Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (494 page)
Read Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) Online
Authors: Ford Madox Ford
“The whole of the trouble comes from your being a member of the shopkeeping classes. That’s what you are, a shopkeeper’s daughter. That’s what’s in the blood; that’s what’s in the profession. Your father was a tailor. If a customer brought him cloth to make a suit of he would steal a yard and a half of cloth and justify himself because it was the custom of the trade; that’s like you. You will take any advantage you can, and you will justify yourself because it’s the custom of a person in your position. That’s all you care about. When Sergius Mihailovitch has been generous to you, you’ve despised him, because you do not understand what generosity is. When Sergius Mihailovitch lost his affection for you, you upbraided him like a tradesman who sees a customer take his custom away and give it to another establishment. That’s what you are, a product of tradespeople. The difference between you and gentlefolk like Macdonald — Good God! — the difference between both you and me and him is that we haven’t got a spark of generosity in us. We’ve both conspired to injure that fine gentleman mortally. I’m ready to say that I’m Judas. But I’m ready to say too that all you’ve ever thought of in your life is the forty pieces of silver, of your own dirty personal vanity. We aren’t either of us fit to loosen the shoe latchets of Sergius Mihailovitch. That’s how the world has always been. That is how it will always be. If you manage to get your vitriol on to him, he’ll still be fifty thousand fathoms above the heads of you and me. We’re the lower classes, that’s what we are, because we haven’t got in the whole of our compositions a spark of generosity.”
His voice was getting higher and higher, and suddenly it broke altogether. The Countess appeared to be listening to him with a polite attention. When he had definitely stopped speaking she began calmly:
“I’ll admit that in a conventional sense vitriol is not a proper thing to use. It sounds vulgar. But I argued the matter very carefully with the President’s daughter. We agreed that this man is entirely infamous. He is infamous in his private life; his example would debauch the young of any nation. He is infamous in his public life. He has fought victoriously against the sacred cause of Freedom. And in all the principles of justice the implement used against an offender is roughly adjusted to his offence. A nobleman is hung with a silken rope, a common murderer gets hemp; a soldier is shot; certain infamous felons are infamously flogged. Vitriol is the weapon of infamy because it makes both the criminal who uses it and his victim infamous. So I shall use it as an infamous implement against an infamous man. You will acknowledge that that is justice.”
Terror and agony seized upon Mr. Pett. He heard sounds upon the deck: they became more numerous. There was a brushing footstep in the passage itself. The Countess’s fingers closed calmly round the large glass; she pushed the envelope off it with the muzzle of the revolver. Suddenly Mr. Pett screamed out:
“Sergius Mihailovitch, don’t come in! Don’t come in, Sergius Mihailovitch, on peril of your life!”
Then Mrs. Pett came in through the door. There was an extreme strangeness about the aspect of Mrs. Pett. She appeared to be bluish in the shadows of her face; her outline was oddly stiff; she tottered a little as she walked over the carpet, and her eyes never winked, they were perfectly stiff. She came in and sat down at the table. She passed her hand over her face as if her hair had fallen across it. She looked curiously at the ice that was melting in little pools upon the table-cloth, then she said without any expression at all:
“Sergius Mihailovitch is dead. They’ve shot him in the back.”
They were quite silent for fully three minutes. Then suddenly the Countess flung the revolver on the floor. It thumped heavily on the carpet.
“So may all traitors die!” she said.” I could have predicted that that would be his end.”
“No, you couldn’t,” Mrs. Pett said drearily. “You have had nothing to do with it. Not you. I loved Sergius Mihailovitch; when I used to see him playing with children, I wished he’d been the father of mine,”
Suddenly Mr. Pett began to whimper like a child crying. They couldn’t make any sense of his words. He tore at his collar to get it undone, but the linen was too thick. And he forgot about the stud. He went on whimpering and whimpering....
The Countess was trying to think of something effective to say. She could think of nothing, but she was convinced that she was the central figure of that scene. She had been dramatically avenged.
Then Kintyre came in. His face was very tired and his eyes were red. He sat down at the table; from outside they heard the gurgle of the falling tide. There fell upon them a dreary silence that comes after a death-struggle. A steward in his shirt-sleeves walked across the saloon to the closet. He came back with a half-filled bottle of brandy and went away. Some one threw down a coil of rope on the deck overhead, but they were all too dull even to start.
Mr. Dexter came in. He was smoking an enormous cigar that he had just begun. He tiptoed across the room and sat down at the far end of the table as if he desired companionship and yet did not wish to intrude upon a family in grief. He thought of saying: “Mamie’s real ill, and they’ve sent me away,” so as to explain his presence; but he didn’t say it. He took some notes out of his pocket and began to study them — a number of numbers in pencil. He found that he could not read them because his eyes were blurred. He thought he was responsible for the death of Macdonald because he had found the greater part of the money for the scheme.
The Countess moved over to his end of the table. She could not see any signs of grief upon his face, so she imagined that he might be the proper person to talk to about her wrongs. But he did not look up from his notes.
At last Kintyre asked Mrs. Pett: “What was the name of the man who did it? Have they caught him?”
“No,” Mrs. Pett said.” No one is to be caught at all. Didn’t you hear his last words?”
“I thought they were ‘
The dark forest,’
” the Duke said.
“Oh, that was to Lady Aldington,” Mrs. Pett said. “He looked at her and he smiled, and he just whispered: ‘The dark forest.’ But I was thinking of what he said to the King.”
“What did he say to the King?” the Duke asked. Hearing conversation, the Countess moved over behind them.
“He was lying in the garden,” Mrs. Pett said. “He had been walking there with the King to give him the last directions for the day. The man shot him from a dark clump of orange trees. Macdonald fell down. We were looking out of the upper window, Emily and I. She said just before that it was what she liked best in the world — to see her man doing things. That was the only speech of the sort that I’ve ever heard her say about him. She said it as if she didn’t think anyone was listening — or perhaps she was thinking that I felt in the same way. It was beautifully cool, after the day had been so hot.”
She looked at Kintyre and asked:’ Where were you?”
“Oh, I wasn’t in the palace at all,” Kintyre said.” I was seeing to the unmooring of the
‘Trogoff II.
Macdonald insisted that I should get her off to-night for fear they should loot. She’s a hundred miles away by now. What happened then?”
“Oh, we ran down,” Mrs. Pett said. “Macdonald was lying there. At first he was in too great pain to speak at all. The King was holding up his head and crying out for some one to come and search the garden, but there was such a noise and disorder in the palace that no one came. It was rather up towards the end of the building, in the dark where the trees are. Then a man came out of the orange bushes; he said that it was he that killed the traitor. A dark man in a long cloak. He spoke a little indistinctly, and the King was shouting out all the time, so he didn’t hear. There was a little moonlight; we could see rather distinctly. You know how clear the nights are. Then Lady Aldington knelt down beside him. He’d been making bubbling noises with his mouth, or as if he were shivering. That was just the pain. And then the nerve exhaustion came — I don’t know if you know anything about the spine — sensation ceases a minute or two after it’s been injured. And Macdonald looked at Lady Aldington. ‘Just excuse me a minute,’ he said, ‘I must talk to the King first.’ She said: ‘Ah! always the others first!’ That was the only thing she said to-night. Then Macdonald said: ‘Prop me up so that I can talk to the King,’ and Lady Aldington lifted up his shoulders and the King knelt over him.... The man who had shot him was still looking down. ‘Listen a minute, Pedrocito...’ Macdonald said: his voice was quite clear. I went and knelt beside Lady Aldington and helped her to hold him up. I’ve got his blood on the knees of my skirt. And then he said to the King: ‘Listen, this is cancer of the spine. An old complaint with me. It’s cancer of the spine. An old complaint with me. It’s cancer of the spine, you understand.’ The King said, ‘No, no.’ But Macdonald answered: ‘These are my last words to you. I command you to recognise that it was cancer of the spine. The Galizian doctors aren’t very good. No one knows what cancer is. It’s a foreign body introducing itself somehow into the tissues.’ I said, ‘Good God, Sergius Mihailovitch, how can you talk like that! Think of Emily!’ And then he said, ‘My dear’ — he said ‘My dear’ to me!—’I’m doing the best I can for Lady Aldington. I’m trying to keep my figure clean for her memory, it’s very urgent!’ The man who had shot him said: ‘No, it is not cancer of the spine. I shot you.’ Then Sergius Mihailovitch looked up at him. ‘My friend,’ he said, ‘don’t boast about it. Don’t put your personal credit before the credit of the King. No doubt I die of a necessary disease. Let it go at that. You don’t want to discredit the King by a trial at the opening of his reign. That’s what’s got to be avoided.’ Then he spoke to me. Yes, he said to me—’ Anne, you’re the coolest person here.’ That was true, I think, because the King was crying so that he seemed to have lost his senses. He said, ‘Understand, Anne, there mustn’t be any trial. I shall be dead in three minutes; these are my last words. There mustn’t be bloodshed on the King’s threshold.’ I said: ‘But there has been bloodshed.’ But he didn’t listen. He turned his head into Lady Aldington’s lap and he said: ‘The dark forest! The dear dark Forest.’ Of course he may have said something more, but I didn’t hear, because I took the King away and tried to explain to him what Macdonald wanted. Then Lady Aldington said that he was dead, and we all helped to carry him into the palace.”
HT
This 1913 novel is a political satire, featuring the eponymous character as a candidate for election to Parliament, having made a fortune in selling soap.
The novel portrays a corrupt world of political chicanery, with both political parties vying to secure Mr. Fleight as their candidate.
However, they are soon keen to drop him when they realise he is in fact an honest man that is likely to question and thwart their political operations.
Mr. Fleight
is an amusing novel depicting the underhand campaign manoeuvrings of politicians and provides a particular hostile criticism of the popular journalism of the time.