Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Simple Life Limited by Ford Madox Ford - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)
    The Simple Life Limited by Ford Madox Ford - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)
    The Simple Life Limited by Ford Madox Ford - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)
    Ebook452 pages6 hours

    The Simple Life Limited by Ford Madox Ford - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)

    By Ford Madox Ford

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    This eBook features the unabridged text of ‘The Simple Life Limited by Ford Madox Ford - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)’ from the bestselling edition of ‘The Complete Works of Ford Madox Ford’.

    Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. The Delphi Classics edition of Ford includes original annotations and illustrations relating to the life and works of the author, as well as individual tables of contents, allowing you to navigate eBooks quickly and easily.

    eBook features:
    * The complete unabridged text of ‘The Simple Life Limited by Ford Madox Ford - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)’
    * Beautifully illustrated with images related to Ford’s works
    * Individual contents table, allowing easy navigation around the eBook
    * Excellent formatting of the textPlease visit www.delphiclassics.com to learn more about our wide range of titles
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPublishdrive
    Release dateJul 17, 2017
    ISBN9781788777674
    The Simple Life Limited by Ford Madox Ford - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)
    Author

    Ford Madox Ford

    Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939) was an English author, editor, and poet best known for his novel The Good Soldier, which is considered to be one of the best works of literature of the twentieth century.

    Read more from Ford Madox Ford

    Related to The Simple Life Limited by Ford Madox Ford - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)

    Titles in the series (26)

    View More
    View More

    Related ebooks

    Classics For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Letters

      Feb 18, 2021

      Letters
      3 min read

    • Article

      Man About Town

      Aug 26, 2021

      WE LIVE IN A STRANGE half-liberated, half-imprisoned world right now. It’s not unlike being at Gordonstoun in the late Eighties, or so I imagine, with less cross-country running. But I have been making the most of my afternoons. I have taken libation

      4 min read

    • Article

      Men Behaving Badly

      Jul 6, 2018

      Men Behaving Badly
      5 min read

    • Article

      RIP Practical Jokes

      May 3, 2023

      ‘Who put salt in the sugar bowl? ‘Who put fireworks in the coal?’ These were the opening lines of Terry Scott's naughty-schoolboy song, My Brother, back in 1962. The song was indicative of an era when pranks and practical jokes were more or less expe

      3 min read

    • Article

      Grey Pride

      Jun 21, 2017

      Grey Pride
      16 min read

    • Article

      Readers’ Letters

      Nov 17, 2021

      SIR: I must applaud William Cook (Who was Blackie the donkey?, October issue) in maintaining the tradition of never allowing the facts to mar a good story. Don Mackay arrived at Jarandilla de la Vera first, not in the wake of Hugh Whittow of the Sun.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Time Traveller

      May 26, 2022

      Time Traveller
      4 min read

    • Article

      Time Out

      Jul 3, 2020

      Historian William Dalrymple has carved himself a niche specialising in the history of Asia and he pulls a lot of that knowledge together to document how the British East India Company managed to subjugate India, back then one of the wealthiest and mo

      3 min read

    • Article

      Time Out

      Jul 3, 2020

      Historian William Dalrymple has carved himself a niche specialising in the history of Asia and he pulls a lot of that knowledge together to document how the British East India Company managed to subjugate India, back then one of the wealthiest and mo

      3 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Apr 8, 2024

      Books
      6 min read

    • Article

      Forgotten Authors

      Sep 22, 2021

      Never meet your heroes. As a wannabe writer, I learnt that lesson early on. I was ten years old, and my favourite writer was Leon Garfield. Imagine how thrilled I was when my mother arranged for me to have tea with him! My mum was friends with Philip

      3 min read

    • Article

      Class Action

      Dec 2, 2023

      Class Action
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Strange History Of Plastic Paddies

      Jun 2, 2021

      Just before he died, John le Carré, an embodiment of Englishness in his writing, took Irish citizenship. In one of the last photographs of the spy author, he was wrapped in an Irish flag. Le Carré – real name David Cornwell – joins a tradition of Eng

      3 min read

    • Article

      Writers Remembering Mom and Dad

      Jul 18, 2017

      Two sons who became writers remember their parents with a fondness that will melt your heart. The post Writers Remembering Mom and Dad appeared first on The Millions.

      6 min read

    • Article

      Live And Let Live

      Apr 9, 2020

      Live And Let Live
      12 min read

    • Article

      “He Is a Great Man”

      Aug 5, 2020

      “He Is a Great Man”
      11 min read

    • Article

      The Old Un’s Notes

      Oct 20, 2021

      The Old Un’s Notes
      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Simple Life Limited by Ford Madox Ford - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The Simple Life Limited by Ford Madox Ford - Delphi Classics (Illustrated) - Ford Madox Ford

      X

      PART I

      CHAPTER I

      MR LUSCOMBE was standing with his hands deep in his pockets, his chin resting upon the dishevelled crown of the head of his little boy called Bill, who stood upon the window-seat before him and, like him, gazed at the pouring rain. It came down in such sheets that a small river flowed on each side of the carriage-drive. Because the County did not call upon Mr Luscombe and his wife, Mr Luscombe was solitary in his habits. He was friendly with the Vicar and he had some acquaintances whom he met at the Golf Club on the neighbouring common. But his most constant companion was his little boy Bill who was then aged seven, had dark, uncombed hair, a brownish, freckled face, wore a rumpled blue jersey and short blue knickerbockers.

      By Jove, we’d better ask them to come in, Mr Luscombe exclaimed. That tree’s no kind of a shelter. The rain comes through it like a sieve.

      The boy continued to gaze out of the window. Don’t ask them, father, he said: they are ugly people.

      They’re jolly wet people, Mr Luscombe said. You couldn’t even ask Sitting Bull to look beautiful with all the paint washed off him.

      But, the little boy retorted, they don’t look like pirates, and they don’t look like Indians, and they don’t look like highwaymen or anything nice.

      But they look wet, Bill, his father urged.

      They look like wet tramps, the little boy said. "They’ll come in and they’ll spoil our game, and Filson says that tramps are poison."

      But they don’t look like tramps, Bill, his father pleaded. I should say they were foreigners if they weren’t so fair.

      Then they’re German spies, the boy said. Filson says the country is full of German spies.

      Then, Mr Luscombe said triumphantly, our duty is to lure them into the house and then to have them arrested.

      That, the little boy answered, would be against the laws of hospitality.

      Isn’t it, his father said, still more against the laws of hospitality to let them get wet? They’re the strangers within the gates, you know. For they are inside the carriage gates. If they’d stayed outside it would be different.

      Then if you give them anything to eat, Bill uttered firmly, I shall drop some salt into it as Morgiana did to the captain of the Forty Thieves.

      I don’t think you’ve got the hang of that, old man, his father said. It was that she got suspicious when the captain said he wanted his food cooked without salt. Mr Luscombe went from the large and rather gloomy dining-room into the large and rather gloomy hall. He opened the door and stood in the pillared porch. The rain poured down and in the long drive the cypresses and holly trees drooped dejectedly beneath the weight of water. Above the gate that gave on to the road there towered two enormous chestnut trees, against whose trunks were pressed the backs of two slight figures. Mr Luscombe stood as far out in the porch as the driving rain would permit: a blonde, rather heavy man of perhaps thirty-five or a little more, he was dressed in a shooting-jacket, had a heavy jaw, a thick moustache and sagacious, rather dog-like eyes. He was a little slow in his actions and he had a pleasant smile which uncovered white and level teeth. He stood just six feet high, his shoulders were more than usually broad and his chest more than usually full. When he had beckoned three times with his hand he succeeded in attracting the attention of the cyclists but, in answer to his gestures, both the young creatures — who in spite of their costumes, which he found so extraordinary, appeared to him of a dazzling fairness — vigorously shook their heads.

      Damn them, Mr Luscombe exclaimed good humouredly, I believe they think I am telling them to go away.

      He repeated his gestures, bowing his body forward and shovelling with his hand towards the doorway as if he were inviting pigs to enter a sty. But his efforts were rewarded only by a similar indifference. He breathed little sounds of vexation between his teeth, and returning into the flagged hall he came out with a large umbrella which was used by his coachman upon wet days. Having opened this he walked gingerly — for he still wore his slippers — down the carriage-drive, picking his way over little runlets of water in the sandy track. The heavy drops fell with loud sounds from the boughs on to the surface of his umbrella and the rain itself made a loud and continuous crepitation.

      Why the deuce, Mr Luscombe exclaimed, did you not come in when I beckoned you? You’ve made me get my feet wet.

      Both the young people gazed at him with expressions of singular solemnity and portentousness.

      The girl, who was of singular fairness, wore upon her head an ungracious cap. It appeared to have been crumpled haphazard together out of a piece of the grey cloth of which her dress was made. She wore also a coat of grey so ill fitting that one of her shoulders appeared to be higher than the other. Her short skirt only just reached to her knees, her stockings were of grey worsted and her cycling shoes were laced with pieces of string. Her male companion, who was as fair, as young and even more slender, had the greater part of his form concealed by a grey horse-blanket, through a hole in whose centre his head stuck out. Upon his head, itself, there was crushed a grey wide-awake so sodden by the rain that it flapped down on each side, concealing the greater portion of each cheek. From between it his pink and white cultured features looked out like an old woman’s from a deep poke-bonnet. The girl was about to speak when the young man spoke in tones that combined at once a quality of gentlemanliness and aggression:

      We ought, he said, to inform you that we object to the abominable institution of marriage. We were married yesterday morning, but we desire to enter the strongest possible protest.

      Mr Luscombe raised his eyebrows, whistled between his teeth, and smiled in a slightly puzzled manner.

      Well, well, he said. I’ve heard of repenting at leisure, but I never heard of a couple who found out their mistake so soon. Consider the protest made and carried and come in out of the rain.

      The young man after a pause was about to speak when the young girl spoke. Her voice was lady-like and she, too, appeared to force into it a certain note of aggression.

      Do you own this property? she asked.

      Oh, Mr Luscombe said, I own this house and grounds and the cottages round the Common and a certain portion of the Common itself. You can hardly call it a property.

      But it is a property, the young girl said. You ought not to own it.

      A slight shade of vexation came into Mr Luscombe’s face.

      How do you know? he said. Is this an impertinence? Are you connections of mine?

      The young man spoke again in his high tones:

      Except in so far as all men are brothers, he said, we cannot claim connectionship with you. But we object...

      The young girl raised her hand as if she were addressing a meeting.

      We object, she began, to all such things as individual property, marriage, revealed religion, the unequal distribution of wealth...

      Oh, well, Mr Luscombe said, you don’t seem to object to rain. Come in and we will have a fire lit.

      The young man said:

      We think we ought to tell you all the things we object to, for we have been told that we have a corrupting influence, whereas our consciences make us see that we must never cease to proselytize. So we warn you....

      Oh, the young girl suddenly exclaimed, if you own all the cottages round the Common you own the one with the yellow jasmine on it and the seat in the porch just beyond the duck-pond. Will you let it to us?

      Mr Luscombe regarded them reflectively. To do that, he said, I should have to turn out the people who are there now.

      You could find them another cottage, the boy said. We have decided that that one would exactly suit us.

      We desire, the girl exclaimed, to lead the Simple Life.

