Complete Works of Ford Madox Ford, page 439
Miss Leroy went into the little scullery, lit the gas-ring, and placed upon it a tin mug filled with cocoa that her mother had set ready for her. When it was warmed she returned to the parlour, poured the cocoa into a cup, and then, returning to the scullery, she filled the mug with cold water so that it might be easy to wash out. She sat down at the parlour table. It was laid with a blue and red duster upon which her mother had placed a thin piece of cold beef, a jar of extremely yellow pickles and a large cottage loaf. The light that had been in the midsummer sky had almost entirely faded out. Gilda Leroy lit a candle in a tin flat candlestick and began to read a paper, printed with very small print and covered in pink. She buried herself deep in the adventures of a governess who had opalescent eyes and a belted earl. She undid her boots as she was reading and loosened them upon her feet. She identified herself thoroughly and rapturously with the personality of the governess. It was true that the governess was five foot eleven in height, whereas she was not five foot six, and could certainly not fling out showers of diamond notes from a grand piano. Still, she could play “Home Sweet Home” upon the harmonium that stood beneath the window and contained a vox humana stop. And she had just arrived at the point when, the governess’ opalescent eyes having become suffused with a grey light, the belted earl said:
“Ha, by Jove! Will you place my coronet upon your brows?”
It was enormously moving; Gilda Leroy seemed to feel in the air something religious, something almost sacred. And then Mrs. Leroy came in and said:
“He’s in the shop. Are you coming out or shall I let him come in here? It isn’t me he comes to talk to.”
“Shut the door,” Miss Leroy said. “I want to talk to you.”
“Then,” her mother exclaimed, “he’ll be selling somebody methylated spirits for nasturtium vinegar.”
“That doesn’t matter,” her daughter said abstractedly. “Not matter!” Mrs. Leroy ejaculated. “Selling methylated spirits after dark costs you forty shillings or a month.”
Miss Leroy unfolded one from her bundle of papers; she turned over a page, found a portrait, pointed to it with her finger and said:
“Who’s that?”
Mrs. Leroy regarded the rough block of an undistinguished gentleman with a rather thick moustache. She read the inscription beneath.
“It seems to me,” she said, “that it’s Mr. Aaron Rothweil, Opposition candidate for the bye-election at Byefleet.”
“But who does it remind you of?” Gilda Leroy asked. “Don’t remind me of anybody,” Mrs. Leroy said, “so much as the young gentleman in wax that’s in Mr. Cluft’s window with: ‘Startling! Seventy-seven and sixpence’ pinned on his bosom.”
“You’ve no heart!” Miss Leroy exclaimed. “Look at the tremble I’m in.”
“Another Marquis?” Mrs. Leroy asked.
Gilda rapidly unfolded another paper and found another portrait.
“Then who’s that?” she asked.
“Seems to be the same man,” Mrs. Leroy said composedly, “though with that spot in the corner of the eye it reminds me of the other gentleman in Mr. Cluft’s window — the one that was marked: ‘The latest — thirty-seven shillings’ until last Monday, when he came out as: ‘Alarming sacrifice! One Guinea.’”
With vehement actions Miss Leroy opened the Evening Sun and the Halfpenny Weekly:
“Who’s that and that?” she asked triumphantly. Mrs. Leroy looked at the portrait in the Evening Sun with patient boredom. She was used to her daughter’s flights of fancy, and this portrait represented exactly the same aspect of Mr. Rothweil except that the nose, instead of the right eye, was defective. Her glance therefore, passed to the Halfpenny Weekly, which presented her with a full-length portrait of Mr. Rothweil in a Panama hat. He was standing in a garden looking profoundly depressed, and it was this air of dejection which really arrested Mrs. Leroy’s attention. She said “Hum!” and her daughter, aware that the portrait had made some impression, exclaimed:
“Just read what’s printed underneath!”
And Mrs. Leroy read, printed in very black letters:
“This is the latest portrait of Mr. Aaron Rothweil, the Opposition candidate for Byefleet. It was taken in the gardens of Palatial Hall, Hampstead, the magnificent residence erected by the late Mr. Aaron Rothweil at a cost of £434,000, and which contains the Norfolk Rembrandt and the celebrated columns of twisted porphyry.”
“You see,” Gilda Leroy said, “there’s Palatial Hall mentioned. Isn’t it an extraordinary mystery? He says his name is Fleight. And when we looked up his name in the telephone directory we discovered that there was only two Fleights — one, Mrs. Fleight, who was a court dressmaker, and the other, Mr. A. R. Fleight, of Palatial Hall, Hampstead. Now, the Halfpenny Weekly says that the owner of Palatial Hall is Mr. Aaron Rothweil, and it gives a portrait of him as being that gentleman. What am I to think?”
“I don’t know what you’re to think,” Mrs. Leroy answered. “I should just ask him.”
Gilda, however, exclaimed hastily:
“Oh, no! I shouldn’t like to hurt his poor feelings. I shouldn’t like him to think I was spying on him. I’m not that sort.”
“But you’re spying on him now, in a manner of speaking,” Mrs. Leroy said. “The best thing you can do is to make a clean breast to him. Ask him who he is and what his intentions are. If you don’t, I shall. Two of your sisters have gone wrong along of this sort of thing, and I’m going to keep you respectable.”
Miss Leroy’s tone became one of abject entreaty.
“Oh no, ma!” she pleaded. “Oh! Don’t, ma! Don’t go and break my heart! I don’t want him to be offended and go, and I don’t want his poor feelings to be hurt. You let him alone. He isn’t what they call ‘enterprising’ in the books. Why, you can’t say that he’s really even walking out with me. The most he ever does is to come and chat with me at the stall about the price of tobacco and why there’s a much bigger profit on Convolvulus cigarettes than on Strauss and Skinner’s, though the one’s tenpence a dozen and the other twopence-halfpenny for ten, with a picture of a historic house thrown in. And he hasn’t even been near the stall for over a fortnight. And it’s the first time he’s been in the shop for ever so long, and now you want to break my heart, asking him questions and driving him away.”
“Well, my girl,” Mrs. Leroy said, “you’ll go your own way in spite of me, and if you get into mischief you’ve time enough to do it while you’re out of the house, so it doesn’t seem my line to interfere with a young man who keeps you at home instead of gadding about. But I’ll tell you this — if you think this man’s a gentleman you can knock that straight out of your head.”
“I was always certain he was a gentleman,” Miss Leroy said; “he behaves just exactly as they do in my books, and if he likes to come to a place like this incognito, isn’t that also the sort of thing a gentleman does in my books? Isn’t it exactly what Sir Purefoy Beaufort does in ‘Won by Waiting’? And if he’s going to behave like a gentleman I’m going to behave like a lady.”
Mrs. Leroy said: “Oh, la la!”
“I’m going,” Miss Leroy continued determinedly, “to behave as the ladies do in my books. They’re all kind and tender and high-minded and, in the sort of situation I’m in, do you suppose that any one of those ladies would have spied upon him? I’m not spying upon him; I’m not going to use any knowledge I obtain as a screw to get something out of him. If it wasn’t indecent to say it before you’re an engaged young lady I should say I love him passionately, and I’m certain I should drown myself if he went away. That I’m certain of, but if you think that I’m going to use any knowledge I have of him as a means of sticking him to me — why, all I can say is Strauss and Skinner will be amalgamated with the Convolvulus people before that happens. And that’s impossible.”
“Well, I’m sure it’s highly creditable of you,” Mrs. Leroy said. She opened the door for a minute and peered into the shop. “Now, Mr. Fleight,” she exclaimed, through the opening, “I can’t have you selling that amount of cow-heel to Mrs. Degas for less than sixpence halfpenny. It can’t be done. If she has six small children I’ve had seven, though four of them are in the churchyard, and I can’t afford to sell things below cost price. Of course, if you like to make it up to the till I can’t say anything against it, though how a young man like you, who appears to be of a quiet disposition and ought to be saving up to support a wife in comfort, can throw his money away like that passes me. I don’t see, while you’re about it, why you shouldn’t pull down the whole street and build us palaces with marble walls and these here painted ceilings that you see in Lyons’ coffee shops, at the same rent we’re paying and with the rates taken off, and a Saturday night beano chucked in cost free. That’d be doing the thing handsome.” She shut the door upon the reply of Mrs. Degas, who was exclaiming in high tones that her six pore little children would have their pore little bellies filled for the first time for three months, and blessing the kind gentleman and Mrs. Leroy most sincerely.
