Parade's End (111 page)

But then, if there was that haste there was danger of death! She had often speculated as to whether he would or would not marry her as an act of death-bed contrition. Rather contemptuously as great lords with
le Spleen
make their peace with God. She screamed; in silent, black London. The night-light wavered in its saucer.

He crepitated out that his brother was doubling, in this new will, his posthumous provision for her. With provision for the purchase of a house in France if she would not inhabit the Dower House at Groby. A Louis Treize dower-house. It was his idea of consolation. He affected to be business-like… . These English. But then, perhaps they do not go through your presses and wardrobes whilst your corpse is still warm!

She screamed out that they might take away their marriage papers and will-forms, but to give her her man again. If they had let her give him her
tisanes
instead of …

With her breast heaving she had cried into that man’s face:

‘I swear that my first act when I am Madame Tietjens and have the legal power will be to turn out all these men and give him infusions of poppy-heads and lime-flowers.’ She expected to see him recoil, but he had said:

‘In heaven’s name do, my dear sister. It might save him and the nation!’

It was silly of him to talk like that. These fellows had too much pride of family. Mark did no more than attend to Transport. Well, perhaps transport in those days had its importance. Still, probably Tietjens, Christopher, over-rated the indispensableness of Tietjens, Mark… . That would have been three weeks or a month before the Armistice. They were black days… . A good brother, though… .

In the other room, whilst papers were signing, after the
curé
in his
calotte
and all, had done reading from his book, Mark had signed to her to bend her head down to him and had kissed her. He whispered:

‘Thank God there is one woman-Tietjens who is not a whore and a bitch!’ He winced a little; her tears had fallen on his face. For the first time, she had said:

‘Mon pauvre homme, ce qu’ils ont fait de toi!’ She had been hurrying from the room when Christopher had stopped her. Mark had said:

‘I regret to put you to further inconvenience …’ in French. He had never spoken to her in French before. Marriage makes a difference. They speak to you with ceremony out of respect for themselves and their station in life. You also are at liberty to address them as your
pauvre homme
.

There had to be another ceremony. A man looking like a newly dressed gaol-bird stepped out with his book like an office register. With a blue-black jowl. He married them over again. A civil marriage, this time.

It was then that, for the first time, she had become aware of the existence of another woman-Tietjens, Christopher’s wife… . She had not known that Christopher had a wife. Why was not she there? But Mark with his labouring politeness and chest had told her that he exaggerated the formality of the marriage because if both he and Christopher died she, Marie Léonie Tietjens, might have trouble with a certain Sylvia. The Bitch! … Well, she, Marie Léonie, was prepared to face her legitimate sister-in-law.

III

THE LITTLE MAID
, Beatrice, as well as Gunning, regarded Marie Léonie with paralysed but bewildered obedience.
She
was ’Er Ladyship, a good mark, a foreign Frenchy. That was bad. She was extraordinarily efficient about the house and garden and poultry-yard, a matter for mixed feelings. She was fair, not black-avised, a good mark; she was buxom, not skinny, like the real Quality. A bad mark because she was, then, not real Quality; but a qualifiedly good mark because if you ’as to ’ave Quality all about you in the ’ouse ’tis better not to ’ave real Quality… . But on the whole the general feeling was favourable because like themselves she was floridly blond. It made ’er ’uman like. Never you trust a dark woman and if you marries a dark man ’e will treat you bad. In the English countryside it is like that.

Cabinet-maker Cramp who was a remnant of the little dark persistent race that once had peopled Sussex regarded her with distrust that mingled with admiration for the quality of the varnish that she imported from Paris. Proper French polish that were. He lived in the cottage just across the path on the Common. ’E couldn’ say as ’ow ’e liked the job the Governor give ’im. He had to patch up and polish with beeswax – not varnish – rough stuff such ’s ’is granf ’er ’ad ’ad. An ’ad got rid of. Rough ol’ truck. Moren n ’undred yeers old. ’N more!

He had to take bits of old wood out of one sort of old truck and fit it into missing bits of other old truck. Bought old Moley’s pig-pound boards that had been Little Kingsworth church stalls, the Cahptn ’ad; ’n ’ad ’im, Cramp, use’m for all manner of patchin’s up. The Captain had bought too ol’ Miss’ Cooper’s rabbit ’utch. Beautifully bevelled the panels was too which cleaned up ’n beeswaxed. Cramp would acknowledge that. Made him match the bevelling in the timber from Kingsworth Church stalls for one of the missing doors, an’ more of the timber fer the patching. Proper job, he, Cramp, had made of it too; he would say that. ’N it looked proper when it was finished – a long, low press, with six bevelled doors; beautiful purfling on the edges. Like some of the stuff ’Is Lordship ’ad in the Tujer Room at Fittleworth House. Moren ’n ’undred yeers old. Three ’undred. Four … There’s no knowin’.

’N no accountin’ fer tastes. ’E would say ’e ’ad ’n eye – the Cahptn ’ad. Look at a bit of ol’ rough truck the Cahptn would ’n see it was older than the Monument to
Sir
Richard Atchinson on Tadworth ’Ill that was set up in the year 1842 to celebrate the glorious victory of Free Trade. So the Monument said. Lug a bit of rough ol’ truck out of the back of a cow-house where it had been throwed – the Cahptn would. And his, Cramp’s, heart would sink to see the ol’ mare come back, some days, the cart full of ’en-coops, ’n leaden pig-truffs, ’n pewter plates that ’ad been used to stop up ’oles in cow-byres.

’N off it would all go to Murrikay. Queer place Murrikay must be – full of the leavins of ol’ England. Pig-troughs, hen-coops, rabbit-hutches, wash-house coppers that no one now had any use for. He loaded ’em when he’d scrubbed, and silver-sanded and beeswaxed-’n-turpentined ’em, onto the ol’ cart, ’n put to ol’ mare, ’n down to station, ’n on to Southampton ’n off to New York. Must be a queer place yon! Hadn’t they no cabinet-makers or ol’ rough truck of ther own?

Well, it took all sorts to make a world n thank God fer that. He, Cramp, had a good job, likely to last ’im ’is lifetime because some folks wus queer in the ’ed. The ol’ lumber went out yon and his, Cramp’s missus, was gettin’ together a proper set of goods. A tidy treat their sittin’ room looked with aspidistras in mahogany tripods, ’n a Wilton carpet ’n bamboo cheers ’n mahogany whatnots. A proper woman Missus Cramp was, if sharp in the tongue.

Missus Cramp she didn’t give so much fer ’Er Ladyship. She was agin Foreigners. All German spies they wus. Have no truck with them she wouldn’t. ’Oo noo if they wus ’s much ’s married. Some says they wus, some says they wasn’. But you couldn’ take in Missus Cramp …’N Quality! What was to show that they were real Quality. Livin how they did wasn’ Quality manners. Quality was stuck up ’n wore shiny clothes ’n had motor-cars ’n statues ’n palms ’n ball-rooms ’n conservatories. ’N didn’ bottle off the cider ’n take the eggs ’n speak queer lingo to th’ handy-man. ’N didn’ sell the cheers they sat on. The four younger children also didn’t like ’Er Ladyship. Never called ’em pretty dears she did nor give ’em sweeties nor rag-dolls nor apples. Smacked ’em if she found ’em in the orchard. Never so much ’s give ’em red flannel capes in the winter.

But Bill the eldest liked ’Er Ladyship. Called ’er a proper right ’un. Never stopped tarkin’ of ’er. ’N
she
’ad
statues
in ’er bedroom, ’n fine gilt cheers, ’n clocks, ’n flowerin plants. Bill e’d made fer ’Er Ladyship what she called ’n eightyjare. In three storey, to stand in a corner ’n hold knick-knacks. Out of fretwork to a pettern she’d give ’im. Varnished proper, too. A good piece of work if he shouldn’t say so… . But Missus Cramp she’d never been allowed in ’Er Ladyship’s bedroom. A proper place it was. Fit fer a Countess! If Missus Cramp could be allowed to see it she’d maybe change her opinions… . But Missus Cramp she said: ‘Never you trust a fair woman,’ bein’ dark.

The matter of the cider however, did give him to think. Proper cider it was, when they was given a bottle or two. But it wasn’t Sussex cider. A little like Devonshire cider, more like Herefordshire. But not the same as any. More head it had ’n was sweeter, ’n browner. ’N not to be drunk s’ freely! Fair scoured you it did if you drunk’s much’s a quart!

The little settlement was advancing furtively to the hedge. Cramp put his bald poll out of his work-shed and then crept out. Mrs. Cramp, an untidy, dark, very thin woman emerged over her door-sill, wiping her hands on her apron. The four Cramp children at different stages of growth crept out of the empty pig-pound. Cramp was not going to buy his winter pigs till next fortnightly fair at Little Kingsworth. The Elliott children with the milk-can came at a snail’s pace down the green path from the farm; Mrs. Elliott, an enormous woman with untidy hair, peered over her own hedge which formed a little enclosure on the Common; Young Hogben, the farmer’s son, a man of forty, very thick-set, appeared on the path in the beech-wood, ostensibly driving a great black sow. Even Gunning left his brushing and lumbered to the edge of the stable. From there he could still see Mark in his bed, but also, looking downwards between the apple-trunks he could see Marie Léonie bottle the cider, large, florid and intent, in the open dairying-shed where water ran in a v-shaped wooden trough.

‘Runnin’ t’ cider out of cask with a chube!’ Mrs. Cramp screamed up the hill to Mrs. Elliott. ‘’Ooever ’eered!’ Mrs. Elliot rumbled huskily back at Mrs. Cramp. All these figures closed in furtively; the children peering through tiny interstices in the hedge and muttering one to the
other:
‘’Ooever ’eered… . Foreign ways I call it… . A glass chube …’Ooever ’eered.’ Even Cramp, though, wiping his bald head with his carpenter’s apron, he admonished Mrs. Cramp to remember that he had a good job – even Cramp descended from the path to the hedge-side and stood so close – peering over – that the thorns pricked his perspiring chest through his thin shirt. They said to the baker who wearily followed his weary horse up the steep path, coming from the deep woods below: It had ought to be stopped. The police had ought to know. Bottling cider by means of a glass tube. And standing the cider in running water. Where was the excise? Rotting honest folks’ guts! Poisoning them. No doubt the governor could tell them a tale about that if he could speak or move. The police had ought to know… . Showing off, with cider in running water – to cool it when first bottled! ’Ooever ’eered! Just because they ’ad a Ladyship to their tail. ’N more money than better folks. Not so much money either. Reckon they’d come to smash ’n be sold up like ’Igginson at Fittleworth. Set ’isself up fer Quality, ’e did too! …’N not so much of a Ladyship, neither. Not so much more of a Ladyship as us if the truth was known. Not an Earl or a Lord, only a baronite-ess at that, supposin’ we all ’ad our rights… . The police had ought to be brought into this affair!

A number of members of the Quality, on shining horses, their leathers creaking beautifully, rode at a walk up the path. They were the real Quality. A fine old gentleman, thin as a lath, clean face, hooky nose, white moustache, lovely cane, lovely leggings. On ’Is Lordship’s favourite hack. A bay mare. A fine lady, slim as a boy, riding astride as they do to-day though they did not use to. But times change. On the Countess’s own chestnut with white forehead. A bad-tempered horse. She must ride well, that lady. Another lady, grey-haired, but slim too, riding side-saddle in a funny sort of get-up. Long skirt with panniers and three-cornered hat like the ones you see in pictures of highwaymen in the new pub in Queens Norton. Sort of old-fashioned she looked. But no doubt it was the newest pattern. Things is so mixed up nowadays. ’Is Lordship’s friends could afford to do as they pleased. A boy, eighteen, maybe. Shiny leggings too: all their clothes is shiny. Rides well, too, the boy. Look how
his
legs nip into Orlando – the chief whip’s horse. Out for an airing. ’Is Lordship’s groom of the stud only too glad if the horses can get exercise in hay-cutting time. The real Quality.

They reined in their horses a little further up the road, and sat staring down into the orchard. They had ought to be told what was going on down there. Puts white powder into the cider along o’ the sugar. The Quality ought to be told… . But you do not speak to the Quality. Better if they do not notice you. You never know. They sticks together. Might be friends of Tietjenses for all you know. You don’t
know
Tietjenses ain’t Quality. Better git a move on or something might ’appen to you. You hear!

The boy in the shiny leggings and clothes – bareheaded he was, with shiny fair hair and shiny cheeks – exclaimed in a high voice:

‘I say, mother, I don’t like this spying!’ And the horses started and jostled.

You see. They don’t like this spying. Get a move on. And all that peasantry got a move on whilst the horses went slowly uphill. Queer things the Gentry can do to you still if they notice you. It is all very well to say this is a land fit for whatever the word is that stands for simple folk. But they have the police and the keepers in their hands, and your cottages and livings.

Gunning went out at the garden gate beside the stable and shouted objurgations at Young Hogben.

‘Hey, don’t you drive that sow. She’s as much right on Common as you.’

The great sow was obstinately preceding the squat figure of Young Hogben who hissed and squeaked behind her. She flapped her great ears and sniffed from side to side, a monument of black imperturbability.

‘You keep your ’ogs out of our swedes!’ Young Hogben shouted amidst objurgations. ‘In our forty acre she is all day ’n all night too!’

‘You keep your swedes outen our ’ogs,’ Gunning shouted back swinging his gorilla arms like a semaphore. He advanced onto the Common. Young Hogben descended the slope.