No More Parades 2 страница

She rang the bell and bade Hullo Central sweep the plateful from the carpet; Hullo Central, tall and dark, looking with wide-open eyes, motionless at nothing.

Sylvia went along the bookshelves, pausing over a book back, “Vitare Hominum Notiss…” in gilt, irregular capitals pressed deep into the old leather. At the first long window she supported herself by the blind-cord. She looked out and back into the room.

“There's that veiled woman! ” she said, “going into eleven… It's two o'clock, of course…”

She looked at her husband's back hard, the clumsy khaki back that was getting round-shouldered now. Hard! She wasn't going to miss a motion or a stiffening.

“I've found out who it is! ” she said, “and who she goes to. I got it out of the porter. ” She waited. Then she added:

“It's the woman you travelled down from Bishop Auckland with. On the day war was declared. ”

Tietjens turned solidly round in his chair. She knew he would do that out of stiff politeness, so it meant nothing.

His face was whitish in the pale light, but it was always whitish since he had come back from France and passed his day in a tin hut among dust heaps. He said:

“So you saw me! ” But that, too, was mere politeness.

She said:

“Of course the whole crowd of us from Claudine's saw you! It was old Campion who said she was a Mrs… I've forgotten the name. ”

Tietjens said:

“I imagined he would know her. I saw him looking in from the corridor! ”

She said:

“Is she your mistress, or only Macmaster's, or the mistress of both of you? It would be like you to have a mistress in common… She's got a mad husband, hasn't she? A clergyman. ”

Tietjens said:

“She hasn't! ”

Sylvia checked suddenly in her next questions, and Tietjens, who in these discussions never manoeuvred for position, said:

“She has been Mrs Macmaster over six months. ” Sylvia said:

“She married him then the day after her husband's death. ”

She drew a long breath and added:

“I don't care… She has been coming here every Friday for three years… I tell you I shall expose her unless that little beast pays you to-morrow the money he owes you… God knows you need it! ” She said then hurriedly, for she didn't know how Tietjens might take that proposition:

“Mrs Wannop rang up this morning to know who was… oh! … the evil genius of the Congress of Vienna. Who, by the by, is Mrs Wannop's secretary? She wants to see you this afternoon. About war babies! ”

Tietjens said:

“Mrs Wannop hasn't got a secretary. It's her daughter who does the ringing-up. ”

“The girl, ” Sylvia said, “you were so potty about at that horrible afternoon Macmaster gave. Has she had a war baby by you? They all say she's your mistress. ”

Tietjens said:

“No, Miss Wannop isn't my mistress. Her mother has had a commission to write an article about war babies. I told her yesterday there weren't any war babies to speak of, and she's upset because she won't be able to make a sensational article. She wants to try to make me change my mind. ”

“It was Miss Wannop at that beastly affair of your friend's? ” Sylvia asked. “And I suppose the woman who received was Mrs What's-er-name: your other mistress. An unpleasant show. I don't think much of your taste. The one where all the horrible geniuses in London were? There was a man like a rabbit talked to me about how to write poetry. ”

“That's no good as an identification of the party, ” Tietjens said. “Macmaster gives a party every Friday, not Saturday. He has for years. Mrs Macmaster goes there every Friday. To act as hostess. She has for years. Miss Wannop goes there every Friday after she has done work for her mother. To support Mrs Macmaster…”

“She has for years! ” Sylvia mocked him. “And you go there every Friday! to croodle over Miss Wannop. Oh, Christopher! ”—she adopted a mock pathetic voice—”I never did have much opinion of your taste… but not that! Don't let it be that. Put her back. She's too young for you…”

“All the geniuses in London, ” Tietjens continued equably, “go to Macmaster's every Friday. He has been trusted with the job of giving away Royal Literary Bounty money: that's why they go. They go: that's why he was given his C. B. ”

“I should not have thought they counted, ” Sylvia said. “Of course they count, ” Tietjens said. “They write for the Press. They can get anybody anything… except themselves! ”

“Like you! ” Sylvia said; “exactly like you! They're a lot of bribed squits. ”

“Oh, no, ” Tietjens said. “It isn't done obviously or discreditably. Don't believe that Macmaster distributes forty-pounders yearly of bounty on condition that he gets advancement. He hasn't, himself, the least idea of how it works, except by his atmosphere. ”

“I never knew a beastlier atmosphere, ” Sylvia said. “It reeked of rabbit's food. ”

“You're quite mistaken, ” Tietjens said; “that is the Russian leather of the backs of the specially bound presentation copies in the large bookcase. ”

“I don't know what you're talking about, ” Sylvia said. “What are presentation copies? I should have thought you'd had enough of the beastly Russian smells Kiev stunk of. ”

Tietjens considered for a moment.

