Complete Works of Ford Madox Ford, page 752
Rotten luck, that child had!...
He astonished himself.... He had thought those words exactly like Hugh Monckton. “Rotten luck” wasn’t part of his own vocabulary at all. They were English, not American words. He could not at the moment remember what an American would say—”lousy” perhaps.... “Lousy luck....”
Then he was losing his individuality.... He didn’t want to become a lousy Englishman.... Hugh Monckton hadn’t been lousy.... But if he, Henry Martin, became an Englishman he would, he felt, be lousy....
But what else could he do? He had spent the whole of the late afternoon with Aunt Elizabeth, acting the part of Hugh Monckton.... And dinner time too.... That lady had stayed to dinner, because the girls would not let her go. They had adopted her with enthusiasm. They had even half-adopted Mary, the housemaid, who had waited on them at dinner....
On the terrace, with candles in shades, and the best silver and a white, shining damask table-cloth and finger-bowls!... When he and Jeanne Becquerel and Eudoxie dined alone they did it to the light of a single electric bulb over the house door. On a red and white checked cloth with aluminum forks and wooden-handled knives.... That was French. It would pass for American too. There were plenty of table-spreads like that in Greenwich Village. In Springfield, Ohio, too.... Jeanne Becquerel kept the heavy, real silver, the silver-handled knives, wrapped in green-baize in a mahogany chest. She would have flown at you like a cat if you had proposed to use them for an ordinary meal.... She had bought them herself at an amazingly small outlay and with astonishing discounts because Eudoxie was in trade.... Out of her eight thousand francs. As part of her trousseau!... Hugh Monckton’s eight thousand francs!
And, at that dinner they had been waved under their noses by English Mary, white apron and all — silver entrée dishes with white porcelain linings, filled with green peas be-sprigged with mint and new potatoes a l’anglaise — with melted butter and chopped parsley! And a great, brown leg of mutton! The English lady had had to carve that because Jeanne Becquerel didn’t know how — or was too shy!... And asparagus of course... and something Mary called gooseberry fool — a sort of rough, sourish cream, like thin oatmeal.... And all completely without condiments, except for the sprig of mint on the peas.... English fashion!
Aunt Elizabeth had drunk a little Scotch whiskey drowned in Perrier water, he and the girls had sipped a half bottle of admirable St. Emilion.... The Englishman’s only wine! Jeanne Becquerel had got it through Eudoxie’s aunt, at seven francs a bottle. The aunt protested that that was a shameful price. “Honteux! Honteux! Honteux!” the tall, heavy old lady had gone on saying over and over again. But Jeanne Becquerel had insisted that she must have the best wine of the goût anglais for her Englishman and everyone knew that St. Emilion was the fin des anglais.
Henry Martin, as a good American, infinitely preferred Burgundy to the thin claret that the English loved. But there he had had to sit under the sardonic gaze of Eudoxie playing the Englishman, at an English board, drinking English wine and eating English food, waited on by an English maid, and complete with an English aunt and French maîtresse en tître such as every Englishman possessed or wanted to possess. And listening to talk about an English haunt of ancient peace.... It was as if he were sinking down, down, into tepid water.... He had all but put on a tuxedo. Only Aunt Elizabeth had not been dressed. So he could not do it, even though he had heard that Englishmen dressed for dinner even when their women didn’t.... The saps!...
Aunt Elizabeth had said at one moment:
“You couldn’t have had it better at Monckton-Warster... She was referring to the dreadful dish called gooseberry fool. She added:” Doesn’t it do you good to have some real English cooking for a change?”
How the meal had been prepared Henry Martin did not altogether know. There had been a good deal of laughing round the kitchen and at one point Jeanne Becquerel had been ejected and had come to sit by him whilst Mrs. Freiligrath had talked family to him. So no doubt Eudoxie and English Mary had prepared the food together.... As a born New Yorker Eudoxie no doubt knew something about the preparation of Anglo-Saxon American cooking — a thing that Henry Martin had studiously avoided for years. Even poor Father, hundred per center as he was in everything else, had continuously struck against poor Mother’s New England vegetable plate, pot roasts without any condiments and string beans boiled in water without salt. Fortunately they had had a Luxemburg woman for cook so that even in his childhood he had known the fiercer joys of hotchpot Ardennoise, plat de côte Flamande and even civet de lièvre St. Hubert. That had usually been only when poor Mother had gone to visit her aunt in Fall River....
He had answered the lady’s speech about its being good to eat English cooking again with:
“Not’arf it ain’t....”
It had been the best he could do — that phrase learnt in the Orderly Room at Cardiff in 1915. It might have been inappropriate. It was Tommie’s slang and he could not remember having heard either Lieutenant Monckton Smith or Captain Wig and Whiskers use it. But you never could tell with English people....
But Mary behind her mistress’s back swiftly put her hand over her mouth to stifle a little explosive “oh” of ecstasy at Master Hughie’s dashing compliment to her cooking. And Aunt Elizabeth became radiant. She said triumphantly to Eudoxie:
“Tell your little friend that even she hasn’t been able to make Posh anything but a real Englishman.... But tell her she is nice!”
And Jeanne Becquerel, delighted in her turn, had said: “Ah oui, c’est l’anglais des anglais!”... You should just see him tying his tie in the morning!
In the ensuing discussion as to the difference between an Englishman and a Frenchman finishing his matutinal toilette — it appeared that an Englishman threw his clothes on as if he were pitching fish from a boat onto the quay whereas a Frenchman walked about for a quarter of an hour before going out, with his boot in his hand studying how most effectively to lace it — Henry Martin had leisure to recover his equanimity.... He had gasped after that lucky speech.
It had let him see how much, at any rate at that moment, he desired not to give away his secret. His heart had literally seemed to be in his mouth after the words had left his lips.
... That must have been one of Hugh Monckton’s most successful days. He could not ever have been much more adored by four women at once. Not even when he had just come home from the Marne with the glorious sabre cut and half a bushel of medals!... And poor Hugh Monckton up there on the bare hillside!
It had been then that Henry Martin had gone the limit: He said to Jeanne Becquerel in French:
“You would not mind if this lady came here often?” and when she said: “Mais non, elle est adorable, ta tante....” he said:
“Then do me the favour to ask her if she could find time to help me in my correspondence with the museums. Tell her it fatigues me a great deal....”
He had thought that he might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb. If it was desired that the lady should have the pleasure of his society, let her have all of it that she could.... He added:
“But wait, ma mie, you will not be wanting the maid always. Her cooking would poison you.... Suggest that you should sometimes go to la Valette to fetch her in the car and sometimes the maid should bring her and we will take her back....”
That was the sort of speech that Jeanne Becquerel could make very prettily.
At her first words Eudoxie had opened her mouth wide with pleasure. She had interjected to him:...”
“Ca... mais ça c’est épatant de toi!... Tu es un fier gosse....” As who should say: “You’re sure a swell kid...”
He had thought so far against the frogs. But it became too laborious. They had reached an unparalleled crescendo.... It was a quarter to four. He went indoors and sat on his bed. It seemed outrageous that he should be permitted neither to think nor to sleep. And he was intensely irritated that the dead man up there should be taken for a hobo. If he was thought to be Henry Martin!
The Police Commissaire, dark and moustached, affected in private life something of the costumes of the Wild West — high boots and a near-sombrero and the dashing air.... Perhaps it was not only in private life: perhaps he never wore police uniform. Or perhaps that was his uniform. Once in a hotel corridor in Tarascon Henry Martin had come on a little boy, weeping over an open trunk and towered over by just such another figure a truculent fellow in leggings and a sombrero. He had been a sleuth. The little boy, the hotel dishwasher’s assistant, had been stealing things from the hotel guests — corsets, pieces of lace, cosmetics — presumably for his mother.
Anyhow the Commissaire usually sat, stiff in a chair, his hands on his thighs, his knees very far apart. When he wanted to speak he leaned forward, his eyes twinkling. During a lull in the conversation, which was usually monopolised by M. Lamoricière who talked Buonapartism, finance, and colonies — or by Macdonald, the secretary who poured out Communistic sentiments — the Commissaire had leaned towards Henry Martin and, with his throaty voice and eyes twinkling as if at some obscure and obscene secret, brought out:
“Dîtes donc, Monsieur, qu’est-ce que c’est que ce Pisto Brutelle?”
Eudoxie had exclaimed: “Coco!” But he had pushed on:
“Il paraît que le pauvre chemineau que vous avez aidé....” It seems that the poor hobo that Henry Martin had aided with his charity and who had suicided himself...
Three women had fallen upon him at once.... Did he think that Monsieur Asch Emma Smeez wanted to be reminded at this delightful and touching moment of family reunion.... Eudoxie and Jeanne Becquerel had thus protested almost in unison.... And even that unfortunate man’s wife who was usually completely silent had broken out with:
“Vraiment, Coco, tu te surpasses!...” He surpassed himself in tactlessness!
And Dr. Grouault had said that it would probably be better if Monsieur Coco chose another subject....
But the mischief had been done. At any rate there, to the howlings of those batrachian monsters and in the slight chill of the dawn, Henry Martin felt himself filled with disgust at the thought of that epithet. It was absolutely unwarranted. He — Henry Martin whom they called a hobo! — on the night before he had tried to kill himself had paid his hotel bill and the hire of the boat. He had even adequately tipped the chamber-maid. How could they call him a hobo? He ought to be called in French a fils de famille, a son of a good family. He could, had he chosen to give in to Father, have been heir to the Pisto-Brittle millions — they were sticky millions but still millions!... He had been a graduate of Dartmouth and a Rhodes scholar. He had been an international footballer; he had played for Wales — the Welsh units of the British Army — against England. If he had not feared that Oxford would turn him into an Englishman and fill his brainpan with curds, there was no reason why he should not have been a don of Magdalen. If, to escape from that, he had enlisted in the British Army, that did not approach him to a hobo. On the contrary it had brought him the friendship — the absolute trust — of the then Lieutenant Hugh Monckton Allard Smith who had had time and to spare, in Orderly Room, to study his character. That wasn’t a progression towards Hobo-ism. He had served too in the A.E.F. He had inherited a modest competence from his mother. He couldn’t call himself an author, yet he had written a non-fiction book that had shewn some learning, had been well received and had had a large sale. It was true that the publisher had refused to pay him a cent — but a great many people had to put up with that nowadays. It was the Crisis. Of course he had lost all his money.
He had then his record. He had even had his sex-adventures such as are proper to an American of quite good station. He hadn’t blazed even in that. He had not had Gloria Malmström for a mistress. But he had had a long affair with a Scandinavian actress. Probably his blood relationship with Hugh Monckton, which seemed to be pretty well established, had given him similar tastes. Even his impoverishment was largely due to his generosity to his first — his only, wife. She had of course, at the time of the divorce, plucked him like a spring chicken. But he need not have let her.... Was that disgraceful?... Well then....
The chorus of frogs was diminishing before the approaching dawn. Nevertheless his perturbation was increasing.... It was no doubt partly indigestion. He was spoilt by Jeanne Becquerel’s marvellous cooking. Everything she cooked was as light as a feather and as laced with flavours as a fugue of Bach’s. He had once heard a damfool American painter proclaim that a good cook never used more than one condiment to a dish. If you used more, he said, it was as if a painter mixed a lot of bright pigments together on a palette. The result was mud-colour. The damfool Puritan! These fellows were determined to deprive you of all pleasure and all health.... For the love of God presumably. They were like the early critics of Bach who said that his fugues were mere noise. They said that the ear could not distinguish more than one subject at once.... Actually the trained ear could appreciate — revel in — at least sixteen.... When Jeanne Becquerel cooked a mere egg-dish you could taste six flavours at once and her simplest soups were whole symphonies. It made your mouth water. And the water of your mouth was digestive fluid.... Now there he was, sleepless and in atrocious perturbation and dread. Because his stomach was filled with those wads of ungarnished meat and water-logged vegetable matter.... Jeanne Becquerel’s gift was not one that you would expect of a little poule. But that was French....
He would have to face it!... The chorus of the frogs had died away. There was nothing to do but to think. He was defenceless on the naked beaches of time!
He had avoided thinking out his case. For months. That he knew as well as he knew anything. Until he had deliberately gone through the events of the 15th of August — the 15th and 16th, he would never be at peace with himself. He would never be a normal man in some sort of harmony with the Universe — as it were the bon père de famille of French leases. He set his mind the job of telling his story in the barest possible way: Last 16th August, then, he had not been a hobo: he had been a down and outer. With the gradual collapse of the New York markets he had gradually become penniless. He was down there on the beach of Carquéiranne absolutely without resources. There had appeared to him to be nothing for him but suicide.... So far he could perceive nothing immoral. It was held by some to be a sin to make away with yourself. But as many virtuous people held it to be a duty not to let oneself become a burden on the world.
... He had seriously and efficiently set about the job. He had been going to step off his boat into deep water. The night before the date he had set for the event he had possessed 394 francs. He had gone to a dancing in the town below.... There is nothing wrong about that. One is at liberty to make whoopee on the night before one’s death as long as one allows a decent interval afterwards for meditation.
He had been sitting with a poule who had a cold. There had been no whoopee about that! Gloria Malmström had been appearing at the variety hall that was tacked on to the “dancing.” In the intervals she had rejoined her husband and Hugh Monckton — Hugh Monckton, a regular Prince Fortunatus, physically resembling Henry Martin. The husband, a Scandinavian poet — Henry Martin had only that afternoon learned that his given name was Hjalfdan — Hjalfdan, then, resembled a snuffling sack of jelly.
Hugh Monckton and Gloria had danced together to the sound of their own orchestra that accompanied them on their travels.... Exquisitely!... Henry Martin’s poule had danced like a sack of beans. He had wished intensely that he could have been Hugh Monckton.
There was nothing wrong about that. Every human being at one time or another has wished to be someone else. And this young fellow had so much resembled Henry Martin physically that the differences in their fortunes had seemed all the harder to stomach. All the more since it had appeared that their names were very similar.... And gradually it had come to Henry Martin that that fellow was not merely Hugh Monckton Allard Smith, President of the Monckton Car Company. He had also been assistant adjutant of the British regiment in which Henry Martin had enlisted. Because of his education Henry Martin had been taken into the Orderly Room. He had actually sat at the same table with Hugh Monckton every day and all day long for several months, the one opposite the other over an army blanket and innumerable papers called “returns.”
That was a matter that had to be carefully dwelt upon! You had to be careful now....
The coincidences Henry Martin did not care about. Every living man was subject to coincidences that might annoy him or might only give cause for momentary astonishment. The point was — to what extent had Henry Martin been justified in taking advantage of the poor fellow’s confidences?... For, if Hugh Monckton had not loaded him with kindnesses and instances of how much he trusted his namesake... well, there was no knowing where Henry Martin would then have been.... Dead, in all probability, after a more successful attempt to get out of the world....
The rest had been mere detail... a piling up of coincidences such as always occurs once coincidences start. He had gone to commit suicide: the sudden cyclone had made him try to save his life and his boat. That was mere reflex action such as might have happened to anyone. It was perhaps inglorious but it was certainly not immoral. It was apparently inspired by a universal instinct. There were ever so many cases. When he had been a boy in Springfield, Ohio, a man had waded into a pond to drown himself and another man had come along the bank with a gun. He had said: “If you don’t come out of that water I’ll blow your head off....” And the fellow had come out of the water....
But the offer of the twenty thousand-pound notes to speculate with; the codicil appointing Henry Martin executor as far as his property in France was concerned; the extravagant value of the things that made up that property.... What about all that? Was it reasonable to make Henry Martin his residuary legatee?... The jewellery alone that had been scattered about the room was worth a considerable amount — and the wads of thousand franc notes....
