Complete Works of Ford Madox Ford, page 374
“I! Organize a prize-fight!” the major exclaimed. “My God!”
“That is what you do!” Sir Arthur said.
And suddenly Mrs. Kerr Howe cried out:
“The rude old man thinks that you are one of the promoters of the Military Boxing Displays that a lot of silly parsons got stopped!”
“I certainly,” Sir Arthur said, “used all my influence as head of the Quietist Church to get those infamous displays suppressed — that and my efforts to drive foul literature off the bookstalls....”
“Oh, of course,” Mrs. Kerr Howe said. “You are one of the old Pharisees in fig-leaves who tried to get up the boycott of my books. I thought I knew your name!”
“Knew my name!” Sir Arthur suddenly foamed. “This to me — the author of Economic Ethics and the Modern State! To me, whom the most eminent statesmen of the nineteenth century were proud to be privileged to consult. To ME!” He choked and once more began to cram his books into his kit-bag. And then he suddenly threw the bag out of the window and pulled the alarm cord. “To me!” he said. “Just Gods! that my only title to fame in this degenerate day should be that I stopped a prize-fight and attempted to cleanse the world of filthy books.” His fury was so terrific that both the major and Mrs. Kerr Howe cowered in their corners whilst he stamped up and down from end to end of the carriage. The train slowed, jolted, ground along the rails and then came to a stop just at a little roadside station. Sir Arthur sprang out and, stamping on the platform, began to shout for the guard. The guard came running up.
“I shall see if the laws of my country will not protect me from such Yahoos,” Sir Arthur hissed back at the carriage. Then he called out: “Guard, arrest these people for drunkenness, the use of obscene language and assault.”
The guard said:
“There, there, Sir Arthur, you know perfectly well I haven’t got the power to arrest anybody. You’ve got to issue a summons, as you usually do.”
“Find me an empty first-class carriage,” Sir Arthur exclaimed majestically, and he began to stalk off up the platform.
The major came to the door of the carriage “You’d better,” he said to the guard, “smell my breath and hear if I can say ‘sixty-six incidentals.’”
The guard said:
“Oh, that’s all right, sir. Very fiery old gentleman, Sir Arthur. This is the third time he stopped the 6.48 this year.” And he shut the door and went up the platform after Sir Arthur.
The engine-driver having stopped the train at a station instead of in the open country, none of the passengers had paid any particular attention to the stoppage, except Miss Flossie Delamare, who came to her window and, leaning out, kissed her hand to the major. He drew his own head in precipitately. For, just as before he had been anxious to be protected from a scene with Mrs. Kerr Howe, now, upon reconsideration, he was anxious for an explanation with her. He wanted to get perfectly settled what she was going to be up to before he got down to his uncle’s.
He pulled up the window and was about to sit down opposite Mrs. Kerr Howe.
“This appears to me,” Mrs. Kerr Howe said, “to be an excellent opportunity for me to have some conversation with Miss Delamare about my play,” and she rose to her feet.
“Oh, come,” the major said, “that can wait. We’ve got to settle about our relationships.”
“They’re settled already,” that lady said. “But of course we must have a talk about them before the day is done,” and vigorously she pushed past him towards the door. He caught hold of her wrist.
“Look here, Juliana,” he said, “I can’t go having tête-à-têtes with you in my uncle’s house.”
“It would upset Olympia?” she asked amiably. “It would upset the whole blooming lot,” the major said. “My uncle, my aunt, Olympia, me — everybody.”
She slipped her hand neatly out of his fingers. “Oh, would it?” she said. “Well, I’m afraid they are going to be upset,” and she was gone out of the carriage.
