Complete Works of Ford Madox Ford, page 338
Mr Gubb was now the Director of the East Croydon Garden City Ltd. He had procured his reinstatement as a solicitor, and amongst his other activities drove a thriving trade as conveyancer to the hosts of tenants who were pouring in. As one of the directors, Croydon saw him very frequently, and he was always represented as speaking in tones of a high mysteriousness of Gerald’s base ingratitude.
“Well, you know, Ada,” Gerald answered, “I suppose I did show base ingratitude. He thinks so and who can know better than he?”
“But what did it all amount to?” the Countess persisted. “The East Croydon is going to pay us remarkably well. We shall be able to do without letting the shooting this year.” Her Ladyship was sitting on a green garden seat in the shade of the high trees at the end of the tennis lawns. On the one side of her sat Mrs Luscombe, on the other Mrs Melville. Mr Melville, trim and precise, sat on a garden seat beside his wife. Mr Everard, with a little more of a white waistcoat than ever, was on another green chair beside Mrs Luscombe, who wore a dress of lavender-coloured muslin, very short in the skirts. Ophelia was coming towards them carrying a tennis racket and walking beside Mrs Lee who, with her high and windy tones, called her “My dear,” and wore a tabor-made costume of brown serge. From the other direction there came slowly the Dowager-Countess and Mr Bransdon who, according to Mr Everard, resembled four James MacNeil Whistlers, with the white lock and all, robed into one.
“What it all amounted to,” Mrs Luscombe said with decision, “was, that the man was an impertinent, underbred little creature, and Gerald gave him the talking-to that he deserved.”
“Oh, no,” Gerald answered, “it amounted to a great deal more than that. It was entirely a matter of misunderstandings of our relative points of view.”
“Oh, come, Gerald dear,” Mrs Luscombe said. “Don’t be irritating and talk wildly. You never have told us what you were driving at, and Ada really wants to know.” She added to the Countess, “You haven’t an idea how teasing Gerald can be at times.”
“I am sure,” Mrs Melville spoke for the first time, “Gerald never teased anybody, in his life. He never even pulled the cat’s tail when he was a boy.”
“Web, you see,” Gerald Luscombe said, “what Mr Gubb was aiming at was, so he said, to turn me into a benefactor of my kind. But what I was aiming at — it was sentimental of me, but there it is! — I was aiming at Hamnet Gubb.”
The Countess said, “What is Hamnet Gubb?” just as Mr Bransdon exclaimed, “Web, you very nearly shot him in the bathing shed.”
“What I mean,” Gerald Luscombe explained patiently, “was that I supposed that the people Mr Gubb was going to bring along would all have the same natures and lead the same sort of life that Hamnet Gubb leads to-day.”
“But who is Hamnet Gubb?” the Countess persisted. “What sort of life does he lead?”
“Ah, if you want to know that,” Gerald said, “you’d better go and see him.”
“Oh, let’s go and see him,” Ophelia exclaimed suddenly. “I haven’t set eyes on him since the night in the moonlight when he saved both our lives. You remember,” she addressed her husband, “though we went three times after you were well, we never could find him in the cottage?”
Mr Everard rose indolent and smiling from his tilted chair. At the same moment Countess Croydon got up stiff and erect. “I’ll certainly come with you,” she said, “if we really are going to see the Simple Life at last?” She looked down at old Mrs Melville and said, “Won’t you come, too?”
Mrs Luscombe had to remain with her guests and the Dowager-Countess, who did not like to be of any expedition that included the Countess herself, sat down beside her hostess.
“I’ll go and see Hamnet,” Mr Bransdon said. “That boy had some spunk in him.”
They skirted the croquet lawn where Mr Lee was playing a spirited game with the Rt. Hon. Ygon and Bill was marking the hoops.
“Come along, Bill!” Mr Luscombe called out. “We’re all going to see Hamnet Gubb.”
“Oh, hooray!” Bill exclaimed. And running up he caught hold of Ophelia’s shoulder and let her pull him along. “What do you think I saw Hamnet do yesterday? He got a squirrel to come down from a tree and eat sugar out of his hand! And what’s more, when he put it back on the trunk it wouldn’t stop there but came back and burrowed in under his coat! Why, there’s a hen partridge that leads a covey of thirteen chicks over his doorstep when he’s sitting in the doorway!”
“Rather awkward if he took a fancy to your game,” the Countess said to Gerald. “What does he do for a living?”
“Oh, that’s rather sketchy,” Gerald said. “He doctors the farmers’ cows now and then, and he has a potato patch and some cabbages. I believe his father’s offered him some money, but he won’t take it.”
“Oh, you’ve given him some yourself, you know, Gerald,” Mrs Melville said.
“I don’t like that,” the Countess answered. “If he’s healthy and able-bodied he ought to work for his own living and not be a parasite.”
“Well, that’s one way of looking at it,” Gerald Luscombe said. “But I don’t think he much knows or cares, and I don’t much know or care myself.”
“But you don’t want to encourage idleness!” the Countess said.
“I don’t know,” Luscombe answered. “I’m idle myself. I’ve been idle all my life. I think I like to encourage Hamnet Gubb to be idle because he does it in a pretty way, just as I like to see Mr Gubb being furiously industrious because it makes me feel so superior.”
“I really don’t know how you can talk like that,” the Countess said. “What is it but idleness that fills all the workhouses and gaols and makes people disconcented with their proper stations in life. That and drink.”
“Ah, well, Hamnet doesn’t drink,” Luscombe answered. As they approached the wood Polly Smith came out of it accompanied by a young man, called Mainwaring, in white flannels.
“Hullo,” she said to her brother-in-law, “where are you all off to?”
“We’re going to call on Hamnet Gubb,” Mr Everard answered. “Come along, Polly.”
“Oh, I’ve got something better to do,” Miss Smith said, and she tossed up her nose and passed them by, the young man sauntering docilely beside her.
“Now, if we were playing consequences,” Ophelia remarked, “you’d write down at the end of it, after Mr Gubb had met Mrs Brandetski in the Alhambra, ‘and the consequence was Hamnet Gubb and the world said, I’ve got something better to do.’”
As no one understood the inwardness of this remark nobody laughed. But Mr Everard asked, “How do the good Gubb and Miss Egmont get on together?”
“Oh, didn’t you know?” Mrs Lee exclaimed. “Mrs Gubb got a Separation Order last month. She’s living in St John’s Wood now.”
The path between the trees grew narrower, and as they must walk two and two the Countess decided to be beside Mr Everard. She was mildly displeased with Gerald.
“I think,” she said, “it’s a very good thing that the Colony broke up when it did. It’s much more comfortable to have them over the other side of the county.”
Mr Everard only said, “Ah!” After a time he added, “And yet it’s wonderful, isn’t it? it’s delightful bow everything has passed off. Everybody’s happy and smiling except poor Gubb. And even he’s got a grievance and a fine large income! So he’s nothing to complain of.”
“I fancy,” the Countess said, “you had a good deal to do with straightening things out?”
“I!” Mr Everard exclaimed in a tone of the most intense denial. “I! Nothing in the world. There wasn’t anything straightened out. Everybody was as happy as love birds in a cage.”
“Then do you mind my asking you one question?” the Countess said. “Why have you turned the new cottages at Luscombe Green into a Home of Rest for decayed actors and actresses, and why won’t you admit anybody under sixty?”
Mr Everard looked hard at the Countess and the Countess looked hard back at him.
“You must let me send you tickets,” he said, “for The Widows of Wilfulstein. It’s going to be the best piece I ever put on.”
The Countess made the first joke of her existence. “You didn’t think you’d be up to stage-managing the other thing,” she said.
“Well,” Mr Everard said, “I could have done it, mind you, if I could afford to give my whole time to it, but Ophelia’s got to be amused and there are other little jobs.”
The Countess sighed. “There you are,” she said. “You prefer looking after a charming young wife and providing employment for, how many people was it you said altogether? — sixteen hundred, including the waiters at the restaurants. You prefer doing that to looking after the morals of one tiny village. I have to keep seven in order, and the Liberal papers never let me alone. Do you know,” she added with an accent of incredulity in her voice, “one of them positively got hold of the fact that at his shooting lunches Croydon himself drank a small bottle of champagne whilst he gave his guests brandy and water!”
Hamnet Gubb was sitting in the sun upon his doorstep His clothes were of the same grey tweed, his hair was bleached, his face tanned. He looked up humorously as the whole party filed out of the tall woods. The sunlight beat down into the hollow: the birds on the thatch flew away: there was not a breath of air and the high woods listened all around them.
“Look here!” Mr Luscombe exclaimed. “We want you to make us a speech. We want you to explain to us what the Simple Life really is.”
Hamnet Gubb smiled with a quizzical brilliance.
“Well, that’s it,” he said. “You just sit in the sun and the birds and beetles and things come and climb all over you.”
“But what do you live on?” the Countess asked. “What does it cost you a week? How do you make it? Would you recommend other people to follow your example?”
“Ah, I don’t really know that,” Hamnet Gubb said. “You see, one day’s so extraordinarily different from another, and there are so many things that happen. Why, a branch fell right off that elm there three days ago in the stillest possible weather. Not a breath of wind and suddenly half the tree gone!”
“But....” the Countess said.
“I really can’t tell you more about it than that,” Hamnet Gubb answered, “just because it is so exciting. But I can assure you,” he added, “I’m perfectly clean. You needn’t have any doubts about that. I take a bath every day in the spring in the woods and my morals are of the highest possible kind.”
“But aren’t you rather lonely sometimes?” Mr Everard asked. “Wouldn’t you like a ticket now and then for the Talavera? I could send my car down to pick you up.” Hamnet smiled at him indulgently.
“Well, now and then you might,” he answered, “But bless my soul, I’m not lonely. All sorts of people are continually dropping in. I’ve not retired from life. I’m merely living it. There’s a robin has nested in the straw of my bed, and if you look you’ll see a swallow’s nest on the front door. Lonely! Oh dear no! Why, there are seven people calling on me at the present moment.”
“I think,” Mrs Lee whispered as low as she could to the Countess, “that the man’s making fun of us. It’s positively insulting.”
“I don’t know,” the Countess answered slowly. “I fancy, if you come to think of it, that it’s we who’ve shown rather bad form to him. But I really should like to know what it is he lives on.”
Mr Luscombe sauntered slowly off with Bill and Mr Everard beside him, and a minute later Mrs Lee and the Countess and Mrs Melville followed them. Then Ophelia went in at the gate.
“My dear,” she said in tones of the most intense concern, “how can you possibly lead such a terrible life? Why, your clothes are nearly worn out!”
Hamnet regarded her quizzically. “Why, for the matter of that,” he said, “I believe you’ve worn that dress before.”
Ophelia was wearing a very short dress of flowered silk. The waist was very high, the sleeves very short, and round the bottom there was a frill of ostrich feathers. On her head was a hat so enormous that it seemed to dwarf even her, made entirely of small grey feathers. If she had not been beautiful enough to carry it off she would have appeared grotesque and unpresentable.
“If I can see that you’re lovely in your way,” Hamnet said, “why in the world can’t you see that I’m beautiful in mine?”
Mr Bransdon at the gate, standing like an immense figure of Spanish, melodrama, said, “Oh, you’re perfectly all right in your way. But how long do you intend to keep it up? Or haven’t you any intentions at all?”
“There you are!” Hamnet Gubb said. “You’ve grasped the essentials of it as you certainly would, being an intelligent man. The only rule of the Simple Life is not to have any rules at all. You just live and see where you come out.”
“Oh, but won’t you come and live with us now and then?” Ophelia said. “You shall have the best bedroom we’ve got.”
“Of course, I shall want the best bedroom,” Hamnet said gravely. “And the 120 h p. Panhard to take me to the theatre: and you shall give me a spin in your flying machine. Ah of it, everything, when I’m in the mood.”
“Of course we shall never be really rich,” Ophelia said. “Montague makes a great deal but he’s so tremendously generous. He has the noblest heart in the world.”
“Well, of course he has,” Hamnet answered. “He leads the life he likes. Don’t you see? That’s the Simple Life, to know the life you like and to have the courage to lead it. You don’t want to organise: you don’t want to make it the Simple Life Limited: you just want to go ahead. If you think about Life it isn’t Life. If you think about the sort of man to model yourself on, you aren’t a man. You’re a trained rat.”
“Oh, come!” Ophelia said.
“Oh, I know,” Hamnet gibed at her. “You think I ought to model myself on Everard. He’s the noblest of men. Well, I do model myself on him. He’s not self-conscious: I’m not self-conscious. I like him better than anyone else I know.”
He stepped past her and down to the gate where he stood beside Mr Bransdon.
“Then you will come and stop with us?” Ophelia said anxiously.
“Of course I’ll come and stop with you,” Hamnet answered. “Haven’t I said I would? Do you suppose I’ve got a principle against stopping with you? I tell you I’ve no principle of any kind whatever. When the mood’s on me I shall come and I daresay I’ll stop till the quilt on your best bed is worn out. Now run away and play with Everard. I want to talk to the great Bransdon.”
Ophelia suddenly flung her arms round his neck and kissed him.
“Well now,” he exclaimed, “that’s what I like. That’s really sisterly.”
“Poor dear!” she said. And trotting off up the path in her short skirt she looked as if she ought to have had a hoop bowling beside her.
“Ophelia gets younger every day,” he said to Mr Bransdon. “On our wedding day she was forty. Now, I believe she’s only fifteen. How does she get on with the smart set, if it is the smart set she moves in?”
“Oh, perfectly well,” Mr Bransdon answered. “You see, they’re all only fifteen.”
“How charming that must be!” Hamnet answered. He walked slowly round Mr Bransdon, surveying critically the monumental black figure, whilst Mr Bransdon frowned because of his eyeglass.
“I say,” Hamnet said, “you can’t be quite good form, are you? You’re a little bit overdressed?”
Mr Bransdon did not answer.
“And you don’t care a damn if you are,” Hamnet continued. “Well, that’s right, that’s the right spirit. You can afford to do what you like and you do it. So can I and I do.”
Mr Bransdon surveyed him with a glance rendered violent because of his eyeglass. “What makes you so beastly wise?” he said.
“Oh, we learn in suffering what we teach in parables,” Hamnet answered. “I had a rotten time and I’m wise: you had a rotten time and you’re wise. It’s the rotten time that does it. Now look here, the other day some man came along and stuffed a fifty-pound note through a broken pane in my window. Oh don’t look so stiff, it was either you or Everard or perhaps both of you together. Well, there it is, that’s money. When I was having my bad time — and you don’t know what a beastly bad time it was! — money appeared to me to be the accursed thing. There wasn’t any scoundrelism a man wouldn’t commit for it: there wasn’t any labour he wouldn’t go through to get an entirely insignificant portion. I say it was the money that appeared to me to be accursed. But look at the disgusting things my father’s done in order to get a good bit of power and a tiny little bit of money. It isn’t the money that’s a bad thing, it’s the getting it, just as it isn’t the working that is the bad thing, it’s the way you scamp your work in order to get money. The point is, that it’s not right that the two should be connected. I cure dogs and horses and someone else puts money through a cracked window for me. That’s the way it ought to be. That’s the way to be at one with Nature.”
