Parade's End

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 of 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 as anything else.

Miss Wanostrocht was asking:

“Aren’t there Institutions… Military Sanatoria… for cases precisely like that of this Captain Tietjens. It appears to be the war that has broken him down, not merely evil living.”

“It’s precisely,” Valentine said, “because of that that one should want… shouldn’t one… Because it’s because of the War….”

The sentence would not finish itself.

Miss Wanostrocht said:

“I thought… It has been represented to me… that you were a Pacifist. Of an extreme type!”

It had given Valentine a turn — like the breaking out of sweat in a case of fever — to hear the name, coldly, “Captain Tietjens,” for it was like a release. She had been irrationally determined that hers should not be the first tongue to utter that name.

And apparently from her tone Miss Wanostrocht was prepared to detest that Captain Tietjens. Perhaps she detested him already.

She was beginning to say:

“If one is an extreme Pacifist because one cannot bear to think of the sufferings of men isn’t that a precise reason why one should wish that a poor devil, all broken up…

But Miss Wanostrocht had begun one of her own long sentences. Their voices went on together, like trains dragging along ballast — disagreeably. Miss Wanostrocht’s organ, however, won out with the words:

“… behaved very badly indeed.”

Valentine said hotly:

“You ought not to believe anything of the sort — on the strength of anything said by a woman like Lady Macmaster.”

Miss Wanostrocht appeared to have been brought to a complete stop: she leaned forward in her chair; her mouth was a little open. And Valentine said: “Thank Goodness!” to herself.

She had to have a moment to herself to digest what had the air of being new evidence of the baseness of Edith Ethel; she felt herself to be infuriated in regions of her own being that she hardly knew. That seemed to her to be a littleness in herself. She had not thought that she had been as little as that. It ought not to matter what people said of you. She was perfectly accustomed to think of Edith Ethel as telling whole crowds of people very bad things about her, Valentine Wannop. But there was about this a recklessness that was hardly believable. To tell an unknown person, encountered by chance on the telephone, derogatory facts about a third party who might be expected to come to the telephone herself in a minute or two — and, not only that — who must in all probability hear what had been said very soon after, from the first listener…. That was surely a recklessness of evil-speaking that almost outpassed sanity…. Or else it betrayed a contempt for her, Valentine Wannop, and what she could do in the way of reprisals that was extremely hard to bear!

She said suddenly to Miss Wanostrocht:

“Look here! Are you speaking to me as a friend to my father’s daughter or as a Headmistress to a Physical Instructor?”

A certain amount of blood came into the lady’s pinkish features. She had certainly been ruffled when Valentine had permitted her voice to sound so long alongside her own; for, although Valentine knew next to nothing about the Head’s likes or dislikes she had once or twice before seen her evince marked distaste on being interrupted in one of her formal sentences.

Miss Wanostrocht said with a certain coldness:

“I’m speaking at present… I’m allowing myself the liberty —as a much older woman — in the capacity of a friend of your father. I have been, in short, trying to recall to you all that you owe to yourself as being an example of his training!”

Involuntarily Valentine’s lips formed themselves for a low whistle of incredulity. She said to herself:

“By Jove! I am in the middle of a nasty affair…. This is a sort of professional cross-examination.”

“I am in a way glad,” the lady was now continuing, “that you take that line…. I mean of defending Mrs. Tietjens with such heat against Lady Macmaster. Lady Macmaster appears to dislike Mrs. Tietjens, but I am bound to say that she appears to be in the right of it. I mean of her dislike. Lady Macmaster is a serious personality and, even on her public record Mrs. Tietjens appears to be very much the reverse. No doubt you wish to be loyal to your… friends, but…”

“We appear,” Valentine said, “to be getting into an extraordinary muddle.”

She added:

“I haven’t, as you seem to think, been defending Mrs. Tietjens. I would have. I would at any time. I have always thought of her as beautiful and kind. But I heard you say the words: ‘has been behaving very badly,’ and I thought you meant that Captain Tietjens had. I denied it. If you meant that his wife has, I deny it, too. She’s an admirable wife… and mother… that sort of thing, for all I know….”

She said to herself:

“Now why do I say that? What’s Hecuba to me?” and then:

“It’s to defend his honour, of course… I’m trying to present Captain Tietjens as English Country Gentleman complete with admirably arranged establishment, stables, kennels, spouse, offspring…. That’s a queer thing to want to do!”

Miss Wanostrocht who had breathed deeply said now:

“I’m extremely glad to hear that. Lady Macmaster certainly said that Mrs. Tietjens was — let us say — at least a neglectful wife…. Vain, you know; idle; overdressed…. All that… And you appeared to defend Mrs. Tietjens.”

“She’s a smart woman in smart Society,” Valentine said, “but it’s with her husband’s concurrence. She has a right to be….”

“We shouldn’t,” Miss Wanostrocht said, “be in the extraordinary muddle to which you referred if you did not so continually interrupt me. I was trying to say that, for you, an inexperienced girl, brought up in a sheltered home, no pitfall could be more dangerous than a man with a wife who neglected her duties!”

Valentine said:

“You will have to excuse my interrupting you. It is, you know, rather more my funeral than yours.”

Miss Wanostrocht said quickly:

“You can’t say that. You don’t know how ardently…”

Valentine said:

“Yes, yes…. Your schwaerm for my father’s memory and all. But my father couldn’t bring it about that I should lead a sheltered life…. I’m about as experienced as any girl of the lower classes…. No doubt it was his doing, but don’t make any mistakes.”

She added:

“Still, it’s I that’s the corpse. You’re conducting the inquest. So it’s more fun for you.”