Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (86 page)

“I say … I say, you beggars….”

I was beginning to wonder how it was that I felt such an absolute conviction of being alone, and it was then, I believe, that in this solitude that had descended upon my soul I seemed to see the shape of an approaching Nemesis. It is permitted to no man to break with his past, with the past of his kind, and to throw away the treasure of his future. I began to suspect I had gained nothing; I began to understand that even such a catastrophe was possible. I sat down in the nearest chair. Then my fear passed away. The room was filling; it hummed with excited voices. “Churchill! No better than the others,” I heard somebody saying. Two men had stopped talking. They were middle-aged, a little gray, and ruddy. The face of one was angry, and of the other sad. “He wanted only to be found out. What a fall in the mud.” “No matter,” said the other, “one is made a little sad. He stood for everything I had been pinning my faith to.” They passed on. A brazen voice bellowed in the distance. “The greatest fall of any minister that ever was.” A tall, heavy journalist in a white waistcoat was the centre of a group that turned slowly upon itself, gathering bulk. “Done for — stood up to the last. I saw him get into his brougham. The police had a job…. There’s quite a riot down there…. Pale as a ghost. Gurnard? Gurnard magnificent. Very cool and in his best form. Threw them over without as much as a wink. Outraged conscience speech. Magnificent. Why it’s the chance of his life.” … And then for a time the voices and the faces seemed to pass away and die out. I had dropped my paper, and as I stooped to pick it up the voices returned.

—”Granger … Etchingham Granger…. Sister is going to marry

Gurnard.”

I got on to my hands and knees to pick up the paper, of course. What I did not understand was where the water came from. Otherwise it was pretty clear. Somebody seemed to be in a fit. No, he wasn’t drunk; look at his teeth. What did they want to look at his teeth for; was he a horse?

* * * * *

It must have been I that was in the fit. There were a lot of men round me, the front row on their knees — holding me, some of them. A man in a red coat and plush breeches — a waiter — was holding a glass of water; another had a small bottle. They were talking about me under their breaths. At one end of the horseshoe someone said:

“He’s the man who….” Then he caught my eye. He lowered his voice, and the abominable whisper ran round among the heads. It was easy to guess: “the man who was got at.” I was to be that for the rest of my life. I was to be famous at last. There came the desire to be out of it.

I struggled to my feet.

Someone said: “Feel better now?” I answered: “I — oh, I’ve got to go and see….”

It was rather difficult to speak distinctly; my tongue got in the way. But I strove to impress the fool with the idea that I had affairs that must be attended to — that I had private affairs.

“You aren’t fit. Let me….”

I pushed him roughly aside — what business was it of his? I slunk hastily out of the room. The others remained. I knew what they were going to do — to talk things over, to gabble about “the man who….”

It was treacherous walking, that tessellated pavement in the hall.

Someone said: “Hullo, Granger,” as I passed. I took no notice.

Where did I wish to go to? There was no one who could minister to me; the whole world had resolved itself into a vast solitary city of closed doors. I had no friend — no one. But I must go somewhere, must hide somewhere, must speak to someone. I mumbled the address of Fox to a cabman. Some idea of expiation must have been in my mind; some idea of seeing the thing through, mingled with that necessity for talking to someone — anyone.

I was afraid too; not of Fox’s rage; not even of anything that he could do — but of the sight of his despair. He had become a tragic figure.

I reached his flat and I had said: “It is I,” and again, “It is I,” and he had not stirred. He was lying on the sofa under a rug, motionless as a corpse. I had paced up and down the room. I remember that the pile of the carpet was so long that it was impossible to walk upon it easily. Everything else in the room was conceived in an exuberance of luxury that now had something of the macabre in it. It was that now — before, it had been unclean. There was a great bed whose lines suggested sinking softness, a glaring yellow satin coverlet, vast, like a sea. The walls were covered with yellow satin, the windows draped with lace worth a king’s ransom, the light was softened, the air dead, the sounds hung slumbrously. And, in the centre of it, that motionless body. It stirred, pivoted on some central axis beneath the rug, and faced me sitting. There was no look of inquiry in the bloodshot eyes — they turned dully upon me, topaz-coloured in a blood-red setting. There was no expression in the suffused face.

“You want?” he said, in a voice that was august by dint of hopelessness.

“I want to explain,” I said. I had no idea that this was what I had come for.

He answered only: “You!” He had the air of one speaking to something infinitely unimportant. It was as if I had no inkling of the real issue.

With a bravery of desperation I began to explain that I hadn’t stumbled into the thing; that I had acted open-eyed; for my own ends … “My own ends.” I repeated it several times. I wanted him to understand, and I did explain. I kept nothing from him; neither her coming, nor her words, nor my feelings. I had gone in with my eyes open.

For the first time Fox looked at me as if I were a sentient being. “Oh, you know that much,” he said listlessly.

“It’s no disgrace to have gone under to her,” I said; “we had to.” His despair seemed to link him into one “we” with myself. I wanted to put heart into him. I don’t know why.

He didn’t look at me again.

“Oh, that,” he said dully, “I — I understand who you mean…. If I had known before I might have done something. But she came of a higher plane.” He seemed to be talking to himself. The half-forgotten horror grew large; I remembered that she had said that Fox, like herself, was one of a race apart, that was to supersede us — Dimensionists. And, when I looked at him now, it was plain to me that he was of a race different to my own, just as he had always seemed different from any other man. He had had a different tone in triumph; he was different now, in his despair. He went on: “I might have managed Gurnard alone, but I never thought of her coming. You see one does one’s best, but, somehow, here one grows rather blind. I ought to have stuck to Gurnard, of course; never to have broken with him. We ought all to have kept together. — But I kept my end up as long as he was alone.”

He went on talking in an expressionless monotone, perhaps to himself, perhaps to me. I listened as one listens to unmeaning sounds — to that of a distant train at night. He was looking at the floor, his mouth moving mechanically. He sat perfectly square, one hand on either knee, his back bowed out, his head drooping forward. It was as if there were no more muscular force in the whole man — as if he were one of those ancient things one sees sunning themselves on benches by the walls of workhouses.

“But,” I said angrily, “it’s not all over, you can make a fight for it still.”

“You don’t seem to understand,” he answered, “it is all over — the whole thing. I ran Churchill and his conscious rectitude gang for all they were worth…. Well, I liked them, I was a fool to give way to pity. — But I did. — One grows weak among people like you. Of course I knew that their day was over…. And it’s all over,” he said again after a long pause.

“And what will you do?” I asked, half hysterically.

“I don’t just know,” he answered; “we’ve none of us gone under before.

There haven’t been enough really to clash until she came.”

The dead tranquillity of his manner was overwhelming; there was nothing to be said. I was in the presence of a man who was not as I was, whose standard of values, absolute to himself, was not to be measured by any of mine.

“I suppose I shall cut my throat,” he began again.

I noticed with impersonal astonishment that the length of my right side was covered with the dust of a floor. In my restless motions I came opposite the fireplace. Above it hung a number of tiny, jewelled frames, containing daubs of an astonishing lewdness. The riddle grew painful. What kind of a being could conceive this impossibly barbaric room, could enshrine those impossibly crude designs, and then fold his hands? I turned fiercely upon him. “But you are rich enough to enjoy life,” I said.

“What’s that?” he asked wearily.

“In the name of God,” I shouted, “what do you work for — what have you been plotting and plotting for, if not to enjoy your life at the last?” He made a small indefinite motion of ignorance, as if I had propounded to him a problem that he could not solve, that he did not think worth the solving.

It came to me as the confirmation of a suspicion — that motion. They had no joy, these people who were to supersede us; their clear-sightedness did nothing more for them than just that enabling them to spread desolation among us and take our places. It had been in her manner all along, she was like Fate; like the abominable Fate that desolates the whole length of our lives; that leaves of our hopes, of our plans, nothing but a hideous jumble of fragments like those of statues, smashed by hammers; the senseless, inscrutable, joyless Fate that we hate, and that debases us forever and ever. She had been all that to me … and to how many more?

“I used to be a decent personality,” I vociferated at him. “Do you hear — decent. I could look a man in the face. And you cannot even enjoy. What do you come for? What do you live for? What is at the end of it all?”

“Ah, if I knew …” he answered, negligently.

CHAPTER NINETEE
N

I wanted to see her, to finish it one way or another, and, at my aunt’s house, I found her standing in an immense white room; waiting for me. There was a profusion of light. It left her absolutely shadowless, like a white statue in a gallery; inscrutable.

“I have come,” I said. I had it in my mind to say: “Because there is nothing for me to do on earth.” But I did not, I looked at her instead.

“You have come,” she repeated. She had no expression in her voice, in her eyes. It was as if I were nothing to her; as if I were the picture of a man. Well, that was it; I was a picture, she a statue. “I did it,” I said at last.

“And you want?” she asked.

“You know,” I answered, “I want my….” I could not think of the word. It was either a reward or a just due. She looked at me, quite suddenly. It made an effect as if the Venus of Milo had turned its head toward me. She began to speak, as if the statue were speaking, as if a passing bell were speaking; recording a passing passionlessly.

“You have done nothing at all,” she said. “Nothing.”

“And yet,” I said, “I was at the heart of it all.”

“Nothing at all,” she repeated. “You were at the heart, yes; but at the heart of a machine.” Her words carried a sort of strong conviction. I seemed suddenly to see an immense machine — unconcerned, soulless, but all its parts made up of bodies of men: a great mill grinding out the dust of centuries; a great wine-press. She was continuing her speech.

“As for you — you are only a detail, like all the others; you were set in a place because you would act as you did. It was in your character. We inherit the earth and you, your day is over…. You remember that day, when I found you — the first day?”

I remembered that day. It was on the downland, under the immense sky, amid the sound of larks. She had explained the nature of things. She had talked expressionlessly in pregnant words; she was talking now. I knew no more of her to-day, after all these days, after I had given up to her my past and my future.

“You remember that day. I was looking for such a man, and I found you.”

“And you …” I said, “you have done this thing! Think of it!… I have nobody — nothing — nowhere in the world. I cannot look a man in the face, not even Churchill. I can never go to him again.” I paused, expecting a sign of softening. None came. “I have parted with my past and you tell me there is no future.”

“None,” she echoed. Then, coldly, as a swan takes the water, she began to speak:

“Well, yes! I’ve hurt you. You have suffered and in your pain you think me vile, but remember that for ages the virtue of to-morrow has been the vileness of to-day. That which outstrips one, one calls vile. My virtue lies in gaining my end. Pity for you would have been a crime for me. You have suffered. And then? What are you to me? As I came among you I am to-day; that is where I am triumphant and virtuous. I have succeeded. When I came here I came into a world of — of shadows of men. What were their passions, their joys, their fears, their despair, their outcry, to me? If I had ears, my virtue was to close them to the cries. There was no other way. There was one of us — your friend Fox, I mean. He came into the world, but had not the virtue to hold himself aloof. He has told you, ‘One goes blind down here.’ He began to feel a little like the people round him. He contracted likings and dislikings. He liked you … and you betrayed him. So he went under. He grew blind down here. I have not grown blind. I see as I saw. I move as I did in a world of … of the pictures of men. They despair. I hear groans … well, they are the groans of the dead to me. This to you, down near it, is a mass of tortuous intrigue; vile in its pettiest detail. But come further off; stand beside me, and what does it look like? It is a mighty engine of disintegration. It has crushed out a whole fabric, a whole plane of society. It has done that. I guided it. I had to have my eyes on every little strand of it; to be forever on the watch.”

“And now I stand alone. Yesterday that fabric was everything to you; it seemed solid enough. And where is it to-day? What is it to you more than to me? There stood Virtue … and Probity … and all the things that all those people stood for. Well, to-day they are gone; the very belief in them is gone. Who will believe in them, now that it is proved that their tools were people … like de Mersch? And it was I that did it. That, too, is to be accounted to me for virtue.”

“Well, I have inherited the earth. I am the worm at the very heart of the rose of it. You are thinking that all that I have gained is the hand of Gurnard. But it is more than that. It is a matter of a chess-board; and Gurnard is the only piece that remains. And I am the hand that moves him. As for a marriage; well, it is a marriage of minds, a union for a common purpose. But mine is the master mind. As for you. Well, you have parted with your past … and there is no future for you. That is true. You have nowhere to go to; have nothing left, nothing in the world. That is true too. But what is that to me? A set of facts — that you have parted with your past and have no future. You had to do the work; I had to make you do it. I chose you because you would do it. That is all…. I knew you; knew your secret places, your weaknesses. That is my power. I stand for the Inevitable, for the future that goes on its way; you for the past that lies by the roadside. If for your sake I had swerved one jot from my allotted course, I should have been untrue. There was a danger, once, for a minute…. But I stood out against it. What would you have had me do? Go under as Fox went under? Speak like him, look as he looks now…. Me? Well, I did not.”

“I was in the hands of the future; I never swerved; I went on my way. I had to judge men as I judged you; to corrupt, as I corrupted you. I cajoled; I bribed; I held out hopes; and with every one, as with you, I succeeded. It is in that power that the secret of the greatness which is virtue, lies. I had to set about a work of art, of an art strange to you; as strange, as alien as the arts of dead peoples. You are the dead now, mine the art of an ensuing day. All that remains to you is to fold your hands and wonder, as you wondered before the gates of Nineveh. I had to sound the knell of the old order; of your virtues, of your honours, of your faiths, of … of altruism, if you like. Well, it is sounded. I was forever on the watch; I foresaw; I forestalled; I have never rested. And you….”

“And I …” I said, “I only loved you.”

There was a silence. I seemed for a moment to see myself a tenuous, bodiless thing, like a ghost in a bottomless cleft between the past and the to come. And I was to be that forever.

“You only loved me,” she repeated. “Yes, you loved me. But what claim upon me does that give you? You loved me…. Well, if I had loved you it would have given you a claim…. All your misery; your heartache comes from … from love; your love for me, your love for the things of the past, for what was doomed…. You loved the others too … in a way, and you betrayed them and you are wretched. If you had not loved them you would not be wretched now; if you had not loved me you would not have betrayed your — your very self. At the first you stood alone; as much alone as I. All these people were nothing to you. I was nothing to you. But you must needs love them and me. You should have let them remain nothing to the end. But you did not. What were they to you? — Shapes, shadows on a sheet. They looked real. But were they — any one of them? You will never see them again; you will never see me again; we shall be all parts of a past of shadows. If you had been as I am, you could have looked back upon them unmoved or could have forgotten…. But you … ‘you only loved’ and you will have no more ease. And, even now, it is only yourself that matters. It is because you broke; because you were false to your standards at a supreme moment; because you have discovered that your honour will not help you to stand a strain. It is not the thought of the harm you have done the others…. What are they — what is Churchill who has fallen or Fox who is dead — to you now? It is yourself that you bemoan. That is your tragedy, that you can never go again to Churchill with the old look in your eyes, that you can never go to anyone for fear of contempt…. Oh, I know you, I know you.”

She knew me. It was true, what she said.

I had had my eyes on the ground all this while; now I looked at her, trying to realise that I should never see her again. It was impossible. There was that intense beauty, that shadowlessness that was like translucence. And there was her voice. It was impossible to understand that I was never to see her again, never to hear her voice, after this.

She was silent for a long time and I said nothing — nothing at all. It was the thought of her making Fox’s end; of her sitting as Fox had sat, hopelessly, lifelessly, like a man waiting at the end of the world. At last she said: “There is no hope. We have to go our ways; you yours, I mine. And then if you will — if you cannot forget — you may remember that I cared; that, for a moment, in between two breaths, I thought of … of failing. That is all I can do … for your sake.”

That silenced me. Even if I could have spoken to any purpose, I would have held my tongue now.

I had not looked at her; but stood with my eyes averted, very conscious of her standing before me; of her great beauty, of her great glory.

* * * * *

After a long time I went away. I never saw her again. I never saw any one of them all again. Fox was dead and Churchill I have never had the heart to face. That was the end of all that part of my life. It passed away and left me only a consciousness of weakness and … and regrets. She remains. One recognises her hand in the trend of events. Well, it is not a very gay world. Gurnard, they say, is the type of the age — of its spirit. And they say that I, the Granger of Etchingham, am not on terms with my brother-in-law.