Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (590 page)

She did give me, however, a taste of her organising qualities — in a little contest of wills. She wanted me at one point to go and superintend my artists. I didn’t want to go, partly because I was lazy, partly because I trusted them, partly because I wanted to block the way of Marie Elizabeth and the Jeaffresons, who were certain to come at the most inopportune moment, and who were just as certain to upset George Heimann, and probably the young woman too. But she just made me. She said:

“We artists cannot ever afford not to attend to the minutest details. Believe me, I do not let a waiter here serve an anchovy without inspecting it. There will be six hundred people here to-night — to see your show!”

I believe she was a millionairess, losing hundreds of pounds every night. For the love of Art? To brighten London? There are people who have had that odd ambition. Or she may have been anything else. God knows!

I only know that a sort of aristocratic scorn in the tones of that speech forced me to my feet.

I said:

“No doubt, Comtesse! Still there are dangers worse than inadequate rehearsals. The draught I have been feeling on my shoulder-blades....”

She exclaimed:

“Shoulder-blades!” with a blank non-comprehension. She was a real Countess, not even by marriage. Then she exclaimed: “Ah!” and went on swiftly:

“If it is that: I assure you my doors are never open. Always before them there is... an angel with a flaming sword. Hein? Does that satisfy you?”

She had understood me more quickly than I did her, and she went on:

“I assure you that no bailiff could get at your young man, and no lover at your young woman! Nor any husband at you! Not here!”

I said:

“We’ve got to look out for worse people. A sister. A family solicitor!”

She said:

“Pouff!” and rubbed her thumb lightly over her forefinger. She went on, however, reasonably. “Well, yes. No doubt worse than bailiffs or lovers. Not than husbands perhaps. I do not know. But shall they get past me... Pouff! Go and look at your young people!”

I reached in the dim distance a small cell. It was a
cabinet particulier,
reserved I believe for H.M. Ministers, Royal Dukes, and newspaper proprietors. It was triangular in shape, and had pink walls, pink lampshades, a pink-covered table — all that pink being of silk.

It made a charming picture. Miss Honeywill, between two Charles II’s, was bent over the paper-strewn table, the bright light falling down on her hair and her shoulders that were just strapped over with black. The two young men, their hairs both very black and drooping, bent one on each side of her. It made a symmetrical group that was abandoned, breathlessly, to their business in hand. They were arranging little irregular cards in packs. One of them said:

“That’s where the cobra bites his hand. No. 13. That’s the yataghan cutting it off. No.
14.”

I thought for a moment that Madame had been right: that they needed guidance.

“It’s his little finger!” I interrupted. “The cobra bit his little finger!”

They said, all three in unison:

“Of course! Of course! We know,” without one of them looking up. They did not need guidance.

I stood looking at them for a time, out of sheer pleasure at the picture and the quiet.

I turned away into a purgatory of conversation, the upper world having descended into those quiet glooms. Madame, at a distance, in front of that sheet, was barring the way to three figures. Two appeared to be muffled up and shapeless — in flannel rugs as it might be. But the third was in an energetic black domino. I stepped behind a Caryatid that was like a white dromedary on its hind legs. The voice of Madame I could hear very plainly; the others, all talking together, made just a babble. Madame said:

“I regeret! It is an absolute rule. No one here speaks to my artistes. The police interfere!”

The other voices all talked at once. Madame said:

“It is an absolute rule. I regeret! Jacques, those carnations are for table eighteen. The police interfere.” They went on like that for a very long time. When I moved out from behind that animal, Madame was standing alone beside my table. I hurried to her and exclaimed: “Don’t say that you have saved the show!”

She answered:

“That girl is beautiful. But tyrannous. Be careful! Johann, come here!”

She added:

“But why should you be careful? You are young. Enjoy yourself and pay for it. Make trouble for yourself. They are only in the cloakrooms.” An albino waiter approached and held to her a pink ear into which she began to talk earnestly.

There could be no doubt that, beautifully dressed, George Heimann’s sister was beautiful in a French, complete sort of way. Before, that day, when I had seen her, she had been in rather dowdy clothes that I took it she wore either out of compliment to Miss Jeaffreson, or to uphold some sort of political creed. She was coming, fast, in and out of those avenues of columns, like a black panther approaching a peacock. Of course she did not resemble a panther; but, when I saw her advancing swiftly, on soft, dancing feet, I felt as I had felt when looking at a Japanese print of a black panther that was descending through the air upon a white peacock. That is exact.

At that date, according to her birth certificate, Marie Elizabeth was just under twenty-two, but she might well have been over. She had wide nostrils, scarlet lips, scarlet colour on her cheeks, black eyebrows that met, and black, compact, waved hair — a mass of it, but done tightly and showing regular lines of light and shadow, as you see it in Roman marble heads. She was smallish rather than tall, and she had an extraordinarily compact body — not, I mean, dwarfish, but giving the idea that if you lifted her horizontally she would come all in one piece with no limb drooping.

And her flesh looked firm: she was in a very decolleté dress that went all round her upper arms, as if she had been standing in dark, claret-coloured water that came just above her breasts and was level all round her. I don’t know if she was just before the fashion of that day in London, or just on the crest of the wave: the dress was silk net; the skirt, hand-painted with roses, had an overskirt, full round the hips and dividing in front, from the waist to the ankles. I don’t know where she had got it from — Frankfort, I daresay, for just before the war Frankfort was the near rival of Paris. But it may have come from Paris.

In any case, it must have cost a fortune. And I remember thinking with a small pang of disquietude that it might well be a symbol — a symptom! — of a coming rift between the brother and sister. For George had insisted to me on his determination that his uncle should not be worried by any person or on any account; and I had got it into my head that that girl must have worried their uncle for the large cheque for that dress. In that I was wrong. For it seems that the girl had learned through the flagitious transactions of Mr. Podd that her old German “pieces” were of great value in certain markets. So she had sold several more through a dealer and had bought herself a regular trousseau.

But it was a symbol all right. She had bought those things because she was going to begin a campaign, and for that campaign she considered that it was necessary not to appear shabby. And that campaign did not mean that she was going to have the approval of her brother.

So she came down upon me with a determination which also was a symbol of her campaign and appearing French to the core. She breathed deeply: of course she must have had deep lungs to necessitate those large, sensitive nostrils; and, coldly passionate and passionately materialistic, she went straight ahead. She came right up to me and said:

“I must speak to my brother! That is my right!”

I forgot to say that she had the most wonderful, direct, brown eyes. I am sure of that, because I only really notice eyes when they are brown. And leading down on me that triangle of assailants she resembled an Arab mare bringing on a couple of nondescript tradesman’s hacks.

Not that Miss Jeaffreson, in a disturbing way, was not impressive. She showed over black velvet more flesh than Marie Elizabeth, and she had long, black, evil-looking gloves, and her gold-rimmed pince-nez gleamed dangerously enough. But as for the solicitor-brother! You know, there are in this world unfortunate beings who are ostentatiously pleased with themselves!

He was impossible! He advanced behind the other two, the apex of an irregular triangle, with an odd stalking gait. He was very excited, quite small, blonde nondescriptly, and without eyebrows. His glasses were tilted over to one side, because he was straining to pull an evening paper out of the tail pocket of his dress coat; for he wore evening dress, but of a sort that can only be worn by the very distinguished and careless. I believe he was a very good lawyer when his women folk left him alone.

Miss Jeaffreson being close to my right hand, and Miss Heimann just in front of me, he stalked up to my left with the air of a small, grotesque sentry marching up to markers. He halted, and his detestable evening papers in his thin fingers exactly entered my hand which was near my waistcoat pocket. It was an impressive feat of direction, as if a marionette had succeeded in striking something accurately with its sword. And, just as Miss Heimann was saying: “I must speak to my brother; it is my right,” he exclaimed, in a penetrating falsetto:

“It’s about their bastardy!”

It will sound eccentric, but by this time we were in the centre of an orchestra. For some time past musicians looking like undertakers, carrying wrapped-up instruments that resembled soup-ladles, and old ladies, who I suppose were cloakroom attendants, had been walking about among the tables and removing their wraps. Lights existed here and there. At a distant table waiters were eating. There had been erected around us a small palisade of music stands; a big drum and some cymbals lay immediately behind the feet of Mr. Jeaffreson. The hall was beginning to be very light. I expect we were a nuisance, but that made no difference to my friends. They stood there and talked.

And our conversation was like one of the imbecile romances of Dumas Père, in which the hero fences with any number of assassins at once. I don’t believe I could have done it but for that miraculous dinner and the Moselle. I am not as a rule a swift debater; but I stood there, feeling bland and humorous. And I was penetrating! I knew, for instance, by instinct that I did not cut much ice with Miss Heimann. She was determined, and there was an end of it; and as the lights went up she grew more and more physically striking. To the other two I was a person of importance, and they reasoned with, rather than bludgeoned me.

Miss Heimann’s line was that she was going to see her brother. That finished it. With her I just wasted time when I said that if she upset him now she would offend the six or seven hundred people — All London! — who were coming to see the show. To Miss Jeaffreson I said that the young man was in a highly nervous condition and had much better be left alone; and to the solicitor: What could “place” a young man better than that, in the midst of a crowd including half the legal luminaries in London, he should be seen at table, in light, gay, and intimate intercourse with Lady Ada Pugh Gomme, wife of the High Commissioner of the Pacific, a Lord Justice of Appeal and an ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer, whom Lady Ada was bringing expressly to be of service to George? We were going to be all at one table!

That certainly impressed the solicitor, even though we were all talking at once. He touched Marie Elizabeth on the arm, extended his hand to his mouth, and really shouted — for there was, by now, a good deal of noise in the cellar, with people coming and all:

“Perhaps it would be better! The remand, after all, was for eight days!”

Miss Heimann dismissed my six or seven hundred of All London with a contemptuous downward movement of her hand. She removed her arm from the touch of Mr. Jeaffreson and said fiercely:

“Do you think we’re going to remain for another hour under this cloud? My brother must start for Zell to-night. He is missing his train now!”

Miss Jeaffreson, her eyes hungry and dangerous, was saying:

“Is he really nervous? It must then be a remorse complex! Strange that I had never noticed it. The Heimanns are so secretive about themselves!”