Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (368 page)

“It certainly sounds exciting,” Gerald Luscombe said.

“Exciting!” Mr Everard bubbled over. “Dear old....” He caught himself up. “Why the fact is there’s everything in it. There’s realism for the cranks and there’s romance for the young women and there’s right down stirring patriotism for you and me....” Again Mr Everard paused. “Look here,” he said, “you won’t think me impertinent or I suppose you will, but it’s got to be got over—” and Mr Everard heaved a deep sigh as if of relief and fumbled with the lowest mother of pearl button of his waistcoat....

“What’s the matter?” Gerald asked. “I haven’t noticed anything to complain of, so far.”

“Well, but the real fact is,” Mr Everard said, and he wiped his forehead with a white silk handkerchief, “I didn’t come down here of my own accord.”

Gerald Luscombe said, “Oh!”

“You see,” Mr Everard went on, “it’s because I’m going to marry Polly Smith, and so I’m in a sort of a way one of the family and all the rest of them are so confoundedly afraid of you.”

“Well, I am rather a formidable proposition,” Gerald Luscombe said friendlily.

“
Oh, you’ve got rather a stand-offish air,” Mr Everard said.

“I?” Gerald Luscombe ejaculated.

“I don’t know what it is exactly,” Mr Everard answered. “I suppose you’re a gentleman or something and the others aren’t. Though I used to think old Mr Smith was the stiffest man I’d ever met. But even he doesn’t really like to ask you the question.”

“What question?” Gerald Luscombe asked.

Mr Everard took a deep breath. “After all you can’t eat me,” he said. “But they all want to know whether it pays?”

Gerald Luscombe looked at him with a sort of enigmatic smile. “My dear fellow,” he said, and he used the address for the first time, “of course it doesn’t pay. How could it? It may pay Mr Gubb. It obviously can’t pay me.”

Mr Everard let his breath go from him in a deep “Ah!
They
thought” — he said, and his
they
indicated all Mrs Luscombe’s relatives, her father, her brothers, her brothers-in-law and her cousins the Peckovers, “
they
thought that you might see your way to some sort of gold mine.

I guess it was part of it jolly well nothing but curiosity. But Mr Smith is really anxious. He thinks that if you think you’ve found a gold mine — I mean if you’re speculating deep in it — you may be hard hit and Evangeline may suffer. I never thought, myself, that you were the sort of chap — fellow — well, say man
— to
expect to find a wild-cat gold mine in Surrey and I knew myself, perfectly well, that there couldn’t be any gold mine about it at all.”

“Oh, they needn’t lose their heads,” Gerald Luscombe said. “There’s no gold mine and it doesn’t pay. I’m spending a fixed sum and Evangeline isn’t going to have to go without a single Paris frock and Bill isn’t going to have to come back from Harrow.”

“It is a fixed sum?” Mr Everard asked.

“Oh, it’s very fixed,” Gerald Luscombe answered. “And they’ve just about touched the bottom of it.” He looked at Mr Everard still quite friendlily. “Of course,” he said, “it’s damned impertinence of Mrs Luscombe’s family to inquire into my private affairs, but I don’t at all mind giving you information as a member of the outside pubic. I thought I would go in for this thing as an experiment, and because these people said they had discovered the secret of eternal happiness and brotherly love and because I’ve done pretty well out of the country and I consider that my class has certain duties to perform. So I’ve given them their show.”

“It seems,” Mr Everard said, “to have resolved itself into a rather promising land company for Mr Gubb. You said eight and a half per cent, profit this afternoon, didn’t you? And you’ve paid for the Communal buildings?”

“Oh, they’re my property all right,” Gerald Luscombe said.

Mr Everard went through a moment of calculation. “Of course we might find some use for them if the show should bust up,” he said.

“Mind you,” Luscombe pursued his own train of thought, “I don’t say they haven’t discovered the secret of eternal happiness and brotherly love — if it weren’t for human nature.”

Mr Everard looked rather hard at Luscombe’s eyes. He asked curiously:

“Does Gubb know that the amount you’ve put aside is strictly limited and that you’re near the end of it?”

“I’m not quite certain if he does,” Gerald answered.

“Because,” Mr Everard continued, “he was talking this afternoon of a Communal Electric Supply and a Cold Storage System. He says that Cold Storage will be the salvation of the Country and will make the small holders for ever independent of the auctioneers.”

Gerald Luscombe only said, “Ah!”

PART III

CHAPTER I

FANNER’S MALL was approached by a very long, very broad avenue of plane trees perhaps two hundred years old. It was said to be the only avenue of its kind in the Kingdom and had been planted by Hendryk Schonberg Schuylten, first Earl of Croydon who had come over from Holland with William the Third and had made the avenue of these trees out of compliment to that sovereign whose gardener first introduced the plane to London parks and squares. It had acquired its name from the game of pell-mell which had been played there by the gentry from the surrounding residences for many years — for much longer, indeed, than it had been played in the Metropolis. The Quality of the County of Surrey were always noted for their tenacious adherence to old-fashioned ways. The house, itself, was of grey, unadorned stone, in shape like a box with imitation battlements and an arched front doorway. It had imitation Tudor mullioning to the windows and, considered abstractly, it appeared to have neither comfort nor dignity. Nevertheless, it contained one hundred and two rooms and had been built to designs by the late Sir Gilbert Scott, the eighth earl desiring to have something more artistic to live in than the old building which had been designed by Vanbrugh. This piece of architectural munificence on the part of the eighth earl had impoverished the family, having cost it perhaps a thousand acres of land and nearly all the timber in the park. Lady Croydon detested the building because Sir Gilbert very shortly afterwards, in his design for the Union Workhouse in the neighbourhood, had almost exactly duplicated Fanner’s Mall itself. The Earl, however, was never comfortable except when he was at home. It stood about four miles to the southwest of Luscombe Green and about forty minutes’ walk to the north-west of Guildford.

Mr Creedy, upon a hot afternoon, was sunning himself contemplatively on the stone front steps. Wearing a black tail coat, a black waistcoat insufficiently low to be appropriate for evening dress and yet with aperture enough to show a wide expanse of shirt front, his lower limbs clothed in grey, striped trousers, Mr Creedy had a rather bald head, the remainder of his hair being distinctly black. He was very clean-shaven, had a slightly bulbous nose and all the air of having been in the family for thirty years. He had, however, been engaged only three months ago upon the return of the Earl and Countess from foreign parts and he was intending to give notice as soon as he was able to find a place more likely to suit him. It was not that he quarrelled with his wages, it was not that he suffered from over-work, it was simply that the house was too gloomy and that Mr Creedy liked to be where there were children. Young people, he said, did liven you up a bit, and his Lordship was too uncommon quiet.

Mr Creedy changed the balance of his weight from his right grey trousered leg to his left and back again, when he was aware that something or somebody was approaching beneath the high shade of the Mall. The company, however, was at such a distance that it appeared to be no larger than a not very distinguished collection of marionettes. Mr Creedy was about, instinctively, to disappear within the front door so as to be able decently to bob out again when the Quality approached, but his fat, white hand hesitated upon the ring of the door which was of modern oak studded with square fragments of rusty iron to imitate nail-heads. He could not tell whether this was really the Quality. It might be Tourists, and although Mr Creedy, during the three months that he had been there, had never seen anything resembling a Tourist, for there was nothing whatever at Fanner’s Mall to see, he had so lately come from Slains Castle, from whose grounds it was necessary to throw out numerous bands of visitors who were admitted on Mondays only and who, too, did also their little towards making the place more lively — Mr Creedy had so lately come from a Show Place that almost automatically the idea came into his head. If they were Callers it would be his duty to pop in and then out again when the door was knocked at. If they were Tourists, on the other hand, it would be his duty to stand as majestically as he knew how and, if his mere presence did not prove sufficient, to ‘shoo’ them away with voice and, if necessary, with hand.

And, as the conviction entered his head that what was approaching him was a woman with a fish cart who ought to have come by the lane at the back of the house, Mr Creedy, with some heaviness and some dignity, descended to the very bottom step of the flight so as to be able to administer a sterner and a more immediate rebuke. It certainly was a woman and she certainly was dragging behind her a donkey in a cart, and when she was come considerably closer Mr Creedy perceived that she wore a very short, grey tweed skirt, a white sweater and a grey wideawake. The beast that she dragged behind her was a donkey, and from the top line of a sort of tub on wheels attached to the animal there peeped out the brown and freckled heads of four remarkably snub-nosed little boys who resembled nothing so much as so many puppies looking over the edge of a box. The woman’s face was exceedingly red with her exertions, for the donkey, having been fed lately on dog biscuits in pursuance of a new theory of diet, was daily becoming more weak and incapable of drawing its load. Her wispy black hair, moreover, was unusually untidy, and she was decidedly out of breath.

“
I say, you know,” Mr Creedy said in a gently argumentative manner, “you oughtn’t to have come here. This is No Thoroughfare.” Mr Creedy had plumped for the idea that these were Tourists. Some of them did get themselves up so queer though they might be quite respectable people when at home. This particular Tourist, however, was too immediately out of breath to answer him, and Mr Creedy approached the governess-cart and surveyed its contents from Olympian heights as if, indeed, he were looking down upon a litter of puppies.

“I’ll admit,” he said, “that it’s very disappointing and even inconvenient, if you think you’re taking a short-cut, to find it is a No Thoroughfare, and it’s very thirsty weather, too.” And Mr Creedy cast a quick look up and down each wing of the building to see that there were no signs of the Earl, who, indeed, he was pretty well sure, was asleep in the smoking-room. “And if these little dears would like a drink,” he continued, “I could slip you round to the housekeeper’s door and she’d certainly give them some nice water from the well if not a glass of milk apiece.”

“I have come to call upon Lady Croydon.” He got his answer. “I am Mrs Lee of The Summit.”

Mr Creedy squared his shoulders a little more and stood, as it were, at attention.

“Oh, I beg pardon, mem. I didn’t know, mem,” he said without the least loss of composure. “Not having seen your face, mem, and there being so many Tourists always about...” He discontinued his sentence vaguely and said: “I’ll see if her Ladyship’s in.” He disappeared this time for an appreciable space of time in at the hall door. Mrs Lee engaged herself in removing the four safety-pins from her skirt so that it descended to the middle of her calves or a little lower. She fanned herself for a short time with her wideawake and pulled by one arm from beneath the promiscuous limbs of the children a grey tweed tailor-made coat which she proceeded to get into. The donkey drooped its head: the four children gazed round and round, their eyes enormous, their mouths hanging open. Mr Creedy returned to say that her Ladyship would see Mrs Free. If Mrs Free would follow him with the young gentlemen he would send a lad to take the carriage round to the stables.

“Oh, you can come back and amuse the children, my good man,” Mrs Lee said. “You needn’t be afraid of Koko. I’ve trained him to stand, even if it’s for a couple of hours, with a silent and as if military precision.”

Mr Creedy turned right about and, his coat tails flapping, he preceded Mrs Lee up the steps into a sort of octagonal vaulted hall of perfectly bare stone. It struck so cold and damp that Mrs Lee rejoiced that she had really put on her coat. Mr Creedy flung open the second door in the hall and announced, “Mrs Plee,” in a very loud voice, and Mrs Lee having entered, he closed the door with a sort of military precision. He went for a moment into the dining-room and opened a yellow-grained oak sideboard, designed by Sir Gilbert Scott to imitate imitation cathedral choir-stalls, and having filled his tail pockets he went out once more into the hall, down the steps, and resumed his tranquil contemplation of the contents of the governess-cart. All the children seemed to be of the same age. They wore blue jerseys, black knickerbockers, and their legs, hands and faces were the colour of the bright red mahogany furniture that is sold in the cheaper furnishing shops. The children gazed up at him like nestlings expecting to be fed.

“Well, my little man,” Mr Creedy said, selecting, not the largest, for that was impossible, but the one most nearly in danger of falling out of the ill-balanced cart, “and what may your name be?”

And there came in high, piping tones that were enough almost to make Mr Creedy start, the words: “Cordelia Delarobbia Stewart Lee,” and simultaneously the three other children exclaimed: “We’re not little men. We’re of the female sex. We wish we weren’t.”

Mr Creedy fumbled in his tail coat. He produced a red-cheeked and rather shiny apple which he proceeded to make more shiny by rubbing it on his trousers.

“There’s one apiece for each of you,” he said, “and one for the donkey. Is it cocoa as makes your legs so brown?”

“We aren’t cocoa children,” one of them said. “It’s the Simple Life that does it. We wish it didn’t.”

“I thought all Lees was in cocoa?” Mr Creedy said. He was distributing the apples one by one, slowly extracting them from his pocket and rubbing each as he had rubbed the first.

“How can we be
in
cocoa?” one of them asked. And another said: “You shouldn’t say ‘was’ when you mean ‘were.’”

“It’s a manner of speech,” Mr Creedy said resignedly. “Everybody in the world can’t speak alike.” He produced yet a fifth apple from his tail pocket and without going through the ceremony of wiping it he meditatively bit it in half with large teeth, approaching as he did so the head of the donkey. The children’s four pair of eyes became enormous and they watched Mr Creedy breathlessly. Mr Creedy extended on his flat palm the half apple to the donkey’s mouth. The animal extended its nostril, snorted, and then delicately reaching out with its huge teeth it assimilated the morsel; its head bent down, its four knees seemed to crumble beneath it, its hind legs gave way sideways, the governess-cart changed its angle so that the children who were in danger of pitching out backwards were in danger of pitching out forwards. The donkey had tangled its hocks in a complicated manner in the breeching-straps, the traces and the loose reins. It lay tranquilly upon its side and munched. The children’s eyes were all fixed upon Creedy.

“You don’t say I’ve poisoned him!” Mr Creedy ejaculated.

Shrill and in unison the voices of the children went up:

“You’ll have to unharness him. You’ll have to unharness him.” They thumped upon the sides of their cart rhythmically, like Indians accompanying a chant upon the war-path. “When he’s had anything to eat he always lies down and he won’t get up. He won’t get up. You can kick him. You can kick him. You can stick pins in him. You can stick pins in him but he won’t get up. Until you unharness him. Until you unharness him.”

“You’ve seen him play that trick on other people before,” Mr Creedy said, and with his right hand he caressed his somewhat bluish chin, looking with an air of calm reflection down upon the recumbent donkey whose head was nodding like that of an old gentleman in his armchair after dinner. He made, however, no motion towards unharnessing the donkey, for that, obviously, would be a stable-boy’s business. Having thus meditatively gazed for a space of time at least sufficient to allow him to commit the donkey’s features to memory, Mr Creedy again addressed himself to the children.

“Well, young gentlemen,” he said.

“
Women!” the children shrieked all at once. “ We’re young women and we wish we weren’t.”

“Well, my little dears,” Mr Creedy said, “it seems a pretty complete business.”

The foremost two children exclaimed:

“We wish we weren’t young women because we want to help father in the city.”

The two children in the rear exclaimed:

“We wish we were men to help mother with the Simple Life.”

“So you aren’t all of one mind,” Mr Creedy said. “Well! well!”

“We fight about it,” the foremost child on the right hand side exclaimed.

“We fight like hell when mother isn’t about,” the foremost child on the left hand side said.

“Like to see us fight?” both the children in the rear exclaimed cheerfully.

Mr Creedy said, “Well! well! my little dears. I’d like to know what you’re fighting about before I put my money on either of you.”