Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (443 page)

PART III
.

CHAPTER I
.

MR. ARTHUR FOSTER had a thoroughly uncomfortable dinner with Miss Peabody and Mrs. Kerr Howe. Miss Peabody was exceedingly nervous; Mr. Foster was thoroughly fidgety; and Mrs. Kerr Howe talked incessantly, and with a hard insistence, about the reform of conventional marriage and her new play, which she had almost persuaded Miss Delamare to promise to stage at the reformed theatre. This made Mr. Foster extremely uncomfortable, for he could not help remembering at every word of Mrs. Kerr Howe’s, that he had promised to suppress the reformed theatre. Miss Peabody, on the other hand, was pleased. She thought it really splendid that Mrs. Kerr Howe should prove by her conversation, which could only be regarded as immoral in the extreme, that a reformed theatre conducted by a person like Miss Flossie Delamare would be an exceedingly undesirable thing, not only for the morals of the country, but also for Mr. Foster’s own social advancement.

She wanted, indeed, to explain this to Mr. Foster after dinner. She meant to tell him that merely turning out Miss Delamare need not necessarily suppress the theatre altogether. She herself, she wanted to say, was perfectly ready and able to run the theatre. Of course, she was not capable of acting herself, but with the literary education that she had received in Boston, which is the acknowledged metropolis of learning for the world, she would be perfectly able to select the plays which were to be produced, and to engage actresses of serious and not merely frivolous gifts. She was anxious, moreover, to insist that Mr. Foster should enforce his authority and have Miss Delamare ejected from the house next day. She wanted to say that Flossie was leading the major astray. She was absolutely certain of this. She thought she had surprised glances between the major and Miss Delamare in the court.

But she did not get any conversation with Mr. Foster. He was fidgetingly anxious for some conversation with his wife, and when Mrs. Kerr Howe said that she was going to get her play and read them the second act, he took the opportunity of going upstairs to his wife’s bedroom. Miss Peabody, also, went to her own room; so that when Mrs. Kerr Howe returned to the drawing-room she found no audience at all for her play, and she spent the rest of the evening playing the music of “Pigs is Pigs” in solitude amongst ghostly men in armour.

Mr. Foster did not find his wife in her bedroom. And when he asked her maid, he was told that Mrs. Foster was with the major. He went there himself, and there he found the major in his dressing-gown lying in the long arm-chair before the fire. He had a green shade over his eyes, and Mrs. Foster and Miss Delamare were also there. Mrs. Foster was knitting Berlin wool; Miss Delamare was making up a ball from a skein that the major held over his two hands, and they were all laughing at the tops of their voices, because Miss Delamare was giving them an exact imitation of the mannerisms of all the three justices, of the policemen, of Mr. Broadrib, and Sir Arthur Johnson. Just as Mr. Foster came into the room, she was erecting her head, frowning tremendously, and exclaiming: “Infamous!”

The pleasant family tone of the room affected Mr. Foster with a sort of homesickness. He asked to be permitted to sit down, and no one forbade it. And then he informed his nephew that he intended to write to
The Times
to denounce the Lord Chancellor’s new experiments in justices of the peace. The major thanked his uncle, and begged him not to take so much trouble; but Mr. Foster said it was his duty as the sturdy Nonconformist Unionist that he was. Mrs. Foster just sat and knitted, but there was in her eyes an expression so nearly resembling the steely and the ironical, that Mr. Foster’s nervousness increased. And then once again, Flossie, who was the most good-natured little soul alive, and who perceived that there was in the air a decided strain, began a new series of imitations of the trial. But Mr. Foster observed that, although his wife laughed till the tears came when Miss Delamare said: “Have you anything to say why sentence should not be passed upon you?” Mrs. Foster became steely and cold in expression whenever he raised his own voice. And after an hour and a half of it he really could not stand it any longer. He said: “My dear, I should be really glad of a word with you.”

Mrs. Foster rose in an extraordinarily stiff manner and followed him out of the room. He led her into the next bedroom, turned up the light and closed the door.

“My dear,” he began at once in a hurried and flustered voice, “I want you to understand that I am perfectly reasonable in the step I propose to take. Putting aside the facts of Flossie’s past history, I have just been listening to the plot of a play by Mrs. Kerr Howe...”

Mrs. Foster interrupted him suddenly and disconcertingly:

“If you can find it in your heart to say anything against that little creature that’s sitting in there with my Edward..

“I wasn’t saying anything at all against her,” Mr. Foster exclaimed: “but this play of Mrs. Kerr Howe’s that she has promised to put on...”

“She hasn’t promised to put on any play by Mrs. Kerr Howe at all,” Mrs. Foster said. “She hasn’t promised, and she isn’t going to.”

“But it’s a terrible play,” Mr. Foster remarked. “It’s no good talking, Arthur,” his wife answered, “and I’m not going to talk. If your own heart doesn’t tell you what’s right and proper, you’re not the man I took you for, and there’s an end of it. I won’t hear another word.”

“But consider the whole of the circumstances,” Mr. Foster said. “Consider that we could not possibly have Miss Delamare in the house when Edward is married to Olympia. Consider all the trouble it would make. Consider the scandal it would cause if Olympia objected. Surely, surely, we’ve got to consider that splendid and gifted woman before the private wishes of any other member of the household. You haven’t got anything to say against
that
, have you?” He paused for some reply from his wife, but there came none.

There was beginning a babble of voices from the corridor.

“That appears to me to be the first thing to be considered,” Mr. Foster repeated “Surely you will not deny that!”

“The first thing that seems to me to be considered,” Mrs. Foster said maliciously, “is that, by your silliness, Flossie and Edward have been left alone in his bedroom, and that your fine madam has discovered them there. You can hear her pretty voice...”

And there was no mistaking the fact that the raised tones of Miss Peabody were coming from somewhere at no great distance.

They went side by side into the next room.

“This is the end,” Miss Peabody was exclaiming tragically, in the closing words of a long invocation. She turned upon Mr. Foster.

“Here,” she exclaimed, “you have ocular proof of the abandoned nature of this young person. Is it conceivable that any other member of her sex would be found in these circumstances?” There was such fire in her voice and gestures that Mr. Foster was really slightly alarmed.

“God bless my soul!” he exclaimed. “Not in each other’s arms!”

“And why shouldn’t they be?” Mrs. Foster asked, with an alarming sharpness. It was so alarming that Mr. Foster blurted out:

“Of course, it would not be a proof of guil — of guilty...”

And then Miss Peabody exclaimed “Silence!” with such vigour that they were all quiet. “They were
not
in each other’s arms,” she continued. “Why should they be? I am not complaining of Edward. I trust him implicitly. But it is this abandoned and shameless woman whom I find here that I denounce. I accuse her of creeping after my fiancé on every occasion; of using devices to attract his affection. I accuse her...”

“Really, Olympia,” the major began, but she took no notice; and for a minute they were talking together. Miss Peabody’s voice came out triumphant.

“A woman who is capable of putting herself into such a situation...”

“Of course, my dear lady,” Mr. Foster said, “it is very shocking. But still there are... there are extenuating circumstances..”

Miss Peabody said “What are they?” with such violence that Mr. Foster forgot completely all that he had meant to say. And she continued triumphantly: “A woman who will come to a man’s rooms...”

And then Miss Delamare stood up.

“Don’t you forget,” she remarked good-humouredly, “that I am not the only pebble on the beach. You’re making such a ridiculous exhibition of yourself, that you do not deserve any sympathy; but still — just remember that for a minute.”

Miss Peabody exclaimed “Mr. Foster!” in tones so tragic that Mr. Foster started towards her side.

“Now we’ve had enough of this,” Mrs. Foster remarked, and at the same moment Miss Peabody said:

“We’ve had more than enough of this,” and she looked fixedly at Mr. Foster to remark: “Either Miss Delamare leaves this house, or I do.” And like an echo Mrs. Foster said:

“Either Miss Delamare stays here, or I go.” Miss Peabody really started.

“Either Miss Delamare stays in this house,” Mrs. Foster repeated categorically, “or I go out of it. I hope you understand me.”

Mr. Foster stuttered: “What? What? What?”

“Yes, what, what, what,” Mrs. Foster said hysterically. “For a long time Miss Delamare has been more than a daughter to me. I’ve never known what it was to have a child, or any comfort; and now I know it, and I’m not going to give it up. I’ve had the dear and precious luxury of having my Edward, but that’s going to be only for a week or two. He’s going to be taken from me by a woman whom I can never like. And I am not going back to my loneliness again. So that it’s come to this...” And Mrs. Foster looked round her with an expression of courageous terror. “Now here, with all of you to witness, I adopt Miss Delamare for my own child. So long as she stays where I am she is my own dear daughter. And if she is driven out of it I go with her. And I will be her chaperon and wait for her outside the theatre, or whatever it is her paid chaperon does, if she’ll have me, until world without end.”

For a moment Miss Peabody gazed round her in what might have been called a baleful manner. Then she swallowed a disagreeable lump in her throat. She had got hold of the situation so thoroughly that, although this announcement entirely changed the situation, it did not take her more time than that moment of swallowing to know pretty well where she stood. She knew, for instance, that although she had Mr. Foster very much under her thumb, she had not got him sufficiently there to make him contemplate with equanimity the prospect of a definite breach with Mrs. Foster. She could see that that elderly gentleman was exceedingly “on the jump,” as nervous as a man well could be; and she knew that she would have to do something to calm matters down. She was still determined to eject Miss Delamare from the reformed theatre scheme, and she thought she could always influence Mr. Foster sufficiently for that by just forcing it perpetually on his attention that no one would take Miss Delamare seriously enough, if she were left as the acting manageress of the theatre — seriously enough to make the theatre any good for Mr. Foster’s social advancement. She knew that there she was on pretty safe ground, whereas when it came to attacking Miss Delamare’s moral character, although she was perfectly certain that Miss Delamare was an infamous woman, she realized that she had not got anything to go upon. She had never heard a single word against Flossie. But Flossie could not be taken very seriously, and a theatre that Flossie ran certainly could not be taken seriously enough to get Mr. Foster a knighthood as a national benefactor. She remained perfectly determined to oust Flossie Delamare from that family; but she saw that she had been too precipitate. She would just have to wait till she was safely married to the major. She had time enough in that one action of swallowing to feel what you might call all the elements in that situation, although she certainly did not have time to put them into thoughts. And she just said:

“Of course, that entirely alters matters altogether. Of course, if Mrs. Foster has adopted Miss Delamare, it makes Miss Delamare in a sort of a way almost Edward’s sister. So that I can see that various little tokens of affection from Flossie — if I might call her Flossie...”

“I think you had better call me Florence,” Miss Delamare said. “That’s my name.”

“... any little evidences of affection that Florence may have shown Edward are, of course, upon an entirely different basis.”

“Of course, of course,” Mr. Foster said.

“And that being so,” Miss Peabody continued, “there doesn’t seem to me to be anything left for me but to congratulate Florence on the news that I have just heard, and to hope that everything will be very pleasant in the future.”