Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (449 page)

“I think, ma’am,” Miss Jenkins interrupted her, “that I know quite well what I am, but I should just like you to tell me what you want me to have.”

Mrs. Foster looked at Miss Jenkins with the expression of a child that gazes into the fire in search of fairy palaces.

“I don’t quite exactly know,” she said. “It isn’t what I want her to have so much, for I almost hope she won’t have much money so that he can’t be said to be dependent on her; but I hope she will be of good family, because he’s of good family himself, his father, the admiral, being descended, as I have heard him say many times, from the old ancient kings of Ireland, and moving in the society of the best in the land. And I wouldn’t object to her having a title, because that’s a nice thing, too, though Heaven knows I’ve never wanted it myself. A title — and a house like this — and a little estate like this — but not too big...”

“Of course, ma’am,” Miss Jenkins said, “you’re talking about Lady Savylle. Well, I don’t see any difficulty about that, ma’am.”

Mrs. Foster had come altogether too near it already to start now. And she just said:

“You mean that Lady — Lady Savylle would marry him?”

“I’m perfectly certain she will, ma’am,” Miss Jenkins said, “the moment he asks her.”

“But he loves her,” Mrs. Foster said. “He loves her most devotedly.”

“I believe he does, ma’am,” Miss Jenkins answered.

It was at that moment that Mr. Foster saw something confident and manlike to say, and he remarked:

“If Edward doesn’t propose to Lady Savylle to-morrow, I will cut him straight out of my will.” And it was really his turn to be surprised when Miss Jenkins remarked:

“I should not, if I were you, be too astonished if he did it to-night.”

“But surely,” Mr. Foster said, “it’s too late. You don’t expect him to get on a horse and go galloping... I mean, I shouldn’t like it myself. His eyes have got to be considered.”

Miss Jenkins remarked: “Then if all that has got to be considered, and if you really think it is getting near the statutory hour for barring proposals of marriage, don’t you think it would make it come a little earlier if you went into the next room and I closed the panel — you and Mrs. Foster — for the major is waiting outside with a portmanteau on his back, and the sooner I have a word with him the sooner all this will be settled to everybody’s satisfaction.”

The grim men and the vacant women marched across the old couple as they went into the pink room, and Miss Jenkins, closed in and up against it, stood with her hand still upon the knob. She was undoubtedly panting slightly, and she looked at the little secret door of escape that was only half hidden by the shadowy arras. The electric light had never got itself repaired, so that she and the room and the great picture and the great bed were only shadowily lit by the pair of long wax candles on the dressing-table. But she abandoned her impulse of flight and called boldly enough:

“Now you can come in, Major Edward.”

The major pushed the door open with the portmanteau that was upon his shoulder, but that was the last use that he made of it, for he pitched it straight on to the ground, and rushing forward with extended arms, he grasped Miss Jenkins and kissed her repeatedly upon every one of her features that his lips could be expected to reach.

“I’ve brought it off at last,” he gasped. “I’ve kissed somebody at last.”

Miss Jenkins with quite a firm grasp removed his hands from her shoulders.

“And don’t you think it is very wrong of you, sir?” she asked.

“I’m hanged if I do,” the major said. “I’m not engaged to Olympia now.”

“But you are in love with her Ladyship,” Miss Jenkins answered.

“I am in love with you, with you, with you,” the major said.

“But you have got to marry Lady Savylle,” Miss Jenkins asserted. “Your uncle says he will cut you out of his will if you don’t propose to her to-morrow.”

“I am proposing to you to-night,” Major Foster said. “Will you marry me?”

“But you have got to marry money or a title, sir,” she informed him. “One or the other.”

“I don’t care,” he answered. “You’ve got to marry me.”

“A poor servant, sir?” Miss Jenkins said. “You’ll be cut out of your uncle’s will.”

“I don’t care,” he exclaimed. “I’ll work.”

“You couldn’t, sir,” she said. “You’ll have to leave the army altogether if you marry a servant. You’ll have to live on my wages.”

“Oh, they’ll do for two,” the major answered. “I’ll come as butler.”

Miss Jenkins was searching on his dressing-table. “You haven’t got a piece of paper?” she asked.

He produced from his kit-bag a complete sheet of note-paper. “What do you want paper for?” he asked.

“To write upon, sir,” she answered.

“Well, you can have half the sheet,” he said, and he tore it in half. “You want to make me sign a promise to marry you; then I shall make you sign a promise to marry me. You’re a wicked, cunning, intricate and slippery eel, and you are not going to get out of it.” He lent her a fountain-pen from his travelling desk, and she wrote a very short message that could not have been more than three words by the scratching of the pen. She folded the sheet of paper carefully, and then regarded him with a sort of humorous intentness.

“You’re determined to marry me, sir?” she said. “It does seem a pity when we had it all so nicely arranged, your uncle, your aunt and I. You were to marry someone with a title and a little house like this, and a little estate like this.”

“I am going — to marry — you,” the major said.

She held the paper towards him. “Then you had better read this when I am gone,” she said.

“Here, you wait a minute,” he commanded cheerfully. “I can do a little bit of writing, too; give me my pen.”

He scribbled four words upon his piece of paper, folded it and held it out towards her. “Turn about’s fair trading,” he said. “You give me your paper, and you can have mine; but you’re to read yours here and I will read mine.”

She looked at him with an odd smile, and he said:

“Well, this is what we call the game of consequences. You’ve just got to bear them. Open your paper.”

“No, open yours first,” she said.

He remarked, “Oh, well...” And then he read. “Oh, is that all?” he exclaimed nonchalantly.

“All?” she ejaculated.

“Well,” he said; “if you look at your paper you will see that there is only one word in each of them that differs. You’ve written, ‘I’m Nancy Savylle,’ and I’ve written, ‘You’re Nancy Savylle.’ It seems a silly thing to have done, but it’s what you wanted, and I suppose it’s my job in life to give you what you want.”

“Then you knew all the time?” she said.

“All the blessed, blessed time,” he answered. “Don’t you suppose that though the eyes in my head are damaged they didn’t know you from the start, though you puzzled me? And don’t you suppose it has been a blessed, blessed time just being in the same house with you, and just having you fluttering round, and just knowing and just loving and just wondering — just wondering what you were going to do? And wasn’t it just the blessing of God only to sit in this room and to know it was full of you where you had been walking round and round so that the trace of your footsteps interlaced, and every bit of the air in which must have touched you and kissed you? And don’t you suppose...”

“Oh, you Irish villain!” she exclaimed.

“Oh, you wicked, designing witch!” he answered. “How did you dare to do it?”

“Do you suppose,” she mimicked him, “that I could bear you to be in England a minute and me knowing it and not being with you every second of the time? And don’t you suppose I have passed every minute of the time that I could spare from these botherations just being in this room when you were not in it, and just looking at the cold ashes of the wood and just thinking how they had glowed when you looked upon them? And haven’t you been the sun in the air to me, and the sky that carries it all, and the green of the grass, and the love that is in all the world? And don’t you suppose that when I have laughed at you I have trembled too, because I knew it was you that was the master of me? And don’t you suppose...” And she put her hands upon his shoulders and drew him close against her. “Don’t you suppose...”

“What a...” he was beginning, when again she interrupted him with:

“Now, my wild Irishman, don’t you be saying that I am anything, and I won’t be giving you any title. But just let’s remember that it’s not you, and it’s not me, but it’s just us from now on to the end of the time, and just say what’s fit for both our mouths... and that’s what a pair of us we are!”

“What a pair of us we are!” he repeated enthusiastically. And just at that moment there was not any panel there at all, and Mrs. Foster was remarking:

“Teddy, there’s a knob on this side of the panel as well as on that; we’ve just found it.” She surveyed contentedly the couple who were disengaging themselves from each other’s arms, and she remarked: “Ah!”

“So that,” Miss Jenkins said, “you really expected this all the time.”

“I certainly really suspected something of the sort from the very beginning,” Mrs. Foster said. “From the first moment that I set eyes on — on her Ladyship’s Own Maid.”

“Oh, you wicked old person!” Miss Jenkins said.

“My dear,” Mrs. Foster replied, “the first thing I learned in my life from Edward’s father, the admiral, was that it’s best to let young people alone. For he nearly bit my head off when I tried to give Edward’s mother good advice during their courting. And a very rash and sudden thing it was, for it only lasted three days from the time when he came into the shop to order twenty pounds of wax candles for the captain’s cabin, because things were different in those days. And I think you will acknowledge that I have let you alone... I think you will acknowledge that I have done my best for my dear Edward. And if a woman really sets herself to do her best, there’s not anything in this silly world that is going to prevent her doing it.”

“But hang it all!” Mr. Foster said, attempting to assert for the last time his masculine dignity; “do you suppose I didn’t suspect something, too?”

THE END

Ford’s longest novel,
The New Humpty-Dumpty
was first published in 1912 under the pseudonym Daniel Chaucer. It is an unusual blend of fictional writing and imaginative journal, rich in emotional depth, whilst concerning situations that reflect Ford’s own life.
  
It tells the story of Count MacDonald and his unhappy marriage, causing critics to liken the fictional relationship to the author’s own marriage.
 
The Countess is portrayed as a vindictive tormenter of the Count, even planning to throw vitriol in her husband’s face at one point of the narrative.
 
The vehemence she reveals when rejecting his requests for divorce clearly highlight Ford’s own frustration with his wife Elsie’s denying him the opportunity to marry his lover Violet Hunt.

Hunt was an author and literary hostess, also romantically involved at various times with Oscar Wilde, H. G. Wells and Somerset Maugham.
 
Though Hunt never married, she lived with Ford, whilst he was still married, from 1910 to 1918 at her home South Lodge, where she established her literary salon.
 
Interestingly, she was later fictionalised by Ford as the scheming Florence Dowell in
The Good Soldier
and as the dominating Sylvia Tietjens in
Parade’s End
.