Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (613 page)

“I will run you down in my little car. My dear, I would do anything to give you a little — a little bit of... of....

People in those days were kind to serving men; the war being only just over a year old, they took it rather seriously, devising with anxious consciences as to what they could do to be kind to us.

It was a legal hour’s run, and she got me there in forty minutes. It was curious to see the slightly strained, chauffeur’s expression on her face, the little contraction of the eyes. She said she took that road every night of her life, alone, after midnight. But she said that just before we started, and she did not speak again until we were at Froghole.

I made her come in with me into the familiar house. I said to myself, and I believe I said to her, that Marie Elizabeth probably wanted to talk about the Marsden case, and she, Clarice, had better know what was said. Actually I could not bear to have her out of my sight.

But, as a matter of fact, Clarice knew absolutely nothing about what was being done in that litigation: George had never talked to her about it, and she had no other means of knowing.

It was a curious, awkward interview. Not because of the presence of Clarice, for those two women regarded her with such indifference from a merely intellectual plane — they being doctors of law or something of the sort — that they seemed hardly conscious of her existence. I just said, thinking of the case, that Clarice had a right to be present at that interview, and I believe they just took that to mean that she had married or was going to marry me. That she could have any idea of marrying George they would have regarded as impossible. She was for them what we used to call “a little bit of fluff.” I am quite certain that Miss Jeaffreson thought I was going to marry George’s cast-off mistress, or that there was some sort of arrangement such as Miss Jeaffreson’s “principles” would make her in theory approve.

No; it was awkward simply because those two women were so radically dishonest in their approach to me. They wanted to persuade me to let Marie Elizabeth sell either my brother’s land or his stocks and shares without letting me know that the money was to be spent on Marie Elizabeth’s lawyers. They fenced and fenced, talking of the expenses of keeping up that establishment, the rise of prices, increases of taxation, the fact that Froghole air did not suit Marie Elizabeth.

I daresay I was more peremptory than I should otherwise have been if I had not wanted so desperately to get away — away with Clarice. Do you know the dreadful feeling of measuring time? Seven hours remain before you will stand under the arc lamps of the station! Six hours and fifty minutes! Six hours and a half — for the chance of a word: of any imaginable madness! I could not remove my eyes from her face: I spoke harshly to Miss Jeaffreson, looking at Clarice, in the room with my brother’s silver rose bowls that reflected the table cloths. Clarice’s figure cut in half my poor brother’s great View. She remained standing all the time, her face at times worked dreadfully, but against the light!... We all remained standing. It was Miss Jeaffreson who talked: I believe Marie Elizabeth was ashamed — of the lying, not of her unshakeable purpose.

I said:

“Marie Elizabeth has four hundred a year from my brother’s investments. The chickens used to bring in a profit of another three hundred....”

Miss Jeaffreson protested, giving lying figures of the prices of poultry foods and of the rise in land taxation.

I said:

“Marie Elizabeth has seven hundred and fifty a year from the late Mr. Heimann!”

Miss Jeaffreson said:

“No! No! Two hundred!”

I said:

“I saw Mr. Heimann’s — Lord Marsden’s letter, in which he said he had raised the allowance.... George has a thousand a year. He had also some hundreds for law over and above that...”

Miss Jeaffreson said:

“George is not very generous!” She said it as if stealthily — and Clarice made a queer noise. It was so queer that both Marie Elizabeth and Miss Jeaffreson looked at her. It broke my heart. I had had amazing hopes.

Miss Jeaffreson exclaimed to her:

“I suppose he has not been making you presents?” Marie Elizabeth said:

“No! No! I can’t stand that, Eleanor. You mean well!”

She looked at me balefully, and said:

“My brother is the soul of generosity. He gives me every penny of his allowance. It is a thousand a year. He gave me also the whole of that other money for legal expenses.” She looked at Miss Jeaffreson and said: “It’s no good, Eleanor, I cannot keep that up. My brother is a good man.”

Clarice made with her hands a little motion as if she were stretching out her arms to Marie Elizabeth.

I said:

“You want money to prosecute your claim to the Marsden peerage. Why could you not have told me that at the beginning?”

Marie Elizabeth said:

“Because you have been so obstinately against me. I have it now... at the end of my finger-tips... And you!”

She stretched her arms out about level with her hips and made a curious, foreign, passionate crawling motion with her fingers. She was, after all, a little French woman.

Miss Jeaffreson said to me:

“You couldn’t... You couldn’t be so cruel... as to refuse her... She has suffered... She has suffered so much....”

There was in the voice of that devil a real sob! What could I do against all those passions? I had my own passions!

Miss Jeaffreson said:

“Show him the papers, Marie!... Marie! For God’s sake show him the papers!”

Clarice, hovering, as it were, desperately outside their circle, her neck stretched upwards, made a half step towards us. Miss Jeaffreson said to me:

“For heaven’s sake, man! O, for heaven’s sake! It’s all proved. Except just where they were born! Not how!

Not how! They are legitimate. But if we could just get at where. Oh! You have to help us! If you are worthy the name of a man!”

I believe, upon my soul, that that woman loved Marie Elizabeth!

The world is a queer place! Miss Jeaffreson and her brother had victimised the poor Heimann children dreadfully, in just the money side of it all. Yet both of them desired that they should win — legitimacy, titles, the splendour of opulence!

I had to settle it all in a sort of choking haste. Fortunately I could read quickly!

Mr. Pflugschmied was then in Berlin. But by an attaché of the Berlin-American Embassy who had been transferred to London he had sent over a copy, attested by the Berlin-American Ambassador, with seals, spread eagles and all, of Mr. Heimann’s “statement.” It left no moral doubt. Naturally, it left a legal doubt.

Mr, Heimann stated that he, William Ernest, third Earl Marsden, had married the mother of those children, George and Marie Elizabeth Marsden, at Ys-près-Armentières on the twenty-seventh of January eighteen hundred and ninety. He had met the mother, then a chambermaid aged seventeen, in the Hotel St. Roques, Rue St. Roche, Paris, and had accompanied her to Ys-près-Armentières for the purpose of marrying her. This he had done, selecting as his lawyer Monsieur le Notaire Gustav Flamenc of Ys, and being married, for the ecclesiastical marriage upon which his wife had principally insisted, by the priest, Gabriel Hijmann, his wife’s cousin, of Pont-de-Nieppe, also near Armentières. The wife’s name had been Gabrielle Armande Félicité Aimée Hijmann: the names of the issue of this marriage had been George Hijmann Marsden, born April 23rd, 1892, and Marie Elizabeth Hijmann Marsden, born May 17th, 1894. The only noticeable omission in the document was the birthplace of the children. I daresay Mr. Heimann’s neuritis had then come on.

The poor man had done his best on the 3rd August, 1914. He had written out all that and got it witnessed by a Rechtsanwalt — the very Rechtsanwalt who had housed poor George in the town of Zell; but he had just omitted to put in where the children were born. I suppose that cost George and Marie Elizabeth between six and seven thousand pounds between them. British lawyers are not of much use to us laity, but they know how to look after themselves.....

I said, in the end, that before I did anything in the matter, George himself must assure me that he approved. Clarice, advancing into the room at that, offered to fetch George, who might be expected to be at the bottom of the hill amongst the chicken runs. She looked at me, and said, with extreme distress:

“That is... if... you... if it isn’t... Oh! dear, help me a little!”

I said nothing.

She said:

“If you have the money! I haven’t. Not to-day. I’d advance it if I had. Do you suppose I don’t want George to be an Earl?”

I said:

“If you would, then I will. Yes, go and fetch him.”

The light went out in the room. My poor brother’s View was there, but no light came from it. Those two women went on talking to me: I think they were urging me to advance the money even should George refuse his sanction.

Suddenly he was there, Clarice just behind him. I said:

“Lord Marsden. Your womenkind wish me to lend them a great deal of money in order that they may advance certain legal claims. Have you any objection?”

He looked down listlessly at the top of a little mahogany table with spindly legs.

“None!” he said. He asked me when I was going, still listlessly enough, and then put a little heart into wishing me luck in France. Then he turned away and drifted into the great View of my poor brother. He was like a stranger of excellent manners.

In the end I wrote a formal direction to my co-trustee in poor Fred’s estate, authorising him to advance a good deal of money to Marie Elizabeth. I suppose it all went into the pockets of the Jeaffresons — but it took time.

So that I did no more than catch my train with a little to spare, and Clarice saw me off beneath the eccentric arc-lights of my terminus — at nine at night on the fifteenth of September, 1915; and I went off in a gloomy carriage, packed to stuffiness with subalterns whose eyes all goggled out of their heads when they saw who my companion was. What dreadful things railway stations were in those days!

I remember that of Hazebrouck: I suppose it was in February, 1917, I found myself in the station of Hazebrouck. There was not much light there. Or there were great shafts of light, running up into the cylindrical barrel roof. I was going up the line; I had no idea how long I should have to wait for a train. No one had. A tired creature with a Prussian blue tunic and red flannel trousers, with a grotesquely disproportionate rifle and an immense zigzag bayonet, lounged beside an exit. It was as if he made me a prisoner, though I don’t suppose he really did.

I stood at a bookstall for a long time; the light of a dim candle threw out the closely packed yellow backs of novels. There were many trains in the darkness; and market women with geese they had not succeeded in selling in Hazebrouck market. It had all the effect of being shrouded in gloom, in depression, and of being commonplace beyond belief.

Naturally I stood at the bookstall. I was an author. I had been. There were the usual books of the bookstall at a French — or was it a Belgian? — provincial railway station. A gentleman with a forked red beard in a black cloak and top hat was conducting a red-haired
décolletée
nymph, on some cover or other, to a just outlined bed room. And then, pressed and constricted, nearly beyond the rim of light, I saw the back of someone’s translation of one of my own books. Dusty! No human soul would ever assimilate it. And no human soul, I thought, would ever think of me again....

A stalwart fellow touched my elbow. A sergeant, an invalid I suppose, attached to the Railway Transport Officer. He said:

“The train for Steenewerck is in, sir!”

I have no doubt that it was really just a kindly attention; but it enhanced my sense of being in prison. They were watching me; they did not mean that I should miss my train up into the Line. Once I had been a free man: I had sat and written!