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

Tietjens went on:

“About our next war with France.⁠ ⁠… We’re the natural enemies of the French. We have to make our bread either by robbing them or making catspaws of them.⁠ ⁠…”

Sylvia said:

“We can’t! We couldn’t⁠ ⁠…”

“We’ve got to!” Tietjens said. “It’s the condition of our existence. We’re a practically bankrupt, overpopulated, northern country: they’re rich southerners, with a falling population. Towards 1930 we shall have to do what Prussia did in 1914. Our conditions will be exactly those of Prussia then. It’s the⁠ ⁠… what is it called?⁠ ⁠…”

“But⁠ ⁠…” Sylvia cried out. “You’re a Franco-maniac.⁠ ⁠… You’re thought to be a French agent.⁠ ⁠… That’s what’s bitching your career!”

“I am?” Tietjens asked uninterestedly. He added: “Yes, that probably would bitch my career.⁠ ⁠…” He went on, with a little more animation and a little more of his mind:

“Ah! that will be a war worth seeing.⁠ ⁠… None of their drunken rat-fighting for imbecile boodlers⁠ ⁠…”

“It would drive mother mad!” Sylvia said.

“Oh, no it wouldn’t,” Tietjens said. “It will stimulate her if she is still alive.⁠ ⁠… Our heroes won’t be drunk with wine and lechery: our squits won’t stay at home and stab the heroes in the back. Our Minister for Waterclosets won’t keep two and a half million men in any base in order to get the votes of their women at a General Election⁠—that’s been the first evil effects of giving women the vote! With the French holding Ireland and stretching in a solid line from Bristol to Whitehall, we should hang the Minister before he had time to sign the papers. And we should be decently loyal to our Prussian allies and brothers.⁠ ⁠… Our Cabinet won’t hate them as they hate the French for being frugal and strong in logic and well-educated and remorselessly practical. Prussians are the sort of fellows you can be hoggish with when you want to.⁠ ⁠…”

Sylvia interjected violently:

“For God’s sake stop it. You almost make me believe what you say is true. I tell you mother would go mad. Her greatest friend is the Duchesse Tonnerre Chateaulherault.⁠ ⁠…”

“Well!” Tietjens said. “Your greatest friends are the Med⁠ ⁠… Med⁠ ⁠… the Austrian officers you take chocolates and flowers to. That there was all the row about⁠ ⁠… we’re at war with them and you haven’t gone mad!”

“I don’t know,” Sylvia said. “Sometimes I think I am going mad!” She drooped. Tietjens, his face very strained, was looking at the tablecloth. He muttered: “Med⁠ ⁠… Met⁠ ⁠… Kos⁠ ⁠…” Sylvia said:

“Do you know a poem called ‘Somewhere’? It begins: ‘Somewhere or other there must surely be⁠ ⁠…’ ”

Tietjens said:

“I’m sorry. No! I haven’t been able to get up my poetry again.”

Sylvia said:

“Don’t!” She added: “You’ve got to be at the War Office at 4:15, haven’t you? What’s the time now?” She extremely wanted to give him her bad news before he went; she extremely wanted to put off giving it as long as she could. She wanted to reflect on the matter first; she wanted also to keep up a desultory conversation, or he might leave the room. She didn’t want to have to say to him: “Wait a minute, I’ve something to say to you!” for she might not, at that moment, be in the mood. He said it was not yet two. He could give her an hour and a half more.

To keep the conversation going, she said:

“I suppose the Wannop girl is making bandages or being a Waac. Something forceful.”

Tietjens said:

“No; she’s a pacifist. As pacifist as you. Not so impulsive; but, on the other hand, she has more arguments. I should say she’ll be in prison before the war’s over.⁠ ⁠…”

“A nice time you must have between the two of us,” Sylvia said. The memory of her interview with the great lady nicknamed Glorvina⁠—though it was not at all a good nickname⁠—was coming over her forcibly.

She said:

“I suppose you’re always talking it over with her? You see her every day.”

She imagined that that might keep him occupied for a minute or two. He said⁠—she caught the sense of it only⁠—and quite indifferently that he had tea with Mrs. Wannop every day. She had moved to a place called Bedford Park, which was near his office: not three minutes’ walk. The War Office had put up a lot of huts on some public green in that neighbourhood. He only saw the daughter once a week, at most. They never talked about the war; it was too disagreeable a subject for the young woman. Or rather, too painful.⁠ ⁠… His talk gradually drifted into unfinished sentences.⁠ ⁠…

They played that comedy occasionally, for it is impossible for two people to live in the same house and not have some common meeting ground. So they would each talk: sometimes talking at great length and with politeness, each thinking his or her thoughts till they drifted into silence.

And, since she had acquired the habit of going into retreat⁠—with an Anglican sisterhood in order to annoy Tietjens, who hated convents and considered that the communions should not mix⁠—Sylvia had acquired also the habit of losing herself almost completely in reveries. Thus she was now vaguely conscious that a greyish lump, Tietjens, sat at the head of a whitish expanse: the lunch-table. There were also books⁠ ⁠… actually she was seeing a quite different figure and other books⁠—the books of Glorvina’s husband, for the great lady had received Sylvia in that statesman’s library.

Glorvina, who was the mother of two of Sylvia’s absolutely most intimate friends, had sent for Sylvia. She wished, kindly and even wittily, to remonstrate with Sylvia because of her complete abstention from any patriotic activity. She offered Sylvia the address of a place in the city where she could buy wholesale and ready-made diapers for babies which Sylvia could present to some charity or other as being her own work. Sylvia said she would do nothing of the sort, and Glorvina said she would present the idea to poor Mrs. Pilsenhauser. She⁠—Glorvina⁠—said she spent some time every day thinking out acts of patriotism for the distressed rich with foreign names, accents or antecedents.⁠ ⁠…

Glorvina was a fiftyish lady