She got hold of a sleepy porter who had been awakened from a nap by the unaccustomed stopping of the mail, and in a minute she had got her dressing-bag and her jewel-case out of the major’s carriage and into Miss Delamare’s. From the door the major could perceive Sir Arthur foaming down the platform like a great white wave. And the major had to do a lot of rapid reflection. In the first place, he knew perfectly well that it would not be the least use getting in with Flossie and Mrs. Kerr Howe. Mrs. Kerr Howe would be talking about her play the whole way down, and that would bore him to extinction. On the other hand, if he didn’t get into the same carriage to check them they would almost certainly compare notes as to his past career, and he didn’t know that he wanted that. He had, of course, to think of poor Olympia’s feelings as much as possible, and he was convinced that Mrs. Kerr Howe would do all that she possibly could to give poor Olympia a lively time. His uncertainty, however, was cut short by the guard, who came running up to beg him to get into the other carriage with his other lady friends, so as to leave Sir Arthur an empty first. And the major, with a good-tempered “Oh, well,” got himself out of his own carriage and into the next. He was just saying cheerfully to Flossie Delamare, “You wicked, abandoned little wretch,” when Sir Arthur, his eyes blazing, his beard working convulsively, thrust his head in at the window and shouted:
“You wicked, abandoned wretch. Don’t think to escape me in this way. You hired bully, you atrocious, drunken sot with your abandoned female companions, the moment I get to my destination I shall issue a summons against you for drunkenness, assault, and the use of obscene language.” His head disappeared like that of a Jack-in-the-box, leaving the guard visible behind him.
“Do you suppose he’ll take out a summons against me?” the major asked.
“He’ll certainly issue it himself,” the guard said. “He’s one of these liberal J.P.’s — precious fond of issuing summonses.” The guard disappeared.
“Drunkenness! Assault! The use of obscene language!” Miss Flossie Delamare laughed. “That’ll make a pretty lively time for poor Olympia when the summons comes on.”
The major said, “Oh, rot!” and then he hurriedly began to talk to her in the hope of heading off Mrs. Kerr Howe.
“You wicked, abandoned little wretch,” he said, “what do you mean by not telling me you were going down to my aunt’s? What do you mean by telling my aunt that you were one of my best friends?”
“Oh well, Teddy,” Miss Delamare said, “if it comes to good wishes, I am sure I’m the best friend you’ve got in the world. And as for taking you in... why, you’re such a precious hand at mystification yourself that it’s a fine old temptation to score off you sometimes.”
“But hang it all,” the major said, “you did it so confoundedly well. When you talked about parting for ever there were tears in your eyes.”
“Oh well, Teddy,” Miss Delamare said, with a little hurt air, “you seem to forget sometimes that I am an actress.”
Mrs. Kerr Howe suddenly cut in with what appeared to be a victorious snicker:
“Your half-brother,” she said, “has been telling me the most romantic story about your relationships.”
Miss Delamare exclaimed:
“My half-brother!” and then she looked at the major and got from his face one of her brilliant inspirations.
“Oh, Teddy you mean!” she said. “I thought you meant that old gentleman who might have been an uncle to me. Well, I hope Teddy hasn’t been saying things against me behind my back.”
And the major sank down into his corner with a sigh of deep relief. He couldn’t now have any doubt that Flossie Delamare wouldn’t give Mrs. Kerr Howe any kind of a handle against him, and he just said:
“The times we’ve seen!”
“Yes, the times we’ve seen, Teddy!” Miss Delamare said with a little regretful sigh, and then, immediately afterwards, Mrs. Kerr Howe was all over her like a wave with her projects for the New Theatre. The major never got another word in. Mrs. Kerr Howe explained the plot of her play. She dilated on the high-mindedness of all the characters except the villain. She explained how the play would help on the reform of conventional marriage. The major never got a word in, and at last he took from the pocket of his rainproof coat a volume called The Sacred Fount, and began to puzzle over its contents. The Westinghouse brake, which had been strained by the sudden stopping of the train, burst about a quarter of an hour later, and by the time the train had slowed down a little, one of the carriages about three ahead of them took it into its head to run off the line. It was nothing like a serious accident, but it jolted them a good deal. But Mrs. Kerr Howe talked on steadily about her play, and although it was a quarter to eleven before they reached Basildon Manor she was still talking about it.
CHAPTER III.
MRS. ARTHUR FOSTER — Major Brent Foster’s aunt — was anxiously seeing to the warmth of his bedroom in Basildon Manor at about half-past ten that night. It is true that it was nearly June, but she was convinced that, after many years in one tropic and another, he would find it cool enough. A fire burned in the grate; there was a hot bottle in the immense and shadowy four-post bed. And all the room wavered between shadowiness and warmth. The fireplace was as large as a London pantry; the dogs on the hearth were as large as a London umbrella stand; the burning logs were as big as Mrs. Foster’s husband’s portmanteau; the velvet curtained bed was as big as she imagined desert islands to be, and the immense picture of Ancestors that faced the foot of the bed was at least as large as the immense folding-doors between the front and rear dining-rooms of The Pines, Hornsey. And Mrs. Arthur Foster was a little afraid of this picture—”the Panel,” her Ladyship’s Own Maid called it. It represented three fierce men in broad-brimmed and plumed hats; three ladies in velvet, pearls, low necks and fringes; one little boy with long curls and a slouch hat; three little girls in low necks, one of whom held a parrot, another a monkey, and the third attended on by a greyhound. A baby, also in a lownecked dress, sprawled on the ground in the attempt to reach a parti-coloured ball. All these people were represented as standing in the open air, in a group like a wall, as people stand nowadays to be photographed, and, with the exception of the baby, gazed fiercely, mildly, or with unseeing glances at Mrs. Arthur Fotser.
Having done all she could for the major’s room she had to pause and look round, and those eyes irresistibly drew her glance. She really shivered, and then she said to her Ladyship’s Own Maid:
“Dear me, Miss Nancy Jenkins, my dear, wouldn’t you say they were asking me how I dared to be in their room?”
“No, I shouldn’t, ma’am,” her Ladyship’s Own Maid replied; “you’re nothing to the people they did see in their own rooms when they were alive.”
“No, poor dears, I daresay not,” Mrs. Foster said. “And I daresay they’d know how respectful and how like an intruder I feel.”
“Now you needn’t, ma’am,” Miss Nancy Jenkins said kindly. “I’m sure the last thing her Ladyship would want you to feel is anything but entirely at home. Her Ladyship begged me to make you and Major Brent feel absolutely and entirely as if the place belonged to you. Her Ladyship begged me particularly to ask you to remember, if there isn’t any other way of making you see it, that if it wasn’t for your taking the place in the summer she could not afford to live in it for the spring and autumn. She would have to sell it and all the dear old things.”
Mrs. Foster looked timidly at her Ladyship’s Own Maid.
“Dear me, Miss Nancy Jenkins,” she said, “did her Ladyship really ask you to say that?”
“It’s what her Ladyship particularly wishes you to understand,” the maid answered. “Particularly. More than anything else. She loves the old things, and she wants them to make people happy.”
“I feel afraid of them really,” Mrs. Foster said. “I would not like people to know it. But they’re all so old and so stern and so precious that sometimes I’m afraid to turn round for fear of breaking them. And sometimes — oh! I really wish I was back in my own drawing-room at Hornsey, where there’s nothing really valuable except the Berlin wool-work screen that was worked by the Princess Alice’s own hands for the Great Exhibition of ’52.” She stopped and looked almost lovingly at her Ladyship’s Own Maid.
Miss Jenkins smoothed her black alpaca apron.
“I’m afraid,’’ she said,” that it’s her Ladyship’s leaving me that has given you that sort of idea,” she said. “But, indeed, madam, that was not meant as a... as a precaution against yourself. The best of people have now and then a servant that’s a breaker, and her Ladyship values every stick of her house as if it were one of her little fingers.” She stopped, and then added: “But rather than take away from your satisfaction, rather than you should feel that you are being watched upon, I’m perfectly certain that her Ladyship would prefer me to go to-night.”
“Oh, but my dear, my dear Miss Nancy Jenkins,” Mrs. Foster exclaimed on a note of almost painful anxiety, and then she stopped distractedly. “You’re perfectly certain,” she asked, “that those cigars are the sort of cigars the major will like?”
“Well, you never can be quite certain what a gentleman will like, ma’am,” Miss Jenkins answered; “but you can be perfectly certain that they’re not the kind of cigars that you need be ashamed of, and that’s the important point. They’re the sort that her Ladyship always has in the house for her gentlemen friends. And they’re the sort that Captain Brent used always to smoke at Holbury before he went away. Of course, there’s no saying that his tastes may have changed.”
