Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (600 page)

The arguments that she used in her letter to my mother may or may not have been such as she would have addressed to her husband. They were to the effect that in giving hospitality and countenancing her brother’s children she was at least doing nothing to prejudice the interests of her own son and daughter — even before the outbreak of war. She liked the two Heimanns; she adored her brother; she was going to do her best for them.

And, after the war did break out, there was an argument stronger still — a reasoning that had the strength of a passion. Those were, of course, terrible times for mothers; and Lady Ada said that for night after night she could not sleep for thinking that if she acted with any injustice against her brother’s children Providence would avenge that injustice on her own, in dreadful France. She was convinced that her brother was already dead, and that his awful shade looked down on her and on them all.

I may as well, as I have mentioned my mother, put down here what was her view of Mr. Heimann’s disgrace. If she put it rather forcibly, it was nevertheless pretty nearly the attitude that had been taken up by most of Earl Marsden’s contemporaries. I happened to be reading some nineteenth century memoir or other at the time when I was staying with her, awaiting the news of my brother’s death, and coming on the phrase “Pugh Gomme’s Forty Guineas,” I asked her what it meant, and what Mr. Pugh Gomme, the brother of Lady Ada’s husband, could have been after to bring disgrace on his connection for the sake of a sum so small.

“What are all Pugh Gommes after?” my mother asked me in return. “The world is full of them. They are after testimonials — Government testimonials for choice. That fellow was an engineer — like your father; but your father was not an
arriviste
of that type. Edward Pugh Gomme invented the little brass rings that hold telegram forms in sheaves. Then he got Marsden, who was at that time Postmaster-General, to buy the patent for his Department. He received in return forty-two pounds and a testimonial. He used that to get the job of building the longest singlespan bridge in the world. In South America, somewhere. Your father said the bridge was a fairish piece of work: the fellow was as good an engineer as another. But it would take a Pugh Gomme to think of using letters of thanks about brass rings as Government backing to secure a job of bridge-building. But then, it is only Pugh Gommes who get on. And that unfortunate fool, Marsden, was foully used: there was not about that transaction the faintest suspicion of corruption. The sum paid was merely nominal: the cost of making a specimen machine for punching those rings. Perfectly legitimate. And I do not believe that Marsden even knew that Pugh Gomme had had the money.”

My mother was talking in her bedroom, just before she dressed for dinner: she was standing before her long glass and looking at me in the reflection. She added:

“Think of that poor, mad fool, running like a dog from his shadow, half the world over. Because he was once drunk in a public place: the House of Lords, to wit! Mind, I do assert that Marsden was foully used. He was. He was one of the long tail of men that Mr. Gladstone, who is now roasting in hell, betrayed as dirtily as men could be betrayed. And if Marsden turned upon his country, who could blame him?”

I said: “Mother! Mother!”

She replied:

“Go you away, my son! I must change my gown. But I know my world: I shall have been in it seventy years come Monday. And to be in Germany just now is just the sort of hobble a man like Marsden, a most ingenious fool, would get himself into. He would put his trust in Prussian princes. Trust him! It w
ould
be Prussians at this juncture. You see the pretty idea: the Prince was to help him back to power — or his son, in the alternative! — in return for a perfectly high-souled treaty. Perfectly high-souled. I don’t mean that he is a traitor: he is an honest man. But it takes a Whig to contract intimacies in the very quarter from which war is to come. So there is nothing for him but to commit suicide or to sit for some years in prison. And I would wager you a swan’s egg to a hazel nut that Prince Something of Prussia holds all Marie Elizabeth’s papers at this very moment. So we may just sit quiet.”

That was pretty nearly just what she said. As it turned out, she was more correct in her guesses than were most of us.

CHAPTER III

So behind that closed mahogany door a good many perturbations must have existed. Marie Elizabeth had just marched straight in on Sir Arthur and, announcing herself as the legitimate daughter of his old friend and chief, Earl Marsden; she had demanded to be provided with certificates proclaiming her British nationality. It had acted like a thunderbolt.

Sir Arthur had a pretty shrewd idea that the girl was actually the daughter of his old friend. Lady Ada, obeying the order in her brother’s letter, had told the statesman that Mr. Heimann supported and answered for these children; was ready to pay for the boy’s election to Parliament, and so on. But Marie Elizabeth boldly announced her ability to prove that she was legitimate. And my brother Fred, in a letter, had butted in with more vigour than he would have allowed himself if that had not been war-time and if he had not been hypnotised by that girl. His letter from his camp in Essex had simply announced that Lady Elizabeth Marsden, known as Marie Elizabeth Heimann, would call on Sir Arthur that morning at that office to claim the protection of the Government against all possible inconveniences arising from her supposedly foreign origins.