      CHAPTER II

      MR LUSCOMBE’S history had been peculiar and somewhat unfortunate. His father, like himself called Gerald Luscombe, had been a man of a gloomy and resentful turn of mind, who, towards the end of his life drank himself steadily into a lunatic asylum. And, since Mr Luscombe senior was of this cast, his wife had been rather notoriously unfaithful. She was in the habit of absenting herself for long periods — though generally during the hunting season — with a man called Melville. Amongst the families of County rank of that neighbourhood, as indeed amongst the relatives of Mr Luscombe, this fact had at first caused consternation and extreme anger. Mr Luscombe, the father, however, silent and saturnine, paid no attention either to the behaviour of his wife or to the remonstrances of the rest of his acquaintances. And if he would not divorce Gerald Luscombe’s mother he did not in the least attempt to limit her goings-out or her comings-in. A silent, bitter man with, about the corners of his mouth, such a smile as if he were a spectator at a cruel comedy, he was finally put under restraint at his own request when Gerald Luscombe was about fourteen. At that point Mrs Luscombe retired definitely with her lover to the Continent. Gerald Luscombe passed his days at Harrow where he attracted very little attention, spending his holidays with his mother and Henry Melville, to both of whom he was doggedly attached. This gave rise to a rumour that Gerald was the son, not of his father but of his mother’s lover. This rumour caused him considerable unpleasantness at Oxford, where two of his cousins, who were his next of kin, happened to he up at the same time as himself. Between these cousins and himself there had always been considerable dislike. They were dark young men who affected intellectual interests. At Oxford they read Swinburne, attempted to form a Kelmscott Lodge, a Socialistic Community named after that of the late Mr William Morris at Hammersmith. They had therefore always called Gerald Luscombe the Oaf, for Gerald was fair, rather heavily made and as untidy as it was then possible to be at Oxford. Being a remarkably good cross-country runner he kept a little pack of beagles of his own. He pulled rather a good oar, he was not afraid of work, indeed he had rather a taste for the Latin humaner letters, whilst he had a real passion for gardening. He was moreover comparatively abstemious and had none of the, what were then called, decadent tastes affected by his cousins, the Nevill-Luscombes. The Nevill-Luscombes, whilst affecting an extreme freedom of thought, deemed it fit, at the beginning of their second year, to wait upon their cousin and to inform him that his mother’s behaviour was so scandalous that, as members of his family, they must beg him altogether to refrain from countenancing her. Having with some difficulty — for he was not a very proficient boxer — thrashed the elder of the two cousins, Luscombe threw the younger through his window. And this caused so much comment amongst the men that, in order to account for it, the Nevill-Luscombes were forced to tell the reason for the fracas to several of their more intimate friends. They did it with some reluctance, and the revelation caused them to be regarded with considerable distaste by the more athletic members of their college. This again engendered further bitterness of spirit in the Nevill-Luscombes, who from that day forward called their cousin no longer the Oaf but the Bastard.

      Gerald Luscombe’s youth, therefore, if it was tranquil and upon the whole fortunate, was not without its qualifying sadnesses which tinged his whole disposition. He was never gay though his face had upon it a smile that was always half frank, half timid, like that of a man used to awaiting certain insults. He had no pre-disposition to discontent, but he was accustomed to think rather sad, commonplace thoughts about social injustices. His obstinacy was nevertheless so considerable that upon the death of his father he peremptorily insisted that his mother, who had immediately married Henry Melville, should come to live with him at Coombe Luscombe, which had become his by right of inheritance, together with about three thousand acres of fairly fertile land set about with Surrey heath. The old people — for by that time both his mother and Henry Melville had grown to appear quite aged — accordingly decided to pass the remainder of their days with Gerald, of whom they were exceedingly fond and in whom they took a sort of tremulous and tender pride — a pride that centred round his goodness of heart, for he had no other very special attributes. He was exceedingly beloved by his servants and much more popular with his tenants than most landlords, even in Surrey, where the cottagers are more than normally servile. The return, however, of Mr and Mrs Melville caused an entirely unreasonable amount of irritation in the neighbourhood of Coombe. It was held for certain that Gerald Luscombe was not the son of his father and that therefore he was in wrongful possession of his small estate. The peasantry from neighbouring villages paraded at nights in front of the house playing the rough music of the marrow-bone and cleaver till they were dispersed by the police; the effigies of Mr and Mrs Melville and of Gerald Luscombe were burnt on the 5th of November, and of all the surrounding residents the only one who called upon Mr Luscombe was an elderly lady who had made herself almost more unreasonably unpopular by attempting to keep some of the surrounding common-land open to the public when the neighbouring marquis had attempted to fence it in. Her name was Miss Stobhall, she declared herself to be a Socialist and her pubic spirit was exceedingly disliked by all the countryside because she came from Yorkshire. If anybody was to keep the commons for Surrey men it ought to be a Surrey man or a man at least. It was no make of truck for women. Miss Stobhall had made herself all the more unpopular because, whilst she herself lived in her small gardener’s cottage at the end of her suburban drive, she kept her large villa as an exclusive asylum for various foreigners from Eastern Europe. Thus at one time it was filled with Polish refugees, at another with Armenians. Once she had six Macedonians, and towards the end of the Russian Revolution no less than twenty-seven Jews and Jewesses escaped from a pogrom in Nijni Novgorod. The presence of these amiable transfugees was held to render the country unsafe, though no actual deed of violence had as yet been traced to them, at any rate as far as human beings were concerned. But it having been observed at one time that several of Miss Stobhall’s guests were in the habit of praying upon all-fours, the rumour grew that these Easterners had the habits of beasts of prey. They were said at night to run like foxes, and any casualties amongst the hen-roosts of the neighbourhood were laid to the charge of Miss Stobhall’s protégés, though this did not prevent the accounts of loss being sent in to the Master of the Foxhounds. For it was held that if the Armenians had the nature of foxes the damages they did should be paid for as if by foxes they had been done. The Master was quite at liberty to hunt them if he desired.

      Being himself unpopular, Mr Gerald Luscombe had no particular desire for friendship with an old and unpopular lady. Indeed, her unpopularity having arisen from causes other than his own, Luscombe was inclined to regard Miss Stobhall as a slightly criminal person. Nevertheless, moved at times by her ecstatic recital of murders, outrages and oppressions wrought by Turks, Kurds, Bulgarians, Prussians, Russians, the officials of Irkutsk and the soldiers of the Sheik of Kowweit, Mr Luscombe from time to time contributed substantial sums towards the relief of the more indigent refugees or towards the Revolutionary funds of distant quarters of the globe. For the rest, Mr Luscombe’s avowal that he was a Tory who feared God and honoured the Queen silenced Miss Stobhall’s uttering of her conviction that, bad as conditions were in the near and middle East, oppression, greed, bigotry and anti-Social crime stalked in England more direly abroad than anywhere else in the rest of the world. Mr Luscombe had suffered so severely at Oxford from his Socialistic cousins that the very name of advanced opinions was distasteful to him.

      His cousins, however, were no longer of advanced opinions and Mr Nevill-Luscombe was standing for a northern constituency in the Liberal Unionist interest. It was at the time of the closing days of the South African War and Mr Nevill-Luscombe’s splendid periods denouncing the foreign spies and traitors, the Socialists, Anarchists, Nationalists and Liberals, the unsound, the disloyal and the traitorous — Mr Nevill-Luscombe’s splendid oratory — since his was a by-election — reverberated through the newspapers of the whole of England. The election, however, caused him to be shorter of cash and of breath, and having lately married a lady whose imperiousness equalled her charm, he was persuaded, against his better judgment, though not against his desire, to bring an action against Mr Gerald Luscombe for the possession of such part of the Luscombe property as was entailed. He brought the action on the ground that his cousin, not being the son of his father, the property should pass to himself as next of kin. It was perfectly true that under common law this claim would have been untenable, but, as is the case with small estates lying near the Kentish border, Coombe Luscombe was held under the law of Gavelkind, and Gerald Luscombe’s father having died intestate the property had passed under that law. There arose then the celebrated case of Luscombe v. Luscombe, Melville intervening, which lasted many days and on account of its singularity and its rancour attracted a great deal of attention. To Gerald Luscombe it was a weariness: it was even a horror. The spectacle of his poor, trembling old mother, a little gentle, mittened old lady, stuck up in the witness-box and brow-beaten by a Queen’s Counsellor of intolerable coarseness; of Mr Melville, old, too, white-bearded and exceedingly small and gentle, suffering from the same ordeal; the hearing of the evidence of servants and hangers-on, much of it sheer perjury, these things were very nearly as much as Gerald Luscombe could stand. And even when the case was won he was very much of a mind to let Coombe and to shake the dust of England off his feet. His dogged nature, however, an inheritance from his father that neither common law nor the law of Gavelkind could affect, made him stick like a leech to his native house. If he hadn’t any friends in Surrey, he hadn’t any either in the rest of the world. The gaining of his case brought him no gain of countenance either from the County or from the country-side. It was considered that by upholding his mother and her husband he was arrogantly upholding what is called vice. And although the Nevill-Luscombes, in order to prove their case, had suborned so many witnesses to perjure themselves in the effort to prove that Gerald Luscombe was the son of Henry Melville — although they had done this so effectually that they couldn’t set to work now to prove that he was the son of any other man, the County was by no means of opinion that that showed Gerald Luscombe to be the son of his father. Mr Melville had proved conclusively that at the time of Gerald Luscombe’s birth and for three years before, he had been in Ceylon, but the County considered that that only made the matter all the worse.

      In the meantime, calling at his solicitor’s house, Gerald Luscombe had made the acquaintance of the solicitor’s daughter. She was a fine, flexible, up-standing creature, fair and quite finished. She had indeed been finished in Paris, from which place she had just returned, and her name was Evangeline Smith — her father having been one of the Smiths of Darlington and head of the firm of Smith, Peckover and Jupp. She had so much tact that she seemed to Gerald Luscombe the kindest creature in the world: he had not spoken to a woman at all approaching his own class for nearly seven years. She had so much goodness of heart that she could afford, ostracised as they were in that out-of-the-way place, to wear the most expensive of Paris gowns — that she went twice a year to France to purchase — without its appearing to Gerald and his mother that such display reduced her rather to the level of the villa residents of the neighbourhood, since her frocks were of the Town, whereas the County, except for a very few hours in the year, confined itself severely to tweeds. Gerald Luscombe was aware that in a sense he had lowered himself. And, though the house itself began to be more lively with voices of professional people like solicitors and doctors and even clergymen, Gerald Luscombe felt himself none the less out of his element and just as solitary. He couldn’t make out how to talk to his wife’s friends, though he occasionally played a game of golf with his wife’s brother who was in the firm: with his wife’s brother-in-law who was an underwriter — Gerald never really understood what an underwriter was — or with his wife’s cousin, who, having failed three times for Sandhurst, was now in an office in Mincing Lane.

      CHAPTER III

      OUR name, the boy said, is ‘Bransdon,’ and we both have the Celtic temperament. That is what you might expect, for Ophelia’s father is the great Mr Bransdon and mine is his chief disciple, Mr Gubb. We have neither of us tasted flesh meat or alcohol in our lives and we are compiling a book called ‘Health Resides in Sandals.’

      Mr Luscombe said: Well, now!

      Mr Gubb’s son fetched the bicycles from outside the wall. From the handle-bar of each of them depended a net bag containing a very sodden loaf of bread and a paper bag so melted that raisins dripped from them here and there as the bicycles shook. But the showers of talk continued undamped, as if they were veritable bursts of sunshine beneath the liquid downfall. Nevertheless, when they were about half-way up the carriage drive the great Mr Bransdon’s daughter exclaimed: Ugh! and wriggled her shoulders inside her ill-fitting clothes. The rain has gone through! It’s trickling down my spine!

      She had interrupted a dissertation of her husband who was explaining that though both Mr Bransdon and Mr Gubb objected to bicycling it was never their way to employ a blind subservience towards their distinguished parents. Indeed, their parents had not exacted it. They had never commanded either of their children to do anything. They had simply appealed to their reason. Thus, though the fathers strongly objected to bicycles because they were vulgar, were not employed in medieval times, were machines manufactured by other machines and had never been ridden by either Mr Bransdon or Mr Gubb — in spite of these very weighty reasons the children had decided to inaugurate their common life by a bicycle tour. They did it for the sake of the experience and they did it because, also, they were upon a crusade.

      We want to spread our ideas, the boy explained. We want to preach here and there in the hedgerows and by-ways. And so the more quickly we can get from audience to audience the better. Our desire is to do something fine. That, for instance, is why for the first time in our lives we have put on stockings.

      Mr Luscombe said that he did not follow their course of reasoning.

      You see, it’s like this, the boy continued, we desire to talk to all sorts of people and we have observed that even round Court Street, where we are comparatively well-known figures, we are sometimes laughed at as we go along the road. Now it cannot be a good opening for a lecture if the lecturer is laughed at. It takes away considerably from your chance of a hearing. Usually I wear a smock frock and Ophelia a single garment of a clinging and flowing design and we have always walked about bare-foot, carrying our sandals in our hands for rough places. But we have decided that if we are to see people as they actually are and if we are to be listened to with attention at a first hearing we must appear as nearly like ordinary people as is possible. With the results that you see. We feel that we are hideous but it is in a good cause. And we can put it to our account that all of our garments have been manufactured by our own hands from fabrics actually woven by our fathers and their disciples.

      He stopped for a moment to look himself down and to survey the figure of his wife. Underneath their misshapen and sodden clothes their figures appeared, as if they were something foreign and disconnected from their attire, to be lithe, rounded and glowing. It was as if antelopes had put on coats and trousers.

      Hideous, but certainly to be excused, the boy was beginning with complacency but at this point the girl interrupted him with the little scream to the effect that the water was trickling down her back. There was just the slightest suspicion of annoyance in the boy’s voice as he said:

      Well, you won’t take cold: we never take cold. We have been brought up on rational, hygienic principles.

      But it’s horribly uncomfortable, the girl said. Horribly! I’ve never felt anything so cold.

      This gave Mr Luscombe the chance for a word and he suggested that he would lend the young man some of his own clothes and the girl some of his wife’s.

      "I shall wear nothing of the sort," the young man said. "I have always been of the opinion that we should allow our clothes to dry upon us. If animals can do it why should not we?"

      The girl hesitated for a moment and then as a fresh little runlet of water reached her skin, she exclaimed:

      I shall go off my head if I don’t get these things off. It’s like being tickled to death with icicles.

      She started forward into the porch and Mr Luscombe followed her. The young man remained to stack the bicycles against one of the large stone pilasters. He took the loaves of bread from the string bags and set them on a carved oak chair in the hall, and the raisins he laid out to dry on the hall table. Then, having shaken the wet out of his wide-awake with a circular sweep of his arm, he was about to follow Mr Luscombe into the drawing-room when the crash of falling bicycles warned him that his work was to do all over again.

      Miss Stobhall had come in that morning to bring Mrs Melville a piece of her last year’s damson cheese. And, although she was not afraid of the weather, the rain at ten o’clock had set in so heavily that it had been too much for her to face. She had remained to lunch, though Mrs Luscombe had gone in in the brougham to do a day’s shopping in Dorking and to attend a garden party of the vicar’s wife’s. Atrocities had of late been comparatively scarce in Eastern Europe except in Russia. But Miss Stobhall’s enthusiasms, if they were many, perpetual and varied, were apt gradually to die away and if the strict truth could be told, Miss Stobhall was a little tired of Russia. But, for the whole of that rainy day she had entertained Mr and Mrs Melville with a vivid account of what was happening in Saravejo. She had described that city’s position, its public buildings, the circumstances of its population and the condition of the bandits who occupied the surrounding country. She had talked of these things with a volubility whose very lowest note was to the effect that it was the duty of the British Government to send a squadron of destroyers and a landing party up the Danube.

      She was a rather large-boned woman, with a loud voice, handsome brown eyes, a north-country accent and a trick of suddenly stammering and losing hold of her subject when she was in the midst of one of her longest speeches. These sudden digressions were apt to be exceedingly bewildering to Mr and Mrs Melville. Thus before the door opened to admit Ophelia Bransdon and Mr Luscombe, Miss Stobhall had broken off a glowing description of the beauty, modesty and virtue of a Servian Jewess who had been maltreated and imprisoned in Little Russia and was then appealing to the civilised world for subscriptions to pay her fare from Odessa to Buenos Ayres — Miss Stobhall had interrupted this narration in the middle of a sentence, nay, half way through the word American, to exclaim suddenly:

      And then there’s the case of poor Somerville, the Earl of Croydon’s oldest tenant, who has been evicted from his farm because he applied to the County Council for land under the Small Holdings Act. Of all the abominable tyrannies committed by the band of dastards who own the pubic lands of England, she was saying...

