Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (377 page)

Luscombe leaned back in his deep chair. “That makes the seventh time, doesn’t it?” he said. “What will the poor devil have to give her to make it up on this occasion?”

“Oh, I fancy it’s done for good,” his wife answered. “Everard was here in the car this morning to tell me. He says that he’s had enough of it.”

“Well, so he has,” Luscombe answered. “It would have been three times too much for me.”

“Polly,” Mrs Luscombe continued, “has told him that he’s too unbearably vulgar. She says she couldn’t possibly go through life with him. It appears that he dropped an ‘h’ at their last Thursday. At least she says he did.”

“Oh, that’s all nonsense,” Mr Luscombe said. “It just shows Polly’s ignorance. Everard speaks in a north-country way sometimes, but he no more drops his ‘h’s’ than a Frenchman would call a pig a schwein. It’s out of the picture.”

Mrs Luscombe rubbed her upper lip meditatively with the paper knife.

“
Is
he too vulgar?” she asked. “Too vulgar for anything? You see, he was always so much about at Father’s that I got used to him.”

“That’s just it,” Gerald said. “One does get so used to him and I think that proves perhaps that he can’t be vulgar.”

“But still,” Mrs Luscombe said, “as regards one’s friends — ?”

“Oh, one’s friends,” Gerald said. “They don’t matter. They’ll swallow him. They’d swallow him if he wore boots with spurs on. You see, he’s got a heart of gold. He’s got a sack of gold, too. One for every night of the year. And he’s really the best-natured fellow in the world. You’ll find his name on every one of their blessed subscription lists. It doesn’t matter what they’re for.”

“Oh, I’m so glad you don’t think we ought to drop him,” Mrs Luscombe said.

“Drop him?” Gerald asked. Why should we?”

“Oh, he looked in this morning to ask,” Mrs Luscombe said. “That was what he came for. You see, poor fellow, I can’t put it exactly as he put it, but what it amounted to was, that if he was going to be dropped by us on that account he’d make up to Polly again. If he wasn’t, he wouldn’t.”

“What did you say?” Gerald asked.

“Oh, I told him,” Mrs Luscombe said, “that as far as I was concerned I’d always thought it a most unsuitable match, but I couldn’t answer for you.”

“Oh, well, you can,” Gerald answered.

“I saw him going past the house,” Mrs Luscombe continued, “with Ophelia Bransdon in his motor.”

“He would, naturally,” Gerald answered. And he added, “I daresay your sister would be all right if one could get the bang of her. But I never could understand which could be the right side to begin upon. She seems to be prickly all over, like a horse-chestnut.”

“Well, I daresay this will be a lesson to her,” Mrs Luscombe said. And just at that moment Mr Gubb was announced.

“You needn’t go,” Gerald exclaimed to his wife. “There’s nothing you can’t hear and very possibly it would interest you.”

In his blue reefer suit with his white shirt and his red satin bow, which he now always wore for business interviews, Mr Gubb with his pink, clean-shaven face and his pink, bald head, appeared bursting with prosperity. He did not lose a minute in getting to business, but seating himself plumply on the front edge of a saddlebag chair he pulled out from his breastpocket two white papers and a blue one.

“I’ve come to put my new schemes before you,” he said, “if you can give me the time to listen.”

“Oh, go on,” Gerald answered. He remained lounging back in his own chair. Mrs Luscombe had crossed the room to the other side of the large, square desk and now she sat at it, leaning her elbows on the leather top and her chin upon her hands.

“My earnest desire,” Mr Gubb commenced, “is to extend our so meritorious enterprise. In putting my scheme before you I will be as brief as possible.” Mr Gubb’s voice was authoritative and assured. He regarded Gerald Luscombe as easy and good-humoured, entirely lacking in any business insight and quite easy to be led away from prudential considerations by a fine crop of humanitarian phrases. Hitherto Gerald had not refused him any single request. He regarded him as a milch cow, and at the bottom of his heart felt a certain contempt for him. “What I should like you to do,” he continued, “would be to build us another twenty cottages as similar as possible, architecturally, to those at present occupied by my Colony. By
our
Colony, I should say,” Mr Gubb corrected himself. “I should like them, however, to be somewhat modified internally with perhaps a larger living-room. And I should like them each to have attached to them a little more ground, say an acre apiece.”

“And the cost?” Gerald Luscombe asked.

Mrs Luscombe was anxiously regarding his face. Mr Gubb also looked at him. Luscombe had no expression whatever, and his eyes, intelligent and mild, like those of a spaniel, gazed over the brilliant bald head at the grained panelling of the door beyond. Mr Gubb leant forward in his chair to pass to him the large, blue paper.

“This,” he said, “contains Mr Major’s specifications for building twenty such cottages. Please peruse them carefully afterwards. But for the moment you will see that the gross cost of each cottage would be £625.”

“Making for the whole, £12,500,” Gerald Luscombe said. “And the land they stand upon?” he asked. “What do you allow for that?”

“Oh,” Mr Gubb said with assurance, “you have so much land. I haven’t thought you would consider that. Besides, agricultural land is worth practically nothing in this district. Let us say £10 an acre for the land, making another £200.”

“But it isn’t agricultural land, you know,” Gerald Luscombe said. “It would be building land. From two to three hundred pounds per acre is the price in this district or it would be if I allowed any villas to be built.”

“But these aren’t villas,” Mr Gubb answered. “This isn’t a commercial undertaking. You said, and you’ve always said, that you didn’t expect to make any profit out of the Simple Life.”

“Well, I didn’t expect to,” Gerald said, “and I haven’t: and I certainly never shall.”

“Then that’s all right,” Mr Gubb continued brusquely. “The capital sum I am asking you for immediately is £12,500.”

“And the rent you will propose to pay me per cottage?” Gerald Luscombe asked.

“Oh, the same as the others,” Mr Gubb answered. “Five shillings a week. Thirteen pounds a year.”

Gerald Luscombe said, “Well.”

“And of course,” Mr Gubb continued, and now he was preparing to get into his stride, “we shall then be able to add further Communal institutions. With the profits from the buildings that you will put up we shall proceed to erect in the first place a Communal library and reading-room, having attached to it a small gallery for the exhibition of pictures and works of Art. For although, hitherto, as is natural with the young community, our needs have been almost purely material, it should not be imagined that those finer things, the Arts, would not eventually come within our purview.” He addressed himself for a moment to Mrs Luscombe. “Our Library,” he said, “will contain only such serious books as will tend to improve the tone of mind of the readers. I shall begin it by presenting to it my own library of works upon economic, political and historical subjects. Fiction we shall entirely banish except perhaps for the works of Richardson and for one or two Utopian novelists such as Mr Wells, Mr Galsworthy and Mr Upton Sinclair. We desire, above all things, to communicate to our fellow workers a tone of earnestness and of serious attention to the problems of life. In this, madam, I feel that we shall earn your sincere commendation.”

Mrs Luscombe, who read a French novel for at least an hour and sometimes two every day after lunch, did not know what to say. Nevertheless she contrived to retain along with her silence an easy grace.

“And similarly,” Mr Gubb continued, “with the Fine Arts. We shall confine our exhibitions as much as possible to landscapes and to works of an idyllic nature. We shall thus inculcate in the young a love of nature, of peace, of comradeship and of brotherliness. Historical works we shall largely eschew. They are apt to deal too largely with kings and nobles and vain pomps. Though pictures of a symbolic nature, like those of the late Mr G. F. Watts with whom it was my privilege to pass several Sunday mornings, or those of Mr Walter Crane with whom I have frequently spoken upon the same platform; in short, symbolic pictures of all sorts we shall exhibit very freely. And from time to time we shall hold exhibitions of the works of our own painters and craftsmen.”

Again he bowed to Mrs Luscombe.

“I have observed, madam,” he said, “upon the walls of several of these apartments very charming proofs in aquarels of the skill of your hands. If you could be persuaded to lend some of these for exhibition, we should most certainly give them a very prominent place upon the walls.”

Mrs Luscombe, who had been taught water-colour painting by a very fifth-rate master in her Paris finishing school, was quite too well acquainted with the deficiencies and weaknesses of her productions to desire at all that they should be brought into the light of day. She contrived, however, by means of a gracious but quite mechanical smile, to inspire Mr Gubb with the idea that his compliment had found a billet. Strengthened and refreshed he proceeded with his scheme. He approached the subject of Cold Storage. Incidentally, he said, Cold Storage, by rendering the producer independent of the salesman and able to market his goods exactly when it pleased him, would drive the middleman almost entirely out of the world. At present, say, the producer of fat stock was bound to sell when and how it pleased the butcher. With Cold Storage he would be able to slaughter his beasts at their fattest and to keep the flesh until such time as the market prices were at their highest. And so it would be with all agricultural products. With the Colony the case would be somewhat different. They were not, that is to say, producers in the open market, nor did they seek to make a profit. But at certain times of the year, as Mrs Luscombe must well know, there was apt to be a glut of certain kinds of food. Thus the year before last the Colony produced two hundred and seventy bushels more of cherries than it could possibly consume. This surplus they had been obliged to dispose of to dealers at prices of an entirely contemptible kind. With Cold Storage they would be able to keep these cherries indefinitely, eating them all the year round, and even retaining some for the next year when there might come a shortage. And similarly with all the other fruits of the earth, as well as eggs, milk, butter and even fish. They would thus be rendered independent of the seasons as of the markets. The Cold Storage building which he proposed to erect would be operated by a small oil-engine, and since this would only be required during a portion of the day, the remainder of its power could be devoted to providing the Colony with electric light. They would also be able to install an electric bus in place of the motor-bus, which was ugly, noisy and expensive, and it was proposed to have at the disposal of such of the Colonists as desired it, one or even two electric typewriters.

And then, Mr Gubb said, his ideal would be perfected. All the other schemes were coming along as well as could be desired. The farm they were ready to take over at Michaelmas, and this, in addition to providing the Colony with wool, meat and other foods, would provide healthy, vigorous toil for many of their members. The problem of co-operative supply was nearly worked out, and thus there would be presented to the world the spectacle of a sane, virile, self-respecting community living in harmony with itself and at peace with its neighbours, engaged in health-giving pursuits and recreating themselves with sane, healthy pleasures, cultivating alike the Arts and the face of the earth, not only making a little oasis of perfect beauty in the midst of the grim sordidness of modem life, but, beautiful in itself and beautiful in all its members, pointing out with no hesitating note, but with a shrill insistence to all the rest of the world, the only possible, the only thinkable road towards social regeneration.

“Indeed, madam,” Mr Gubb approached the end of his peroration and once more addressed Mrs Luscombe, “I have to-day received proofs of two facts with only one of which I imagine you to be acquainted. As to the testimonial to my unworthy self, which is to be presented to me on Saturday, I have hardly any comment to make save that it brings tears of gratification to my eyes, tears which can only be the more numerous when I consider that the testimonial is not from my friends who know me so well, but from outsiders who can only judge the results of the work. This can only mean that the work itself is applauded: nay, that its example will be emulated. Indeed, here is actual Proof.”