“And a stupid sort of fool he is,” Mrs. Leroy said to her daughter when the door was dosed. “Full of these notions out of books like you. With how he preaches that it’s our duty to give a tenth of our profits to the poor. And I bet he’s been looking through my little book of accounts for the last three weeks, and I bet he’ll be giving a tenth of my profits out of his own pocket to that Mrs. Degas and Mrs. Epstern and Mrs. Higham and others of the chosen people that chooses to come in.”
“Oh, mother!” Miss Leroy said, “I can’t understand how you dare talk to him as you do.”
“Well, I’m not going to chuck myself over Waterloo Bridge if he goes away,” Mrs. Leroy said. “That makes a difference.”
“You haven’t any heart,” Gilda said.
“God bless the girl!” Mrs. Leroy exclaimed good-temperedly; “what does she want out of me now?”
“I want to know,” Gilda answered, “what I’m to do?”
“I should have thought,” Mrs. Leroy retorted, “that you would have known out of your books. I’m bound to say that, if I have thought it a waste of time, your for ever reading and reading instead of having a bit of knitting or of needlework in your hand, yet it’s made you gentler and better mannered, and better behaved than any of your sisters ever was, and sometimes I think that if Emily and Eliza had read as much as you have it might have kept them straight, though I never was one to hold with book-learning.”
“But what am I to do, ma?” Miss Leroy asked. “What does it all mean?”
“Ah! That’s it!” Mrs. Leroy said. “You’ve got your knowledge from reading the gentry’s books, and I’ve got mine from living in the gentry’s houses, though it’s twenty-five years and more since I was in service.
And if you want to know who I think your Mr. Fleight is, why he’s probably that there Rothweil’s groom of the chambers.”
“But why is he so like him?” Miss Leroy asked.
“That’s just what I was going to tell you,” Mrs. Leroy answered. “Sir Pompey Munro, that I was with for fifteen years, he had a groom of the chambers called Brickwall; and Brickwall was as like Sir Pompey as two peas, though much better dressed and more distinguished. Because why? Mr. Brickwall was Sir Pompey’s bastard brother. And what I was going to tell you was that it was Mr. Brickwall’s name that was in the telephone directory, because Sir Pompey had a horror of being rung up, and all his friends knew Mr. Brickwall’s name was there and Mr. Brickwall had to have his name there because he did all Sir Pompey’s business. And if you ask me who I think Mr. Fleight is, why it’s just that he’s Mr. Rothweil’s groom of the chambers.”
“But he doesn’t look like a groom,” Miss Leroy said. “He hasn’t got bandy leg9 and he never smells of horses.”
“Well, a groom of the chambers never sees a horse as likely as not,” Mrs. Leroy said. “He’s a sort of six times upper butler. But if that doesn’t satisfy you I’ll tell you what you’ll do. You go down to Byefleet on Monday.”
“Where’s Byefleet?” Miss Leroy asked.
“It’s a country place,” her mother answered, “in Kent.”
“Oh, but I couldn’t go down into the country,” Miss Leroy said. “It’s so lonely. You never know that you won’t be murdered on those solitary roads.”
“Pack of nonsense!” Mrs. Leroy said resignedly. “I suppose it means that you want me to go with you?”
“But what are we going to go for?” her daughter asked.
“Oh, good Lord!” Mrs. Leroy ejaculated. “Whoever came across such innocent ignorance; but then you’ve never been through an election as I’ve been through a dozen in the houses I’ve served in. If this here election at Byefleet is coming off on Saturday this Mr. Rothweil will be holding sixteen meetings a day — all over the place. And you’ll get a look at him and know all about him. If your Mr. Fleight is Mr. Rothweil he’ll be the candidate, and if he’s really the groom of the chambers, why, he’ll be somewhere about looking after the candidate’s comfort, and you’re pretty certain to run against him.”
In the shop they began to talk about the obligations that wealth confers upon its owner. This came about because a Mr. Posnit, a solicitor’s clerk, came into the shop with a basket on his arm and there completed his Saturday night’s purchasing, since Mrs. Leroy sold brown sugar and her special brand of red herrings at a cheaper rate even than that at which they could be purchased from the costermongers’ stalls or the cheapest tradesmen in the neighbourhood. When he had gone Mrs. Leroy addressed Mr. Fleight, who sat behind the counter near the window, gloomy and silent, and her daughter who, quite as gloomy and quite as silent, was leaning on the angle of the counter just in front of the parlour door. It didn’t, she said, appear to be right that Mr. Posnit, who was a gentleman and lived in rooms of his own, should demean himself by purchasing in the cheapest market. She herself had seen him going along Victoria Street to work in a top hat and a frock coat. Of course, she wouldn’t have said that to Mr. Posnit, because trade was trade, and she couldn’t afford to damage her own. But wealth was wealth, too, Mrs. Leroy said, and it was the duty of the middle classes and such to buy at the stores, and of the real swells to go to the best shops with the large plate-glass windows, where an apple that looked as if it were made out of soap cost as much as sixpence. For everybody had to live, and how was the expensive tradesman to be kept going if the real swells didn’t patronise him, or them there stores, if the middle classes didn’t go to them but came to shops like hers where you got things really cheap and really genuine? Live and let live was what she always said, and wealth had its obligations.
Mr. Fleight burst out with:
“Oh, that’s all nonsense!” Wealth was really a bore, so why should it carry any obligations at all. What was wealth? There wasn’t any amusement about it. There wasn’t even any romance, because you couldn’t ever see it. You might be a millionaire twice over; you might be so wealthy you didn’t ever begin to understand how wealthy you were; but you couldn’t ever see it. It was a sort of thing that melted all round you and, if you wrote your name on a piece of paper, wealth was somehow transferred to another man. Or, on the other hand, if some other man wrote his name on a piece of paper, wealth might be transferred to you. But that was the bore — it was invisible. And that wasn’t any fun for a man. It was better, from the romantic point of view, to have a stocking full of halfcrowns hung up the chimney; it was better even to have a till like the one Mrs. Leroy had under the counter, which was pretty full on a Saturday night with small silver in one bowl, and coppers, with fish scales sticking on them, in the other. “For myself,” Mr. Fleight concluded, “I’d rather see — if I was a millionaire I’d rather see a good large table covered with pillars of gold sovereigns about three feet high — which might mean, say, £20,000 — I’d rather see that than have a hundred thousand in some stocks or shares. But I couldn’t, of course — not even if I was as rich as Mr. Morgan.”
“But why shouldn’t you?” Mrs. Leroy asked, “supposing you were some very rich man — a soap boiler, now? Sir Pompey Munro, where I was in service, he had a strong room in Lowndes Square. Two foot thick the walls was, and it had a circular door that worked like the back end of the big cannons you sometimes see in the picture theatres.”
“But he never had much gold there,” Mr. Fleight asserted.
“I can’t say that he did,” Mrs. Leroy said. “He used it for his valuable papers and securities, but I can’t say there was ever much gold in it.”
“Would you have known?” Mr. Fleight asked.
“Young man,” Mrs. Leroy answered, “there was nothing that went on in that house that I didn’t know. If he’d had large sums of gold it would have had to be brought in. It would be heavy, in cases. And there was never anything heavy came into my basement but what I knew about it, and about the heaviest thing that ever did come was these here crates of a dozen syphons of soda water. So that settles that!”
“It does exactly settle that,” Mr. Fleight exclaimed. “And I’ll tell you why it does. Any millionaire that kept £20,000 worth of gold locked up in his house would be considered a lunatic — because, though wealth breeds wealth, sovereigns wouldn’t increase in number locked up in a cellar. It wouldn’t be safe to do it. It would be almost good enough to prove you were a lunatic and have you locked up in an expensive asylum whilst your heirs spent your income. And the £20,000 in gold would be put into gilt-edged securities by the commissioners in lunacy. It just simply couldn’t be done in secrecy on account of the servants — just because gold is heavy, and you couldn’t have big, heavy cases carried into your house without the cook knowing it in the kitchen, and the butler in the pantry, and the upper parlourmaid in the first-floor drawing-room, and my lady’s maid enamelling my lady’s nose in the boudoir, and the old woman with the large pocket under her skirt who bought the fat from the cook.”
