Ford Madox Ford

“ For Robert Grimshaw, if he was a man of many knowledges, was a man of no experiences at all, since his connection with Katya Lascarides, her refusal of him, her shudderings at him, had been so out of the ordinary nature of things that he couldn’t make any generalizations from them at all. When he had practically forced Dudley Leicester upon Pauline, he really had believed that you can marry a woman you love to your best friend without enduring all the tortures of jealousy. ”

“ It’s difficult for a wife to talk about these things to a doctor. He might not believe it if I said that Dudley was so fond of me. But you know, and you may make him believe it. For it all turns on that.... But I will have Saunders within call till you come back with him....”
She went into the room, and, having touched the bell, stood looking down upon her husband with a contemplation of an infinite compassion. In the light of the stained glass at the end of a long passage of gloom she brought tears into Grimshaw’s eyes, and an infinite passion and tenderness into his whole being. ”

“ Robert Grimshaw said fiercely.
“Well, the responsibility’s mine,” she answered, and her tiny lips quivered. “There’s my mother dead and Dudley mad, and I’m responsible.”
“No, I’m responsible,” Grimshaw said in a fierce whisper.
“Now come,” she answered; “if I hadn’t married Dudley, mother would never have had her pony-chaise or got pneumonia ...”
“It was I that brought you together,” Grimshaw said.
“Oh! if you put it that way,” she answered; “there’s no end to who’s responsible. You may say it was the Brigstocks. But the immediate responsibility is mine. ”

“ I do know a lot—about other people. Jervis gives me the news while he’s shaving me. So I suppose I know nearly all he knows about other people. He knows I like to know, and it’s part of what he’s paid for. But as for what he knows about me”—Grimshaw waved his hand as if he were flicking cigarette-ash off his knee—“why, I know nothing about that. We never can; we never shall. But we never can and we never shall know what anyone in the world knows of us and thinks. You’ll find, as you go on, that you’ll never really know all that Pauline thinks of you—not quite all. ”

“ Robert Grimshaw said, “if we overburden our bodies with fasting, we demoralize the image of our Creator and Saviour?”
“Not so!” the priest thundered suddenly, and his eyes blazed far back in his skull. “We have mortified this our body which is from the devil, and in the lowness of the tides of this life we see the truth. For I tell you that when we see this place to be lonely, then, indeed, we see the truth, and when we say that it is pleasant, we lie foully.” ”

“ Thus, sitting before Pauline Leicester in her drawing-room, did Robert Grimshaw review his impressions. And, looking back on the whole affair, it seemed to present himself to him in those terms of strong light, of the unreal sound of voices on the telephone, and of pain, of unceasing pain that had never “let up” at any rate from the moment when, having come up from the country with Katya’s kisses still upon his lips, he had found Pauline in his dining-room, and had heard that Dudley Leicester didn’t know. ”

“ ROBERT GRIMSHAW was pushing the electric button beside the Leicesters’ entry when, hatless, the daylight falling on his ruffled hair, Dudley Leicester flung open the door and ran down the street.
“Oh, go after him; go after him!” Pauline cried from the hall.
If Dudley Leicester had done anything at all in his life it was to run at school. Thus it was a full minute before Grimshaw came to the door of the little dark hat-ironing shop, in the middle of which Leicester stood, leaning over the counter, holding by the waistcoat a small man with panic-stricken blue eyes. ”

“ Van Husum’s dissolving into a flood of tears—at the end of that meeting Ellida had softly reproached Katya for the little notice she had taken of what was, after all, the nicest child in London.
But cool, calm, tall, and dressed in a grey that exactly matched her eyes, Katya “took charge.” And, during the process, whilst she said, “I shall want this and that,” or “The place must be on a hill; it must face south-west; it must be seven miles from the sea; it must be a farm, with plenty of live-stock but no children,” Ellida watched her, silent, bewildered, and admiring. ”

“ But except by little pressures of the hand at meeting or at parting, and by little fluttering attentions to Ellida’s hats and toilets when she rose to go, Pauline was not going to show either gratitude or emotion for the moment. It was her way of keeping her flag flying. And he admired her for it as he admired her for everything, and looking down at Peter between his feet, Robert shook his head very sadly. “Perhaps,” he thought to himself, “until she knows it’s hopeless, she’s not going to acknowledge even to herself that there’s anything the matter at all.” ”

“ For no force is ever lost, and the ripple raised by a stone, striking upon the bank of a pool, goes on communicating its force for ever and ever throughout space and throughout eternity. But for our vision its particular “affair” ends when, striking the bank, it disappears. So for me the “affair” of Dudley Leicester’s madness ended at the moment when Katya Lascarides laid her hands upon his temple. ”

“ It would not have been like me to call you a penguin. You’re not like one.”
“Ah,” she said, “when you’re in love you don’t bother about likenesses. I’ll bet you called your wife a penguin before you married her, or a tooth-brush, or a puff-ball. I’ve heard that men always transfer their pet names from woman to woman.”
He attempted to blurt out that she was to leave Pauline out of it, but she cried:
“Oh, you traitor! You have called her one of these names. Couldn’t you have kept them sacred? Isn’t anything sacred to a man? ”

“ Then once more she was looking down at him:
“Tell whoever it is,” she said, “that Sir William is in Paris and Lady Hudson in bed. Say ’sir’ when you speak, and they’ll think it’s the second footman, Moddle! Don’t you remember Moddle?” And again she laughed, and her ascent of the stairs was marked by the tips of her fingers, visible as if they were little white and creeping mice.
Dudley Leicester put the receiver to his ear. A peremptory “Are you 4,259 Mayfair?” made him suddenly afraid, as if a schoolmaster had detected him in some crime. Hitherto he had had no feeling of crime. ”

“ Dudley Leicester raised his hand to his straw-coloured moustache.
“Grimshaw’s talking to Saunders,” he said.
Ellida looked at him incredulously. But eventually her face cleared. “Oh, about Peter?” she said. “I was beginning to think you’d got an inquest in the house....”
And suddenly she touched Dudley Leicester vigorously on the arm.
“Come! Get him up from wherever he is,” she said, with a good-humoured vivacity. “Katya’s more important than Peter, and I’ve got the largest number of things to tell him in the shortest possible time.” ”

“ We fly as far asunder as the poles, and it goes on for good.”
She stopped as suddenly as she had begun to speak, and what she had said was so true, and the sudden revelation of what burned beneath the surface of a creature so small and apparently so cold—the touch of fierce hunger in her voice, of pained resentment in her eyes—these things so overwhelmed Robert Grimshaw that for a long time, still he remained silent. Then suddenly he said:
“Yes; by God, it’s true what you say! I told Ellida long ago that my business in life was to wait for Katya and to see that you had a good time.” ”

“ Robert Grimshaw had walked along nearer the rails than was his habit until he came to where Etta Stackpole—it was just as much her habit, so that he had known where to find her—was talking to three men in her brilliant way. And raising his head, Robert Grimshaw had inserted himself between Hugo van Voss, a Dutch Jew beginning to show adiposity, and Charles McDiarmid, who, with his grey peaked beard and slight lisp, was asking why she hadn’t come to the Caledonian Market last Tuesday to look for bargains in the bric-à-brac that is displayed there upon the broad flagstones. ”

“ Little, and as it were golden, Pauline stood motionless in the middle of the room; she looked upon the floor, and appeared lost in reflection. Then she touched one side of her fair hair, and without looking up she came silently towards them. Ellida was upon the point of running towards her, her arms outstretched, and of saying: “You are wonderful!” but Pauline, with her brown eyes a little averted, brought out without any visible emotion, as if she were very abstracted, the words: “And how is your little Kitty? She is still at Brighton with Miss Lascarides? ”

“ Pauline Leicester was leaning over her husband, who was sunk deep into his chair. He had an odd, a grotesque aspect, of being no more than so many clothes carelessly thrown down. She looked for a moment round at Robert Grimshaw, and then again bent her tender face over her husband.
“Dudley, dear,” she said; “don’t you hear? It’s nothing. It’s all nothing. Listen!” She raised her voice to repeat: “It is all nothing. I have nothing against you.” ”

“ You’ve got to think that I don’t by any means care for Katya less. I want her for myself. But I want to see to it that Pauline has a good time, and I want to see her having it.”
“How can she have it if you’ve given her Dudley Leicester when she wants you?”
“My dear child,” he answered, and he had become again calm, strong, and infinitely lofty. “Don’t you understand that’s how Society has to go on? It’s the sort of thing that’s got to happen to make us the civilized people that we are. Dudley’s the best fellow in the world: I’m sure he’s the best fellow in the world. ”

“ I haven’t made a scandal or any outcry about Dudley Leicester. That’s our day and that’s our class. But look at all the difference it’s made in our personal relations! Look at the misery of it all! That’s it. We can make a day and a class and rules for them, but we can’t keep any of the rules except just the gross ones like not making scandals.”
“Then, what Katya’s here for,” Robert Grimshaw said, “is to cure Dudley. She’s a most wonderful sense, and she knows that the only way to have me altogether is to cure him.”
“Oh, don’t put it as low down as that,” Pauline said. ”

“ Dudley Leicester, that’s a good thing to do. It’s an act of piety for one thing; it averts evil for another. It’s like touching for the evil chance. If you’d done that for me—for my sake, because you had a good slice of my life—if you had done it ... ”

“ This young man, with a singular slimness and taciturnity, had been put in by Sir William as if he were a bailiff in possession of Dudley Leicester. Dudley Leicester never spoke, the young man hardly ever; but he was exceedingly nice in his table manners, and eventually Pauline made the discovery at dinner that he very much disliked cats, and was a Christian Scientist. And with these additions the household continued its way.
To Robert Grimshaw the bright spot in this tenebrous affair was the inflexible tranquillity of Pauline Leicester. ”

“ Robert Grimshaw looked distastefully at the unlit cigarette which he held between his fingers, and then he observed before him a man who might have been fifty, with watery blue eyes and a red nose, his clothes and hat all a mossy green with age and between his lips a misformed cigarette. ”

“ No man, indeed, can serve two women—no man, at any rate, who is essentially innocent, and who is essentially monogamous as was Dudley Leicester.
“... The cowardliest thing you ever did in your life,” he heard her repeat, and it was as if in trying to remember Pauline, he were committing a new treachery to Etta Stackpole. ”

“ Possibly, by shoving him on to do things, Pauline and I—or I principally—have brought this sort of thing on. Englishmen haven’t any sense of responsibility. Perhaps it’s bad for them to have it aroused in them. They can work; they can fight; they can do things; but it’s for themselves alone. They’re individualists. But there is a class that’s got the sense of duty to the whole. They’ve got a rudimentary sense of it—a tradition, at least, if not a sense. And Leicester comes of that class. ”

“ It was because he behaved so like an oaf that I set myself to get him. I swear that it is true. I swear as I am a religious woman. I believe in God and things.”
Again Robert Grimshaw said, “Good God” and his agitation grew on him.
“Well,” Etta Stackpole said, “what is there to get so upset about? It doesn’t count in Dudley for dissoluteness. There isn’t a man in the world, not even yourself, Robert Grimshaw, could get out of my having him if I set myself to it at that time of night and after that sort of evening. I’m not boasting about it. It’s the nature of the beast that you men are. ”

“ But vaguely and without much interest, at odd moments Dudley Leicester had gathered—it is impossible to know how one does gather these things, or perhaps Robert Grimshaw had really formulated the idea for his simple brain—that the Hudsons were one of several predatory and semi-detached couples. They didn’t interfere apparently with each other. They hit where they liked, like what used to be called “chain shot,” dangerous missiles consisting of two cannon-balls chained one to the other and whirling through Society. ”

“ The minute jealousies, the very deep hatreds, and the strong passions that swelled in his particular world of deep idleness, of high feeling, and of want of occupation—in this world where, since no man had any need of anything to do, there were so many things to feel—Dudley Leicester perceived absolutely nothing, no complexities, no mixed relationships. ”

“ But I’m a lonely woman. My work’s all I’ve got.”
“Katya!” he said. “You know your half of your father’s money is waiting for you. I’ve not spent a penny of it.”
“I know you’re a dear,” she said, “but it doesn’t alter matters. I won’t take money from a man who won’t make a sacrifice for me.”
“Ellida took her share,” he said.
“Ellida’s Ellida,” she answered. “She’s a darling, but she’s not me. If you’d take the steps you might, you could have me, and I’d have father’s money. But that’s all there is to it. I’ll do all I can for Dudley Leicester. ”

“ It was a progress of sudden jerks, long, swift rushes, and of sudden dodgings aside.
“Ah, Pauline Leicester!” Grimshaw said; “you haven’t got to fear her on one side, but you have on another. She’s a quaint, dear, cool, determined little person. I shouldn’t advise you to do Dudley Leicester any more harm because, though she’s not in the least bit revengeful, she won’t let you play any more monkey-tricks to damage poor Dudley. Don’t you make the mistake of thinking she’s only a little wax doll. She’s much more dangerous than you could ever be, because she doesn’t spread herself so much abroad. ”

“ Etta Hudson sustained, with a brilliant indifference, the glances from the half-closed eyes of McDiarmid and those of the dark, large, rather insolent and inscrutable orbs of the stockbroker.
“Oh yes,” she said to Grimshaw. “You take me down to Bushey again. I’m booked up three deep for the next six months, but I’ll chuck anybody you like except my dressmaker.”
“Booked up?” Robert Grimshaw leant over the rails to say. “Yes, we’re all booked up. We’re an idle, useless crowd, and we never have an instant to do anything that we like.” ”

“ Dudley Leicester, who, whatever he had, had no head for business, had been Robert Grimshaw’s fag at school, and had been his almost daily companion at Oxford and ever since. But little by little the normal flush had returned to Robert Grimshaw’s face; only whilst lounging through life he appeared to become more occupied in his mind, more reserved, more benevolent and more gentle.
It was on observing a return of the excessive and chalk-like opacity in Robert Grimshaw’s cheeks that Ellida, when that afternoon he called upon her, exclaimed:
“What’s the matter? You know you aren’t looking well. ”

“ You’re the bravest woman in the world, and I’m Katya Lascarides.”
With the light full upon her face, Pauline Leicester hardly stirred.
“You’ve heard all about me,” she said, with a touch of sadness in her voice, “from Robert Grimshaw?”
“No, from Ellida,” Katya answered, “and I’ve seen your photograph. She carries it about with her.”
Pauline Leicester said, “Ah!” very slowly. And then, “Yes; Ellida’s very fond of me. She’s very good to me.”
“My dear,” Katya said, “Ellida’s everything in the matter. At any rate, if I’m going to do you any good, it’s she that’s got me here. ”