Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (263 page)

The little boy said —

“E — ee — ng — pi — er!” and kept held out the hand towards the coins.

“He has quite a nice voice,” Mr. Todd said. “If you would like it I might find a place for him in my reclaimed juveniles’ choir. He has a good little face.”

“I think it is you that will profit by it,” the stranger said, “for he will sing well the praises of a God and will adorn all rites. Take now these coins, little boy.”

The little boy’s white teeth shone all across his face.

“Straight, guv’nor?” he implored, and there was, at the prospect of this wealth, a note of adoration in his voice and attitude. “My I tike ‘em? Ye won’t sy I pinched ‘em? Wot’d any bloomin’ copper fink as see me wid ‘em?”

“Child,” the stranger said, “since you are the first mortal in this city to pay me real homage, surely I will attend to it that no harm comes to you from my gift.”

“Take the money the Prince offers you,” the missionary said. “I will see to it that the police do not interfere with you. What is your name? You know me?”

“Liverlonger Sal Cunn, Glaws Strit, Padd’nton. You’re the bloomin’ mijjunary. My ole man ‘e ses’ e’d like to do you in, and ‘e’ll do it one die.”

The missionary squared his shoulders.

“Two can play at that game, my lad,” he said.

“You mean,” the stranger asked, “that you will meet this boy’s father in combat and not call the policeman to your aid?”

The little boy had taken the two coins into his palm, and with a high-pitched “Crikey!” he darted, dodged, was round the corner of the coffee-stall that stood, closed up, at the end of the bridge. He vanished, indeed, so swiftly and was so low on the ground that it was as if be had sunk into the pavement. “Your Highness,” the missionary said, “I consider that I owe no little of my ascendancy over the people in my district to an hour’s practice that I take twice a week with Hiram Miggs, the converted heavy-weight. With such a man as that lad’s father I should try persuasion first. But in the event...”

“Minister,” the stranger said gravely, “I wonder to what extent you or the White Christ whom you worship are the wiser. For did not the Christ bid you render the other cheek to the smiter?”

They were walking by then past some huge buildings whose red bricks were begrimed with soot and whose white facing-stones were grown grey. Prosperous men, with umbrellas, silk hats, and bags, alighted from buses and ran up the steps of the forecourts, but there was little impediment to their walking straight or conversing equably.

“I take your Highness to be a Mohammedan from your saying ‘the White Christ whom you worship,’” the missionary said. “Therefore you are probably unacquainted with the term ‘muscular Christianity’ !”

“I am aware of its significance,” the stranger said. “But let us consider for a moment. If you beat this lad’s father, you will win the applause of — you will even win the ascendancy over — such suffrages as the man represents. But for what will you be honoured? For just such physical superiority as was worshipped before the Christ came with his mild rule. How, then, will you establish Christianity in the hearts of these people?”

“Sir,” Mr. Todd said, “these things must be done step by step. The first thing is to reduce the people to order and decency.”

“Of that I should not be so sure,” the stranger said, “were it not that you have assured me of the almost incredible thing that each soul of the mighty crowd that we have passed through is inspired by your proverbial saying. For assuredly a crowd, each member of which recollects daily and hourly — for that I take to be your meaning — each soul of which recollects that his nation keeps, as it were, her eyes upon him and awaits of him that he shall perform thoroughly his function in the republic — for you have said that each of these men remembers that England expects him to do his duty, and that I take to be the thorough performance of his function in the republic — then I say a crowd, a city, a nation...”

“Sir, sir!” the missionary brought out, overwhelmed at this torrent of phrase.

“Permit me,” his companion said, “to develop my argument, for it redounds to your own credit.”

Mr. Todd, however, was more intent upon a personal interest. The next turning would take them down to his own house, and it would be the moment of his life if he could persuade a real prince to enter his doors. At the corner, therefore, he halted. The stranger, however, continued his speech. It was to the effect that, since this commonwealth had developed such high aspirations in its units, and since that development had taken place under the auspices of muscular Christianity, that cult, which Mr. Todd so efficiently represented, must be justified of its existence. Thus the Founder of that religion might contestably be held to be less wise than these his followers. For Christ Jesus, the stranger said, would have preferred to set an example of meekness. It was he that turned not his back to them that smote him, in the belief, in the assurance, that these too, ultimately, or the children of their children’s children, would by this example be turned towards meekness and the love of their fellows.

“You, it seems to me,” the stranger said, “have confuted Egathistotheopompus upon lines different indeed from those of his great predecessor and victor.”

Egathistotheopompus, it appears, had been a philosopher much esteemed by such worshippers of the heathen deities as remained in the outer parts of the Roman Empire during the fifth century. His works, however, presumably had perished during the burning of the library at Constantinople, for of them no trace remained. He it was who especially had promulgated the theory that mankind was not perfectible, but moved in cycles, that there had been a Golden Day in Egypt that declined, till in Athens the wheel of humanity was again exalted, and so in Rome, and so doubtless onwards into the unknown future and back into the unchronicled past.

