Some Do Not . . ._ A Novel - Ford Madox Ford [43]
She broke off and said:
'Let's not talk about it any more, if you don't mind. You have me in your house, so I suppose you've a right to references, as the mistresses call them. But you've been very good to me and never asked. Still, it's come up; do you know I told a man on the links yesterday that I'd been a slavey for nine months. I was trying to explain why I was a suffragette; and, as I was asking him a favour, I suppose I felt I needed to give him references too.'
Mrs Duchemin, beginning to advance towards the girl impulsively, exclaimed:
'You darling!'
Miss Wannop said:
'Wait a minute. I haven't finished. I want to say this: I never talk about that stage of my career because I'm ashamed of it. I'm ashamed because I think I did the wrong thing, not for any other reason. I did it on impulse and I stuck to it out of obstinacy. I mean it would probably have been more sensible to go round with the hat to benevolent people, for the keep of mother and to complete my education. But if we've inherited the Wannop ill-luck, we've inherited the Wannop pride. And I couldn't do it. Besides I was only seventeen, and I gave out we were going into the country after the sale. I'm not educated at all, as you know, or only half, because father, being a brilliant man, had ideas. And one of them was that I was to be an athlete, not a classical don at Cambridge, or I might have been, I believe. I don't know why he had that tic...But I'd like you to understand two things. One I've said already: what I hear in this house won't ever shock or corrupt me; that it's said in Latin is neither here nor there. I understand Latin almost as well as English because father used to talk it to me and Gilbert as soon as we talked at all...And, oh yes: I'm a suffragette because I've been a slavey. But I'd like you to understand that, though I was a slavey and am a suffragette--you're an old-fashioned woman and queer things are thought about these two things--then I'd like you to understand that in spite of it all I'm pure! Chaste, you know...Perfectly virtuous.'
Mrs Duchemin said:
'Oh, Valentine! Did you wear a cap and apron? You! In a cap and apron.'
Miss Wannop replied:
'Yes! I wore a cap and apron and sniffled "M'm" to the mistress; and slept under the stairs, too. Because I woud not sleep with the beast of a cook.'
Mrs Duchemin now ran forward and, catching Miss Wannop by both hands, kissed her first on the left and then on the right cheek.
'Oh, Valentine,' she said, 'you're a heroine. And you only twenty-two!...Isn't that the motor coining?' But it wasn't the motor coming and Miss Wannop said: 'Oh, no! I'm not a heroine. When I tried to speak to that Minister yesterday, I just couldn't. It was Gertie who went for him. As for me, I just hopped from one leg to the other and stuttered: "V...V...Votes for W...W...W...omen!" If I'd been decently brave I shouldn't have been too shy to speak to a strange man...For that was what it really came to.'
'But that surely,' Mrs Duchemin said--she continued to hold both the girl's hands--'makes you all the braver...It's the person who does the thing he's afraid of who's the real hero, isn't it?'
'Oh, we used to argue that old thing over with father when we were ten. You can't tell. You've got to define the term brave. I was just abject...I could harangue the whole crowd when I got them together. But speak to one man in cold blood I couldn't...Of course I did speak to a fat golfing idiot with bulging eyes, to get him to save Gertie. But that was different.'
Mrs Duchemin moved both the girl's hands up and down in her own.
'As you know, Valentine,' she said, 'I'm an old-fashioned woman. I believe that woman's true place is at her husband's side. At the same time...'
Miss Wannop moved away.
'Now, don't, Edie, don't!' she said. 'If you