Some Do Not . . ._ A Novel - Ford Madox Ford [133]
'He's certainly,' Valentine said, 'not a friend of his country's enemies. I'm not, myself.'
Mrs Duchemin exclaimed sharply, her eyes dilated. 'What do you mean? What on earth do you dare to mean? I thought you were a pro-German!'
Valentine said:
'I'm not! I'm not!...I hate men's deaths...I hate any men's deaths...Any men...' She calmed herself by main force. 'Mr Tietjens says that the more we hinder our allies the more we drag the war on and the more lives are lost...More lives, do you understand?...'
Mrs Duchemin assumed her most aloof, tender, and high air: 'My poor child,' she said, 'what possible concern can the opinions of that broken fellow cause anyone! You can warn him from me that he does himself no good by going on uttering these discredited opinions. He's a marked man. Finished! It's no good Guggums, my husband, trying to stand up for him.'
'He does stand up for him?' Valentine asked. 'Though I don't see why it's needed. Mr Tietjens is surely able to take care of himself.'
'My good child,' Edith Ethel said, 'you may as well know the worst. There's not a more discredited man in London than Christopher Tietjens, and my husband does himself infinite harm in standing up for him. It's our one quarrel.'
She went on again:
'It was all very well whilst that fellow had brains. He was said to have some intellect, though I could never see it. But now that, with his drunkenness and debaucheries, he has got himself into the state he is in; for there's no other way of accounting for his condition! They're striking him, I don't mind telling you, off the roll of his office...'
It was there that, for the first time, the thought went through Valentine Wannop's mind, like a mad inspiration: this woman must at one time have been in love with Tietjens. It was possible, men being what they were, that she had even once been Tietjens' mistress. For it was impossible otherwise to account for this spite, which to Valentine seemed almost meaningless. She had, on the other hand, no impulse to defend Tietjens against accusations that could not have any possible grounds.
Mrs Duchemin was going on with her kind loftiness:
'Of course a fellow like that--in that condition!--could not understand matters of high policy. It is imperative that these fellows should not have the higher command. It would pander to their insane spirit of militarism. They must be hindered. I'm talking, of course, between ourselves, but my husband says that that is the conviction in the very highest circles. To let them have their way, even if it led to earlier success, would be to establish a precedent--so my husband says!--compared with which the loss of a few lives...'
Valentine sprang up, her face distorted.
'For the sake of Christ,' she cried out, 'as you believe that Christ died for you, try to understand that millions of men's lives are at stake...'
Mrs Duchemin smiled.
'My poor child,' she said, 'if you moved in the higher circles you would look at these things with more aloofness...'
Valentine leant on the back of a high chair for support.
'You don't move in the higher circles,' she said. 'For Heaven's sake--for your own--remember that you are a woman, not for ever and for always a snob. You were a good woman once. You stuck to your husband for quite a long time...'
Mrs Duchemin, in her chair, had thrown herself back. 'My good girl,' she said, 'have you gone mad?' Valentine said:
'Yes, very nearly. I've got a brother at sea; I've had a man I loved out there for an infinite time. You can understand that, I suppose, even if you can't understand how one can go mad merely at the thoughts of suffering at all...And I know, Edith Ethel, that you are afraid of my opinion of you, or you wouldn't have put up all the subterfuges and concealments of all these years...'
Mrs Duchemin said quickly:
'Oh, my good girl.--If you've got personal interests at stake you can't be expected to take abstract views of the higher matters. We had better change the subject.'
Valentine said:
'Yes, do. Get on with your excuses for not asking me and mother to your knighthood party.'