Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (442 page)

“Nancy darling, I’ve got you now! This silly disguise can’t deceive me any more.”

The girl continued to scream systematically, monotonously, and without emotion, as if she were a pig being taken to market and having the time of its life, whilst the major held her in a firm grasp.

And then the word “Infamous!” sounded through the room. Sir Arthur Johnson, quite out of breath but still triumphant, was crashing through the remains of the drawers and the cardboard boxes. He roared: “This is the sort of thing! Seduction of a poor servant in the very arms of justice!” And then he cried: “Officers, come up!”

The Lady Savylle moved across to the major.

She touched his arm that encircled the girl, and said in his ear:

“If you want Mary Savylle, I am Mary Savylle!” He looked round at her with an unseeing glance. “I can’t see you,” he said. “I only saw the cap and apron. Because they’re white,” he added.

His arms released the servant, and she sank down on the bed. The bed collapsed like an overburdened camel, and there were two frightened policemen in the doorway. Sir Arthur thundered: “Officers, advance!” and the girl stopped screaming. It was as if a tap in her had been turned off, and the sudden silence was like a pain.

The major looked unseeingly at the girl. “You must be her Ladyship’s maid!” he exclaimed, with a sort of wonder and awe. “What an extraordinary thing.”

“I’ve got too weak a heart,” the girl answered. “The doctor he say that excitement would kill me. But it’s worth it to be her Ladyship’s maid and live in a novelette and then die sudden!”

The major repeated in an awed voice:

“Extraordinary! though the other night... I could have sworn the other night...” Then he tried to look at Mary Savylle. “I can’t see you,” he said. “It’s the exertion. It’s affected my circulation! My eyes are fall of blood!”

Sir Arthur shouted: “Enough of this blasphemous foolery! Officers, do your duty!”

The frightened policemen did nothing at all. Mr. Broadrib walked into the room; he took hold of the major’s elbow.

“You’d better go back to the dock,” he said in metallic but calm tones. “They’ve determined to revise your sentence.” He added to one of the policemen: “Here, you! Lead this gentleman back to the dock. Be careful with him; he’s blind.” And the major was led away with his dazed and puzzled expression. The Lady Savylle looked at Mr. Broadrib.

“Oh, my good man!” she exclaimed, and her face was lamentable. “If he’s blind...”

And suddenly she stretched out her arms and fell upon Mr. Broadrib’s broadcloth shoulder. She wept passionately and passionately.

“There! There!” Mr. Broadrib said in the tones of an old woman comforting a child for a lost doll. “It’s curable! I’ve seen many cases of it in Africa. Only make him a happy man and let him live at ease...”

The servant, who had begun to cry, crawled sitting along her broken bed and began to kiss Lady Savylle’s motionless hand that hung against Mr. Broadrib’s side.

“If faithful service though, with but a weak heart, for the doctor he says it is so...” she began to blubber out, and she pressed her wet cheek against the hand.

But Sir Arthur Johnson, who had remained triumphant and majestic, exclaimed to the two women:

“Now you perceive the results of debauchery and feather-headedness. That infamous scoundrel is struck blind in the midst of his excesses; he is overwhelmed by the laws of his country, and you are two betrayed and abandoned women...”

Mr. Broadrib looked round over the Lady Savylle’s head that was still upon his shoulder. “Oh, go away for a silly old goat,” he said. “Didn’t you hear me tell the fellow that his sentence is to be revised?”

“Yes,” Sir Arthur answered, with a splendid unconcern. “I told them they must give him another year, and they will.”

“Well, you run away and see,” Mr. Broadrib said.

Sir Arthur looked him hard in the eyes.

“You mean,” he gasped, “that you have been meddling! Infamous!” He rushed from the room and they heard him exclaiming “Infamous!” all down the stairs.

CHAPTER IV
.

THE major was taken back to Basildon, wrapped up like a bale of merchandise, in the motor; and it fell to Miss Peabody to be driven by the major’s uncle in the dogcart. For Miss Peabody had been deeply offended by Mrs. Foster in the well of the court. Mrs. Foster had wept over the condition of Miss Delamare when she fainted, and this had appeared to Miss Peabody to be excessive. She had said that she was the person to be considered, as it was her fiancé who was to be sent to prison, not Miss Delamare’s. And Mrs. Foster had snapped out that she loved little Flossie’s little finger better than the whole of Miss Peabody’s body, and so did the major, and so did everybody with eyes in their heads. The words were unconsidered and spoken in emotion, but Miss Peabody treasured them up.

The trial had been resumed and concluded with an air of extraordinary solemnity. The three justices upon the bench looked more tired and more tempestuous than ever; but they had received a telegram addressed to Mr. Broadrib and communicated to them which was couched in extraordinarily vigorous terms from the Home Secretary. And they realized that the eyes of two great parties would certainly be upon them. They were going to act with the dignity that their country and the civilized world expected from them. Twenty minutes before they had been in a very different case; they had been presiding in an obscure court over an obscure allegation against an obscure member of the wealthy classes.

The moment the major was again in the dock, Mr. Justice Hills, who had by now remembered that he was a judge of the King’s Bench, remarked peremptorily:

“Have you anything to say why sentence should not be pronounced on you?”

The major remarked: “I thought you had pronounced sentence; I don’t care tuppence. You obviously can’t do anything so ridiculous as to sentence me to six months’ imprisonment for offences that I never committed.”

Mr. Justice Hills appeared to be paying him no attention. “The offences that you have committed,” he said, “are very serious, and we might take into consideration also your disrespectful conduct to the court in leaving the dock before the end of the trial. But taking into consideration the fact that a female connection of yours had become indisposed, and that you were only acting in the interests of common humanity in desiring to fetch restoratives for the lady..

“But I wasn’t doing anything of the sort,” the major said “... taking into consideration the fact that you
appeared
,” the judge said significantly, “to be going to fetch restoratives for the lady, we shall pass over that portion of your conduct. The sentence that we have already pronounced upon you was merely by way of showing you what are our powers. It should serve as an excellent warning to all evil-doers who may be tempted to act in the future as you have done in the past.”

“But bless my soul,” the major said, “I didn’t do anything at all.”

“But taking into consideration your youth and inexperience,” the judge said, “and considering also that a distinguished ornament of this bench” — here Mr. Justice Hills bowed in the direction of Mr. Broadrib—”has seen fit to intercede for you, and to explain that you have suffered what it is customary to call ‘considerable hardship’ in the service of your country, we are ready to use the powers of reconsideration that the law has given into our hands, and to apply to you the First Offenders Act. You are discharged.”

“Well,” the major said, “I guess the First Offenders Act was never more fittingly applied. For wasn’t it the first offence of the sort that was ever tried? — to offer an old gentleman a corner seat in one’s reserved carriage — for that’s the only offence that has been proved against me.” Then he stepped down out of the dock and gave the blushing policeman half a sovereign.

There was a great deal of tension in the Manor House that night, for, during her drive in the dogcart, Miss Peabody, who was not in the least satisfied with the course the trial had taken, took occasion to insist that Mr. Arthur Foster should refuse absolutely to sign the contract for the new theatre. She took occasion also to say many things that completely destroyed the character of Miss Delamare. For what had most irritated her in the things of the trial had been the fact that Miss Delamare had fainted and not she herself. This appeared to her to be the most disgraceful episode in the disgraceful career of that actress, for she considered that the fainting fit was an absolute proof of what she called “Guilty Relations” between Miss Delamare and the major. So that, when he got down from the dogcart, Mr. Arthur Foster went straight to his wife’s room and announced that he was determined to refuse Miss Delamare the leading part in the new theatre. To his intense relief his wife said not a single word beyond the one phrase: “Then I advise you not to say a word of it to Miss Delamare.” But there was a sort of steely, enigmatic manner about the lady that seriously alarmed Mr. Foster. He attempted to explain the motives of his resolve, but Mrs. Foster only answered: “It’s your own money, I suppose. You can do what you like with it. You had better go away now; I want to give orders about Edward’s dinner. He won’t come down this evening; he is not well. I shan’t, either; I’m not well, and Flossie will dine with me. She’s not well.”

And the moment Mr. Foster was gone Mrs. Foster rang the bell and told her maid to tell her Ladyship’s Own Maid that if Miss Jenkins was at liberty, she would come and see Miss Jenkins in the housekeeper’s room. And she followed so hard on the heels of her own maid, that she was in Miss Jenkins’s room before the servant had got the words out of her mouth. She said, with the remains of the dignity which she had been bestowing upon her husband:

“I’ll trouble you, Miss Jenkins, to arrange that I have another room, and that my things are removed from mine to-morrow morning.” And then, the servant being gone from the room, she said: “I really can’t help it, Miss Jenkins; either that woman goes, or I do.” And she burst into a flood of tears.

Miss Jenkins settled her down into her armchair before the fire. She produced a small green phial that contained sedative drops; she dropped six of these on to a lump of sugar and she put the lump of sugar in Mrs. Foster’s mouth.

“You will feel better in three minutes,” she said; “and during those three minutes you had better just cry, ma’am.”

The room was small and square and comfortable, and Mrs. Foster cried on, letting her tears fall into the fender. Miss Jenkins stood calm and erect on the other side of the table that had a red baize covering. She looked down at her fingers and reflected.

“Of course, ma’am,” she said at last, “if you really wanted Miss Peabody ejected from this household, I can do it for you!”

Mrs. Foster looked up from the fire-place.

“If I want it!” she exclaimed. “I want nothing else; nothing else in the world. That woman is the ruin of all our lives, and if I spoke discourteously to her in the court, which I couldn’t help, being carried out of myself by anxiety for Flossie — for I said to her, meaning Miss Peabody, that I loved Miss Delamare’s little finger better than the whole of Miss Peabody’s body — though it would be more proper to say that I hate the whole of Miss Peabody’s body and soul and mind and machinations, for she’s plotting and plotting and plotting — and so did the major love Flossie better, though I’m not saying that he’s in love with her, and so would anybody who had a feeling heart in his or her breast. And now she’s plotted and plotted until she’s got Mr. Foster to desert Flossie Delamare — and I’m sure if I wasn’t afraid the major would need my money, I’d set Miss Delamare up in a theatre myself. And I’m sure of this, too, that unless Mr. Foster changes his mind in the night without any words spoken by me, I will never sleep in the same room with him again, for he’s so weak and so easily influenced, that I’m tired of him and done with him; and that’s the last word I mean to say about this for fear of boring you, Miss Jenkins; but this isn’t the last word I’m going to think, and the thoughts come bubbling up in me like the water of a plum-pudding that I used to watch boiling when I was in my father’s house. For the admiral he was a man, though a rampant roaring man, and the major is my own boy, and I’d go to the bad for him; but as for Mr. Foster.. — Mrs. Foster suddenly closed her lips tight—”well, I can’t think of what to say about Mr. Foster, and it wouldn’t beseem me to say it if I could think of it.”

Miss Jenkins remained reflecting for quite a long time. At last she said:

“Of course, I’m willing to attempt to eject the lady; and if you give me a free hand I’m perfectly willing to try to do it, and do it I think I can. I should prefer it just to come about, for, if there’s any kind of decency in things, it would come about. But there doesn’t seem to be — any kind of decency in things. I should have thought that when those charges were made against the major Miss Peabody, considering her nature, would have thrown the major over. But that doesn’t seem to be her nature. On the contrary, it’s acted in the other way. So that if you ask me, I will do what I can, though it appears to me to be a discreditable action, and that’s all there is to it.”

Mrs. Foster suddenly stood up. “A discreditable action?” she asked. “Did you ever hear of Saint George? — the gentleman who rescued a naked princess from a dragon. And did you ever hear that that was a discreditable action? — though I can’t say that the major is anything like a naked princess, and neither am I for the matter of that. But if you could rescue us from this dragon — two of us...” and Mrs. Foster broke off, to begin again with extraordinary vigour: “Discreditable! why she’s the ruin... why she’s the end...” and Mrs. Foster broke off again and remarked: “But I’m boring you.”

Miss Jenkins still remained standing perfectly still, looking downwards and reflecting.

“It seems to me, ma’am,” she said at last, “that if you are going to separate from Mr. Foster, it would be more proper and seemly that he should be moved away from your room than you. And if you agree to that, that’s what I’ll do to-morrow morning.”

“I daresay you’re right, Miss Jenkins,” Mrs. Foster said. “You put us all right in everything But that’s not the important point. The important point is, what are you going to do about the other thing?”

“I don’t think I can tell you about that, ma’am,” Miss Jenkins answered.