Some Do Not . . ._ A Novel - Ford Madox Ford [118]
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 of 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 week-ends, 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 quotations they would be apt rather than striking. But she took it for granted that he was the right man--much as you take it for granted that the engine of an express train in which you are is reliable. The right people have chosen it for you...
With Mrs Duchemin, mad before her, she had the first intimation that her idolized friend, in whom she had believed as she had believed in the firmness of the great sunny earth, had been the mistress of her lover--almost since the first day she had seen him...And that Mrs Duchemin had, stored somewhere, a character of an extreme harshness and great vulgarity of language. She raged up and down in the candlelight, before the dark oak panelling, screaming coarse phrases of the deepest hatred for her lover. Didn't the oaf know his business better than to...? The dirty little Port of Leith fish-handler...