Complete Works of Ford Madox Ford, page 764
He had passed months of halcyon weather... with Jeanne Becquerel floating around him on the terrace and Eudoxie paying her angel’s visits. Obviously it could not have lasted. Jealousy had to come creeping in.... And he imagined Jeanne Becquerel even now to be raging in the kitchen.... There was she, cooking at the back of the house and Eudoxie lording it on the terrace over the smiling Mediterranean.
On the face of it she had the right to fume....
Or had she?... It was a confusing affair. In any case she had fumed that morning — to such an extent that, at one point, he had thought with despair that that ménage à trois must inevitably come to an end.... He had indeed followed Jeanne Becquerel down to the garage in order to tell her that he was prepared to ask Eudoxie not to come there any more. It had cost him intense pain. But he considered that he cut rather an ignoble figure.... He had a young woman to live with him. He didn’t know exactly why he had her to live with him. It was perhaps just charity. It had been that in the beginning....
Certainly it had been that. The young woman had attempted to kill herself because she thought Hugh Monckton had gone away to commit suicide. That had been, apparently, not so much that she was in love with Hugh Monckton. It was obvious by now that she had not been his mistress.... But, both crossed in love, they had been in and out of each others’ hotel rooms for a week.... So perhaps she had turned on that gas out of sheer loneliness.... Or more probably because she had thought that if she did not possess sufficient attraction to make him want her for his mistress she might as well get out of the world.
... She had crashed, in falling senseless, over the wash basin and water and things with a noise to wake the dead....
He had naturally had to pull her out of her room — and a lousy, suffocating job it had been. And, as naturally, he had had to put her into his bed. He couldn’t leave her lying on the floor. Tax his brain how he would he could not think of anything else he could have done. He had tried — and couldn’t rouse that mouldering rat-ridden hotel....
No, he couldn’t now think of anything else he could have done.... Obviously he couldn’t have shoved her back into her room. It was full of gas.... And he himself had been all smashed up and doped to the wide — as Hugh Monckton would have said — by Dr. Grouault. He had had to get into bed beside her.... He had been up all the night before listening to Hugh Monckton’s raving over Gloria Malmström. He couldn’t have spent another night out of bed....
His intentions up to that point had been strictly honourable.... Or he hadn’t given the matter a thought.... He had fallen into the bed, dead asleep....
And next morning there had been all that crowd in their bedroom.... The waiter with the breakfast, Eudoxie come back after her girl-friend, the doctor come to change his bandages, Lamoricière to ask after his health, the Commissaire who was Eudoxie’s cousin come to ask questions about the suicide whose body had been found up in the pine-grove — pinède, the French called it.... They all had to come in in the due course of their functions and duties! It was Destiny giving him one more of the sardonic digs with which it delighted to pursue him.... For there of course had been Jeanne Becquerel sleeping beside him....
Then apparently his strictly honourable intentions had become strictly dishonourable.... At first it had been honourable not to want carnal knowledge of the young lady. Then as you might say with a click it became disgusting.... He could see that now.... Male and Female, Destiny had created them....
At the time he had not been able to see it. That was perhaps, as Eudoxie had said, because he was American. Perhaps Americans read the intentions of the Creator otherwise than the lesser breeds.... Yet probably a Creator would want creation to continue.... You might put that aside for the moment....
But there remained this.... If before the eyes of a crowd you let a young woman share your bed and board and be called Madame Asch Emma Smeez and run your villa... Coram publico as the saying was — you were in honour bound to shew her the honour that you would shew to a lady of the house.... You couldn’t let her be turned out of her own kitchen — even by her best girl friend and your aunt’s maid! That seemed a clear case in which, as the other saying has it, noblesse oblige.... Damn all sayings: it was they who made a cock-eyed world....
He would have to tell Eudoxie to keep away from there.... Then he would probably die. He couldn’t imagine living unless Eudoxie came in and out half a dozen times a day.... He had made that offer to Jeanne Becquerel in the warm dawn sunlight of a Mediterranean day. They had both been in pyjamas, against the garage wall to get all the warmth.... He had felt mournful and rather noble. He was offering that girl his life!
