A Man Could Stand Up - Ford Madox Ford [81]
She closed the door as delicately as if she were kissing him on the lips. It was a symbol. It was Armistice Day. She ought to go away; instead she had shut the door on...Not on Armistice Day! What was it like to be...changed!
No! She ought not to go away! She ought not to go away! She ought not! He had told her to wait. She was not cloistered. This was the most exciting spot on the earth. It was not her fate to live nun-like. She was going to pass her day beside a madman; her night, too...Armistice Night! That night would be remembered down unnumbered generations. Whilst one lived that had seen it the question would be asked: What did you do on Armistice Night? My beloved is mine and I am his!
The great stone stairs were carpetless: to mount them would be like taking part in a procession. The hall came in straight from the front door. You had to turn a corner to the right before you came to the entrance of a room. A queer arrangement. Perhaps the eighteenth century was afraid of draughts and did not like the dining-room door near the front entrance...My beloved is...Why does one go on repeating that ridiculous thing? Besides it's from the Song of Solomon, isn't it? The Canticle of Canticles! Then to quote it is blasphemy when one is...No, the essence of prayer is volition, so the essence of blasphemy is volition. She did not want to quote the thing. It was jumped out of her by sheer nerves. She was afraid. She was waiting for a madman in an empty house. Noises whispered up the empty stairway!
She was like Fatima. Pushing open the door of the empty room. He might come back to murder her. A madness caused by sex obsessions is not infrequently homicidal...What did you do on Armistice Night? 'I was murdered in an empty house?' For, no doubt he would let her live till midnight.
But perhaps he had not got sex-obsessions. She had not the shadow of a proof that he had; rather that he hadn't! Certainly, rather that he hadn't. Always the gentleman.
They had left the telephone! The windows were duly shuttered but in the dim light from between cracks the nickel gleamed on white marble. The mantel-shelf. Pure Parian marble, the shelf supported by rams' heads. Singularly chaste. The ceilings and rectilinear mouldings in an intricate symmetry. Chaste, too. Eighteenth century. But the eighteenth century was not chaste...He was eighteenth century.
She ought to telephone to her mother to inform that Eminence in untidy black with violet tabs here and there of the grave step that her daughter was...
What was her daughter going to do?
She ought to rush out of the empty house. She ought to be trembling with fear at the thought that he was coming home very likely to murder her. But she wasn't. What was she? Trembling with ecstasy? Probably. At the thought that he was coming. If he murdered her...Can't be helped! She was trembling with ecstasy all the same. She must telephone to her mother. Her mother might want to know where she was. But her mother never did want to know where she was. She had her head too screwed on to get into mischief I...Think of that!
Still, on such a day her mother might like to. They ought to exchange gladnesses that her brother was safe for good now. And others, too. Normally her mother was irritated when she rang up. She would be at her work. It was amazing to see her at work. Perhaps she never would again. Such untidiness of papers. In a little room. Quite a little room. She never would work in a big room because a big room tempted her to walk about and she could not afford the time to walk about.
She was writing at two books at once now. A novel...Valentine did not know what it was about. Her mother never let them know what her novels were about till they were finished. And a woman's history of