Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (522 page)

“Thousands of people are coming,” he exclaimed, “you never saw such a sight!”

And indeed they came. It was like a presentation at Court; it was like a bargain sale; it was like a battlefield, and the great actors and actresses of the day poured in with such speed and volubility that the other guests had the sensation of assisting at a gigantic theatrical gala incorporating all the ball-room scenes of every drama of manners that had been produced during the last twenty years.

The theatrical people in fact gave the note of the party. You couldn’t look anywhere without seeing one of them being himself or herself, in a loud voice and with attitudes borrowed from the favourite character of his most successful piece. The orchestra from the Opera had arrived and began the overture to Strauss’ Rosenkavalier. But so deafening was the noise of tongues and so close the pressure of bodies, that the orchestra remained inaudible and unseen. People swept past Mr. Fleight in droves, as if every glitteringly dressed person in London had turned into an emigrant and was rushing on to the decks of a steamer along a gangway. The remarkable butler never missed one of them, and a perfect fusillade of well-known names burst and rattled near the doors. It was as if a brazen megaphone were braying out the results of a perusal of the work of reference called “Who’s Who.” There were Mr. and Mrs. Cocks and Dickinson who wrote for the
Review.
Mr. Dickinson was a large and impressive person with curls like Lord Byron’s, and normally he stood out in a crowd. But that evening his coat was nearly pulled off his back by Madame La Comtesse de Girouette, who had come from the French Embassy along with Mr. Picpus, extra Secretary of Legislation. She slipped upon the marble steps and only saved herself by catching hold of Mr. Dickinson’s coat tails. Field-Marshal Sir Andrew How, who had been induced to come by Mr. Blood himself, a very shy man, was overwhelmed with confusion at the sight of this immense gathering and tried to go away. But he was pushed by the oncoming Castors, Chilcotts, Nelsons and O’Donoghues, positively into the arms of Mr. Fleight, who had to save him from falling. When Lord and Lady Cummyns, very shy people too, who had an income of about three hundred pounds a year, and hardly ever went to parties because they couldn’t afford to dress, had just given their names to the butler, Miss Clare Langham, the illustrious novelist, was so determined to be announced at the very earliest opportunity that she pushed right between the frightened peer and his wife and put her own foot through her red plush skirt. This caused some dismay, but she too was brushed aside. Mr. Parment entered without attracting any attention at all, and he stood saying some kind words about Mr. Fleight’s efforts on behalf of Mr. Gregory.

Gradually the whispers went through the hall that the Chancellor of the Exchequer was there. Then everyone was pleased at once, and it became the gayest huge party that had ever been given. The theatrical people did, of course, more to promote this happiness than the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but still, Mr. Parment added something to the satisfaction. For, if it is the most delightful thing in the world to have one of the queens of the stage dig her elbow into your back, it is also pleasant to hold a plate of ice-cream, in a crowd at the buffet, over the head of a Chancellor of the Exchequer in the effort to hand it to a crushed lady behind him. Indeed, the Statesman, being more human, will probably catch your eye and smile friendlily at your efforts, whilst the actress will be merely irritated at your back for getting in the way of her elbow.

Two Parliamentary under-secretaries and the Leader of the Opposition with two other front-bench Opposition men — the House having just risen — arrived almost immediately after the Chancellor, the last three having been forced to go there by Mr. Garstein, who wanted to give value for money received. And these six statesmen stood awkwardly in a horse-shoe round the door, not having the slightest idea of what they ought to say to each other. Mr. Fleight tried to introduce Augusta to the Leader of his own party, but Mr. Blood was just carrying that brilliant lady off along the side of the hall. Mr. Fleight gave instructions that the Russian dancers should be asked to begin their performance, and having introduced, with a calm dejection, three actresses, one painter’s wife, who was extraordinarily pretty, and Lady Cummyns to five of the other Statesmen, he introduced Miss Clare Langham, the enormously great authoress who had torn her skirt, to the Leader of the Opposition. He had expressed a strong desire to make that lady’s acquaintance. He said that hers were the only books he ever read.

With these twelve behind him, Mr. Fleight pushed a passage through the crowd towards the boxes at the end of the hall. But when he opened the door of the first box he saw, silhouetted against the light, the large forms of Augusta and Mr. Blood. He closed the door gently and conducted the politicians to boxes further on. From one of them he had to eject Mr. Macpherson, who had ensconced himself there with a very small actress, dressed almost entirely in tulle. Mr. Macpherson however, insisted on introducing this lady to every one of the six political leaders. He had met them all in the drawing-rooms of wealthy supporters of either party, for there was nowhere that Mr. Macpherson did not go. And, since Mr. Fleight desired to be kind to Mr.

Macpherson, he took on himself the company of the young actress, who led him into the deserted supper room and gave him a long and minute account of why she had left a touring company at the Theatre Royal, Leeds. In that way Mr. Fleight never saw the Russian dancers.

On the unusually high stage, so that they appeared to be elevated in the air — and this was done for the benefit of the audience that was forced to stand in the body of the hall — in garments of scarlet, green, purple and indigo, the dancers sprang here and there. They simulated languor, passion, despair, rage, death and ecstasy. The orchestra played long, cloying melodies and harmonies whose discords resolved themselves into sweetness after having been very long sustained. To the people in the boxes, the audience appeared like an immense tesselated pavement that moved very slightly — the heads of the men and small portions of their black coats being, as it were, set into the white shoulders of the women with their variegated clothes. Sometimes they were quite silent in order to listen to the music, but now and again a small cluster of talk would begin in one comer of the space and rush suddenly, like a wave, right across the assembly to beat against the other side of the hall and echo into the arches and into the dome, so high overhead. And then again the talk would suddenly die down as if a re-awakened reverence had filled them all again with the intense desire to listen to the music of Borodine. There was only one actress, in the far comer, near the stage, who kept up a continual chatter in a strident voice. She was jealous because the dancers attracted so much attention, and from time to time everybody in the hall heard a slice of an adventure of a friend of the lady’s called Tony Hartogg, who had a large golden tooth....

And Mr. Blood, looking down upon the multitude, remarked to Augusta in an undertone:

“Now, isn’t all this good enough?”

Augusta, with her eyes still upon the dancers, answered: “If you mean ‘good enough’ to make me marry Mr. Fleight — frankly, no, I don’t.”

“But consider,” Mr. Blood said, “all that it does mean.”

“If you will explain what that is,” Augusta answered, “I might be better able to come to a conclusion. All that I can see is that your friend has spent, as nearly as possible, three thousand pounds in order to give free drinks to a lot of loafers. They won’t owe him any obligation. Why should they? Of course I may be wrong. I don’t pretend to understand everything of the society of this country.”

“What you say, Augusta,” Mr. Blood answered, “would be perfectly true if our friend were going to go under. If he became poor there would not be a single soul in this room who would give him a penny to buy a roll with. That’s all right; that’s human nature. But our friend isn’t going to go under, and that means that every one of the two thousand people in this room will do Mr. Fleight a small favour if he asks it. And, loafing, idle, and incompetent crowd that they are, they hold in their hands the influence of the whole Empire and of half the world besides. It isn’t decent that they should, but there it is. If, for instance, you had a drunken brother that you wanted exported somewhere, and kept, you’d ask Mr. Fleight to speak to that man with a bulbous nose, or that other man with a face like a hawk — that one beside the pillar there — and one of the men would give him the job of representing the Empire in, say, Madagascar; or the other would make him the sole arbiter of life, death, and whisky over some three thousand niggers in a clearing in the centre of America where they’re building a railway. They’ll do these things, not out of any sense of gratitude to our friend, but simply in order not to be left out of the next party that he gives. After an affair like this, and if Mr. Fleight keeps it up, it will be more of a calamity not to be invited to one of Mr. Fleight’s parties than if you were permanently struck off the list of the Royal Levees.”

Augusta said:

“That may be all very well, but I’ve got the feeling that the man’s unlucky. It’s a superstition, perhaps, but I can’t get away from it. What is to prevent his going and losing all his money?”

“I,” Mr. Blood said rather determinedly, “I’m the man that will prevent that.”

Augusta said:

“Of course that makes it feel a little better, but still—” she broke off and, gazing at the dancers, shook her head very slightly. One side of each of their faces was in deep shadow, so that they were silhouetted against the light. The orchestra had sunk its tones to an absolute pianissimo, and there was in the audience, beneath the vast haze of light, an almost complete silence. Augusta added after a moment: “Or I ought to say that it makes the money perfectly safe, but still I’ve the sense that some disaster—” She did not finish her sentence. The orchestra wailed, leaving upon the ear a sense of not being satisfied. A dancer in a blue and glittering gown was fainting over a mossy bank....

“Hasn’t it occurred to you,” Mr. Blood said rather earnestly, “that you’ll probably, when you marry him, be poor Mr. Fleight’s absolutely worst disaster yourself?” Augusta continued to gaze in front of her for a minute or two. Then she said:

“No, I don’t see how I could be. I’m perfectly healthy, not in the least neurotic, and absolutely good-tempered. If I shouldn’t make him happy, who in the world would?”

“Well,” Mr. Blood answered, “I’ve still got the sense — a sense just as strong as that other one of yours — that you’ll prove the greatest possible disaster for poor Aaron. I don’t see how it’s going to happen, but I feel it. I don’t think it’ll come through ill-health or your going off with another man—”

Augusta said: “Oh, that!” and made with her right hand a gesture of the most unspeakable contempt.

“Well,” Mr. Blood retorted, “it will as likely as not be just that. The coldness of your temperament — the fact that you obviously can’t take an interest in any man. Poor Mr. Fleight loves with a wild, mad, helpless, impossible passion. And, mind you, he’ll go on just as he’s begun and you won’t be capable of making any sentimental return.”

“Well,” Augusta said quite coolly, “I’ll warrant that he would have perfectly healthy children.”

“My dear Augusta,” Mr. Blood said, “I’m not going to go on discussing the possible disasters that might overtake our poor friend, but I think you’re now easy in your mind about his money. And to turn the discussion upon yourself, your last remark is just the sort of remark that you ought not to allow yourself to make. It doesn’t worry me, but it’s a frame of mind that won’t go down in this country. It’s the perfectly plain common sense of the matter that we’re talking about, but in England you really mustn’t ever, no matter what you may be talking about, look at any subject from the standpoint of plain common sense. If you do, you’ll let some of it slip out, and that is disaster.”

“But I can’t see,” Augusta said, “why I shouldn’t talk about it. The business of marriage is to provide healthy and legitimate children.”

“But good heavens, Augusta!” Mr. Blood said, “that may be the business of a marriage in Germany, and it is the business of marriage here, but one absolutely dare not say so. In this country the business of marriage is to join two loving hearts in a union that it’s better not to talk about, compounded of sympathy and bearing up and not letting the servants know that you quarrel.”

“It sounds perfect rot to me,” Augusta said; “but I’ve no doubt you’re correct. These are the most idiotic people that I’ve ever conceived. It’s like living in a lunatic asylum, where you do nothing but play blind man’s buff all day long. But, of course, if you tell me that’s how I’ve got to behave, if I ever did marry Mr. Fleight, I’d be particularly careful that the servants shouldn’t know we quarrelled. Not that I can imagine any possibility of quarrelling with him; he doesn’t interest me enough.”

“You know, Augusta,” Mr. Blood said reasonably, “what you’ll have to do is to get an encyclopaedia and go through it carefully, marking out how you may talk about the things that it contains. Thus, in general company you mustn’t ever talk about marriage and its problems except in terms of the servants. And you mustn’t ever talk about the servants except in terms of the lower classes. And you mustn’t ever talk about the lower classes because they’re the poor. And you mustn’t ever talk about the poor except in terms of the Bazaar at St. Mark’s, Kilburn. And you must be very careful about St. Mark’s, because St. Mark’s has something to do with God, and God you must never mention at all.”