“Then there you are, Miss Nancy,” Mrs. Foster said triumphantly. “How could I get on in this great ugly old house if I hadn’t you to back me up? What do I know about gentlemen’s tastes? Of course there’s Mr. Foster — he’s a true gentleman; but of course he’s not a real gentleman. I mean not a manly gentleman like the major.”
“Well, of course, you couldn’t have everyone in the world like the major,” Miss Jenkins said, “or there wouldn’t be room to hold us.”
Mrs. Foster’s eyes wandered abstractedly to the panel.
“Now, who did you say all those angry-looking people were?” she asked. “You’ve told me once, but I’ve forgotten. And it would be too silly not to be able to tell the major anything about anything.” Miss Jenkins pointed to the tallest of the three men in slouch hats.
“That was the fourth earl,” she said succinctly. “Fell at Naseby four years after the picture was painted. The two elder sons, Lord Edward, afterwards fifth earl, and Lord Charles fell at the battle of the Boyne. The baby on the ground, Lord James, afterwards sixth earl, was attaindered after the battle in which he took part. The baby’s son, Lord William, was restored to the Barony of Higham, but not the earldom, upon his reconciliation with Queen Anne. He was known as ‘Wild Higham,’ because there was nothing that he would stick at. His portrait is in the long dining room: said to bear a strong resemblance to her Ladyship.”
“That’s what I can’t bear,” Mrs. Foster said, with deep feeling. “Wherever I go all over the house they’re all, all of them, always looking at me, and they’re all alike. And the wife of the eldest son always has that same pearl necklace on, and they all, you feel, all of them, stick at nothing.”
“That’s so, ma’am,” Miss Nancy Jenkins said. “There’s not one of them that ever would. Never stick at anything once it came into their heads — the Wild Highams wouldn’t.”
“Now I don’t know how I feel about that, Miss Nancy,” Mrs. Foster said. “Everything’s always so difficult to get at. In the first place, on principle, I oughtn’t to approve of people who don’t care what they do. But then I can’t help saying that there was my brother-in-law, Admiral Brent, the major’s father — he stuck at nothing, as you put it, and I always used to think he was the finest man I ever met, though of course I shouldn’t like Mr. Foster to hear me talking like that. Not that he’s jealous, but he strongly disapproved of everything the admiral did. But he was a fine man, though what with not paying attention to Mr. Foster’s advice about his speculations, and what with high living and throwing his money out of the window, and charities he couldn’t afford and all the rest of it — he took a racehorse full gallop down some cliffs in India, where they say only ponies went, for a bet. And he won the bet. But he died three weeks after my poor sister — Edward’s mother — and he didn’t leave behind him any money, but eleven hundred and sixty-two pounds’ worth of debt which I paid out of my own jointure, for the sake of the name. Though that made Mr. Foster furiously angry, for he said, what was the name of a dissolute scoundrel to him. And poor dear Edward — the major — paid the money back out of his salary — I mean his pay, because, of course, you ought not to talk of what an officer gets as a salary. But he did his best, poor dear, having put aside fifty pounds a year, which was paid me regularly by the paymaster of the War Office when he was only a captain, and then advancing it to seventy-five pounds a year when he was on active service, when, of course, they get more, as you doubtless know. So that at the present moment he only owes me £433 13s. 4d. with interest. And that was what all the trouble was about,” Mrs. Foster ended suddenly.
“I don’t see about what, ma’am,” Miss Nancy Jenkins said, “or what the trouble was.”
“The trouble was,” Mrs. Foster said, “that he blacked his uncle’s eye. Because, of course, Mr. Foster, who’s the kindest and best gentleman in the world, but a little wanting in tact where his brother-in-law the admiral was concerned — Mr. Foster was much more outrageous when Captain Edward started to pay the money back than he was with me for having paid it out — he said that I wasn’t to take money from the pauper son of a bankrupt swindler. But I said, no, let the boy do his duty to his father’s memory! It was right and proper, and it showed a good spirit. Not of course that I was going to take the money, for God knows there isn’t a thing I wouldn’t give the boy, even down to the gold and the false teeth out of my head, though, of course, that’s not a thing I ought to say, but it’s perfectly true. And then, there came that awful trouble, and I never saw my Edward again for ten years.” Mrs. Foster broke off and remarked innocently, “Why, you’re crying, Miss Nancy!”