It was for Sir Arthur a pretty kettle of fish. He rang up Lady Ada, who was not able to help him much and only insisted that he should treat the girl with every possible politeness and consideration, if only for the sake of her own children in France. Marie Elizabeth, I fancy, had managed to bluff Sir Arthur into half thinking that her father, Mr. Heimann, had sent her certain papers. Lady Ada, over the telephone, expressed her conviction that this was quite possible. Her brother, seeing war approach, might very legitimately desire to make things safe for his daughter; and she merely insisted that everything that could be done for the girl should be done. And Sir Arthur could not very well object. He had, anyhow, to talk in the presence of the girl who sat by the telephone, and of Mr. Carstones, until at last he sent that gentleman out to talk to me.

What was settled at that interview I don’t know: there were many others, and Marie Elizabeth told me nothing about them. All I knew was that, as a result, the Home Office sent instructions to the local police at Froghole to the effect that the girl was to be in no way molested.

No, I did not know what was going on behind that vulgar door. But just because Marie Elizabeth had told me nothing at all, whilst that grey Mr. Carstones let out several things about my brother, a good many things seemed more plain to me.

Thus, for Marie Elizabeth — and possibly for my brother too! — I was an enemy to their brilliant schemes. That I should be so regarded was hateful to me; but it was only the beginning of many hatefulnesses! For, if my simple and direct relative supported the views of that girl, he would do it much more militantly than I could support the views of poor vanished George. He would sail round and make things hum. He couldn’t, of course, accompany her to these mausoleums, because he was actively engaged in the Regimental Quartermaster-Sergeant’s store of his battalion handing out socks to men as they joined up at the depot. So that was my job —

He had gone almost singularly without drama. Yes, really singularly so. We breakfasted at nine and the post came at about half-past. He had been up at six, taking Marie Elizabeth round amongst his mazes of wire enclosures where the meditative hens walked. Marie Elizabeth had undertaken to superintend these animals, at any rate for the present. She took, with her French blood, as naturally to the superintendence of hens as an English boy takes to egg-stealing. Personally, I know nothing about them, but I believe their superintendence calls for patience, skill, industry, temperance....

I have gone back by-the-bye to the fifth of August.

We were then breakfasting on a profusion of eggs, and my brother said that at all costs, if there were a war, his head of poultry must be maintained. We should in six months be screaming for food.

That appeared to me to be about the usual sort of gloomy nonsense that Fred talked when he ever did talk about the Fleet and such things. It was all just like peace. There were, of course, letters when the post came.

Fred finished his egg, wiped his moustache very slowly, and looked up from the back of a rather insignificant postcard that had no stamp.

He said to Marie Elizabeth:

“I’ll just show you those lists of March-hatched pullets!” and got up slowly in his long-legged manner. They went out.

Perhaps five minutes later — I had been looking at some proofs beside my egg-cup — I heard an absurd sound like a sob. My aunt, in black satin, even at that hour, very stout, white-complexioned and white-haired, sat rigid at the head of the table. She apologised for disturbing me at my work. She said she could not help being reminded of the departure of my great-grandfather for the Crimea. He had got up just like that, taking my grandmother to look at a spaniel that was sick in the stables. Only, my aunt said, it had been a long blue letter, not a postcard that had summoned him.

Of course my brother was not gone for good. He was indeed back that evening, watching Marie Elizabeth’s superintendence of the hens’ retirement. There were five hands, I think, on the place. And he had come once again in a Tomny’s tunic. He had bought himself a motor-cycle; the Dépôt was only five or six miles off — down somewhere in his View. But I did not have any private conversation with him. He asked me to stop there for a time to look after the women, and I had nowhere else to go in particular.

And I had just naturally taken Marie Elizabeth up to Town that day. The trains were extremely crowded; she did not know her way about London very well. She had told me at breakfast that Sir Arthur wanted to see her at twelve.

As I have said, Fred had written to Sir Arthur himself to say that this young woman, his guest, needed official assistance, but I daresay she would have written herself if there had been no one else.

Obviously it strengthened her position to have a man to write for her, and she was not one to miss anything that would strengthen her position.

I cannot exactly define her manner towards me. I have never seen how temperance reformers behave to such advocates of moderate facilities for drinking as are thrust unavoidably upon them. But I can imagine their behaving much as Marie Elizabeth behaved to me — with a scrupulous politeness, talking about the weather, the crops, possibly also the war; but never about the subject next their hearts.

And indeed Marie Elizabeth never talked about the war. Her attitude to that was extraordinarily complete.

