No More Parades_ A Novel - Ford Madox Ford [65]
The sergeant-major, his eyes enormously opened, said: 'Did you know the warmest banker in England?...' But there, we always knew the captain was well connected...' She went on:
'They said of him...He was always helping people.'...'Holy Mary, mother of God!...He's my husband...It's not a sin...Before midnight...Oh, give me a sign...Or before...the termination of hostilities...If you give me a sign I could wait.'...'He helped virtuous Scotch students, and broken-down gentry...And women taken in adultery...All of them...Like...You know Who...That is his model...' She said to herself: 'Curse him!...I hope he likes it...You'd think the only thing he thinks about is the beastly duck he's wolfing down.'...And then aloud: 'They used to say: "He saved others; himself he could not save..."'
The ex-sergeant-major looked at her gravely:
'Ma'am,' he said, we couldn't say exactly that of the captain...For I fancy it was said of our Redeemer...But we 'ave said that if ever there was a poor bloke the captain could 'elp, 'elp 'im 'e would...Yet the unit was always getting 'ellish strafe from headquarters...'
Suddenly Sylvia began to laugh...As she began to laugh she had remembered...The alabaster image in the nun's chapel at Birkenhead the vision of which had just presented itself to her, had been the recumbent tomb of an honourable Mrs Tremayne-Warlock...She was said to have sinned in her youth...And her husband had never forgiven her...That was what the nuns said...She said aloud:
'A sign...' Then to herself: 'Blessed Mary!...You've given it me in the neck...Yet you could not name a father for your child, and I can name two...I'm going mad...Both I and he are going to go mad...'
She thought of dashing an enormous patch of red upon either cheek. Then she thought it would be rather melodramatic...
She made in the smoking-room, whilst she was waiting for both Tietjens and Cowley to come back from the telephone, another pact...This time with Father Consett in heaven! She was fairly sure that Father Consett--and quite possibly other of the heavenly powers--wanted Christopher not to be worried, so that he could get on with the war--or because he was a good sort of dullish man such as the heavenly authorities are apt to like...Something like that...
She was by that time fairly calm again. You cannot keep up fits of emotion by the hour: at any rate, with her, the fits of emotion were periodical and unexpected, though her colder passion remained always the same...Thus, when Christopher had come into Lady Sachse's that afternoon, she had been perfectly calm. He had mooned through a number of officers, both French and English, in a great octagonal, bluish salon where Lady Sachse gave her teas, and had come to her side with just a nod--the merest inflexion of the head!...Perowne had melted away somewhere behind the disagreeable duchess. The general, very splendid and white-headed and scarlet-tipped and gilt, had also borne down upon her at that...At the sight of Perowne with her he had been sniffing and snorting whilst he talked to the young nobleman--a dark fellow in blue with a new belt who seemed just a shade too theatrical, he being chauffeur to a marshal of France and first cousin and nearest relative, except for parents and grandparents, of the prospective bride...
The general had told her that he was running the show pretty strong on purpose because he thought it might do something to cement the Entente Cordiale. But it did not seem to be doing it. The French--officers, soldiers and women--kept pretty well all on the one side of the room--the English on the other. The French were as a rule more gloomy than men and women are expected to be. A marquis of sorts--she