Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (513 page)

“But, I say,” Miss Macphail said, “the cost will be enormous.”

“It must be enormous,” Mr. Blood answered. “This is bribery on a wholesale scale.” He paused for a moment. “Have you got a good memory?” he said. “Yes, I seem to remember that you have. Then there’s another thing that you’ve got to do.” She was to find out the name of the last book, and the last picture, and the last art wash-basin, of as many people as she possibly could, who were to come to the blessed entertainment. She was to be able to give Mr. Fleight a pointer when she introduced him to them. As often as not he’d know more about them than she, because he had some real feeling for art. Mr. Blood would send along a fairly large contingent of countesses, and that sort of thing. But she had better leave them to him and Wilhelmina. She was not so likely to shock them. Why Mr. Blood dragged in Wilhelmina was this. Augusta was to make the house she took in Kensington a sort of centre for the sort of crowd that would come to the entertainment. He wanted her to get them, as far as possible, to pay their dinner calls at her house afterwards. He wanted her to keep them together. “You’ll probably,” he concluded, “do all right with the one sort, but Wilhelmina is the one of you who has the best chance of getting really good people to come and see her in her studio.”

“Of course, Wilhelmina’s a perfect dear,” Augusta said. “I don’t suppose any of your countesses will be able to resist her.”

“I don’t know so much about that,” Mr. Blood said. “I can’t resist her myself, but all women aren’t like me, and we must see how the cat jumps.”

They were under the shadow of Westminster Cathedral tower, and Mr. Blood began to close the interview.

“Of course, there’ll be plenty more for you to do,” he said, “but that will be enough for you to keep in your head for one day.”

“It still sounds like a silly fairy tale,” Augusta meditated, “except for the way you say it. The way you say it makes it seem a nasty dirty business. I don’t really like your cynicism.”

“It is a nasty dirty business,” Mr. Blood said. “It’s the dirty comedy of life being unrolled before your eyes. It’s the thing that modem life has become the disgusting thing that it has become. I’m trying to crush it all up into a short period so as to make the affair all the more an object lesson — or, rather, all the more of a joke, because I don’t care whether anybody learns anything from it or not. I’m not a social reformer.” Augusta would see all these people struggling and cadging and grabbing at the money that they would be throwing about.

“Climbers?” Mr. Blood began again suddenly, “Why you and our friend, Fleight, shall climb in three months to a position that, normally, it takes ten years to attain to. And doesn’t it make you think that the whole thing is a disgusting affair, that life is more foul than it ever conceivably was, and that God has gone to sleep? If He hadn’t He’d wash the whole unclean lot of us with one tidal wave into the Atlantic.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” Augusta said. “I don’t see how I could be expected to.”

The motor drew up before the whitewashed archway that was the entrance into the Mews.

Mr. Blood walked straight through the Leroys’ shop and into the back. He was anxious to discover what sort of people they were. He was followed closely by Miss Macphail and, when he came upon the apparently lifeless body of Gilda Leroy, it struck him as an odd circumstance. But he got the story very quickly pieced together.

CHAPTER V
I

A
ND that night they were all dining at Corbury together — Mr. Fleight, Mr. Blood, Mr. Reginald Blood, Drupe the agent, Miss Macphail, Miss Wilhelmina Macphail, Mr. Blood’s cousin, Mrs. Dumerque and the parson’s wife, who had been persuaded, on short notice, to make up an even number. Later, Mr. Mitchell, Mr. Raggett and Mr. Macpherson were coming down to spend the night, for they had determined the next morning to recommence an even more energetic canvas of the constituency of Byefleet. Mr. Blood had made Miss Macphail bring all these people together by the use of the telephone, and of Mr. Fleight’s four motor cars and Mr. Blood’s two. And, since Miss Macphail had done this very efficiently — explaining, for instance, quite clearly to Mrs. Dumerque, why her cousin desired her presence that very evening, and that Mr. Fleight’s car would be at her door at six o’clock — Mr. Blood was quite pleased with Miss Macphail. He recited, indeed, her praises to Mr. Fleight, and that gentleman thanked her with a grave deference. It was the first time that Mr. Fleight had spoken directly to Augusta, and he said he felt assured that they would be able to work smoothly together, and between them make a very efficient job of things, because Mr. Blood had told him to regard her as his private secretary for certain purposes. She thought him a horrid little man.

They led thus for some days a hurried and strenuous existence. They canvassed, uttering frenzied sheaves of promises and — a thing that had never been known in an election in that district before — they carried note-books in which they wrote down what those promises were. For the intention was that every promise should be kept. That was the great advantage of Mr. Fleight’s wealth. They took, as a band, their general instructions from Mr. Blood. They weren’t to dwell in any way upon the political question. They were just to say when politics were mentioned: “Oh, you can’t expect us to talk about these things. Mr. Rothweil tells you all about that in his speeches. What he wants to know is, what is needed in the country districts. So that, if you’ll let us know what are your views, or what are your grievances, we’ll undertake to lay them before Mr. Rothweil, and it’s ten chances to one that they will be remedied.”

Then from every cottager grievances would come like a flood. Mr. Fleight found himself pledged upon the very first day of the new campaign to the erection of pumps, to the digging of wells, to the founding of at least one almshouse, to the straightening of a nasty corner of road where the motors came round too sharply; to the endowment of a free dispensary, to the creation and endowment of three football clubs and one quoits club, and to the fighting of a right-of-way case. Of actual bribery — the direct purchase of votes — there was practically none committed by these amateur canvassers. In the last twenty-five years Byefleet had been twice disfranchised for indulging in the political misdemeanour, and it had to be gone about very carefully by selected agents of Mr. Drupe’s in the public houses.

It was Augusta who was the most dangerous in this particular. Not being very English she could not be made to see the necessity for indirectness in political corruption. She just simply couldn’t see it. As she said at dinner on the second day, if Mr. Fleight was going to spend forty thousand pounds on bribery — for what was setting up a free dispensary and the quoits club but just simply buying votes in a stupid way, so that you couldn’t be certain of getting them? — she couldn’t for the life of her see why it wouldn’t be cheaper and more useful and much more certain to pay forty shillings a head per vote. They all tried to make her see it; even Wilhelmina could see it, but it just simply wouldn’t penetrate to Augusta’s intelligence.

On the third evening she really seriously perturbed them. They were all, as is natural in these cases, giving their experiences of voters’ humour. And when it came to Augusta’s turn, her prime jest came out something like this.

There was a thatched cottage in Dumbwoman’s Lane which led up to Polecat Hill. And in this cottage there dwelt a very old hedger. When Augusta had entered and had explained that her mission was political, the very old man had said:

“Ah, about that vote! It do fair terrify me, lying awake at nights to think which I be to vote for”—”terrify” being the Kentish for “worry to death.” And even when Augusta with great volubility had explained why he certainly must vote for Mr. Fleight, at the end of a quarter of an hour he had just shaken his very old head and repeated: “It do fair terrify me.” He really had not understood a word that Augusta had said, and after a moment’s pause he added, “because ‘tis like this here. This here opposition candidate has been here and he never give me nothing. And that there Government candidate hasn’t never been here.

But what I says is, if he had have been here he might have given me something, so I think I shall vote for he.” This anecdote caused considerable laughter at the dinner table. But it changed to panic, when Augusta said:

“I just couldn’t stand such nonsense, so I pulled out my purse and gave him a couple of pounds.”

Mr. Blood at the top of the table said:

“Good Heavens, Augusta!”

“I know,” Augusta commented firmly, “that, being a woman, I’m not fit to have a vote. But if I’m not as fit to have a vote as that old fool, and if the whole of the way you men go about your elections isn’t just rotten—”

Mr. Blood said, “Augusta,” in an imperative tone. Then he stood up. “Now just tell me,” he said, “was there anything in that cottage that you could want to buy — a grandfather’s clock or an old chair?”

“There wasn’t anything,” Augusta said. “It was a dirty cottage built of mud.”

“Wasn’t there even a cat?” Mr. Blood said.

“Yes, there was a nasty, dirty cat,” Augusta answered. “The old woman was nursing it all the time I was there, and it made me feel sick. I hate cats.”

“Oh, no, you don’t, Augusta,” Mr. Blood said, “you positively love cats. You’re a great connoisseur of cats. And you recognised that the cat the old woman was nursing was a Pomeranian of an unknown breed.”

“I didn’t,” Augusta said. “It was a nasty, dirty cat.”

“Oh, yes you did,” Mr. Blood said. “You were so enthusiastic about that cat that you paid for it. Thirty shillings down and three shillings and sixpence a week for its keep until you are able to make a home for it.”

And he took Augusta straight away from the table to the cottage in Dumbwoman’s Lane, where he found it comparatively difficult to explain the nature of the transaction to the very deaf old woman, who maintained that the cat was the only joy of her heart. It was however achieved in time. And when they got back to Corbury, they found that Augusta’s mother had arrived. Augusta had been made to telegraph to her and to send her the money for her passage two days before. She was a fierce-looking old lady, with a very virile nose and very white hair, so that, since she had very little English and could not be made to understand why she had been suddenly summoned to these distant and barbarous climes — she presented much the appearance of, and sounded very much like, an enraged cockatoo.

She was, however, dressed in very excellent black silk, and she really solved the difficulty for Mr. Blood. Augusta was too dangerous to be used as a canvasser, and, at the same time, she had been almost too decorative to be used unchaperoned, on the decorative side of the campaign. Mr. Blood had a theory that the British voter loves a candidate who goes about with a fiancée in his motor car. But it was imperative that that fiancée should have a mother, or at least an aunt, somewhere in the neighbourhood. Thus Frau Macphail was almost a godsend. For the rest of the time she drove out every day and all day long, sitting beside Augusta, on the back seat of Mr. Fleight’s immense car. In front of her would sit Mr. Fleight and Mr. Drupe, the agent. And, since nothing would make Frau Macphail understand in the least what they were doing, she got it finally into her head that Mr. Fleight, whom she knew to be a soap merchant, was travelling in his own soap. Thus, every time that he came out of a cottage she would lean forward and touch Mr. Fleight on the knee, exclaiming:

“Good sales? Gutes Geschaeft? Wie? Was?” She also vaguely imagined that Augusta intended her to marry Mr. Drupe. And, in that way, they travelled in harmony over many miles of country. At every cottage that they came to they would stop for five minutes, and at every schoolroom or meeting-house in a village, Mr. Fleight would go in and address the meeting. On one occasion, when his voice had completely broken down, towards tea-time, and when he had exhausted his stock of lozenges, Augusta herself tried her hand at speaking. She was perfectly calm and composed, and her voice was very loud. She told the audience of farm labourers that Mr. Rothweil’s opponent was a rodden fool; that the Government were a “rodden lot of Bipple,” and that if they didn’t vote for Mr. Fleight the country would go to ruin and the “togs.” At each of her remarks old Frau Macphail, who had climbed on to the platform, nodded her black bonnet, which resembled that of the late Queen Victoria, and exclaimed:

“Ja, Ja that ist so. I tell you that ist so.”

And Augusta’s speech was so exactly of the type desired by rural audiences, that Mr. Drupe, without delay, enlisted her as a permanent speaker. He couldn’t be loud enough in his praises of her to Mr. Fleight. He said she was just exactly what they wanted. Most people thought that the Government were a rotten lot, and that Mr. Freight’s opponent was a rotten fool. But most people hadn’t got the courage to say ‘so in such direct terms. Even Augusta’s German accent was not disagreeable to the country people. They all had accents of their own, and Augusta’s rather pleased them as a variation from Mr. Fleight’s pure London enunciation, which struck them as being superior and slightly painful to listen to. In Augusta, Mr. Drupe said, Mr. Rothweil had a very valuable and efficient ally. And Mr. Fleight agreed that she was a very notable young woman.

They were having, in fact, in Corbury, what Lennards, the butler, who was old-fashioned in his speech, called “a high old time.” It did him good to hear them at dinner, and made him think that the old house was being brought up-to-date. It was quite different from the sober, quiet and rather disagreeable gentlemen whom, as a rule, the master had down for the shooting in October. And there was less beer drunk — which pleased Lennards — than during the master’s cricket week in July.

They all lived in great harmony. Even Mrs. Dumerque, the banker’s wife, and Mr. Blood’s first cousin — a gentle, elegant and quiet woman of about forty, though with her hair quite grey — agreed to like the Macphail woman and find a positive respect for Mr. Fleight. She said he was such a gentleman, and this was really more than Mr. Blood could have expected. He knew his cousin spoke of most of his proceedings as “Arthur’s ways,” and tolerated them as oddities. So that it really gave him great pleasure when his cousin, almost the only person in the world for whom he had a real respect and a deep affection, seemed to like Fleight and his band for their own sakes, and not merely to tolerate them as being one of his whims. Mr. Blood recognised that there was never any knowing exactly what line the great lady would take, but he knew she could be very charming when it struck her as being appropriate, and he was pleased because he liked Wilhelmina, and wished her to have good fortune.

Mr. Reginald Blood had taken to canvassing very energetically for Mr. Fleight’s opponent. But even this did not disturb the general harmony, for Mr. Reginald was a very odd creature. Side by side with Mr. Blood’s detachment and a practical intellect for which Mr. Blood himself had the very greatest respect, his nature contained a very strong feeling — a feeling that was almost a passion — for the traditions of their race. He didn’t mind his brother’s girding at the ministry, just as a good Catholic will not object very much to another Catholic’s jeering at his Bishop’s administration of the diocesan fund, or his putting into operation the admonitions of the encyclical called
Pascendi Greges.
But, he had the greatest respect for his house’s Whig traditions. He had never, till then, wanted to do anything for Whiggism or the Liberal party. But it struck him as going too far when Mr. Blood afforded an Opposition candidate the hospitality of Corbury and active advice as to how to conduct the campaign, though even Mr. Blood did not carry the insolence so far as actually to support the Rothweil candidature by speeches or canvassing. His brother’s actions finally stung Mr. Reginald to such a pitch that he positively announced his fixed intention to canvass such of the Corbury tenantry as were within the division of Byefleet, in the interests of Mr. Fleight’s opponent. This put the tenants into a considerable quandary because, try as they would, they couldn’t get any instructions from Mr. Blood himself, whereas they knew that Mr. Rothweil was certainly a friend and a guest of Mr. Blood. They simply did not dare to do what Mr. Reginald wished, just as they simply did not dare to vote for Mr. Rothweil.

It looked, therefore, as if nearly one hundred and twenty voters would not take part in the election. And this disobedience on the part of the retainers of his house irritated Mr. Reginald so much that he positively spoke at one of the meetings of the Government candidate in the Byefleet Market Hall. A coarse man called from the back during one of his pauses, the words “washing basket!” Mr. Reginald, standing on high, quivered, and several people imagined that he must faint, but instead of that he grew positively violent. That, he said, was the sort of thing that his opponents had to bring against sound argument.