Some Do Not …, Ford Madox Ford [free e novels .txt] 📗

to your superiors.⁠ ⁠… Damn it; they say you’re brilliant. But I thank heaven I haven’t got you in my command.⁠ ⁠… Though I believe you’re a good lad. But you’re the sort of fellow to set a whole division by the ears.⁠ ⁠… A regular⁠ ⁠… what’s ’is name? A regular Dreyfus!”

“Did you think Dreyfus was guilty?” Tietjens asked.

“Hang it,” the General said, “he was worse than guilty⁠—the sort of fellow you couldn’t believe in and yet couldn’t prove anything against. The curse of the world⁠ ⁠…”

Tietjens said:

“Ah.”

“Well, they are,” the General said: “fellows like that unsettle society. You don’t know where you are. You can’t judge. They make you uncomfortable.⁠ ⁠… A brilliant fellow too! I believe he’s a brigadier-general by now⁠ ⁠…” He put his arm round Tietjens’ shoulders.

“There, there, my dear boy,” he said, “come and have a sloe gin. That’s the real answer to all beastly problems.”

It was some time before Tietjens could get to think of his own problems. The fly that took them back went with the slow pomp of the procession over the winding marsh road in front of the absurdly picturesque red pyramid of the very old town. Tietjens had to listen to the General suggesting that it would be better if he didn’t come to the golf-club till Monday. He would get Macmaster some good games. A good, sound fellow that Macmaster now. It was a pity Tietjens hadn’t some of his soundness!

Two city men had approached the General on the course and had used some violent invectives against Tietjens: they had objected to being called ruddy swine to their faces: they were going to the police. The General said that he had told them himself, slowly and guiltily, that they were ruddy swine and that they would never get another ticket at that club after Monday. But till Monday, apparently, they had the right to be there and the club wouldn’t want scenes. Sandbach, too, was infuriated about Tietjens.

Tietjens said that the fault lay with the times that permitted the introduction into gentlemen’s company of such social swipes as Sandbach. One acted perfectly correctly and then a dirty little beggar like that put dirty little constructions on it and ran about and bleated. He added that he knew Sandbach was the General’s brother-in-law, but he couldn’t help it. That was the truth.⁠ ⁠… The General said: “I know, my boy: I know⁠ ⁠…” But one had to take society as one found it. Claudine had to be provided for and Sandbach made a very good husband, careful, sober, and on the right side in politics. A bit of a rip; but they couldn’t ask for everything! And Claudine was using all the influence she had with the other side⁠—which was not a little, women were so wonderful!⁠—to get him a diplomatic job in Turkey, so as to get him out of the way of Mrs. Crundall! Mrs. Crundall was the leading Anti-Suffragette of the little town. That was what made Sandbach so bitter against Tietjens. He told Tietjens so that Tietjens might understand.

Tietjens had hitherto flattered himself that he could examine a subject swiftly and put it away in his mind. To the General he hardly listened. The allegations against himself were beastly; but he could usually ignore allegations against himself and he imagined that if he said no more about them he would himself hear no more. And, if there were, in clubs and places where men talk, unpleasant rumours as to himself he preferred it to be thought that he was the rip, not his wife the strumpet. That was normal, male vanity: the preference of the English gentleman! Had it been a matter of Sylvia spotless and himself as spotless as he was⁠—for in all these things he knew himself to be spotless!⁠—he would certainly have defended himself, at least, to the General. But he had acted practically in not defending himself more vigorously. For he imagined that, had he really tried, he could have made the General believe him. But he had behaved rightly! It was not mere vanity. There was the child up at his sister Effie’s. It was better for a boy to have a rip of a father than a whore for mother!

The General was expatiating on the solidity of a squat castle, like a pile of draughts, away to the left, in the sun, on the flatness. He was saying that we didn’t build like that nowadays.

Tietjens said:

“You’re perfectly wrong, General. All the castles that Henry VIII built in 1543 along this coast are mere monuments of jerry-building.⁠ ⁠… ‘In 1543 jactat castra Delis, Sandgatto, Reia, Hastingas Henricus Rex’⁠ ⁠… That means he chucked them down⁠ ⁠…”

The General laughed:

“You are an incorrigible fellow.⁠ ⁠… If ever there’s any known, certain fact⁠ ⁠…”

“But go and look at the beastly things,” Tietjens said. “You’ll see they’ve got just a facing of Caen stone that the tide floated here, and the fillings-up are just rubble, any rubbish.⁠ ⁠… Look here! It’s a known certain fact, isn’t it, that your eighteen-pounders are better than the French seventy-fives. They tell us so in the House, on the hustings, in the papers: the public believes it.⁠ ⁠… But would you put one of your tiny pet things firing⁠—what is it?⁠—four shells a minute?⁠—with the little bent pins in their tails to stop the recoil⁠—against their seventy-fives with the compressed-air cylinders⁠ ⁠…”

The General sat stiffly upon his cushions:

“That’s different,” he said. “How the devil do you get to know these things?”

“It isn’t different,” Tietjens said, “it’s the same muddleheaded frame of mind that sees good building in Henry VIII as lets us into wars with hopelessly antiquated field guns and rottenly inferior ammunition. You’d fire any fellow on your staff who said we could stand up for a minute against the French.”

“Well, anyhow,” the General said, “I thank heaven you’re not on my staff for you’d talk my hind leg off in a week. It’s perfectly true that the public⁠ ⁠…”

But Tietjens was not listening. He was considering that it was natural for an