She had sprung at him like a wild-cat! She had called him several kinds of ignominious and heartless beings.
... Some of the things he did not even understand.... She had threatened to take her own life... with a rope, a knife, by starvation, by smashing up Monckton One, by an overdose of snow! If he dared say a word to Eudoxie!
... If he so much as showed by his expression that he even suspected any of the things that she, Jeanne Becquerel, had told him... about the school satchels, about M. de la Sainte Croix de la Bretoniere, about the American publishers — about the two bedraggled American females... who had turned out to be his late wife and Mrs. Perceval... his lost love who had turned Lesbian....
He had supposed that to be the reaction from the snow. Under snow she had miscalled Eudoxie: on the rebound she had to fly at him....
At breakfast three hours later she had been her perfectly normal, delicate-coloured self.... She had discussed how they would sit when they drove to Carcassonne.... Aunt Elizabeth had never seen Carcassonne.... She should sit beside the driver. Monckton One was covered. So those in the rear seat did not see so well.... The great thing was to see the approach to the peaked, battlemented city.... Jeanne Becquerel was to drive. That left Henry Martin and Eudoxie sitting together behind.
Henry Martin said nothing about that. They had become the perfect lady and gentleman of a show case, sitting, eating breakfast at a shining table, beneath the Japanese lilac that now had many shining green leaves, in the sun, above the Mediterranean.... A pair of green lizards, like lovers, the male as long as your arm, the female a little shorter, as brilliant green as the youngest grass, with scarlet spots, lay in the sun on top of the balustrade. They were Jeanne Becquerel’s delight. After breakfast she would feed them. But they would let no one else come near them. They held their heads erect — like the Ichthyosaums — and watched for flies....
“Naturally I shall drive Monckton One,” Jeanne Becquerel said. “Moi aussi je n’ai jamais vu Carcassonne!” That was if not a disgrace, at least a tragedy for a Frenchwoman.... Housemaid Mary was to follow with the luggage in a car Aunt Elizabeth hired when she went out calling. She could go hardly anywhere without Mary who knew exactly how many drops to give her if her heart fluttered. According to the whiteness of Aunt Elizabeth she gave seven, eleven or eighteen drops.... They agreed that it must be terrible to have to live like that.... Yet Aunt Elizabeth was always perfectly composed.... With care she might live for years. She appeared to love life....
Jeanne Becquerel had gone to fetch her. Afterwards she would do her marketing. It was not good to be too early in the market, prices always fell as the day went on, the peasants fearing not to sell their goods.
Aunt Elizabeth had turned up with the disagreeable Macdonald and the papers. They were both extremely angry with Mr. Hoover; the President of the United States had made a speech against State Relief. Another paragraph in the papers reported that bands of children of the unemployed were wandering, homeless, over the United States.... The whole number of the separate bands amounted to 270,000.... Macdonald had said: “You talk about the homeless children of the early days of the Soviet Republic!...” He wanted someone to kill Mr. Hoover. Aunt Elizabeth said that that would only cause reaction and Macdonald said that of course she looked at things from the Capitalist point of view.... It appeared that she had sent a thousand pounds to the children’s relief fund. This had enraged Macdonald. He said that charity was the Capitalist’s weapon against the proletariat. The only thing was to let more and more hundreds of thousands of children starve till the outraged proletariat rose and watered the fields of America with the blood of the oppressors.
Henry Martin got out of his chair and led the two of them to the strong room. This was a room with solid concrete walls, iron bars that were electrified, and an iron door that was behind Henry Martin’s bed-head. During the day the bed was removed from the door. It ran easily on casters. Within the room the larger objects, like the Pheidias Venus, were sheeted up or in their cases. The more precious small objects were contained in a green safe along with the more valuable of Jeanne Becquerel’s jewels. Her Eastern dresses were hung round the walls so that the room appeared to be tapestried irregularly with oriental stuffs. The larger pieces of metal set with stones were heaped on cushions under the windows. That was Jeanne Becquerel’s wish. She passed hours sitting on the tiled floor, letting jewels slip through her fingers and arranging larger pieces in the patterns which she declared to satisfy her soul.
Amongst all these things with its back to the light stood Henry Martin’s roll-topped American office-desk with, beside it, a leather armchair for him and a revolving office-chair for the disagreeable Macdonald. A smaller safe on an iron shelf contained medicines and Eudoxie’s heavy, white-papered rolls. The place had been built by a former owner, a retired naval captain. He was said to have used it for the drying of his table grapes. If that was so the enormously thick walls of Roman concrete, so hard that it would turn most safe-breakers’ tools, must have been meant to preserve an even temperature for the grapes. Thus by letting a fairly strong electric current pass through the iron bars of the window so that, if anyone tried to file them, a short circuit attended with a great deal of noise would be caused whilst the person with the file would get a nasty shock, Henry Martin could feel that those treasures were fairly safe. The neighbourhood was said to swarm with Italian and Algerian chicken-thieves. Food, fruit, clothes or garden tools, if you left them on the terrace, except just under the open windows of the room where Henry Martin slept, as like as not disappeared by the morning. Coco, the Commissaire, would say that there was beginning to be a great deal of unemployment and poverty amongst the alien and half-breed population in the town below. He didn’t suppose Henry Martin or Jeanne Becquerel would want to pursue with vindictiveness poor devils who were only trying to provide for their hungry families and whom they had tempted by their own carelessness. He was ready to undertake to lay by the heels any big thief of the sort who would want to steal a Second Folio, a Cezanne, or a Pheidias Venus.... And before they could steal them too! That sort of gentry was all marked. They could trust him!
So Henry Martin had introduced his Aunt and the more than ever disagreeable Macdonald into the strong room and had left them to go through the correspondence with English Museums by themselves. By that time he could hardly keep his eyes open....
He had been awakened by the arrival of Jeanne Becquerel with those two men... and now he was more than worried. He could not account for Eudoxie’s having, apparently humorously, refrained from looking at him — any more than he could for the long, slightly sardonic stare she had given him. It was possible that she did not want to appear too intimate with him before those two. Commercial men are apt to think rather contemptuously of the business keenness of a man who makes love to his amanuenses. Or it might be because, like him, she wished Jeanne Becquerel to have all the honours of the house. Or she might be watching her step because Jeanne Becquerel was possibly spying on them through the curtains of the guest room.... That she had suddenly become indifferent to him he wasn’t proposing to believe. She shewed too fierce a determination to look after not only his interests but his safety from discovery.... It amazed him to see how she must have studied every turn of the intricate and tricky game that his life was. She must have studied it as professionals study the game of chess....
And she was insupportably adorable. She sat there, swinging her foot and swaying her body with the controlled certainty of the athlete that she was, turning from one man to the other her animated and condescending face and it was as if not only did she watch every turn of their slow minds with all the intentness of a Greek wrestler but she could have taken both of them at once and physically have knocked their heads together. It was perhaps her physical litheness that was the most astonishing.... She suddenly addressed him directly.
“Don’t you think,” she asked, “that at this point we’d better get Mrs. Freiligrath to take part in this conference?...”
He answered that, to tell the truth, he had not been attending.... He didn’t see why he shouldn’t let these men know how completely he was prepared to leave the management of his affairs to her. She said:
“These gentlemen were suggesting that, since the expenses of their scheme are likely to be very considerable...”
“We’ve been explaining to Mademoiselle,” Mr. Crape interrupted gently, “that we propose to end the picture with a series of close-ups showing Monckton cars in some of the remotest parts of the globe....”
“Speeding,” Mr. Old-Smith interrupted him in turn, “from Greenland’s icy mountains at dawn to sunset over India’s coral strands... with of course oodles of heathens whose untutored minds...”
“You would,” Henry Martin said, astonishingly to himself, “use Miss Becquerel — my other secretary for — Far Eastern scenes — amongst the palm groves here....”
Mr. Old-Smith said that Mahdamahsell here had told them that already. It appeared that the other lady had gorgeous robes and gadgets and would dance Siamese fashion better than a native....
Euxodie went on gravely to Mr. Crape:
“It seems to me to be pretty good publicity.” She added: “I don’t suppose Mr. Smith would be prepared to guarantee on his own any large expenditure by Monckton’s.” Mrs.
Freiligrath on the other hand had almost as large holdings in Monckton’s as Mr. Smith....
Henry Martin said:
“Oh, larger.... You’d better see her.... I don’t suppose she’d pledge Monckton’s either.... But she’s much more in touch with Eustace Monckton than I.... She could probably tell you if you could hope....”
He pulled himself out of his low chair.... In her armchair in the strong room with her face to the window Mrs. Freiligrath was reading the catalogue — apparently Macdonald was checking another copy at the roll-top desk....
Henry Martin said through the window that gave out on the terrace:
“Eudoxie’s here. She says it would be as well...” Macdonald swung round on his chair....
“Eudoxie’s there!” he exclaimed. He sprang up.
Henry Martin continued telling Aunt Elizabeth that he’d be glad if she’d come out. She said:
“You’re aware the British Museum refuses... I didn’t think it worth while waking you....”
Macdonald emerged hastily from the french window of the bedroom. He exclaimed from the step:
“Have you heard from Trig?... Is he coming here?...” presumably to Eudoxie!
Henry Martin said that would make it all the better for the Smithville Museum. They would get the Hugh Monckton bequest....
She exclaimed:
“Oh, surely not ‘bequest’... Donation...” and she in turn disappeared behind the iron inner door.
Macdonald was saying: “Then it’s a damn, filthy shame.... I suppose you’ve arranged it with your foul cousin....”
Eudoxie was laughing at him. She said:
“Don’t be a disagreeable grumph.... Of course the French don’t want him... and he doesn’t want to come here....”
Macdonald said furiously:
“It’s infamous.... I could name another dozen dirty hoboes that ought to be deported... and that not a hundred miles from here....” He rushed away down the terrace.... Eudoxie descended from the balustrade. She said amiably as she passed Mr. Crape:
“He’s got a friend in England who’s just come out of prison and the police won’t let him come into France.... They won’t have Communists who’ve been in prison.... Particularly not in sea-ports....”
She met Mrs. Freiligrath at the door. Henry Martin was making motions to introduce his aunt to the two men. Eudoxie said to her:
“Mr. Crape has elaborated his scheme a good deal since the night before last.... I told you Mr. Smith wouldn’t deal with it....”
Aunt Elizabeth said:
“I’ve already cabled Eustace in code as I told Mr. Old-Smith I would.... And followed it up with an aeroplane letter.”
That was the way these women played with him.
PART FOUR
CHAPTER ONE
MARY’S VOICE SAID THE INEVITABLE WORDS:
“Your tea, sir.” She had already thrown back the mosquito frames against the heavy damask curtains.... Innumerable bees were buzzing in the eucalyptus blossoms outside the windows. A flight of steel engraved portraits of Moncktons, Allards and Smiths — all men — went up the wall above the heavy, marble-topped wash-stand. A tallboy with chased brass handles and keyplates stood between the curtains of the two guillotine-casemented windows. The bed was a tall four-poster with a canopy of purple silk. A large, slightly stained coloured print showing horsemen in scarlet coats, on horseback with attendant hounds before a white inn was on the wall at Henry Martin’s left hand, shut in by the posts of the bed and the tester....
Mary was removing white garments from the red velvet of a great carved mahogany armchair under the right window. She said:
“Your bath’s running in, sir...
The chair and the immense wash-stand were from Allard Old Manor: the tallboy from Monckton-Warster: the heavy carpet that hid the beautiful red tiles and the heavy curtains as well as the steel engravings, from Ebury Street.... You could trust Aunt Elizabeth to treasure up the least important family portrait. In the bed in which he lay a Monckton great grandmother had actually been born. It had come from the Monckton-Warster attics.... If she could, Aunt Elizabeth would have cut down the great gumtree in front of the window and would have replaced it with a Shropshire cedar. Mary said:
