Complete Works of Ford Madox Ford, page 763
Eudoxie was carrying a silver tray with a cocktail shaker to the table beyond the Japanese lilac....
She settled herself on the balustrade beside Mr. Crape. Henry Martin explained that he wished her to know the terms of Mr. Old-Smith’s offer and Mr. Old-Smith again got going.
His immediate anxiety was as to the subject of the preface that Mr. Smith was to write for the book of H. M. A. Smith.
“It’s understood,” he began, “that the general lines of your preface are to be those of your remarkable prophecy in Indianapolis....” He turned upon Eudoxie.... “Mahdamahzell,” he addressed her, “four years ago, in Indianapolis, Mr. Smith...”
She leaned forward to ask:
“This Mr. Smith, here?”
Mr. Old-Smith said emphatically:
“This very Mr. Smith, here.... Mr. Smith of Moncktons, Ltd.”
Eudoxie leaned back and breathed deeply. In the house, she had attended to the scarlet of her cheeks and that of her lips, which were like a gash. As the days were already drenched with sun she was wearing one of the vast palmetto hats she affected. She clasped her white, scarlet-nailed fingers over her dark-blue, pyjama’d right knee and avoided looking at Henry Martin.... She had become a person for the glutinous deference of Mr. Old-Smith and he addressed the rest of his remarks solely to her.
It appeared that in Indianapolis four years before Hugh Monckton had prophesied for Mr. Old-Smith a financial collapse of Wall Street. It bringing in its train the financial and industrial ruin of most of the countries of Europe and other Continents. He had based his prediction on the fact that at that time the United States had mopped up nearly all the gold of the world. You cannot, Hugh Monckton had apparently said, mop up the world’s gold supply and not come to ruin. The Athens of Pericles had done that. She had had a few boom years and disappeared as a world power. Then Rome had monopolised the world’s currency supply — to be sacked by the Huns: then Byzantium — to be sacked by the Saracens. It had then been the turn of Spain, then of England... Very soon it would be that of the United States.... History always repeated itself because having always to deal with the same materials it could do nothing else. One nation or the other, for one reason or the other, obtained a gold monopoly, knew a few years of boom and exaggerated prosperity.... Then the collapse!... In the present instance, he had shocked Mr. Old-Smith at the time, by saying, the collapse of the United States would be accentuated because it synchronised with the collapse of the Industrial system all the world over.... That was coming because the proletariat were arriving rapidly at a stage of class-consciousness that would make them refuse to go on working in conditions that they considered to have become insupportable.... Mr. Old-Smith said that these opinions had shocked him at the time. But they came from the mouth of a captain of industry — a great employer of labour with singular opportunities for judging the temper of men.... It was as if a Napoleon should predict his own end....
Henry Martin went away into considering Hugh Monckton making these prophecies. Hugh Monckton passed for being the tongue-tied Englishman.... But Henry Martin could remember at least a couple of occasions in the Cardiff Orderly Room when Hugh Monckton’s tongue had come remarkably untied when speaking to him, Henry Martin — as ex-Rhodes Scholar rather than Orderly Room lance-corporal. Speaking at first slowly and then falling into a rapid and gloomy speech that was quite without colloquialism, he had let himself go. On each occasion the subject had been the conditions of peace and what would happen if peace were dictated by the men then in power in England, France and the United States. The United States had not then come into the struggle but he said that, whether she did or didn’t, at the end of the war her financial strangle-hold would be so strong that she could well be the most unanswerable dictator of the lot.... And what then?...
Until then Henry Martin had not remembered anything more than just the fact that the young officer had uttered forebodings of a world-wide disaster.... Now one thing came back to him with the startling vividness of a light seen at the end of a tunnel. It had struck him as an American at the time. Then he had forgotten it.... Hugh Monckton had said that there was one thing that England could do against the United States.... America by her advances as a neutral would find herself at the end of the War in possession of all the gold in the world.... As a remedy against that... the only remedy!... Great Britain could denounce gold as a medium of exchange....
That forecast had not yet come true. Of course, Mr. Krieger alleged, there was a possibility of England’s going off the gold-standard. That would be much the same thing.... At any rate his own recollections and now Mr. Old-Smith’s account of that four-year-old Indianapolis conversation proved that Hugh Monckton had really thought about public matters.... Pretty consistently and for a long time.
He was not merely an inarticulate and monied oaf!
It was thus all the more pitiful that Henry Martin should have got him considered as a vulgar and unscrupulous rigger of markets. What lay up there in the raw field that was the new burying ground of le Revest les Eaux.... What lay up there surveying the distant Mediterranean from beneath a chunk of rock, lettered: “Ci gît H. M. A. S., Un Etranger”... and “Miserere mei, Domine, quia multum amavi”... “Have mercy on me, oh Lord, for I have loved much....” These decaying bones and shrouds had once been a man of character and intelligence who might have deserved well of his kind... And circumstances, with Henry Martin at their heart, gave him now the aspect of a swindler whose disingenuousness had made him famous half the world over!... Or in the alternative, as a niggard who had let his next of kin kill himself for the want of a little money!... One or the other!
There was no getting away from the fact that that was in Old-Smith’s mind.... And no doubt in the other fellow’s.... And gradually it would get into the minds of half the world!... Hugh Monckton in cahoots with Henry Martin Aluin Smith and with the French police, who were notoriously venal, had got hold of a corpse as to whom for a day or two they had pretended that it was the remains of a suicided Hugh Monckton.... Half a day would have been sufficient for the news of the suicide of the President of Moncktons Limited to spread, and would be sufficient to knock for an hour or two the bottom out of Moncktons’ stock.... In that hour or two Hugh Monckton and his fellow conspirator had made a fortune....
If that hadn’t been the case, Hugh Monckton — already a multimillionaire, had let his next of kin commit suicide for the want of a few cents!... And then had taken advantage of the confusion of names to make further millions!... The one alternative was as discreditable as the other....
It made Henry Martin all the more anxious to write that book. In it he would put clearly and concisely the views that Hugh Monckton had expressed — and by attributing that part of the book to Hugh Monckton he could make that poor fellow, at least to that extent, live again.
He felt nervous.... Eudoxie with animation and good nature was negotiating terms with Mr. Old-Smith.... She had not of course any knowledge of the business side of publishing. But her native shrewdness and knowledge of other business made her apparently see that, by resisting points as to which Old-Smith was particularly anxious, the price he proposed to pay would always be a little pushed up.... She did that....
Henry Martin had not been listening to them at all.... Now they appeared to be discussing the terms of serial rights — the amounts to be paid by magazines for publishing parts of the book. Mr. Old-Smith considered that if his firm acted as agents in these matters they ought to have 25% of the proceeds. Eudoxie had never heard of an agent receiving more than ten....
Henry Martin suddenly interrupted:
“I must make a stipulation, Mr. Old-Smith.”
Mr. Old-Smith suddenly removed his straw hat and with a green silk handkerchief mopped his cropped silver head and brows.
“If it’s about serial rights...” he said despairingly....
Henry Martin said it was about the Preface.... The nature of the Preface! He stipulated that, that afternoon, Mr. Old-Smith should dictate to Eudoxie all that he remembered of the Indianapolis conversation.... He couldn’t be expected, at that length of time, to remember minutely a conversation that had taken place during a dinner at which, admittedly, a good deal of good wine had been consumed. He didn’t suppose his views had changed. Why should they have? His prophecy as to the disasters that befall nations who mop up too much gold had been too jolly well backed up by the events.... There were the breadlines, stretching in New York from West Eleventh to beyond West Fourteenth to prove it.... But he wanted that statement from Mr. Old-Smith. If he o k.’d it the book could go through.
Mr. Old-Smith began to speak.... Henry Martin restrained him again.
It was to be understood, he said, that the book was to consist of that long preface signed by himself and then the body of the book as left by H. M. A. Smith — knocked together and with footnotes by himself.... As to all matters relating to business, agency, or publicity, Mr. Old-Smith was to come to terms with Eudoxie, to accept her signature, and to make all payments to her....
Eudoxie suddenly jumped on the stone balustrade. She exclaimed.
“Oh, Asch Emma....” and then... “That will be o k., Mr. Smith!”
Mr. Old-Smith shied a little.
He said he understood that the tremendous nature of Mr. Smith’s business preoccupations would prevent his wanting to study the details of so small an affair.... But Mr. Smith must understand that the laying out of the large sum that young lady insisted on was not a small matter to the firm of Old-Smith Brothers....
Henry Martin said:
“I’ll initial the lady’s signature and the sheets of the agreement.... It’s take it or jolly well leave it, Mr. Old-Smith... There are other firms...
Mr. Old-Smith dropped his green silk handkerchief. When he had recovered it he sat blinking at Henry Martin and getting back his breath.
Mr. Crape said:
“Of course if Mr. Smith initials the lady’s signature it’s as good as if he signed himself.” He added that, as far as he was concerned — and his outlay would obviously be considerably greater than that of Old-Smith Brothers, he would be perfectly contented with that kind of agreement. He paused a moment and then suggested that if he was to get his proposal settled before lunch it was about time that Mr. Old-Smith closed with the lady’s terms. He, Mr. Crape, couldn’t for the life of him see what his old friend was boggling about.
Henry Martin had felt a determination to see Eudoxie’s eyes. He asked her directly if she had seen H. M. A. Smith’s manuscript. She contemplated for a moment her swinging foot.... The last time they had talked about the ms. he had discouraged her getting it from the police. But no doubt she had done so.
She still looked at her foot.
“It’s delightful,” she said. She looked, smiling with enthusiasm, at Mr. Old-Smith. “You’ve no idea how delightful it is,” she said.... “It’s the sort of book that only Henry Martin could write...
Mr. Old-Smith asked:
“Henry Martin?... Oh, H. M. A. Smith!...” He added: “You knew him then....” She pointed her right index finger at the gout of red on her engagement finger.
“He gave me this ring!” she said...” and it’s a no end delightful sort of book.” She went on. “You could not call him a surely to God writer.... Though what he might have become!...” But the book was full of his unagitated and charming personality.... And his odd erudition.... That was no doubt the trace of the Rhodes Scholar.... Because of course Rhodes Scholars from Dartmouth differed from the sort of goofy illiterates that went to Oxford from states like Alabama.... An extraordinarily calm and good humoured book for a man who was watching his last penny and determined on suicide.... It was all about crises....
Mr. Old-Smith who apparently thought slowly, now said:
“But I thought the ms. was in the hands of the French... the local... police!”
She exclaimed gaily:
“You forget that the commissaire de police is my first cousin.... We slept in the same cradle.... Though of course he used it ten years before I did....” The book, he must understand, wasn’t merely about this crisis.... But about all the crises that history records.... And not from the economic but from the human side.... You heard how Dukes behaved when they were broke in the Athens of after Pericles... and widows who had to live on the assignats of the French Revolution.... And of course old maids and magnates and gangsters and cophaws today.... “In fact,” she concluded, “with this Mr. Smith’s preface about gold it will make the perfect, crisis, bedside book.”
Mr. Old-Smith said:
“What I don’t understand is about these French police.... Of course I know the book’s all right.... We will settle the details this afternoon.... But here’s a police that keeps a lending library for the books of presumed suicides... and sends their passports to be dry-cleaned....”
“That’s only,” Eudoxie explained brightly, “when it’s all in the family.... You see Henry Martin and Hugh Monckton were born in the same year and had the same great grandfather.... And the commissaire and I are first cousins. I slept in his cradle when I was eleven months old because poor Mother brought me here on a visit from New York.....She died next year...
She turned upon Mr. Crape....
It was his turn for the electric chair, she said: They would hear his proposition....
Mr. Crape said that his proposition concerned Moncktons Ltd.... It also involved the book they had been talking about — in its ramifications....
Eudoxie said:
“As I had the honour to tell you down in the town, we are not any longer interested in Moncktons Ltd.... Except of course you might say, nepotically, as having had the same great grandfather.”... That was to say that Mr. Eustace Monckton who now managed the business alone had also the same great grandfather — but of course on the mother’s side.
Mr. Crape said that his project was an unusual one. He proposed to make, as soon as the book had earned a certain publicity, a film of the Monckton works.... That is to say that he proposed to have the film ready at the date of the publication of the book.... He proposed to make the film run as you might say from pig-iron to paradises.... The first picture would show assembled all the raw metal that went into the making of a Monckton car.... Steel, rubber, nickel, alloys, fine woods, and so on.... He trusted that this exposition was not overtiring for Mr. Smith.... Then, to give an idea of the vast distances these products came from, they would have close-ups of natives tapping rubber trees in the forests of Para, Spaniards getting out pig-iron, natives toiling in copper mines at the Cape or in Montana; the molten pig-iron pouring into the sand-troughs.... Say at Middlesborough.... A fine effect you could get out of that.... All that would give an idea of the vast number of workers that were benefited by the manufacture of automobiles.... Then you would show the thousands of workers pouring out of the Smith ville works: some close-ups again of the more decorative parts of the works themselves, showing the consideration that the family had always shown for the mental development of their employees... the famous reading-room, the debating hall, the schools, swimming pools, sport grounds... and then the directorial offices to symbolise the brains that made all these things possible....
Mr. Crape’s not disagreeable voice interrupted its lecture to say:
“I suppose it would be possible to have a close-up of the director’s room showing Mr. Smith thinking out a new gadget and then giving directions to Mr. Eustace Monckton....”
Henry Martin stirred nervously in his chair.... Eudoxie laughed:
“I do not suppose,” she said, “that Mr. Smith will ever see Smithville again or ever think out anything else but his writing.... You do not seem to have at all grasped his position....”
Mr. Crape said amiably:
“That will be all right.... We could shew Mr. Smith thinking, here on the Mediterranean.... That would make a pretty relief from the industrial scenes.... Mr. Smith is of a notoriously retiring disposition.... But I do not see that he could object to be shewn as just thinking... and possibly dictating to yourself.... Or Mlle. Jeanne!... You’re both charming enough and photogenic enough to make that picture a relief from anything... and it’s really essential to the film.... You could hardly expect to put on the play of the Master Builder and omit Bygmester Solness....”
Eudoxie had at that to look at Henry Martin — steadily and for a long time.... But her eyes did no more than question him. They conveyed to him no information as to the state of her feeling towards himself.... He made a slight gesture of acquiescence.... He did not see why he should not act the part of Hugh Monckton taking thought for the benefit of mankind. After all, the poor fellow had vastly extended a great business which did give employment to a great number of men in times that were bitterly hard.... Why should his poor shade not have that little sprig of rosemary?... For remembrance!
Eudoxie said at once:
“I don’t see that that couldn’t be arranged.... Only not on this terrace.... You don’t want it torn stone from stone by souvenir hunters....” She added that her aunt up the hill had a perfectly beautiful terrace.... One could shoot it there.... Or there were hundreds of terraces on the Mediterranean.... She added with a little smile of malice: “Why not have Gloria Malmström.... For the secretary!... I’m not Mr. Smith’s secretary. I’m his private business manager....”
Mr. Crape said speculatively:
“I don’t see why we shouldn’t have Miss Malmström.... If it’s desired and she does not cost too much...
A sudden cloud came over Eudoxie’s face. She exclaimed quickly...
“No, no.... She’d want a million... and Jeanne Becquerel is ten times more beautiful... and fresher....”
Mr. Crape resumed his analysis of his film.
It had occurred to Henry Martin that, if Mr. Crape did not get his film, Mr. Old-Smith might not so much want the book.... And he found that he was desperately anxious to write that — perhaps because it might be another rope to bind Eudoxie to him. He could not, now, tell how he stood with her and he felt that he was in for a terrible fit of nerves.... It was as if summer had come to an end!
