England -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; World War, 1914-1918 -- Social aspects -- England -- Fiction
SOME DO NOT. . .
A NOVEL
BY
FORD MADOX FORD
AUTHOR OF "THE MARSDEN CASE," "MISTER BOSPHORUS
AND THE MUSES," ETC., ETC.
London: DUCKWORTH AND COMPANY
3, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C. 2
CONTENTS
PART ONE
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
PART II
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
PART ONE
I
The two young men--they were of the English public official class--sat
in the perfectly appointed railway carriage. The leather straps to the
windows were of virgin newness; the mirrors beneath the new luggage
racks immaculate as if they had reflected very little; the bulging
upholstery in its luxuriant, regulated curves was scarlet and yellow in
an intricate, minute dragon pattern, the design of a geometrician in
Cologne. The compartment smelt faintly, hygienically of admirable
varnish; the train ran as smoothly--Tietjens remembered thinking--as
British gilt-edged securities. It travelled fast; yet had it swayed or
jolted over the rail joints, except at the curve before Tonbridge or
over the points at Ashford where these eccentricities are expected and
allowed for, Macmaster, Tietjens felt certain, would have written to the
company. Perhaps he would even have written to the _Times_.
Their class administered the world, not merely the newly-created
Imperial Department of Statistics under Sir Reginald Ingleby. If they
saw policemen misbehave, railway porters lack civility, an insufficiency
of street lamps, defects in public services or in foreign countries,
they saw to it, either with nonchalant Balliol voices, or with letters
to the _Times_, asking in regretful indignation: "Has the British This
or That come to _this_!" Or they wrote, in the serious reviews of which
so many still survived, articles taking under their care, manners, the
Arts, diplomacy, inter-Imperial trade or the personal reputations of
deceased statesmen and men of letters.
Macmaster, that is to say, would do all that: of himself Tietjens was
not so certain. There sat Macmaster; smallish; Whig; with a trimmed,
pointed black beard, such as a smallish man might wear to enhance his
already germinated distinction; black hair of a stubborn fibre, drilled
down with hard metal brushes; a sharp nose; strong, level teeth; a
white, butterfly collar of the smoothness of porcelain; a tie confined
by a gold ring, steel-blue speckled with black--to match his eyes, as
Tietjens knew.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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