Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (223 page)

A profound discouragement overcame him. He remembered the miles of white and mahogany passages in the centre of the ship. What ideals had all the people who, in the warmth and tranquillised security, slept in those innumerable precisely similar cells? And this ship that to all intents and purposes he owned was only an infinitesimal fragment of the whole of his problem. For his problem embraced all humanity. He was at that moment the wealthiest — and to that extent the most powerful — of all the men in the world. But what he wanted to do was to use his power to influence minds. Otherwise he could give all these people an extravagantly good dinner, a circus entertainment, or present each one of them with an Old Glory in satin stars and stripes. He might give every tenth man a hundred thousand dollars and see what came of it...

And although that sort of thing did not appeal to him he could not be certain — he had insight enough to be uncertain — that that sort of thing precisely wasn’t the best thing that he could do. He might, in that way, form the basis of a fortune for some poet or some thinker great enough to influence all the United States, all these cartloads of emigrants, all the world. In the sort of semi-socialist ideals in which he had been brought up, which dominated pretty well the whole world, the panacea was undoubtedly something in the way of examinations, scholarships, investigations of some sort. Then ought he to hold some sort of examination of all the population of the ship? But what sort of examination? Had any good really come to the world with the prevalence of that school of thought? Was the United States any the better for it — or humanity? He thought it was.

But, on the other hand, had not all his ideals come from past ages when certainly examinations had not even been discovered. Was not, at bottom, the feeling that dominated all these miles of corridors loathsome, dull, uniform, materialistic? Was there in all this miracle of modernity a single touch of poetry or of the finer feelings? If there were — and he did not deny it — he had not yet discovered it. And if he could not discover even the spark of it how was he — he! — to fire it into a blaze?

Before his eyes that central castle rose up, dark, but glowing through many portholes, so that it appeared to have inside a glowing and radiant centre — like the turnip-headed ghost of a country churchyard! He stood among the nameless crowd and it rose up inaccessible to them.

But was it like a castle? No, it was square, it was obviously of iron plate: at the top the monstrous forms of huge ventilators turned to right and left. The galleries that were formed by the layers of decks made it have a little the air of a Chinese pagoda. But it was not even like a Chinese pagoda; it had not any quaintness, any grace of outline. It was not like part of a seafaring vessel; it was not like anything. Or yes! It was like a gigantic packing-case jammed down on to the gracious lines of a vessel. That was what they had done for ships — he and his. They had filled its real decks with a huddled, nameless crowd: they had jammed a packing-case down upon its hold.

And yet, he was aware, ships had been fine, graceful, air-swept vehicles for the Finer Spirit. But it seemed to him that
this
ship — this ship of his — was nothing but an offence, with its trail of smoke to the august, black heavens and the vast swarms of blazing stars. There was not, probably, on that whole vessel a person that you could “place” : there was not a name that mattered.

The decks of the packing-case were nearly deserted now. In the topmost gallery but one a single figure moved round and round, appearing in the light of one side, disappearing in that of the other. They were going to sleep there. Here around him the sounds of the concertina, the clapping of the pail handles, still went up...

Perhaps the fact that the people in the packing-case had not any names and could not be placed — perhaps the very fact that they were all so hopelessly middle-class and fluctuating would make his task easier. It is, after all, easier to destroy a packing-case than a feudal castle or even a Chinese pagoda. There were not there any castes, any ranks, any classes to whom the shedding of blood had given an almost moral significance and stability. It might then be easier to infuse into these people a great ideal — an ideal of solidarity, of self-sacrifice, of cooperation — an ideal of a Greatness distinct from the acquisition of riches or of the power to “bluff!” They could not, those two national ideals, have taken a very deep hold. It was a matter of such very recent history, this tradition of evil that had been founded by men like his father. He was not very strong in history: but was not the “millionaire” the product of the half century since ‘49? Was not he a figure that another half century might consign to oblivion? Because, precisely, you could not place them. They had not the prescriptive rights of having done a service to the community that, in the old world, made one tender to a certain
gens,
to certain families. It was, was it not? the Transatlantic social mill, just one ant-heap in which
any
ant struggled through the mass to the outside on the top. You could pull down an ant-heap. You could clear away that central packing-case and the lines of the ship would be once more revealed. After all, what was the sense of writing up First “Class” or Second “Class” on a vessel that went towards the West? It was not a matter of class: it was a matter of a few more coins out of the breeches pocket.

Then assuredly these class limits could be swept away from the vessel with a very small struggle. You would perhaps be able to do it by uttering the, to the American, damning word “
undemocratic.”
For assuredly that ideal was very strong even with the Mrs Sargents.

Supposing he were to inaugurate his sway of this “line” by uttering a manifesto that all class distinctions were precisely anti-national. Supposing he were to build steamers without that central mass, but clean, roomy, fine from stem to stern. And then he might issue a bold challenge to all American users of boats, daring them to travel by any others at the risk of being called un-American. Would not that be a great step? And would not the example of it bear fruit even in Europe: would not it cause, even there, a further stage in the gradual euthanasia of class distinctions that was going on all over the world. Example! Was not that really the thing that counted? His father’s wide example had done much harm: might not his, by that device, create a new standard? For he had heard it advanced again and again against his countrymen that what they needed, what they absolutely lacked, was precisely standards!

And then — because he had not gone to school at Harrow or mixed with Tories for nothing — there came into his head the discouraging idea that no law ever acts as it is intended to do. You pass a law to restrict the number of drink-shops and the children see their parents drink at home and the streets are filled with female drunkards — so that Heaven knew what would be the effect of abolishing the classes on his ships. He could not see that any evil would result: but it might mean the disappearance for ever of any mingling of European and American culture. Decent people might refuse to travel. You simply could not tell
how
it would influence ideals! You couldn’t tell anything. He wanted to help the people pent up before him to a purer type of ideals; he wanted intensely to help all these poor people round him.

He felt for his watch: it seemed to him that he must have lost hours — that Eleanor would be in bed by now. But his watch wasn’t there. He supposed he must have left it in his berth. Yet his pocket-book wasn’t there: his cigarette-case was gone — even his handkerchief. It annoyed him — because his pocket-book contained one of Eleanor’s letters. However, he had Eleanor...

Of course there would be criminals going to the United States. And he wondered what
their
ideals were.

Up on the third deck in front of him there appeared, at the angle, beneath the light, the figure of Mr Houston. Small, his Homburg hat on the back of his head, his hands deep in the pockets of his smooth black overcoat, his little beard pointing nearly horizontally, he appeared to gaze at something far off in the night.

And suddenly it occurred to Don that it was absurd to say you can’t “place” Americans. This gentle and tolerant old man with the low, trustable voice was Mr Houston of Brooklyn. Half the people on the packing-case would know him as coming of a good family who had lived in Columbia Road for generations. Mr Houston had “retired,” which wasn’t quite American, but it was condoned by the ill-health that showed in every line of his figure. It didn’t count at all that the Houstons for generations had made their money by manufacturing stovepipe elbows. What mattered, even to the people of the packing-case, was that the Houstons had been distinguished for probity, gentleness and benevolence — for character, in short. And wasn’t that just as much a class distinction as anything else? Wouldn’t it be as cruel not to provide a little privacy for this poor old man with his need for quiet as to force Eleanor to mix with the people who had picked his pocket?

Mr Houston moved his head round on his thin neck and uttered some inaudible words, and immediately afterwards Eleanor, muffled to the eyes in a golf cape, came to stand beside him and to follow the direction of his hand into the night.

And whilst in rejoining them Don once more lost himself in the mazes of the packing-case, coming out in a bewildering way where, beneath a rather dim light, the second-class passengers lay about under undistinguished-looking shawls, finding the grille drawn along the long deck and mounting more corridor stairs, utterly unable to locate the particular gallery upon which he had seen them, Don was wondering in his mind whether actually Eleanor had any more claim to consideration than Mr Houston. He was quite aware that she wouldn’t nowadays get it. Modern philosophy would have it that to manufacture stove-pipe elbows was as glorious a thing as to crack them — and wasn’t mediaeval warfare a matter of cracking with a steel bar a stove pipe on another man’s head? So that considering an individual to be no more than a link in the chain of his family, wasn’t Mr Houston as precious metal as were Eleanor and her father? Was he or wasn’t he? He represented the manufacture of stove pipes, she only their destruction.

Every modern creed would give the answer that he was better: Mrs Sargent would say so: his Fabian friends would say so — even Eleanor might be sufficiently moved by the life all round her, or by the enunciations of her friend the Canon to say that Peace hath her victories and the rest of it. But was it true? Was it true in the sense of the Eternal Verities and apart from modern accepted Ideals? Was not Eleanor, as representing people who had really acted in their own persons, of a more vital tradition than Mr Houston, whose ancestry had merely taken the profits of poor wretches’ toil?

Before he could feel himself equipped to do anything he would have to settle in his mind all these mere first principles. He felt it himself, but it was forcibly put to him in these very words by Mr Greville ten minutes later. He had found Eleanor hanging on to Mr Houston’s gentle support and walking very slowly along the covered deck, from above which the globular lamps sent down a soft glow on their figures. Mr Houston seemed to have discovered a soft, ancient elective affinity for her. With his black-gloved, thin hands he was fending their roll from the side-rail, and he was telling her, as a good joke, how he had taken a row-boat full of oranges to the lighthouse men of the most northerly lighthouse in the world. He had seen from the North Cape the tower on the horizon and he had said: Hullo, he supposed those fellows would like some oranges. He had started on his voyage round the world with a truck load of California oranges — and he still had some left in the steamer’s refrigerators. And as he leaned back, small, brown-faced, white-bearded and gentle-eyed, promising her, as he resigned her to Don, to send her a few for herself to-morrow morning, he seemed to be offering her the homage due from the representative of one fine tradition to another. Noble natures, after all, leap to each other across the ages as across the waters ship salutes ship.... And Eleanor, catching her arm into Don’s, remarked, as she watched the old man’s figure timidly disappearing into the narrow saloon doorway, that he was a rather charming old person. He had, it seemed, been offering his tribute of California oranges to elect natures all over the globe. And what more, Don asked himself, could he demand of his countryman?

But the young people hadn’t made more than one turn of the quarter-mile deck — they hadn’t indeed dismissed Mr Houston and his adventures from their conversation before they were joined by Mr Greville, who, with his lean features, his frock-coat and soft, wide-awake-like scholar’s hat, resembled, extraordinarily in the lights and shades, Uncle Sam himself. As Eleanor, saluting him gaily, said: “You couldn’t have told he wasn’t an American.”

“Ah, wait till you hear him speak,” Don answered gaily too.

For, linked to Eleanor, who in turn linked herself to her father, he seemed to feel that they had a solidarity — perhaps it came from their added surefootedness now that the wind was freshening. It was as if they were indeed a family, he and they; as if he had acquired their point of view. He didn’t seem any more to float, lost and alone. The water roared past them, an infinitely little space of white dimly seen, an infinitely vast space of solid black; the wind, catching them, caused them to pause a little at the forward corner and sent them hurrying a little down the other side, where, at the far angle, a man in a grotesquely-shaped ear-cap leaned over the rail, gazing at the blurred stars. The lights and the noises had died away in the inscrutable blackness of the ship’s forward deck. There was nothing any longer visible save the black fantastic forms of windlasses and spars, adding with their deeper shadows to shadows already black. And as the ship sped on, leaving in the mind the impression of something immense, trustworthy and intent on its end, through the night, trackless and enigmatic, it seemed to Don — it was an impression rather than any reasoned evolution — that all these people, far beneath his feet now, had sunk literally into still deeper depths of unimportance. They didn’t matter, they were the raw material, the ore with which one worked — without names, without traditions, with nothing but a future that he should have to mould.