Parade's End (123 page)

It had been a good lie. That Mrs. Tietjens was a
maîtresse femme
. There was no denying that. She herself was engaged for those others both by her own inclinations and the strong injunctions of her husband, but Mme Tietjens was certainly ingenious. She had managed to incommode and discredit that pair almost as much as any pair could be incommoded and discredited, although they were the most harmless couple in the world.

They had certainly not had an agreeable festival on that Armistice Day. Apparently one of the officers present at their dinner of celebration had gone raving mad; the wife of another of Christopher’s comrades of the regiment had been rude to Valentine; the colonel of the regiment had taken the opportunity to die with every circumstance of melodrama. Naturally all the other
officers
had run away and had left Christopher and Valentine with the madman and the dying colonel on their hands.

An agreeable
voyage de noces
… . It appeared that they had secured a four-wheel cab in which with the madman and the other they had driven to Balham – an obscure suburb, with sixteen celebrants hanging all over the outside of the cab and two on the horse’s back – at any rate for a couple of miles from Trafalgar Square; they were not of course interested in the interior of the cab; they were merely gay because there was to be no more suffering. Valentine and Christopher had got rid of the madman somewhere in Chelsea at an asylum for shell-shock cases. There he had remained ever since. But the authorities would not take the colonel so they had driven on to Balham, the colonel making dying speeches about the late war, his achievements, the money he owed Christopher… . Valentine had appeared to find that extremely trying. The man died in the cab.

They had had to walk back into Town because the driver of the four-wheeler was so upset by the death in his cab that he could not drive. Moreover the horse was foundered. It had been twelve, midnight, before they reached Trafalgar Square. They had had to struggle through packed crowds nearly all the way. Apparently they were happy at the accomplishment of their duty – or their benevolence. They stood on the top step of St. Martin’s Church, dominating the square that was all illuminated and packed and roaring, with bonfires made of the paving wood and omnibuses and the Nelson Column going up and the fountain-basins full of drunkards, and orators and bands… . They stood on the top step, drew deep breaths and fell into each other’s arms… . For the first time – though apparently they had loved each other for a lustrum or more… . What people!

Then, at the top of the stairs in the house in the Inn they had perceived Sylvia, all in white! …

Apparently she had been informed that Christopher and that girl were in communication – by a lady who did not like Christopher because she owed him money. A Lady Macmaster. Apparently there was no one in the world who did not dislike Christopher because they owed him money. The colonel and the lunatic and the husband
of
the lady who had been rude to Valentine … all, all! Right down to Mr. Schatzweiler who had only paid Christopher one cheque for a few dollars out of a great sum and had then contracted a nervous break-down on account of the sufferings he had gone through as a prisoner of war.

But what sort of a man was that Christopher to have in his hands the fortunes of a woman… . Any woman!

Those were practically the last words her Mark had ever spoken to her, Marie Léonie. She had been supporting him whilst he drank a
tisane
she had made in order that he might sleep, and he had said gravely:

‘It is not necessary that I should ask you to be kind to Mademoiselle Wannop. Christopher is incapable of looking after her… .’ His last words, for immediately afterwards the telephone bell had rung. He had just before seemed to have a good deal of temperature and it had been whilst his eyes were goggling at her, the thermometer that she had stuck in his mouth gleaming on his dark lips, and whilst she was regretting letting him be tormented by his family that the sharp drilling of the telephone had sounded from the hall. Immediately the strong German accent of Lord Wolstonemark had, with its accustomed disagreeableness, burred in her ear. He had said that the Cabinet was still sitting and they desired to know at once the code that Mark used in his communications with various ports. His second-in-command appeared to be lost amongst the celebrations of that night. Mark had said with a sort of grim irony from the bedroom that if they wanted to stop his transport going out they might just as well not use cypher. If they wanted to use a twopenny halfpenny economy as window dressing for the elections they’d have to have, they might as well give it as much publicity as they could. Besides, he did not believe they would get into Germany with the transport they had. A good deal had been smashed lately.

