A Man Could Stand Up - Ford Madox Ford [15]
The clumsy, fifteenish, bumpy-faced girl was a symbol of that place--healthyish, but not over healthy; honestish but with no craving for intellectual honesty; big-boned in unexpected places...and uncomelily blubbering so that her face appeared dirtyish...It was in fact all 'ishes' about that Institution. They were all healthyish, honestish, clumsyish, twelve-to-eighteenish and big-boned in unexpected places because of the late insufficient feeding...Emotionalish, too; apt to blubber rather than to go into hysterics.
Instead of saying good-bye to the girl she said:
'Here!' and roughly, since she was exhibiting too much leg, pulled down the girl's shortish skirt and set to work to lace the unyielding boot on the unyielding shin-bone...After a period of youthful bloom, which would certainly come and as certainly go, this girl would, normally, find herself one of the Mothers of Europe, marriage being due to the period of youthful bloom...Normally that is to say according to a normality that that day might restore. Of course it mightn't!
A tepid drop of moisture fell on Valentine's right knuckle.
'My cousin Bob was killed the day before yesterday,' the girl's voice said above her head. Valentine bent her head still lower over the boot with the patience that, in educational establishments, you must, if you want to be businesslike and shrewd, acquire and display in face of unusual mental vagaries...This girl had never had a cousin Bob, or anything else. Pettigul and her two sisters, Pettiguls Two and Three, were all in that Institution at extremely reduced rates precisely because they had not got, apart from their widowed mother, a discoverable relative. The father, a half-pay major, had been killed early in the war. All the mistresses had had to hand in reports on the moral qualities of the Pettiguls, so all the mistresses had this information.
'He gave me his puppy to keep for him before he went out,' the girl said. 'It doesn't seem just!'
Valentine, straightening herself, said:
'I should wash my face if I were you, before I went out. Or you might get yourself taken for a German!' She pulled the girl's clumsyish blouse straight on her shoulders.
'Try,' she added, 'to imagine that you've got someone just come back! It's just as easy and it will make you look more attractive!'
Scurrying along the corridors she said to herself: 'Heaven help me, does it make me look more attractive?'
She caught the Head, as she had anticipated, just on the point of going to her home in Fulham, an unattractive suburb but near a bishop's palace nevertheless. It seemed somehow appropriate. The lady was episcopally-minded but experienced in the vicissitudes of suburban children: very astonishing some of them unless you took them very much in the lump.
The Head had stood behind her table for the first three questions and answers, in an attitude of someone who is a little at bay, but she had sat down just before Valentine had quoted Shelley at her, and she had now the air of one who is ready to make a night of it. Valentine continued to stand.
'This,' Miss Wanostrocht said very gently, 'is a day on which one might...take steps...that might influence one's whole life.'
'That's,' Valentine answered, 'exactly why I've come to you. I want to know what that woman said to you so as to know where I stand before I take a step.'
The Head said:
'I had to let the girls go. I don't mind saying that you are very valuable to me. The Governors--I had an express from Lord Boulnois--ordered them to be given a holiday to-morrow. It's very inconsistent. But that makes it all the...
She stopped. Valentine said to herself:
'By Jove, I don't know anything about men; but how little I know about women. What's she getting at?' She added:
'She's nervous. She must be wanting to do something she thinks I won't like!'
She said chivalrously:
'I don't believe anybody could have kept those girls in to-day. It's a thing one has no experience of. There's never been a day like this before.'