Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (588 page)

She said:

“It’s the very thing! I’ll do it with so much delight! If you only knew how
exactly
it falls in.”

She was going to move away, but, as if in an access of confidence, she stood still and went on:

“I’ve got Someone. A Someone with influence, practically clinching influence in one direction.... I’ve been thinking how to introduce George to him. George’s appearance is naturally a little startling. And Sir Arthur isn’t, oh,
vastly
unconventional. But in that Night Club atmosphere George would go down, Guy Fawkes hat and all. You’re a wonderful help! I’ll just telephone to Sir Arthur to come round and pick a chop, and then bring him on!”

It struck me that she must know that statesman remarkably well. And of course she did. George’s fortune ought to have been made. It wasn’t.

It will be believed — it may even be remembered! — that that day was remarkable in the annals of the lighter entertainments of London. That was because the evening before the police had raided the Night Club — and found nothing objectionable. Otherwise I daresay Lady Ada would not have anticipated so much pleasure from coming there, nor might she have proposed to bring her Someone with influence. But naturally all London wished to breathe an air that had been police-raided. I understand that half the Cabinet brought their aged mothers to see the show that night; but I was too busy to notice them much.

Having the right to pass in as many people as I chose, though I had not as yet thought about it, on that night at least I could be tyrannous. I don’t suppose that without that I could have got George away from that crowd of mænadic talkers, and when I did I did it only with violence. But the Jeaffresons wanted too desperately to visit a haunt of fashionable vice to be really mutinous.

Even at that I could not dress in my rooms, to which we had walked, they being just round the corner from the Club — without having the four of them: George Heimann; Mary Elizabeth, Miss Jeaffreson and that extraordinary fellow, her solicitor brother, all in my little parlour. They stood about amongst my books and bibelots, and held a council of war over, as it were, the body of the half inanimate George — the subject being, of course, the case of Podd
v.
Heimann, otherwise Pearson. Or, the case being a criminal one, I suppose it would be more technical to call it Rex
v.
Heimann, etc. (Podd prosecuting.) They went on jaw-aw-awing, and I could hear them through the door of my little dressing room: my three rooms together cannot have been much larger than a railway carriage.

At last I put my arm through the just opened doorway, caught the young man by the cloak and pulled him in to me. My incapable valet, whom I had found no opportunity of dismissing, was throwing my clothes on to me, and I sent George into the bedroom to telephone to Miss Honeywill, the instrument being beside my pillow. I had got her number from the Night Club.

He went into that room stiff and pallid, like a Russian convict on the road to Siberia. But before my fellow had ruined my second tie I could hear him roaring with laughter and shouting. He was saying:

“But you’ve got a lovely voice! An adorable voice!” He was not lacking in enterprise!

Against the head of my bed that romantic mass of blackness was leaning, the handsome face alight with animation as I saw him against the bright upright brass bars, the purple and green eiderdown and the delicate luminous fringes of the lamp shade. Though it was only six of a July evening, my bedroom was so dark that to see the telephone the lamp must be lit. I do not know how we lived that life with our semi-feminine trimmings in Mayfair cubby holes. But we did.

He held the black tube to his ear, and had pauses of excited listening and ecstatic intervals of laughter. From time to time he would say — just as Madame had said:

“Oh, it will be all right. We will pull you through!” There was not much of nervousness in his aspect. He turned his head, keeping the black tube at his ear, and said to me:

“The fellow called Revendikoff will be at the Night Club at 6.30 with your manuscript. She’s been crying. She thinks she can’t do it. But
I
say: With coaching and a claque....”

I found myself saying:

“Yes, tell her it will be all right!” It seemed a fabulous thing to say, but that boy carried me away with him.

“She’s got an
adorable
voice!” he said to me. Then he turned to the mouthpiece.

“No, you don’t!” he exclaimed. “You cannot let Jessop down. Put on a pretty frock and we’ll come and fetch you. I’ve arranged hundreds of this sort of thing!”

That of course was news to me; but I had come to think that that boy was capable of a good many things. It saved me the trouble of casting about for an excuse to tear him away from those vampires, whom I could hear still talking away like enraged saucepans on the bubble!

What
did
they want to talk to him about? The case must have been a very simple one for a solicitor, and they had already had some hours at George. They had talked all through the speeches and all through tea-time, and on the stairs. I suppose Mary Elizabeth said that Mr. Podd was a wicked man, and Miss Jeaffreson said what a wicked fellow that Podd was, and the solicitor wondered if he had made his will. And Miss Heimann asked if George had noticed the magistrate’s face when someone said something; and Miss Jeaffreson asked George if he had noticed the face of the magistrate, and the solicitor told an anecdote about the misfortunes of a client whose parents had not been married by some oversight. You know, that fellow must have had a most lugubrious crowd hanging around his office. I had never imagined that such disasters could befall the human race. And then they would begin all over again, with variations of a trifling kind, Miss Heimann saying that Mr. Podd had the soul of a pink, naked, new-born mouse, at the same time as Miss Jeaffreson was saying that the magistrate had obviously seen through Mr. Podd’s solicitor; Mr. Jeaffreson would be continuing his dismal anecdote. And then all three would fall at once on the silent George and declare that he must approach his uncle. He must get papers out of that unhappy and mysterious fellow. Miss Jeaffreson had already and many times told Miss Heimann and her (Miss Jeaffreson’s) brother all the details of her interview with Mr. Heimann in the ghostly room; but they had agreed that it would be more tactful to conceal that from George — George must start for Zell that night. And he must coerce his uncle into making a will! I don’t know how people
can
do that sort of thing. But they do.

