Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (447 page)

“I’m sure that’s extremely interesting,” Miss Jenkins said. “But if you will kindly give me any further orders that you may have, I shall be pleased to take them. Or if not I shall be glad to be dismissed.”

“I order you,” Miss Peabody exclaimed, “to reveal to me the secret of that panel.”

Miss Jenkins produced a very small stamp-case of green leather from the pocket of her apron. She opened it and took out a little piece of stamp-paper; and, coming towards the frame of the immense picture panel, she stuck the little piece of stamp-paper on a protruding knob.

“That,” she said, “is the knob that opens the panel. You ordered me to show it you, and I have shown it you much against my will.”

“But where,” Miss Peabody asked, “is the knob that closes the panel?”

“That,” Miss Jenkins exclaimed, “I shall certainly
not
show you. You insist on opening that panel in order to give Miss Delamare what you would probably call a piece of your mind. And as you will probably give an untruthful account of the transaction to-morrow, I am perfectly determined that, if the panel is opened, it shall remain open as evidence of the fact that it was you who opened it. The panel cannot be opened from the next room, so that proof is absolutely conclusive.

“And indeed,” she continued, “I tell you plainly, that I shall go straight from here and throw the closing gear of that panel out of action. So that if you open it, you certainly will not be able to close it even though you should find the other knob.”

Miss Peabody said with a sort of high irony: “Well, this is a pretty condition of affairs, I’m sure.”

“Her Ladyship,” Miss Jenkins replied, “left me here to act upon my own discretion for the protection of her friends in this house and of the reputation of the house itself. I don’t want to have scenes here, and I won’t have scenes here. But as it is obviously impossible for me to stop you making a fool of yourself, I certainly insist upon your making a fool of yourself in my own way — in the way that is least likely to cause inconvenience to her Ladyship, or to any other person in this house. And as for Miss Delamare, if you attack her, I don’t think, knowing her as I do, that you will get very much change out of her.”

“I fail to understand these vulgar expressions,” Miss Peabody said.

“Not to get much change out of a person,” Miss Jenkins replied, with the utmost equanimity, “is an Americanism. It means that you come off second best. It means that Miss Delamare’s case is so absolutely impregnable, that you won’t be able even to make her wince and that she will make you wince all the time.”

“Everything you say,” Miss Peabody said, “only makes me all the more determined to do what I am determined to do.”

“I am quite aware of that,” Miss Jenkins said. “It’s a little proceeding which will lead you to disaster, and I don’t see that I am particularly concerned in saving you from disaster. I am concerned in satisfying my own conscience. If you come to grief I shall probably profit by it, so I am not going to let you come to grief until I have used every possible argument that would dissuade a decent woman. For the main point for me is that if you are not a decent woman, I have every possible right to profit by your collapse.”

Miss Peabody, still ironically, exclaimed: “What language!”

“Yes, collapse,” Miss Jenkins said gravely. “That’s what you will do. If you indulge in this vicious and vulgar spite you will collapse. You will collapse utterly. You will go out. I warn you that you will go out, and you will probably be miserable to the end of your days. And you will deserve it. For what has Miss Delamare done to you? Nothing! Absolutely nothing! It’s just because she’s little and gentle and pretty and gay and nice — and to be sure you’re none of those things — and it’s just because she’s been kind to another old woman — kind and gentle and considerate — and to be sure you’re none of those things either. But it’s just because of them that you hate her as an unpleasant cat hates a pleasant dog. It isn’t because — it isn’t because you’re my rival that I hope to see you thrown out of this house. If you had been a nice woman, Heaven knows I wouldn’t have stirred a finger against you, Heaven really knows that I wouldn’t. But you have such an evil nature! You have such a dislike of anything that is good and gay and pleasant, that even though I don’t want to do so for my own sake, I shall certainly do for his — the very best that I possibly can to save from you the man that I have loved for years, and a man that is as good and as gentle and as gay as any man ever was in this world. So I tell you quite plainly that, if you attempt to interfere with Miss Delamare, you will lose the man you are engaged to. I hope you will do it and I hope you may lose him, for if you do I shall most certainly get him, and I want him more than anything else in the world; and that’s just all there is to it, and this is the last word that I shall say. I’ve just planked my cards on the table and you can do as you like.”

Miss Peabody remained gazing at her for a long minute in an absolute speechlessness, and Miss Jenkins was just moving towards the door when she exclaimed sharply:

“No, stop! You!” She put her hand up to her forehead. “So that,” she said at last, “you are in league with that creature. With that Miss Delamare. And you are trying to shield her. That’s it! I see through the whole discreditable and disgusting thing. I’m not going to speak about it any more. I shall attend to the matter tomorrow. But to-night I shall speak to this woman in such a way as to drive her right out of this house, You may hope that I can’t do this, but I certainly can. I have had to do with too many abandoned and fallen women in my life not to let my tongue be like the whip of a lash. And I begin to see so far into this disgusting and sordid affair that in a few minutes I shall be absolutely at the bottom of it, and then I shall be prepared to act. But as for your imagining that Major Foster will ever fall to you, I tell you this, that if God struck me with lightning at this minute and you were the only woman in the world, he would never look at you. Now you can go.”

Miss Jenkins withdrew without another word.

And Miss Peabody remained alone, leaning on the high mantelpiece and really trying to get to the bottom of things. And then suddenly the bottom of things came up at her like a flash. It was really the plainest intrigue that she had ever been called upon to solve. Miss Delamare was to plunder Mr. Foster, and she had agreed upon this with her Ladyship’s Own Maid, giving the major himself over to Miss Jenkins as the price of Miss Jenkins’s support!

There simply could not be any doubt about this. And, with a step of extreme firmness, she marched straight over towards the panel. She was just going to tell Miss Delamare that she had unshakable proof that she was Mr. Foster’s mistress, and that the granting of the lease of the new theatre was the price of her sin.

CHAPTER VI
.

MR. FOSTER was sitting in front of his bedroom fire in a state of the most thorough dispiritude. He did not like his room, which was hung all with pink chintz, and did not seem to be the proper room for a gentleman; he was exceedingly afraid of what he saw to be the considerable change in Mrs. Foster, and he was extremely afraid of what Miss Peabody might be going to do or, still more, to say, now that he had definitely signed with Miss Delamare the agreement for the new theatre. His simple soul was thoroughly frightened, thoroughly worried and thoroughly shaken. For nearly an hour he had been trying to read a book by Mrs. Kerr Howe called
Pink Passions.
This book troubled him exceedingly; for, to tell the truth, he had never read a book since the publication of
The Woman in White.
And it did not seem to him to be natural that people should behave as they did in Mrs. Kerr Howe’s book, and the characters certainly seemed to him to be chiefly improper persons. On the other hand, Mrs. Foster was perpetually dinning into him the fact that Mrs. Kerr Howe was a great author. And, in his muddled and troubled state, the poor man began reflecting upon what was to be expected from great authors. He had a vague idea that the purpose of literature was said to be to ennoble the world; but, on the other hand, he had an idea that the end of authors, or the life of authors for the matter of that, was spent in the Divorce Courts. And he imagined that the greater the author, the more frequent were his visits to these establishments. So that he could not very well see how the products of obviously immoral persons could help on moral causes in the world. And at the same time he was so anxious to be received back, if not into his old quarters, at least into Mrs. Foster’s favour, that he was really desperately anxious to appreciate not only Miss Delamare, but also Mrs. Kerr Howe. He felt that if he could do this, Mrs. Foster would, for reasons that he could not understand, be kind to him again. And he was looking into his fire and brooding rather miserably. For he was determined to await the return of Mrs. Foster before he got into bed. He wished to tell her as well as he could that, in the end, he found that she was more important to him than the wishes of Miss Peabody. Though this again muddled him, for he had really wanted to propitiate his wife by doing everything that he possibly could to please her nephew. And he had perfectly believed that, the more he pleased Miss Peabody, the more joy it ought to cause Major Edward Brent Foster; for so simple was his soul that it had never occurred to him to notice that his wife exceedingly detested that lady. He had usually been taught by his friends in the city, and other places, to consider that women were incomprehensible, but he had really had so little to do with women — though it is true that having been as normally unfaithful to Mrs. Foster as most of his friends were to their wives, he had now and then had his whiskers damaged before he shaved them in order to be more in the fashion — he had really had so little to do with women, that the fact they were incomprehensible had not really seemed to him to matter at all.

But now he dropped
Pink Passions
, and looking at the fire, exclaimed in a bitterly aggrieved tone: “Why, they’re incomprehensible!”

He had been trying to do his best to please everybody all round, and he seemed to have come in for so much abuse, that he simply felt bruised and black and blue all over his moral being.

“Why, they’re incomprehensible!” he repeated. For, if Mr. Foster had not been strictly virtuous all his life, he had certainly been strictly respectable, and, in the present transactions, he had not only been extremely respectable but even quite absolutely virtuous. There was not, he was perfectly certain, a single thing that could possibly be said against his virtue. Not a single thing. He was as spotless as an angel, and he had tried to be as obliging as a Cook’s Guide.

He heard a little swish — a negligible sound in these old houses — and suddenly there burst upon him the words:

“You infamous man! You abandoned woman!” Mr. Foster tried to spring clean out of his chair; but, since he was not normally very active, he only succeeded in achieving a sort of shuffle. Miss Peabody was standing in a sort of lighted square that had disappeared from the pink chintzed panelling of one of his walls. And, his mind having been running upon his respectable but not impeccable past, Mr. Foster imagined that Miss Peabody must have heard what he would have called a thing or two about himself, and exclaimed in a breathless alarm:

“What woman?”

And then there began a breathless dialogue, for Miss Peabody exclaimed:

“That actress — that Miss Delamare! I know all about her.”

Mr. Foster ejaculated: “What about her?” And Miss Peabody said convictingly:

“You are in her room.”

“Certainly not,” Mr. Foster almost screamed. “This is my room.”

“You can’t expect me to believe that,” she said. “Oh, nonsense!” he answered. “You’ve gone mad with jealousy.”

Olympia advanced upon him. “Mr. Foster,” she exclaimed, with a fixed gravity, “don’t lie to me. I expected to find you here. I was convinced that I should find you here, and I have found you here. There’s no getting away from that. If you like to behave penitently, I may be inclined to conceal your guilt. But I insist upon your leaving that atrocious woman to me. I insist upon your at once leaving this room.”

“But damn it!” Mr. Foster said, and it was the first time he had ever sworn in his life, “I must have some room somewhere. Mrs. Foster has turned me out of my room, and I’m certainly not going to let you turn me out of this.”

Miss Peabody repeated stonily: “I insist upon your leaving that atrocious woman to me.”

“But there’s no woman here but yourself, my good soul,” Mr. Foster said. “You can see that there isn’t.”

Miss Peabody exclaimed: “Nonsense! She’s hiding behind the curtains. She’s got under the bed.” Mr. Foster ejaculated: “By Heaven! Women are incomprehensible! You’re out of your senses. It’s a most extraordinary mistake.” And after a moment he added: “Come and look behind the curtains. Come and get under the bed yourself if you want to. I’m sick of all this.”

Miss Peabody advanced right into the room. She did look behind the curtains, and she satisfied herself that the bed came so low that nobody could possibly get under it.

And Mr. Foster by this time had become so furiously enraged, that he began to run about the room throwing open the wardrobes, the drawers and the cover of his dressing-table.

“Look here, you infernal idiot,” he said; “there you can see my suits. And there you can see my vests and pants. And there you can see my spare studs and my shaving things. Does that satisfy you? Miss Delamare doesn’t shave.” Miss Peabody stood for a terrified moment with her eyes so distended that he thought she would burst the lids.

“Then it’s
your
room!” she exclaimed. “How horrible!” She caught her breath sharply. “My dear man,” she exclaimed, “my dear friend, how can I have wronged you!” Her brain began to swim and she made desperate and even exaggerated efforts to get back to the courtly and old-fashioned phraseology that she had always used when speaking to Mr. Foster. “My good friend,” she repeated, “my dear friend! My dear dear friend!” And then, as she felt really faint, she said: “Support me! You are so strong! So noble! Lay me on my bed.” And as she actually did totter, Mr. Foster could not see anything for it but to try and support her back into her own room. He really did try, too, to carry her, but, as she was no light weight, he hardly succeeded in doing more than make her stumble along the floor. And then he perceived Mrs. Foster standing in the square opening. She exclaimed, in what he knew to be tones of the deepest contempt:

“Mr. Foster! Miss Peabody!”

And this affected Mr. Foster so much that he let go of Miss Peabody altogether. She collapsed upon the floor like a badly jointed doll and gave just one, but a very violent scream. Mr. Foster stood perfectly still with his jaw hanging down, and then Mrs. Foster said slowly:

“I presume you will explain what this means. Or don’t you intend to?”

Mr. Foster began to giggle feebly.

“My dear,” he said, “I don’t know. I don’t know what it means. Miss Peabody came into my room suddenly.”

Mrs. Foster said simply: “So it appears”; and Miss Peabody remarked faintly from the floor: “Mrs. Foster!”

Then, suddenly, Mrs. Foster appeared to become enraged. She rushed up to Miss Peabody, and leaning over her exclaimed:

“Don’t speak! Don’t you dare to speak, or I will spurn your abandoned face with my foot.”

Mr. Foster tried to get in a “But, my dear...” but Mrs. Foster, who was perfectly white with rage, exclaimed:

“Hold your tongue!” And then she added: “This is what it means! This is what it has all meant. This is the meaning of your compliments to that — that thing. This is why I have been thrown into the society of this woman that I always detested. This is why my poor Edward must marry her — to cover up an abominable intrigue...”

And then suddenly Miss Delamare and Mrs. Kerr Howe appeared in the room behind.

“In the name of Heaven what’s the matter?” Mrs. Kerr Howe said. “Who’s that screaming?” And they both stood in the opening of the panel with wide and incredulous eyes.

Mrs. Foster turned upon them with an immense dignity.

“This is the matter,” she exclaimed. “I have discovered that that woman on the floor is the basest of mortals. That she and my husband...”

“But that isn’t possible,” Mrs. Kerr Howe said.

Mrs. Foster answered: “But I tell you I saw it with my own eyes. Mr. Foster was carrying this woman in his arms. She had her arms round his neck.”

“Oh, I can’t believe that,” Miss Delamare said.

Mrs. Foster was beginning again: “She had her arms round his neck. I heard her with my own ears ask him to carry her to her bed. This is philanthropy! This is the Suppression of Vice! And to think that it should be my husband — and to think that she’s such a thing! She’s — she’s old! Her teeth are false, her hair’s false. I know it is. I’ve seen it hanging over her looking-glass.”

Miss Peabody began to scream lamentably, but Mrs. Foster continued without pity:

“My dear, if he had wanted to betray me with you, I shouldn’t mind so much. You’re young and pretty and charming, and you’ve got a nice heart and gay manners. Or if it had been you, Mrs. Kerr Howe, it wouldn’t have been so insulting. You’ve got good looks, though you’re too little to be really handsome, and you dress well. And you have got an intellect. But that it should be that thing — she’s as old as myself or older, and she dresses out of the rag-bag, and she’s wizened and she’s spiteful and she’s stupid...”

She was interrupted by Mrs. Kerr Howe, who remarked:

“Mrs. Foster, there’s somebody knocking at the door.” And a deep silence fell upon them. They heard the voice of Major Brent Foster exclaim clearly from within:

“Olympia, may I come in? They say they’ve changed our rooms.” And Mrs. Foster exclaimed:

“Oh, come in and look at this disgraceful spectacle.”

The major came in, with his amiable smile which gradually changed into an appalled expression.

“Why, what!” he ejaculated. “Olympia on the floor! Why, whatever!... Olympia, get up. I’ve bought you this ring in town.” And he was crossing the room to go to Olympia’s side, when Mrs. Foster stretched her arm rigidly across his chest. “My dear,” she said, “come away. You can’t stop here.”

“But what’s the matter?” he asked.

“We must go away,” Mrs. Foster said. “You and I and Flossie — out of this house for good.”

“But hang it all!” the major said. “I must have some sort of an explanation. You can’t clear out of the house as if you were taking a twopenny ticket on the tube. What’s the matter, Olympia?” But Mrs. Foster said, quite harshly: “Edward! No, don’t speak to that — that — harlot.”

It was at this word that Miss Peabody began to scream again, and she screamed quite respectably for some minutes. And then they perceived that Miss Jenkins was coming into the room from behind the hangings. She pushed them aside and stood amongst them, rather rigidly, looking down at Miss Peabody, her lower lip just curling in the very slightest.