Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (321 page)

Robert Grimshaw was walking nervously up and down, striking the side of his trousers with his ebony stick.

“Oh,” she said with a sudden gibe, “I know what’s the matter with you; you’re feeling remorse. You’re upset because you suspected Dudley of being a mean hound. I know you, Robert Grimshaw. You were jealous of him; you were madly jealous of him. You married him to that little pink parroquet and then you got jealous of him. You
wanted
to believe that he was mean and deceitful. You wanted to believe that he was going to turn out a bad hat. You wanted to believe it so that you could take your Pauline off his hands again, and now you’re feeling remorse because you suspected him. You knew in your heart that he was honest and simple and pure, but your jealousy turned you mad; I know you, Robert Grimshaw. Well, go on feeling remorse. Get all you can of it. I tell you this: I got Dudley Leicester into my hands and 1 did what I wanted with him, and nothing happened to shock him except when the telephone bell rang and someone recognized his voice. I guess that was shock enough for him. I thought he was in for something. I could tell it by the look of his eyes, but that only proves the thorough good sort he was. It wasn’t till then that he understood what he’d been up to. Then he was knocked flat.”

“There wasn’t anything else at all?” Robert Grimshaw said. He had pulled himself together and stood with his stick behind his back, leaning upon it a little. “Yes I admit I misjudged Dudley; but it’s a queer sort of world. You’re quite sure there wasn’t anything else?”

“What more do you want?” she asked. “Could a chap like that have had anything more beastly happen to him? Besides, it’s indicated in the form you say his madness takes. He’s always asking who it was who rung us up. Doesn’t it prove that that’s what hit his brain? No, he wasn’t thrown out of a cab. He didn’t stumble. My husband didn’t turn up, no. Nothing of the sort. He was just knocked plumb-centre by that chap saying: ‘Isn’t that Dudley Leicester speaking?’”

Robert Grimshaw’s face was the hue of wood-ash.

“My dear Etta,” he said with his gentle collectiveness. “It’s perfectly obvious that you aren’t responsible for Dudley’s collapse. It was the meddling fool at the other end of the telephone.”

“It was rather meddlesome when you come to think of it, but then perhaps he didn’t know there was anything wrong in Dudley’s being where he was.”

“Perhaps he didn’t,” Robert Grimshaw said. “Let’s go and have lunch.”

“Oh, I don’t want any lunch,” she said. “Take me home.”

She supported herself on his arm as they walked up the long avenue, for her footsteps were not very steady.

PART IV
.

CHAPTER I
.

“OH no,” the specialist said, “I don’t see what purpose it would serve, your telling his wife exactly what happened. I prefer, indeed, that you should not. No doubt it was the shock of hearing the voice on the telephone that actually induced the state of mind. But to know the fact doesn’t help us — it doesn’t help us towards the cure. All we can do is to wait. His chance is that he’s not such a very young man. If it had happened ten years ago there wouldn’t have been any chance for him at all; but the brain-fibre — what the Germans call the
Hirnstoff —
is tougher now. Anyhow, we can’t say.”

Sir William Wells, an unreasonably lugubrious man of fifty, having in his eyes the look of a man doomed beyond hope, with ruffled grey hair, an untidy grey beard, very dark eyebrows, a whitish complexion, in which tints of blue predominated, except that on his cheek-bones were patches of red so bright that he had the appearance of having rouged — with an air, in fact, of having had all his hair ruffled up the wrong way, and of remaining still a personage of importance — Sir William Wells repeated:

“All we can do is to wait.”

“Don’t you think,” Robert Grimshaw said — they were in the great man’s first-class consulting-room — a tall place, very gay, with white walls, bright plaster-worked ceiling, chairs with seats and backs of scarlet leather, and numerous cabinets inlaid with green and yellow wood, very shiny and new, and yet conveying a sinister suspicion that they contained not rose-leaves, silks, or bibelots, but instruments, diagrams, and disinfectants—”don’t you think,” Robert Grimshaw said, “that, since his mania, if it is a mania, is so much along the lines of his ordinary character, that is an indication that his particular state is not so very serious?”

“My dear sir,” the specialist answered, “what we’ve got to do is to establish whether there is or isn’t a lesion in the brain. His character’s nothing to do with it.”

“Of course we’re in your hands,” Grimshaw answered, “but I should have thought that a man who’s been abnormal all his life...”

“My dear sir,” Sir William repeated, shaking his glasses as if minatorily at Grimshaw’s nose, “have you any profession? I suppose not. But if you had a profession you would know how utterly impossible the suggestions of laymen are to the professional. People come to me for this sort of thing because I have had thousands — literally, thousands — of similar cases. It’s no good my considering individual eccentricities; my business is to put my finger on the spot.”

“Then, what do you propose to do?” Grimshaw said.

“Nothing,” the specialist answered. “For the present, absolutely nothing.”

“But don’t you think a change...” Grimshaw suggested.

Having entirely redecorated his house from top to bottom in order to indicate that he was more prosperous than Dr. Gegg of No. 161, Sir William, who was heavily indebted to Jews, was upon the turning-point between bankruptcy and possible salvation.

“No,” he said determinedly, so that he seemed to bay like a dog from his chest, “certainly not. If I am to cure him, I must have him under my own close personal attention. There’s nothing to be done but to wait.”

He rose upon the points of his toes, and then brought his heels sharply down upon the floor.

“You understand, we know nothing yet. Your friend doesn’t speak a word. He’s no doubt aware that he’s watched. He has a companion whom I have personally instructed, and who will report to me. Get him to take as much exercise as he can. Keep him fairly quiet, but have him in the room when cheerful people are about. I will drop in at every moment of the day that I can spare.”

He paused to glare at Robert Grimshaw.

“I’m a very busy man, but I’ll pay special attention to your friend’s case. I will try to be always in and out of Mr. Leicester’s house. More I can’t do.”

Backed up as he was by Katya Lascarides’ suggestion that Sir William was a good man, Grimshaw felt an intense satisfaction — even a gratitude — to Sir William; and whilst he slipped his five-pound note carefully wrapped round five shillings under the specialist’s paper-weight, which was made of one huge aqua-marine, he uttered a formal speech of thanks.

“Mind,” Sir William shouted at him as he reached the door, “I don’t promise you a cure. I’m not one of those quacks. But you know my position, and you know my reputation. I work from ascertained facts, not from theories. If it were possible to communicate with your friend — if he’d speak, or if it were possible to manipulate him — we might get at something. If, for instance, we could get him to stand with his heels together, his hands at his sides, and his eyes shut; but we can’t get him to speak, and he doesn’t listen when he’s spoken to. There’s nothing to do but wait until he does.”

A period of strain, enhanced by the continual droppings in of Sir William Wells, ensued for the house in Curzon Street, and nothing happened, save that they all became personally acquainted with Sir William’s idiosyncrasies. They discovered that he had a singular prejudice against the eating of fish; that he was exceedingly insolent to the servants; that he read the
Daily Telegraph
; that he liked the singing of Scotch comedians, and considered all ballet-dancers to be physically abnormal. They also had the perpetual company of a gentle and black-haired youth called Held. This young man, with a singular slimness and taciturnity, had been put in by Sir William as if he were a bailiff in possession of Dudley Leicester. Dudley Leicester never spoke, the young man hardly ever; but he was exceedingly nice in his table manners, and eventually Pauline made the discovery at dinner that he very much disliked cats, and was a Christian Scientist. And with these additions the household continued its way.

To Robert Grimshaw the bright spot in this tenebrous affair was the inflexible tranquillity of Pauline Leicester. Looking back upon it afterwards he seemed to see her upon the background of his own terrible pain — to see her as a golden and vibrating spot of light. She spoke about the weather, about some improvements that were being made in the village of Icking, about the forthcoming General Election, about her clothes. She went everywhere that she could go without her husband. She went to “at homes,” to private views, she was “at home.” She had Dudley himself in her drawing-room where in the farther corners young Mr. Held and Ellida Langham held animated conversations so close to his passive form that it might appear that, monosyllabic as he always was, he was at least attentive to the conversation. She drove regularly in the Park with Dudley beside her, and most often with Robert Grimshaw sitting opposite them; but she never mentioned her husband’s condition to Grimshaw, and her face wore always its little, tender smile. He was aware that in her there was a certain determination, almost a fierceness. It wasn’t that in her deep black her face was more pallid, or that her features hardened. It wasn’t that she chattered less. Her little tongue was going perpetually, with its infantile gaiety, if her eyes were for ever on the watch.

There was, moreover, a feeling of a General Election in the air — of that General Election in which Dudley, as a foregone conclusion, was to replace the member sitting for his division of the county; and one afternoon Robert Grimshaw came in to one of Pauline’s “at homes.” The little encampment round Dudley Leicester had its place usually in the small, back drawing-room which Dudley’s great chair and Ellida’s enormous hat and Mr. Held’s slim figure almost contrived to fill. Dudley sprawled back, his complexion perfectly clear, his eyes gazing abstractedly before him, perfectly normal, perfectly healthy, on show for anyone who chose to look at him; and Ellida and Mr. Held joined in an unceasing and animated discussion on Christian Science. Robert Grimshaw, having addressed a word or two to Madame de Bogota, and having nodded to Mr. Balestier, who sat for a Midland county, and having shaken hands with Mrs. Jimtort, the wife of a Recorder of a south-western city, was moving slowly up to close in the little group in the background. And suddenly, with an extraordinary running step, Dudley Leicester shot past him straight at the member for the Midland county. He had brought out the words: “Are you the man...” when already shooting, as it were sideways, between the people, Mr. Held had very lightly touched his wrist.

“You know,” he said, “that you’re
not
to talk politics this afternoon. We’re all tired out.”

Leicester passed his hand lightly down his face, and, turning slowly, went back to his armchair.

Mr. Balestier opened his eyes rather wide; he was a stoutish, clean-shaven man of forty- five with a rather disagreeable expression, who, probably because he was interested in South American railways, went about everywhere with the Senhora de Bogota.

“Oh, I say,” he ejaculated to Pauline, “you have got them under your thumb, if it’s you who insists they’re not to talk politics. It seems to act like a military command.”

And Pauline stifled a yawn with her tiny hand.

“Well, it’s perfectly true what Dudley’s secretary says. We are all nearly worn out, so you’ll have to excuse my yawning,” Grimshaw heard her say from behind his back. “And Dudley hasn’t been really well since he had the ‘flu.’”

“Oh, you’re altogether too nervous,” Mr. Balestier’s fat voice came. “Dudley’s absolutely certain of his seat, and as for not well, why, he’s a picture of ox-like health. Just look at him!”

“But he’s so terribly thorough,” Pauline answered. “He’s much too wrapped up in this work. Why, he thinks about nothing else all day and all night. If you watch him you’ll see he hardly ever speaks. He’s thinking, I wouldn’t mind betting, about how to win the heart of a man called” Down,” with red whiskers, who’s an Antipedobaptist and not our tenant, and supposed to be able to influence thirty Nonconformists’ votes. You just keep your eye on Dudley.”

“Oh, I’ll take your word for his industry,” Mr. Balestier said. “But I’ve got something much better worth keeping my eyes on.”

“Is that meant for you or me, Madame de Bogota?” Pauline said. “Or possibly it’s you, Mrs. Jimtort!”

“As a matter of fact,” Mr. Balestier said, “I was thinking of Grimshaw’s dog. I feel convinced he’ll have a piece out of my leg, one of these days.”

Robert Grimshaw meanwhile was supporting himself with one hand on the blue curtains that decorated the archway between the two rooms. He was positively supporting himself; the sudden shock of Leicester’s shooting past him had left him weak and trembling. And suddenly he said:

“What’s the good?”

Ellida — for even Ellida had not yet recovered from the panic of Dudley’s swift evasion — took with avidity this opening for a recommencement of one of her eternal and animated conversations with Mr. Held.

“What’s the good of exposing these impostures?” she said. Why, all the good in the world. Think of all the unfortunate people that are taken in....”

And so she talked on until Mr. Held, the name of Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy upon his lips, plunged again into the fray.

But Robert Grimshaw was not asking what was the good of Christian Science. He had turned his back upon the front room. Nevertheless, every word that Pauline uttered had at once its hearing, its meaning, and its painful under-meaning in his ears. And when he had said, “What’s the good?” it had been merely the question of what was the good of Pauline’s going on with these terrible vigilances, this heart-breaking pretence. And through his dreadfully tired mind there went — and the vision carried with it a suggestion of sleep, of deep restfulness — the vision of the logical sequence of events. If they let Dudley Leicester down, if they no longer kept up the pretence — the pretence that Dudley Leicester was no more an engrossed politician — then Dudley Leicester would go out of things, and he and Pauline... he and Pauline would fall together. For how long could Pauline keep it up?

The cruelty of the situation — of each word that was uttered, as of each word that she uttered in return, the mere impish malignancy of accidental circumstances — all these things changed for the moment his very view of Society. And the people sitting behind him — Madame de Bogota, with the voluptuous eyes and the sneering lips; Mrs. Jimtort, whose lips curved and whose eyes were cold; Mr. Balestier, whose eyes rolled round and round, so that they appeared to be about to burst out of his head, and the deuce only knows what they didn’t see or what conclusions they wouldn’t draw from what they did see — these three seemed to be a small commission sent by Society to inquire into the state of a household where it was suspected something was “wrong.” He realized that it was probably only the state of his nerves; but every new word added to his conviction that these were not merely “people,” bland; smiling, idle, and innocuous — good people of social contacts. They were, he was convinced, Inquisitors, representing each a separate interest — Mrs. Jimtort standing for provincial Society, Madame de Bogota for all the cosmopolitanism of the world’s centre that Western London is, and Balestier for the Party. And outside there seemed to be — he seemed to hear them — the innumerable whispers of the tongues of all Society, canvassing the results of the report that would be brought back by this committee of inquiry. It worked up, indeed, to an utterly abominable climax when Balestier, with his rather strident voice, exclaimed: