Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (510 page)

“Look here,” he exclaimed, “you’ve no right to come here drunk! If you don’t go away I shall call the police.”

“I’m not drunk,” Mr. Fleight muttered. “You give me 12077 Victoria.”

“I shall do nothing of the sort,” the clerk said sulkily. “Out you go!”

Mr. Fleight looked passionately round over his shoulder, and the effect upon the clerk was appalling, since it showed what a terrible state his face must be in. The clerk jumped fully three feet backwards and exclaimed:

“Look here, if you’re suffering from a mortal disease you’ve no right to use the telephone box! It’s forbidden by the Act.”

“You damned ass!” Mr. Fleight said with a bitter fury; “what do you think I’ve got? Cancer? Leprosy? This is the efficiency of the confounded British Public Service! In any Christian country you’d expect they’d try to help a man who’d been smashed up in an accident to get on to his doctor, instead of letting any jackanapes put all the possible hindrances he could think of in a man’s way. I might be bleeding to death internally whilst you’re playing the fool here.”

“Oh, come now!” the clerk said in an aggrieved and shocked voice, “why didn’t you say what was the matter at the start? I’ll do all I can to help you. Perhaps you’d like a glass of water.”

“I don’t want anything,” Mr Fleight said, “but for you to give me the number I want, and to get this letter through to Mr. Wetherell, the dentist, as quickly as you possibly can by express. It’s no good your telling me that it would be quicker to telephone to him because it wouldn’t. He’s at his private house, where he isn’t on the telephone.”

“He shall have it in twenty minutes, Mr. Toms,” the clerk said.

“Mr. who?” Mr. Fleight asked.

“Do you suppose,” the clerk answered, “that I don’t know you for Cannoneer Toms, the champion bantam weight of the world, just come from fighting Charlie Thompson of Chicago? Why, you’re the best known man in the United Kingdom to anyone that’s any feeling for sport at all. You think I’m only a Post Office clerk, but I’ve got a soul above my station like the rest of the world.”

Mr. Fleight had an odd sensation, as if he were going that night into a rest cure or into prison for a fortnight. He was afraid of anybody’s seeing his face. But this Post Office clerk having seen it, the plunge seemed to be over as far as the clerk was concerned, and Mr. Fleight remarked:

“I haven’t the least objection to listening to your disquisition upon yourself if you’ll get that letter sent off first, and put me on to the number that I’ve asked you to give me three times.”

“I’ll get the letter to its destination in under a quarter of an hour,” the clerk said zealously. He disappeared, and immediately afterwards, from the ear piece of the telephone, Mr. Fleight heard the vague metallic noises indicating that he was being put into communication with the garage where his car was waiting. The garage informed him that his chauffeur was getting a bit of supper.

“Well, tell him to come to me,” Mr. Fleight said. “I’ll hold the line till he does.”

The garage appeared slightly to demur at this proposal. It seemed to them almost a sacrilege, and certainly an impertinence, tor interrupt a chauffeur at his meal. And Mr. Fleight’s chauffeur was very eminent in his profession. Mr. Fleight never quite rightly understood why his chauffeur was so eminent. But probably it was only because, being Mr. Fleight’s chauffeur, he had such enormous sums at his disposal for tyres, petrol and sundries, that there was no member of the trade that was not ready to bow into the dust before him, and no other chauffeur who was not ready, enviously, to treat him as a prince. The voice from the garage remarked anxiously:

“Oh, but he’s at his
supper.
Supper, you know.”

“But, hang it all!” Mr. Fleight exclaimed, “I’m his employer.”

The voice did not seem to be in any particular way impressed. It remarked with a sort of reluctance:

“Oh, of course, if you’re his employer...”

It ceased, apparently in order to consult someone, and then announced:

“If you really think it’s necessary we’ll send a boy to his restaurant.”

“It’s absolutely quite necessary,” Mr. Fleight remarked, with a cynicism that, probably, did not travel along the wires. “I know, of course, that he won’t like to be disturbed, but I’ll apologise properly when he does come.”

“Then I suppose,” the voice said, still rather reluctantly, “it will be all right. Hold the line.”

With the ear piece to his ear, Mr. Fleight turned once more to face the Post Office clerk, who at once burst into a flood of talk.

Of course, when Mr. Fleight first came into the office he had thought he and his trainer were two ordinary “drunks.” But now he knew who they were he was ready — as long as it was becoming — to do anything to oblige him. And let him tell Mr. Toms that if he were the Prime Minister himself, and he came into there — as he did quite frequently when he was going to take a train from Charing Cross — he wouldn’t put himself out one jot to do more than was demanded of his official position. Not one jot. “But when it’s a question of
you
...” the clerk concluded.

“Well, I’m sure it’s extremely obliging of you?” Mr. Fleight said.

“Not a bit,” the clerk answered. It was just an act of acknowledgment of genuine merit.

“Now, where did you get all these opinions?” Mr. Fleight asked.

“Where do I get them?” the clerk exclaimed, as if any fool ought to have known. “Why, out of the newspapers, out of John Richard Green’s f Short History of England’; out of Maine’s ‘Spirit of Constitutional Law.’” And let him ask Mr. Toms what did he suppose it was the business of all the education they had to have to pass their examinations for the Post Office, if it wasn’t for them to hold views and opinions, and know how to express them. And what was the object of it all? Look at Mr. Toms. If Mr. Toms would excuse his saying so — a few decades ago he would have been an ignoble, degraded, vicious creature. A common prize-fighter without an h. to his head...

Mr. Fleight was distracted by a voice exclaiming “Hullo!” on the telephone. But that came to nothing, and he asked desultorily of the clerk: “Then what do you propose as a remedy?” In a dim way he was interested in the clerk as he was interested in the people at the garage. He had never had quite such a conversation and, faintly, he had the feeling, that grew much more strong afterwards, that he was speaking, not to one or two, but to millions — that, in fact, he was interviewing triumphant Democracy.

“Remedy?” the clerk exclaimed. “I don’t know that I want a remedy: it’s what I want to see: it’s civilisation. It’s the high degree of efficiency we’ve arrived at.” And all around us there was life and movement going on. That was what Parliament ought to recognise. There was change. Our intellects were working all the time. We weren’t static. Every day we perceive new aspects. Why, look at the Reverend Pennyfather Blowater, the democratic vicar. What would have been his attitude towards prize-fighting ten years ago? The Clerk didn’t mind telling Mr. Toms he was talking to him about it the other day and Mr. Blowater said to him, “Jumnor, what is the whole country interested in? What takes the mind of everybody — all the world over? What has fascinated the attention of Maeterlinck, the great poet? Or supposing that you wanted to start a paper that you wanted to make money by, what would it have to be about? Boxing!”

“Now,” said the Reverend Blowater, “it’s no good shutting our eyes to things that are a great public manifestation. This is one of the aspirations of the democracy, and the aspirations of the democracy are always right. The trouble of the age is that it’s too much of a machine age; it’s too grey, too unromantic. Now what do we see in a professional prize-fighter? Heroism, romance, the democracy asserting itself. What is needed for the career of such a man? Sobriety, temperance, determination, physical fitness, dash — all democratic virtues. Consider the career of such a man.”

“Consider your own career,” the clerk dropped his quotation of the Reverend Blowater and addressed Mr. Fleight. “Consider your own career. At eighteen, you beat Pony Matheson in Islington; next year you knocked out Bob Chapman in three rounds at Aberystwith; then you beat Cob Bradshaw in Melbourne; then you laid out G. L. Levin at Chicago, and now you’ve finished it all by polishing off Tony Morris in the Agricultural Hall this evening. And what I should like to say to our representatives in Parliament is this....”

The post office clerk paused to draw a deep breath before commencing his peroration, but the voice of Chapman, the chauffeur, drew Mr. Fleight’s attention to the telephone, and, whilst Mr. Fleight was telling the chauffeur to fetch some clothes in a bag and leave them at Victoria cloak-room so that Mr. Fleight could send for them in the morning, he was vaguely aware that a superior was upbraiding Mr. Jumnor, the clerk, for wasting time that should have been spent in filling up forms called “A.”

Thus the voice of triumphant Democracy died away, and, holding his handkerchief to his face, Mr. Fleight seized the opportunity of bolting into the taxi-cab. Mr. Leroy bundled sheepishly in after him when he had directed the cabman to take them back to Augusta Mews.

“Now, what was all that talk about?” Mr. Leroy asked.

“Oh,” Mr. Fleight answered, “that’s only a symptom of the times. That’s the young generation knocking at the door, that is.”

“More like falling out of the window,” Mr. Leroy said. “You’d have thought he’d had a bad shaking. Do you suppose there are many more like him?”

“Oh, we’re breeding them by the million,” Mr. Fleight answered. “I wonder whether that dentist will have arrived.”

CHAPTER I
V

WHEN the dentist did, however, arrive, towards a quarter to twelve, he announced that Mr. Fleight’s gums were still too swollen for him to do anything for them. Mr. Fleight had imagined that by the expenditure of a thousand pounds, or twenty thousand pounds, or anything, he could be provided with three new false teeth by breakfast time the next morning. But the dentist told him it just couldn’t be done. There would have to be all sorts of bridges to make, teeth to be filed down, at least a day’s work. And Mr. Wetherell had his other patients to consider. Humanity, he said, came before mere money. He promised, however, to come round next morning about half-past eight to make his measurements in case the swelling should have gone down. And, at the urgent entreaty of Mr. Fleight, he consented to get his dental manufacturers to send a complete set of appliances including an electrical storage battery to the Leroy’s house so that he could work on the spot. This was going to cost something like £197. Mr. Wetherell said it seemed like lunacy, but that after all Mr. Fleight’s money was his own. There was thus an end to romance for that day, and Mr. Fleight got to bed about half-past twelve in a sloping garret beneath the roof.

The way in which money works or does not work in a city like London is, as Mr. Fleight said next morning, amazing. There are times when — say at night — if you had a thousand pounds in your hand you could not possibly buy for yourself a lemon squash. But there are other times — such as on this Tuesday morning — when things turn up as smartly and as mysteriously as the extra twopences present themselves to your notice in a taxi-cab.

Thus, at about a quarter past eight, Mrs. Leroy was annoyed and perturbed by the arrival of an immense red plush armchair, with head rests and leg rests, and arm rests and other and singular complications. Mrs. Leroy tried to bar the entrance of the four men who were carrying this grotesque monstrosity, but, at the urgent instance of Mr. Fleight, it was carried straight through the house and to the back yard, for, as the day promised to be fine, Mr. Fleight expressed his perfect willingness to be operated upon in the open air. Having brought in the chair, the workmen retired, and returned with a quantity of metal objects, long tubes and large metal cases containing storage batteries. These they proceeded to set up beside the monstrous and grotesque red chair in the back yard, which was already amply occupied by packing cases, loose straw, and the washing, which was hanging out to dry. Mrs. Leroy took this down before the arrival of the dentist. The dentist himself came at a quarter to nine, just as Miss Leroy was leaving for business, though, in consideration of the importance of these proceedings, she was determined to ask the travelling inspector who would visit her stall in the course of the morning to let her have a substitute at least during the late afternoon.

The dentist himself went through these operations with an admirable gravity. The position was extraordinarily odd, but, having once begun it upon that basis, he just continued. He was the most eminent dentist of the day and thoroughly accustomed to the mad, the suspicious, or the merely imbecile proceedings of very wealthy people with too much time upon their hands. As for the inconvenience of the packing cases, and the generally undecorative nature of the landscape, he was prepared to take that out in his bill. And he grasped Mr. Fleight’s head in his hands and subjected him to the usual professional assaults, whilst the pleasant sound of the drill buzzing its way through diminishing teeth, and the sharp sparking from the accumulator, caused in the mind of Mrs. Leroy, who held a basin of water upon the doorstep, a simple amazement and a great deal of gratification. She always had wanted to know how these here American dentists did their work, and what it was they charged you for. The dentist went away after he had had the electric appliances put in the scullery. He announced that he would send a large tarpaulin with which to cover the chair itself.

Mrs. Leroy calmly hung out her washing again, so that for the rest of the day they had to walk between airless avenues of damp white clothes, and it was beneath these that Mr. Fleight engaged himself, after lunch, in opening the crates of lemons with a crowbar. And, no sooner had he prized off the first lid than, assured that she had now got out of him the small piece of work that wanted doing, Mrs. Leroy felt impelled to ask the amazing question as to what were his intentions.

“It’s a singular thing,” Mr. Fleight said,’ that you should ask me that question just now, because I have been questioning myself very seriously all this morning as to what my intentions really were.”

“Well, that’s a good thing, at any rate,” Mrs. Leroy commented.

“The point is, Mr. Fleight continued,” that it is my intention to be absolutely and entirely loyal to Mr. Blood. What Mr. Blood intends me to do I shall do, whatever happens.”

“Then it would be a comfort,” Mrs. Leroy exclaimed, “to know who Mr. Blood may be. It sounds as if he was a captain in the Salvation Army.”

“He’s certainly not that,” Mr. Fleight said. “But the point is that he
is
the director of my career. I mean that I’m quite as much in his hands as I should be if he were a Salvation Army captain and I were a criminal desirious of reforming.”

“Well, I do hope you aren’t,” Mrs. Leroy said; “I hope all your money has come to you by fair means.”

‘“Oh, that’s nothing to do with the case,” Mr. Fleight said; “if you’ll excuse my saying so, that’s just drawing a red herring across the trail. The real point is that, although Mr. Blood has hitherto talked a great deal about how to direct my political career, he hasn’t said anything about what my political ideals are to be. It’s perfectly true that I’m Opposition candidate, but I don’t in the least know whether in the long run I’m to be a Tory or a Socialist, or a Liberal Individualist for the matter of that. I may possibly be allowed to settle that for myself. And, if I am, the conversations that I had last night with the Post Office clerk, the people at the garage, and even your husband, and — if you can call it a conversation — with the hooligans who assaulted me — all these conversations and incidents have thrown so many side lights upon the state of civilisation, that it really has become extremely difficult for me to decide what my intentions are, or whether it’s even possible to have any intentions at all.”

“I don’t see what all these people,” Mrs. Leroy said, “have got to do with Gilda. I should have thought it was the sort of thing that you and she would have been able to decide between you.”

“Gilda?” Mr. Fleight exclaimed, with the aspect of a rather puzzled man. “Oh, you mean Miss Leroy. I daresay she’s seen a great deal of life....”

“How dare you say such a thing?” Mrs. Leroy exclaimed. “Gilda is as respectable — she’s kept herself as straight as — as your own mother.” She was silent for a moment, and then she began again. “Life indeed! If I thought you really knew what you were saying, for two pins I’d throw you out into the street, apron and all.”

“But really, you know,” Mr. Fleight answered, “I don’t in the least understand what you mean. What does life mean to you?”

“These here champagne suppers,’’ Mrs. Leroy said,” and the promenades at the music halls, and it ends on the streets. What can ‘seeing life’ mean but that? English is English, I suppose? And if you make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear that’s how it ends.”

“It’s a little difficult,” Mr. Fleight began timidly, “to make you understand what I do mean. What I’m trying to say is that Miss Leroy appears to me from the little I’ve seen of her to be a person of a great deal of common-sense, and it may well be that she is acquainted with the conditions of life among the poor, let us say.”

“The poor?” Mrs. Leroy exclaimed angrily. “Let me tell you, young man, that my daughter Gilda has no more mixed with people below her than you have. And not so much, if you come to consider your present situation. I don’t know what on earth you may be trying to talk about, but you certainly don’t mean to give offence.”

“I don’t really know, you know,” Mr. Fleight said, with an air of such gentle modesty as entirely to disarm the elderly woman, “what on earth you may be trying to talk about.”

“He might be a poor babe of three,” Mrs. Leroy remarked to a large sheet that hung at her side. They were indeed entirely boxed in by sheets in the square white cell, for Mrs. Leroy, whilst she was about it, did the washing for Mrs. Kerridge, who was very much occupied during the day. The opened packing case, upon whose lemons Mr. Fleight sat, occupied the very centre of the parallelogram. Mrs. Leroy had her back to the sheet which hung immediately in front of her own back door. “Now, I ask you,” she apostrophised Mr. Fleight, “if you don’t know that I’m referring to your goings-on with my daughter Gilda, what in the world do you know and ought you to be at large?” Mr. Fleight ejaculated:

“My goings-on with your daughter Gilda—”

“You’re walking out with her,” her incomprehensible reply came to him.

“But I’m not!” he exclaimed. “She isn’t here. I’m sitting on a packing-case.”

“Now do you, or do you not,” Mrs. Leroy said determinedly, “understand English?”

“I begin to think I don’t,” Mr. Fleight said almost hopelessly. “But it certainly seems to me that I can’t be walking out when I’m so obviously sitting here.”

“Then,” Mrs. Leroy said, “if you will force me to be indelicate — when I say ‘walking out,’ I mean do you intend to marry Gilda?”

“I marry Gilda!” Mr. Fleight exclaimed. “Good God, what an extraordinary thing to say!”

From some faint sound behind her back Mrs. Leroy had an idea....

“Gilda’s probably listening to what we’re saying,” she said, “so you may as well be careful, young man.”

“It doesn’t seem very proper,” Mr. Fleight said hopelessly, “that Miss Leroy should be listening. But I’ve no particular objection.”

“Do you mean,” Mrs. Leroy repeated, “to tell me that you don’t know that Gilda is right-down clean — well, if it must come out — gone on you, as they say in the books, though I never like using such language myself?”

“On me!” Mr. Fleight exclaimed. “Entertains an affection for me! But it’s the most amazing thing!

I’m not the sort of person for women to — At least, I never imagined—”

“Of course,” Mrs. Leroy said judicially, “it may not be you. It may be your motor cars and chauffeurs and things. You’re not particularly much to look at; but you never know the foolish ideas gals get into their heads, and I’m bound to say she was in a mighty state of excitement before ever she knew you had so much as a motor car.”

“But, God bless my soul!” Mr. Fleight said, “this is very embarrassing. In that case I ought not to stop here, and that would be most annoying. Of course, if it’s merely a matter of the motor cars, she could have which ever one she liked of the four any day and all day long.”

“A lot of good that would be to her,” Mrs. Leroy said.

“I suppose,” he answered rather disconsolately, “you mean that she wouldn’t be able to afford to keep it up? But of course I could get her a position — say, in a hat shop. Or I could give her a hat shop for the matter of that. I should think if she were properly dressed she’d look quite well enough to attract customers, wouldn’t she? But I don’t know much about that sort of thing.”

He passed his hand rather wearily across his forehead. He had been a good deal shaken by the assault of the night before; and, although he was certainly gratified at the idea of having aroused the affections of a young lady, the affair was certainly a nuisance. “I suppose that was really why those ruffians fell upon me last night?” he said. “I’d never looked at it in that way.”

“Bless my soul!” Mrs. Leroy said, in accents of real astonishment, “I don’t believe you even know what the gal looks like.”

“Oh, come!” Mr. Fleight answered; “I’m not so unobservant as all that. I mean, I should certainly recognise her if I met her anywhere where she could be expected to be. I mightn’t perhaps if it were in Paris or Athens or the Duchess of Devonshire’s ball, you know.”

Mrs. Leroy exclaimed; “Well, of all—” But she couldn’t finish the ejaculation. She was so astonished at the complete way in which Mr. Fleight’s manner proved that he hadn’t entertained any designs whatever against her daughter. “Then,” she continued, “if you didn’t come here after Gilda, what in the wide world did you come for?” Mr. Fleight looked at the ground in a state of the deepest dejection. He brought out at last the words:

“The comforts of home — that’s what I came for.” Mrs. Leroy said: