Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (485 page)

Suddenly his hand moved with a resolute action, with a quick motion that she knew to mean he was coming back to life; and suddenly she exclaimed:

“We’ve found it, really.”

And he said: “Yes! yes! The very centre of dark forest.”

CHAPTER
V

MR. PETT inhabited one of those discreet houses of which there is a colony nestled away to the south-east of South Kensington station. In the tortuous and narrow streets of this district there is very little traffic, and in the resulting quietness Mr. Pett found that tranquillity of atmosphere which was necessary to his avocation as a Thinker. He might have been in a country village. His old house stood in a large garden that was completely surrounded with a high wall. Before the front door stood a gate with a grille, and this gate the servants could open from the kitchen by pressing a button. Mr. Pett believed very much in all labour-saving appliances. The house itself might have been built in 1820, but in the interests of hygiene and for the slaying of all insects as well as of all microbes, Mr. Pett had so filled up all interstices with white paint and white enamels that, in a winter twilight with the fire dancing, the aspect of the long, rather low, rooms was really very pleasant. All the tapestries were of blue curtain serge; on the walls there were many high art photographs of Mr. Pett, bearing inscriptions to the effect that they were respectfully presented by exclusive photographers. There were also many portraits of Mr. Pett’s distinguished contemporaries, they too bearing evidence in the form of inscriptions that they were presented by the distinguished sitters. In the white wooden book-shelves were a great many books, modern editions of classics, novels presented by their authors, modern scientific works, and books concerned with economics. So that, in his complacent moments, Mr. Pett could feel that he was really founding a family in an ancestral home, for there was none of his books and none of his pictures on the walls that did not give evidence of some distinguished association or another; and since Mr. Pett ardently believed that wars were at an end, and that a new era had dawned, he could think contentedly that his children — for he was now sufficiently wealthy to consider the possibility of burdening himself with a family — might thank him for placing them when they came into existence amongst the aristocracy of the new era. Indeed, there was practically no one, whether it were Mr. Bernard Shaw, Mr. Galsworthy, Mr. H. G. Wells, or the President of the new founded British Academy, or Monsieur Anatole France, or Count Tolstoi, or the President of the Fabian Society, who was not represented in one form or another in Mr. Pett’s residence. And Mr. Pett could quite justly think that he himself stood not in the least below the level of these founders of the Great New Things that would come.

In such a winter twilight Mr. Pett stood before his polished brass mantel-shelf, in the white room with the blue serge curtains; pieces of wood burning in the fireplace sent out pleasant reflections that danced on the shiny white surface of the walls. Mr. Pett was talking energetically, and with a certain high spirit in the flow of his words. In the shadows close at his right hand sat Mrs. Pett; in the shadows before him, the Marquis da Pinta and a Dom Crisostomo Carrasco, a gentleman who, although he was a Spaniard, was nevertheless the Marquis da Pinta’s agent in Galizia. The Dom Carrasco was a little dark man. In the dancing light of the flames his face stood out from time to time, vivid but exhibiting a strained attention. He had a little, thin, black curly beard, and his eyes shone with a deep, half-maniacal fury. He was of the Anarchist degenerate type, but he was filled with a fervent passion for Royalism and the Catholic Faith.

“A man like that ought to be killed!” Mr. Pett exclaimed.

“Yes, yes, he ought to be killed,” the Marquis da Pinta repeated. “I will kill him myself when I am at liberty to do so. Every day I am practising with my sword. He has desecrated the memory of the great Dumas.”

The Dom Carrasco leant forward in his armchair and exclaimed:

“Yes, yes, he ought to be killed.” And his white fingers in the fire-light crawled like a bunch of sleepy, new-born snakes.

“It’s not soon enough,” Mr. Pett exclaimed, “to kill him in a duel after the counter-revolution. He ought to be killed at once, or at the very least as soon as the King is put on his throne.”

“Yes, yes,” Dom Carrasco exclaimed, “as soon as the King shall enjoy his own again.”

Mrs. Pett said agonisedly: “But, for God’s sake, be careful, Herbert!”

And Mr. Pett snarled at her sharply: “What do you mean?”

“It’s exactly,” Mrs. Pett said, “as if you were asking to have Count Macdonald murdered.”

“No; I’m asking to have him executed,” Mr. Pett said, “that’s what I want. He ought to go out of the world sharply and quickly, and without any romance to leave a glamour round his name. He ought to be shot by order of a court-martial. That’s it, he ought to be shot quickly, quietly, and efficiently, with no fuss about it.”

“Yes, yes, quickly and quietly,” Dom Carrasco muttered. “But you can’t really mean it, Herbert?” Mrs. Pett said. She appealed earnestly to the other two. “You must understand, gentlemen,” she said, “that my husband is only speaking figuratively. It’s a common enough thing for him to say that traitors to the State should be executed. But he doesn’t mean it literally. Count Macdonald can’t be called a traitor to the State. He’s only a gentleman of a different way of thinking from my husband.”

The Marquis da Pinta barked out violently: “But he is a traitor to the State. He will soil the opening years of the new reign of the King by shedding blood. There must be no blood when the King ascends the throne. Besides, he has desecrated the memory of the great Dumas.”

“You only got that idea of shedding blood from my husband,” Mrs. Pett said. “It isn’t your own idea.”

Mr. Pett exclaimed violently: “Shut up, Anne.” And then he squared his shoulders to deliver his philosophy. “You might say that I am expressing an old idea when I say that Sergius Mihailovitch ought to be put out of the way. You might say he deserves death because he is setting out to take life. That would be the old Hebraic shibboleth — an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and death for him who deals death. But that is an exploded theory, though even under that old code Macdonald deserves death..

Mrs. Pett exclaimed once more:” But Herbert..

She was really very seriously concerned. She knew perfectly well that her husband was merely taking a dramatic pose. Really, he was only trying to discredit Macdonald. He hadn’t the least intention or the least desire of having any life taken. But he had got upon that line of talk, and he stuck to it for the sake of dramatic effect. And she disliked this exceedingly, because she thought that these two gentlemen would consider her husband a confounded fool and a disagreeable sort of person, because they couldn’t help knowing that Mr. Pett had paid his court to Lady Aldington and that Macdonald was the preferred suitor.

She disliked thinking that these foreigners should consider her husband to be what she called a dirty little swine. She didn’t consider that he really was this, but she knew that in these moments of tension he gave way to unworthy emotions. She had to consider her home, her children, and the reputation of her little clan, and these she was trying to protect. It never came into her head that these foreign gentlemen would take her husband seriously and, with his sanction, would attempt to murder Sergius Mihailovitch. That appeared to her an extravagant idea. People did not do these things.

“Even by the old code,” Mr. Pett continued, “Macdonald is worthy of death in any honourable circle. He has taken money from the Duke of Kintyre as the price of his dishonour. In any decent society that would be judged worthy of death. He’s taken money from Lady Aldington, who is his mistress. In any decent society that would be judged worthy of death.”

“Certainly these things would be worthy of death,” the Marquis da Pinta said.

“He has squandered Lady Aldington’s money upon a common woman of the streets,” Mr. Pett went on with his indictments. “He is what the French would call a
souteneur.
That alone is worthy of death.”

“But, good God, Herbert,” Mrs. Pett said, “you know perfectly well that all of these things are untrue!”

“I’ve had them all from his wife,” Mr. Pett snapped back. “He has deserted his wife and left her to starve. That’s enough to make any decent man want to shcot him.”

“Certainly,” Dom Carrasco said, “that’s enough to make any decent man desire to shoot him. He is a blot upon the face of monarchy.”

Mrs. Pett suddenly began to laugh. It appeared to her to be the only thing to do.

“You’re all perfectly grotesque,” she said; “you seem to forget that this is the twentieth century. You’re like a set of conspirators in an Italian mediaeval town, and Herbert is like Henry II when he said to his courtiers:

‘Will no one rid me of this pestilent priest?’ and so they went and murdered St. Thomas à Becket. I really wish you’d stop it, because if anybody should ever hear — at least it gives me the feeling — you really would appear rather discreditable.”

A silence settled down upon the room; the fire-light flickered; the branches of a leafless laburnum tapped upon the window. Suddenly the door opened, and against the lighted hall there appeared the figure of one of Mr. Pett’s efficient servants, and behind her that of the Countess Macdonald. Mrs. Pett sprang up quickly from her cane chair, and really running into the hall she prevented the Countess’s entrance.

“Herbert’s got some men on business,” they heard her say, “let’s go into the dining-room.” Then the door closed.

Mr. Pett continued: “He merits death for many offences even under the old code. But I do not stand for anything old. I stand for the Great New Things that are coming. In the New Time there won’t be any death penalty for the killing of a man. There won’t be any death penalty at all, except for the one offence that this man has committed. Indeed, hardly anyone will kill a man, all the passions that lead to this being abolished by a wise government. But there is one crime that is unpardonable, that is, an attempt to kill New Ideas. That is unpardonable because it hurts not one man but the entire community, and not only the entire community but the entire State of which the symbol is the King. That is what this man Macdonald has done for the counter-revolution. We had the New Idea that this should take place without any show of force or any danger of the shedding of blood, and to repair this offence there is no penalty but that of extinction. And this extinction should not take the form of execution with its forms and pomps, because that would draw attention to the man and his ideas. Nay, it should not even take the form of execution by court-martial. Some private person should be selected by the head of the State quickly and quietly to assassinate the wrong-doer. He shouldn’t, indeed, even be formally informed that he is to assassinate the criminal. A wink or a nod from the head of the State ought to be sufficient. I hope you follow my line of reasoning?”

The Marquis da Pinta said: “I follow it perfectly. Your logic is incontestable. We must put this man out of the way quickly and quietly.”

“I will attend to its being done,” Dom Crisostomo Carrasco exclaimed; “you may depend upon me.”

Mr. Pett suddenly had a little moment of emotion.

“But, good God,” he said, “you don’t suppose I’m in earnest? You don’t suppose that I really want Macdonald murdered?”

The Marquis da Pinta said: “No, no, of course not,” in an official manner.

And Dom Carrasco repeated: “I perfectly understand what you want done.”

“But look here!” Mr. Pett said agitatedly. “You quite understand that I don’t want that. I strongly object to murder. That was only a theory.”

“Oh, I perfectly understand Your Excellency,” Dom Carrasco said. “It shall be all exactly as Your Excellency desired.”

“That’s quite certain?” Mr. Pett asked. “You gentlemen are sometimes rather ready with the knife, I believe.”

“I should not think of letting a knife be used,” the Marquis da Pinta said. “You seem to forget that I am a person of intelligence.”

They began to talk about the affairs of the Galizian counter-revolution. They were prospering even beyond their anticipations. Operating from the Spanish border on the north-west of Galizia, Mr. Carrasco, who, for purposes of identification, was mounted on a white stallion that had one piebald mark like a diamond on its left haunch — Mr. Carrasco in three months had covered very nearly the whole of the provinces of Gallegos and South Galizia. The province of Batalha, where the population was really densest, since it contained two and a quarter of the three million Galizians, Carrasco could neglect, for that province would do pretty well what Mr. Macdonald — El Rey de Batalha — chose to command; and Carrasco himself had seen this Mr. Macdonald just before leaving for England, and Mr. Macdonald assured him that as far as he was concerned the counter-revolution might begin at any moment.