Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (354 page)
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Authors: Ford Madox Ford
CONTENTS
MR LUSCOMBE was standing with his hands deep in his pockets, his chin resting upon the dishevelled crown of the head of his little boy called Bill, who stood upon the window-seat before him and, like him, gazed at the pouring rain. It came down in such sheets that a small river flowed on each side of the carriage-drive. Because the County did not call upon Mr Luscombe and his wife, Mr Luscombe was solitary in his habits. He was friendly with the Vicar and he had some acquaintances whom he met at the Golf Club on the neighbouring common. But his most constant companion was his little boy Bill who was then aged seven, had dark, uncombed hair, a brownish, freckled face, wore a rumpled blue jersey and short blue knickerbockers.
“By Jove, we’d better ask them to come in,” Mr Luscombe exclaimed. “That tree’s no kind of a shelter. The rain comes through it like a sieve.”
The boy continued to gaze out of the window. “Don’t ask them, father,” he said: “they are ugly people.”
“They’re jolly wet people,” Mr Luscombe said. “You couldn’t even ask Sitting Bull to look beautiful with all the paint washed off him.”
“But,” the little boy retorted, “they don’t look like pirates, and they don’t look like Indians, and they don’t look like highwaymen or anything nice.”
“But they look wet, Bill,” his father urged.
“They look like wet tramps,” the little boy said.
“
They’ll come in and they’ll spoil our game, and Filson says that tramps are poison.”
“But they don’t look like tramps, Bill,” his father pleaded. “I should say they were foreigners if they weren’t so fair.”
“Then they’re German spies,” the boy said. “Filson says the country is full of German spies.”
“Then,” Mr Luscombe said triumphantly, “our duty is to lure them into the house and then to have them arrested.”
“That,” the little boy answered, “would be against the laws of hospitality.”
“Isn’t it,” his father said, “still more against the laws of hospitality to let them get wet? They’re the strangers within the gates, you know. For they are inside the carriage gates. If they’d stayed outside it would be different.”
“Then if you give them anything to eat,” Bill uttered firmly, “I shall drop some salt into it as Morgiana did to the captain of the Forty Thieves.”
“I don’t think you’ve got the hang of that, old man,” his father said. “It was that she got suspicious when the captain said he wanted his food cooked without salt.” Mr Luscombe went from the large and rather gloomy dining-room into the large and rather gloomy hall. He opened the door and stood in the pillared porch. The rain poured down and in the long drive the cypresses and holly trees drooped dejectedly beneath the weight of water. Above the gate that gave on to the road there towered two enormous chestnut trees, against whose trunks were pressed the backs of two slight figures. Mr Luscombe stood as far out in the porch as the driving rain would permit: a blonde, rather heavy man of perhaps thirty-five or a little more, he was dressed in a shooting-jacket, had a heavy jaw, a thick moustache and sagacious, rather dog-like eyes. He was a little slow in his actions and he had a pleasant smile which uncovered white and level teeth. He stood just six feet high, his shoulders were more than usually broad and his chest more than usually full. When he had beckoned three times with his hand he succeeded in attracting the attention of the cyclists but, in answer to his gestures, both the young creatures — who in spite of their costumes, which he found so extraordinary, appeared to him of a dazzling fairness — vigorously shook their heads.
“Damn them,” Mr Luscombe exclaimed good humouredly, “I believe they think I am telling them to go away.”
He repeated his gestures, bowing his body forward and shovelling with his hand towards the doorway as if he were inviting pigs to enter a sty. But his efforts were rewarded only by a similar indifference. He breathed little sounds of vexation between his teeth, and returning into the flagged hall he came out with a large umbrella which was used by his coachman upon wet days. Having opened this he walked gingerly — for he still wore his slippers — down the carriage-drive, picking his way over little runlets of water in the sandy track. The heavy drops fell with loud sounds from the boughs on to the surface of his umbrella and the rain itself made a loud and continuous crepitation.
“Why the deuce,” Mr Luscombe exclaimed, “did you not come in when I beckoned you? You’ve made me get my feet wet.”
Both the young people gazed at him with expressions of singular solemnity and portentousness.
The girl, who was of singular fairness, wore upon her head an ungracious cap. It appeared to have been crumpled haphazard together out of a piece of the grey cloth of which her dress was made. She wore also a coat of grey so ill fitting that one of her shoulders appeared to be higher than the other. Her short skirt only just reached to her knees, her stockings were of grey worsted and her cycling shoes were laced with pieces of string. Her male companion, who was as fair, as young and even more slender, had the greater part of his form concealed by a grey horse-blanket, through a hole in whose centre his head stuck out. Upon his head, itself, there was crushed a grey wide-awake so sodden by the rain that it flapped down on each side, concealing the greater portion of each cheek. From between it his pink and white cultured features looked out like an old woman’s from a deep poke-bonnet. The girl was about to speak when the young man spoke in tones that combined at once a quality of gentlemanliness and aggression:
“We ought,” he said, “to inform you that we object to the abominable institution of marriage. We were married yesterday morning, but we desire to enter the strongest possible protest.”
Mr Luscombe raised his eyebrows, whistled between his teeth, and smiled in a slightly puzzled manner.
“Well, well,” he said. “I’ve heard of repenting at leisure, but I never heard of a couple who found out their mistake so soon. Consider the protest made and carried and come in out of the rain.”
The young man after a pause was about to speak when the young girl spoke. Her voice was lady-like and she, too, appeared to force into it a certain note of aggression.
“Do you own this property?” she asked.
“Oh,” Mr Luscombe said, “I own this house and grounds and the cottages round the Common and a certain portion of the Common itself. You can hardly call it a property.”
“But it is a property,” the young girl said. “You ought not to own it.”
A slight shade of vexation came into Mr Luscombe’s face.
“How do you know?” he said. “Is this an impertinence? Are you connections of mine?”
The young man spoke again in his high tones:
“Except in so far as all men are brothers,” he said, “we cannot claim connectionship with you. But we object...”
The young girl raised her hand as if she were addressing a meeting.
“We object,” she began, “to all such things as individual property, marriage, revealed religion, the unequal distribution of wealth...”
“Oh, well,” Mr Luscombe said, “you don’t seem to object to rain. Come in and we will have a fire ht.”
The young man said:
“We think we ought to tell you all the things we object to, for we have been told that we have a corrupting influence, whereas our consciences make us see that we must never cease to proselytize. So we warn you....”
“Oh,” the young girl suddenly exclaimed, “if you own all the cottages round the Common you own the one with the yellow jasmine on it and the seat in the porch just beyond the duck-pond. Will you let it to us?”
Mr Luscombe regarded them reflectively. “To do that,” he said, “I should have to turn out the people who are there now.”
“You could find them another cottage,” the boy said. “We have decided that that one would exactly suit us.”
“We desire,” the girl exclaimed, “to lead the Simple Life.”
MR LUSCOMBE’S history had been peculiar and somewhat unfortunate. His father, like himself called Gerald Luscombe, had been a man of a gloomy and resentful turn of mind, who, towards the end of his life drank himself steadily into a lunatic asylum. And, since Mr Luscombe senior was of this cast, his wife had been rather notoriously unfaithful. She was in the habit of absenting herself for long periods — though generally during the hunting season — with a man called Melville. Amongst the families of County rank of that neighbourhood, as indeed amongst the relatives of Mr Luscombe, this fact had at first caused consternation and extreme anger. Mr Luscombe, the father, however, silent and saturnine, paid no attention either to the behaviour of his wife or to the remonstrances of the rest of his acquaintances. And if he would not divorce Gerald Luscombe’s mother he did not in the least attempt to limit her goings-out or her comings-in. A silent, bitter man with, about the comers of his mouth, such a smile as if he were a spectator at a cruel comedy, he was finally put under restraint at his own request when Gerald Luscombe was about fourteen. At that point Mrs Luscombe retired definitely with her lover to the Continent. Gerald Luscombe passed his days at Harrow where he attracted very little attention, spending his holidays with his mother and Henry Melville, to both of whom he was doggedly attached. This gave rise to a rumour that Gerald was the son, not of his father but of his mother’s lover. This rumour caused him considerable unpleasantness at Oxford, where two of his cousins, who were his next of kin, happened to he up at the same time as himself. Between these cousins and himself there had always been considerable dislike. They were dark young men who affected intellectual interests. At Oxford they read Swinburne, attempted to form a Kelmscott Lodge, a Socialistic Community named after that of the late Mr William Morris at Hammersmith. They had therefore always called Gerald Luscombe the Oaf, for Gerald was fair, rather heavily made and as untidy as it was then possible to be at Oxford. Being a remarkably good cross-country runner he kept a little pack of beagles of his own. He pulled rather a good oar, he was not afraid of work, indeed he had rather a taste for the Latin humaner letters, whilst he had a real passion for gardening. He was moreover comparatively abstemious and had none of the, what were then called, decadent tastes affected by his cousins, the Nevill-Luscombes. The Nevill-Luscombes, whilst affecting an extreme freedom of thought, deemed it fit, at the beginning of their second year, to wait upon their cousin and to inform him that his mother’s behaviour was so scandalous that, as members of his family, they must beg him altogether to refrain from countenancing her. Having with some difficulty — for he was not a very proficient boxer — thrashed the elder of the two cousins, Luscombe threw the younger through his window. And this caused so much comment amongst the men that, in order to account for it, the Nevill-Luscombes were forced to tell the reason for the fracas to several of their more intimate friends. They did it with some reluctance, and the revelation caused them to be regarded with considerable distaste by the more athletic members of their college. This again engendered further bitterness of spirit in the Nevill-Luscombes, who from that day forward called their cousin no longer the Oaf hut the Bastard.
Gerald Luscombe’s youth, therefore, if it was tranquil and upon the whole fortunate, was not without its qualifying sadnesses which tinged his whole disposition. He was never gay though his face had upon it a smile that was always half frank, half timid, like that of a man used to awaiting certain insults. He had no pre-disposition to discontent, but he was accustomed to think rather sad, commonplace thoughts about social injustices. His obstinacy was nevertheless so considerable that upon the death of his father he peremptorily insisted that his mother, who had immediately married Henry Melville, should come to live with him at Coombe Luscombe, which had become his by right of inheritance, together with about three thousand acres of fairly fertile land set about with Surrey heath. The old people — for by that time both his mother and Henry Melville had grown to appear quite aged — accordingly decided to pass the remainder of their days with Gerald, of whom they were exceedingly fond and in whom they took a sort of tremulous and tender pride — a pride that centred round his goodness of heart, for he had no other very special attributes. He was exceedingly beloved by his servants and much more popular with his tenants than most landlords, even in Surrey, where the cottagers are more than normally servile. The return, however, of Mr and Mrs Melville caused an entirely unreasonable amount of irritation in the neighbourhood of Coombe. It was held for certain that Gerald Luscombe was not the son of his father and that therefore he was in wrongful possession of his small estate. The peasantry from neighbouring villages paraded at nights in front of the house playing the rough music of the marrow-bone and cleaver till they were dispersed by the police; the effigies of Mr and Mrs Melville and of Gerald Luscombe were burnt on the 5th of November, and of all the surrounding residents the only one who called upon Mr Luscombe was an elderly lady who had made herself almost more unreasonably unpopular by attempting to keep some of the surrounding common-land open to the public when the neighbouring marquis had attempted to fence it in. Her name was Miss Stobhall, she declared herself to be a Socialist and her pubic spirit was exceedingly disliked by all the countryside because she came from Yorkshire. If anybody was to keep the commons for Surrey men it ought to be a Surrey man or a man at least. It was no make of truck for women. Miss Stobhall had made herself all the more unpopular because, whilst she herself lived in her small gardener’s cottage at the end of her suburban drive, she kept her large villa as an exclusive asylum for various foreigners from Eastern Europe. Thus at one time it was filled with Polish refugees, at another with Armenians. Once she had six Macedonians, and towards the end of the Russian Revolution no less than twenty-seven Jews and Jewesses escaped from a pogrom in Nijni Novgorod. The presence of these amiable transfugees was held to render the country unsafe, though no actual deed of violence had as yet been traced to them, at any rate as far as human beings were concerned. But it having been observed at one time that several of Miss Stobhall’s guests were in the habit of praying upon all-fours, the rumour grew that these Easterners had the habits of beasts of prey. They were said at night to run like foxes, and any casualties amongst the hen-roosts of the neighbourhood were laid to the charge of Miss Stobhall’s protégés, though this did not prevent the accounts of loss being sent in to the Master of the Foxhounds. For it was held that if the Armenians had the nature of foxes the damages they did should he paid for as if by foxes they had been done. The Master was quite at liberty to hunt them if he desired.
Being himself unpopular, Mr Gerald Luscombe had no particular desire for friendship with an old and unpopular lady. Indeed, her unpopularity having arisen from causes other than his own, Luscombe was inclined to regard Miss Stobhall as a slightly criminal person. Nevertheless, moved at times by her ecstatic recital of murders, outrages and oppressions wrought by Turks, Kurds, Bulgarians, Prussians, Russians, the officials of Irkutsk and the soldiers of the Sheik of Kowweit, Mr Luscombe from time to time contributed substantial sums towards the relief of the more indigent refugees or towards the Revolutionary funds of distant quarters of the globe. For the rest, Mr Luscombe’s avowal that he was a Tory who feared God and honoured the Queen silenced Miss Stobhall’s uttering of her conviction that, bad as conditions were in the near and middle East, oppression, greed, bigotry and anti-Social crime stalked in England more direly abroad than anywhere else in the rest of the world. Mr Luscombe had suffered so severely at Oxford from his Socialistic cousins that the very name of advanced opinions was distasteful to him.
His cousins, however, were no longer of advanced opinions and Mr Nevill-Luscombe was standing for a northern constituency in the Liberal Unionist interest. It was at the time of the closing days of the South African War and Mr Nevill-Luscombe’s splendid periods denouncing the foreign spies and traitors, the Socialists, Anarchists, Nationalists and Liberals, the unsound, the disloyal and the traitorous — Mr Nevill-Luscombe’s splendid oratory — since his was a by-election — reverberated through the newspapers of the whole of England. The election, however, caused him to be shorter of cash and of breath, and Laving lately married a lady whose imperiousness equalled her charm, he was persuaded, against his better judgment, though not against his desire, to bring an action against Mr Gerald Luscombe for the possession of such part of the Luscombe property as was entailed. He brought the action on the ground that his cousin, not being the son of his father, the property should pass to himself as next of kin. It was perfectly true that under common law this claim would have been untenable, but, as is the case with small estates lying near the Kentish border, Coombe Luscombe was held under the law of Gavelkind, and Gerald Luscombe’s father having died intestate the property had passed under that law. There arose then the celebrated case of Luscombe
v.
Luscombe, Melville intervening, which lasted many days and on account of its singularity and its rancour attracted a great deal of attention. To Gerald Luscombe it was a weariness: it was even a horror. The spectacle of his poor, trembling old mother, a little gentle, mittened old lady, stuck up in the witness-box and brow-beaten by a Queen’s Counsellor of intolerable coarseness; of Mr Melville, old, too, white-bearded and exceedingly small and gentle, suffering from the same ordeal; the hearing of the evidence of servants and hangers-on, much of it sheer perjury, these things were very nearly as much as Gerald Luscombe could stand. And even when the case was won he was very much of a mind to let Coombe and to shake the dust of England off his feet. His dogged nature, however, an inheritance from his father that neither common law nor the law of Gavelkind could affect, made him stick like a leech to his native house. If he hadn’t any friends in Surrey, he hadn’t any either in the rest of the world. The gaining of his case brought him no gain of countenance either from the County or from the country-side. It was considered that by upholding his mother and her husband he was arrogantly upholding what is called vice. And although the Nevill-Luscombes, in order to prove their case, had suborned so many witnesses to perjure themselves in the effort to prove that Gerald Luscombe was the son of Henry Melville — although they had done this so effectually that they couldn’t set to work now to prove that he was the son of any other man, the County was by no means of opinion that that showed Gerald Luscombe to be the son of his father. Mr Melville had proved conclusively that at the time of Gerald Luscombe’s birth and for three years before, he had been in Ceylon, but the County considered that that only made the matter all the worse.
In the meantime, calling at his solicitor’s house, Gerald Luscombe had made the acquaintance of the solicitor’s daughter. She was a fine, flexible, up-standing creature, fair and quite finished. She had indeed been finished in Paris, from which place she had just returned, and her name was Evangeline Smith — her father having been one of the Smiths of Darlington and head of the firm of Smith, Peckover and Jupp. She had so much tact that she seemed to Gerald Luscombe the kindest creature in the world: he had not spoken to a woman at all approaching his own class for nearly seven years. She had so much goodness of heart that she could afford, ostracised as they were in that out-of-the-way place, to wear the most expensive of Paris gowns — that she went twice a year to France to purchase — without its appearing to Gerald and his mother that such display reduced her rather to the level of the villa residents of the neighbourhood, since her frocks were of the Town, whereas the County, except for a very few hours in the year, confined itself severely to tweeds. Gerald Luscombe was aware that in a sense he had lowered himself. And, though the house itself began to be more lively with voices of professional people like solicitors and doctors and even clergymen, Gerald Luscombe felt himself none the less out of his element and just as solitary. He couldn’t make out how to talk to his wife’s friends, though he occasionally played a game of golf with his wife’s brother who was in the “firm”: with his wife’s brother-in-law who was an underwriter — Gerald never really understood what an underwriter was — or with his wife’s cousin, who, having failed three times for Sandhurst, was now in an office in Mincing Lane.