Ford Madox Ford - The Parade's End Tetralogy - Some Do Not, No More Parades, A Man Could Stand Up & Last Post

He looked quietly back at Duchemin. And suddenly it came to him; she was suffering! She was probably suffering intensely. It had not occurred to him that she would suffer—partly because he was without nerves himself, partly because he had conceived of Mrs Duchemin as firstly feeling admiration for himself. Now it seemed to him abominable that she should suffer.

Mrs Duchemin was in agony. Macmaster had looked at her intently and looked away! She read into his glance contempt for her situation, and anger that he should have been placed in such a position. In her pain she stretched out her hand and touched his arm.

Macmaster was aware of her touch; his mind seemed filled with sweetness. But he kept his head obstinately averted. For her sake he did not dare to look away from the maniacal face. A crisis was coming. Mr Duchemin had arrived at the English translation. He placed his hands on the table-cloth in preparation for rising; he was going to stand on his feet and shout obscenities to the other guests. It was the exact moment.

Macmaster made his voice dry and penetrating to say:

“Youth of tepid loves” is a lamentable rendering of puer callide ! It’s lamentably antiquated . . . ’

Duchemin chewed and said:

‘What? What? What’s that?’

‘It’s just like Oxford to use an eighteenth-century crib. I suppose that’s Whiston and Ditton? Something like that . . . ’ He observed Duchemin, brought out of his impulse, to be wavering—as if he were coming awake in a strange place! He added:

‘Anyhow it’s wretched schoolboy smut. Fifth form. Or not even that. Have some galantine. I’m going to. Your sole’s cold.’

Mr Duchemin looked down at his plate.

‘Yes! Yes!’ he muttered. ‘Yes! With sugar and vinegar sauce!’ The prize-fighter slipped away to the sideboard, an admirable, quiet fellow; as unobtrusive as a burying beetle. Macmaster said:

‘You were about to tell me something for my little monograph. What became of Maggie . . . Maggie Simpson. The Scots girl who was model for Alla Finestra del Cielo ?’

Mr Duchemin looked at Macmaster with sane, muddled, rather exhausted eyes:

‘ Alla Finestra !’ he exclaimed: ‘Oh yes! I’ve got the watercolour. I saw her sitting for it and bought it on the spot . . . ’ He looked again at his place, started at sight of the galantine and began to eat ravenously: ‘A beautiful girl!’ he said. ‘Very long necked . . . She wasn’t of course . . . eh . . . respectable! She’s living yet, I think. Very old. I saw her two years ago. She had a lot of pictures. Relics of course! In the Whitechapel Road she lived. She was naturally of that class . . . ’ He went muttering on, his head over his plate. Macmaster considered that the fit was over. He was irresistibly impelled to turn to Mrs Duchemin; her face was rigid, stiff. He said swiftly:

‘If he’ll eat a little: get his stomach filled . . . It calls the blood down from the head . . . ’

She said:

‘Oh, forgive! It’s dreadful for you! Myself I will never forgive!’

He said:

‘No! No! . . . Why, it’s what I’m for !’

A deep emotion brought her whole white face to life:

‘Oh, you good man!’ she said in her profound tones, and they remained gazing at each other.

Suddenly, from behind Macmaster’s back Mr Duchemin shouted:

‘I say he made a settlement on her, dum casta et sola , of course. Whilst she remained chaste and alone!’

Mr Duchemin, suddenly feeling the absence of the powerful will that had seemed to overweigh his own like a great force in the darkness, was on his feet, panting and delighted:

‘Chaste!’ he shouted. ‘Chaste you observe What a world of suggestion in the word . . . ’ He surveyed the opulent broadness of his tablecloth; it spread out before his eyes as if it had been a great expanse of meadow in which he could gallop, relaxing his limbs after long captivity. He shouted three obscene words and went on in his Oxford Movement voice: ‘But chastity . . . ’

Mrs Wannop suddenly said:

‘Oh!’ and looked at her daughter, whose face grew slowly crimson as she continued to peel a peach. Mrs Wannop turned to Mr Horsley beside her and said:

‘You write, too, I believe, Mr Horsley. No doubt something more learned than my poor readers would care for . . . Mr Horsley had been preparing, according to his instructions from Mrs Duchemin, to shout a description of an article he had been writing about the Mosella of Ausonius, but as he was slow in starting the lady got in first. She talked on serenely about the tastes of the large public. Tietjens leaned across to Miss Wannop and, holding in his right hand a half-peeled fig, said to her as loudly as he could:

‘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 . . .