Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (374 page)

And he began to swear the most astonishing imprecations in the Russian of his childhood, which only came back to him when he was excited, out of himself. Brandetski’s jaw dropped. He smote his forehead with his left hand, waved the revolver over his head and suddenly rushing to the door threw it open and tore down the path.

“Hurlock seems to have picked himself up and gone,” Ophelia said quietly, “otherwise Cyril would have fallen over him. I thought you said you’d killed him?”

“Oh, nonsense,” Bransdon answered. “It was just a knock-out blow. He’d be unconscious for about five minutes.”

“Well,” Ophelia said, “I rather thought I’d seen a man killed.” She seemed to be slightly disappointed. Mr Bransdon pulled himself out of the chair and suddenly he stamped and frowned. “That ass!” he exclaimed. “That dirty parasite!”

“Which one?” Ophelia asked amiably.

“That dock rat who said he loved you,” Bransdon answered.

“
Well, he’s been saying that all the time for the last three weeks,” Ophelia answered.

Bransdon peered at her under his shaggy eyebrows. He shook in her candid face a gnarled fore-finger.

“You look out what you’re up to, young woman,” he said. “You keep hold on yourself. You remember you aren’t free until you’ve consulted me.”

“I don’t see,” Ophelia said, not defiantly, but as if she were consulting him, “I don’t see what it’s got to do with you.”

“ Oh, don’t you,” Bransdon answered. “Well then, see here. I’m going to make a change. I don’t like things as they are. I don’t think I like this place. I think I’ve had enough of it. To-night’s taught me a nice little lesson. You’re my adopted daughter. You owe me duties and I suppose I owe you duties. I tell you I’m going to clear things up a bit. Lock the front door. I’m going to bed.” But before he had got out of the room he turned his enormous head over his shoulder. “Do you see?” he said. “I’m going to clear things up a bit.”

Ophelia said, “Oh!” reflectively and still without any tone of defiance.

PART IV

CHAPTER I

MRS LEE had attended with an extraordinary diligence to the task of obtaining subscriptions for a testimonial to Mr Gubb. The testimonial was to take the form of a massive silver ikon, which Mrs Lee said would be a gift of remarkable appropriateness. And as neither the Countess Croydon nor the Dowager Duchess had any real idea of what an ikon was, and as they had still less idea of what the Simple Life really was all about, so that even if they had known what an ikon was they would not have known whether it was or was not appropriate, and as, moreover, both these ladies were desperately afraid of appearing obtuse before Mrs Lee’s overbearing intellectuality — for these reasons and also because they were delighted to escape any trouble, both these distinguished patronesses of the effort languidly agreed that nothing could be more entirely appropriate. The ikon, too, had the advantage of being extraordinarily cheap. It was a massive object weighing perhaps two and a half pounds of silver: it had folding doors, very elaborately chased, in front of a sort of shrine and beneath the folding doors was a space of clear silver upon which an appropriate inscription might be engraved. And this, Mrs Lee said, she would be able to secure for the sum of fifty guineas. It was certainly not more than its possible value as broken silver but, on the other hand, the Countess Croydon’s jeweller, who happened to visit Fanner’s Mall, whilst the ikon was there for inspection, said, though he did not set much store by that sort of foreign work, nevertheless the thing was almost certainly an antique, and antiques fetched all sorts of fancy prices. The sum of fifty guineas was raised with great ease. Mrs Lee put her husband down for ten guineas, and she paid, also out of her husband’s pocket, the ten that the good-natured Duchess had let herself be put down for. This pleased Her Grace so much that it secured for Mrs Lee an invitation, not only to a garden-party, but to a dinner, the Duchess being given to entertain at times collections of literary and Bohemian scalliwags, in whose society Her Grace took a heavily jocular pleasure and amongst whom she imagined that Mrs Lee would fit in very well. Countess Croydon put her husband down for five guineas, and when Croydon grumbled querulously she pointed out that by attracting residents to the neighbourhood, Mr Gubb was very much increasing the potential value of Croydon’s land. Thus the more they advertised him, the more they helped themselves. Gerald Luscombe subscribed a couple of guineas, and the amount now secured being twenty-seven, Mrs Lee had no difficulty whatever in securing from amongst the neighbouring County gentry thirteen more guineas in sums ranging from twenty-one shillings down to five and threepence. The remaining ten guineas Mrs Lee secured from good-natured Mr Everard, who would just as willingly have made it twenty. Mrs Lee said that it was delightful to think that they had raised the money entirely from outsiders. It demonstrated what good work the Simple Life was doing in bringing all classes together. It might have been said that the aristocracy and gentry were just the very people who would not support this kind of enterprise, yet, owing to the eloquent persuasions of the Countess Croydon, nearly every person of that class in the district and several even of the villa residents had hastened to subscribe. It is true that the numerically largest of the sums were small in amount, hut they were many, and that only proved how wide-spread was the sympathy. And Mrs Lee sent out invitations for a garden-party to be held at The Summit after the presentation. To this she invited all the subscribers to the Gubb testimonial. The Duchess’ was the first acceptance that she received, so that she had no refusals at all. It remained only to choose a Saturday when there was a full moon on which to make the presentation. The full moon was necessary because in country districts the roads are too dark at other times for people desiring to attend entertainments in distant villages. Thus the date was fixed for the Saturday after Whit-Monday.

Mr Gubb was informed of the honour that was intended him on the morning after the affray of Mr Bransdon’s. Indeed, Mrs Lee called in at his cottage exactly as Ophelia entered it to tell him of her adopted father’s desperate adventure of the night before. Ophelia’s dislike for Mrs Lee, however, was so considerable that having got in first with her news she walked straight out again before Mrs Lee had time to say a word. Thus Ophelia, like the rest of the Colonists, was quite unaware of the honour that was intended for Mr Gubb until it was announced by a notice nailed on to the Communal Announcement board which stood between the dormitory and the bathing shed.

Mr Gubb’s pleasure was of the most splendid, of the most unmixed kind. On the one hand his own labours — and for how many years he had laboured! — were about to be publicly acknowledged. It had even been arranged that the London Press Syndicate should send down a reporter to take down the speeches of the noble and distinguished body who had promised to be present. And the reporter was to occupy the morning and afternoon of the same day in drawing up an account of the aims and achievements of the Colony itself. Thus it would not be only in the small circle of the countryside that his achievements and awards were made known. Some slight perturbation was caused by the fact that Mr Brandetski, in whose possession the ikon remained, had disappeared. The door of his room in the Johnsons’ cottage was locked and no trace of him was to be found. Mrs Lee, however, did not doubt that before the Saturday he would return. He had probably gone to London to get some clothes for the function. There was only one thing needed to make Mr Gubb’s satisfaction complete. This was that his old friend Bransdon should write and, if possible, deliver a little oration upon the great occasions — Mr Gubb accordingly paid a visit to the great man.

He found him, however, in bed, and so flushed was Bransdon’s face, so stertorous his breathing and so altogether strange his general manner, that Mr Gubb felt constrained to beg Mr Everard, who had come down from Town that morning in order to give the Bransdons a motor ride, to run into Guildford and fetch immediately a doctor. Somewhat to the surprise of Mr Gubb, without speaking a single word to him, Ophelia Bransdon flung herself into the seat next Mr Everard and disappeared with him. Gubb was left alone with Mr Bransdon whose condition excited in him renewed alarm. It reminded Mr Gubb of the great man’s condition at the time of his breakdown, after he had killed his bulldog Fanny.

Of late years Mr Bransdon had seemed to be becoming much improved in health, much more near the normal. It was perfectly true that he still had his periods of depression and of almost imbecile apathy. But these periods were becoming shorter in duration and occurred at longer and longer intervals. So that Mr Gubb had gradually come to be in the frame of mind to regard his old friend as upon the high road to a complete restoration to mental health. Bransdon, indeed, had set very seriously to work on various occasions and for spasmodic periods. So that in the two years since they had moved up to Luscombe Green, he had written no less than three short stories. And since work by Mr Bransdon had lately become rare, the price that he had received for these had been very gratifying.

Yet it could not be alleged that Mr Gubb found in these circumstances an unalloyed pleasure. For one thing, when Bransdon was in sound mental health the output of prose poems and of moral prophecies fell off almost altogether. So, too, did his allegiance to the rules of the Simple Life. It was not only in the matter of clothing that Mr Bransdon showed symptoms of paganism or of conventional leanings, just as it was not only now in periods of ill-temper that he disputed Mr Gubb’s own dogmas.

But upon the whole Mr Gubb felt few regrets. If Bransdon made fewer calls upon his time, the business affairs of the Colony made almost as much as he could cope with, and what with his preoccupation and with the slowness in the change in the great man, Mr Gubb had hardly observed the slow change in their relationships. But as Mr Gubb stood in the small white bedroom looking down upon Bransdon’s flushed face and vacant eyes that appeared to brood upon nothing, it suddenly came into his head how very great the change had been. It was almost a cleft: it was almost as if Mr Bransdon had cut himself adrift and stood upon his own legs. Why, positively, Bransdon, employing for his secretary not Mr Gubb but young Mr Brayle, the sub-editor of the magazine, and in consultation, not with Mr Gubb but with Mr Everard of whom Mr Gubb knew nothing or very little at all —

Bransdon had finished a play that was going to be put into rehearsal in a very short time at the Southampton Street Theatre which Mr Everard had taken for that purpose. Whatever could be said against him, Mr Gubb could not be considered a jealous man, or these circumstances, implying, as they did, so much loss of influence on his part, would have caused him a very much greater perturbation. Mr Gubb, however, regarded things habitually from the bright side. For it had seemed to him that if Mr Bransdon were going to become a great author once more, or even an admired playwright, he would add attractive value to the Colony itself. They would be able to build new houses, to enroll new disciples...

But on the other hand, when he looked at Mr Bransdon lying there, he seemed to revise his whole point of view. He saw that Bransdon never really could, by any possibility, have been cured. Men whose brains have once been touched never escape again. They might have periods of brightness but these would be mere flashes in the pan. And Mr Bransdon’s appearance so exactly resembled what it had been on the night after his fall that it seemed to Mr Gubb inevitable that once more, and no doubt for ever, Bransdon was about to become the helpless being that he had for so long appeared.

Sir Gubb opened the window and called to a passing child to send Miss Egmont to him. He thought that it would be unsafe to leave Bransdon by himself. Mr Brayle was in London for the day and he personally had a great many things to do. He had for one thing an interview with Mr Luscombe.

Miss Egmont, a little older, a little harder in the eyes and with her lips considerably straighter, arrived bearing a small case of polished mahogany, in appearance almost exactly resembling a chess box. When she opened it, however, having set it down upon a chair, all its sides came apart and displayed an array of little white glass tubes containing pelettes which resembled the comfits known as “hundreds and thousands.”

“I am very glad you have sent for me,” she addressed both Mr Gubb and Mr Bransdon. “I have for so long wanted to try my skill upon our great man.”

Mr Bransdon stirred uneasily in bed. His face became redder, but he uttered no sound. Miss Egmont, upon the other hand, was exceedingly radiant. She crossed over to the other side of the bed where, extending from the floor almost up to the pillows, she perceived a pile of
Simple Life Tracts,
including a complete set of issues of “The Mare’s Tail.” A pamphlet, entitled simply “Join our No-Corset League, by Simon Bransdon,” lay open upon the bed as if Mr Bransdon had been studying it before the entrance of Mr Gubb. Miss Egmont sat down upon a chair, and, hooking her heels on to the top rail, set her elbows on her knees and fixed her hands beneath her bony chin, her eyes, hard and appearing to be magnified several times by her powerful glasses, directed themselves intensely upon Mr Bransdon’s face.

With the black and white hair combed back from the great forehead, with the tufted eyebrows, the eyes glancing doggedly towards the feet, the sharp, hooked nose and the hands extended upon the blue serge coverlet and the peaked beard, pointing upwards with a sinister cock, he appeared to Miss Egmont a recumbent effigy of the Commendatore in Don Giovanni. Mr Gubb was clearing his throat nervously but Miss Egmont exclaimed in rapt, tense tones, keeping her averted gaze still upon Mr Bransdon’s face, “Don’t speak to me. I am studying him.” But,” Mr Gubb began rather apprehensively, “the poor dear man is unconscious.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Miss Egmont answered. “The thought transference is proceeding in waves. It’s tremendous. I feel them here, now.” And with a thin finger she touched her polished, yellow forehead.

“But we’ve sent for the doctor to Guildford,” Mr Gubb blurted out desperately at last. “We only want you to watch him.”

Miss Egmont recoiled sharply as if with a spring of steel.

“My methods,” she said, “are the official methods of the Colony.”

“Oh, I know,” Mr Gubb retorted uneasily. “But this is a serious case.”

“Serious!” Miss Egmont said. “Isn’t it exactly in serious cases that my methods are of the most use?”

“But the importance of the patient?” Mr Gubb said. “The more important the patient,” Miss Egmont answered, “the more necessary...”

“Oh, I know, I know,” Mr Gubb answered fervently. “No one has greater faith than I. But our dear friend himself desired...”

“You said,” Miss Egmont fixed him with a cold alacrity, “that he has been insensible all the time.”

“Yes,” Mr Gubb answered, “I think he must have had some sort of fit after fighting with that rough last night. I thought he might die at any moment, so a doctor was absolutely necessary.”

“You always were a liar, Horatio Gubb!” Miss Egmont said.