Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (151 page)

He
at least was not wanting in initiative. If things hadn’t got enough in them he dropped them immediately. There had been, for instance, the Renaissance Press that he had got George to back. That was on its last legs. Well, he had long ago cleared out of that. He, obviously, could not pay up anything; he had nothing. It would all fall upon George. And, in the light of Mrs. Moffat’s revelations, he didn’t see where George was going to find the money to meet the bill. George was obviously on his last legs.

“Lucky I cleared out from him when I did,” Hailes mused. “He might have let me in for something. I suppose that was what he was
really
up to.” Hailes, as a matter of fact, had sent Mr. George P. Beale, the Philadelphia publisher, down to George. He had a general idea that George, by selling something to Mr. Beale, might realise at least enough to satisfy the creditors of the Renaissance Press. The creditors in question were mostly friends that Mr. Hailes thought it would be desirable to keep in with — at the expense of George.

He pictured himself, after George’s crash came, going about, proclaiming, “Well, I did my best for him; I got him in with Beale’s. Yes,
I
sent Beale to him. But there are some people you can’t save from themselves.”

Sitting there in the carriage, he thought comfortably, “And I
have
done my best for that old fool. No one can accuse me of a dishonourable act.”

The carriage stopped suddenly opposite Madame Rene’s. Mrs. Henwick’s brougham, shining brilliantly and coquettishly, was planted in front of them.

Mr. Hailes said, cheerfully: “I suppose you’ll ask her in here.”

“No, I can’t,” Mrs. Moffat answered, curtly. “I can’t tell her. I can’t be bothered with scenes.”

Hailes said: “Oh, I’ll break it. I’m quite up to it. I’d better ask her for a lift westwards, and tell her on the way.”

Mrs. Moffat nodded without speaking, and Hailes noticed that two long furrows of tears were ploughed down the brilliance of her cheeks. He was intensely astonished.

A moment later Mrs. Henwick tripped out of the blazoned doors. She took in their carriage with an alert, unastonished bird’s glance, and came, smiling daintily and with a touch of pleasure, to their door.

“Oh, you two creatures,” she said, “I’ve got such an inspiration of a hat.”

“Be careful,” Mrs. Moffat whispered hoarsely to him as he passed her,
“
I believe she was fond of him.”

“Well, you are in a hurry, Ella,” Mrs. Henwick said.
“
So am I, too. Dick’s got such a charm of a surprise bracelet waiting for me, I believe. All right; I’ll drop Mr. Hailes quite tenderly. Going to your bank? Well, so long.”

She waved her hand daintily, and disappeared into her coupé, followed by the attentive form of Mr. Hailes.

Mrs. Moffat drove alone towards Trafalgar Square, immensely shaken, but with a feeling of momentary calm. And her intense dislike for Hailes grew with every turn of her swift wheels. He was unbearable, insufferable. She would make him feel — Then, suddenly, she stopped her horses, and sent them prancing back after the brougham of Mrs. Henwick.

It had occurred to her, like the stab of a long needle, “What is he doing now?” She realised that he was quite capable of commencing, with adroit consolations, a series of small, encroaching services. She knew him so well. What a devil he was —

And, inconsequently, she wondered how Mrs. Henwick would look in black, after such a shock.

PART III. THE BLACKENING PEARLS
.

CHAPTER I
.

GEORGE found Mr. Beale of Philadelphia a thoroughly entertaining
“
type.” He entered into his frankness, his brusqueness, his evident intention to get what he wanted. It would be saying too little, to put it that George found the American thoroughly sympathetic; he found him the sort of man that he himself would have wished to be.

At his return from Thwaite’s cottage he discovered Mr. Beale standing before the fireplace, reading nervously and intently the manuscript that Thwaite the night before had left on the sofa.

“I say, this isn’t the thing?” he immediately attacked George. “I mean the thing that’s to fill two continents with awe. The novel that man Hailes was talking about.” He brushed his disengaged hand nervously across his red-gold beard. “Oh, but it’s there, somewhere. It’s not a figment of the imagination.”

“We’d better breakfast,” George said pleasantly. “One can’t unravel mysteries fasting.”

Mr. Beale looked at him a shade savagely; then he laughed.

“You can look at it in that way,” he said.

He swiftly examined the celebrated dining room and exclaimed: “So this is where you eat, Mr. Moffat? It’s real fine.”

He folded his napkin into the opening of his waistcoat and emphasised his remarks with a bacon knife: “Let me tell you all about myself, Mr. Moffat.”

George, massive and benignantly amused, let the stream pass over him. Mr. Beale explained that he was a business man, who wouldn’t intrude anywhere unless he saw a good thing that he wanted.

“And when I don’t see that good thing in the window, I ask for it,” he concluded, fixing his clear blue eyes on George.

“But, my dear man,” George said, amiably, “I don’t know what it is you want.”

“The American novel is played out,” Mr. Beale suddenly announced. Philadelphia, in the shape of his firm, was waiting for it at the last base or he wasn’t any judge of base-ball. “No, sir, the American novel racket has had its day.”

“Things move so fast over there,” George said. He savoured his toast in his pleasant way of tasting an ice at an opera. “But, how, if I had a novel for you to have, or if you had my novel — how, in the realms of wonder, would you affect that American phenomenon with it?”

Mr. Beale looked at him sharply: “I thought you would come round,” he said. “Why, the merit wouldn’t be yours. I don’t mind telling you
that
much.”

George chuckled once more.

“Oh, I know you won’t get riled,” Mr. Beale said rapidly. “You haven’t any ‘side,’ as they say over here. Well, it’s like this — I’m going to play the Great Panjandrum card over again.”

George laughed:

“You don’t mean to say I’m the Great Panjandrum?”

“With the little button at the top and all,” Mr. Beale confirmed. He snapped up a piece of kidney.

“But really—” George was beginning.

“You’re precisely
that,”
Mr. Beale said.

“It’s like this—” He stopped, looked at George, and then himself exploded into laughter:

“It’s the most ridiculous thing. Fancy having to persuade an author that he’s a big iron pot. You’ve gotten yourself anyhow, a sort of European-American, extra-superfine, poet’s bay-leaf reputation. You needn’t deny it. And that man Hailes (he
does
know you? He
has
lived in this house? Well, then — )
he
says you’ve gotten a novel. Now I want that novel.”

George supposed it was what he was writing now.

“Oh, put that on one side,” Mr. Beale answered.

George was in the pleasant humour that came over him when an ingenuous and charming child wanted his repeater watch to play with.

“Of course, I don’t know why you should oblige me,” Mr. Beale said suddenly; “it isn’t as if our aunts had been neighbours, or anything.”

“I’d oblige you if I by any means could,” George said.

“What I want is to get a big Rostand-Cyrano-de-Bergerac - real literature - all - that boom,” Mr. Beale began again. He said he wanted something national and romantic — hit-the-great-heart-of-the-nation-plumb-centre. “I guess you think I’m
vulgar,
though,” he added.

George laughed, and ensconced himself cross-legged in the shelter of his great hooded chair.

“My dear fellow,” he said pontifically, and as soothingly as he could, “how in the world could I appeal to your Transatlantic-national heart?”

“Why, it was about the discovery of America, wasn’t it?” Mr. Beale said.

George said, “Oh.”

Mr. Beale was referring to the half remembered and half again forgotten
Wilderspin
— the manuscript that had been lent to Clara Brede.

It appeared that Mr. Hailes on his departure had carried away a rather fragmentary duplicate, the existence of which George had altogether forgotten.

“I’ve seen it,” Mr. Beale said. “I’m not after a pig in a poke. I read it at Hailes’ rooms last night. Why that passage — when your hero sights the land. Why, by Jove —

“It’s atrocious,” George said quickly. “It’s the work of a boy of ten.”

“I don’t care what it is,” Mr. Beale answered. “That’s what I’m after. Give me the complete manuscript.”

“It’s out of the question,” George said decidedly.
“
It’s in the hands of another person.”

Mr. Beale’s face fell so dismally that George felt really concerned for him.

“But I tell you,” he said grievously,
“
if it is
rot,
I like it, but I’m no judge; if it
is
rot, that’s just what the public — our crowd — wants. Something they can
like
that’s written by a real man with a reputation like yours. Full-dress, classical literature with the big L is so almighty dry as a rule. But if they can get something tender and juicy like this, by a standard man like you, they’ll
fall
on it. Good Lord! No one could work that racket as I could. Why—”

He paused dejectedly.

“Can’t it be arranged? The American rights, at least? My people are a wealthy crowd.”

George shook his head.

“It’s not a question of publication,” he said. “The book’s sentimental rubbish.”

“Well, but where’s the manuscript,” Mr. Beale asked.

George waved a hand non-committally.

“Don’t waste time,” Mr. Beale said. “You can’t bluff me.”

George laughed. “I wouldn’t even think of trying.”

Beale looked at him frankly and appreciatively.

“I don’t believe you would,” he said. He paused and considered.

“I really wouldn’t think of publishing it on any account,” George said. “I tell you the thing’s atrocious.” Its glaring sentimentalisms rose up suddenly before his mind’s eye. He remembered an absurd scene in which, in the wilds of an impassable Virginian forest, his hero mused on the fall of Rome, Babylon and Carthage, and on the rise of the Transatlantic empires yet to be. That was what Mr. Beale wanted. It was as if George, in the ingenuousness of his heart, had written it to glorify spread-eagleism. “It’s the most childish piece of false sentiment from beginning to end,” he brought out.

“I’m prepared to spend a record sum on advertising it,” Mr. Beale coaxed him.

George felt the pathos of Mr. Beale’s position — of his joyous enthusiasm, his delight in a
coup
as a
coup.
He really wished that Mr. Beale might succeed in proving the justice of his theories. He felt, too, that Mr. Beale must regard the refusal as a senseless and gratuitous piece of ill-luck. The thing worried him more than a little.

He looked pensively out of the window; Clara Brede, in her blue cloak, passed once again. She was carrying a bulky and untidy brown paper parcel. “I’m really extremely sorry,” he said to Mr. Beale, “for my apparent churlishness.”

“Well, but where’s the manuscript of
Wilderspin,
anyhow?” Mr. Beale asked cheerfully. “We can talk about terms when I get hold of it.”

George opened the door for Clara Brede. Her fresh voice said enthusiastically:

“I’ve brought you back the manuscript. It’s splendid.” She entered the room as if on the spring wind, her face full of animation.

“Oh, I didn’t know you had anyone here,” she said, and added: “But it’s magnificent, your
Wilderspin.
Why don’t you publish it?”

It was as if Mr. Beale sprang upon her. George looked at him with momentary apprehension. He didn’t know — and he a little dreaded — how his mannerisms might strike Clara Brede. But Mr. Beale had suddenly become almost Parisian in his manner:

“I assure you,” he said, “I’ve been asking Mr. Moffat the same question for the last two hours.”

“Why? What?” Clara asked. She held the manuscript as if it had been a child, tenderly, and stood framed by the doorway.

“I am what you call a publisher,” said Mr. Beale gallantly. “I can’t say the offer I’ve made him for that precise work is a princely one. He won’t allow me to make an offer.”

“Oh, but it’s splendid,” Clara Brede said.
“
I’ve never read anything like it.”

George suddenly felt a great deal of pleasure. “It’s a childish performance,” he maintained stoutly,
“
and my position’s absurd.”

Clara Brede came a little farther into the room.

“You don’t mean to say,” she suddenly attacked George—”you don’t mean to say you refuse to let it be published.”

“It would make his name,” Mr. Beale addressed her. “It would make him famous in two, if not three, continents. I haven’t arranged for Australia.”

“But I don’t in the least want to be famous,” George said rather angrily, “on the strength of
Wilderspin”

Clara had been listening to Mr. Beale, flushed as if an enchanter had been speaking. She flashed an “Oh! how can you?” on George. “I like the book so much. It’s so real, it’s so full of life, it’s so kind and good and helpful.”

“Exactly, exactly what I wanted to say, Miss,” Mr. Beale chimed in.

George suddenly reflected on
Wilderspin
as viewed in the eyes of Clara Brede. Clara was undoubtedly romantic — and
Wilderspin,
which to him was nauseatingly sentimental, to her was real. And she found it so kind, so good and so helpful? The central character indulged in rhetorical musings; she must have found them pleasing. Perhaps the book
was
attractive.

When he had been writing it (he remembered that it had appealed to his wife) he had meant it to be full of the open air, of the sea; yes, certainly of romance; of kindness, too, and a certain good-hearted braveness. Perhaps some of that young spirit of his had really expressed itself in the work. As a “piece of work” it was undoubtedly bad; points were incredibly missed; the subject hadn’t been done justice to; nothing had been squeezed out of it — from a writer’s point of view. It wasn’t the sort of subject that he was really fit to treat — romance, love, gallantry, tenderness. What had he known of these?

But Clara Brede liked it; then it must have merits that he himself couldn’t see.

He softened towards his work whilst he stood mutely listening to their exhortations.

At last Clara said: “I’d give anything to see it published.”

And Mr, Beale chimed in: “I’d give more than a few dollars to publish it.”