Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (469 page)

Kintyre and Lady Aldington explained that they had run down to call on the Countess. Mr. Dexter was still walking the King up and down the path at the end of the garden....

CHAPTER II
I

IT wasn’t, however, for nearly a week that Macdonald could bring himself to have his business interview with Mr. Dexter, and this was as much as anything because of the bewildering muddle in which he felt himself to stand. He could not really get at any main point of his immediate career. All he knew was that an extraordinary number of people seemed to want him to do an extraordinary number of things. Thus, Miss Dexter insisted that he should go shopping with her. She did not appear to know a single lady in England. Lady Aldington sent him a card for an At Home. On the top of the card there was written: “Dr. Farquhar will speak on the nationalisation of Scottish railways. You remember Dr. Farquhar?”

Miss di Pradella also insisted on being taken to Hampton Court. He couldn’t make out why she should want to be taken to Hampton Court. She didn’t appear to know anything about the place. She wouldn’t let either the King or Miss Coward accompany them, and she insisted on dropping Sergius Mihailovitch at an inn called the Rainbow, whilst she herself was driven to another public house called the Swan. When she came back she exhibited every sign of distress. It appeared that there had been at the Swan tea-garden an elderly waiter called Niemkonski. Some years before, Mr. Niemkonski had lent Miss di Pradella’s father twenty-five pounds. This had never been repaid, and Miss di Pradella had learnt that Mr. Niemkonski was now in very poor circumstances. He was, moreover, the only Viennese that Miss di Pradella knew in London. And she had heard, at the Swan tea-garden, that two days before Mr. Niemkonski had been knocked down by a motor car just outside the Swan, and that he was somewhere in some hospital. She insisted that they must go and find him. She said that Mr. Niemkonski had claims upon her honour. She spoke as if she were an aristocrat of ancient lineage.

It was a great nuisance to Macdonald. The waiter with the broken leg had a wife and three children in a back street in Ealing. These also had to be found and provided for. The two younger children were boys at school, but the eldest was a girl of fifteen, who was taking cheap dancing lessons. Macdonald promised that he would try to find her a place in the ballet of the Talavera Theatre. It was all really a great nuisance, because Macdonald had made an appointment with Mr. Pett for five o’clock at his office, and Lady Aldington’s At Home was at nine. He realised that he was practically saddled with the fate of the entire Niemkonski family by the time he did arrive in Little Walden Street at seven-thirty.

Mr. Pett and Mrs. Pett, too, were waiting for him in the large room that contained the black oak table and the Chippendale chairs. Miss di Pradella herself was quite free of the place, and dropped herself into a deep armchair and began to eat pralines. Mr. Pett was exceedingly angry with Sergius Mihailovitch. He contrived by means of effective cockney hints to convey the idea that Sergius Mihailovitch had been trying to edge him out of any control of the Galizian counter-revolution. This was all the more unreasonable in that for the last week Mr. Pett had been laid up with a chill on the liver. He had indeed been so ill with it that although Macdonald had tried to see him daily, the doctors had not allowed it.

He stood before the Chippendale bureau, swinging an oak stick behind his legs. He was dressed in rather an elaborate black tail suit and carried a top-hat; but he was wearing a blue flannel shirt, and his black eyes had what in London is called a nasty expression. He exclaimed violently:

“Look here, you, I’m the chief person in this expedition, and don’t you forget it! It’s I that started the scientific reactionary movement in the world. And if you do anything, it’s because you are my puppet. Understand?”

Macdonald took out from the drawer of his bureau the deed of agreement with the Queen-Mother and the King.

“You’ll see if you read this that the terms you dictated have been adhered to exactly,” he said.

Mr. Pett fell vehemently upon the document as if it had been a halfpenny evening paper from which he desired to gather the result of the Boat Race.

“There is nothing in it,” he said, “about my having dictated these terms.”

Macdonald took a pen from the bureau. “I’ll write it in the end,” he said, “and sign it before a commissioner of oath.”

Mr. Pett reddened beneath his fury. He swallowed in his throat, grunted under his black and pendulous moustache, and began seriously to read the document.

Macdonald turned to Mrs. Pett, who was asking Miss di Pradella what she had seen at Hampton Court. Mrs. Pett appeared rather astonished when that young lady denied having seen either the Raphaels and Van Dycks or the Orangery, the Dutch Garden or the celebrated vine.

“I must say,” Mrs. Pett commented to Sergius Mihailovitch, “that you don’t appear to be much of a guide for foreigners. You’ve shown this young lady nothing at all.” And in painful and conscientious German she began to promise Miss di Pradella that she would herself take that young lady to Hampton Court, and explain to her the true significance of that place of gardens, decapitated queens, and long picture galleries.

Macdonald explained that they had been upon an errand of mercy and that accounted for their long delay. He expressed himself as being overwhelmed with contrition.

“Yes,” Mrs. Pett said seriously, “it is rather a pity. We have been waiting for all of two hours and a half.”

And at hearing that Sergius Mihailovitch really became overwhelmed.

“Oh, it does not matter about me,” Mrs. Pett said softly.

“I can wait for ever, but—” and by signifying her wishes with her eyes, Mrs. Pett withdrew Sergius Mihailovitch to the extreme end of the room, where they sat down upon two chairs side by side against the wall.

“It’s going to be a very troublesome business,” she said. “If you only could bring yourself always to be punctual in an appointment with Herbert! And if only you could make it fall out that nothing at all is done without Herbert’s being present, that would make it much easier.”

She looked at the ground rather apprehensively. Then she continued at last:

“You know Herbert well enough. As long as he is employed he is as reasonable and cheerful as a child. And, you know, he is nearly as disinterested as you are. But keeping him waiting is dreadful. You don’t know what it’s been like. I thought he would do you some personal violence.”

“Just because he imagined that I was trying to jockey him out of his share of the credit?” Macdonald asked.

“Just about that,” Mrs. Pett said. “You see, he has got the brain of the imaginative writer although he only writes serious books. When he is kept waiting with nothing to do, his brain always gets to work, and it always gets to work upon suspicions. I tell you whilst we’ve been sitting here he’s been imagining that you and the King and the Queen-Mother, with troops and all the rest of it, had sailed off to Galizia, and that you were going to get yourself nominated Emperor of the Peninsula.”

“But surely,” Macdonald said, “he knows me well enough..

Mrs. Pett put her little appealing hand gently upon his.” It’s really very serious,” she said. “Just consider! Just before you came in he had gone to the telephone to ‘phone the whole story to the
Daily Herald
— all about everything: you, and the Queen-Mother, and the King, and Mr. Dexter, and the Russian battleship he believed you had gone off in.”

“But that would have ruined everything,” Macdonald said. “If the paper had published...”

“My dear!” Mrs. Pett said, “my dear Sergius, my dear friend, that’s what I am so afraid will still happen. That’s why I so much wish that we weren’t in this thing at all. Don’t you understand that Herbert does not want anything out of it except that you should acknowledge that he is fit to manage everything?”

“Well, of course I acknowledge it,” Macdonald said.

“Oh, but can you acknowledge it enough?” she continued, with her little air of misgiving. “You’ll have to have it always in your mind. Do you know, I believe I know what will happen. One day Herbert will ask for something absolutely ridiculous. He will want to be Generalissimo of the Galizian forces or Archbishop of Batalha. He won’t
want
to be it, that is to say, but he will ask for the nomination. And you will start with surprise, or you will try to prove to him that because he isn’t a priest he can’t possibly be made an archbishop. And then, whenever that happens, the fat will be in the fire; and if he doesn’t do something horrible against you personally, he’ll do something that will ruin your whole scheme.”

“Oh, come,” Macdonald said, “I think you’re a little nervous and run down; but of course I’ll keep in mind what you say. If he wants to be Galizian nominee for Pope, he shall be nominated.”

“Of course you understand,” Mrs. Pett said, “he’ll back out of the nomination when once it is made. He’s going to back out of something to-day; he will sigh that he feels it will damage him as writer to take up any other work. But what he will really mean is that he is not after anything at all for himself. Only, for goodness’ sake, give him everything that he wants!”

“Oh, I’ll give him the moon,” Macdonald smiled. He and Mrs. Pett had been very good friends for many years.

“Of course,” Mrs. Pett said rather sadly, “everything has changed in our relationships. Years ago, when Herbert was an Anarchist and you gave up all your money to him to administer, it was easy. And when he was a Socialist and you did the same thing, it was just as easy. But now you’re doing the administering, and he has to run in double harness with you. It’s almost as if — he feels it as if you had some sort of control over him. It was all very simple once, but now it’s very complicated.”

“Yes, everything is complicated,” Macdonald said. “When I look back on any of my former phases — whether it was Houndsditch, or Putney, or even at Wiesbaden with the Grand Duke, it looks like the simplest life in the world. Now I simply don’t know where I am. And it goes on growing. Yesterday I seemed to be independent and in a country cottage; to-day I simply don’t know where my responsibilities begin and end. To-day I have picked up a waiter called Niemkonski and a hungry family. And, upon my soul, when it’s all over and done with, I don’t believe I’ve got ten pounds in the bank. Besides, I’ve got to go to Lady Aldington’s some time to-night and am not dressed yet.”

“Oh, we are all going to Lady Aldington’s,” Mrs. Pett said. “And we aren’t dressed. We aren’t going to be.” Macdonald looked at her questioningly.

“Oh, that’s Herbert’s idea of to-day,” she continued. “He says he won’t go into the halls of the great and pretend that he has forgotten his humble origin. That’s why he has put on a blue shirt with a black coat. You know Herbert.”

“Oh, I know Herbert,” Macdonald laughed. “At any rate, he’s quite serene now.”

Mr. Pett had thrown the document on to the black oak table. He was smiling complacently down upon it. He looked across at them, and suddenly he called from the end of the room:

“That’s a famous piece of work. You couldn’t have got anyone to do better than me. And you’ll see it will work out to a ‘t.’ I’ll bet this will be the model constitution for all the kings that ever get restored to their thrones after this. And that is mine.”

“Well, you’d better copyright it at once,” Macdonald called back to him.

“Oh, blow all that!” Mr. Pett answered. He looked at the table and blushed uneasily all over his face. “You don’t suppose,” he said, and he shuffled his feet, “that I was in earnest when I said that I wanted any of the credit of the thing. I am an author, that’s what I am. This kind of business is only recreation for me.”

Macdonald was approaching him slowly along the table to get at some more papers that were in the bureau behind Mr. Pett’s back.

“At any rate,” he said, “the whole credit of the central idea is yours. It took your scientific, economic mind to originate that.”

Mr. Pett shuffled still more with his feet and became more and more modestly crimson.

“Oh, rot!” he mumbled so that his words were hardly distinguishable. “The original idea was put into my head by a chap called Vincent. He was the
Daily Herald’s
correspondent at Flores. And one day he happened to say to me at the club that any Galizian might be bought for eight and fourpence — eight thousand picados and by remitting his taxes for a year.... That gave me the idea of the whole thing. From that to calculating the population of Galizia and multiplying it by eight and fourpence was a perfectly simple matter. The population of Galizia is three million, and three million times eight and fourpence is, roughly speaking, one million five hundred thousand pounds.”