No More Parades, Ford Madox Ford [best ereader for pdf TXT] 📗
- Author: Ford Madox Ford
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Levin said:
“Do you want the general always to be told things against you in contradistinction to things about … another person?”
Tietjens said:
“We shall be keeping the fellows in my cookhouse a confoundedly long time waiting for inspections … I’m in your hands as regards the general …”
Levin said:
“The general’s in your hut: thankful to goodness to be alone. He never is. He said he was going to write a private memorandum for the Secretary of State, and I could keep you any time I liked as long as I got everything out of you …”
Tietjens said:
“Did what Major Thurston allege take place … Thurston has lived most of his life in France … But you had better not tell me …”
Levin said:
“He’s our antiaircraft liaison officer with the French civilian authorities. Those sort of fellows generally have lived in France a good deal. A very decentish, quiet man. He plays chess with the general and they talk over the chess … But the general is going to talk about what he said to you himself …”
Tietjens said:
“Good God! … He going to talk as well as you … You’d say the coils were closing in …”
Levin said:
“We can’t go on like this … It’s my own fault for not being more direct. But this can’t last all day. We could neither of us stand it … I’m pretty nearly done …”
Tietjens said:
“Where did your father come from, really? Not from Frankfurt? …”
Levin said:
“Constantinople … His father was financial agent to the Sultan; my father was his son by an Armenian presented to him by the Selamlik along with the Order of the Medjidje, first class.”
“It accounts for your very decent manner, and for your common sense. If you had been English I should have broken your neck before now.”
Levin said:
“Thank you! I hope I always behave like an English gentleman. But I am going to be brutally direct now …” He went on: “The really queer thing is that you should always address Miss Wannop in the language of the Victorian Correct Letter-Writer. You must excuse my mentioning the name: it shortens things. You said ‘Miss Wannop’ every two or three half-minutes. It convinced the general more than any possible assertions that your relations were perfectly …”
Tietjens, his eyes shut, said:
“I talked to Miss Wannop in my sleep …”
Levin, who was shaking a little, said:
“It was very queer … Almost ghostlike … There you sat, your arms on the table. Talking away. You appeared to be writing a letter to her. And the sunlight streaming in at the hut. I was going to wake you, but he stopped me. He took the view that he was on detective work, and that he might as well detect. He had got it into his mind that you were a Socialist.”
“He would,” Tietjens commented. “Didn’t I tell you he was beginning to learn things? …”
Levin exclaimed:
“But you aren’t a So …”
Tietjens said:
“Of course, if your father came from Constantinople and his mother was a Georgian, it accounts for your attractiveness. You are a most handsome fellow. And intelligent … If the general has put you on to inquire whether I am a Socialist I will answer your questions.”
Levitt said:
“No … That’s one of the questions he’s reserving for himself to ask. It appears that if you answer that you are a Socialist he intends to cut you out of his will …”
Tietjens said:
“His will! … Oh, yes, of course, he might very well leave me something. But doesn’t that supply rather a motive for me to say that I am? I don’t want this money.”
Levin positively jumped a step backwards. Money, and particularly money that came by way of inheritance, being one of the sacred things of life for him, he exclaimed:
“I don’t see that you can joke about such a subject!”
Tietjens answered good-humouredly:
“Well, you don’t expect me to play up to the old gentleman in order to get his poor old shekels.” He added: “Hadn’t we better get it over?”
Levin said:
“You’ve got hold of yourself?”
Tietjens answered:
“Pretty well … You’ll excuse my having been emotional so far. You aren’t English, so it won’t have embarrassed you.”
Levin exclaimed in an outraged manner:
“Hang it, I’m English to the backbone! What’s the matter with me?”
Tietjens said:
“Nothing … Nothing in the world. That’s just what makes you un-English. We’re all … well, it doesn’t matter what’s wrong with us … What did you gather about my relations with Miss Wannop?”
The question was unemotionally put and Levin was still so concerned as to his origins that he did not at first grasp what Tietjens had said. He began to protest that he had been educated at Winchester and Magdalen. Then he exclaimed, “Oh!” And took time for reflection.
“If,” he said finally, “the general had not let out that she was young and attractive … at least, I suppose attractive … I should have thought that you regarded her as an old maid … You know, of course, that it came to me as a shock, the thought that there was anyone … That you had allowed yourself … Anyhow … I suppose that I’m simple …”
Tietjens said:
“What did the general gather?”
“He …” Levin said, “he stood over you with his head held to one side, looking rather cunning … like a magpie listening at a hole it’s dropped a nut into … First he looked disappointed: then quite glad. A simple kind of gladness. Just glad, you know … When we got outside the hut he said ‘I suppose in vino veritas,’ and then he asked me the Latin for ‘sleep’ … But I had forgotten it too …”
Tietjens said:
“What did I say?”
“It’s …” Levin hesitated, “extraordinarily difficult to say what you did say … I don’t profess to remember long speeches to the letter … Naturally it was a good deal broken up … I tell you, you were talking to a young lady about matters you don’t generally talk to young ladies about … And obviously you were trying to let your … Mrs. Tietjens, down easily … You were trying to explain also why you had definitely decided to separate from Mrs. Tietjens … And you took it that the young lady might be troubled … at the
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