Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (607 page)

Mr. Pflugschmied, on the other hand, whilst he uttered comfortable and rather feminine ejaculations of shockedness over George’s recalcitrance, limited himself on the whole to assuring George that George did not know how the Chancelleries of an exhausted Europe bent before the will of a live Philadelphia — or it may have been by that time a Chicago — pressman.

George said he had not imagined that any man
could
be so inaccurate. It even distracted him a good deal because he kept listening for the next inaccuracy. And it was all very exhausting. George said that at a very early stage of the discussion he was already “bathed in sweat.”

He said, too, that being so battered with moral censure certainly affected him a good deal. It gave him again the sensation he had had when a number of Germans in Zell talked about the events and moral aspects of the war.

He was not weakened in his attitude. He stuck to the assertion that he would not initiate, counsel, or assist any kind of litigation. It was like hanging on to a stick in a gale of wind. Fortunately not one of them asked him to give any reasons for his outrageous behaviour. They just took for granted his mental obliquity and battered away at him as if for practice in argument. A housemaid came in once or twice, tentatively, as if to see whether she could lay the table for dinner; but they took no notice of her. They seemed to have forgotten eating. But George said the sight of the pretty, fresh girl in cap and apron-strings rested his mind. It reminded him that the whole world was not one immense parrot cage.

They got at last to all talking at once. That was inevitable. He did not blame Marie Elizabeth. It was necessary that she should talk. That was why he was there. And he maintained that she was always dignified; stony, but “correct.” The other two were just shouting alongside her voice. So that once he found himself roaring at the full depth of his lungs to Mr. Pflugschmied: and George’s was no mean voice when he raised it:

“For heaven’s sake, say for once something accurate and precise, or hold your tongue. The King is not the uncle of the German Emperor: he is the cousin. The German Emperor is not the Emperor of Germany but the German Emperor!”

Mr. Plowright (otherwise Pflugschmied) had been describing how he was going to start for Germany at once and the things he was going to say to the ruler of that Empire in order to recover the documents of George, a subject of that sovereign’s uncle.

George said that after he shouted like that a dead and astonishing silence existed in that room. Mr. Plowright was suddenly without motion, his jaw hanging down; and his round eyes which, behind his opulent gold-rimmed glasses, had the air of being wet, were fixed on George’s face with the expression of one suddenly overwhelmed by hopeless and irrevocable disaster. The two girls looked down, Eleanor at the table between her elbows, Marie Elizabeth at the floor. The silence was so oppressive that George could hear the drip of the water on to the carbide of the hanging lamp. And George said that the pain of that kindly squat man was so distressing that he said: “I’m sorry! Do go on talking. I believe you have been very good to my sister. I am deeply grateful!”

No one spoke; no one moved. George went on:

“It’s a little madness of mine. Technical inaccuracies distract me. Of course you do not know our European fine shades. Why should you? — they’re quite unimportant. And of course American newspapers do not mind technical inaccuracies. You get out of the habit, I daresay.”

It was as if Mr. Plowright had been stung by a wasp. He began in the tone of a little squeal:

“My Lordship! If the reporter of any American paper..” Marie Elizabeth said:

“Yes, Otto! Yes, Otto! Another time!”

George said that he was amazed at the softness in his sister’s voice. It was that of a tall mother talking to a wounded child. She even looked at George appealingly. The passionless intonation nevertheless returned to her voice when she said to her brother:

“You refuse, then, all help and countenance?”

Miss Jeaffreson said:

“What is the use of talking, Marie Elizabeth? That idle and discredited woman has got at him first. They are in agreement to whistle you down the wind. A certain type of man is born to be blinded by that meretricious type of woman!”

Mr. Plowright — he must really have been a gentleman — began timidly:

“No! Countess Pugh appears to be a real kind woman. But her judgment is obscured. Rheumatoid arthritis, from which she suffers, is one of the worst scourges....” George looked in his direction. His eyebrows winced slightly; his aunt was suffering really from hysterical angina pectoris complicated by a still more awful disease. Mr. Plowright babbled down into an unintelligible and uneasy silence. George said to his sister:

“I refuse you countenance. I do not refuse you a brother’s love. I have told you all I could think of to-night. And you know that helps you in a course of action that, frankly, breaks my heart. If your solicitor wishes to question me as to details I will answer all that I know. In addition, our father placed in our hands a considerable sum that he said was to be for the express purpose of litigation. He meant it to serve against Mr. Podd: I cannot have used much of that; your Mr. Jeaffreson will tell you when he makes up his accounts. It was some hundred pounds. What I have not used is at your disposal. Your expenses have no doubt been heavy.”

It was as if a sombre flame of satisfaction ht up for the moment the eyes of Marie Elizabeth. She said nothing, however. Mr. Plowright exclaimed something that George did not catch; but he felt that the kindly fat man had commended him in tones that resembled those of an American university cheer. Marie Elizabeth looked at him softly, and said:

“Of course, Otto, my brother is always generous!”

She added something else that again George did not catch. It was as if those two had a private and intimate language of half-words and allusions. George imagined that Mr. Pflugschmied had been trying to lend her money with which to prosecute her romantic suits. And George got rather strongly the impression that his sister could not have been managing her finances very well.

She must have had a reasonable income. The Scotch Bank continued to pay her the allowance that Mr. Heimann had directed; she had from four to five hundred a year from my brother’s estate, and Miss Jeaffreson ought to have been able to defray most of the household expenses out of
her
allowance for that purpose from the late Mr. Heimann. Possibly they lived extravagantly; anyhow, prices were rising already; and no doubt neither Marie Elizabeth nor Eleanor Jeaffreson was a good housekeeper. On the top of that Marie Elizabeth seemed to be constantly taking “counsel’s opinion” on small points in her case. That would certainly be expensive.

George said that if any man was to lend money to his sister he had rather it had been Mr. Pflugschmied than anyone else. He was so obviously without guile or even ordinary knowledge of the world. He said, nevertheless, to that gentleman that he hoped no occasion of the sort had yet arisen, and he would certainly take steps to see that none did in the future.

Mr. Pflugschmied began to stutter. He was affectingly distressed. He said that Marie Elizabeth’s “story” had been one of the greatest press-scoops he had ever handled. It had been worth a thousand pounds to him — Mr. Pflugschmied; so why should not Marie Elizabeth.... He began to blush as well as to hesitate for words. He hoped, he said, as soon as certain formalities could be concluded, since there could be no doubt of the lamented death of her late husband, “to enter into so tender a relationship with Lady Jessop,
née
Marsden, that...” George said that he cried out:

“You mean to say that you have been writing about us in your accursed prints?”

Mr. Pflugschmied said, with composure: in this matter he was certain of his ground. He said:

“Only, I assure your lordship, in gilt-edged journals of our greatest cities — and with extreme delicacy!”

He added:

“Why should I resist the urge? I
want
her to win her case. And our journals secure enormous attention to-day in feudal England.” He said that only ten days ago he had had an interview with our Lord Chief Chancellor — the head of the Law Courts. Perhaps he did not get the title quite right.

He seemed to have exhausted his words. Miss Jeaffreson, too, had kept silence after George had promised his sister that money. Marie Elizabeth said:

“You aren’t stopping here to-night?” He answered:

“No! I have a friend to see near here.” She asked again: “After that! What are you doing?” He said:

“I am going to enlist — in the Irish Guards!” She said: “I shall get that stopped. It is wicked. How can I pretend that my brother is an Earl, if he is a common soldier?’

Miss Jeaffreson said:

“It is murder! To dress yourself up with brass buttons. To swagger around. How do you know that the man you kill mayn’t be...

Mr. Plowright (otherwise Pflugschmied) however, considered that it would be democratic; an Earl, having the right to a commission by birth! He considered it fine. It would make a splendid impression “at home.”

Marie Elizabeth was crying — painful tears. She said:

“He gives with one hand and takes with the other. Who will believe that my brother is a gentleman by birth and tradition if he is in those coarse, vulgar clothes. But I shall stop it. I have influence enough for that!”

Mr. Pflugschmied got George out into my brother’s little hall, which seemed a momentary quiet shrine of the English decencies. A lamp burned above a card table loaded with newspapers. With his right hand Mr. Pflugschmied brushed the collar of George’s motor-coat; with his left he caught up an immense Saturday edition of one of the newspapers he represented. It appeared to be left there with the view of impressing casual callers. He said:

“Here: look! What could be more delicate!”

George said he looked down upon that fat, folded sheet with a mind that shuddered, as if he had been forced to contemplate an esoteric indecency. Portraits of himself and of Marie Elizabeth, in oval lozenges of spottiness, leaned away the one from the other. Beneath them, as if on the squalid ribbons of a true-lover’s knot, was inscribed something like:

“Lord of Marston Moor denied his Rights. Last Fight at Chaldon Field Derided in Twentieth Century.” Beneath was a portrait inscribed “Hamden,” and a little picture of a stricken man riding a horse which had its head down in utter fatigue. It represented undoubtedly John Hampden, going dying from Chalgrove Field.

George could not get his breath. He stammered:

“Ours is... an eighteenth century title... Chalgrove Field was fought.... Oh, about 1643!”

Mr. Plowright’s eyes behind his glasses looked more wet than they had seemed before. He said:

“I knew you would be pleased. Look at all that space!” He was helping George tenderly into his motor cap:

“Of course,” he said, “there is a mistake in the name. And in historic details. I wrote it before I was admitted into the
inner
circle of your dear sister’s affairs.” In a ghostly voice, suggestive of a confidence trickster, he stated to George that any American journalist who made a mistake in a name would be “fired” with extreme and merciless velocity: even if he wrote of “Patrick” instead of “Padruic” O’Brien, bar-tender in the 13th Ward, Philadelphia.

On the doorstep, with the quiet night behind him, George recovered enough of a voice to ask his way to the house of Dr. Robins, who lived two miles away. Mr. Plowright (otherwise Pflugschmied) said that George must keep on over the Ridge and then turn to the right. The second turning. He held on to George’s hand whilst he eulogised George for his purpose of enlisting, and Countess Pugh Gomme for being a true woman.

His voice died away. The headlights of George’s little car lit up in their pallid altitude the immense beech-trees that form a natural avenue over the Ridge. They are spectacular: engrossed like human beings; all-knowing like things that are dispassionate and eternal, they go up forty feet without a horizontal side-branch. George shivered a little and put on his top-speed.

He did not have much luck, really, even when for the time he was beginning to prosper. For, naturally, Mr. Pflugschmied having told him to take the second turning to the right he ought to have taken the first side road to the left.