Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (446 page)

“This is extremely interesting,” Mrs. Foster said. “I’m sure Mrs. Kerr Howe will be delighted to know this.” She looked at the major reflectively. “My dear Edward,” she said, “I sometimes thought that I should like you to marry Mrs. Kerr Howe. But now that I have heard these beautiful facts, my mind is more at rest upon the subject. Of course, in my heart I should much prefer you to marry Miss Delamare. And I am sure both ladies are only just waiting to be asked, to jump down your throat.”

The manager suddenly stood up. “Do I understand,” he said, with an accent almost of awe, “that I am talking to people who are upon intimate terms with those two great ornaments of the social life of the day — Mrs. Kerr Howe and Miss Flossie Delamare?”

“But they are both stopping with us at the present moment,” Mrs. Foster said. “And they are both most extremely anxious to marry my nephew. At least, Mrs. Kerr Howe is, though I don’t know how it may be with Miss Delamare, for, of course, she’s my adopted daughter, and the major’s my adopted son, so perhaps the Church would forbid the marriage. I am not very clever at these things.”

“You’ve been extremely clever, madam,” the manager said, “in adopting a distinguished and charming family; and I trust that when your son does marry, he will permit me to present to the bride, whichever lady she may be, a complete set of the works of Mrs. Kerr Howe bound in our half-roan with gilt backs and marble tops. There could be no present in the world more appropriate to a newly married lady, for these books will refresh and recreate her weary hours...”

“Well, I’m sure I’m much obliged,” the major said.

“Of course,” the manager continued, addressing Mrs. Foster, “I imagine that from the samples of your nephew’s conversation and behaviour that I have been privileged to hear and to hear of, her weary hours — or at any rate her unexcited hours — will be quite few and far between. But I can imagine nothing better calculated to engross the mind and to relieve it of gloomy thoughts whilst, say, the lady is waiting in the corridors of a police-court, or during the assizes, whilst she is expecting the verdict of the jury who will retire to consider it — I cannot imagine anything better calculated to distract the mind than any volume by the author of
Pink Passions
, or
Crime in a Nightgown
.” The manager pulled out his watch. “Thank Heaven!” he exclaimed; “it’s twenty past twelve. Now let’s go to Waterloo.”

“But what are we going to Waterloo for?” the major asked.

“To investigate on the spot,” the manager answered, “the details of your sordid crime.”

“But that will be taking up a tremendous amount of your time,” Mrs. Foster said.

“My dear lady,” the manager answered, “that’s exactly what I want. Do you suppose that a man like myself has anything in the world to do? I am the head of one of the most important, of one of the most extended enterprises in the world. We employ nine hundred and seventy carts in the distribution of weekly periodicals alone. And is it thinkable that I — the head of this great business — should have anything in the world to do?”

“But I should have thought...” Mrs. Foster began timidly.

“My dear lady,” the manager said, “just reflect for a moment. What is the secret of business success? What is it that makes an enterprise run smoothly once it has started on its proud career? I will tell you. The secret of all these things is efficient subordinates. Now my subordinates are so absolutely efficient that there is nothing in the world left for me to do. I sit here for whole mornings playing patience, or reading the works of Mrs. Kerr Howe, or in the alternative simply twiddling my thumbs and praying Heaven for an occupation. Thanks to yourself and the major, my mind has been occupied from half-past eleven till twenty minutes past twelve by this extraordinary and engrossing story of passion and crime.”

“Oh, hang it all!” the major said, “where does the passion come in?”

“I have gathered,” the manager answered, “in the course of our conversation, that you are engaged to at least two ladies, and that at least two other ladies are anxious to marry you. Of course, it is no affair of mine; but I can easily gather from these glimpses of the background of affairs of the heart what thrilling situations, what tremendous escapes and outpourings of the soul must occur in the course of your daily life. What a subject for Mrs. Kerr Howe! And how eagerly, did it only know the circumstances, would the public await that lady’s next volume. But now let us go to Waterloo. As I have said, I have been in an agony all this morning for the want of an occupation. And now that I have a chance to make a criminal investigation on my own account, is it to be thought that I will let the matter drop until I have sifted it to the bitter end?”

They drove to Waterloo in the motor that had brought them up from Basildon. And there the manager interviewed the bookstall clerk, whose manner was respectful whilst it was self-respecting, and the bookstall boy, who was in tears. The bookstall boy declared that he had certainly found eight sixpenny magazines, one penny daily, and two halfpenny dailies upon his stall. And these he had sent back to the central office as “returns,” because he did not know what else in the world to do with them. Similarly, he had found upon his stall the half-sovereign that the major had thrown there, and this he had taken to the Lost Property Office which, he understood, was the correct thing to do. At the end of three months, if the major did not in the meantime identify his coin, the half-sovereign would have become the property of the paper-boy.

“It results from all this” — the manager addressed the major and his aunt—”that, although an obvious attempt at theft was made, yet, the offender having returned the stolen goods, and made an honest though mistaken attempt to pay for them, the company — though I say it regretfully — would hardly be justified in attempting to prosecute the offender who might be very difficult to identify.”

“But hang it all!” the major said.

“That, my young friend,” the manager replied, “is the fifth time that you have said, ‘Hang it all!’ in the course of an hour. I can only put down the smallness of your vocabulary to the nature of your favourite literature. For books, whilst they refresh the mind, recreate the senses, and are boons to minds weary and depressed...” The manager’s eye at this moment fell upon the clock that, upon the main line departure platform, marked the hour of one. “God bless my soul!” he said. “Let’s all go and have lunch together. That is to say, I shall be delighted if you will lunch with me, for I am extremely obliged to you for getting me through this morning. For this afternoon I am safe, since I have an engagement to play golf with the manager of the P.Q.Q.G., who, let me tell you, is one of the busiest men of our busy commercial world.”

CHAPTER V
.

THEY lunched at an excellent and extremely costly restaurant that was hidden away in a dirty back alley, behind Tokenhouse Yard. Here they had the opportunity of inspecting the features of gentlemen who, the manager assured them, were the twenty-seven busiest men of their great commercial world. He also told them that they might, if they imagined carefully, imagine that there they heard the very wheels of London finance whirring along. But when they listened with attention, the sound most audible to them was made by the head of the firm of Howe, Hough, Blades and Kershaw, who was snuffling over his soup.

“Well,” the manager said reflectively when they had finished lunch, “I’m very much obliged to you for your society and for clearing up the mystery.”

“But there could not have been any mystery,” the major said. “You can’t really have suspected me of wanting to steal four and tuppence worth of cheap literature!”

“Oh, that wasn’t the mystery,” the manager answered. “You see, for a long time past I have been puzzled by reports from various bookstalls of a gentleman — and all the clerks reported that he was strange in his manner — who insisted on their providing their stalls with copies of works that couldn’t by any imaginable probability ever get sold. And what I really wanted was to get the facts of this singular proceeding and if possible to put an end to it. I think I have done that,”

“I think I must acknowledge that you have done that,” the major said rather ruefully.

“Henceforth the bookstalls will be protected from these spurious demands,” the manager continued amiably. “I think you will acknowledge that, too.”

“I think I must,” the major conceded; and then he asked: “You don’t happen to be an Irishman by any chance?”

“No, I was born in Peckham,” the manager answered,—”silly Peckham.”

“But probably under the table of a solicitor’s clerk,” the major commented.

“Oh no,” the manager answered. “Just in the usual ordinary common-sense parsley-bed.” He had accompanied them to the opening of the dirty court where their motor-car was awaiting them, and he held up his finger to a taxi-cab. “You see,” he said, “what’s the trouble with all you Irish people is that you are too clever by half, whereas we who are born in Peckham are only just clever enough. That’s what gives us our immense pull.” He recommended them very strongly, if they wanted to be interested, to go to the matinée of “Pigs is Pigs” and see how they liked it without Miss Delamare as the leading lady. And this they really did. The major, who had never seen this entertaining work which united in itself the talents of two authors and three musical composers, was quite interested in its simple display; but Mrs. Foster said that it was not worth seeing in the absence of the “symphonic embodiment of quaint imbecility.” Afterwards they dined in the ladies’ room of the major’s club, and there the major met a man whom he had not seen for eleven years. And Mrs. Foster, who had really a great dread of travelling in the motor by night, went back to Basildon by the 8.43, so that the major should have his talk out with his old friend. She insisted on this because she wished him to have a very thorough change.

It may have been a quarter past ten when the major left his club steps in the large motor. And as the roads were quite empty, and the moonlight very bright, they got full forty miles an hour out of her, and he reached Basildon Manor not much more than twenty minutes after his aunt, who had gone straight up to Miss Delamare. He himself went straight up to his own room.

Mr. Arthur Foster had spent a tranquil but somewhat tiring day over the amalgamation of the two societies that were interested in the cause of virtue, and it was not until just before dinner that he went up to his room to dress. Then he discovered that all his things had been cleared out. He rang the bell, which was answered by Mrs. Foster’s maid, and Mrs. Foster’s maid said she knew nothing about it, but she would ask her Ladyship’s Own Maid.

Her Ladyship’s Own Maid waited upon Mr. Foster and informed him that such were Mrs. Foster’s orders. She could not help it; she was not responsible for it. She had just done what she was told. Mr. Foster protested lamentably; he wanted her Ladyship’s Own Maid to inform him what he had done, that at his time of life he should be moved around the house like a parcel sent by post. Her Ladyship’s Own Maid could only say that the room which had been allotted to Mr. Foster was thoroughly comfortable and perfectly pretty, being the room which was called the pink room.

“But what have I
done?
” Mr. Foster asked.

Miss Jenkins reflected for a moment, and then she said slowly: “Mrs. Foster, I believe, is extremely angry because you have not signed the contract with Miss Delamare. I believe that is the reason.”

“Well, but what am I to do?” Mr. Foster said. “It isn’t for me to advise you, sir,” Miss Jenkins said; “but if I might suggest, I should say that you ought to sign that contract immediately after dinner, and then, as I imagine Miss Peabody will be thoroughly angry, I should advise you to stop with the other ladies until about half-past ten, and then go to your room and wait quietly till Mrs. Foster comes back. For I may say that I know pretty well what women are, and I think, sir, if you give proof of deference to Mrs. Foster’s wishes and of obedience to her commands, she will probably be inclined to forgive you.”

“But this is awful,” Mr. Foster said. “I simply daren’t sign that contract.”

“You will find it much more awful if you don’t, sir,” Miss Jenkins said. “Mrs. Foster is determined not to speak another word to you.”

Mr. Foster groaned and groaned. And then he permitted Miss Jenkins to lead him to the pink room, where he dressed for dinner. At dinner he sat pallid and depressed, and did nothing to enliven the conversation of the three ladies who were under his charge. But, having drunk three and a half glasses of Moselle, two of champagne, two of port, and one of liqueur brandy which he took with his coffee, he joined the ladies with a firm step and courageous manner.

“Miss Delamare,” he exclaimed in loud tones, “if you will kindly bring me that contract for the new theatre, I will go into my study and sign it with you at once. Miss Jenkins and one of the other servants can be the witnesses.”

Miss Peabody started violently and opened her mouth, but, as Mrs. Kerr Howe was present, she did not feel that it would be wise to make any remark. And Mr. Foster remained under the shelter of the presence of Mrs. Kerr Howe until Miss Delamare returned with the contract. Mrs. Kerr Howe was talking about the end of the third act of her play. And she went on talking about it to Miss Peabody until ten minutes after Mr. Foster and Miss Delamare had gone away. Then she perceived that Miss Peabody had fainted in her grandfather’s chair.

It was not for nearly an hour and a half that she was brought round. Under the ministrations of her own maid, her Ladyship’s Own Maid and Mrs. Kerr Howe, she had cold rigors, warm heats, and finally a real and typical fit of hysterics. It being then about a quarter past ten, Miss Jenkins suggested that she had better drink a little whisky and water and then go quietly to bed.

“I am not going to
bed”
Miss Peabody said; but as she had been talking nonsense — sheer simple nonsense — for the last three-quarters of an hour, no one took any particular notice of the speech, and her own maid and her Ladyship’s Own Maid conducted her up to her room which was by now the room with the panel. She dismissed her own maid, but she begged Miss Jenkins to stay with her. And immediately, with eyes that glittered with rage, Miss Peabody commanded: “Tell me how this panel works.”

With their forbidding, unseeing or threatening eyes the three men, the three women, the three children and the baby on its hands and feet gazed at Miss Peabody. They appeared immense and threatening. Miss Jenkins said slowly:

“You work it by a knob in the carved frame. That is to say, miss, there are two knobs, one to shut it and one to open it. That was why the major couldn’t shut it the other night. He got hold of the one that opened it first, and it never entered his head that there was another to shut it. And then Miss Delamare found the one to shut it, and it never entered
her
head that there would be another to open it.”

Miss Peabody said: “That fiendish woman is at the bottom of everything.”

“All the same, miss,” Miss Jenkins said slowly, “I don’t think if I were you that I should attempt to interview Miss Delamare to-night. I should personally advise you to let the knobs alone.”

“I shall certainly do nothing of the sort,” Miss Peabody said.

“It almost makes me inclined to say,” Miss Jenkins replied slowly, “your blood be upon your own head.”

Miss Peabody said sharply: “That’s a most improper remark.”

“It would be,” Miss Jenkins returned, “if it were a question merely of superior and inferior. But you have insisted on my joining in what appears to be — in what you consider to be — a plot. And plotters have got to be considered equals. I don’t think it a proper thing that you should attack Miss Delamare. And what’s more, I don’t think it will be a good thing for yourself.”

Miss Peabody became calmly hard and obstinate. “My girl,” she said, “I don’t know why you should be so concerned for Miss Delamare. I don’t believe that I can consider you a friend of mine.”

“I wish you wouldn’t consider me a friend of yours,” Miss Jenkins replied. “I am certainly not, and it will make your position plainer if you consider that I am very decidedly not a friend of yours. But it is the most friendly thing I have ever said to you when I recommend you to leave that panel alone.”

“And is it likely,” Miss Peabody said, “that I should take the advice of a servant who definitely tells me that she is not my friend?” She laughed again with a high incredulity. “Is it really believable?” she said. “A servant who is not my friend!”

Miss Jenkins stood still with her hands hanging before her. There was quite a silence, and then Miss Peabody said sharply: “Well?”

“I have nothing in the world to say, miss,” Miss Jenkins continued. “The position is absolutely at a deadlock. I have recommended you very earnestly to leave the thing alone. It doesn’t appear to me to be a dignified proceeding; it doesn’t appear to me to be the proceeding of a lady, or even of a decent-hearted woman. And if you persist in doing it, all I can say is, that that takes away any reluctance I may feel. Because, of course, it makes me all the more absolutely certain, if I was not certain enough already, that you are absolutely unfitted for the position you are called upon to occupy.”

Miss Peabody remained perfectly calm. “I don’t in the least understand your threats,” she said. “And I don’t in the least want to understand them. To-morrow I shall deal with you. What do you think your mistress will say when she hears of your outrageous insolence to a guest of her house?”

“I think her Ladyship will be in entire agreement with me,” Miss Jenkins said.

“I don’t believe anything of the sort,” Miss Peabody answered. “You may understand servant nature very well, but it’s pretty certain that you don’t understand the nature of employers.

You will find, I think, that her Ladyship will entirely agree with me. You will find, I think, that there is a sort of freemasonry between employers, and that your employer, hearing that you have been insolent to another person of her class, will turn you out of your situation at once. And I am glad of it, for you are a more puffed-up creature than anyone I have ever met in this world.”

“Well, all I can say is,” Miss Jenkins answered, “that if there is that sort of freemasonry between employers, and if that’s the sort of thing that can happen to a good servant who does what is only her duty in such circumstances as I have done my duty — all I can say is, that if that sort of thing happens, servants are a bitterly wronged class, and I shall certainly see to it that my servants are on a different footing.”

“
Your
servants!” Miss Peabody exclaimed. “What have you got to do with servants?”

“Of course I have my servants like anybody else,” Miss Jenkins said. “Do you suppose I shouldn’t have?”

“Then all I can say is,” Miss Peabody answered, “that the condition of affairs in this country is infinitely more corrupt — is infinitely more revolutionary than they can be said to be even in my own country. Heaven knows in Boston there’s infinitely too little discipline, there’s infinitely too little respect of class for class. But if the sort of thing that I find here is typical of your upper classes, if subordinates are not only to be treated as familiars by their superiors but to be furnished with all the luxuries and the privileges of their superiors themselves, how is it to be wondered at that this branch of the Anglo-Saxon brotherhood is drifting to decay? I don’t know who you are, and I don’t know what you are, but it’s quite evident to me that you must have some hold over your mistress. Probably the origin of that hold is in something corrupt. Almost certainly it is, and that’s the end of the whole matter. Everywhere here I find corruption, and corruption, and again corruption.”