Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (580 page)

The boy said:

“What’s that you say? Speak up!”

I said — for that passage began to feel as if it were humming with disagreeable currents:

“For goodness’ sake hold your tongue. That young fellow could kill you. I’m going, I don’t want to see you killed!”

Mr. Podd clung to my coat sleeve. It was as if he collapsed in upon himself, like a straw dummy. I don’t know how he managed it. He was pretty stout.

I said to the boy:

“Couldn’t you cut some of this out?”

He answered me calmly:

“I am afraid I can’t. I promised my sister. She wants him to hear the figures she has unearthed. They are not all the figures, but they are enough. Listen! My sister has discovered that for one single piece of old German furniture that Mr. Podd declared to be worthless or merely amusing, Mr. Podd has received two hundred pounds from the United States senator, Pappenheim. She has in addition got estimates — she is very energetic! — from printers and binders for the production of exactly such a book as this English edition of
The Titanic
!”

“I lost ninety pounds on the book!” Mr. Podd exclaimed.
“
Do you think I can maintain offices, staffs, warehouses — and advertising — for nothing?”

“The highest estimate,” George addressed me, “ that my sister had for producing the book amounted to fifty-six pounds, and there were many lower. And Mr. Podd’s accounts are not even decently honest. He has had twelve hundred and twenty copies from his printer, and has accounted to the Professor for only one thousand. That is called a trade custom....”

At that Mr. Podd made an incomprehensible noise that threw the young fellow out of his stride. After that he interrupted George Heimann pretty continuously with threats of proceedings of which the boy took no notice, merely waiting politely for Mr. Podd to finish a sentence or an objurgation and then proceeding, addressing himself mostly to me.

“I am informed, at least, that there is a trade custom to the effect that a publisher may receive odd numbers of copies of a book from a printer as against so much paper, and then account to an author only for round thousands. Honest publishers do not avail themselves of it, it being considered not criminal but just tricky. My friends consider it particularly shabby to take advantage of it as against a foreigner, who cannot be expected to know of such a custom. A shabby trick!”

Mr. Podd shouted out a filthy word. His condition began to appear to me rather dreadful.

I may as well say here that, at the subsequent trial, that boy’s accusations were fully proved. Mr. Podd must have made in all over four hundred pounds out of the old furniture; he had printed the book very meanly, and he had availed himself rather to excess of that trade custom — if it were a trade custom. I suppose he might really have regarded all that as legitimate trade. Why he didn’t, I do not know with exactitude.

I was cross-examined rather severely at the trial as to the exact words that then passed. I have said that I am good at remembering conversations, but that cross-examination has rather blurred my memory of exact phrases. I was then an officer of His Majesty’s Army, and it was a painful occasion. Mr. Podd’s counsel kept on saying to me: “ Will you swear that prosecutor did not say this?” or, “On your oath, Lieutenant Jessop, did prisoner not then say so and so?” And the affair had by then assumed a very disagreeable aspect. The conversation — that caterwauling, for that was what it became! — took place on the 13th of July, 1914, and the trial not till May or June, 1915; and since the subject under discussion was the work of a German poet, protected by the German Emperor and defrauded by an English publisher, May or June, 1915, was not a very propitious date.

At any rate, the mental processes through which Mr. Podd appeared to go in that corridor of his do not remain very clearly in my mind. However, I do know definitely that Mr. Podd, who was something of a Don Juan, had looked with eyes of licentious favour on a Miss Jeaffreson, the intimate companion of that boy’s sister. That George Heimann naturally did not know.

At the beginning the boy had simply erected himself in the passage — all black with one hand raised above his head. The cape of his Inverness was draped down from his wrist and, blocking out the light, he appeared sinister, like Mephistopheles. It was quite proper for Mr. Podd to be frightened.

In obtaining the warrant against the boy, an hour later, he certainly perjured himself. He had to allege that he had felt a burning desire to fly at the boy’s throat — the action being for criminal, not civil, libel. But, though I do not mean to say that Mr. Podd ought not to have felt a burning desire to assault Heimann, I confidently assert that he didn’t: his heels came too heavily on my toes as he tried to push back. The boy retained one finger on the publisher’s blue grey waistcoat and poured out very distinctly in his resonant voice what remained of his sister’s indictment.

Mr. Podd had been merely disdainfully abusive for as long as the boy had talked about the shabby get-up of
The Titanic
:
an Epic,
and the old furniture deals. But I knew, as soon as George brought in that “trade custom” that something was going to happen. Something electric took place in Mr. Podd. Perhaps he had really comforted himself with alleging that he had made a loss of ninety pounds on the book. If he reckoned without what he got for Miss Heimann’s old furniture, he may really have lost something.

But this was different, and almost as soon as George Heimann began upon it, Mr. Podd exclaimed to me in a sort of husky cry:

“You hear this fellow accuse me of stealing, Jessop!

.... By God, I shall now send for a policeman.” He began to shout:

“Absalom! Oneday! Byles! Miss Ketch!”

He fell dead silent: perhaps he was choking!

George Heimann finished his sentence and looked at me. “You see!” he said. “It’s a pretty strong indictment.” He smiled rather wanly: I daresay he was tired. He must have been speaking for twenty minutes against interruptions. I said:

“Well, that’s enough. I’d go away now!”

He answered:

“Am I not bound to see if Mr. Podd has any explanations to offer my sister?”

He stood still for a moment in the silence, looking very handsome and drooping.

“A fellow,” he said, “is bound to be given a chance of uttering his explanations.”

He went on waiting for Mr. Podd to give some answer. And that silence was like the interval in a church, at the end of a service, when the parson has said: “The peace of God that passeth all understanding....” I felt certain that in a moment his feet would be making a little sound on the board floor and that we should be going out. The face of Mr. Podd had gone powder-purple. I suppose the blood had died away from beneath his affliction. The stillness went on.

Suddenly Mr. Podd shouted:

“You bl — y bastard!”

I think those words detonated more than any sound I have ever heard. It may have been because the passage was narrow and enclosed; but that effect of outcry and panic was no doubt also mental. It was the obvious culmination to all the hints that Mr. Podd had been muttering between his teeth — to the effect that Heimann was a man without origins, without a name, with a bad past. I had been frightened during the whole of that interview. You know I had been afraid that Mr. Podd was going to get killed. For I hadn’t the least doubt, by then, that that boy was someone’s illegitimate son. I made a half movement to get between them. But the boy had moved backwards a step — and Mr. Podd advanced slightly.

The young man said:

“That’s weak, Mr. Podd, as an exculpation. Street boys say that!” His voice was still gay, but it had in it an assured note of pain. One day, afterwards, I heard a man, half of whose chest had just been blown away, say: “‘Ere’s another bloomin’ casualty! — and the effect was much the same.

Mr. Podd cleared his husky throat. I knew that he was banking on the conviction that that boy would never strike him.

“But I mean it,” his voice came, tremulous, but gaining control of his vocal muscles. “You and your sister are a pair of bastards. With an escaped criminal for a father. Your mother was no better than she should be. I have heard your record!”

George Heimann caught that man by the throat; but quite gently, both hands encircling the miserable fellow’s collar. It may sound feminine — but I could have screamed. I was more afraid than I can tell you. I could see long white fingers on the back of that man’s neck, and I imagined Mr. Podd’s obscene blue eyes being pushed by strangulation out of their sockets.

The boy’s white hands dropped gently to his sides. In an ecstasy of recovered confidence Mr. Podd began to howl out to his oddly named and invisible myrmidons. His voice had such a variety of notes and the space was so confined that it gave the effect of half a dozen men all caterwauling together —

The world, I think, was mad then. I don’t know if you remember the season of
1914, in
London and the world over. It comes back to me as a period of outcries, smashings, the noises of broken glass falling to the ground and physical violences. An accursed year! The whole tone of personal contacts was strained, tense — mad! I don’t believe George Heimann would have been, even vicariously, a champion of his womenfolk in that particular scene in any other year. I don’t even believe that Mr. Podd would. But for the mad contagion of that time he must have seen that he could not walk roughshod over even the dictates of elementary prudence without coming to very disagreeable grief. For he hadn’t even taken the infinitesimal trouble of blaming the faults of that wretched book on his wretched printer and binder!

The point that I want to make, however, is that the young man’s heart had been so little in the row even after that accusation of bastardy, that his catching Mr. Podd by the throat had been no more than a reflex action. I don’t know if you know what I mean by a reflex action, and I don’t know if I can explain it shortly enough — but these are actions to which we are all more or less subject. Suppose you shudder at the sound of a slate pencil that squeaks on a slate: well, your physical shuddering is a reflex action. Or, still more, suppose that going along a street and seeing a man with a bulbous nose, you should feel a sudden unreasonable desire to tweak that conspicuous organ. If you did tweak it, I should call that a reflex action. You would probably control the impulse.

But the effect of the sudden accusation of bastardy on George Heimann was such that he could not control his arms and hands until they were actually on that fellow’s throat. It was as if the slate pencil had squeaked and he had shuddered. I did not need to have him tell me that to know it: it was in the queer jerky motions of his hands that had been so swift.

Mr. Podd was continuing his extraordinary row, going on howling out those rather singular names — and, later; there were probably answering shouts from assistants who were in no great hurry to come to him. I, too, was calling to the boy:

“You’d better clear out! For God’s sake get out of this!”

I had to do something to relieve my mind; for I was feeling rather sick. The look of pain on that boy’s face had been too much for me.

At last doors began to burst open, though no one came visibly in entirety into the passage except some woman who, I daresay, did not expect to be assaulted. Lilliput, Oneday, Absalom, and little boys in aprons just showed themselves. As if they had been used to these scenes, all these assistants of Mr. Podd leaned their bodies half out of the doorways without coming further. The lady, whom I took to be Miss Ketch, had a note book and held a pencil to her teeth. George Heimann held his ground, but he had said nothing more.

Mr. Podd was certainly something of a psychologist. He had calculated correctly that George Heimann would do him no physical violence of any serious nature. Now he must have guessed that I did not love him enough to make a good legal witness against the boy. He was of course out of breath, but, distinctly, in spite of his husky throat, and with a sneering intonation, he invited George Heimann to repeat his accusations. I cried out sharply:

“Whatever you do, don’t do anything of the sort!” But the boy waved one hand towards me.

“Of course one must be prepared to stick to his words,” he said. And then, addressing Mr. Podd, he repeated with extreme formality the substance of his accusations. He said that Mr. Podd had contracted with his sister, Miss Mary Elizabeth Heimann, to produce an especially luxurious edition of
The Titanic: an Epic.
In consideration of that Miss Heimann had given to Mr. Podd six pieces of old furniture. Mr. Podd had sold one alone of these pieces to a Senator Pappenheim for a thousand dollars, in spite of the fact that, being himself an expert, he had assured that inexperienced girl that her furniture was without value. And, in spite of his contract to produce a luxurious edition, Mr. Podd could not have spent more than £65, all told, on the production of that translation. He went on to talk of the secret trade custom by means of which his sister alleged that Mr. Podd had robbed Professor Curtius of a pound or two, Professor Curtius being a defenceless foreigner.....He repeated all this rather monotonously and without spirit; his tones had no resonance, as if he were voluntarily not availing himself of a training in voice production, but his words were absolutely distinct. He omitted, too, all his former epithets and denunciations. I was glad, for it allowed me to gather with much more clearness what it was of which Mr. Podd was being accused. I was glad, too, because it made me respect that boy much more. It was at least a feat of self-control.