Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (380 page)

The Summit was a large, gaunt villa erected of rough-hewn rock, standing upon the top of a steep bank above the road over Frog’s Cottages. The woodwork of the windows and the rough, oaken door were unpainted and warped. Mr Everard climbed the rough, stone steps in the bank of clay. The small grass plot before the door was covered with straws: the grass was rough and unmown, and Mrs Lee’s donkey, standing in a flowerless flower-bed, was rubbing itself against the corner of the house. The square windows with their little panes made of bull’s-eye glass were uncurtained, and the half-opened oaken door revealed carpetless, red tiles, white-washed walls and paintless, deal woodwork.

Mr Everard could perceive no knocker upon the rough slab of the door nor any bell to ring. He knocked, however, as hard as he could with his knuckles and stood, shivering a little at the gloomy aspect of Mrs Lee’s hall. No answer came at all, but from somewhere, apparently overhead, there descended the sound of Mrs Lee’s voice in torrents of sound, interrupted by moments of subdued male remarks. Mr Everard knocked again and then shouted, “Hullo!” At last he advanced on to the tiles of the hall. And suddenly, in a doorway behind the front door, he perceived four pair of eyes watching him in intense silence.

“Hullo!” he said. “Why didn’t some of you answer the door?”

“Father’s turning,” two of the children said. “He’s the worm. Don’t you hear them at it?”

“Oh, you run along and tell your mother,” Mr Everard answered, “that Mr Everard is waiting to take her over to Luscombe Green.”

Cordelia Delarobbia’s eyes became enormous. Her lips diminished to the size and shape of a coat-button.

“Phew!” she whistled. “Father’ll be turning
you
into a co-respondent. He’s at her now.”

“Let’s go and kill him,” two other children said. “We shall be made to wear skirts and petticoats and combinations and suspenders.”

“Yes, by Jove we will,” answered Cordelia Delarobbia and her mate. “Hooray! Hoo-blooming-ray!”

And slowly the two small figures with their cropped heads and knickerbockers began to go through the antics of a Red Indian war-dance. The other two stood dejectedly, their heads hanging down.

“It’s going to be rotten,” one of them said. “We’ve got to have three maidservants and a French cook and not do any of the health-giving housework ourselves, and there’s to be a brougham to take Pa to the station and we’re to be sent to a rotten girls’ school.”

Mr Everard said, “By Jove! When they
do
turn, they
do
turn.” He fumbled in his waistcoat pocket with his bulky motor gloves and produced half-a-crown. “Look here, nippers,” he said, “the one of you that runs upstairs and tells your mother that I’m here shall have this.”

“Ah money is dross,” one of the two dejected children exclaimed with disgust. But no sooner did Cordelia Delarobbia perceive the coin than she flew past Mr Everard grabbing it as she passed in a small, very dirty hand and clattered with a great noise up the bare, wooden stairs.

A minute later Mr Everard heard resounding thumps of hands and feet upon a closed door.

“Father,” a shrill and terribly distinct voice cried, “Mr Everard is downstairs. He’s come to elope with mother in a motor-car.”

The two dejected children immediately burst into loud howls and clutched at the skirts of Mr Everard’s dust-cloak.

“Oh, take us, too,” they wailed. “Take us, too,”

The other child was still executing a war-dance, silently and with an intent expression upon her freckled face.

CHAPTER IV

AS the sound of Cordelia Delarobbia’s voice came through the cracked wood of the bare door Mr Lee said to his wife in a low voice: “Well, you’d better answer the child.”

Mrs Lee’s nostrils were distended: her eyes were glaring. Half her hair had come down so that it resembled the untidy straw that lay about in the garden. She was wearing a very dirty jersey and the knickerbockers that she always assumed in the privacy of her home. Her legs and feet were bare except for vegetarian leather sandals, but across the bed there lay her evening dress of blue satin, which she had bought in town that week and was just about to pack into a cardboard box in order to take it across to Luscombe Green where she had intended that evening to dress herself in the Johnsons’ cottage.

“It’s for you to answer Cordelia,” Mr Lee repeated.

Mr Lee, who in London was known as Henry Augustus Pierpoint, registered money-lender, was a small, brownish man with a torpedo beard and rather mournful eyes. His voice, as a rule, was low, faltering and apologetic. Even in this crisis it remained low.

“What am I to answer, usurer?” Mrs Lee asked venomously. Her lips were quivering and her chest heaved up and down.

“You’ll answer as you think fit,” Mr Lee answered. “But you know the conditions. If you go to Luscombe Green to-day the door will be locked upon you to-night, and divorce proceedings will be commenced against you to-morrow.”

“Toad!” Mrs Lee exclaimed. “You unspeakable...”

Mr Lee extended Ms hand gently. He looked round the room.

“As I have said before,” he remarked, “this is not the room for a gentleman’s wife. This is not the house for a gentleman, and the children’s manners are not those of a gentleman’s children.”

At that moment Cordelia Delarobbia thumped upon the door with hands and feet.

“Come along, mother,” she shouted. “Come and elope. Clarissa and I found an old shoe in the dunghill: we’ll throw it after you.”

“Where did they pick up such disgusting ideas?” Mrs Lee said. “Where but from you and your detectives and your low pot-house louts?”

“My dear Janet,” Mr Lee said, “as I have told you before, my detectives and the boys hanging about outside the Blue Anchor have got evidence enough against you to give me a divorce. I don’t say you’ve done anything wrong with that man, but your behaviour has looked so much like it that it perfectly justifies me. If a woman, the wife of a gentleman and the mother of a gentleman’s children, cannot behave with sufficient circumspection to keep her from being a by-word to pot-house loafers, she doesn’t deserve anything.”

“But, you vile animal,” Mrs Lee was beginning, “you Jew moneylender, you Quaker usurer...!”

“My dear Janet,” Mr Lee said with a slightly tired imperturbability, “you have heard my terms. It’s yes or no.”

In the course of his profession Mr Lee had uttered those identical words so very often to borrowers that they came from him with a sense of calmness. They were even soothing. And once more his mild eyes wandered round the room. The walls were washed with a blue wash, the floor-boards were bare and rather dirty. Upon the floor, beneath the window, was a quantity of straw which contained, arranged amongst it still, a few of last year’s apples. Mrs Lee’s skirt was hanging upon a nail on the back of the door, and her wideawake decorated a knob of the iron bedstead. In the corner of the room nearest the window there leant a double-barrelled shot gun, and upon the bare, deal mantelpiece were a dozen cartridges and a small plaster cast of “The Winged Victory.” This Mrs Lee had purchased so that by means of gazing at it as she lay in bed she might bear beautiful children.

“You’ll further oblige me,” Mr Lee continued, “by not firing that gun out of the window at four o’clock in the morning. The birds can be frightened off the fruit by a boy or something. You will give the gun to the head gardener that I have engaged, or you can take it away if you like. It’s not proper that a gentleman’s wife should carry such lethal instruments. I have ordered suitable furniture for this room from Cass & Company of Tottenham Court Road. The things will be here on Monday — four van-loads of excellent furniture.”

Still hammering on the door Cordelia screamed: —

“Come along, mother! Come along, mother!” until she was hoarse.

“Well,” Mr Lee said, “what is your answer?”

Mrs Lee covered her face with her hands suddenly and burst into showers of tears that fell between her fingers.

“I couldn’t,” she heaved out, “stand it. It would choke me.”

“
Well,” Mr Lee said, “I don’t want to be harsh or unreasonable. If you like to go away from here and lead a virtuous and circumspect life I will make you an allowance. But if you go anywhere within a radius of twenty miles of Luscombe Green, if only for five minutes, I shall do what I have said. I am a wealthy man. I have to-day retired from business. I intend to lead the life of a country gentleman and I shall breed shorthorns. If you care to fall in with this mode of life I shall be very pleased. If not, I am ready to let you have a separation, provided that you behave with sufficient decency not to drag my name through the dirt.”

Mrs Lee was weak with sobbing.

“I don’t understand,” she blubbered pitifully, “how you’ve come to change so.”

“I haven’t changed in the least,” Mr Lee said. “Only you’ve never let me get out a word to say what I wanted, or when I’ve got it out you’ve never paid the slightest attention. I have always meant to retire when I had enough and sufficiently early to enjoy life and to make a position in the county. I have decided to retire earlier than I had otherwise meant, because I was appalled about three months ago to discover suddenly what a disgusting state of body and mind my poor children are in. I’ll give you the credit that you don’t know anything about it, but their morals and language are as disgusting as their nails, and when I came to make enquiries I discovered that you have about as bad a name amongst the servants and lower classes of this neighbourhood as any woman of loose life that I have ever heard of.”

Mrs Lee pushed back the hair that was clotted over her wet face to exclaim:

“Not a single person in the County has refused my invitation to my garden-party.”

“Oh, you’re giving a garden-party, are you?” Mr Lee said. “What has made you sane for a moment?”

“The D... Dowager-Duchess,” Mrs Lee sobbed, “Countess Croydon, Lady Sebag, they’re all coming.”

“The deuce they are,” Mr Lee said.

“Oh, don’t you understand? Don’t you understand?” Mrs Lee wailed.

A renewed volley of thumps upon the door drowned Mr Lee’s voice.

“Oh, can’t I speak to Mr Everard? Can’t I speak to Mr Everard?” Mrs Lee wailed once more.

“Of course you can speak to anybody you like,” Mr Lee said.

Mr Everard, still standing in the hall and chatting with the children, was appalled to observe descending the stairs what he took to be a man with enormous showers of dark hair. His eyes were round with amazement. Tears were all over the approaching stranger’s face. It extended its arms, clasped Mr Everard round the neck and burst into floods of tears upon his shoulder. Mr Everard staggered. The hair got into his mouth. He spat it out to exclaim:

“Pierpoint! What in the world is all this?”

