No More Parades - Ford Madox Ford (the gingerbread man read aloud .TXT) 📗

made as a schoolteacher, or a teacher of athletics in a girls’ school⁠ ⁠… She had walked two or three times up and down the street with the idea that the girl might come out: then it had struck her that that was rather an ignoble proceeding, really⁠ ⁠… It was, for the matter of that, ignoble that she should have a rival who starved in an ashbin⁠ ⁠… But that was what men were like: she might think herself lucky that the girl did not inhabit a sweetshop⁠ ⁠… And the man, Mac-master, said that the girl had a good head and talked well, though the woman Macmaster said that she was a shallow ignoramus⁠ ⁠… That last was probably not true; at any rate the girl had been the Macmaster woman’s most intimate friend for many years⁠—as long as they were sponging on Christopher and until, lower middle-class snobs as they were, they began to think that they could get into Society by carneying to herself⁠ ⁠… Still, the girl probably was a good talker and, if little, yet physically uncommonly fit⁠ ⁠… A good homespun article⁠ ⁠… She wished her no ill!

What was incredible was that Christopher should let her go on starving in such a poverty-stricken place when he had something like the wealth of the Indies at his disposal⁠ ⁠… But the Tietjens were hard people! You could see that in Mark’s rooms⁠ ⁠… and Christopher would lie on the floor as lief as in a goose-feather bed. And probably the girl would not take his money. She was quite right. That was the way to keep him⁠ ⁠… She herself had no want of comprehension of the stimulation to be got out of parsimonious living⁠ ⁠… In retreat at her convent she lay as hard and as cold as any anchorite, and rose to the nuns’ matins at four.

It was not, in fact, their fittings or food that she objected to⁠—it was that the lay-sisters, and some of the nuns, were altogether too much of the lower classes for her to like to have always about her⁠ ⁠… That was why it was to the Dames Nobles that she would go, if she had to go into retreat for the rest of her life, according to contract⁠ ⁠…

A gun manned by exhilarated antiaircraft fellows, and so close that it must have been in the hotel garden, shook her physically at almost the same moment as an immense maroon popped off on the quay at the bottom of the street in which the hotel was. She was filled with annoyance at these schoolboy exercises. A tall, purple-faced, white-moustached general of the more odious type, appeared in the doorway and said that all the lights but two must be extinguished and, if they took his advice, they would go somewhere else. There were good cellars in the hotel. He loafed about the room extinguishing the lights, couples and groups passing him on the way to the door⁠ ⁠… Tietjens looked up from his letter⁠—he was now reading one of Mrs. Wannop’s⁠—but seeing that Sylvia made no motion he remained sunk in his chair⁠ ⁠…

The old general said:

“Don’t get up, Tietjens⁠ ⁠… Sit down, lieutenant⁠ ⁠… Mrs. Tietjens, I presume⁠ ⁠… But of course I know you are Mrs. Tietjens⁠ ⁠… There’s a portrait of you in this week’s⁠ ⁠… I forget the name⁠ ⁠…” He sat down on the arm of a great leather chair and told her of all the trouble her escapade to that city had caused him⁠ ⁠… He had been awakened immediately after a good lunch by some young officer on his staff who was scared to death by her having arrived without papers. His digestion had been deranged ever since⁠ ⁠… Sylvia said she was very sorry. He should drink hot water and no alcohol with lunch. She had had very important business to discuss with Tietjens, and she had really not understood that they wanted papers of grownup people. The general began to expatiate on the importance of his office and the number of enemy agents his perspicacity caused to be arrested every day in that city and the lines of communication⁠ ⁠…

Sylvia was overwhelmed at the ingenuity of Father Consett. She looked at her watch. The ten minutes were up, but there did not appear to be a soul in the dim place⁠ ⁠… The father had⁠—and no doubt as a Sign that there could be no mistaking!⁠—completely emptied that room. It was like his humour!

To make certain, she stood up. At the far end of the room, in the dimness of the one other reading lamp that the general had not extinguished, two figures were rather indistinguishable. She walked towards them, the general at her side extending civilities all over her. He said that she need not be under any apprehension there. He adopted that device of clearing the room in order to get rid of the beastly young subalterns who would use the place to spoon in when the lights were turned down. She said she was only going to get a timetable from the far end of the room⁠ ⁠…

The stab of hope that she had that one of the two figures would turn out to be the presentable man died⁠ ⁠… They were a young mournful subaltern, with an incipient moustache and practically tears in his eyes, and an elderly, violently indignant baldheaded man in evening civilian clothes that must have been made by a country tailor. He was smacking his hands together to emphasize what, with great agitation, he was saying.

The general said that it was one of the young cubs on his own staff getting a dressing down from his dad for spending too much money. The young devils would get amongst the girls⁠—and the old ones too. There was no stopping it. The place was a hotbed of⁠ ⁠… He left the sentence unfinished. She would not believe the trouble it gave him⁠ ⁠… That hotel itself⁠ ⁠… The scandals⁠ ⁠…

He said she would excuse him if he took a little nap in one of the armchairs too far away to interfere with their business talk. He