audience dispersed, the more chosen of them, including Mr and Mrs Lee, to eat a collation which had been laid out for them by Mr Everard’s chauffeur in the Johnsons’ cottage, some to Mr Luscombe’s, and the rest upon their settled ways.
CHAPTER VIII
MR. EVERARD and Ophelia Bransdon were walking slowly over the Common beneath the shadowy moonlight and amidst the heavy dew. They had taken a well-marked path that ran diagonally from the public house into space towards the loom of the high black firwoods. Mr Everard had, indeed, made Ophelia come down from her speech by the final desperate expedient of clutching her ankles from below, and forcing her feet step by step on to lower rungs of the ladder. Ophelia bad not very much resented this coercion. For one thing, she had had her whack at Mr Gubb and had been wondering what next she was going to say. For another she really considered Mr Everard to be the noblest of men, and she did not want anything better than to be coerced by him. But she did want an explanation. She could not understand why Mr Everard should take so much interest in the success of Mr Gubb’s evening.
“I really can’t see,” she said, “why you objected to my interrupting.”
“Oh, my dear!” Mr Everard ejaculated, and he tucked her hand under his arm and walked her gently along Old Cod’s path. “It’s because it’s simply shocking. Don’t you see that you should never interfere between a chap and his reward if it doesn’t come up against you? It wasn’t the decent thing for you to butt into his festival.”
“But if I wasn’t to do it then,” Ophelia said, “when was I to do it at all? The Sunday meeting for to-morrow is abandoned, and we leave this place on Monday.”
“You never ought to do it at all,” Mr Everard said.
“Now look here, what does it matter to you? We’re all public performers. You, I, he. Well, wasn’t it Shakespeare who said all the world’s a stage? There’s nothing like the good old legitimate! So never you interfere with another man’s show unless he’s a competitor.” Mr Everard squeezed Ophelia’s hand. “Don’t you see, my dear, that chap’s just a theatrical manager in a small way. He runs a little company. And I can remember,” he continued with deep feeling, “the times when I ran small companies, too, and it was just touch and go whether there’d be anything in the till on Saturday night to pay the poor little devils in my company. Ah! you don’t know what it is. You don’t know what it is!” And Mr Everard shivered a little. “If you’d lived in the world as long as I have lived, you’d know what a ghastly, what a hideous thing it is to have your show interrupted. That’s what you did to-night, but you’re young and unthinking. But you wait till one of these days when you’re on the stage hopping away and doing your best in the devil of a funk, and then there comes one little tiny hiss not so loud as the noise you make doing your hair and then, by God! you’ll know what hell is! You just wait! You just wait!”
“Ah,” Ophelia said, “but that’s different from all this lying and hypocrisy. Why shouldn’t it be exposed?”
“Oh, no, it isn’t. No, it isn’t, my dear,” Mr Everard said. “That chap Gubb is working just as hard as a juggler keeping sixteen balls in the air at a time. Gubb’s got just as hard a row to hoe, and by Jove! what a good face the fellow keeps to it! Everything’s crumbling round him. Every blessed thing! And there he stands up there on that platform, calm and smiling. And you go and interrupt him. No, my dear...” and Mr Everard’s voice took on a tone of real sadness. “I can’t say it’s a nice thing you’ve done. I really can’t.”
“But then all these disgusting scandals,” Ophelia said; “oughtn’t they to he exposed?”
Mr Everard’s whole being became one of horror. “Oh, my dear child,” he exclaimed, “what a horrid thing to say! Why should a lot of poor people be made miserable? Think of the harm it does! And who benefits? Who benefits? Nobody. Nobody in the world.”
There was a rustling sound in the gorse bushes beside them.
“There isn’t one of us,” Mr Everard said, “who could afford to have all that we do known. Not you: not me. There’s no one in the world. The exposing of scandals breeds scandals. It’s bad for the people themselves: it’s bad for the public. It makes me sick. I hate it. Look here, if some people saw you and me walking here now they’d ruin the reputations of you and me for the rest of our lives. Why, there’s a man there ahead of us. He might do for us if he wanted to, but I guess it’s only one of Mr Luscombe’s keepers.”
And searching about in his mind for a tag of what he called “the legitimate,” Mr Everard hit upon the sentence: “And there is no king, be his cause never so just, that if he put it to the arbitrament of the sword, can try it out with all unspotted soldiers.”
Ophelia suddenly exclaimed, “That’s Brandetski! Ah!” And she sprang in front of Mr Everard, holding him motionless, with both her hands behind her back.
“Come, I say!” Mr Everard exclaimed. “What’s it all about?” And then he heard a heavy sound as of a great many cans falling. Almost immediately afterwards a whiff of a very strong odour of paraffin was borne upon the air. A little wind was getting up and moving the wisps of gleaming mist. Ophelia’s clear, high voice exclaimed: “What are you going to do?”
Mr Everard felt his position was exceedingly ridiculous. Ophelia gripped his coat with both hands in a clutch that he was entirely unable to disengage and he could not see over her head. And suddenly from a little way ahead another voice exclaimed:
“I am going to kill you both.”
Mr Everard could not get the hang of the situation at all and he did not begin to until he heard Ophelia answer in a voice that quavered:
“Then you’ll have to shoot him through my body.”
Then Mr Everard exerted his full strength and with a sudden jerk, pulled the lapels of his coat from between the girl’s fingers. She swayed a little forward and he stepped quickly to one side.
In the gleam of the mist beneath the moon Mr Everard perceived the blotted black figure of an incredible and grotesque man. On his head was stuck the shadow of a hat like a pill-box. His blouse was confined at the waist by a belt, and at the end of his arm, stiffly extended towards them, was an object that glittered dully.
Suddenly Ophelia sprang in front of him again and Mr Everard had a feeling of irritation.
“You’re making me ridiculous,” he said breathlessly and once more he stepped to the side. The Russian remained perfectly silent. Only the extended arm seemed to say impossible and ridiculous things. Ophelia was still bending forward. Her face in the moonlight had an odd, intent expression as if she were listening to the sound of a sea shell rather than gazing at the black and minatory figure. Mr Everard took three paces forward —
“Halt!” the Russian exclaimed.
At his back Mr Everard perceived a bulky, rounded object, gleaming in the high lights and dark in the folds.
“That’s a sack full of something,” he said to himself.
“Now, my friend, you die!” he heard the Russian say. “If you move one footstep forward you die at once. If you stand still you may say your prayers.”
The little wind had fallen, the mist all round them lay level; the moon shone down equably without increase or diminution. They stood between two high and rounded mounds of gorse, shadowy and gleaming here and there with dew drops in the small, wet webs of spiders.
“It’s absolutely ridiculous!” Mr Everard exclaimed. And that, indeed, was all that he felt except that the bushes shut them in and the mist seemed to spread round them for infinite miles of solitude.
“What’s he going to do?” he asked suddenly of Ophelia, and the question seemed to him ridiculous, too. He felt self-pity, irritation, and subconsciously he had the futile idea that the police ought to be more efficient. It came into his head oddly that several months ago, as it seemed, Gerald Luscombe had boasted about the efficiency of the rural police. “This ought to teach him,” he said between his teeth. And then it came into his head that this would mean the finding of their bodies lying among the gorse bushes some time next morning....
Suddenly Ophelia exclaimed: “He’s the noblest man in the world. I love him and you’re a low spy and traitor, Cyril Brandetski.”
They could hear a chuckle in Brandetski’s throat. “Yes,” he exclaimed suddenly. “Now I understand why you lured me down here. Now I understand why they held you up as a bait. They were waiting for the reward from the police, and you talk of spy and traitor! But what do I care, I, Brandetski? Still they shall hear of me, still they shall tremble at my last act. But not you: not he. You will be dead. You have spoken your last word. If you try so much as to say farewell, you will be dead before the first word is spoken.”
A sudden anger overwhelmed Mr Everard. “I’ll be damned if that’s so,” he exclaimed. He measured the distance between himself and the Russian. There might have been five yards of unequal turf, or there might have been a little more. He found suddenly that he was panting. It would not be any use; he could never do the distance before the Russian fired. And again in the stillness of the moon it all seemed ridiculous. Besides he was very angry. He was not angry with the man for wanting to shoot him; that seemed natural, though it appeared to him ridiculous that it should seem natural, but he was violently angry that the man should attempt to dictate whether he should speak to Ophelia or no. And with a sudden contempt he turned his back right upon the Russian.
“Be damned to him!” he exclaimed to Ophelia.
He stretched out both his hands. “Good-bye, my dear,” he exclaimed.
Ophelia was gazing at him now with the same rapt expression. She said, “Oh, forgive!” as if she were in a great hurry. And suddenly she cried in a high, clear voice that surprised him because it was so natural: “Help, quick! We are being murdered!” Then she crept up close to him as if she were sheltering herself behind his bulk. “I can’t bear it,” she whispered.
He put his hands upon her shoulders and drew her close up to him. He was acting upon the impulse that if he fell he would cover her completely with his bulk. Everything seemed to stand still, to be silent. He heard a loud, dry click, then another, then another, half a dozen. He heard the Russian swearing, and whilst very slowly it came into his head that the revolver had missed fire, he heard also a sort of screaming snarl and the pad of footsteps on the close, soft turf. And suddenly he felt a pain so violent upon his head that he could not believe in it. The Common and the gorse bushes seemed to stand on end and, crushing forward upon Ophelia, Mr Everard went out of the scene.
To Ophelia who was forced down till she sat with Everard’s head across her knees, Brandetski appeared holding the revolver by the butt. He was panting violently.
“That was your work, too, no doubt!” he said. “But now you die as he has done.” And he lifted the heavy mass of metal high in the air. She stretched her arms over Everard’s head to shield it.
“Where are you?” a voice cried. “We are coming.” The Russian breathed from deep in his throat and stepped back.
