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

He was obviously waiting, quite patient, swinging his umbrella by the hook. He appeared to have no other means of self-expression. The girl was saying that when she had rung up Christopher that morning a voice had said, without any preparation at all: the girl repeated, without any preparation at all:

“You’d better keep off the grass if you’re the Wannop girl. Mrs. Duchemin is my husband’s mistress already. You keep off!”

Christopher said:

“She said that, did she?” He was wondering how Mark kept his balance, really. The girl said nothing more. She was waiting. With an insistence that seemed to draw him: a sort of sucking in of his personality. It was unbearable. He made his last effort of that afternoon.

He said:

“Damn it all. How could you ask such a tomfool question? You! I took you to be an intelligent person. The only intelligent person I know. Don’t you know me?”

She made an effort to retain her stiffening.

“Isn’t Mrs. Tietjens a truthful person?” she asked. “I thought she looked truthful when I saw her at Vincent and Ethel’s.”

He said:

“What she says she believes. But she only believes what she wants to, for the moment. If you call that truthful, she’s truthful. I’ve nothing against her.” He said to himself: “I’m not going to appeal to her by damning my wife.”

She seemed to go all of a piece, as the hard outline goes suddenly out of a piece of lump sugar upon which you drop water.

“Oh,” she said, “it isn’t true. I knew it wasn’t true.” She began to cry.

Christopher said:

“Come along. I’ve been answering tomfool questions all day. I’ve got another tomfool to see here, then I’m through.”

She said:

“I can’t come with you, crying like this.”

He answered:

“Oh, yes, you can. This is the place where women cry.” He added: “Besides there’s Mark. He’s a comforting ass.”

He delivered her over to Mark.

“Here, look after Miss Wannop,” he said. “You want to talk to her anyhow, don’t you?” and he hurried ahead of them like a fussy shopwalker into the lugubrious hall. He felt that, if he didn’t come soon to an unemotional ass in red, green, blue or pink tabs, who would have fishlike eyes and would ask the sort of questions that fishes ask in tanks, he, too, must break down and cry. With relief! However, that was a place where men cried, too!

He got through at once by sheer weight of personality, down miles of corridors, into the presence of a quite intelligent, thin, dark person with scarlet tabs. That meant a superior staff affair: not dustbins.

The dark man said to him at once:

“Look here! What’s the matter with the Command Depots? You’ve been lecturing a lot of them. In economy. What are all these damn mutinies about? Is it the rotten old colonels in command?”

Tietjens said amiably:

“Look here! I’m not a beastly spy, you know? I’ve had hospitality from the rotten old colonels.”

The dark man said:

“I daresay you have. But that’s what you were sent round for. General Campion said you were the brainiest chap in his command. He’s gone out now, worse luck.⁠ ⁠… What’s the matter with the Command Depots? Is it the men? Or is it the officers? You needn’t mention names.”

Tietjens said:

“Kind of Campion. It isn’t the officers and it isn’t the men. It’s the foul system. You get men who think they’ve deserved well of their country⁠—and they damn well have!⁠—and you crop their heads.⁠ ⁠…”

“That’s the M.O.’s,” the dark man said. “They don’t want lice.”

“If they prefer mutinies⁠ ⁠…” Tietjens said. “A man wants to walk with his girl and have a properly oiled quiff. They don’t like being regarded as convicts. That’s how they are regarded.”

The dark man said:

“All right. Go on. Why don’t you sit down?”

“I’m a little in a hurry,” Tietjens said. “I’m going out tomorrow and I’ve got a brother and people waiting below.”

The dark man said:

“Oh, I’m sorry.⁠ ⁠… But damn. You’re the sort of man we want at home. Do you want to go? We can, no doubt, get you stopped if you don’t.”

Tietjens hesitated for a moment.

“Yes!” he said eventually. “Yes, I want to go.”

For the moment he had felt temptation to stay. But it came into his discouraged mind that Mark had said that Sylvia was in love with him. It had been underneath his thoughts all the while: it had struck him at the time like a kick from the hind leg of a mule in his subliminal consciousness. It was the impossible complication. It might not be true; but whether or no the best thing for him was to go and get wiped out as soon as possible. He meant, nevertheless, fiercely, to have his night with the girl who was crying downstairs.⁠ ⁠…

He heard in his ear, perfectly distinctly, the lines:

“The voice that never yet⁠ ⁠…
Made answer to my word⁠ ⁠…”

He said to himself:

“That was what Sylvia wanted! I’ve got that much!”

The dark man had said something. Tietjens repeated:

“I’d take it very unkindly if you stopped my going⁠ ⁠… I want to go.”

The dark man said:

“Some do. Some do not. I’ll make a note of your name in case you come back⁠ ⁠… You won’t mind going on with your cinder-sifting if you do?⁠ ⁠… Get on with your story as quick as you can. And get what fun you can before you go. They say it’s rotten out there. Damn awful! There’s a hell of a strafe on. That’s why they want all you.”

For a moment Tietjens saw the grey dawn at railhead with the distant sound of a ceaselessly boiling pot, from miles away! The army feeling re-descended upon him. He began to talk about Command Depots, at great length and with enthusiasm. He snorted with rage at the way men were treated in these gloomy places. With ingenious stupidity!

Every now and then the dark man interrupted him with:

“Don’t forget that a Command Depot is a place where sick and wounded go to get made fit. We’ve got to get ’em back as soon as we can.”

“And do you?” Tietjens would