      Mr and Mrs Melville sat side by side upon a square sofa. They blinked their eyes beneath the torrent of Miss Stobhall’s words. Very quiet and domesticated old creatures, they rather liked the north-country lady’s interminable harangues. When she was once started it appeared to them as if they were setting out for a long and rather sleepy railway journey. They had no particular sympathy with Miss Stobhall’s views and they had no particular views of their own. But Miss Stobhall’s stories, when Mr and Mrs Melville could understand them, partook always very much of the marvellous, and Miss Stobhall’s world was so entirely made up of black-browed tyrants and virtuous and gifted victims that she certainly gave them something picturesque to listen to in the long, quiet day when so little occurred.

      A long solitude in each other’s exclusive society had given to these two old people a singular similarity as if they had been painted in the same colours by the same hand and brush. And when they were apart they had that quaint air of incompleteness that will be seen in the case of a small pair of parakeets. Their most engrossing employment was to follow Gerald Luscombe round the garden whilst he weeded or potted out plants. And whilst he crouched down over the dark soil they would stand behind him hand in hand, the one holding his trowel, the other his weed basket. Or else they would go round the garden cleaning the roses of greenfly and caterpillars and calling to each other with expressions of admiration and triumph when they caught a particularly large snail. Sometimes Mr Melville would talk of his adventures in India as a child of eight during the Mutiny, or of the tigers that he had shot. And sometimes Mrs Melville would allude to the Court Ball and the Opera of the late sixties. But it was as difficult to realise that Mr Melville had ever stood up to anything larger than a caterpillar, as it was to believe that Mrs Melville had ever committed such deeds as to earn for her in an unenviable sense, an immense notoriety. It was upon this trio, settled down as they seemed to be, for a long afternoon that Ophelia Bransdon was introduced. Miss Stobhall immediately sprang up with a little expression of astonishment. The old people seemed to twitter with small pleasurable sounds.

      My dear, Miss Stobhall said, I should never have recognised you. Has your father come to his senses at last?

      I don’t know what you mean, Ophelia answered, but I know I’m very wet.

      Mr Luscombe, with his smiling and diffident air as if he were afraid of having committed an imprudence, begged his mother to take Ophelia up-stairs and to put her into some of his wife’s clothes. And there ensued a little rustling of coming and going which ended in leaving Miss Stobhall alone with Mr Melville and Mr Luscombe.

      Upon my word, Miss Stobhall exclaimed, "can the great Bransdon have come to his senses?"

      She looked enquiringly at Sir Melville and Mr Luscombe who returned mystified glances to her. The young man in the porch had been arranging the bicycles once more but he now stalked into the room holding his wide-awake crumpled up in his hand. He said Ha! upon observing Miss Stobhall and nodded perfunctorily to Mr Melville. Then he began to walk slowly up and down the carpet, his hands deep in his pockets and his head hanging upon his chest. He seemed to be aloof from or at least oblivious of his companions. Seen without his hat he appeared even fairer and younger, for his decidedly golden hair had an odd, boyish roughness. He looked, nevertheless, extraordinarily clean — as if he had been washed so often that his features had a semi-transparent quality.

      I’ve just been asked, Miss Stobhall said to him in her determined voice, appearing ten years older and as much harder by contrast with his frail youth—I have just been asked — or I was just going to be asked, but they haven’t had time to get it out — what sort of a thing a great Bransdon is. You see, your great man doesn’t bulk much with the outside world. These men have never even heard of him!

      Mr Melville appeared full of consternation: Mr Luscombe uttered unintelligible sounds, meaning to say that of course

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1