Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (520 page)

“Oh, Augusta, I thought from the way you behaved in court that you were beginning to have some sympathy for me.’’

She retorted:

“Sympathy! Of course I had sympathy for you — the sort of sympathy that you have for a cat when three dachshunds have got hold of it. But you don’t want to marry the cat. Now do you?”

She regarded Mr. Fleight with her clear, hard, blue eyes. She was looking astonishingly beautiful. Driving about in the brougham had restored to her complexion some of its more shell-like tints, and, having found a job that so exactly amused and interested her — for she didn’t really want to do anything better in life than call on countesses, as she was doing all day long — a great deal of the hardness of her manner was disappearing and, during lunch, she had said several amusing, but quite withering things, about the personalities of some of Mr. Fleight’s political opponents.

She said that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, for instance, was like a gramophone which had learnt with difficulty to say one word—” enthusiasm.” This wasn’t a particularly good joke, but it had its point because, the night before, they had heard the Chancellor address a meeting of ten thousand dock operatives at Chatham, and the great man’s huge features, high voice and perpetual repetition of the same phrases were still very strongly in both their minds.

“No,” Augusta continued her frightful speech, “I don’t feel a repulsion from you as I used to do. It’s quite possible to have you about. But I simply don’t believe you’d be good business for a woman to marry. You don’t have any luck. I wouldn’t have minded half so much if you had done what they said about you in court. But as you haven’t, it makes you absolutely hopeless. You’re just the exact opposite of the fairy story that I used to hear as a child, called ‘Hans in Luck.’ I don’t see how you’ll ever get even into Parliament, and frankly, I believe I can do better for myself than you can for me.”

Mr. Fleight gave a deep groan and then he exclaimed: “At any rate you don’t feel a repulsion from me; that’s something to go on.”

“Oh, you’re all right,” Miss Macphail answered, “you’re not a bit worse than the editor of the
Westminster Weekly
I used to work for, and I put up with him.”

Mr. Fleight had real, large tears in his eyes, and he went straight off to Mr. Blood to give him an account of the interview. Mr. Blood, however, only wanted to hear about the trial. Mr. Blood said very sensibly that it wasn’t Mr. Fleight’s job to sit worrying about Augusta; it would be very much better for him if he tried to do something to get himself a less unlucky aspect in her eyes. And then he went straight off to see the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

He wanted to get the Chancellor to attend Mr. Fleight’s party. He had some luck. The Chancellor was to have gone that afternoon to a garden-party, where eleven thousand people from Scotland, Cornwall and Wales had been invited to meet him at tea. But towards half-past three, just as Mr. Blood set off from Burton Street, a really terrible hurricane descended upon London. Its precursor had been the heat which had rendered so irritable the Common Sergeant. And, indeed, the Common Sergeant’s temper turned out to be a piece of luck for Mr. Blood.

He found the Chancellor standing on the doorstep in Downing Street with his top hat on, surveying doubtfully the huge sheets of water that fell even between him and the door of Mr. Blood’s motor. Mr. Blood charged swiftly out and right into the hall. The Chancellor said: “Hullo! What’s this? Woman’s Suffrage?” and then he smiled. “What do you think of this weather? Not much weather for a garden-party; what?”

“You’d better give up the garden-party,” Mr. Blood said, “and give ten minutes to me. I want to ask you a favour.”

An enormous peal of thunder shook all the windows in the Treasury building, and the Chancellor again closed the umbrella that he had half opened. And, indeed, just at that moment, a dark young man, who was his secretary, came to say that the storm had blown down all the marquees in Lady Guestling’s garden and that the grounds, which lay rather low, resembled a lake. Her ladyship begged that the Chancellor wouldn’t even think of coming. She had just telephoned through.

“Well, we can get back to the estimates,” the Chancellor said contentedly, but Mr. Blood cut in:

“Look here, just give me ten minutes of your time. I want to ask a favour. I don’t mind saying that I’ll make it really worth your while.”

“Of course, if it’s a matter of a favour,” the Chancellor said. “Yes, yes, anything that I can do — I’m sure—” His manner was quite vacant, because he imagined that Mr. Blood was going to ask for a job for his brother Reginald, and the Chancellor, with his exceedingly tenacious mind, was perfectly determined that he would not give Reginald any job in the Civil Service. That would preclude his entering Parliament, and the Chancellor desired that Reginald should enter Parliament.

“I’m not really a man of straw,” Mr. Blood said again, “and, if you can oblige me, I’ll certainly make it worth your while.”

The Chancellor said:

“Oh, that’s all right. Certainly — Yes, yes. Come with me.”

He took Mr. Blood into the rather dark, rather small room on the left of the door, where there were two young men working at desks. He put his hat on the mantelshelf, dropped his umbrella on the floor, and looked at the papers that lay before first one young man and then the other.

“That word ought to be ‘Battlefleets’ — you understand. ‘Battlefleets of Austria’ — not simply ‘fleets’” he said, “‘Battlefleets’ sounds so much better.” He then remarked: “Hum, hum,” and stood in front of Mr. Blood, who had sat himself down. “Oh, yes, a favour,” he said. “What is it we want now?”

“I want you,” Mr. Blood said, “to come to Fleight’s party.”

“Fleight?” the Chancellor said, “I don’t know. Who’s he? I don’t suppose I shall have any time — I never have any time. You’re very lucky to get this ten minutes. I don’t suppose I could have given you ten minutes any other day for the next six months.”

“Mr. Fleight,” Mr. Blood remarked, “has just been outrageously handled in a trial.”

The Chancellor’s face fell in a sort of panic. He had got it firmly fixed in his head that Mr. Blood wanted a job for his brother, and he had not yet grasped the fact that he was speaking of somebody else.

“A trial!” he exclaimed. “We can’t have anything to do with trials. Don’t you understand? Interfering with the judiciary! That’s impossible.”

“But it was before the Common Sergeant,” Mr. Blood said cunningly. The Common Sergeant was one of those old and old-fashioned criminal magistrates who greatly inconvenience and irritate all progressive Governments in this country. He was continually inflicting barbarously harsh sentences, which the humanitarian Home Secretary as regularly reduced. Then the Common Sergeant would make from the bench biting remarks as to the Home Secretary and the Government in general. He was thus a perpetual scandal, so that he was detested by all the members of the Ministry.

“Oh, the Common Sergeant!” the Chancellor exclaimed. “He’s the devil of a fellow. I believe he gives the Home Office more trouble — at least, so I’ve heard.... We certainly ought to get rid of him. But the difficulty is one doesn’t know how it’s to be done.”

“You’d certainly give him a very nice slap in the face,” Mr. Blood continued, “if you’d come to Mr. Fleight’s party.”

“But who is Mr. Fleight?” the Chancellor asked — and then, attempting to show a jocular benevolence, he added: “What is he that you should thus commend him?” for he had a liking for the music of Schubert.

“He’s the Opposition candidate for Byefleet,” Mr. Blood brought out.

“I suppose,” the Chancellor said, “you mean the Government candidate. I can’t keep these fellows’ names in my head, but I had a vague idea it was Gregory.”

“Gregory’s got a writ for lunacy out against him,” Mr. Blood said.

“Oh, I see,” the Chancellor said, “then Gregory’s retiring and Mr. Fleight’s taking his place.”

“I don’t know so much about that,” Mr. Blood answered, “but Mr. Fleight’s moving heaven and earth to get Gregory out of the clutches of the lunacy people. He wants to attack the whole system. He’s, just this morning, started to instruct his solicitors to put about twenty men on the job to find out all the possible cases that could be published.”

“Well, it’s a very difficult job,” the Chancellor said, “I tried to reform them myself about four years ago. You remember my bill? But it hasn’t done much good. Still it’s a striking attempt — very creditable. I hope your friend will get in.”

“He’s the Opposition candidate, you know,” Mr. Blood said.

“But you said he’s trying to help our man!” the Chancellor exclaimed. “The story doesn’t hang together.”

“It wouldn’t hang together,” Mr. Blood said, “if my chap wasn’t so incredibly chivalrous. The moment he heard that your man was in danger of being shut up he almost went off his head about it.”

The Chancellor suddenly sat down upon a chair in front of Mr. Blood.

“This is a most extraordinary story,” he said. “Suppose you go through it in detail.”

Mr. Blood did go into it in detail. He told the circumstances of the trial in such a way as quite sensibly to enrage the Chancellor against the Common Sergeant. He told the story of Mr. Gregory in such a way as to make the great man hot in favour of that unfortunate individual. He pointed out that such chivalry as Mr. Fleight was showing ought to be rewarded by a similar chivalry from the Government. Most particularly he stated that Mr. Fleight wasn’t to be regarded necessarily as an opponent of the Government, and that if the Chancellor treated him prettily now, it might very well affect his attitude in the future. Besides, it was a public duty to give the Common Sergeant a slap in the face.

The Chancellor shook his head perplexedly.

“I wish I knew what to do!” he exclaimed. “I don’t know. You see I haven’t my usual advisers with me — the people who make up my mind about social affairs. It seems to me an unconventional affair — of course, that doesn’t matter to me. I’m not afraid of unconventional affairs — but still—”

“If you’ll come to Mr. Fleight’s party,” Mr. Blood said suddenly, “I’ll put my brother Reginald up for Byefleet at the next election, and I’ll stand all the expenses myself. It won’t hurt you to be decent to Mr. Fleight, and some official person ought to be, because he’s the victim of a gross miscarriage of justice. It won’t hurt you to do this one decent thing in the welter of dirty business that politics is. Mr. Fleight hasn’t got the ghost of a chance of getting in for Byefleet.” The Chancellor remained abstracted for a moment, and then he said:

“You’ll put your brother up? He’s the sort of man I very much want. I think — Yes, I think, I say — I’ll come. I’ll almost certainly come. Why shouldn’t I take a line myself for once? It isn’t as if I was particularly satisfied with the lines I’m usually advised to take.”

Mr. Blood rose. “I daresay,” he said, “you’ll get put off, or your official secretary will persuade you not to come. But perhaps you’ll give me permission to include your name amongst the printed list of those who have accepted the invitation?”

“Oh, but I’ll certainly come,” the Chancellor said briskly, “I never go back on my word. Besides, this is rather a romantic expedition. It’ll shake the cobwebs out of me. I like parties of non-political people, only I never get the chance to go to them, and here it appears to be actually a duty. I want to see the Russian dancers, too. I’ve never had time. I hear they’re quite remarkable. Perhaps you’ll keep their performance back until I’m able to get there.”

“Oh, we’ll certainly do that,” Mr. Blood answered. He was preparing to leave the room when the Chancellor exclaimed:

“By the bye, Mr. Blood, if you can spare me another minute — You know those words — or rather that sentiment that you are always using — what I might call the cross-bow sentiment. And the other day you said, you know, that something was going to sweep me over — and then you say we are antediluvian. Now what does that all mean?”

Mr. Blood turned back from the door.

“It’s got a meaning,” he said. “It’s got the precise and actual meaning attaching to the words.”

“But you say we’re old-fashioned,” the Chancellor expostulated in an almost shocked tone of voice. “We can’t possibly be old-fashioned, because we’re inspired by the great fine truths. They don’t ever grow stale. The greatest good of the greatest number, for instance.”