Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (582 page)

I said it was certainly the worst atrocity I had ever witnessed.

“And it forces things up,” the boy said, nervously. “Things one usually doesn’t talk about. You see, I’m... I’m fond of my uncle... and I adore the memory of my mother. She was like my sister... but softer. So gentle; so shy.... She was a Frenchwoman... from Arles. Utterly beautiful. You know the Arlésiennes....?”

I said: “Oh!” — rather as a tribute of astonishment at that piece of information than one to the beauty of the female inhabitants of Arles. He went on:

“And my uncle... I’m proud of him. But afraid.” He hesitated. “Do you happen to know a print that’s extraordinarily popular in country beerhouses in Germany? “.... It represented a Congress of Vienna or Berlin. The boy went on to give the idea that his uncle resembled those types of Victorian greatness — square-bearded, grave, sardonic, inactive, but very impressive. They stood, awfully, in groups, in rooms decorated with mirrors and filled with great ormoulu desks, their right hands pointing to the scrolls between immense inkstands — the scrolls whose writings shook the world or brought back peace with honour..... Within a month, alas, we were calling them scraps of paper.

Well, the boy said that his uncle resembled, in type, one of those statesmen who contrived those ineffective safeguards for an always threatened world. He said that once, in such a German country inn, looking at such a print, he had been irresistibly forced to exclaim:

“Why, that’s you, uncle!”

The print had been an unusually good impression, with a rare clearness of feature in its subjects.

His uncle, bearded, tall and autocratic, had answered: “ Nonsense, boy, that’s Salisbury. A good likeness, though, as he was at that age. He’s older than I.”

The boy’s dislike of intimacies must have stood in his way a good deal; for obviously his uncle couldn’t have given him a better opening. And he made the opening even larger. For, as if he were conscience-stricken at finding that the boy didn’t recognise the portrait of the Marquis of Salisbury — Bismarck’s “ lath painted to look like iron” — he said immediately afterwards that a gentleman ought to know something of the private history of his country, and began to lend the boy books from his own travelling library — fat books with titles like
The Life and Letters of Lord Elgin,
in several volumes. The boy said that here and there he came across marginal notes in pencil. They would be like: “This is wrong. Mr. G. did not sign till the 24th Sep. I was against the whole thing. — M.” But even that didn’t nerve the boy to asking questions that might have brought about revelations or an intimacy. So you have to imagine these two proud, reserved creatures, revolving half over Europe, the uncle always polite, the nephew never asking questions about “ things” — until it really became a settled habit of mind.

“So that,” the boy concluded,
“
I know nothing.... Nothing!”

He added: “But you understand. I’ve always been brought up to regard myself as occupying — or destined to occupy — a sheltered position in Society. But the experience of to-day...

We had by that time reached the doorstep of the Bloomsbury lodging house, and I heard no more; nor, except for just patting him on the black shoulder, did I have any opportunity of expressing the sympathy that I felt.

Over the lunch-table he had to report to his flashing sister all that had passed at his interview with Mr. Podd. Her eyes glittered, her cheeks were flushed, she propped her chin on her hands, leant across the tiles of the table and gazed into her brother’s eyes. She kept on spurring him on with:

“And then.... And then.
..

I couldn’t, at that time, get at the mainspring of her character, or even of her desire for the punishment of Mr. Podd. All families have their intimate shorthands for conversation, and I daresay these two used allusiveness that I did not catch on to. But I did gather that she had set him to say certain things and that he had said them, at any rate in the first half of the interview. For she would ask:

“Did you say that he had robbed the stranger within our gates?” He said that he had said so. I gathered, too — I don’t know how, for Miss Jeaffreson said no word, but sat with her hands entwined till the arrival of the buckwheat cakes and syrup — I gathered that Miss Jeaffreson had been on the side of moderation in spite of the outrages that the Doctor Geheimrath’s poet’s soul had suffered. You see, she had her
Child’s Guide to Nietzsche
for which she wanted a publisher, and Mr. Podd was the only publisher that she knew. That is a strong motive; but the imperious onrush of Miss Heimann must have swept her away until she, too, had concurred in the flagellation of the monstrous Podd. And she didn’t, now, comment at all. Only from time to time Mary Elizabeth looked sideways at her, and said:

“You see!” — as if she had been marking signal triumphs of her wisdom.

At any rate I had a pretty strong vision of the poor young man, pushed into that combat by the united strength of his women. He had my sympathy — for I saw that no man could have resisted that vital creature were she the woman of his hearth. And then she began to rally him about what she called his lugubrious aspect. Didn’t he approve of what he had done? Was he feeling remorse for the feelings of Mr. Podd?

He said, without any petulance, that he never had approved. And he added that Mr. Podd had scored on the whole.

Miss Heimann said — and it was like a detonation:

“That’s impossible!”

He looked her quite straight in the eyes and said nothing. And quite slowly she went pale and rigid. Then he exclaimed:

“Yes; that was it!”

It was rather dreadful, you know.

I don’t mean to claim that this was telepathy. They were very united if differing souls. But they were also very intimate. The subject was no doubt near the surface, always, of their minds. And almost certainly he had then a suggestion of the look he would usually have when, with her, he was discussing the matter. I wasn’t, of course, acquainted with his varying expressions. To me he appeared absolutely nonchalant; at any rate that was all that either of them said — for we began to talk about books.

CHAPTER III

IT was that scene, then, that came back to me when — say, at five minutes to three, in Shaftesbury Avenue — Miss Jeaffreson said that I, too, must have noticed that the young things were beginning to feel it deeply. It was a worry to her.

It worried me too, to be brought out of a rather colourless world of sheer thought into a street that included colour and features. As long as I was merely listening absently to Miss Jeaffreson and pursuing two trains of thought I was really pretty far away from Shaftesbury Avenue. Now I was brought back to it, with its passing of traffic that was like a fence to our footway; its rather cheap but pretentious shops, its sky-signs and its sunlight... and to looking at Miss Jeaffreson.

It was, you know, only her nose — which turned up too much — and her clothes that she ostentatiously despised, except that the materials were probably “very good,” of a blue-grey woollen kind — it was only those two things that made her appear uglyish. She rather threw them at you. But she had small feet and good ankles, slim hips, an upright carriage — and quite good eyes. Her lips were a little large — but they would have passed. And her voice was not unpleasant. When you noticed that it had a touch of piquancy — you noticed that it had a touch of piquancy, if I may put it in that way. At any rate it was a Governing Classes’ voice. I suppose a Higher Official of the British Museum is a member of the Governing Classes, with a right to be listened to, an assurance. The young Heimanns hadn’t the voices or intonations of the middle-governing class of before the War — for these things are said to be changed now. No; they had the intonations of very superior, solitary, beings, and their voices had the timbre of foreign, rather fairy-tale, princes. You would have said that they were too good to be true. But, of Miss Jeaffreson, you would have said, after ten or a dozen sentences, that for certain she had moved in “Afternoons” decorated by Higher Permanent Officials, Dons, Masters of Balliol, of the Temple, or of Lunacy, Judges of the High Court,
Times
critics and literary knights. You would be certain that someone with a name like “Leslie Stephen” had been her godfather.

That she was “advanced” you could also postulate, but “advanced” in a strange way that would make her all the more dangerous, if only to small circles;. You would know, if you happened to know the type, that she would have “principles” that at odd moments would wreck enterprises, homes, or the lives of friends — always for the purest of motives.

She had come — I gathered all this from conversation with her between Shaftesbury Avenue and the Ladies’ Club — she had come then, to act as duenna to Miss Heimann, in the usual sort of way, through a Great Lady. Her father, the late Higher Official, had lived — again in the usual sort of way — well up to his income, so that at his death there had been nothing but the insurance, the sale, and a small pension on the Civil List for Lady Jeaffreson. Miss Jeaffreson had had to get something to do; and her need of occupation having been fairly well advertised amongst Higher Officials whilst petitioning for the pension, the Great Lady had come on the scene. She was a Lady Ada Pugh Gomme, an Earl’s daughter married to a commoner, but to a very superior sort of commoner. Lady Ada, then, had very kindly suggested that looking after the Heimann girl might be the very job for Miss Jeaffreson, who was understood to be “clever.”

Mr. Heimann, the uncle, Lady Ada said, was a very old friend of her own; he lived abroad, was a little eccentric, preferring to lead a very solitary life and evading his own countrymen. He was wealthy, and Lady Ada supposed — for she knew nothing about it — that the young people would have a competence if not more. She said that as to that she was really in the dark: Mr. Heimann had never been communicative even when he had lived in England and been a dear friend of her own. The lady had added, Miss Jeaffreson said: “ A
very
dear friend!” — as if to emphasize that the family into which Miss Jeaffreson would be going, if she went, was an entirely desirable one.

And Miss Jeaffreson had gathered very little more, the rest of Lady Ada Pugh Gomme’s conversation concerning itself with Miss Jeaffreson’s emoluments — which they were asked to fix between them, and with the sort of life she would lead. This had entirely appealed to Miss Jeaffreson. She was to accompany the young woman through several University Classes in Germany; she would be at liberty herself to take classes in any department of learning that she preferred. But her main function, as Miss Jeaffreson put it, was to be “cultural.” She was, without adopting the air of an instructress, to give Miss Heimann a sense of home values.

That was the way Miss Jeaffreson put it: I don’t suppose that Lady Ada or Mr. Heimann ever used the words. Indeed, Lady Ada, as I came to know her that very afternoon, used fewer words than one would have believed possible, and I gather that Mr. Heimann, when Miss Jeaffreson came to know him, had proved even less communicative. For the matter of that, Miss Jeaffreson herself was never what one could call crudely definite. Most of her meanings were wrapped up in hints which, although they were perfectly plain to a person like myself in rather her walk in life, wouldn’t... well, wouldn’t have served as foundations for a libel suit.

She gave certainly an impression of Mr. Heimann as a man “ with a past,” as she put it. A man, square-bearded, powerful in frame, not bent; always walking with his hands behind his back, along the back alleys of German “Philosophen Walder,” and always reading — well, the life and letters of some Lord Ripon or other. And she managed to convey a sense of the children’s mother — she had the details only from the children, for the mother had been long dead — of the children’s mother as having been no better than she should be: a French girl, of the South, pretty. But frail!

My companion on this walk was an Intellectual. What her exact Department was I never discovered: perhaps it was merely that she offered an appreciative audience to whoever was on the most advanced fringe of the world of thought. She approved of Nietzsche as a philosopher; of Eugenists, of Malthusians; of such politico-economists as declared that war was impossible. She had sat under German professors who professed all these matters in their advanced stages. At the moment she was most under the influence of a professor called Freud, of whom at that time I knew only that he interpreted dreams — which did not seem to me to be very important.

Indeed, I knew very little of all these things. I was interested in human relationships: but I had never — and I never have — tabulated my views as to these subtle things. It seems, however, that some German professor of Modern English Literature had. Had, I mean, tabulated my views at least of the relations of the sexes as they were revealed in my works. This information, which Miss Jeaffreson then gave me, appalled me; but it explained the rather adoring attitude that she seemed to think I required of her.

I had been wondering about this. That she had been meaning to cast snares about me was obvious. But there are the snare personal and the snare literary. I could see this lady casting very formidable personal snares; her glance was that of a woman who very certainly had done so in her time — probably to rather unpresentable men. And as soon as I heard that I had the continental rank of German professorial tabulation I thought I knew where I was with her.

I trust I do not seem unduly brutal in writing of this young lady — though I don’t really care if I do. In this matter at least she proved herself a thoroughly bad woman. Even the worst of freelances — and London in those days was full of them — should stop short of making their dearest friends and benevolent employers the instruments of their, let us say, principles. At least that is how I see it.

So, to be on the right side of this purely intellectual flirtation, I said:

“Do you really mean to say that their mother was a French provincial street-walker?”

I stood still to say it. And, having been gazing through a plate-glass window set in granite at a blue straw hat trimmed with jay’s wings pointing backwards so that it resembled a helmet of Mercury, which was marked “5 1/2 gs.,” I turned my eyes directly on to those of Miss Jeaffreson. She averted her own: they were like not very bright blue agates behind aggressive, rimless pince-nez. She said, with a brave attempt at a titter:

“She? Who? Good gracious, no! I daresay she was perfectly respectable.”

That was the nearest she had come, so far, to a definite statement; and even that is not so very definite when you come to examine it.

“Or,” I continued, still staying where I was. My eyes, so that I might not seem too much the inquisitor, looked again at the blue straw hat with the blue jay’s wings. Against a rich but unostentatious background of panelled yellow oak of good grain, it existed solitary in the window, supported, as they say of coats of arms, by two half-transparent swathes of black silk net decorated with silver sequins. It was a new shop, and I looked up at the number so that I might tell my friend, Mrs. Jeal, who liked shopping in that quarter because she thought it romantic and dangerous to come so far East.

To tell the truth, I was really marking time because I did not exactly relish the idea of continuing the conversation. One is at bottom selfish: it was no affair of mine, and I could not exactly see where it was going to lead me with a young woman like Miss Jeaffreson. Besides, to get at what I wanted to get at in the way I wanted to get at it I needed to stand still. Far down towards the Circus that was inconvenient. I truly believe that if a fourth man had collided with my back I should have walked on in silence. But there stood Miss Jeaffreson, her mouth slightly open, and in her eyes a distinct challenge. I should have to have an explanation with her sooner or later. And it seemed better to have it after I had struck a hard, or at least a determined note. So that:

“Or,” I continued resolutely, “that Mr. Heimann, senior, is a bad hat who has left his country for his country’s good? With the further implication that the mother entangled him and, after bearing him the two children, came to a bad end?”

The diagnosis, put in that brutal way, came so near her real thoughts that she uttered merely an:

“Oh!” that was like a gasp. And I took the opportunity to use exactly the words that that morning Mr. Podd had used to young Heimann concerning his parentage. Of course I didn’t, at that stage, tell her that they were Mr. Podd’s, She said then, quickly but rather loftily:

“Oh, but you’re... I can’t take you as being just an....”

I said that I was a perfect stranger: she continued ingratiatingly:

“Oh, but you!... We’ve sat, Mary Elizabeth and I, for so many hours under... That you seem... We’ve; haven’t we?.... A different... I mean — vocabulary, from the vulgar-minded...”

I retorted that, as far as I knew, to say that a woman was no better than she should be had only one significance in all sorts of vocabularies — and that was what she had said of George Heimann’s mother. She answered cheerfully: “Oh, come: you don’t want to pretend to be... One couldn’t ever take you as... a vulgarian! Not
you
!” I asked her, as drily as I could — but I don’t for a moment imagine that the dryness got through to her:

“Then what precisely
do
you mean?”

Her dislike of the definite was so great that, even then, she had to ask:

“Do you mean what do I mean as to the whole affair? “I said, mercilessly:

“No: simply by the phrase ‘no better than she should be.’”

And she had the face to say:

“My dear man: that she hadn’t read... that she wasn’t grounded... that she appears to have been a frivolous, shallow.... Oh, a devoted mother, I grant you! But not one of... Us!”

I hope the reader will not think I was merely making a melodramatic point when I say that I hurriedly moved our walk across the traffic of the Circus, where a retort was impossible — after I had exclaimed:

“And is that the construction, do you suppose, that Mr. Podd would put upon your words? Or do you think Mr. Podd, too, to be one of Us! Not just an...?”

And, do you know, as we made that crossing, I felt extremely sick.

For it was this woman who had told Mr. Podd the hideous things he had hurled at George Heimann that morning. I could tell it from her manner, then; I could have told it from the mere look of her eyes behind her glasses when I had first really looked at her, half way through that walk; and I could have told it from the gurgling, regretful tone in which she had said that she supposed she couldn’t now ask Mr. Podd to publish her book! No one else in London could have done it. And of course I was quite right. You will hear.......

But why do people do these things? Against their best friends! It would appear to be for nothing. But I daresay that is not so.