Some Do Not . . ._ A Novel - Ford Madox Ford [142]
The sordid and aligned houses seemed to rush past her in the mean August sunshine. That was because if you thought hard time went quicker; or because after you noticed the paper shop at this corner you would be up to the boxes of onions outside the shop of the next corner before you noticed anything else.
She was in Kensington Gardens, on the north side; she had left the poor shops behind...In sham country, with sham lawns, sham avenues, sham streams. Sham people pursuing their ways across the sham grass. Or no! Not sham! in a vacuum! No! 'Pasteurised' was the word! Like dead milk. Robbed of their vitamins...
If she saved a few coppers by walking it would make a large pile to put into the leering--or compassionate--taxicabman's hand after he had helped her support her brother into the dog-kennel door. Edward would be dead drunk. She had fifteen shillings for the taxi...If she gave a few coppers more it seemed generous...What a day to look forward to still! Some days were lifetimes!
She would rather die than let Tietjens pay for the cab!
Why? Once a taximan had refused payment for driving her and Edward all the way to Chiswick, and she hadn't felt insulted. She had paid him; but she hadn't felt insulted! A sentimental fellow; touched at the heart by the pretty sister--or perhaps he didn't really believe it was a sister--and her incapable bluejacket brother! Tietjens was a sentimental fellow too...What was the difference!...And then! The mother a dead, heavy sleeper; the brother dead drunk. One in the morning! He couldn't refuse her! Blackness: cushions! She had arranged the cushions, she remembered. Arranged them subconsciously! Blackness! Heavy sleep; dead drunkenness!...Horrible!...A disgusting affair! An affair of Ealing...It shall make her one with all the stuff to fill graveyards...Well, what else was she, Valentine Wannop: daughter of her father? And of her mother? Yes! But she herself...Just a little nobody!
They were no doubt wirelessing from the Admiralty...But her brother was at home, or getting a little more intoxicated and talking treason. At any rate the flickering intermittences over the bitter seas couldn't for the moment concern him...That bus touched her skirt as she ran for the island...It might have been better...But one hadn't the courage!
She was looking at patterned deaths under a little green roof, such as they put over bird shelters. Her heart stopped! Before, she had been breathless! She was going mad. She was dying...All these deaths! And not merely the deaths...The waiting for the approach of death; the contemplation of the parting from life! This minute you were; that, and you weren't! What was it like? Oh heaven, she knew...She stood there contemplating parting from...One minute you were; the next...Her breath fluttered in her chest...Perhaps he wouldn't come...
He was immediately framed by the sordid stones. She ran upon him and said something; with a mad hatred. All these deaths and he and his like responsible!...He had apparently a brother, a responsible one too! Browner complexioned!...But he! He! He! He! completely calm; with direct eyes...It wasn't possible. 'Holde Lippen: klaare Augen: heller Sinn...Oh, a little bit wilted, the clear intellect! And the lips? No doubt too. But he couldn't look at you so, unless...
She caught him fiercely by the arm; for the moment he belonged--more than to any browner, mere civilian, brother!--to her! She was going to ask him! If he answered: 'Yes, I am such a man!' she was going to say: 'Then you must take me too! If them, why not me? I must have a child. I too!' She desired a child. She would overwhelm those hateful lodestones with a flood of argument; she imagined--she felt--the words going between her lips...She imagined her fainting mind; her consenting limbs...
His looks were wandering round the cornice of these stone buildings. Immediately she was Valentine Wannop again; it needed no word from him. Words passed, but words could no more prove an established innocence than words can enhance a love that exists. He might as well have recited the names of railway stations. His eyes, his unconcerned face, his tranquil shoulders; they were what acquitted him. The greatest love speech he had ever made and could ever make her was when, harshly and angrily, he said something like: