Some Do Not . . ._ A Novel - Ford Madox Ford [51]
'I've got a message for you from Mr Waterhouse. He says if you'll...'
The completely deaf Miss Fox--who had had her training by writing--remarked diagonally to Mrs Duchemin:
'I think we shall have thunder to-day. Have you remarked the number of minute insects...'
'When my revered preceptor,' Mr Duchemin thundered on, 'drove away in the carriage on his wedding day he said to his bride: "We will live like blessed angels!" How sublime! I, too, after my nuptials...'
Mrs Duchemin suddenly screamed:
'Oh...no!'
As if checked for a moment in their stride all the others paused--for a breath. Then they continued talking with polite animation and listening with minute attention. To Tietjens that seemed the highest achievement and justification of English manners!
Parry, the prize-fighter, had twice caught his master by the arm and shouted that breakfast was getting cold. He said now to Macmaster that he and the Rev. Mr Horsley could get Mr Duchemin away, but there'd be a hell of a fight. Macmaster whispered: 'Wait!' and, turning to Mrs Duchemin he said: 'I can stop him. Shall I?' She said:
'Yes! Yes! Anything!' He observed tears; isolated upon her cheeks, a thing he had never seen. With caution and with hot rage he whispered into the prize-fighter's hairy ear that was held down to him:
'Punch him in the kidney. With your thumb. As hard as you can without breaking your thumb...'
Mr Duchemin had just declaimed:
'I, too, after my nuptials...' He began to wave his arms, pausing and looking from unlistening face to unlistening face. Mrs Duchemin had just screamed.
Mr Duchemin thought that the arrow of God struck him. He imagined himself an unworthy messenger. In such pain as he had never conceived of he fell into his chair and sat huddled up, a darkness covering his eyes.
'He won't get up again,' Macmaster whispered to the appreciative pugilist. 'He'll want to. But he'll be afraid to.' He said to Mrs Duchemin:
'Dearest lady! It's all over. I assure you of that. It's a scientific nerve counter-irritant.'
Mrs Duchemin said:
'Forgive!' with one deep sob: 'You can never respect...
She felt her eyes explore his face as the wretch in a cell explores the face of his executioner for a sign of pardon. Her heart stayed still: her breath suspended itself...
Then complete heaven began. Upon her left palm she felt cool fingers beneath the cloth. This man knew always the exact right action! Upon the fingers, cool, like spikenard and ambrosia, her fingers closed themselves.
In complete bliss, in a quiet room, his voice went on talking. At first with great neatness of phrase, but with what refinement! He explained that certain excesses being merely nervous cravings, can be combated if not, indeed, cured altogether, by the fear of, by the determination not to endure, sharp physical pain--which of course is a nervous matter, too!...
Parry, at a given moment, had said into his master's ear:
'It's time you prepared for your sermon to-morrow, sir,' and Mr Duchemin had gone as quietly as he had arrived, gliding over the thick carpet to the small door.
Then Macmaster said to her:
'You come from Edinburgh? You'll know the Fifeshire coast then.'
'Do I not?' she said. His hand remained in hers. He began to talk of the whins on the links and the sanderlings along the flats, with such a Scots voice and in phrases so vivid that she saw her childhood again, and had in her eyes a wetness of a happier order. She released his cool hand after a long, gentle pressure. But when it was gone it was as if much of her life went. She said: 'You'll be knowing Kingussie House, just outside your town. It was there I spent my holidays as a child.'
He answered:
'Maybe I played round it a barefoot lad and you in your grandeur within.'
She said:
'Oh, no! Hardly! There would be the difference of our ages! And...and indeed there are other things I will tell you.'
She addressed herself to Tietjens, with all her heroic armour of charm buckled on again:
'Only think! I find Mr Macmaster and I almost played together in our youth.'
He looked at her, she knew, with a commiseration that she hated: