Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (274 page)

He raised his hands on high, and then turned upon Mr. Milne.

“If you have an ideal you have ‘God’.. he mimicked.” Then I suppose that as your new friend is evidently your ideal he is going to be your God....”

And once again Mr. Clarges took refuge in flight. He returned, however, from the passage to fetch, ostentatiously, his umbrella, because he desired to show that he could not trust his property in the neighbourhood of their new friend. When for a second time he retired he did not go any further than the little book room, where he remained, seated on the truckle-bed and turning over the numbers of Mr. Milne’s
Educational Journal.
He turned impatiently, but he saw nothing of what he read. He heard them, at last, clear away the plates.

CHAPTER
V

WHEN he returned to the room — and he did it with no particular ill grace, saying merely that he couldn’t stand that sort of talk and had gone to read a paper till they had done with it — he found Mrs. Milne in her accustomed seat beside the fire-place, and gliding half invisible through the gloom, he sat down in
his
accustomed place — as if, still, he meant to buttress her from the heresies of the world.

Her husband and their new guest were standing, mere silhouettes against the window.

“Of course I don’t want to ask impertinent questions,” he heard Alfred Milne ask. “But his disappearance has caused his wife such a lot of grief — so Bracondale says.”

“She should rather rejoice,” Mr. Apollo answered, “for this man was insolent, a braggart, oppressive, ill-natured, and had no faith in his God nor any love for his kind.”

“But still — not to know, not to have the slightest inkling, to be full of uncertainty.... He might return to-morrow, or never.”

“He will never return,” Mr. Apollo’s voice said passionlessly.

“But still.. Alfred Milne pleaded.

“If you offend against a God,” the voice returned, “there is no altering his verdict; nor can you atone, for you are dead and can no more act.”

Alfred Milne maintained a silence of intense thought. At last he said —

“I do not understand very well. Arthur Bracondale says that you have done a certain thing — that you say you have done a certain thing....” He could not be more explicit because he was aware of Mr. Clarge’s dark re-entry. “I cannot well believe that that is more than figurative speech. But there are so many things that I have failed to understand. This is a very weighty punishment to this man. He did not know the nature of his offence. Is this justice?”

“Assuredly it is justice,” his interlocutor said, “and such justice as every day you see before your eyes. For have you not seen a man set out to cross a road, and, not heeding his steps, be crushed out of all semblance of the man he was by an approaching vehicle? Is that justice or injustice? Which do you say? Assuredly it is justice, for so it is ordained: he who affronts an oncoming body falls to the ground and is killed.”

“But then...” Alfred Milne said, “in the case of the policeman...” He paused, for he did not know how to proceed.

“You pause,” Mr. Apollo said, “because you are well aware that that too was an action of divine justice. For that man was indeed most evil in his deeds as in his effects. For he had misrepresented the actions of myself, whom I will call, as being most suited to your comprehension, a very wonderful man; and what deed can be more full of sin than to misreport the actions of a very wonderful man? For the nearer a man approaches to the quality of wonderfulness the nearer he is to a god. And so the perjurer sins the more against his fellow-men, since it is only to the actions of their Gods, as they are recorded, that man can turn for guidance. And, in this misreporting the actions of a God — if your very wonderful man be indeed a god — your perjurer sins against the God; and though it be but a very little or no ill to the God, yet so potent a thing is a God that a very little sin against him is visited with a very terrible punishment. This must be apparent to your understanding.”

Alfred Milne was again silent for a long time. At last he said, as if he were pleading —

“But will you not come to the house of Mrs. Todd to see how she grieves?”

“My friend,” Mr. Apollo said, “I will go with you wherever you will.”

Milne crossed to his wife’s side and bent over her to say —

“I don’t know quite when I shall be back. There are a great many things to do. Mr. Todd the missionary has disappeared from his home. I want to see if he cannot be restored.”

“I will stay with your wife till you come back,” Mr. Clarges said a little grimly, and Alfred Milne answered —

“It would be kind if you would; but I shall in all probability be very late.”

As they went down the stairs Mr. Apollo said to the young man —

“Has it not occurred to you to consider it possible that in your absence thus late in the night-time this old man might make amorous overtures to your wife?”

Alfred Milne halted on the first landing.

“Do you ask,” he said, “because you consider it likely?” Having put the question, however, he continued to descend the dim stairs.

“I do not consider it likely,” Mr. Apollo said: “indeed I am assured that it will not take place. I ask that I may have insight into your view of your own heart.”

Again, upon the second landing down, Alfred Milne paused.

“I think that in the case of Mr. Clarges it has never occurred to me,” he said. “He is very much like our joint father; we are both orphans. But — as a principle...”

“Yes, let me hear your principle of the matter,” Mr. Apollo said.

Again Alfred Milne descended the stairs, and again, at the third landing, he halted.

“It isn’t very easy,” he said, “to put it exactly into words. But, roughly speaking, if a man can’t keep his wife’s affections — or if a wife is not willing to defend herself from such advances — it’s neither decent nor in any way useful for a man to interfere.”

“You put it, I observe,” Mr. Apollo said, “in the form of a hypothetic question.” If a man did so and so,” you say. But how would it be in your own case? Would you not feel rage, ignominy or despair? Would you not slay your wife, or put her away from you, or expose her to the contempt of the world, as has been the case with most of the races with which I have had acquaintanceship?”

Again — and now they were only two landings from the ground — Alfred Milne halted.

“I cannot say how I should feel,” he said; “it is likely that I should have all these emotions. But as to how I should act, I trust not vindictively, and, unless it happened that I acted when passion was actually upon me I think it would not be so.”

“Then tell me,” Mr. Apollo said, “to what extent this principle obtains in your Republic, or whether these views are limited to yourself as an individual.”

Again — and by now they were on the basement floor, confronting the heavy red door with ground-glass strips of window, wet with the sweating of the staircase — Alfred Milne paused.

“I can’t claim to speak infallibly as to the state of public opinion. And indeed we have hardly the time for me to talk about these things — for we must take a bus, if that won’t be disagreeable to you; I cannot afford cabs. And a bus where other people would hear us is not the place in which to discuss marriage.”

“That is a strange saying,” Mr. Apollo said. “Is it possible that, in your Republic, the discussion of grave matters can give offence if it be overheard? But, of course, since man is man, all things are possible. Tell me then, now, what it is that will give offence and afterwards we will hasten the more.”

Alfred Milne leaned against the iron rail that descended from on high.

“I’ve pointed out that I can’t speak with any authority,” he said, “for our State is so huge and contains so many classes and creeds. But, since you ask me, I should say that the very highest classes and the very lowest — what we call the aristocracy and the working-men — have evolved out of experience much such a philosophic practice as I have outlined. They take what comes, I mean, without much fuss and are fairly comfortable. But the huge class that lies in between — the class that we call the middle class, a type of citizen that is shut off from experience and that never thinks — those people who have no preoccupations or knowledge other than what goes to their trades or their stomachs...”

“You speak very disfavourably of these people,” Mr. Apollo said.

“I do not profess to give views that I don’t hold,” Alfred Milne answered. “I may be unjust, but I think I am not.”

“Well, speak on,” Mr. Apollo said; “I pay attention to what you say.”

“Then, roughly speaking,” Alfred Milne continued, “all those who think at all, from whatever class they are drawn, think to-day very much as I think. Those of them who are called upon to act would act very much as I should act if they and I acted in accordance with our principles. And, roughly speaking again, the thinker of to-day dictates the moral standpoint for the unthinking of to-morrow or of the day after to-morrow. I am not, you will understand, advocating promiscuity; I could not be more entirely contented than I am with Frances.”

“And does not that, perhaps,” Mr. Apollo said, “influence the ideas that you utter? If you were less certain of her fidelity might you not be more inclined to mure her up from the society of other men?”

Alfred Milne considered his dusty shoes.

“Of course, I can’t be sure,” he said, “and the question, except from one point of view, is mere trifling. If Frances had not been Frances I should not have been drawn to her. But, with regard to a general principle, we’ve got to have one founded on common sense and experience, and from that point of view a woman who has to be retained for oneself by shutting her up between four walls, or guarding her with marriage oaths, is not a woman much worth having. Such a state is neither dignified nor practicable as we live to-day.”

“Well, these are your affairs and not mine,” Mr. Apollo said, “for I cannot see that I shall ever be wedded to a woman, nor, except in so far as I desire to know how they are conducted, are mortal affairs any concern of mine.... But tell me, now, where you wish to take me.”

“We are going,” Alfred Milne said, “first to Arthur Bracondale’s rooms and, if he is not in, to the office of the
Daily Outlook
.”

“I will gladly go with you,” Mr. Apollo said; “but you shall tell me why we go to these places.”

“Well, you know,” Alfred Milne said, as he opened the heavy door, “young Bracondale has always done a little journalism out of bank hours, and now, in an extraordinary way, the
Daily Outlook
has taken him up. He sent in a little sketch that he called a ‘Day in a Bank Clerk’s Life’ and they...”

Mr. Apollo and Alfred Milne were passing — to reach the bus-filled high road — between the grim walls of More’s Buildings and the tenements. In the opening, grimy and tenebrous, of Victoria Mansions, dimly discernible beneath a gas-lamp, there stood three men and two women with the gaping vault behind them.

“Parrit! Parrit! Pretty Pall! Jaw! Jaw! Jaw!” came across to their ears, and a woman screamed out two obscene epithets.

“You spoke truly,” Mr. Apollo said, “when you alleged that there was in the elements of your Republic an extraordinary diversity. For here I observed at one and the same time a beautiful and simple mode of life much such as obtained when the Gods were still on earth and over against it a lack of hospitality such as even Athens scarcely could show.”

“Oh well,” Alfred Milne said, “it takes all sorts to make a world. These people are not pleasant, but they must live somewhere.”

“I am not so certain of that,” Mr. Apollo said.

It was, however, at this point that they sprang, one after the other, on to a bus that disdained to stay for them. The summer night was cool; lights, turning and whirling as they moved, shot up like spray from between the house fronts to the pale sky; along the pavements the huge crowds sauntered, gentle and orderly.

“At any rate” — Alfred Milne continued his tale—”young Bracondale sent in his article about the bank and they printed it that very night. Lord Aldington, who owns the paper, is such an extraordinary man. I suppose he knows his business, but he sent for Bracondale and made him all sorts of promises. If he keeps them — but they say you never can tell with him — young Bracondale is a made man and can marry Miss Todd tomorrow.”

“But why,” Mr. Apollo asked, “do you take
me
to the home of this journal? Is it that I am to confirm this Lord in his good opinion of this young man? I am very ready to do so.”

Alfred Milne leant suddenly forward. “You must not think it an impertinence in me to have asked you to come.” His voice was full of concern. “It did not appear to me to be so. I thought it would be an experience for you to see the inside of a newspaper office — and of such an office. It is such an experience for me that I thought it would be so for you.”