Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (591 page)

They went on on those lines for several minutes. Suddenly I felt exasperated. I said like a fool to Marie Elizabeth:

“You forget that your brother cannot leave the country without my consent. I am bail for him!” It was more a joke than anything else. To Miss Jeaffreson I threw:

“A young man does not walk along the streets, clenching his hand at the ground and saying ‘ Damnation’ without—”

Marie Elizabeth’s beautiful chest dilated; her nostrils grew large; her memorable brown eyes roved round that lighted space in search of any door that appeared likely to lead to an Artists’ Room. Miss Jeaffreson’s avid glance devoured my face.

“It
must
be the Remorse one!” she exclaimed. “Marie Elizabeth, do you suppose it was that girl in Berlin? I always thought that he... that perhaps he hadn’t behaved quite...”

Marie Elizabeth’s face was like wax: she stood rigid with passion. She uttered the one word:

“Insolent!” to Miss Jeaffreson. And to me:

“If you are that type of
lâche
!”

I felt a curious crepitating touch on my upper arm. It was the bow of the orchestra-leader, a mulatto with a very deprecating smile. We were occupying his position.

I moved my company somehow through his palisade. In the remoter parts of the hall there were people in grey wraps, looking at us. Suddenly I felt unhappinesses — a whole lot of little ones together. It had occurred to me that I had no right to keep that girl from her brother if she wanted to discuss urgently a matter personal to herself. Her birth was quite as much in question as his. And I felt, still more disastrously, that I had been giving away to the Jeaffreson girl the confidences of George Heimann. His gesticulations, his letting himself go, had been meant for me as a private sympathiser. I couldn’t think that I had done anything fine, however bothered I had been, in communicating them to that girl. And indeed I felt I had failed of confidence in the boy himself. After all, if he could not hold his own end up against his own sister he was not much of a boy; and I had come to think a good deal of his character. For the matter of that I had not really taken any steps to discover what he really wanted, and I was, when I came to think of it, uncertain of what he really
ought
to do. Maybe he ought to leave for Zell that night and obtain particulars of his birth from his uncle. A man should know whether he is legitimate or not. On the other hand, the uncle was a man of violent temper; maybe if the young man asked him questions he might disown the two of them abruptly and for good. And I wondered why I was meddling in the affair at all.

The fact is that one should not, ever, take part in any transaction of any delicacy, or indeed in any transaction at all, if one has tasted the slightest drop of alcohol. My good dinner and my bottle of Moselle, though that is the lightest wine in the whole world, had made me more ready than I ought to have been to treat this affair lightly and, as the French say,
de chic.
Now I was paying for it. I don’t mean to say that I was feeling any sudden or profound wave of remorse; these were just the goblin beginnings of reaction.

So that, as soon as we were outside the musicians’ ring, I planted the two Jeaffresons at my deserted table. To Marie Elizabeth, who was standing alone, I said:

“Come! you had better see your brother.”

She shrugged her shoulders slowly and not very perceptibly.

“It is of no use,” she exclaimed; “if he cannot leave the country. And of course he cannot leave the country. Why should you trust him? He is a man without a name or a home!”

I said:

“But I beg you to consider, mamzelle, that he may go to the moon, for me!”

She exclaimed, grimly:

“You see! You call me mamzelle, instinctively! Why? Because you feel that I have no place here — or anywhere!”

“Oh, damn it,” I said, desperately, “it’s because I’m clumsy and there have been too many of you at me at once.

And because I adore the French — I would rather you were French than anything.”

She said:

“Well, perhaps I am French, and therefore do not understand such jests. Who can tell?”

She seemed very foreign. She was standing with her arms folded one over the other, and under her left elbow the fingers of her right hand were beating an irregular tattoo — three taps and a long interval, and then three taps. I had seen violent Spanish women calm themselves in that way. Suddenly and rather grimly she dropped her arms apart and said:

“Very well! Let us go, if you remove the embargo. The... the joke!” It was extremely insulting. But she did not mean to let any desire to hurt my feelings interfere with her opportunity. She was feminine: but not so feminine as to refuse to go because now I wished her to go.

We went solitarily towards the pink
cabinet particulier,
between the camels that stood on their hind legs, the lion-headed and the hawk-headed men. I was thinking what a curious sensation it was to be hated by a woman whom you thought beautiful. It was a matter of thirty yards perhaps. Suddenly she stood still.

“Mr. Jessop,” she said, “at the University of Berlin” — I think she said Berlin—” I handed in a thesis on Roman Law that would have entitled me to a doctorate if I had been a young man.”

I said:

“Well?”

“And, Mr. Jessop,” she continued, “I intend to use my knowledge of law to its utmost, and my talent for litigation!”

She paused to let that announcement sink in; then she said:

“It is in vain that you pretend to be stupid. You side with my brother — in certain weaknesses he has. I do not intend you to prevail.”

At that moment I was taken away from this lady by Madame, who, flashing with sequins in the fashion of the moment, shivered a little without her furs. She said:

“Is your show any good?”

She continued:

“Most English work is so contemptible. I was thinking of putting it on now. At eight-thirty. When there is no one in the room!”

I pulled myself together and said drily:

“I don’t know. How should I know? It is not in my line. You asked me for it — by letter! I gathered that you wanted to give the shadow artist, the fellow with the cardboards, an opportunity; an advertisement. I thought that was good of you, and agreed!”

She said:

“Yes, yes! You guessed that from my letter. Then you are intelligent!”

I said:

“And believe me, Madame la Comtesse. You have taken up some of my time and a good deal of my good nature. And I am not just
le dernier venu
!”

She exclaimed:

“Oh la, la! Which woman is it?”

I was not in an angelic temper. I said:

‘‘ If you don’t give that girl a show — a real show! — you will throw away a pearl. And that is always
une action lâche.”
She said:

“Well, then, you think your show
is
good enough. Why could you not say so? But it is not
this
girl?” — and she pointed to the shoulder-blades of Miss Heimann, who was walking purposefully towards the pinkly illuminated doorway of the private room.

I said:

“No, the other girl — and the two young men!”

She asked:

“Hein? She is a trouvaille? I think so. And the young men. Na-ice boys. This girl, too, I know. Now, where.... now, where?”

“Mr. Jessop!” the voice of Miss Honeywill said: “
Can’t
you get them to leave him alone?”

She was in front of me, in scarlet Turkish trousers and a sapphire blue bodice; but her voice was the voice of the daughter of the country doctor who in the mud attended ten-shilling confinements. She put both her hands on my shoulders, and said:

“He wants — he
must
have — a little bit of fun. Get it for him!” Yes, she was just one of those little creatures, you see, trotting bravely along the muddy streets, carrying satchels, or sitting, their ankles crossed, reading devoutly, in public conveyances, and believing in the “little bit of fun” as the great cure-all of their industrious existences.

Madame had drifted away discreetly. She always drifted away when she scented a love scene — and she generally suspected one. She was inspecting the table that was being prepared for the Duke of Middlesex.

In the pink doorway was the figure of Miss Heimann; she was talking no doubt to her brother, for his black shadow fell from inside the room on to the wall beside her. Behind, were the figures of Mr and Miss Jeaffreson. The solicitor was stretching out his detestable evening paper. God knows how they got there. But I know that, aided by the scarlet trousers of Miss Honeywill, I got them away very quickly.

I just said to that solicitor:

“You can’t come here. The police....”

He gave, inside his glasses, a sideways squint at the scarlet trousers, and his eyes goggled noticeably. I added:

“There are two hundred thousand pounds invested in this place. As a business man you will know that we can’t take chances where ladies are in
déshabille
!”

By the kindness of Providence there, rose up, helmet, chin-strap and all, beside the distant entrance — a police constable! His function was to regulate the carriages that came to Madame’s place of entertainment, and no doubt he wanted a drink before the rush began. The Jeaffresons were no more there. Mr. Jeaffreson had taken the scarlet trousers for some sort of undergarment; I daresay the sapphire blue bodice, which was very tight-fitting, had aided in the illusion. I cannot imagine how solicitors like that can make a living; but I believe he was excellent at helping old ladies to make wills in favour of lap-dogs.

Miss Heimann had penetrated into that inner room, and she and her brother presented an admirable spectacle. Miss Honeywill said fiercely:

“Go in and fetch her out!”

I said:

“She’s his sister!”

She answered:

“He’s not fit. I know that. He can’t stand it. I give you three minutes!”

Marie Elizabeth was standing rigid, beneath a pink-shaded lamp; George Heimann had one foot on a chair, his white hand hanging down between his knee and his inner thigh. I rather like pure romantic effects, and from that point of view he was admirable. And I daresay he knew it, and I don’t blame him for it. Politicians, soldiers, and epic poets are simple people, living by broad, sentimental appeals to the romantic in mind. And George Heimann had elements of all the three in his ancestry and his composition. So he looked like a wood-cut of the 1840’s —
The Hero’s Farewell.

And it was a farewell!

His chalk-white, keen-featured face was quite good-humoured and animated. He said:

“Come in, Jessop! You know all about it. If not, you’re the only soul in London, it appears, who does not.”

When I said that that was morbid nonsense, he replied: “Then you are in my confidence, and I want you to hear. “ And then, do you know, he grasped his sister’s bare shoulder, heavily, with his outstretched left hand. It produced in me a singular emotion, but I believe that he was quite right to be melodramatically brutal at that moment. It shortened the scene.

“My girl,” he said. “For me our uncle is the best and kindest. What he wishes goes, with me! What he says stands!” He added very slowly and distinctly:

“I will never — never
— never
! — disturb my uncle with questions as to my birth. I will never — never — never agree that any other soul shall!”