Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (438 page)

PART II
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CHAPTER I
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THE next two days were uncomfortable, but not so extraordinarily uncomfortable as they might have been. Indeed, as far as the major was concerned, it might have been better to call them merely odd. He himself had not any activities. He sat about on knolls in the grounds, and tried to make head or tail of a story called “The Great Good Place”; but he just simply could not make anything, and his eyes were rather bad. It took the form of a dimness that would last two or three days, and then give place to two or three days in which his vision would be rather clearer than usual. So he really had not anything to do, for the doctors had told him that he was not even to ride much, and riding was the only thing that could have taken him out of the grounds; for, as for fishing, he could not really see well enough to tie a fly.

Miss Flossie Delamare spent the whole of her days with Mrs. Foster in a small room giving off the drawing-room. She listened to interminable tales of the irregular actions of the dashing Admiral Brent; she did her best to learn Berlin wool-

work, for which she developed no particular talent, and she spent many hours a day with old Mrs. Foster at the piano in the great drawing-room, where the armour stood. Mrs. Foster was doing her best to help Miss Delamare to learn her two songs for the musical comedy called “Pigs is Pigs.” This successful piece having run for two years and seven nights, Miss Delamare had insisted on a fortnight’s holiday, during which her place was taken by her friend, Miss Lottie Charles. Miss Delamare said that that old play was driving her regular dotty, and she had insisted on being provided with three new dances and two new songs if she was to go on with the part. But by the time she had reached Basildon Manor she rather wished she had not. Because learning was extraordinarily difficult to her. She never could get words into her head, and she only had five notes in her voice. The song called “Chipper-chipper Chip-chip” did not present so many difficulties as far as Miss Delamare was concerned, but it proved extremely difficult for Mrs. Foster to accompany. The main body of the song had to be performed by the hero of the musical comedy. This had not been the Intention of the three authors of the words and the two composers of the music; but this Miss Delamare had insisted should be so. According to the original intention of the composers and the authors, Miss Delamare was to have sung the whole composition, which was a touching story of the love affairs of a tomtit and a dormouse. But Miss Delamare had absolutely refused to take so much trouble, so the words had been handed over to the hero, though Miss Delamare had consented to sing the chorus if it was very much simplified. The hero, Mr. Roy Regulin, had absolutely refused to sing anything about a dormouse, or anything about a tomtit. He wanted to sing about his adventures in walking after a young lady with a bandbox in the city of Paris. He was firm, and Miss Delamare was firm; so that in the end the three worried authors and the two distracted composers left it at that, and a very good song it turned out to be. For the hero related how he met the young lady with the bandbox on the boulevards and how he turned and followed her. And then Miss Delamare sang:

“
But she only said...

‘
Chipper-chipper Chip-chip.’”

And at the end of every six lines of this song, Miss Delamare, who carried a bandbox, sang her artless refrain.

The only difficulty was that old Mrs. Foster, whose knuckles were very gouty, and who had never in her youth got beyond playing “Rock me to Sleep, Mother,” and “O Woodman, Spare that Tree” — Mrs. Foster found it extremely difficult to accompany the young lady, to whom she was much attached. Miss Delamare, on the other hand, said she would be absolutely unable to practise the song unless Mrs. Foster could at least pick out the melody with one finger upon the grand piano. They might, indeed, have had the major in, for he had some working acquaintance with the instrument, and indeed in the evenings, when they were all properly clothed, he managed to rattle out the tune very spiritedly. But Miss Delamare said that she could not possibly dance the steps in the extraordinarily tight skirts that were all she had got with her. So that it was not, Mrs. Foster said, to be thought of that he could assist at the rehearsals, for Flossie had not got so much as one petticoat in all her eleven boxes. Thus, Mrs. Foster, having had all the Indian rugs taken out of the great drawing-room, and having all the doors locked from half-past eleven till one, did her laborious best to accompany Miss Delamare’s capers.

This had two great advantages. It enormously pleased Mrs. Arthur Foster, who was never tired of seeing Flossie kick the tortoiseshell comb out of the back of her own head. Whereupon her cunningly arranged hair would fall all over her like a waterfall. And, on the other hand, it simplified the task of Miss Peabody.

Miss Peabody, as the major had to observe, was simply wonderful. She had the job of keeping four women away from two men, and of keeping in touch with the two men herself all the time. The geographical position of the house did, of course, aid her. Very long and very low, she occupied Mr. Foster’s study in the middle, as a sort of strategic position. The house stood on a knoll, with the park dropping away from the front and the kitchen garden behind. And the kitchen garden was so really a place of vegetables that no young couple could possibly have the excuse of wandering into it to admire its beauties, since its beauties consisted mainly of cabbages, and it was too early in the year for the wall fruit to have fallen. Thus there only remained the park.

Miss Peabody would arrange the major, with a rug tucked round his knees, under a large oak. She would let him have the book called
The Sacred Fount
to read, and several lumps of sugar with which to feed the deer if they came his way.

And, planted in the window of Mr. Arthur Foster’s study, she could see him perfectly well, and if she caught him so much as standing up, she would be out at the hall door with her smelling-salts ready to offer him before he had walked so much as five steps. In the meanwhile, she knew that Miss Delamare was conveniently shut up with Mrs. Foster, and she could generally perceive Mrs. Kerr Howe ranging the distances of the park with a book in her hand, or leaning her proofs up against the trunk of a distant tree — which Miss Peabody observed she generally did when she was in the view of the major — correcting them in a style and fashion very proper for a professional lady writer.

And, on the other hand, Miss Peabody had her thumb well down upon Mr. Arthur Foster. The poor old gentleman simply could not move. She had concocted an enormous plan for amalgamating the L.S.S.V. and the B.A.A.S. (London Society for the Suppression of Vice, and the Boston Association for the Abolition of Sin). She had persuaded the old gentleman that, by amalgamating these two societies, of the one of which he was founder and the other of which she was the perpetual grand mistress, he would be absolutely certain of a knighthood, if not even of a baronetcy, which would probably descend to the major. And she kept the poor old gentleman stuck there over her papers so that neither Miss Delamare with her plans for the new theatre, nor Mrs. Kerr Howe with her arguments in favour of her new play, ever got a chance of speaking to him. Moreover, a quite definite coldness had sprung up between her and Mrs. Arthur Foster, who was understood to back up Miss Delamare and the theatre. It had happened in this way.

On the first morning of their all breakfasting together, Mr. Arthur Foster had come down first and had opened a letter which had contained a report from the secretary of the L.S.S.V. It had filled him with real enthusiasm. He had not been able to refrain from saying briskly to her Ladyship’s Own Maid, who was waiting at the sideboard because Saunders, the butler, had apparently turned his ankle, slipping on a rug on the polished oak floor of the corridor, to which he was unaccustomed because he had spent the last twenty years of his service at The Pines, Hornsey, where the passages were covered with linoleum — Mr. Arthur Foster could not refrain from reading his letter aloud to Miss Jenkins, who stood with her hands folded before her in front of the largest ham she had ever seen.

“Now this is famous!” Mr. Foster had said; “it is really excellent! Listen to this, Nancy, my dear — just listen to this.”

Miss Jenkins stood absolutely motionless; the water in the silver kettle hissed pleasantly; the kidneys over their spirit-lamp bubbled and shook the silver lid that covered them.

“This is from Colonel Hangbird,” Mr. Foster said, “the secretary of the L.S.S.V. that my wife is president of. Colonel Hangbird says that he is happy to be able to announce that, during the year whilst my wife has been president of the society, and lastly, owing to your — I mean my — generous contributions to its funds, Vice of all kinds in the kingdom has diminished by ‘01 per cent. What do you think of that, Miss Nancy?” Miss Jenkins regarded the Turkey carpet.

“You ought to be made a baronet, sir, or a knight at least,” she said. And then she asked disconcertingly: “Now how long would it take at that rate for Vice to be rooted out of the country altogether?”

Mrs. Foster was just coming in at the door, so Mr. Foster said, “Ssh! Ssh!” and then he addressed his wife with the words: “My dear, here’s splendid, here’s glorious news! Read this letter. Nancy says — I mean it’s generally considered — that I ought to be a baronet, or at least a knight.”

Mrs. Foster took the letter without much enthusiasm. She read rather slowly, and then began upon the breakfast with which Miss Jenkins served them. Mrs. Foster read with an irritating slowness, but she did bring out at last:

“Yes, my dear, I have no doubt it is perfectly splendid, but I don’t see anything about a knighthood.”

“Oh, that,” Mr. Foster said, “that’s just the general opinion. Colonel Hangbird’s report will be in all the papers. Just think, I shall be a knight, and people will have to call you ‘my lady.’”

“I don’t know that I shall like that,” Mrs. Foster replied speculatively. “It will seem rather odd. But how long will it take to get rid of Vice altogether at that rate? Not so very long, I should think.”

Mr. Foster happened to be coughing over his cup of coffee, and Miss Jenkins remarked with extreme deference:

“It will take just a thousand years, ma’am.”

But Mrs. Foster was thinking of something else, and she turned eagerly upon her Ladyship’s Own Maid.

“Have you any news of her Ladyship?” she asked. “Do, if you write to her, repeat and repeat it again, that Mr. Foster and I would be delighted if she will consider this house her home instead of going to the Dower House at all.”

Mr. Foster immediately became exceedingly animated.

“Certainly, certainly!” he exclaimed; “by all means tell her Ladyship that.” And then he got up to run towards Miss Peabody, who was entering the room, and he continued his exclamation: “How odd it would be if Mrs. Foster were ‘her Ladyship’ and Lady Savylle were ‘her Ladyship’...”

Mrs. Foster said rather frostily: “I don’t think we should mention our titles in conversation,” and she appealed to Miss Jenkins for corroboration.

Miss Jenkins said: “It isn’t usual, ma’am.” Mr. Foster appealed to her rather wistfully. “Still, every now and then...’’ he said.

Miss Jenkins continued to gaze remorselessly at the carpet.

“Hardly even every now and then, sir,” she remarked.

And then Mr. Foster spoke to Miss Peabody.

“I don’t see,” he exclaimed, “that it is any use having a title if it is never to be used to you.” Miss Jenkins remarked:

“Of course, it’s a matter of taste, sir.”

But Miss Peabody, who was rather flushed, pushed in between her host and her Ladyship’s Own Maid, and it was only then, after having exhausted this engrossing topic, that Mr. Foster remembered his duty to his guest. His acquaintance with polite conversation came mostly from novels, of which he had read several between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three, and his speeches when addressing a lady were apt at times to startle his hearers. Thus he remarked now:

“Down before all the others and with the flush of youth and beauty on your cheek! How I envy my nephew, lucky dog!”

Mrs. Foster, who was gazing quite angrily at the toast-rack, remarked:

“I don’t believe you’re going to get a title, and I don’t in the least want one for my own part.”

Miss Peabody said rather fiercely: