Complete Works of Ford Madox Ford, page 65
The drone of the presses made the floor under my feet quiver, and the whole building vibrated as if the earth itself had trembled. I was alone with my knowledge. Did she know; had she put the power in my hand? But I was alone, and I was free.
I took up the proof and began to read, slanting the page to the fall of the light. It was a phrenetic indictment, but under the paltry rhetoric of the man there was genuine indignation and pain. There were revolting details of cruelty to the miserable, helpless, and defenceless; there were greed, and self-seeking, stripped naked; but more revolting to see without a mask was that falsehood which had been hiding under the words that for ages had spurred men to noble deeds, to self-sacrifice, to heroism. What was appalling was the sudden perception that all the traditional ideals of honour, glory, conscience, had been committed to the upholding of a gigantic and atrocious fraud. The falsehood had spread stealthily, had eaten into the very heart of creeds and convictions that we lean upon on our passage between the past and the future. The old order of things had to live or perish with a lie. I saw all this with the intensity and clearness of a revelation; I saw it as though I had been asleep through a year of work and dreams, and had awakened to the truth. I saw it all; I saw her intention. What was I to do?
Without my marking its approach emotion was upon me. The fingers that held up the extended slips tattooed one on another through its negligible thickness.
“Pretty thick that,” Soane said. He was looking back at me from the cupboard he had opened. “I’ve rubbed it in, too … there’ll be hats on the green to-morrow.” He had his head inside the cupboard, and his voice came to me hollowly. He extracted a large bottle with a gilt-foiled neck.
“Won’t it upset the apple cart to-morrow,” he said, very loudly; “won’t it?”
His voice acted on me as the slight shake upon a phial full of waiting chemicals; crystallised them suddenly with a little click. Everything suddenly grew very clear to me. I suddenly understood that all the tortuous intrigue hinged upon what I did in the next few minutes. It rested with me now to stretch out my hand to that button in the wall or to let the whole world—”the … the probity … that sort of thing,” she had said — fall to pieces. The drone of the presses continued to make itself felt like the quiver of a suppressed emotion. I might stop them or I might not. It rested with me.
Everybody was in my hands; they were quite small. If I let the thing go on, they would be done for utterly, and the new era would begin.
Soane had got hold of a couple of long-stalked glasses. They clinked together whilst he searched the cupboard for something.
“Eh, what?” he said. “It is pretty strong, isn’t it? Ought to shake out some of the supporters, eh? Bill comes on to-morrow … do for that, I should think.” He wanted a corkscrew very badly.
But that was precisely it — it would “shake out some of the supporters,” and give Gurnard his patent excuse. Churchill, I knew, would stick to his line, the saner policy. But so many of the men who had stuck to Churchill would fall away now, and Gurnard, of course, would lead them to his own triumph.
It was a criminal verdict. Callan had gone out as a commissioner — with a good deal of drum-beating. And this was his report, this shriek. If it sounded across the house-tops — if I let it — good-by to the saner policy and to Churchill. It did not make any difference that Churchill’s was the saner policy, because there was no one in the nation sane enough to see it. They wanted purity in high places, and here was a definite, criminal indictment against de Mersch. And de Mersch would — in a manner of speaking, have to be lynched, policy or no policy.
She wanted this, and in all the earth she was the only desirable thing.
If I thwarted her — she would … what would she do now? I looked at
Soane.
“What would happen if I stopped the presses?” I asked. Soane was twisting his corkscrew in the wire of the champagne bottle.
It was fatal; I could see nothing on earth but her. What else was there
in the world. Wine? The light of the sun? The wind on the heath? Honour!
My God, what was honour to me if I could see nothing but her on earth?
Would honour or wine or sun or wind ever give me what she could give?
Let them go.
“What would happen if what?” Soane grumbled, “D — n this wire.”
“Oh, I was thinking about something,” I answered. The wire gave with a little snap and he began to ease the cork. Was I to let the light pass me by for the sake of … of Fox, for instance, who trusted me? Well, let Fox go. And Churchill and what Churchill stood for; the probity; the greatness and the spirit of the past from which had sprung my conscience and the consciences of the sleeping millions around me — the woman at the poultry show with her farmers and shopkeepers. Let them go too.
Soane put into my hand one of his charged glasses. He seemed to rise out of the infinite, a forgotten shape. I sat down at the desk opposite him.
“Deuced good idea,” he said, suddenly, “to stop the confounded presses and spoof old Fox. He’s up to some devilry. And, by Jove, I’d like to get my knife in him; Jove, I would. And then chuck up everything and leave for the Sandwich Islands. I’m sick of this life, this dog’s life…. One might have made a pile though, if one’d known this smash was coming. But one can’t get at the innards of things. — No such luck — no such luck, eh?” I looked at him stupidly; took in his blood-shot eyes and his ruffled grizzling hair. I wondered who he was. “Il s’agissait de…?” I seemed to be back in Paris, I couldn’t think of what I had been thinking of. I drank his glass of wine and he filled me another. I drank that too.
Ah yes — even then the thing wasn’t settled, even now that I had recognized that Fox and the others were of no account … What remained was to prove to her that I wasn’t a mere chattel, a piece in the game. I was at the very heart of the thing. After all, it was chance that had put me there, the blind chance of all the little things that lead in the inevitable, the future. If, now, I thwarted her, she would … what would she do? She would have to begin all over again. She wouldn’t want to be revenged; she wasn’t revengeful. But how if she would never look upon me again?
The thing had reduced itself to a mere matter of policy. Or was it passion?
A clatter of the wheels of heavy carts and of the hoofs of heavy horses on granite struck like hammer blows on my ears, coming from the well of the court-yard below. Soane had finished his bottle and was walking to the cupboard. He paused at the window and stood looking down.
“Strong beggars, those porters,” he said; “I couldn’t carry that weight of paper — not with my rot on it, let alone Callan’s. You’d think it would break down the carts.”
I understood that they were loading the carts for the newspaper mails. There was still time to stop them. I got up and went toward the window, very swiftly. I was going to call to them to stop loading. I threw the casement open.
* * * * *
Of course, I did not stop them. The solution flashed on me with the breath of the raw air. It was ridiculously simple. If I thwarted her, well, she would respect me. But her business in life was the inheritance of the earth, and, however much she might respect me — or by so much the more — she would recognise that I was a force to deflect her from the right line—”a disease for me,” she had said.
“What I have to do,” I said, “is to show her that … that I had her in my hands and that I co-operated loyally.”
The thing was so simple that I triumphed; triumphed with the full glow of wine, triumphed looking down into that murky court-yard where the lanthorns danced about in the rays of a great arc lamp. The gilt letters scattered all over the windows blazed forth the names of Fox’s innumerable ventures. Well, he … he had been a power, but I triumphed. I had co-operated loyally with the powers of the future, though I wanted no share in the inheritance of the earth. Only, I was going to push into the future. One of the great carts got into motion amidst a shower of sounds that whirled upward round and round the well. The black hood swayed like the shoulders of an elephant as it passed beneath my feet under the arch. It disappeared — it was co-operating too; in a few hours people at the other end of the country — of the world — would be raising their hands. Oh, yes, it was co-operating loyally.
I closed the window. Soane was holding a champagne bottle in one hand. In the other he had a paper knife of Fox’s — a metal thing, a Japanese dagger or a Deccan knife. He sliced the neck off the bottle.
“Thought you were going to throw yourself out,” he said; “I wouldn’t stop you. I’m sick of it … sick.”
“Look at this … to-night … this infernal trick of Fox’s…. And I helped too…. Why?… I must eat.” He paused “… and drink,” he added. “But there is starvation for no end of fools in this little move. A few will be losing their good names too…. I don’t care, I’m off…. By-the-bye: What is he doing it for? Money? Funk? — You ought to know. You must be in it too. It’s not hunger with you. Wonderful what people will do to keep their pet vice going…. Eh?” He swayed a little. “You don’t drink — what’s your pet vice?”
He looked at me very defiantly, clutching the neck of the empty bottle. His drunken and overbearing glare seemed to force upon me a complicity in his squalid bargain with life, rewarded by a squalid freedom. He was pitiful and odious to my eyes; and somehow in a moment he appeared menacing.
“You can’t frighten me,” I said, in response to the strange fear he had inspired. “No one can frighten me now.” A sense of my inaccessibility was the first taste of an achieved triumph. I had done with fear. The poor devil before me appeared infinitely remote. He was lost; but he was only one of the lost; one of those that I could see already overwhelmed by the rush from the flood-gates opened at my touch. He would be destroyed in good company; swept out of my sight together with the past they had known and with the future they had waited for. But he was odious. “I am done with you,” I said.
“Eh; what?… Who wants to frighten?… I wanted to know what’s your pet vice…. Won’t tell? You might safely — I’m off…. No…. Want to tell me mine?… No time…. I’m off…. Ask the policeman … crossing sweeper will do…. I’m going.”
“You will have to,” I said.
“What…. Dismiss me?… Throw the indispensable Soane overboard like a squeezed lemon?… Would you?… What would Fox say?… Eh? But you can’t, my boy — not you. Tell you … tell you … can’t…. Beforehand with you … sick of it…. I’m off … to the Islands — the Islands of the Blest…. I’m going to be an … no, not an angel like Fox … an … oh, a beachcomber. Lie on white sand, in the sun … blue sky and palm-trees — eh?… S.S. Waikato. I’m off…. Come too … lark … dismiss yourself out of all this. Warm sand, warm, mind you … you won’t?” He had an injured expression. “Well, I’m off. See me into the cab, old chap, you’re a decent fellow after all … not one of these beggars who would sell their best friend … for a little money … or some woman. Will see the last of me….”
I didn’t believe he would reach the South Seas, but I went downstairs and watched him march up the street with a slight stagger under the pallid dawn. I suppose it was the lingering chill of the night that made me shiver. I felt unbounded confidence in the future, there was nothing now between her and me. The echo of my footsteps on the flagstones accompanied me, filling the empty earth with the sound of my progress.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I walked along, got to my club and upstairs into my room peaceably. A feeling of entire tranquillity had come over me. I rested after a strife which had issued in a victory whose meaning was too great to comprehend and enjoy at once. I only knew that it was great because there seemed nothing more left to do. Everything reposed within me — even conscience, even memory, reposed as in death. I had risen above them, and my thoughts moved serenely as in a new light, as men move in sunshine above the graves of the forgotten dead. I felt like a man at the beginning of a long holiday — an indefinite space of idleness with some great felicity — a felicity too great for words, too great for joy — at the end. Everything was delicious and vague; there were no shapes, no persons. Names flitted through my mind — Fox, Churchill, my aunt; but they were living people seen from above, flitting in the dusk, without individuality; things that moved below me in a valley from which I had emerged. I must have been dreaming of them.
I know I dreamed of her. She alone was distinct among these shapes. She appeared dazzling; resplendent with a splendid calmness, and I braced myself to the shock of love, the love I had known, that all men had known; but greater, transcendental, almost terrible, a fit reward for the sacrifice of a whole past. Suddenly she spoke. I heard a sound like the rustling of a wind through trees, and I felt the shock of an unknown emotion made up of fear and of enthusiasm, as though she had been not a woman but only a voice crying strange, unknown words in inspiring tones, promising and cruel, without any passion of love or hate. I listened. It was like the wind in the trees of a little wood. No hate … no love. No love. There was a crash as of a falling temple. I was borne to the earth, overwhelmed, crushed by an immensity of ruin and of sorrow. I opened my eyes and saw the sun shining through the window-blinds.
I seem to remember I was surprised at it. I don’t know why. Perhaps the lingering effect of the ruin in the dream, which had involved sunshine itself. I liked it though, and lay for a time enjoying the — what shall I say? — usualness of it. The sunshine of yesterday — of to-morrow. It occurred to me that the morning must be far advanced, and I got up briskly, as a man rises to his work. But as soon as I got on my legs I felt as if I had already over-worked myself. In reality there was nothing to do. All my muscles twitched with fatigue. I had experienced the same sensations once after an hour’s desperate swimming to save myself from being carried out to sea by the tide.
No. There was nothing to do. I descended the staircase, and an utter sense of aimlessness drove me out through the big doors, which swung behind me without noise. I turned toward the river, and on the broad embankment the sunshine enveloped me, friendly, familiar, and warm like the care of an old friend. A black dumb barge drifted, clumsy and empty, and the solitary man in it wrestled with the heavy sweep, straining his arms, throwing his face up to the sky at every effort. He knew what he was doing, though it was the river that did his work for him.
His exertions impressed me with the idea that I too had something to do. Certainly I had. One always has. Somehow I could not remember. It was intolerable, and even alarming, this blank, this emptiness of the many hours before night came again, till suddenly, it dawned upon me I had to make some extracts in the British Museum for our “Cromwell.” Our Cromwell. There was no Cromwell; he had lived, had worked for the future — and now he had ceased to exist. His future — our past, had come to an end. The barge with the man still straining at the oar had gone out of sight under the arch of the bridge, as through a gate into another world. A bizarre sense of solitude stole upon me, and I turned my back upon the river as empty as my day. Hansoms, broughams, streamed with a continuous muffled roll of wheels and a beat of hoofs. A big dray put in a note of thunder and a clank of chains. I found myself curiously unable to understand what possible purpose remained to keep them in motion. The past that had made them had come to an end, and their future had been devoured by a new conception. And what of Churchill? He, too, had worked for the future; he would live on, but he had already ceased to exist. I had evoked him in this poignant thought and he came not alone. He came with a train of all the vanquished in this stealthy, unseen contest for an immense stake in which I was one of the victors. They crowded upon me. I saw Fox, Polehampton, de Mersch himself, crowds of figures without a name, women with whom I had fancied myself in love, men I had shaken by the hand, Lea’s reproachful, ironical face. They were near; near enough to touch; nearer. I did not only see them, I absolutely felt them all. Their tumultuous and silent stir seemed to raise a tumult in my breast.
I sprang suddenly to my feet — a sensation that I had had before, that was not new to me, a remembered fear, had me fast; a remembered voice seemed to speak clearly incomprehensible words that had moved me before. The sheer faces of the enormous buildings near at hand seemed to topple forwards like cliffs in an earthquake, and for an instant I saw beyond them into unknown depths that I had seen into before. It was as if the shadow of annihilation had passed over them beneath the sunshine. Then they returned to rest; motionless, but with a changed aspect.
“This is too absurd,” I said to myself. “I am not well.” I was certainly unfit for any sort of work. “But I must get through the day somehow.” To-morrow … to-morrow…. I had a pale vision of her face as it had appeared to me at sunset on the first day I had met her.
I went back to my club — to lunch, of course. I had no appetite, but I was tormented by the idea of an interminable afternoon before me. I sat idly for a long time. Behind my back two men were talking.
“Churchill … oh, no better than the rest. He only wants to be found out. If I’ve any nose for that sort of thing, there’s something in the air. It’s absurd to be told that he knew nothing about it…. You’ve seen the Hour?” I got up to go away, but suddenly found myself standing by their table.
