Complete Works of Ford Madox Ford, page 389
“I shall certainly do nothing of the sort,” Miss Peabody said.
“It almost makes me inclined to say,” Miss Jenkins replied slowly, “your blood be upon your own head.”
Miss Peabody said sharply: “That’s a most improper remark.”
“It would be,” Miss Jenkins returned, “if it were a question merely of superior and inferior. But you have insisted on my joining in what appears to be — in what you consider to be — a plot. And plotters have got to be considered equals. I don’t think it a proper thing that you should attack Miss Delamare. And what’s more, I don’t think it will be a good thing for yourself.”
Miss Peabody became calmly hard and obstinate. “My girl,” she said, “I don’t know why you should be so concerned for Miss Delamare. I don’t believe that I can consider you a friend of mine.”
“I wish you wouldn’t consider me a friend of yours,” Miss Jenkins replied. “I am certainly not, and it will make your position plainer if you consider that I am very decidedly not a friend of yours. But it is the most friendly thing I have ever said to you when I recommend you to leave that panel alone.”
“And is it likely,” Miss Peabody said, “that I should take the advice of a servant who definitely tells me that she is not my friend?” She laughed again with a high incredulity. “Is it really believable?” she said. “A servant who is not my friend!”
Miss Jenkins stood still with her hands hanging before her. There was quite a silence, and then Miss Peabody said sharply: “Well?”
“I have nothing in the world to say, miss,” Miss Jenkins continued. “The position is absolutely at a deadlock. I have recommended you very earnestly to leave the thing alone. It doesn’t appear to me to be a dignified proceeding; it doesn’t appear to me to be the proceeding of a lady, or even of a decent-hearted woman. And if you persist in doing it, all I can say is, that that takes away any reluctance I may feel. Because, of course, it makes me all the more absolutely certain, if I was not certain enough already, that you are absolutely unfitted for the position you are called upon to occupy.”
Miss Peabody remained perfectly calm. “I don’t in the least understand your threats,” she said. “And I don’t in the least want to understand them. To-morrow I shall deal with you. What do you think your mistress will say when she hears of your outrageous insolence to a guest of her house?”
“I think her Ladyship will be in entire agreement with me,” Miss Jenkins said.
“I don’t believe anything of the sort,” Miss Peabody answered. “You may understand servant nature very well, but it’s pretty certain that you don’t understand the nature of employers.
You will find, I think, that her Ladyship will entirely agree with me. You will find, I think, that there is a sort of freemasonry between employers, and that your employer, hearing that you have been insolent to another person of her class, will turn you out of your situation at once. And I am glad of it, for you are a more puffed-up creature than anyone I have ever met in this world.”
“Well, all I can say is,” Miss Jenkins answered, “that if there is that sort of freemasonry between employers, and if that’s the sort of thing that can happen to a good servant who does what is only her duty in such circumstances as I have done my duty — all I can say is, that if that sort of thing happens, servants are a bitterly wronged class, and I shall certainly see to it that my servants are on a different footing.”
“Your servants!” Miss Peabody exclaimed. “What have you got to do with servants?”
“Of course I have my servants like anybody else,” Miss Jenkins said. “Do you suppose I shouldn’t have?”
“Then all I can say is,” Miss Peabody answered, “that the condition of affairs in this country is infinitely more corrupt — is infinitely more revolutionary than they can be said to be even in my own country. Heaven knows in Boston there’s infinitely too little discipline, there’s infinitely too little respect of class for class. But if the sort of thing that I find here is typical of your upper classes, if subordinates are not only to be treated as familiars by their superiors but to be furnished with all the luxuries and the privileges of their superiors themselves, how is it to be wondered at that this branch of the Anglo-Saxon brotherhood is drifting to decay? I don’t know who you are, and I don’t know what you are, but it’s quite evident to me that you must have some hold over your mistress. Probably the origin of that hold is in something corrupt. Almost certainly it is, and that’s the end of the whole matter. Everywhere here I find corruption, and corruption, and again corruption.”
“I’m sure that’s extremely interesting,” Miss Jenkins said. “But if you will kindly give me any further orders that you may have, I shall be pleased to take them. Or if not I shall be glad to be dismissed.”
“I order you,” Miss Peabody exclaimed, “to reveal to me the secret of that panel.”
Miss Jenkins produced a very small stamp-case of green leather from the pocket of her apron. She opened it and took out a little piece of stamp-paper; and, coming towards the frame of the immense picture panel, she stuck the little piece of stamp-paper on a protruding knob.
“That,” she said, “is the knob that opens the panel. You ordered me to show it you, and I have shown it you much against my will.”
“But where,” Miss Peabody asked, “is the knob that closes the panel?”
“That,” Miss Jenkins exclaimed, “I shall certainly not show you. You insist on opening that panel in order to give Miss Delamare what you would probably call a piece of your mind. And as you will probably give an untruthful account of the transaction to-morrow, I am perfectly determined that, if the panel is opened, it shall remain open as evidence of the fact that it was you who opened it. The panel cannot be opened from the next room, so that proof is absolutely conclusive.
“And indeed,” she continued, “I tell you plainly, that I shall go straight from here and throw the closing gear of that panel out of action. So that if you open it, you certainly will not be able to close it even though you should find the other knob.”
Miss Peabody said with a sort of high irony: “Well, this is a pretty condition of affairs, I’m sure.”
“Her Ladyship,” Miss Jenkins replied, “left me here to act upon my own discretion for the protection of her friends in this house and of the reputation of the house itself. I don’t want to have scenes here, and I won’t have scenes here. But as it is obviously impossible for me to stop you making a fool of yourself, I certainly insist upon your making a fool of yourself in my own way — in the way that is least likely to cause inconvenience to her Ladyship, or to any other person in this house. And as for Miss Delamare, if you attack her, I don’t think, knowing her as I do, that you will get very much change out of her.”
“I fail to understand these vulgar expressions,” Miss Peabody said.
“Not to get much change out of a person,” Miss Jenkins replied, with the utmost equanimity, “is an Americanism. It means that you come off second best. It means that Miss Delamare’s case is so absolutely impregnable, that you won’t be able even to make her wince and that she will make you wince all the time.”
“Everything you say,” Miss Peabody said, “only makes me all the more determined to do what I am determined to do.”
“I am quite aware of that,” Miss Jenkins said. “It’s a little proceeding which will lead you to disaster, and I don’t see that I am particularly concerned in saving you from disaster. I am concerned in satisfying my own conscience. If you come to grief I shall probably profit by it, so I am not going to let you come to grief until I have used every possible argument that would dissuade a decent woman. For the main point for me is that if you are not a decent woman, I have every possible right to profit by your collapse.”
Miss Peabody, still ironically, exclaimed: “What language!”
“Yes, collapse,” Miss Jenkins said gravely. “That’s what you will do. If you indulge in this vicious and vulgar spite you will collapse. You will collapse utterly. You will go out. I warn you that you will go out, and you will probably be miserable to the end of your days. And you will deserve it. For what has Miss Delamare done to you? Nothing! Absolutely nothing! It’s just because she’s little and gentle and pretty and gay and nice — and to be sure you’re none of those things — and it’s just because she’s been kind to another old woman — kind and gentle and considerate — and to be sure you’re none of those things either. But it’s just because of them that you hate her as an unpleasant cat hates a pleasant dog. It isn’t because — it isn’t because you’re my rival that I hope to see you thrown out of this house. If you had been a nice woman, Heaven knows I wouldn’t have stirred a finger against you, Heaven really knows that I wouldn’t. But you have such an evil nature! You have such a dislike of anything that is good and gay and pleasant, that even though I don’t want to do so for my own sake, I shall certainly do for his — the very best that I possibly can to save from you the man that I have loved for years, and a man that is as good and as gentle and as gay as any man ever was in this world. So I tell you quite plainly that, if you attempt to interfere with Miss Delamare, you will lose the man you are engaged to. I hope you will do it and I hope you may lose him, for if you do I shall most certainly get him, and I want him more than anything else in the world; and that’s just all there is to it, and this is the last word that I shall say. I’ve just planked my cards on the table and you can do as you like.”
Miss Peabody remained gazing at her for a long minute in an absolute speechlessness, and Miss Jenkins was just moving towards the door when she exclaimed sharply:
“No, stop! You!” She put her hand up to her forehead. “So that,” she said at last, “you are in league with that creature. With that Miss Delamare. And you are trying to shield her. That’s it! I see through the whole discreditable and disgusting thing. I’m not going to speak about it any more. I shall attend to the matter tomorrow. But to-night I shall speak to this woman in such a way as to drive her right out of this house. You may hope that I can’t do this, but I certainly can. I have had to do with too many abandoned and fallen women in my life not to let my tongue be like the whip of a lash. And I begin to see so far into this disgusting and sordid affair that in a few minutes I shall be absolutely at the bottom of it, and then I shall be prepared to act. But as for your imagining that Major Foster will ever fall to you, I tell you this, that if God struck me with lightning at this minute and you were the only woman in the world, he would never look at you. Now you can go.”
Miss Jenkins withdrew without another word.
And Miss Peabody remained alone, leaning on the high mantelpiece and really trying to get to the bottom of things. And then suddenly the bottom of things came up at her like a flash. It was really the plainest intrigue that she had ever been called upon to solve. Miss Delamare was to plunder Mr. Foster, and she had agreed upon this with her Ladyship’s Own Maid, giving the major himself over to Miss Jenkins as the price of Miss Jenkins’s support!
There simply could not be any doubt about this. And, with a step of extreme firmness, she marched straight over towards the panel. She was just going to tell Miss Delamare that she had unshakable proof that she was Mr. Foster’s mistress, and that the granting of the lease of the new theatre was the price of her sin.
CHAPTER VI.
MR. FOSTER was sitting in front of his bedroom fire in a state of the most thorough dispiritude. He did not like his room, which was hung all with pink chintz, and did not seem to be the proper room for a gentleman; he was exceedingly afraid of what he saw to be the considerable change in Mrs. Foster, and he was extremely afraid of what Miss Peabody might be going to do or, still more, to say, now that he had definitely signed with Miss Delamare the agreement for the new theatre. His simple soul was thoroughly frightened, thoroughly worried and thoroughly shaken. For nearly an hour he had been trying to read a book by Mrs. Kerr Howe called Pink Passions. This book troubled him exceedingly; for, to tell the truth, he had never read a book since the publication of The Woman in White. And it did not seem to him to be natural that people should behave as they did in Mrs. Kerr Howe’s book, and the characters certainly seemed to him to be chiefly improper persons. On the other hand, Mrs. Foster was perpetually dinning into him the fact that Mrs. Kerr Howe was a great author. And, in his muddled and troubled state, the poor man began reflecting upon what was to be expected from great authors. He had a vague idea that the purpose of literature was said to be to ennoble the world; but, on the other hand, he had an idea that the end of authors, or the life of authors for the matter of that, was spent in the Divorce Courts. And he imagined that the greater the author, the more frequent were his visits to these establishments. So that he could not very well see how the products of obviously immoral persons could help on moral causes in the world. And at the same time he was so anxious to be received back, if not into his old quarters, at least into Mrs. Foster’s favour, that he was really desperately anxious to appreciate not only Miss Delamare, but also Mrs. Kerr Howe. He felt that if he could do this, Mrs. Foster would, for reasons that he could not understand, be kind to him again. And he was looking into his fire and brooding rather miserably. For he was determined to await the return of Mrs. Foster before he got into bed. He wished to tell her as well as he could that, in the end, he found that she was more important to him than the wishes of Miss Peabody. Though this again muddled him, for he had really wanted to propitiate his wife by doing everything that he possibly could to please her nephew. And he had perfectly believed that, the more he pleased Miss Peabody, the more joy it ought to cause Major Edward Brent Foster; for so simple was his soul that it had never occurred to him to notice that his wife exceedingly detested that lady. He had usually been taught by his friends in the city, and other places, to consider that women were incomprehensible, but he had really had so little to do with women — though it is true that having been as normally unfaithful to Mrs. Foster as most of his friends were to their wives, he had now and then had his whiskers damaged before he shaved them in order to be more in the fashion — he had really had so little to do with women, that the fact they were incomprehensible had not really seemed to him to matter at all.
But now he dropped Pink Passions, and looking at the fire, exclaimed in a bitterly aggrieved tone: “Why, they’re incomprehensible!”
He had been trying to do his best to please everybody all round, and he seemed to have come in for so much abuse, that he simply felt bruised and black and blue all over his moral being.
“Why, they’re incomprehensible!” he repeated. For, if Mr. Foster had not been strictly virtuous all his life, he had certainly been strictly respectable, and, in the present transactions, he had not only been extremely respectable but even quite absolutely virtuous. There was not, he was perfectly certain, a single thing that could possibly be said against his virtue. Not a single thing. He was as spotless as an angel, and he had tried to be as obliging as a Cook’s Guide.
He heard a little swish — a negligible sound in these old houses — and suddenly there burst upon him the words:
“You infamous man! You abandoned woman!” Mr. Foster tried to spring clean out of his chair; but, since he was not normally very active, he only succeeded in achieving a sort of shuffle. Miss Peabody was standing in a sort of lighted square that had disappeared from the pink chintzed panelling of one of his walls. And, his mind having been running upon his respectable but not impeccable past, Mr. Foster imagined that Miss Peabody must have heard what he would have called a thing or two about himself, and exclaimed in a breathless alarm:
“What woman?”
And then there began a breathless dialogue, for Miss Peabody exclaimed:
“That actress — that Miss Delamare! I know all about her.”
Mr. Foster ejaculated: “What about her?” And Miss Peabody said convictingly:
“You are in her room.”
“Certainly not,” Mr. Foster almost screamed. “This is my room.”
“You can’t expect me to believe that,” she said. “Oh, nonsense!” he answered. “You’ve gone mad with jealousy.”
Olympia advanced upon him. “Mr. Foster,” she exclaimed, with a fixed gravity, “don’t lie to me. I expected to find you here. I was convinced that I should find you here, and I have found you here. There’s no getting away from that. If you like to behave penitently, I may be inclined to conceal your guilt. But I insist upon your leaving that atrocious woman to me. I insist upon your at once leaving this room.”
“But damn it!” Mr. Foster said, and it was the first time he had ever sworn in his life, “I must have some room somewhere. Mrs. Foster has turned me out of my room, and I’m certainly not going to let you turn me out of this.”
Miss Peabody repeated stonily: “I insist upon your leaving that atrocious woman to me.”
“But there’s no woman here but yourself, my good soul,” Mr. Foster said. “You can see that there isn’t.”
Miss Peabody exclaimed: “Nonsense! She’s hiding behind the curtains. She’s got under the bed.” Mr. Foster ejaculated: “By Heaven! Women are incomprehensible! You’re out of your senses. It’s a most extraordinary mistake.” And after a moment he added: “Come and look behind the curtains. Come and get under the bed yourself if you want to. I’m sick of all this.”
Miss Peabody advanced right into the room. She did look behind the curtains, and she satisfied herself that the bed came so low that nobody could possibly get under it.
And Mr. Foster by this time had become so furiously enraged, that he began to run about the room throwing open the wardrobes, the drawers and the cover of his dressing-table.
“Look here, you infernal idiot,” he said; “there you can see my suits. And there you can see my vests and pants. And there you can see my spare studs and my shaving things. Does that satisfy you? Miss Delamare doesn’t shave.” Miss Peabody stood for a terrified moment with her eyes so distended that he thought she would burst the lids.