And these people did it with avidity. So that when, opening my dressing room door — which, so as to make myself unapproachable, I did in my immaculate evening shirt and immaculate evening trousers, but without a coat or waistcoat — I thrust out my head and said that George was coming straight on with me to the Club, and they were to go home and dress and dine, and come on about ten-thirty — a dismayed and gasping silence fell upon those three. They had been counting on four more hours of solid talking to their victim, and they regarded me as abominably selfish.

But I closed my dressing room door fast, and, although through it I could hear them talking more agitatedly than ever for some minutes, I heard them at last go talking away, and there was silence. I daresay they would have stormed my dressing room door if Mr and Miss Jeaffreson had not been afraid that then I would refuse to pass them into the Night Club. But I believe Mary Elizabeth cared very little about it. She was too possessed by one sole idea.

We sneaked from my rooms, down the many stairs, and into an electric brougham that my incapable man had succeeded in obtaining from a neighbouring mews. If it had been any other sort of vehicle he would not have managed to get it; but I detest electric broughams, so he did. It was part of my plan.

Electric broughams are tiny, with small windows, and they run silently. I wanted that boy not to see out, and I wanted to make him attend to me while I talked. And it came off!

We progressed smoothly, and by back streets — I had told the coachman to go by back streets — towards Kilburn, where Miss Honeywill lodged; and I talked. I recited, as a matter of fact, the text of my shadow play, with stage directions. I would have talked about anything else to keep his attention; but that did it all right. With all his accomplishments he might have been expected to be too arrogant to listen. But he was as modest as he was gifted. His eyes and ears were entirely devoted to me.

I had sat him, drooping cloak and large hat and all, on the hateful little spring seat that they put for third parties in those contemptible machines; so he had his back to the driver and could see out very little. But although he silhouetted out for me most of the grey squalors up which, in vistas, we proceeded, I could not but be aware that here and there, outside lugubrious small shops in coarse black letters on orange, green or white sheets, members of the public were invited to invest pence or halfpence and learn about an amusing encounter between Poet and Publisher. They were the placards past which I was to get him!

I did. I kept his attention. My shadow drama was very short. It was to play for twenty minutes, and, having it by heart, I could go through it twice, stage directions and all, in the quarter of an hour of our drive. Why in the world Madame of the Night Club had not let me know three weeks ago that her adorer had stolen the manuscript I cannot imagine, for she had only informed me that morning when I looked in at the Night Club to see how it was going. Even at that, if I had not been so rushed, I could have dictated it in a quarter of an hour to a stenographer.

Anyhow, I repeated it twice in that brougham, and George listened with immense eyes and the air of a connoisseur. He kept on saying:

“How interesting! How differently you go about it! The Professor is the only writer I ever knew till now!”

I expect I must have seemed to him different from the Professor!

The brougham halted — naturally outside a small tobacco and paper shop, with all the newspaper placards blazing. I pushed my head clean through the window space and called to the coachman to drive four doors further on! I had a small dispatch case with me, and I left it on my seat, telling Heimann that this was a thievish neighbourhood and that he must watch that dispatch case like a dog watching his master’s coat and dinner on the stubble! On no account must he move! You see, I had the intimate and breathless conviction that if that young man, who seemed absolutely cool, caught a mere glimpse of the placards, the sight would involve him in a dreadful catastrophe. It was Lady Ada who had made me so nervous!

That street was indeed grim, grey, and paper-bestrewn in the evening light. And Miss Honeywill’s hall was pitch dark and smelt of cabbage. I don’t know why, being a tobacconist’s, a paper shop, and a telephone call office, it should have smelt of that vegetable; but that private entrance certainly did. And I knew why Miss Honeywill, invisible in that odorous blackness, was crying! I said: “ Well, come along!”

And a whisper, between sobs, said: “ That wasn’t your voice then on the telephone. I can’t come! Oh, I
can’t
!”

A rather small weight, like the cheek of a dancing partner, was on my shoulder; the little agreeable sobs came from near my ear.

The tobacconist opened the communication door behind her, and went upstairs without turning round. He left the door open so that a little light came in from the tobacco-y space. I could see her white shoulders just under my own chin. I said:

“No! I am the author. You’re dressed, then! Come along!”

She whispered:

“I can’t. This dress is a hundred years old. And I am worn out. With waiting!”

I patted her back with the hand of the arm that enfolded her. I don’t know why, in the entire abandonment to her grief, she should have taken me for a motherly person. But something in me reminded her of her mother, and she was soothed. She told me so long afterwards.

I said:

“The young fellow of the telephone is in the cab!”

She withdrew herself from my shoulder. Against the tobacco-moted light from the doorway she had a beautiful, compact, energetic silhouette. I said:

“He’s a splendid fellow. He’s our producer!” Suddenly a great, vibrating, proud voice exclaimed:

“My dear man! If I haven’t a cold I’ve a conscience. I’m not going to ruin your beautiful work!”

I drew away from her. It was alarming to think that I had been enfolding the producer of that miraculous organ. I felt for the door knob, and brought out: