Some Do Not . . ._ A Novel - Ford Madox Ford [147]
'Nor for me!' she had answered. She added: 'But I'm glad!'
Patches of silence ran between them: they hadn't yet got out of the habit of thinking they had to hold up the drunken brother. That had seemed to last for a thousand painful months...Long enough to acquire a habit. The brother seemed to roar: 'Haw-Haw--Kuryasch. 2 And after two minutes: Haw--Haw--Kuryasch. 2 Hungarian, no doubt!
He said:
'It was splendid to see Vincent standing beside the Duke. Showing him a first edition! Not of course quite the thing for a, after all, wedding party! But how was Rugeley to know that?...And Vincent not in the least servile! He even corrected cousin Rugeley over the meaning of the word colophon! The first time he ever corrected a superior! Established, you see!...And practically cousin Rugeley...Dear Sylvia Tietjens' cousin, so the next to nearest thing! Wife of Lady Macmaster's oldest friend...Sylvia going to them in their--quite modest!--little place in Surrey...As for us,' he had concluded, 'they also serve who only stand and wait...'
She said:
'I suppose the rooms looked lovely.'
He had answered:
'Lovely...They'd got all the pictures by that beastly fellow up from the rectory study in the dining-room on dark oak panelling...A fair blaze of bosoms and nipples and lips and pomegranates...The tallest silver candlesticks of course...You remember, silver candlesticks and dark oak...'
She said:
'Oh, my dear...Don't...Don't!'.
He had just touched the rim of his helmet with his folded gloves.
'So we just wash out!' he had said.
She said:
'Would you take this bit of parchment...I got a little Jew girl to write on it in Hebrew: It's "God bless you and keep you: God watch over you at your goings out and at..."'
He tucked it into his breast pocket.
The talismanic passage,' he said. 'Of course I'll wear it...'
She said:
'If we could wash out this afternoon...It would make it easier to bear...Your poor mother, you know, she was dying when we last...'
He said:
'You remember that...Even then you...And if I hadn't gone to Lobscheid...'
She said:
'From the first moment I set eyes on you...
He said:
'And I I...from the first moment...I'll tell you...If I looked out of a door...It was all like sand...But to the half left a little bubbling up of water. That could be trusted. To keep on for ever...You, perhaps, won't understand.'
She said:
'Yes! I know!'
They were seeing landscapes...Sand dunes; close-cropped...Some negligible shipping; a stump-masted brig from Archangel...
'From the first moment,' he repeated.
She said:
'If we could wash out...'
He said, and for the first moment felt grand, tender, protective:
'Yes, you can,' he said. 'You cut out from this afternoon, just before 4.58 it was when I said that to you and you consented...I heard the Horse Guards clock...To now...Cut it out; and join time up...It can be done...You know they do it surgically; for some illness; cut out a great length of the bowel and join the tube up...For colitis, I think...
She said:
'But I wouldn't cut it out...It was the first spoken sign.'
He said:
'No it wasn't...From the very beginning...with every word...'
She exclaimed:
'You felt that...Too!...We've been pushed, as in a carpenter's vice...We couldn't have got away...He said: 'By God! That's it...'
He suddenly saw a weeping willow in St James's Park; 4.59! He had just said: 'Will you be my mistress to-night?' She had gone away, half left, her hands to her face...A small fountain; half left. That could be trusted to keep on for ever...
Along the lake side, sauntering, swinging his crooked stick, his incredibly shiny top-hat perched sideways, his claw-hammer coat tails, very long, flapping out behind, in dusty sunlight, his magpie pince-nez gleaming, had come, naturally, Mr Ruggles. He had looked at the girl; then down at Tietjens, sprawled on his bench. He had just touched the brim of his shiny hat. He said:
'Dining at the club to-night?...'
Tietjens said: 'No; I've resigned.'
With the aspect of a long-billed bird chewing a bit of putridity, Ruggles said:
'Oh, but we've had an emergency meeting of the committee...the committee was sitting...and sent you a letter asking you to reconsider...