Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (445 page)

“That may very well be, miss,” Miss Jenkins said; “but can you be perfectly certain that Miss Delamare is an abandoned woman? There’s really nothing in the world that’s ever been said against her.”

“I tell you I feel it,” Miss Peabody said. “I know it. I shudder when I think of her.”

“But that,” Miss Jenkins urged, “may be only just a natural antipathy — the sort of antipathy that some people have for Jews.”

“A natural antipathy!” Miss Peabody exclaimed. “Yes, the natural antipathy that the virtuous and respectable feel for the frivolous, sordid, degenerate, thoughtless and idle creatures of their own sex.” And rendered the more eager by Miss Jenkins’s opposition, Miss Peabody exclaimed: “Only give me the opportunity really to confront that viper, and I will give her such a talking to, that at the end of it she will certainly know that my heel is upon her head.”

“Of course, I can do what you wish, miss,” her Ladyship’s Own Maid said reasonably, “and of course it may — it probably will — lead to driving what you might call the dragon out of this household. But I will urge you not to do it, miss. Miss Delamare is an innocent and harmless little creature, and I’m not certain that if you attempt to harm her it won’t recoil upon your own head. Indeed, I am pretty certain that it will.”

“My good girl,” Miss Peabody said, with dignity, “that’s the sort of sentimental nonsense that you read in novelettes in the servants’ hall. You may rely upon my judgment, that of a mature woman, and you may be certain that anything that I do, or anything that you do for me, will be perfectly justified.”

“I shall be perfectly justified,” Miss Jenkins answered slowly; “well, I hope I shall, and if I’m not, your blood will be upon your own head.”

“That’s a ridiculous phrase again, my good girl,” Miss Peabody said; “so let’s make an end of this nonsense. I simply order you to do what I have suggested, and there’s an end of it.”

Miss Jenkins suddenly looked at Miss Peabody. “Miss Olympia,” she said gravely, “has it ever struck you as quite a side issue, that the arrangement of rooms in this house is slightly questionable? I must say it struck me as extraordinary that you never should have raised any objection.” Miss Peabody started and exclaimed: “What do you mean?”

“Of course,” Miss Jenkins continued, “I don’t want to raise any suspicions, but it seems to me a thing that might be changed — that possibly ought to be changed — that the major and Miss Delamare should have rooms side by side with only that panel in between.”

Miss Peabody became suddenly the vivid red of a turkey-cock’s wattles. She opened her mouth, but she found positively no words to utter.

“That I should never have thought of it!” she exclaimed.

“Well, it has always struck me as odd, miss,” Miss Jenkins answered, “that you never should.”

“Of course it must be changed at once,” Miss Peabody answered. “It must be changed immediately.”

“Of course it shall be, miss,” her Ladyship’s Own Maid said. “I will see to that. And in view of what you’ve just been asking of me, it seems that there would be another little arrangement...” Miss Jenkins hesitated, and again Miss Peabody asked sharply:

“What do you mean?”

“I hardly like to suggest it, miss,” Miss Jenkins said.

“Nonsense!” Miss Peabody exclaimed. “I order you to do so.”

“I’d much rather you thought about it, miss,” her Ladyship’s Own Maid said. “I don’t really care to speak of such things”; and, faced by the new firmness of Miss Jenkins’s lips, Miss Peabody really did reflect.

“If you consider what you’ve asked for, miss,”

Miss Jenkins said, “the opportunity for denouncing Miss Delamare in circumstances that might appear slightly — well, let us say awkward for her...”

Miss Peabody suddenly shook with the birth of a new idea.

“That’s it!” she exclaimed. “That’s precisely it. You will have my things removed to the major’s room, and you will have the major’s things removed to my room. At once; without any delay. The major will be away all day, and he will probably not return until late at night. And you will give him no intimation that the change has been made. I positively refuse to allow you to give him any warning. And then he will come up to my room. And we will just see what takes place.”

Miss Jenkins remonstrated with Miss Peabody for so long, that Miss Peabody simply could not for the life of her understand why she did it. She could only in the end put it down to some undeveloped ideas of womanly propriety which might do Miss Jenkins as a servant a great deal of credit, but which, with her superior knowledge, Miss Peabody considered to be the merest nonsense.

CHAPTER IV
.

IN spite of their ideas to the contrary, the major and his aunt spent a long day in town — for the specialist whom they went to consult about the major’s eyes strongly recommended them to get all the distraction they could. He said that what the major chiefly needed was peace of mind, and with the amiable penetration that these people sometimes possess, he seemed to discern that the Manor House, Basildon, if one of the quietest, was not one of the most restful houses in the kingdom.

So that, first, to get a really good change they went to interview the manager of the bookstall business that had issued a summons against the major. This gentleman was really puzzled by the major’s plain explanation. He could not understand what the major had had to talk to Miss Delamare about with such concentration when, as Mrs. Foster insisted on explaining, she was the major’s adopted sister, and was going to stay with him in the same house. It did not strike the manager as a reasonable explanation for refusing to pay for four and twopence worth of magazines. He was puzzled and, since he was manager of an immense business and had all the time in the world on his hands, he just listened to the major’s fine confusion with amiability and for a tremendous time — from half-past eleven until twenty past twelve. Another thing that he could not understand was the major’s statement that for magazines that he purchased at one stall he paid on principle at another. The major explained that he was a shareholder of the company out of gratitude to the novelist who had helped him to pass his remarkable examination; and that, too, the manager was unable fully to understand. The major said that that was as plain as eating eggs. He asked the manager to picture for himself what sort of a job guarding a well in Somaliland was; and the manager said that he could not in the least begin to imagine it, but that he had a son who had just come back from that pleasant country. Then it turned out that the manager’s son was Sammy Lowes, who had had charge of the next well two hundred and seventy miles away, and that the major had put in a good many evenings at poker over the telegraph wire with Captain Lowes, though he had never actually met his next-door neighbour. He had to explain then how you could play poker by telegram. Then he returned to the subject of the novelist who had so helped him. He explained carefully, that his grim determination to understand every sentence that that gentleman had ever written had toughened his comprehension to such an extent, that there was not a single thing in the world that he could not understand.

The manager asked someone on his telephone to send up Mr. Barnes; and Mr. Barnes, who was introduced as the company’s book inspector-general, declared that he had not even heard the name of the novelist. He went away, however, and then returned with the information which he had got from a subordinate, that not a single book by that gentleman had ever been sold at their stalls. He appeared to be asked for, however, in the circulating department, and there was one solitary exception. Kew had brought nine copies — thirteen being counted as twelve — of a work by this writer.

“So that,” the book inspector-general said, “you can pretty well tell that he’s one of your Intellectuals.” And the manager nodded his head in cordial agreement.

“But hang it all,” the major asked, “
how
can you tell?”

The manager looked at his inspector-general of literature.

“Oh,” the inspector-general remarked gloomily, “you can tell because really intellectual people never buy
new.
It’s only intellectual people that have discovered that you can buy library copies for a shilling after they have been used.”

“Now can you do that?” Mrs. Foster asked. “But it seems rather mean, doesn’t it?”

“It’s only intellectual people,” the inspector answered, “only
quite
intellectual people who know how to be really mean. And the fact of the sale of three copies at Kew goes to back up my contention. For Kew is where we sell only the very crankiest of stuff — health periodicals and the halfcrown monthlies. So if there wasn’t vegetarianism in that particular book, there must certainly have been Christian Science or Spiritualism.”

The major said: “Oh,” and then he added: “You could call it Spiritualism.”

“Then there we are,” the inspector said triumphantly.

“There,” the major remarked politely, “in a manner of speaking you may safely say we all certainly are.”

“But,” the manager hazarded when the inspector had gone, “I may be frightfully stupid, but I can’t in the least see how where we stand, wherever it is, interferes with your frightful crime of stealing periodicals from a railway bookstall.”

“But,” the major said, “it’s just established that I’m an Intellectual.”

“No defence at all,” the manager said gravely; “there can be no crime more mean than stealing from a bookstall. You are a shareholder, and you won’t deny that it’s the very height of meanness.

It’s not as if books were bread, or anything necessary or important. And we’ve just established that the Intellectuals are the only people who know how to be thoroughly and efficiently mean. For what in the world can be meaner than buying second-hand library copies, thus robbing us of our legitimate profit, and the writer of any profit at all. You confess that you belong to the meanest class in the world...”

“But I don’t feel in the least like an Intellectual,” the major said penitently. “I never knew I was till this moment.”

“You certainly don’t look like one,” the manager said encouragingly.

“And I certainly never,” the major said, “bought a library copy in my...” He stopped, and then he exclaimed slowly, and with his face of awe, “My God!
Every one of his books that I had in Somaliland had a cancelled yellow label outside it
!” And he stopped as if he were really terror-stricken.

“Then there,” the manager said, “you really are. You are convicted of the stupidity — it’s worse than a crime, considering the advantages we offer the public — of dealing with any firm other than us. For we do not deface our library copies with yellow labels, contenting ourselves with a chaste stamp on the title page. And — though that does not matter so much — you have received great benefits at the hands of a distinguished personage without making him one penny the richer.”

“Good heavens!” the major exclaimed. “Doesn’t he get
any
thing?”

“Not one penny!” the manager answered. “So that you are branded as belonging to that infamous band of sweaters, the purchasers of library copies. You are plainly a sweater, and you stand in danger of being convicted of theft.” Mrs. Foster protested that her Edward could never be called a thief, but the manager gravely but firmly presented her with many facts concerning the financial side of what he styled an infamous and unsanitary transaction.

But gradually the major became more cheerful. “After all,” he said, “I could not know anything about the matter. A great parcel of books was sent me by Charles Grand — he was a journalist I knew at Simla, and he is now reviewing for the London newspapers...”

“Then,” the manager said quietly but very sadly, “the majority of them were review copies which your friend received for nothing and sold to you for two shillings.”

“But,” the major exclaimed, “is there nothing but villainy in your business?”

“Nothing!” the manager answered still very sadly. “The authors are only fools, but the readers are sweaters, and the publishers — well, the less I say about publishers the less I shall have to answer for in the courts of my country; but all reviewers are villains. The only bright spot is the bookstall, where everything is aboveboard!”

“Well, I’m glad to know that I was right,” the major said.

“Right!” the manager exclaimed. “You’ve never been right in your life!”

“But I was,” the major said, “when I took shares in your company, in order to influence the sales of the author to whom I am grateful.”

The manager became instantly attentive. “And how do you propose to do that?” he asked.

“I am doing it already,” the major answered. “I never go near a bookstall without asking for the works of my benefactor. And when they are not to be had, I lecture the bookstall boy very severely. I say that I am a shareholder...”

“I trust,” the manager interrupted him, “that you have never found any of the works of this author upon our bookstalls?”

“Never!” the major exclaimed.

“Then that’s all right,” the manager said, “and you may continue with your explanation.”

“I tell the bookstall clerk,” the major accordingly continued, “that I am a shareholder, and that I insist upon his ordering all the novels of that author.”

“And do you ever notice that it has been done?” the manager asked.

“I have never been able to discover that it has,” the major said.

“Well,” the manager continued, “it’s best to make certain,” and he took the telephone which stood on the desk before him. “Barnes,” he remarked into that instrument, “will you kindly give instructions that no books by the author of
What Maisie Knew
are ever put on sale upon the stalls, except, of course, as library copies?” He put down the telephone, and, looking contentedly at the major, he remarked: “So that’s all right. We had better go to Waterloo.”

“But I don’t in the least understand,” the major said.

“Oh, that’s all right, that’s all right,” the manager answered. “It’s all perfectly right.”

“But it seems to me...” the major said.

“It seems to me,” Mrs. Foster remarked, “that you have just prevented the books of your friend from being sold at all.”

“That was exactly what was wanted,” the manager said. “Here we were in the face of an atrocious conspiracy to plant upon our firm books that couldn’t possibly be sold. I have fortunately put an end to that.”

“But hang it all!...” the major said.

The manager looked gravely and benevolently at the major.

“My dear young friend, don’t become excited,” he advised. “I observe in you a distinct tendency to become excited. I can only imagine that comes from the class of literature that you have been reading. Now take my advice. Give it up. Just give it up.”

“But, confound your impertinence,” the major exclaimed hotly, “it has made me the youngest major in the British Army.”

“There, there, there, there, there!” the manager said. “Hush! Hush! I cannot imagine what possible advantage it can be to be the youngest major in the British Army. But just you take my advice. When you came in I was reading a book. I am an exceedingly busy man, so it’s absolutely necessary that at times I should relax my mind. That is to say, sometimes, even in office hours, I take up a book and read. Let me tell you, my young friend, that there’s nothing so salutary in the world as literature. And I consider that I, as the manager of this great business, and you as one of its shareholders, are conferring upon humanity the greatest boon that this century...”

“My dear chap,” the major said, “this isn’t a dinner to the Newsvendors’ Benevolent Association, or whatever it is where you make speeches like that.”

“The purpose of literature,” the manager continued, “is to refresh, to recreate, to enlighten, to uplift. Buried deep in the soothing pages of a book, how blissfully the soul pursues its course! With what a smooth current do the minutes pass, with what a...”

“Oh, hang it all!” the major exclaimed. “I can’t stand this. This is like listening to Mrs. Kerr Howe reading aloud.”

“And it was precisely to the works of that great and splendid writer,” the manager said, “that I was desiring to direct your attention. If you would go round the bookstalls now and observe whether there are any works of that lady to be seen, I should be pleased to empower you to threaten to horsewhip any bookstall clerk whose stall did not display at least six copies of six different works by Mrs. Kerr Howe in a very prominent position.”

“Then,” Mrs. Foster suddenly asked the manager, “Mrs. Kerr Howe really is a great writer?”

“Madam,” the manager said impressively, “Mrs. Kerr Howe is the greatest writer the world has ever seen. You can prove it by every possible means. Do you wish to prove it by statistics? Then let me tell you that the complete works of Mrs. Kerr Howe had enjoyed up to the day before yesterday a world sale of seventeen and a half million copies. Supposing all these volumes were stacked on their sides, they would reach from here to the moon. Supposing them to be laid end to end, they would reach twice from here to the moon and back. The mere quantity of printers’ ink employed in their production has been eight and a half thousand gallons. To make the paper required for them one entire forest in the colony of Newfoundland, several woods in Norway, and the entire output of rags for one year of a city the size of Liverpool have been required.”