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

“You’re in uniform yourself,” he said. “Does your conscience let you do war work?”

She said:

“No. We’re hard up. I’m taking the gym classes in a great big school to turn an honest penny.⁠ ⁠… Do be quick!”

Her pressure on his elbow flattered him. He resisted it a little, hanging back, to make her more insistent. He liked being pleaded with by a pretty woman: Christopher’s girl at that.

He said:

“Oh, it’s not a matter of minutes. They keep ’em weeks at the base before they send ’em up.⁠ ⁠… We’ll fix him up all right, I’ve no doubt. We’ll wait in the hall till he comes down.”

He told the benevolent commissionaire, one of two in a pulpit in the crowded grim hall, that he was going up to see General Hogarth in a minute or two. But not to send a bellboy. He might be some time yet.

He sat himself beside Miss Wannop, clumsily on a wooden bench, humanity surging over their toes as if they had been on a beach. She moved a little to make room for him and that, too, made him feel good. He said:

“You said just now: ‘we’ are hard up. Does ‘we’ mean you and Christopher?”

She said:

“I and Mr. Tietjens. Oh, no! I and mother! The paper she used to write for stopped. When your father died, I believe. He found money for it, I think. And mother isn’t suited to freelancing. She’s worked too hard in her life.”

He looked at her, his round eyes protruding.

“I don’t know what that is, freelancing,” he said. “But you’ve got to be comfortable. How much do you and your mother need to keep you comfortable? And put in a bit more so that Christopher could have a mutton-chop now and then!”

She hadn’t really been listening. He said with some insistence: “Look here! I’m here on business. Not like an elderly admirer forcing himself on you. Though, by God, I do admire you too.⁠ ⁠… But my father wanted your mother to be comfortable.⁠ ⁠…”

Her face, turned to him, became rigid.

“You don’t mean⁠ ⁠…” she began. He said:

“You won’t get it any quicker by interrupting. I have to tell my stories in my own way. My father wanted your mother to be comfortable. He said so that she could write books, not papers. I don’t know what the difference is: that’s what he said. He wants you to be comfortable too.⁠ ⁠… You’ve not got any encumbrances? Not⁠ ⁠… oh, say a business: a hat shop that doesn’t pay? Some girls have.⁠ ⁠…”

She said: “No. I just teach⁠ ⁠… oh, do be quick.⁠ ⁠…”

For the first time in his life he dislocated the course of his thoughts to satisfy a longing in someone else.

“You may take it to go on with,” he said, “as if my father had left your mother a nice little plum.” He cast about to find his scattered thoughts.

“He has! He has! After all!” the girl said. “Oh, thank God!”

“There’ll be a bit for you, if you like,” Mark said, “or perhaps Christopher won’t let you. He’s ratty with me. And something for your brother to buy a doctor’s business with.” He asked: “You haven’t fainted, have you?” She said:

“No. I don’t faint. I cry.”

“That’ll be all right,” he answered. He went on: “That’s your side of it. Now for mine. I want Christopher to have a place where he’ll be sure of a mutton-chop and an armchair by the fire. And someone to be good for him. You’re good for him. I can see that. I know women!”

The girl was crying, softly and continuously. It was the first moment of the lifting of strain that she had known since the day before the Germans crossed the Belgian frontier, near a place called Gemmenich.

It had begun with the return of Mrs. Duchemin from Scotland. She had sent at once for Miss Wannop to the rectory, late at night. By the light of candles in tall silver stocks, against oak panelling she had seemed like a mad block of marble, with staring, dark eyes and mad hair. She had exclaimed in a voice as hard as a machine’s:

“How do you get rid of a baby? You’ve been a servant. You ought to know!”

That had been the great shock, the turning-point, of Valentine Wannop’s life. Her last years before that had been a great tranquillity, tinged of course with melancholy because she loved Christopher Tietjens. But she had early learned to do without, and the world as she saw it was a place of renunciations, of high endeavour and sacrifice. Tietjens had to be a man who came to see her mother and talked wonderfully. She had been happy when he had been in the house⁠—she in the housemaid’s pantry, getting the tea-things. She had, besides, been very hard worked for her mother; the weather had been, on the whole, good, the corner of the country in which they lived had continued to seem fresh and agreeable. She had had excellent health, got an occasional ride on the qui-tamer with which Tietjens had replaced Joel’s rig; and her brother had done admirably at Eton, taking such a number of exhibitions and things that, once at Magdalen, he had been nearly off his mother’s hands. An admirable, gay boy, not unlikely to run for, as well as being a credit to, his university, if he didn’t get sent down for his political extravagances. He was a Communist!

And at the rectory there had been the Duchemins, or rather Mrs. Duchemin and, during most weekends, Macmaster somewhere about.

The passion of Macmaster for Edith Ethel and of Edith Ethel for Macmaster had seemed to her one of the beautiful things of life. They seemed to swim in a sea of renunciations, of beautiful quotations, and of steadfast waiting. Macmaster did not interest her personally much, but she took him on trust because of Edith Ethel’s romantic passion and because he was Christopher Tietjens’ friend. She had never heard him say anything original; when he used