I once saw in a place, by coincidence very near the home of Marie Elizabeth’s mother, a dark Jewess carefully folding up satin petticoats and placing them in sacks. A shell went through the top of the house; then another. That very striking, dark young woman just went on folding up the petticoats and placing them in sacks. I suppose them to have been second-hand garments purchased from fleeing inhabitants. But the war was no concern of hers; perhaps it was only just the folly of the male. Her business was with black satin petticoats. She had a great many wedding rings on each finger; they had, I suppose, belonged to deceased inhabitants of the town —

Well, right through Armageddon, that was the attitude of Marie Elizabeth. You would tell her that the Germans had landed in force in Harwich and, if you were sympathetic, she went on talking about her “case.” If you weren’t sympathetic she just made no comment at all.

No doubt hers was really a religion — a crusade. She had to bring to book a guilty man, her father, who had behaved badly to her mother. It was a part of the great war that goes on for ever between the two sexes. The oldest war of all, and the most engrossing of all, since in that there is never peace — an armistice now and then, perhaps!

But as for me and Marie Elizabeth, I really believe that the only thing we ever discussed was the times of trains and at which terminus it would be better to arrive. You see, I was the enemy. I had certainly sympathised with her brother in his desire to leave their uncle-father in peace; Mr. Jeaffreson could also testify that I had been against her determination to drag the
Evening Paper
through the mire of prosecution. Miss Jeaffreson, oddly enough, was, I believe, the only one of them that still had hopes of me. And Fred had certainly heard me call George Heimann “weak” for giving in to his sister — when he had been standing at my bedhead. He had not spoken to me since then. I don’t mean that he had been disagreeable or had avoided me. He had just not made opportunities for speaking to me alone. Perhaps there had not been any. He was an old-fashioned, stiff fellow, who believed that a man should make any sacrifices for a woman — any man for any woman. That was chivalry!

I seemed for a week or so rather to live in the corridor outside the room of Sir Arthur. I daresay I was not there so often as I thought. But there were in those days such an infinite, such an unbearable number of emotions that one effaced the other — except the very strong ones. And that was a pretty strong one. I believe that every atom of my body that could feel recoiled from the callousness of Marie Elizabeth.

I would go there and wait. Sometimes I would have the society of Mr. Carstones — that would mean that Marie Elizabeth was discussing with Sir Arthur the question of her birth. Sometimes Mr. Carstones would not come out — then she might or might not be putting the State to work to discover where were her brother and her father. Apparently at the first interview they had devised some means of making her a British subject. At any rate. Dr. Robins told me that the police and to a lesser extent the neighbourhood were satisfied on the subject — though I believe the peasantry, smaller farmers, and small shop keepers abandoned only with lingering reluctance the burning of my brother’s hen coops.

And then, one day, Mr. Carstones, still grey and lean, and still with the same cold, came out of the door and leaned against one of the mahogany uprights. He said:

“At any rate her nationality is now settled good and firm. Mr. Pugh Gomme, if this muddle goes on, won’t be able to get horrid questions asked in the House about Sir Arthur’s protection of aliens. He’s quite capable of that.”

I said:

“But my brother goes out to-morrow.”

He shook his head.

“They’re fixing it up... It’s fixed up, now,” he said. “Sir Arthur has been extraordinarily energetic. Thank goodness, for once, in a safe direction. They’re doing all that’s wanted, all of them. Why shouldn’t they? I tell you I breathe again.”

That must have been on the fourth of September; my brother went out on the twelfth. I did not ask Mr. Carstones what had been fixed up, or by whom. I did not want to let him know that I was not in the family councils.

That was my first experience of war-weddings. There were plenty of them later.

Marie Elizabeth came out of the new Ministerial mahogany door. Sir Arthur himself held it open for her; Mr. Carstones performed a sort of reverence. She was unbelievably calm — not very tall, looking darker because she was dressed all in black — I don’t know why. A little way down the corridor I said:

“You appear to be going to marry my brother quite soon.”

She answered:

“To-night at nine, at Kensington Church. It appears that, in order to prosecute my suit — to obtain my bare rights — I must in war-time be demonstrably a British subject.”

I said:

“And by marrying Fred....”

She answered:

“I become that. Demonstrably. Not any more than I am now. But with papers to show.”

I said:

“You must have been very quick about it. You two!”

She said:

“Sir Arthur has just procured us a licence from the Archbishop. Fred is at Liverpool Street. He’s going straight to Lambeth now.”

And do you know: as soon as it seemed inevitable that she was going to be my brother’s wife, I felt a sudden warmth towards that smallish, rigid personality. And I said:

“Let’s go and have lunch. Where are we meeting Fred?”

She looked at me with a certain dark, devouring gaze. She gathered from my words that I was not going to offer opposition. And we were neither of us persons to talk about our private feelings. In that she resembled her brother. She just said, over the cutlery of our lunch-table: