Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (384 page)

CHAPTER VII

THE hour of Mr Gubb’s triumph had approached and the schoolroom was completely full. Outside there waited a long stream of motorcars, of carriages, and footmen and chauffeurs who conversed in low tones before the gleaming lamps of their vehicles. All that East Surrey had to show of toilettes, wrapped and cloaked, had descended from these vehicles, coming from villas, from manor-houses, from castles, since it was recognised that in his work Mr Gubb had achieved the great social end of being a territorial philanthropist and, at the same time, making it pay. Outside the doors stood a group of village people and of the Simple Lifers, mingling in the moonlight for the first time, as if symbolically here, too, peace and goodwill reigned.

But within the schoolroom there was no place for either of these elements. The governing classes had taken command. Countess Croydon upon the platform wore an outrageously ill-fitting evening costume of black silk. Next her sat the Dowager-Duchess, an enormous phantom of white, soft flesh bulging out of a claret-coloured velvet gown. Between the duchess and Mrs Lee, Croydon himself appeared shrunk to nothing. He was a little, yellow-faced man with a querulous expression and short, grey whiskers. If he had not been an earl he would almost certainly have been a head waiter in an old-fashioned restaurant. Next him sat Mrs Lee in an extreme brilliance of blue satin, pink flesh and brilliant, high cheeks. She was looking her best. She was looking almost more than her very best. She did not seem more than thirty, and her dark mane disposed itself romantically about her ears with four pink roses caught up in it as if she had run through a wood of roses in flower. And the turquoise blue of her dress fought the claret colour of the Duchess, so that those of the audience who cared about colour had their teeth set on edge, and those who did not were rejoiced as they would have been by a bad stained-glass window. Beside her sat Mr Bransdon, exactly resembling in his capacious evening dress a Diplomatist from Central Europe or a more than usually aristocratic President of the French Republic.

In the audience they could see all the familiar faces. The front row was taken up by the house party from the Dowager-Duchess’s, which included the Bishop of South Australia and his wife, who was very hot. Gerald and Mrs Luscombe and Mr and Mrs Melville, who sat hand in hand, and the boy Bill, occupied, with Sir Crested and Lady Joins, the right-hand side of the second row. The left hand was taken up by Mr and Mrs Paul Sandwith with their house party, which included the celebrated author whose head exactly resembled Shakespeare’s. From time to time this gentleman stood up, turned his head from left to right and ran his fingers, on which glittered an enormous ring, through his rapidly thinning locks. Later in the evening this gentleman caused some disturbance by persisting, during Mr Bransdon’s speech, in talking with his usual tones to Mr Sandwith about his new contract. This caused Mr Parmont, who was there professionally as representing
The Daily News,
to shout, “Shut up! Shame!” and to stamp on the floor. Whereupon from the platform the Earl bleated, “Order! Order!”

During a slightly considerable wait caused by the late arrival of Sir Joshua and Lady Sebag, Mr Everard, who had been marshalling the guests and had run round by a back door and so had got on to the platform, leant over to ask Sir Bransdon whether he bad any news of the ikon.

Mr Bransdon spat violently and in nervous agitation. The connection with Brandetski was extraordinarily painful to him.

“That beastly Russian swine!” he whispered.
“
The Official, Boguslavski, has got the door locked and threatens to give in charge anybody who interferes with the seals. He says that the ikon is Russian property stolen from some one of their damn churches or other.”

“What’s that? What’s that?” Mrs Lee exclaimed.

“Oh, it’s all right,” Mr Everard whispered, and he drew from his breast pocket a smallish, flat object of perhaps the size of a prayer-book, wrapped in white tissue paper.
“
I’ll fix it up.” He withdrew his head from between the two and immediately Mrs Lee began to whisper agitatedly:

“
What is all this? What is all this? Has somebody been making accusations against Cyril Brandetski? You can’t believe them. He’s the soul of honour. He’s your own flesh and blood, too.”

“Good God!” Mr Bransdon exclaimed. His bulky frame was quivering with vivid annoyance. “Don’t drag my name in. I don’t want to be mixed up in the beastly, filthy occurrence. The man’s a Judas with the blood of hundreds on his head. Do you think
I
want to have such a rat for my relation?”

“Oh, but,” Mrs Lee said “you know this must be a plot against him. You know the police will do anything against revolutionaries. And Cyril Brandetski is a hero. He’s the most modest of men, but he’s told me so.”

Mr Bransdon pointed his large, white finger at the back of the hall. “If you just move your head,” he said, “you’ll see his wife. Your husband’s behind you, you remember!”

Mr Everard had, in fact, filled the vacant place of Cyril Brandetski. In it sat Mr Lee, with his brown beard carefully combed, rather softer and with a distinctly Semitic look in his brown eyes. A great flush of red colour went over Mrs Lee’s face. She opened her mouth to speak, but Lord Croydon rapped the table in front of him and exclaimed, “Order! Order!” He had just received from Mr Everard the packet wrapped in tissue paper and the intimation that the ceremony might commence. Lord Croydon rose and, resting his finger-tips on the table before him, he exclaimed with a grating voice:

“Your Grace, my ladies, ladies and gentlemen....”

At this point he lost the place in his manuscript. In the Conservative Government preceding his departure for abroad Lord Croydon had been Under Secretary for the Colonies; but being a speaker incredibly bad even in the House of Lords, having no memory and being fatally given to losing his way in his manuscript notes, it had been with the greatest kindness intimated to him that not in any circumstances could he ever hope to hold office again. On this occasion Lady Croydon had written his speech in a hand so large that short though it was, it covered a small volume of paper.

A very considerable volume of applause greeted His Lordship’s prolonged pause. At the end of it he proceeded to read out that this was a very auspicious occasion, that they all knew why they were present, that the conditions of the country were extremely perilous, that with very great labour Mr Gubb had done something to point the way towards social regeneration. He proceeded to say that personally he believed in class, in spite of the Socialistic nonsense that was talked nowadays. He desired to see the old banner float upon the old ship with the same hands upon the old tiller that had helped them to weather so many storms.

At this point there ensued a storm of applause under cover of which Mrs Lee managed to shout into Mr Bransdon’s ear that it was all a dastardly he.

“Still,” the Earl proceeded, “whilst we ought to proceed very slowly in fear of Radical innovations that would be disastrous to all classes — with that reservation and using all possible caution, I am sensibly in favour of doing all I can to aid in the repopulation of the rural districts. The more people, as my late honourable friend the Earl of Cockham once said in the House of Lords, there are in the country, the more money there is to go round.”

Lord Croydon bowed his head in answer to the laughter that greeted his witticism, and leaning on the table with one hand, he dropped the leaves of his speech inadvertently with the other. They fell over the edge of the table and floated amongst the audience. During the delay which was occasioned by their recovery, Mr Everard took occasion to ask Mr Bransdon what the deuce Ophelia could be wanting with a ladder. He had seen her, be said, carrying it across the road and he felt vaguely uneasy. He had extracted from her, having caught her at the door as he came in, an absolute promise that she would not hold a counter-meeting. But there was no knowing
what
devilry she would not be up to.

Loud cheers, however, were greeting the Earl’s recovery of his speech, and as if to make atonement His Lordship began to read with much more considerable speed and firmness.

“I come now,” His Lordship said, “to the most pleasant portion of this evening — the presentation of this gift to our hero — if he will permit me to cab him so...?”

“Oh, good Lord!” Mr Everard exclaimed aloud. “Old Croydon’s got bold of the wrong page. This ought to come at the very end.”

His Lordship exclaimed, “Order! Order there! Silence!” and picked up the small packet in tissue paper. “This — er — object,” he continued, “a valuable and precious monument of antiquity, connected as it is with religious practices so consonant to the nature of the hero of the evening, is peculiarly appropriate to the occasion. It is, I am informed by my jeweller, of great value, and it has served to aid in the devotions of generations of devout and simple-minded people....”

“Oh, good Lord!” Mr Everard groaned. “The silly fool didn’t understand what I told him.” He whispered to Lady Sebag, who was next him, an eloquent prayer to be allowed to pass her. But that lady of Hebraic and opulent proportions was also of an exceeding deafness, and Mr Everard remained crushed in the corner, rubbing the white-wash off the still rather damp wall.

His Lordship’s tone gained fire and his periods rolled unctuously from off his tongue. “Far from us,” he said, “be any suspicion of Romish practices, though I have no intention of giving offence to any of that creed who may be present in this room. But the Colony, which Mr Gubb has founded is, as is well known to all here, devoutly attached to that Church and that Conservative Party, which are the mainstay and blessing of the country in which, thank God! we dwell. And looking round me I may say that I am proud to be an Englishman, free, generous, unoppressed and broad-minded. And because we are so broad-minded we may say, and again I thank God! that the possession of an image which shall serve to remind us of our duties as Christian ladies and gentlemen isn’t considered heretical or even idolatrous. This object,” and again Lord Croydon waved the tissue paper parcel, “this sacred object, if I may use the expression, has been employed, not by the Romish but by the Greek Rite, with which, as most of you are aware, our established Church — long may she flourish and confer upon our lands the blessing of union and peace! — is in communion. And it has been my private opinion ever since when I was, as you know, a child in the house of my father, who was then British Ambassador in St Petersburg — it has long been my private opinion — but by these digressions I am wasting the time of more valuable speakers—” The Earl looked over the crowded assembly for those cries of “No! No! Go on!” which came in no inconsiderable volume. He continued, therefore, with his digression lasting a quarter of an hour, in which he stated his long settled opinion that the late Archbishop Benson, in applying to the Pope to sanction the validity of Anglican Orders, had committed a grave, tactical error. He should have applied to the Patriarch of Constantinople. And His Lordship proceeded to give them a slight sketch of the tenets, practices and history of the Eastern Church, in the course of which he three times misquoted Gibbon.

Mr Everard had by this time been reduced to a despairing silence, and his mind was altogether taken off His Lordship’s speech by perceiving that Ophelia Bransdon, with her head and the upper part of her body half-way through one of the high windows, was surveying the scene with an expression of ironical contempt.

“Thus before this object,” the Earl continued to trumpet his peroration, “doubtless, many of our fellow-Christians have knelt and performed what they considered their daily Christian duties. Mr Gubb, stout upholder as he is of our own Church, does not belong to that communion, but this object, as I am given to understand, will occupy a prominent position on a shelf specially built for it in — all! — the Communal dining-room, where the inhabitants of the Colony, looking at it at all times, will be reminded Y that they, too, have duties as Christians to perform. Without further occupying your time I will call upon Mr Gubb to come up on to this platform to receive that reward which he has so richly earned.”

Following a slight stir at the extreme end of the hall, Mr Gubb’s brilliant pink head, with its fringe of golden hair, rose from above the chair where he had been sitting beside Mr Parmont, giving him small hints and pieces of information for the account that on the morrow
The Daily News
was to publish. He walked up the aisle amidst small crepitating sounds of enthusiasm and curiosity, and applause burst forth as he mounted the stairs of the platform. It grew louder as he reached the top step; it swelled to very considerable dimensions when, wearing his blue reefer suit, his low collar and his red tie, he faced them and bowed once or twice. In his buttonhole was a single pink rose which Miss Egmont had placed there after he had signed the agreement to marry her. The applause only ceased when the Earl, having shaken hands with him, extended the tissue paper parcel.