“But you,” the stranger said, “have proved to me by your assertions that this is the perfect republic, or nearer it than even Athens was. And that little boy has proved to my own eyes that you stand, in the least, as high as Lacedaemon. For the Spartans set all their energies to producing hardihood among children.”

Their standing at the corner, Mr. Todd was painfully aware, attracted the attention of the conductors of the several buses that turned down the by-street or continued up the main road. One of them even asked, “Where do you want to go to?” And Mr. Todd was sufficiently lately come from the country to dislike being taken for a provincial. He was, moreover, more than ever eager to induce the stranger to come under his roof. Therefore, at last, taking advantage of a full stop, he interrupted deferentially with —

“This is all very interesting, but the public street is hardly the place in which to discuss. Besides, talking is dry work....” He tittered a little at this sally, which he attempted to utter in a voice of respectful frivolity.

His interlocutor looked at him with blank but introspective eyes.

“I have been accustomed to think that men considered public places as very proper places for discussion. Thus you will remember that, according to Plato, Socrates was very willing to hold contentions in the Athenian market-place.” He paused and then uttered, “But perhaps you have never heard of Socrates, nor of Plato, nor yet of Athens?”

Mr. Todd laughed a little uneasily.

“Of course, of course,” he said, “every one is acquainted with the fact that Socrates drank hemlock, and with the theory of Platonic love.”

“I see,” his companion said, “that you are better acquainted with the works of Plato than I. For I have never heard of that theory.”

“I have always considered Platonic love as a mere excuse for adultery,” the missionary said.

“Without much doubt you are right,” the stranger said, as if neither Plato nor his theory much interested him. “I have always considered that Plato was the first of the Hellenic atheists.” He paused and then uttered meditatively, “Strange the vicissitudes of human glory.

Egathistotheopompus, the crown of gold, forgotten, and the works of Plato, the feet of clay, on the lips of all men. In their day Plato and his Socrates were little esteemed, and Egathistotheopompus...” He broke off, however, to utter, “But I perceive, sir, that you are full of anxiety that I should visit your house, and since it pleases me that you should be so anxious, I will very willingly accompany you there.”

Mr. Todd was by this time a little weary. He was so much more accustomed to laying down the law to criminals and little waifs — a process in which easily he followed the train of his own thoughts — that to keep pace with the ideas of this stranger was as difficult as for a stout man to accompany up a rough hillside an accustomed mountaineer. He proposed, therefore, that they should accomplish the short remains of their journey in a horse bus which would drop them within a stone’s throw of their house. The extraordinary rattle and vibration of this vehicle as it passed over a road ruined by the traffic of automobiles rendered conversation almost impossible. Mr. Todd made shift, however, to shout that he was afraid the Prince would find his appointments not such as those to which he had been accustomed. The voice of the Prince came to him in return extraordinarily clear, and penetrating the noise of wheels and vibrating windows.

“It is, as you should be aware,” he said, “my nature to feel no discomforts, and all places, appointments, and food are as one to me. It is only the cheerfulness of the giver that, according as it is great or little, gives me great or little pleasure.”

And the missionary thought that this indeed was the true princely attitude, and he wondered if he had not shown himself snobbish in proffering apologies.

CHAPTER
V

MR. TODD occupied an “upper part” in a great stucco house. His street occupied the one side of a triangle that enclosed a garden common to all the houses. At the apex of the triangle there was a church in the shape of a huge jewel casket, and the whole neighbourhood was of grey stucco and grey bricks with slate roofs. Being there one had the impression of wandering lost for ever in a labyrinth of grey and indistinguishable streets, without a landmark, a monument, or any public building by which one might guide one’s steps. There were no shops, no public-houses, no apparent main roads; crescents whirled and twisted, streets with unrememberable names ran straight for short and baffling distances.

But, such as it was, in this district Mr. Todd — since he had lived there ever since his first arrival in the metropolis — felt himself thoroughly at home. Here such friends as he had mostly resided — and he had many friends, Scotsmen for the most part, but a good sprinkling of them English professional men, and one or two of them Jews who were interested in societies such as Mr. Todd aided.

It was with the thought of these men, whom he might meet or who might be looking out of their windows, that Mr. Todd glanced with agreeable emotions at his companion. Afterwards he would be able to say —

“Ah, yes! That was the Prince you saw me with.”

Yet — but for the fact that this was so very obviously a prince — Mr. Todd would have been a little perturbed by him on account of his almost too great physical perfection. His limbs, moulded with a sinuous grace, seemed to fold their muscles one into another with the tensile and serpentine grace that is to be seen in the limbs of the great cats at the Zoological Gardens. His round head was set on his shoulders not so much erectly and stiffly as are the heads of those Englishmen you would call “well set up,” as to meet with the suavest curves at the junction of the neck. He walked, in fact, so easily and buoyantly that it was as if he sat a horse — and this was disturbing. For Mr. Todd was extremely fond of Turkish baths; he said to himself that he took them for his health; but, subconsciously, he was aware that he loved them for the sense of lassitude and utter rest. And the only figure that he had ever seen comparable to that of the Prince was that of the Oriental attendant, who had such sinuous and intertwining, visible, muscles, in the shampooing rooms that he frequented. And because this image was connected in his mind with ideas of sensual enjoyments Mr. Todd was uneasy at the view of his prince.

He paused on his doorstep to blow into his latchkey — his invariable custom — and he informed the Prince that the Servant Question was responsible for the fall in the type of tenant that these great houses sheltered.

“But for that,” he said, “you may be sure that
my
small income would not let me live in such great rooms as you will see.”

It was at this point that there came into his head the idea of magnifying his poverty in the Prince’s eyes. For surely, the Prince, who had been so prodigal to the little newsboy, would at least use his influence towards Mr. Todd’s promotion. Not, indeed, that Mr. Todd desired promotion for the sake of the increase of salary, but so that he would the more easily be able to impose himself on that part of the world that ignored his influence.

The stone steps of the staircase that they climbed as if it were an Alpine ascent reverberated and echoed coldly to their footsteps. They appeared to aspire to eternal heights; the immensely high and blank walls were a flat and glooming surface of shiny, dark wall-paper, enormously tall at the turns and landings.

They stopped, however, at the first floor. In a room uncomfortably too tall for its breadth — a room so tall that a little old woman beside a tea equipage had an aspect of toys set out for the play of a giant’s child, and the pictures on the walls were so near the floor that it appeared that there could not have been in the house a ladder up which to climb and hang them — the light from the north was dim and chilly even on that July afternoon. Immensely high windows occupied the whole of one narrow wall, and through them, as if at a weary distance, the sun made a haze of light upon the foliage of the spindly plane trees with their black and piebald barks. The whole room — the whole house — had the air of having been built for tall, cold-blooded, and spindly creatures; like the plane trees themselves, that in the triangular gardens were “drawn up” towards the light and air, so that the little old woman seemed not so much to sit on the floor of a room as to be encamped at the bottom of a well.

Light-blue-eyed, thin-haired, with thin delicate and bony mittened wrists, she sat, her hands folded on her apron of black taifeta, a little lace cap like a doyley on her hair, that was the colour of melting snow, and watched the steam coming from the tripod silver kettle on the bamboo table before her. She was filled with two anxieties — the one that her husband had “been run over”; the other, that he should have been kept late by some worrying “case” in the court. If he were run over it would be a catastrophe terrible because it was so unknown; if he were worried by a “case” it would be a catastrophe terrible enough because it was so well known. He would arrive tired, needing his tea; he would quarrel with young Bracondale, who was courting Margaret. There would be a scene. (She could not understand how young Bracondale, who was such a dear boy, could so stand up to the husband she found so overwhelming. But for the matter of that, Margaret herself “stood up to” her father — and she was such a good girl. But there were so many things that Mrs. Todd could not understand in the relationships of these beings whom she loved, dreaded, and intervened between with little flutters of her mittened hands and little inaudible ejaculations.) Only, if there were a troublesome “case” at the court: a rough who back-talked at Todd; a servant-girl gone wrong who refused to give the young man up (And the magistrate, incomprehensibly deaf to Todd’s arguments against early and improvident marriages — or incredibly, sentimentally good-humoured and good-natured with “poor girls.”

“in trouble,” would inevitably try to marry the girl to the youth.) — if such a “case” were at the court, and the inevitable “scene” with young Bracondale occurred, it would mean a sleepless night for her at the shouting missionary’s side. And the sleepless night would mean a new scene with Margaret in the morning, a night after that only less sleepless and so down a descending vista of days agonised by waiting to see in what humour Todd would return from work, and nights punctuated by her patient “Yes, dears,” and “Of course, Todds.” Until that storm would subside as, gradually, Todd, by sleeping a little later, made up for the lost hours of slumber and recovered his equanimity by meeting with a succession of submissive, broken-spirited or merely hypocritical criminals. She knew — Mrs. Todd — that she was not clever. And, at times, between the cleverness of her daughter who insisted — against frenzied clamour — on studying “Art” at a place called “the Slade,” and her husband who appeared to her to be portentously — to be hierarchically — gifted, and what with young Bracondale who occupied an unsatisfactory place at the bank because he was “so clever” with his pencil, and her husband’s friends who talked about innumerable incomprehensible things from Etruscan vases to the Higher Criticism, she wondered — she did not repine — at the marvellous dispensation of Providence that sent her — who was only clever at crochet work — into contact with the affairs of so many gifted creatures.

She figured Providence, indeed, as having much the nature of her husband — as expecting improbable things of her. For Mr. Todd allotted to her as a duty the regulating of the love affairs of Margaret and young Bracondale. To her!

“My dear,” she would say to her daughter Margaret in the morning, “I know I am not clever. But don’t you think, don’t you
think
” — and here she would appeal longingly with her faded blue eyes—” that it would be better not to wait for Arthur
quite
so near the bank door?”

She would indeed confide her sorrows almost more willingly to the little maid who, behind an always smutty face, hid an intelligence as bird-like, as limpid, and as affectionate as that of her mistress. She would say she
did
wish Miss Margaret would do her hair differently, wear gowns sometimes a little different from that blue thing with the embroidery on the yoke, and not make herself quite so cheap to Mr. Arthur, though he was a dear boy; at least they would have called it making herself cheap in her young days. But things were so different now, and Miss Margaret was so clever.

Her pale blue eyes looked up with an expression of timid dread to the figure of the guest that her husband brought. It would be saying too much — if we set down that her first emotion was an expression of thankfulness to Providence that this was
not
a clever person — it would be saying too much to say that she lived under a continual obsession that was a dread of those who were clever. She was indeed thankful and proud that her husband should attract the eminent, even if the eminent were apt to be hard, cold, and self-centred. But to her lonely soul the sight of this stranger, who was so good to look upon, was like a warmth in that chilly room, a companion in her loneliness, relieved as it was only by the companionship of little Milly with the smutty face.

For the merest shadow of a pause the face of the stranger expressed dissatisfaction — a sort of aloof dismay as if at the chilliness of the room — and she felt her mind uttering the words —

“Poor dear; it is evident a person used to
his
surroundings will find these horribly dismal.”

For it was evident that, to her, this stranger came from a home where things were all fine, and incontinently she remembered heather and uplands and blue sky — the land she belonged to. She had not thought of them for many days.

But his hesitation appeared to be the merest pause, the hesitation for a word. The sunlight, striking on a window-pane across the gardens, was reflected all over his figure, and as suddenly he appeared natural and to be where he should be.

Her husband was approaching her with an empressement, with an agitated deference and an air of whispering that she felt denoted an altogether unusual eventuality.

“I shall go and get some of the best tea,” he said. “This is his.. He hesitated between saying” His Highness” and “His Royal Highness.”

“You shall call me Mr. Apollo.” The voice came from the stranger.

And immediately it seemed to this faded little old woman that her husband’s strange, agitated air, his minatory spectacles, his waterfall of beard that seemed to say, “You fool! Mind you don’t commit a
faux pas
” — all these things that at other times would have made her tremble with nervous apprehension, because she never
could
seem to say or do the right thing for his clever people — all these things faded a little. It was as if she were certain that in running to get the best tea — when they were alone or there was no other guest than young Bracondale they always drank “kitchen tea” — in hastening with a lightness and nimbleness that she had forgotten so that they seemed new again to her, she would be doing the exactly right thing. For this stranger would accept the tea and jam as symbols of a desire to serve. And, indeed, he smiled....

On the stairs the missionary, who had excused himself to his guest, ran out after her to whisper the query, “Had she any cakes? Why hadn’t she any cakes? She ought to have cakes always in the house, and he must run himself to fetch them from the baker’s at the corner. And didn’t she know that this was a prince — a real prince whom he was trying to be of use to?”

He spoke in tones hoarse with emotion and hurried with the desire to fetch cakes very swiftly. And hurriedly and tyrannously he extracted from her the two shillings that was to pay for them — for that came out of the housekeeping money.

But to herself she said that the stranger was not a prince — or if he were a prince, he was very much more. She felt like a girl with her first lover.

In the room that was too tall for him, illumined by the reflection from the window in a flood of light dappled by the leaves of the plane trees, the stranger very leisurely ran his eyes over each wall, over the nicknacks on the mantelpiece, the pale blue and pink embroideries of bead-work, the brass fire-screen in the form of a swallow-tailed banner that was screwed to the chilly marble of the mantelpiece. His motions were very slow — precisely as if he were a creature who never acted, but moved always in a rhythm that should not interrupt his thoughts; his features had no expression, as if the odd, bizarre, and useless objects that his eyes rested on were neither pleasing nor distasteful. At the window he paused to look at the backs of a young girl with fair hair plaited and coiled round her neck who leant over the balustrade elbow to elbow with a young man wearing a straw hat and white tennis shoes. They were talking with a rapt intensity — about whether you could express the psychic emotions of Keats’s “Ode to a Grecian Vase” in terms of paint.