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

feet and shout obscenities wildly to the other guests. It was the exact moment.

Macmaster made his voice dry and penetrating to say:

“ ‘Youth of tepid loves’ is a lamentable rendering of puer callide! It’s lamentably antiquated⁠ ⁠…”

Duchemin chewed and said:

“What? What? What’s that?”

“It’s just like Oxford to use an eighteenth century crib. I suppose that’s Whiston and Ditton? Something like that⁠ ⁠…” He observed Duchemin, brought out of his impulse, to be wavering⁠—as if he were coming awake in a strange place! He added:

“Anyhow it’s wretched schoolboy smut. Fifth form. Or not even that. Have some galantine. I’m going to. Your sole’s cold.”

Mr. Duchemin looked down at his plate.

“Yes! Yes!” he muttered. “Yes! With sugar and vinegar sauce!” The prizefighter slipped away to the sideboard, an admirable quiet fellow; as unobtrusive as a burying beetle. Macmaster said:

“You were about to tell me something for my little monograph. What became of Maggie⁠ ⁠… Maggie Simpson. The Scots girl who was model for Alla Finestra del Cielo?”

Mr. Duchemin looked at Macmaster with sane, muddled, rather exhausted eyes:

“Alla Finestra!” he exclaimed: “Oh yes! I’ve got the watercolour. I saw her sitting for it and bought it on the spot.⁠ ⁠…” He looked again at his plate, started at sight of the galantine and began to eat ravenously: “A beautiful girl!” he said. “Very long necked⁠ ⁠… She wasn’t of course⁠ ⁠… eh⁠ ⁠… respectable! She’s living yet, I think. Very old. I saw her two years ago. She had a lot of pictures. Relics of course!⁠ ⁠… In the Whitechapel Road she lived. She was naturally of that class.⁠ ⁠…” He went muttering on, his head over his plate. Macmaster considered that the fit was over. He was irresistibly impelled to turn to Mrs. Duchemin; her face was rigid, stiff. He said swiftly:

“If he’ll eat a little: get his stomach filled⁠ ⁠… It calls the blood down from the head.⁠ ⁠…”

She said:

“Oh, forgive! It’s dreadful for you! Myself I will never forgive!”

He said:

“No! No!⁠ ⁠… Why it’s what I’m for!”

A deep emotion brought her whole white face to life.

“Oh, you good man!” she said in her profound tones, and they remained gazing at each other.

Suddenly, from behind Macmaster’s back, Mr. Duchemin shouted:

“I say he made a settlement on her, duma casta et sola, of course. Whilst she remained chaste and alone!”

Mr. Duchemin, suddenly feeling the absence of the powerful will that had seemed to overweigh his own like a great force in the darkness, was on his feet, panting and delighted:

“Chaste!” He shouted. “Chaste, you observe! What a world of suggestion in the word⁠ ⁠…” He surveyed the opulent broadness of his tablecloth; it spread out before his eyes as if it had been a great expanse of meadow in which he could gallop, relaxing his limbs after long captivity. He shouted three obscene words and went on in his Oxford Movement voice: “But chastity⁠ ⁠…”

Mrs. Wannop suddenly said:

“Oh!” and looked at her daughter, whose face grew slowly crimson as she continued to peel a peach. Mrs. Wannop turned to Mr. Horsley beside her and said:

“You write, too, I believe, Mr. Horsley. No doubt something more learned than my poor readers would care for⁠ ⁠…” Mr. Horsley had been preparing, according to his instructions from Mrs. Duchemin, to shout a description of an article he had been writing about the Mosella of Ausonius, but as he was slow in starting the lady got in first. She talked on serenely about the tastes of the large public. Tietjens leaned across to Miss Wannop and, holding in his right hand a half-peeled fig, said to her as loudly as he could:

“I’ve got a message for you from Mr. Waterhouse. He says if you’ll⁠ ⁠…”

The completely deaf Miss Fox⁠—who had had her training by writing⁠—remarked diagonally to Mrs. Duchemin:

“I think we shall have thunder today. Have you remarked the number of minute insects.⁠ ⁠…”

“When my revered preceptor,” Mr. Duchemin thundered on, “drove away in the carriage on his wedding day he said to his bride: ‘We will live like the blessed angels!’ How sublime! I, too, after my nuptials⁠ ⁠…”

Mrs. Duchemin suddenly screamed:

“Oh⁠ ⁠… no!”

As if checked for a moment in their stride all the others paused⁠—for a breath. Then they continued talking with polite animation and listening with minute attention. To Tietjens that seemed the highest achievement and justification of English manners!

Parry, the prizefighter, had twice caught his master by the arm and shouted that breakfast was getting cold. He said now to Macmaster that he and the Rev. Horsley could get Mr. Duchemin away, but there’d be a hell of a fight. Macmaster whispered: “Wait!” and, turning to Mrs. Duchemin he said: “I can stop him. Shall I?” She said:

“Yes! Yes! Anything!” He observed tears; isolated upon her cheeks, a thing he had never seen. With caution and with hot rage he whispered into the prizefighter’s hairy ear that was held down to him:

“Punch him in the kidney. With your thumb. As hard as you can without breaking your thumb⁠ ⁠…”

Mr. Duchemin had just declaimed:

“I, too, after my nuptials⁠ ⁠…” He began to wave his arms, pausing and looking from unlistening face to unlistening face. Mrs. Duchemin had just screamed.

Mr. Duchemin thought that the arrow of God struck him. He imagined himself an unworthy messenger. In such pain as he had never conceived of he fell into his chair and sat huddled up, a darkness covering his eyes.

“He won’t get up again,” Macmaster whispered to the appreciative pugilist. “He’ll want to. But he’ll be afraid to.”

He said to Mrs. Duchemin:

“Dearest lady! It’s all over. I assure you of that. It’s a scientific nerve counterirritant.”

Mrs. Duchemin said:

“Forgive!” with one deep sob: “You can never respect⁠ ⁠…” She felt her eyes explore his face as the wretch in a cell explores the face of his executioner for a sign of pardon. Her heart stayed still: her breath suspended itself.⁠ ⁠…

Then complete heaven began. Upon her left palm she felt cool fingers beneath the cloth. This man knew always the exact right action! Upon the fingers, cool, like spikenard and ambrosia, her fingers closed themselves.

In complete bliss, in a quiet room, his voice went on talking. At first with great neatness of phrase, but with what