The Minister had said with a sort of heavy joy that they were not going into Germany, and that had been the most dreadful moment of Marie Léonie’s life; but with her discipline she had just simply repeated the words to Mark. He had then said something she did not quite catch, and he would not repeat what he had said. She said as much to Lord Wolstonemark and the chuckling accent said that
he
supposed that that was the sort of news that would rattle the old boy. But one must adapt oneself to one’s day; the times were changed.

She had gone from the instrument to look at Mark. She spoke to him; she spoke to him again. And again – rapid words of panic. His face was dark purple and congested; he gazed straight before him. She raised him; he sank back inertly.

She remembered going to the telephone and speaking in French to the man at the other end. She had said that the man at the other end was a German and a traitor; her husband should never speak to him or his fellows again. The man had said: ‘Eh, what’s that? Eh? … Who are you?’

With appalling shadows chasing up and down in her mind she had said:

‘I am Lady Mark Tietjens. You have murdered my husband. Clear yourself from off my line, murderer!’

It had been the first time she had ever given herself that name; it was indeed the first time she had ever spoken in French to that Ministry. But Mark had finished with the Ministry, with the Government, with the nation… . With the world.

As soon as she could get that man off the wire she had rung up Christopher. He had come round with Valentine in tow. It had certainly not been much of a
nuit de noces
for that young couple.

PART TWO

SYLVIA TIETJENS, USING
merely the persuasion of her left knee, edged her chestnut bay nearer to the bay mare of the shining General. She said:

‘If I divorce Christopher, will you marry me?’

He exclaimed with the vehemence of a shocked hen:

‘Good God, no!’

He shone everywhere except in such parts of his grey tweed suit as would have shown by shining that they had been put on more than once. But his little white moustache, his cheeks, the bridge but not the tip of his nose, his reins, his Guards’ tie, his boots, martingale, snaffle, curb, fingers, fingernails – all these gave evidence of interminable rubbings… . By himself, by his man, by Lord Fittleworth’s stable-hands, grooms… . Interminable rubbings and supervisions at the end of extended arms. Merely to look at him you would know that he was something like Lord Edward Campion, Lieutenant-General retired, K.C.M.G. (military), M.P.V.C., M.C., D.S.O… . So he exclaimed: ‘Good God, no!’ and using a little-finger touch on his snaffle-rein made his mare recoil from Sylvia Tietjens’ chestnut. Annoyed at its mate’s motion, the bad-tempered chestnut with the white forehead showed its teeth at the mare, danced a little and threw out some flakes of foam. Sylvia swayed a little backwards and forwards in her saddle, and smiled downwards into her husband’s garden.

‘You can’t, you know,’ she said, ‘expect to put an idea out of my head just by flurrying the horses… .’

‘A man,’ the General said between ‘Comeups’ to his mare, ‘does not marry his …’

His mare went backwards a pace or two into the bank and then a pace forwards.

‘His what?’ Sylvia asked with amiability. ‘You can’t be going to call me your cast mistress. No doubt most men would have a shot at it. But I never have been even your mistress… . I have to think of Michael!’

‘I wish,’ the General said vindictively, ‘that you would settle what that boy is to be called… . Michael or Mark!’ He added: ‘I was going to say: “his godson’s wife”… . A man may not marry his godson’s wife.’

Sylvia bent over to stroke the neck of the chestnut.

‘A man,’ she said, ‘cannot marry any man’s wife… . But if you think that I am going to be the second Lady Tietjens after that … French hairdresser’s widow …’

‘You would prefer,’ the General said, ‘to go to India… .’

Visions of India went through their hostile minds. They looked down from their horses over Tietjens’s in West Sussex, over a house with a high-pitched, tiled roof with deep windows in the grey local stone. He nevertheless saw names like Akhbar Khan, Alexander of Macedon, the son of Philip, Delhi, the Massacre at Cawnpore… . His mind, given over from boyhood to the contemplation of the largest jewel in the British Crown, spewed up those romances. He was member for the West Cleveland Division and a thorn in the side of the Government. They
must
give him India. They knew that if they did not he could publish revelations as to the closing days of the late war… . He would naturally never do that. One does not blackmail even a Government.

Still, to all intents he
was
India.

Sylvia also was aware that he was to all intents and purposes India. She saw receptions in Government Houses in which, habited with a tiara, she too would be INDIA… . As someone said in Shakespeare:

I am dying, Egypt, dying! Only

I will importune Death a while until

Of many thousand kisses this poor last

Is laid upon thy lips… .

She imagined it would be agreeable, supposing her to betray this old Pantaloon India, to have a lover, gasping at her feet, exclaiming: ‘I am dying, India, dying… .’ And she with her tiara, very tall. In white, probably. Probably satin!

The General said:

‘You know you cannot possibly divorce my godson. You are a Roman Catholic.’

She said, always with her smile:

‘Oh,
can’t
I? … Besides it would be of the greatest advantage to Michael to have for a step-father the Field Marshal… .’

He said with impotent irritation:

‘I wish you would settle whether that boy’s name is Michael or Mark!’

She said:

‘He calls himself Mark… . I call him Michael because I hate the name of Mark… .’

She regarded Campion with real hatred. She said that upon occasion she would be exemplarily revenged upon him. ‘Michael’ was a Satterthwaite name, ‘Mark’, the name for a Tietjens eldest son. The boy had originally been baptised and registered as Michael Tietjens. At his reception into the Roman Church he had been baptised ‘Michael Mark’. Then had followed the only real deep humiliation of her life. After his Papist baptism the boy had asked to be called Mark. She had asked him if he really meant that. After a long pause – the dreadful long pauses of children before they render a verdict! – he had said that he intended to call himself Mark from then on… . By the name of his father’s brother, of his father’s father, grandfather, great-grandfather… . By the name of the irascible apostle of the lion and the sword… . The Satterthwaites, his mother’s family, might go by the board.

For herself, she hated the name of Mark. If there was one man in the world whom she hated because he was insensible of her attraction it was Mark Tietjens who lay beneath the thatched roof beneath her eyes… . Her boy, however, intended, with a child’s cruelty to call himself Mark Tietjens… .

The General grumbled:

‘There is no keeping track with you… . You say now you would be humiliated to be Lady Tietjens after that Frenchwoman… . But you have always said that that Frenchwoman is only the concubine of Sir Mark… . You say one thing, then you say another… . What is one to believe?’

She regarded him with sunny condescension. He grumbled on:

‘One thing, then another… . You say you cannot divorce my godson because you are a Roman Catholic. Nevertheless you begin divorce proceedings and throw all the mud you can over the miserable fellow. Then you remember your creed and don’t go on… . What sort of game is this?’ She regarded him still ironically but with good humour across the neck of her horse.

He said:

‘There’s
really
no fathoming you… . A little time ago – for months on end – you were dying of … of internal cancer in short …’

She commented with the utmost good temper:

‘I didn’t want that girl to be Christopher’s mistress… . You would think that no man with any imagination at all
could
… I mean with his wife in that condition… . But of course when she insisted … Well, I wasn’t going to stop in bed, in retreat, all my life… .’

She laughed good-humouredly at her companion.

‘I don’t believe you know anything about women,’ she said. ‘Why should you? Naturally Mark Tietjens married his concubine. Men always do as a sort of deathbed offering. You will eventually marry Mrs. Partridge if I do not choose to go to India. You think you will not, but you will… . As for me I think it would be better for Michael if his mother were Lady Edward Campion – of India! – than if she were merely Lady Tietjens the second of Groby with a dowager who was once a cross-Channel fly-by-night… .’ She laughed and added: ‘Anyhow, the sisters at the Blessed Child said that they never saw so many lilies – symbols of purity – as there were at my tea-parties when I was dying… . You’ll admit yourself you never saw anything so ravishing as me amongst the lilies and the tea-cups with the great crucifix above my head… . You were singularly moved! You swore you would cut Christopher’s throat yourself on the day the detective told us that he was really living here with that girl… .’

The General exclaimed:

‘About the Dower House at Groby… . It’s really damned awkward… . You swore to me that when you let Groby to that damned American madwoman I could have
the
Dower House and keep my horses in Groby stables. But now it appears I can’t… . It appears …’