A Man Could Stand Up - Ford Madox Ford [18]
Still, she was prevented from taking part in national rejoicings; pretty certainly Edith Ethel had been talking scandal about her to Miss Wanostrocht. She had the right to take it out in some sort of exaggerated declamation!
'It appears,' Miss Wanostrocht said, 'for we can't now go into the question of the whole curriculum of the school, though I am inclined to agree with you. What by the bye is the matter with Pettigul One? I thought her rather a solid sort of girl. But it appears that the wife of a friend...perhaps it's only a former friend of yours, is in a nursing home.'
Valentine exclaimed:
'Oh, he...But that's too ghastly!'
'It appears,' Miss Wanostrocht said, 'to be rather a mess.' She added: 'That appears to be the only expression to use.'
For Valentine, that piece of news threw a blinding light upon herself. She was overwhelmingly appalled because that woman was in a nursing home. Because in that case it would not be sporting to go and see the husband! Miss Wanostrocht went on:
'Lady Macmaster was anxious for your advice.--It appears that the only other person that could look after the interests of...of your friend: his brother...'
Valentine missed something out of that sentence. Miss Wanostrocht talked too fluently. If people wanted you to appreciate items of sledge-hammering news they should not use long sentences. They should say:
'He's mad and penniless. His brother's dying: his wife's just been operated on.' Like that! Then you could take it in; even if your mind was rioting about like a cat in a barrel.
'The brother's...female companion,' Miss Wanostrocht was wandering on, 'though it appears that she would have been willing is therefore not available...The theory is that he--he himself, your friend, has been considerably unhinged by his experiences in the war. Then...Who in your opinion should take the responsibility of looking after his interests?'
Valentine heard herself say:
'Me!'
She added:
'Him! Looking after him. I don't know that he has any...interests!'
He didn't appear to have any furniture, so how could he have the other things? She wished Miss Wanostrocht would leave off using the word 'appear'. It was irritating...and infectious. Could the lady not make a direct statement? But then, no one ever made clear statements, and this no doubt appeared to that anaemic spinster a singularly tenebrous affair.
As for clear statements...If there had ever been any in precisely this tenebrous mess she, Valentine, would know how she stood with that man's wife. For it was part of the preposterous way in which she herself and all her friends behaved that they never made clear statements--except for Edith Ethel who had the nature of a female costermonger and could not tell the truth, though she could be clear enough. But even Edith Ethel had never hitherto said anything about the way the wife in this case treated the husband. She had given Valentine very clearly to understand that she 'sided' with the wife--but she had never gone as far as to say that the wife was a good wife. If she--Valentine--could only know that.
Miss Wanostrocht was asking:
'When you say "Me", do you mean that you would propose to look after that man yourself? I trust not.'
...Because, obviously, if she were a good wife, she, Valentine, couldn't butt in...not generously. As her father's and still more her mother's daughter...On the face of it you would say that a wife who was always striding along the palings of the Row, or the paths of other resorts of the fashionable could not be a good--a domestic--wife for a Statistician. On the other hand he was a pretty smart man, Governing class, county family and the rest of it--so he might like his wife to figure in Society: he might even exact it. He was quite capable of that. Why, for all she knew, the wife might be a retiring, shy person whom he thrust out into the hard world. It was not likely: but it was as possible