Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (514 page)

From that day onward, Mr. Reginald, his lean form trembling, and his grey beard all a-quiver, waving his thin arms, delivered speeches that drove any member of his audience who happened to belong to the Opposition almost into a frenzy of rage. One of his accusations against the Opposition newspapers was actually mentioned in the London Press, and a question was asked about it in Parliament. It made Mr. Reginald appear the most violent of doctrinaire democrats, and next day Mr. Blood had a letter from the Chancellor of the Exchequer — a note scrawled on a half sheet of paper, containing the words: “Thanks, you
have
pulled your brother together.”

But Mr. Reginald’s public utterances did nothing to disturb the harmony of the Corbury dinners. Mr. Reginald had taken possession of one of his brother’s cars, and would dash home from a meeting just in time to dress for dinner and to appear, languid and half asleep, as he generally did appear. Mr. Fleight would have liked to argue one or two points with his host’s brother. He was curious to know how it was that Mr. Reginald could import so much passion into politics.

But, true to the high English standard of good form, sportsmanship and the affectation of indifference, Mr. Fleight never ventured upon controversial grounds. They were tabooed in the house, though canvassing stories were quite freely told, and Mr. Reginald once or twice narrated his own experiences in the effort to obtain promise of votes. They also debated as to the chances of the candidates, and once, after the ladies had withdrawn, Mr. Fleight who was sitting next to Mr. Reginald, turned on him point blank and said: “What
do
you think are my chances?”

Mr. Reginald answered without a moment’s hesitation: “You’ll get in. Our man hasn’t got a chance. Even if the Ebury lot” — those were the Corbury tenants—”voted for our man you’d have a majority of a couple of score or so. If they don’t you may be nearly two hundred up.”

Mr. Fleight said: “Ah!” and Mr. Reginald continued:

“It’s a matter of personalities. Our man’s a perfectly hopeless candidate. He’s got a perpetual cold in his head and I should say he drugs or something. It’s a downright cruelty to bores to have turned him on. It’s a disgrace.”

“And I?” Mr. Fleight said rather timidly.

“Oh, you,” Mr. Reginald said, with a note of contempt in his voice that he suddenly modified to one almost of kindliness. “No one objects to you. And you manage to cut so much more of a dash — your money does. Our man is nearly as rich as you. Quite as rich I — daresay, but he looks like a decayed army pensioner and behaves like a crossing sweeper.”

“You think,” Mr. Fleight said, and then he went at it boldly, “You think my appearance isn’t against me?”

“Your appearance?” Mr. Reginald said with a quite questioning expression. “Oh, your appearance is all right. It rather helps you. What with your reputation of enormous wealth and your tininess people are inclined to pity you as if you were the baby heir to an imperial throne. You’ll probably get a good few votes on account of that feeling. You’re a sort of effective anti-climax to your reputation.”

“But,” Mr. Fleight stammered valiantly, for he wanted to get to the bottom of it, “My eyes... my eyes, you know.”

“Oh, your black eyes,” Mr. Reginald said, “that’s one of the smartest electioneering dodges my devil of a brother ever put out.’’

At the top of the table Mr. Blood made a gentle, ironic sound like a very small laugh.

“That’s worth almost everything to you,” Mr. Reginald said.

Mr. Fleight was overwhelmed with confusion. “That romantic story,” Mr. Reginald continued, “about your studying the conditions of the poor and going slumming and getting bashed by a gang of roughs... why our man would no more have thought of that than he would have thought of addressing marriage proposals to the late dowager Empress of China.”

“But you don’t mean to say,” Mr. Fleight said in an aghast tone, “that you think my eyes are — aren’t—”

“If you’re trying to challenge me to say your eyes are touched up,” Mr. Reginald said, “you’d better say so. Of course, I know they’re painted. Didn’t 1 see my brother doing it and Lennards helping him in the library three mornings ago?”

“But, confound it,” Mr. Fleight said, “they were painting it out not putting it in.”

Mr. Reginald looked straight at his brother who was taking a slow sip of port.

“If a couple of old hands,” he said, “like Arthur and Lennards can’t paint out a black eye better than that it’s deucedly odd. But of course there’s no saying.”

He smiled rather pleasantly with his lean face because Wilhelmina Macphail was coming into the long room and approaching Mr. Fleight. He smiled because he liked Wilhelmina and also because, through her, he had been able to play one of his tricks on Mr. Blood. He had, in fact, persuaded Wilhelmina to undertake the job of closing the shutters. He had assured her of the immense necessity of securing Corbury from heat; he had told her that they would all be dying of it if the task wasn’t efficiently carried out through the morning. In this way he had subtracted one from his brother’s small army of canvassers and had set himself at liberty to work for Mr. Fleight’s opponent. It wasn’t the kind of trick he set much store by but it amused him to score off Mr. Blood in very small matters. He would certainly not have done it in any large one.

Wilhelmina came to tell Mr. Fleight that Augusta said there was a man he must see. Augusta had been detailed as Mr. Fleight’s private secretary to interview any visitors who came to see him at Corbury. She was to stave off those who did not seem to be of importance, and thus Mr. Fleight had a little rest from time to time.

Mr. Fleight went away with Wilhelmina, and in the morning room he found a policeman along with Augusta. The policeman said Scotland Yard had telephoned through to say that they had caught three of those hooligans and would be obliged if Mr. Rothweil could make it convenient to be present at Westminster Police Court for a few minutes next morning. Mr. Fleight said:

“Good heavens!”

It appeared to him to be a calamity that the men who had assaulted him had been caught. He hated the idea of prosecution.

Then he sent Wilhelmina for Mr. Blood. He exhausted in the meantime his stock of ejaculations as to the inconvenience, as to the almost impossibility of his being at Westminster next morning. Augusta, on the other hand looked at him in her cold and businesslike manner and said that there wasn’t any earthly reason why he shouldn’t go. It was his duty to the public to see that these hooligans got what they deserved. And as for his meetings next morning she could address them for him just as well as he could. She could do it better, even, because she could praise him a great deal more openly than he could praise himself.

The policeman said nothing and Mr. Blood, when he came in, just remarked to the policeman:

“That’ll be all right, Mr. Rothweil will be at Westminster to-morrow at a quarter past ten. You can telephone through to Scotland Yard.”

The policeman was going away when Mr. Blood desired to know how they had found the men. It was a button, the policeman said — a button from the tunic of one of the Irish Fusiliers that had been found lying beside the doorstep of the Leroy’s shop. They had had the men paraded and there was one with a new button sewn on to an old tunic. Then they had dropped sharply on two of the soldier’s pals and had got confessions out of them.

The policeman went away, Mr. Blood telling him to get something for himself in the kitchen.

Mr. Fleight turned wearily to Mr. Blood.

“Is this prosecution absolutely necessary?” he said. “It’s very distasteful to me.”

“I’m sorry,” Mr. Blood answered, quite dispassionately, “but it’s your contribution to the campaign, not mine. You’ve heard, according to Reginald, that your black eyes have been worth some votes to you. But it’s more or less necessary that you should legitimise the black eyes.”

“I suppose,” Mr. Fleight replied, with the resigned air of a weary donkey starting again beneath a heavy load “I’ve just got to make it clear that I wasn’t mixed up in some brawl about a woman — that I was really studying the home-life of the poor.”

“You can thank your lucky stars,” Mr. Blood said, “that you weren’t mixed up in some brawl about some woman.”

Mr. Fleight was about to say that he certainly wasn’t, when Lennards, the butler, came in and said that the policeman wanted to speak to Mr. Rothweil.

“Oh, we don’t want any more policemen,” Mr. Blood said. “I told the fellow to go and get some beer. Mr. Rothweil will have to start off to speak in twenty minutes. It’s his most important meeting, and I don’t want him to be agitated.”

Lennards, however, replied that this wasn’t the same policeman as the first. That one was in the kitchen and this one was at the front door. He said his business was urgent and wouldn’t take more than a minute. He had to be shown in.

The second policeman was much stouter than the first, and he had an absolutely expressionless voice. He pulled a paper out of his belt and began to read what he said was a message that they had received from the Hampstead Coroner’s office:

A young woman — his monotonous voice read out — by the name of Gilda Leroy, had committed suicide in a colonnade leading from the front door of Palatial Hall, Hampstead, the residence of Aaron Rothweil. She had called to ask for Mr. Fleight the evening before and, hearing that he was not at home, she was thought to have gone away, and the body was not discovered till next day, because she appeared to have staggered into some bushes a little way off the path. The coroner wished Mr. Fleight or Mr. Rothweil to attend at his court next morning at eleven in order to give evidence.

The policeman folded up his piece of paper again, stuck it in his belt, and remarked to Mr. Blood:

“I wish you a good evening, sir.”

Then he, too, went away.

A profound silence reigned in the dim enormous room. Six tall candles burned before a mirror on a high, carved mantel-shelf. But their reflections were very dim because the mirror was so ancient. Augusta was sitting at a writing-table gazing straight in front of her as if she did not see that this was any affair of hers. Mr. Fleight had sunk down into a very high chair with a back of old tapestry. Above his miserable, white face, decorated with two black dabs under the eyes, two carved lions appeared to dispute. But he was sunk down so low that he had the appearance of a dead rag.

“It’s dreadful,” he muttered. “Oh, it’s dreadful!” Mr. Blood, who had been gazing at Augusta, and reflecting, remarked:

“I don’t see how it’s dreadful. It’s so just exactly what I’d expected, anyhow. But it may turn out awkward. What do you say, Augusta? He was going to the house of this girl when he was assaulted, and the girl commits suicide on the doorstep of his house next evening.”

“I should think it might turn out jolly awkward indeed,” Augusta said coolly. And she added, “Perfectly rodden.”

Mr. Blood said irritably:

“I wish you wouldn’t use that word, Augusta. I wish you’d forget that such a word existed.”

“It’s jolly effective when I’m speaking to yokels,” Augusta exclaimed.

“Well, but we aren’t yokels,” Mr. Blood retorted. “If Mr. Drupe wants you to speak to-night don’t you dare to use it. You’re going to have a county audience as far as there’s any county left.”

“It’s miserable,” Mr. Fleight said. “It’s appalling! Such nice people they were and this will be a disaster to them — nice people!”

“I can’t help that,” Mr. Blood said determinedly. “Now, look here, you must speak to-night, understand! You’ve just got to speak and you just pitch it in. You be positively thunderous about the calumnies that the other side are spreading about you. You just remember that it’s none of your fault. None of your fault at all. And that to-morrow every person in the constituency will be saying that it is. You just try and nobble the upper classes before the lower ones — the servants and the labourers — get on to you. For that’s what they’ll do.”

Mr. Fleight breathed out the words:

“It’s dreadful having to speak.” And then he added quickly, as if he were in terror of Mr. Blood, “I know I’ve got to... I’m dreadfully ashamed of myself for having spoiled your plans. I’ll attend to what you say; I’ll take that line exactly as you ask it.”