A Man Could Stand Up - Ford Madox Ford [85]
'Proposes when occasion offers to remove to Groby in fat, blue typescript. She cried agonizedly:
'Mother. Order me to come back or it will be too late...
She had looked down, unthinkingly...as one does when standing at the telephone. If she looked down again and read to the end of the sentence that contained the words: 'It is useless,' it would be too late! She would know that his wife had given him up!
Her mother's voice came turned by the means of its conveyance into the voice of a machine of Destiny. 'No, I can't. I am thinking.'
Valentine placed her foot on the dais at which she stood. When she looked down it covered the letter. She thanked God. Her mother's voice said:
'I cannot order you to come back if it would kill you not to be with him.' Valentine could feel her late-Victorian advanced mind, desperately seeking for the right plea--for any plea that would let her do without seeming to employ maternal authority. She began to talk like a book: an august Victorian book; Morley's Life of Gladstone. That was reasonable: she wrote books like that.
She said they were both good creatures of good stock. If their consciences let them commit themselves to a certain course of action they were probably in the right. But she begged them, in God's name to assure themselves that their consciences did urge that course. She had to talk like a book!
Valentine said:
'It is nothing to do with conscience.' That seemed harsh. Her mind was troubled with a quotation. She could not find it. Quotations ease strain; she said: 'One is urged by blind destiny!' A Greek quotation, then! 'Like a victim upon an altar. I am afraid; but I consent!'...Probably Euripides; the Alkestis very likely! If it had been a Latin author the phrases would have occurred to her in Latin. Being with her mother made her talk like a book. Her mother talked like a book: then she did. They must; if they did not they would scream...But they were English ladies. Of scholarly habits of mind. It was horrible. Her mother said:
'That is probably the same as conscience--race conscience!' She could not urge on them the folly and disastrousness of the course they appeared to propose. She had, she said, known too many irregular unions that had been worthy of emulation and too many regular ones that were miserable and a cause of demoralization by their examples...She was a gallant soul. She could not in conscience go back on the teachings of her whole life. She wanted to. Desperately! Valentine could feel the almost physical strainings of her poor, tired brain. But she could not recant. She was not Crammer! She was not even Joan of Arc. So she went on repeating:
'I can only beg and pray you to assure yourself that not to live with that man will cause you to die or be seriously mentally injured. If you think you can live without him or wait for him, if you think there is any hope of later union without serious mental injury I beg and pray...'
She could not finish the sentence...It was fine to behave with dignity at the crucial moment of your life! It was fitting: it was proper. It justified your former philosophic life. And it was cunning. Cunning!
For now she said:
'My child! my little child! You have sacrificed all your life to me and my teaching. How can I ask you now to deprive yourself of the benefit of them?'
She said:
'I can't persuade you to a course that might mean your eternal unhappiness!'...The can't was like a flame of agony!
Valentine shivered. That was cruel pressure. Her mother was no doubt doing her duty; but it was cruel pressure. It was very cold. November is a cold month. There were footsteps on the stairs. She shook.
'Oh, he is coming. He is coming!' she cried out. She wanted to say: 'Save me!' She said: 'Don't go away! Don't...Don't go away!' What do men do to you: men you love? Mad men. He was carrying a sack. The sack was the first she saw as he opened the door. Pushed it open; it was already half-open. A sack was a dreadful thing for a madman to carry. In an empty house. He dumped the sack down on the hearth stone. He had