Mr Lee was descending the carpetless stairs. “Have you been philandering with my wife, too?” he said.

A great fear came over Mr Everard.

“It’s impossible!” be said. “You don’t mean to say that it’s you that’s married to Ophelia Bransdon?”

For Mr Everard, who had never seen Hamnet Gubb and who knew Mr Lee as the money-lender Henry Augustus Pierpoint, which was his registered name, could not identify the creature sobbing on his shoulder as anyone else but Mrs Lee. This knowledge had come to him by deduction, but he still could not see what in the world Mr Pierpoint could be doing with Mrs Lee in what he regarded as a half-clad condition. It came into his head that Mr Pierpoint must have been lending the Lees money, and that he had pursued them into their rustic retreat with threats of bailiffs and writs. But before he could say any more the sobs upon his shoulder ceased. The weight became enormous. Mrs Lee bad fainted. Mr Everard staggered right back against the wall. Nevertheless, with an extreme doggedness, he kept his hold and then gently laid the lady down upon the tiles. And then in answer to the sudden craving of his sense of decency he pulled off his dust-coat and laid it over the lady’s lower limbs.

“Now then,” he said rather fiercely to Mr Pierpoint, “what’s all this about? I suppose it’s due to you that there’s the trouble in the household that the poor little children are talking about. I suppose you’ve been putting on the screw, you blood-sucking beast! You’ve lent money to this lady and her husband’s made discoveries in consequence. But don’t you try to blackmail me. You can’t be Ophelia Bransdon’s husband, and I didn’t know you had a wife, and I’m hanged if I believe you ever had one. You aren’t the sort of chap to appeal to women. But I tell you what it is. If I have a word more of your hp I run straight down to the police station, and have a man up here to take you for blackmail. I’m George Everard of the Talavera Theatre.”

“But I’m....” Mr Lee was trying to say.

“Now look here,” Mr Everard went on, fumbling in his pocket for his cheque book, “this’ll be the second time I’ve settled up for poor devils who’ve got into your clutches. You remember poor Tobin well enough, I daresay. I gave you a bit of my mind then. I’ll give you a bit more in a minute; but if you’ll tell me what these poor people owe you I’ll make out a cheque on the spot, and you can take your ugly face out of this house. I haven’t seen this poor woman but twice in my life. Once when she touched me for a tenner for a subscription, and once when she put me out in a damnable way at the Theatre. But for all I disapprove of her Socialism, I tell you this. I’d lend money to a dynamiter to get him out of the clutches of sharks like you.” And Mr Everard shook his cheque book in Mr Pierpont’s face. Mr Pierpont stammered out quickly:

“Look here, I’m Lee down here. For God’s sake hold your tongue before the children.”

The children were hovering round the door of their room, their faces expressing paroxysms of varied emotions.

“You! Lee!” Mr Everard exclaimed.

“I’ve retired from business,” Mr Lee said. “I don’t want it known down here what I did.”

“You!” Mr Everard repeated. “You and the Simple Life! My
Gawd
!” And Mr Everard punched himself violently in the sides to avoid exploding into laughter. At his feet Mrs Lee groaned slightly.

It was, however, half an hour later before, in the dusk, Mr Everard’s motor-car climbed slowly the steep hill at New End. He felt cheerful, he felt contented. He was even whistling slightly. Every now and then he exploded with silent laughter. He had managed to patch things up so effectually that it was arranged that when he had returned to the Luscombe’s to dress he should send his motor-car back to The Summit to fetch to Luscombe Green, not only Mrs Lee in the blue satin gown and all, but Mr Lee himself. For Mr Everard had been able to point out to that gentleman that though he entirely shared his antipathy for the Simple Life and everything connected with it, and although, indeed, he heartily approved of Mr Lee’s retiring from business, setting himself up as a country gentleman and breeding shorthorns — yet it would be an inauspicious beginning to prevent his wife from appearing at a public ceremony of which she was not only the organiser, but for which she had secured the enthusiastic approval of all the aristocracy of the county. Mr Lee had been of opinion that the festivities would be of an immoral kind resembling the Eleusinian Mysteries of which he had read in Lempriere’s dictionary. This work Mr Lee was accustomed to read when he felt the appetite for anything spicy. But the string of titles that Mr Everard had been able to roll off had completely changed his frame of mind.

Mr Everard drove up contentedly to the school buildings. He found that the chairs were arranged in decorous rows with an aisle down the middle of the white bam, the table was upon the platform, the decanter of water upon the table and the glass upon the decanter: the lamps were filled and cleaned, and there was even an armchair for the chairman. Mr Everard locked the door of the schoolroom contentedly. He delivered his car over to his chauffeur with equal contentment and strolled amiably up the road towards the Luscombes’, feeling in very good fettle for the dinner that he certainly thought himself to have earned. He was not, however, to get it so easily. The silence was intense. The road gave out some of the heat of the day. Above his head danced a moving choir of midges and in the great, dusky wall of red in the west there hung the tiny silver filament of the new moon.