Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (327 page)

When he had practically forced Dudley Leicester upon Pauline, he really had believed that you can marry a woman you love to your best friend without enduring all the tortures of jealousy. This sort of marriage of convenience that it was, was, he knew, the sort of thing that in their sort of life was frequent and successful enough, and having been trained in the English code of manners never to express any emotion at all, he had forgotten that he possessed emotions. Now he was up against it.

He was frightfully up against it. Till now, at least, he had been able to imagine that Dudley Leicester had at least a devouring passion for, a quenchless thirst to protect, his wife. It had been a passion so great and commencing so early that Grimshaw could claim really only half the credit of having made the match. Indeed, his efforts had been limited to such influence as he had been able to bring to bear upon Pauline’s mother, to rather long conversations in which he had pointed out how precarious, Mrs. Lucas being dead, would be Pauline’s lot in life. And he had told her at last that he himself was irretrievably pledged, both by honour and by passion, to Katya Lascarides. It was on the subsequent day that Pauline had accepted her dogged adorer.

His passion for Katya Lascarides! He hadn’t till that moment had any doubt about it. But by then he knew it was gone; it was dead, and in place of a passion he felt only remorse. And his longing to be perpetually with Pauline Leicester — as he had told Ellida Langham — to watch her going through all her life with her perpetual tender smile, dancing, as it were, a gentle and infantile measure; this, too, he couldn’t doubt. Acute waves of emotion went through him at the thought of her — waves of emotion so acute that they communicated themselves to his physical being, so that it was as if the thought of Katya Lascarides stabbed his heart, whilst the thought of Pauline Leicester made his hands toss beneath the sheets. For, looking at the matter formally, and, as he thought, dispassionately, it had seemed to him that his plain duty was to wait for Katya Lascarides, and to give Pauline as good a time as he could. That Pauline would have this with Dudley Leicester he hadn’t had till the moment of the meeting in Regent Street the ghost of a doubt, but now...

He said: “Good God!” for he was thinking that only the Deity — if even He — could achieve the impossible, could undo what was done, could let him watch over Pauline, which was the extent of the possession of her that he thought he desired, and wait for Katya, which also was, perhaps, all that he had ever desired to do. The intolerable hours ticked on. The light shone down on him beside the bed. At the foot Peter slept, coiled up and motionless. At the head the telephone instrument, like a gleaming metal flower, with its nickel corolla and black bell, shone with reflected light. He was accustomed on mornings when he felt he needed a rest to talk to his friends from time to time, and suddenly his whole body stirred in bed. The whites of his eyes gleamed below the dark irises, his white teeth showed, and as he clasped the instrument to him he appeared, as it were, a Shylock who clutched to his breast his knife and demanded of the universe his right to the peace of mind that knowledge at least was to give him.

He must know; if he was to defend Pauline, to watch over her, to brood over her, to protect her, he must know what was going on. This passionate desire swept over him like a flood. There remained nothing else in the world. He rang up the hotel which, tall, white, and cold, rises close by where he had seen Etta Stackpole spring from the cab. He rang up several houses known to him, and, finally, with a sort of panic in his eyes he asked for Lady Hudson’s number. The little dog, aroused by his motions and his voice, leapt on to the bed, and pattering up, gazed wistfully at his face. He reached out his tongue to afford what consolation he could to the master, whom he knew to be perturbed, grieved, and in need of consolation, and just before the tinny sound of a voice reached Grimshaw’s ears Grimshaw said, his lips close to the mouthpiece, “Get down.” And when, after he had uttered the words, “Isn’t that Dudley Leicester speaking?” there was the click of the instrument being rung off, Robert Grimshaw said to himself grimly, “At any rate, they’ll know who it was that rung them up.”

But Dudley Leicester hadn’t known; he was too stupid, and the tinny sound of the instrument had destroyed the resemblance of any human voice.

Thus, sitting before Pauline Leicester in her drawing-room, did Robert Grimshaw review his impressions. And, looking back on the whole affair, it seemed to present himself to him in those terms of strong light, of the unreal sound of voices on the telephone, and of pain, of unceasing pain that had never “let up” at any rate from the moment when, having come up from the country with Katya’s kisses still upon his lips, he had found Pauline in his dining-room, and had heard that Dudley Leicester didn’t know.

He remained seated, staring, brooding at the carpet just before Pauline’s feet, and suddenly she said: “Oh, Robert, what did you
do
it for?”

He rose up suddenly and stood over her. and when he held both her small hands between his own, “You’d better,” he said—”it’ll be better for both you and me — put upon it the construction that shows the deepest concern for you.”

And suddenly from behind their backs came the voice of Katya Lascarides.

“Well,” she said, “Robert knows everything. Who is the man that rang up 4,259 Mayfair?”

Robert Grimshaw hung his head for a moment, and then:

“I did,” he said.

Katya only answered, “Ah!” Then, very slowly, she came over and put one hand on Pauline’s shoulder. “Oh, you poor dear,” she exclaimed, and then to Robert: “Then you’d better come and tell him so. I’ll stake my new hat to my professional reputation that it’ll put him on to his legs at once.”

And with an air of taking him finally under her wing, she conducted him down the passage to Dudley Leicester’s room.

In the dining-room Pauline stood for a long time looking down at her fingers that rested upon the tablecloth. The air was full of little noises — the clitter of milk-cans, the monotonous sound of water pulsing continuously from the mains, the voices of two nurses as they wheeled their charges home from the Park. The door-bell rang, but no one disturbed her. With the light falling on her hair, absolutely motionless, she looked down at her fingers on the white cloth and smiled faintly.

CHAPTER II
.

IN the long, dark room where Dudley Leicester still sprawled in his deep chair, Katya stopped Robert Grimshaw near the door.

“I’ll ask him to ask you his question,” she said, “and you’ll answer it in as loud a voice as you can. That’ll cure him. You’ll see. I don’t suppose you expected to see me here.”

“I didn’t expect it,” he answered, “but I know why you have come.”

“Well,” she said, “if he isn’t cured, you’ll be hanging round him for ever.”

“Yes, I suppose I shall be hanging round him for ever,” he answered.

“And more than that, you’ll be worrying yourself to death over it. I can’t bear you to worry, Toto,” she said. She paused for a long minute and then she scrutinized him closely.

“So it was you who rang him up on the telephone?” she said. “I thought it was, from the beginning.”

“Oh, don’t let’s talk about that any more,’ Grimshaw said;” I’m very tired; I’m very lonely. I’ve discovered that there are things one can’t do — that I’m not the man I thought I was. It’s you who are strong and get what you want, and I’m only a meddler who muddles and spoils. That’s the moral of the whole thing. Take me on your own terms and make what you can of me. I am too lonely to go on alone any more. I’ve come to give myself up. I went down to Brighton to give myself up to you on condition that you cured Dudley Leicester. Now I just do it without any conditions whatever.”

She looked at him a little ironically, a little tenderly.

“Oh, well, my dear,” she said, “we’ll talk about that when he’s cured. Now come.”

She made him stand just before Leicester’s sprawled-out feet, and going round behind the chair, resting her hands already on Leicester’s hair in preparation for bending down to make, near his ear, the suggestion that he should put his question, she looked up at Robert Grimshaw.

“You consent,” she said, with hardly a touch of triumph in her voice, “that I should live with you as my mother lived with my father?” And at Robert Grimshaw’s minute gesture of assent: “Oh, well, my dear,” she continued quite gently, “it’s obvious to me that you’re more than touched by this little Pauline of ours. I don’t say that I resent it. I don’t suggest that it makes you care for me any less than you should or did, but I’m sure, perfectly sure, of the fact such as it is, and I’m sure, still more sure, that she cares extremely for you. So that...” She had been looking down at Dudley Leicester’s forehead, but she looked up again into Robert Grimshaw’s eyes. “I think, my dear,” she said slowly, “as a precaution, I think you cannot have me on those terms; I think you had better” — she paused for the fraction of a minute—” marry me,” and her fingers began to work slowly upon Dudley Leicester’s brows. There was the least flush upon her cheeks, the least smile round the corners of her lips, she heaved the ghost of a sigh.

“So that you get me both ways,” Robert Grimshaw said; and his hands fell desolately open at his side.

“Every way and altogether,” she answered.

EPISTOLARY EPILOGUE
.

“IT was a summer evening four years later when, upon the sands of one of our most fashionable watering-places, a happy family group, consisting of a buxom mother and several charming children, might have been observed to disport itself. Who can this charming matron be, and who these lovely children, designated respectively Robert, Dudley, Katya, and Ellida?

“And who is this tall and robust gentleman who, wearing across the chest of his white cricketing flannel the broad blue ribbon of His Majesty’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, bearing in one hand negligently the
Times
of the day before yesterday and in the other a pastoral rake, approaches from the hayfields, and, with an indulgent smile, surveys the happy group? Taking from his mouth his pipe — for in the
dolce far niente
of his summer vacation, when not called upon by his duties near the Sovereign at Windsor, he permits himself the relaxation of the soothing weed — he remarks:

“‘The Opposition fellows have lost the by- election at Camber.’

“Oblivious of his pipe, the charming matron casts herself upon his neck, whilst the children dance round him with cries of congratulation, and the trim nurses stand holding buckets and spades with expressions of respectful happiness upon their countenances. Who can this be?

“And who, again, are these two approaching along the sands with happy and contented faces — the gentleman erect, olive-skinned, and, since his wife has persuaded him to go clean-shaven, appearing ten years younger than when we last saw him; the lady dark and tall, with the first signs of matronly plumpness just appearing upon her
svelte
form? They approach and hold out their hands to the happy Cabinet Minister with attitudes respectively of manly and ladylike congratulation, whilst little Robert and little Katya, uttering joyful cries of ‘Godmama’ and ‘Godpapa!’ dive into their pockets for chocolates and the other presents that they are accustomed to find there.

“Who can these be? Our friend the reader will have already guessed. And so, with a moisture at the contemplation of so much happiness bedewing our eyes, we lay down the pen, pack up the marionettes into their box, ring down the curtain, and return to our happy homes, where the wives of our bosoms await us. That we may meet again, dear reader, is the humble, and pious wish of your attached friend, the writer of these pages.”

Thus, my dear —— , you would have me end this book, after I have taken an infinite trouble to end it otherwise. No doubt, also, you would have me record how Etta Hudson, as would be inevitably the case with such a character, eventually became converted to Roman Catholicism, and ended her days under the direction of a fanatical confessor in the practice of acts of the most severe piety and mortification. Jervis, the butler of Mr. Dudley Leicester, you would like to be told, remained a humble and attached dependent in the service of his master; whilst Saunders, Mr.

Grimshaw’s man, thinking himself unable to cope with the duties of the large establishment in Berkeley Square which Mr. Grimshaw and Katya set up upon their marriage, now keeps a rose-clad hostelry on the road to Brighton. But we have forgotten Mr. Held! Under the gentle teaching of Pauline Leicester he became an aspirant for Orders in the Church of England, and is now, owing to the powerful influence of Mr. Dudley Leicester, chaplain to the British Embassy at St. Petersburg.

But since, my dear — , all these things appear to me to be sufficiently indicated in the book as I have written it, I must confess that these additions, inspired as they are by you — but how much better they would have been had you actually written them! these additions appear to me to be ugly, superfluous, and disagreeable.

The foxes have holes, the birds of the air have nests, and you, together with the great majority of British readers, insist upon having a happy ending, or, if not a happy ending, at least some sort of an ending. This is a desire, like the desire for gin-and-water or any other comforting stimulant, against which I have nothing to say. You go to books to be taken out of yourself, I to be shown where I stand. For me, as for you, a book must have a beginning and an end. But whereas for you the end is something arbitrarily final, such as the ring of wedding-bells, a funeral service, or the taking of a public-house, for me — since to me a novel is the history of an “affair” — finality is only found at what seems to me to be the end of that “affair.” There is in life nothing final. So that even “affairs” never really have an end as far as the lives of the actors are concerned. Thus, although Dudley Leicester was, as I have tried to indicate, cured almost immediately by the methods of Katya Lascarides, it would be absurd to imagine that the effects of his short breakdown would not influence the whole of his after-life. These effects may have been to make him more conscientious, more tender, more dogged, less self-centred; may have been to accentuate him in a great number of directions. For no force is ever lost, and the ripple raised by a stone, striking upon the bank of a pool, goes on communicating its force for ever and ever throughout space and throughout eternity. But for our vision its particular “affair” ends when, striking the bank, it disappears. So for me the “affair” of Dudley Leicester’s madness ended at the moment when Katya Lascarides laid her hands upon his temple. In the next moment he would be sane, the ripple of madness would have disappeared from the pond of his life. To have gone on farther would have been, not to have ended this book, but to have begun another, which — the fates being good — I hope to write. I shall profit, without doubt, by your companionship, instruction, and great experience. You have called me again and again an Impressionist, and this I have been called so often that I suppose it must be the fact. Not that I know what an Impressionist is. Personally, I use as few words as I may to get any given effect, to render any given conversation. You, I presume, do the same. You don’t, I mean, purposely put in more words than you need — more words, that is to say, than seem to you to satisfy your desire for expression. You would probably render a conversation thus:

“Extending her hand, which was enveloped in creamy tulle, Mrs. Sincue exclaimed, ‘Have another cup of tea, dear?” Thanks — two lumps,’ her visitor rejoined. ‘So I hear Colonel Hapgood has eloped with his wife’s French maid!’”

I should probably set it down: “After a little desultory conversation, Mrs. Sincue’s visitor, dropping his dark eyes to the ground, uttered in a voice that betrayed neither exultation nor grief, ‘Poor old Hapgood’s cut it with Nanette. Don’t you remember Nanette, who wore an apron with lace all round it and those pocket things, and curled hair?’”

This latter rendering, I suppose, is more vague in places, and in other places more accentuated, but I don’t see how it is more impressionist. It is perfectly true you complain of me that I have not made it plain with whom Mr. Robert Grimshaw was really in love, or that when he resigned himself to the clutches of Katya Lascarides, whom personally I extremely dislike, an amiable but meddlesome and inwardly conceited fool was, pathetically or even tragically, reaping the harvest of his folly. I omitted to add these comments, because I think that for a writer to intrude himself between his characters and his reader is to destroy to that extent all the illusion of his work. But when I found that yourself and all the moderately quick-minded, moderately sane persons who had read the book in its original form failed entirely to appreciate what to me has appeared as plain as a pikestaff — namely, that Mr. Grimshaw was extremely in love with Pauline Leicester, and that, in the first place, by marrying her to Dudley Leicester, and, in the second place, by succumbing to a disagreeable personality, he was committing the final folly of this particular affair — when I realized that these things were not plain, I hastened to add those passages of explicit conversation, those droppings of the eyelids and tragic motions of the hands, that you have since been good enough to say have made the book.

Heaven knows, one tries enormously hard to be simple, to be even transparently simple, but one falls so lamentably between two stools. Thus, another reader, whom I had believed to be a person of some intellect, has insisted to me that in calling this story “A Call” I must have had in my mind something mysterious, something mystical; but what I meant was that Mr. Robert Grimshaw, putting the earpiece to his ear and the mouthpiece to his mouth, exclaimed, after the decent interval that so late at night the gentleman in charge of the exchange needs for awaking from slumber and grunting something intelligible — Mr. Grimshaw exclaimed, “Give me 4259 Mayfair.” This might mean that Lady Hudson was a subscriber to the Post Office telephone system, but it does not mean in the least that Mr. Grimshaw felt religious stirrings within him or “A Call” to do something heroic and chivalrous, such as aiding women to obtain the vote.

So that between those two classes of readers — the one who insist upon reading into two words the whole psychology of moral revivalism, and the others who, without gaining even a glimpse of meaning, will read or skip through fifty or sixty thousand words, each one of which is carefully selected to help on a singularly plain tale — between these two classes of readers your poor Impressionist falls lamentably enough to the ground. He sought to point no moral. His soul would have recoiled within him at the thought of adorning by one single superfluous word his plain tale. His sole ambition was to render a little episode — a small “affair” affecting a little circle of people — exactly as it would have happened. He desired neither to comment nor to explain. Yet here, commenting and explaining, he takes his humble leave, having packed the marionettes into the case, having pulled the curtain down, and wiping from his troubled eyes the sensitive drops of emotion. This may appear to be an end, but it isn’t. He is, still, your Impressionist, thinking what the devil — what the
very
devil — he shall do to make his next story plain to the most mediocre intelligence!

THE END