“No! I don't remember it, ” he said. “Kiev? … Oh, it's where we were…”

“You put half your mother's money, ” Sylvia said, “into the Government of Kiev 12½ per cent. City Tramways…”

At that Tietjens certainly winced, a type of wincing that Sylvia hadn't wanted.

“You're not fit to go out to-morrow, ” she said. “I shall wire to old Campion. ”

“Mrs Duchemin, ” Tietjens said woodenly. “Mrs Macmaster that is, also used to burn a little incense in the room before the parties… Those Chinese stinks… what do they call them? Well, it doesn't matter, ” he added resignedly, Then he went on: “Don't you make any mistake. Mrs Macmaster is a very superior woman. Enormously efficient! Tremendously respected. I shouldn't advise even you to come up against her, now she's in the saddle. ”

Mrs Tietjens said:

“That sort of woman! ”

Tietjens said:

“I don't say you ever will come up against her. Your spheres differ. But, if you do, don't… I say it because you seem to have got your knife into her. ”

“I don't like that sort of thing going on under my windows, ” Sylvia said.

Tietjens said:

“What sort of thing? … I was trying to tell you a little about Mrs Macmaster… she's like the woman who was the mistress of the man who burned the other fellow's horrid book… I can't remember the names. ”

Sylvia said quickly:

“Don't try! ” In a slower tone she added: “I don't in the least want to know…”

“Well, she was an Egeria! ” Tietjens said. “An inspiration to the distinguished. Mrs Macmaster is all that. The geniuses swarm round her, and with the really select ones she corresponds. She writes superior letters, about the Higher Morality usually; very delicate in feeling. Scotch naturally. When they go abroad she sends them snatches of London literary happenings; well done, mind you! And then, every now and then, she slips in something she wants Macmaster to have. But with great delicacy… Say it's this C. B… she transfuses into the minds of Genius One, Two and Three the idea of a C. B. for Macmaster… Genius No. One lunches with the Deputy Sub-Patronage Secretary, who looks after literary honours and lunches with geniuses to get the gossip…”

“Why, ” Sylvia said, “did you lend Macmaster all that money? ”

“Mind you, ” Tietjens continued his own speech, “it's perfectly proper. That's the way patronage is distributed in this country; it's the way it should be. The only clean way. Mrs Duchemin backs Macmaster because he's a first-class fellow for his job. And she is an influence over the geniuses because she's a first-class person for hers… She represents the higher, nicer morality for really nice Scots. Before long she will be getting tickets stopped from being sent to people for the Academy soiré es. She already does it for the Royal Bounty dinners. A little later, when Macmaster is knighted for bashing the French in the eye, she'll have a tiny share in auguster assemblies… Those people have to ask somebody for advice. Well, one day you'll want to present some dé butante. And you won't get a ticket…”

“Then I'm glad, ” Sylvia exclaimed, “that I wrote to Brownie's uncle about the woman. I was a little sorry this morning because, from what Glorvina told me, you're in such a devil of a hole…”

“Who's Brownie's uncle? ” Tietjens asked. “Lord… Lord… The banker! I know Brownie's in his uncle's bank. ”

“Port Scatho! ” Sylvia said. “I wish you wouldn't act forgetting people's names. You overdo it. ”

Tietjens' face went a shade whiter…

“Port Scatho, ” he said, “is the chairman of the Inn Billeting Committees, of course. And you wrote to him? …”

“I'm sorry, ” Sylvia said. “I mean, I'm sorry I said that about your forgetting… I wrote to him and said that as a resident of the Inn I objected to your mistress—he knows the relationship, of course! —creeping in every Friday under a heavy veil and creeping out every Saturday at four in the morning. ”

“Lord Port Scatho knows about my relationship, ” Tietjens began.

“He saw her in your arms in the train, ” Sylvia said. “It upset Brownie so much he offered to shut down your overdraft and return any cheques you had out marked R. D. ”

“To please you? ” Tietjens asked. “Do bankers do that sort of thing? It's a new light on British society…! ”

“I suppose bankers try to please their women friends, like other men, ” Sylvia said. “I told him very emphatically it wouldn't please me… But…” she hesitated, “I wouldn't give him a chance to get back on you. I don't want to interfere in your affairs. But Brownie doesn't like you…”

“He wants you to divorce me and marry him? ” Tietjens asked.

“How did you know? ” Sylvia asked indifferently. “I let him give me lunch now and then because it's convenient to have him manage my affairs, you being away… But of course he hates you for being in the army. All the men who aren't hate all the men that are. And, of course, when there's a woman between them, the men who aren't do all they can to do the others in. When they're bankers they have a pretty good pull…”

“I suppose they have, ” Tietjens said vaguely; “of course they would have…”

Sylvia abandoned the blind-cord on which she had been dragging with one hand. In order that light might fall on her face and give more impressiveness to her words, for, in a minute or two, when she felt brave enough, she meant really to let him have her bad news! —she drifted to the fireplace. He followed her round, turning on his chair to give her his face.

She said:

“Look here, it's all the fault of this beastly war, isn't it? Can you deny it? … I mean that decent, gentlemanly fellows like Brownie have turned into beastly squits! ”

“I suppose it is, ” Tietjens said dully. “Yes, certainly it is. You're quite right. It's the incidental degeneration of the heroic impulse: if the heroic impulse has too even a strain put on it the incidental degeneration gets the upper hand. That accounts for the Brownies… all the Brownies… turning squits…”

“Then why do you go on with it? ” Sylvia said. “God knows, I could wangle you out if you'd back me in the least little way. ”

Tietjens said:

“Thanks I prefer to remain in it… How else am I to get a living? …”

“You know then, ” Sylvia exclaimed almost shrilly. “You know that they won't have you back in the office if they can find a way of getting you out…”

“Oh, they'll find that! ” Tietjens said… He continued his other speech: “When we go to war with France, ” he said dully… And Sylvia knew he was only now formulating his settled opinion so as not to have his active brain to give to the discussion. He must be thinking hard of the Wannop girl! With her littleness; her tweed-skirtishness… A provincial miniature of herself, Sylvia Tietjens… If she, then, had been miniature, provincial… But Tietjens' words cut her as if she had been lashed with a dog-whip. “We shall behave more creditably, ” he had said, “because there will be less heroic impulse about it. We shall… half of us… be ashamed of ourselves. So there will be much less incidental degeneration. ”

Sylvia, who by that was listening to him, abandoned the consideration of Miss Wannop and the pretence that obsessed her of Tietjens saying four words, against a background of books at Macmaster's party. She exclaimed:

“Good God! What are you talking about? …”

Tietjens went on:

“About our next war with France… We're the natural enemies of the French. We have to make our bread either by robbing them or making cat's-paws of them…”

Sylvia said:

“We can't! We couldn't…”

“We've got to! ” Tietjens said. “It's the condition of our existence. We're a practically bankrupt, over-populated, northern country: they're rich southerners, with a falling population. Towards 1930 we shall have to do what Prussia did in 1914. Our conditions will be exactly those of Prussia then. It's the… what is it called? …”

“But…” Sylvia cried out, “you're a Franco-maniac… You're thought to be a French agent… That's what's bitching your career! ”

“I am? ” Tietjens asked uninterestedly. He added: “Yes, that probably would bitch my career…” He went on, with a little more animation and a little more of his mind:

“Ah! that will be a war worth seeing… None of their drunken rat-fighting for imbecile boodlers…”

“It would drive mother mad! ” Sylvia said.

“Oh, no it wouldn't, ” Tietjens said. “It will stimulate her if she is still alive… Our heroes won't be drunk with wine and lechery: our squits won't stay at home and stab the heroes in the back. Our Minister for Water-closets won't keep two and a half million men in any base in order to get the votes of their women at a General Election—that's been the first evil effects of giving women the vote! With the French holding Ireland and stretching in a solid line from Bristol to Whitehall, we should hang the Minister before he had time to sign the papers. And we should be decently loyal to our Prussian allies and brothers… Our Cabinet won't hate them as they hate the French for being frugal and strong in logic and well-educated and remorselessly practical. Prussians are the sort of fellows you can be hoggish with when you want to…”

Sylvia interjected violently:

“For God's sake stop it. You almost make me believe what you say is true. I tell you mother would go mad. Her greatest friend is the Duchesse Tonnerre Châ teau-Herault…”

“Well! ” Tietjens said. “Your greatest friends are the Med… Med… the Austrian officers you take chocolates and flowers to. That there was all the row about… We're at war with them and you haven't gone mad! ”

“I don't know, ” Sylvia said. “Sometimes I think I am going mad! ” She drooped. Tietjens, his face very strained, was looking at the tablecloth. He muttered: “Med… Met… Kos…” Sylvia said:

“Do you know a poem called Somewhere? It begins: 'Somewhere or other there must surely be… '”

Tietjens said:

“I'm sorry. No! I haven't been able to get up my poetry again. ”

Sylvia said:

“Don't! ” She added: “You've got to be at the War Office at 4. 15, haven't you? What's the time now? ” She extremely wanted to give him her bad news before he went; she extremely wanted to put off giving it as long as she could. She wanted to reflect on the matter first; she wanted also to keep up a desultory conversation, or he might leave the room. She didn't want to have to say to him: “Wait a minute, I've something to say to you! ” for he might not, at that moment, be in the mood. He said it was not yet two. He could give her an hour and a half more.

To keep the conversation going, she said:

“I suppose the Wannop girl is making bandages or being a Waac. Something forceful. ”

Tietjens said:

“No; she's a pacifist. As pacifist as you. Not so impulsive; but, on the other hand, she has more arguments. I should say she'll be in prison before the war's over…”

“A nice time you must have between the two of us, ” Sylvia said. The memory of her interview with the great lady nicknamed Glorvina—though it was not at all a good nickname—was coming over her forcibly.

She said:

“I suppose you're always talking it over with her? You see her every day. ”

She imagined that that might keep him occupied for a minute or two. He said—she caught the sense of it only—and quite indifferently that he had tea with Mrs Wannop every day. She had moved to a place called Bedford Park, which was near his office: not three minutes' walk. The War Office had put up a lot of huts on some public green in that neighbourhood. He only saw the daughter once a week, at most. They never talked about the war; it was too disagreeable a subject for the young woman. Or rather, too painful… His talk gradually drifted into unfinished sentences…

They played that comedy occasionally, for it is impossible for two people to live in the same house and not have some common meeting ground. So they would each talk: sometimes talking at great length and with politeness, each thinking his or her thoughts till they drifted into silence.

And, since she had acquired the habit of going into retreat—with an Anglican sisterhood in order to annoy Tietjens, who hated convents and considered that the communions should not mix—Sylvia had acquired also the habit of losing herself almost completely in reveries. Thus she was now vaguely conscious that a greyish lump, Tietjens, sat at the head of a whitish expanse: the lunch-table. There were also books… actually she was seeing a quite different figure and other books—the books of Glorvina's husband, for the great lady had received Sylvia in that statesman's library.

Glorvina, who was the mother of two of Sylvia's absolutely most intimate friends, had sent for Sylvia. She wished, kindly and even wittily, to remonstrate with Sylvia because of her complete abstention from any patriotic activity. She offered Sylvia the address of a place in the city where she could buy wholesale and ready-made diapers for babies which Sylvia could present to some charity or other as being her own work. Sylvia said she would do nothing of the sort, and Glorvina said she would present the idea to poor Mrs Pilsenhauser. She Glorvina—said she spent some time every day thinking out acts of patriotism for the distressed rich with foreign names, accents or antecedents…

Glorvina was a fiftyish lady with a pointed, grey face and a hard aspect; but when she was inclined to be witty or to plead earnestly she had a kind manner. The room in which they were was over a Belgravia back garden. It was lit by a skylight, and the shadows from above deepened the lines of her face, accentuating the rather dusty grey of the hair as well as both the hardness and the kind manner. This very much impressed Sylvia, who was used to seeing the lady by artificial light…

She said, however:

“You don't suggest, Glorvina, that I'm the distressed rich with a foreign name! ”

The great lady had said:

“My dear Sylvia; it isn't so much you as your husband. Your last exploit with the Esterhazys and Metternichs has pretty well done for him. You forget that the present powers that be are not logical…”

Sylvia remembered that she had sprung up from her leather saddle-back chair, exclaiming:

“You mean to say that those unspeakable swine think that I'm…”

Glorvina said patiently:

“My dear Sylvia, I've already said it's not you. It's your husband that suffers. He appears to be too good a fellow to suffer. Mr Waterhouse says so. I don't know him myself, well. ”

Sylvia remembered that she had said:

“And who in the world is Mr Waterhouse? ” and hearing that Mr Waterhouse was a late Liberal Minister, had lost interest. She couldn't, indeed, remember any of the further words of her hostess, as words. The sense of them had too much overwhelmed her…

She stood now, looking at Tietjens and only occasionally seeing him, her mind completely occupied with the effort to recapture Glorvina's own words in the desire for exactness. Usually she remembered conversations pretty well; but on this occasion her mad fury, her feeling of nausea, the pain of her own nails in her palms, an unrecoverable sequence of emotions, had overwhelmed her.

She looked at Tietjens now with a sort of gloating curiosity. How was it possible that the most honourable man she knew should be so overwhelmed by foul and baseless rumours? It made you suspect that honour had, in itself, a quality of the evil eye…

Tietjens, his face pallid, was fingering a piece of toast. He muttered:

“Met… Met… It's Met…” He wiped his brow with a table-napkin, looked at it with a start, threw it on the floor and pulled out a handkerchief… He muttered: “Mett… Metter…” His face illuminated itself like the face of a child listening at a shell.

Sylvia screamed with a passion of hatred:

“For God's sake say Metternich… you're driving me mad! ”

When she looked at him again his face had cleared and he was walking quickly to the telephone in the corner of the room. He asked her to excuse him and gave a number at Ealing. He said after a moment:

“Mrs Wannop? Oh! My wife has just reminded me that Metternich was the evil genius of the Congress of Vienna…” He said: “Yes! Yes! ” and listened. After a time he said: “Oh, you could put it stronger than that. You could put it that the Tory determination to ruin Napoleon at all costs was one of those pieces of party imbecility that, etc… Yes; Castlereagh. And of course Wellington… I'm very sorry, I must ring off… Yes; to-morrow at 8. 3o from Waterloo… No; I shan't be seeing her again… No; she's made a mistake… Yes; give her my love… good-bye. ” He was reversing the earpiece to hang it up, but a high-pitched series of yelps from the instrument forced it back to his ear: “Oh! War babies! ” he exclaimed. “I've already sent the statistics off to you! No! there isn't a marked increase of the illegitimacy rate, except in patches. The rate's appallingly high in the lowlands of Scotland; but it always is appallingly… high there…” He laughed and said good-naturedly: “Oh, you're an old journalist: you won't let fifty quid go for that…” He was breaking off. But: “Or, ” he suddenly exclaimed, “here's another idea for you. The rate's about the same, probably because of this: half the fellows who go out to France are reckless because it's the last chance, as they see it. But the other half are made twice as conscientious. A decent Tommie thinks twice about leaving a girl in trouble just before he's killed… The divorce statistics are up, of course, because people will chance making new starts within the law… Thanks… thanks…” He hung up the earpiece…

Listening to that conversation had extraordinarily cleared Sylvia's mind. She said, almost sorrowfully:

“I suppose that that's why you don't seduce that girl. ” And she knew—she knew at once from the suddenly changed inflection of Tietjens' voice when he had said “a decent Tommie thinks twice before leaving his girl in trouble! ”—that Tietjens himself had thought twice.

She looked at him now almost incredulously, but with great coolness. Why shouldn't he, she asked herself, give himself a little pleasure with his girl before going to almost certain death… She felt a real, sharp pain at her heart… A poor wretch in such a devil of a hole…

She had moved to a chair close beside the fireplace and now sat looking at him, leaning interestedly forward, as if at a garden party she had been finding—par impossible! —a pastoral play not so badly produced. Tietjens was a fabulous monster…

He was a fabulous monster not because he was honourable and virtuous. She had known several very honourable and very virtuous men. If she had never known an honourable or virtuous woman except among her French or Austrian friends, that was, no doubt, because virtuous and honourable women did not amuse her or because, except just for the French and Austrians, they were not Roman Catholics… But the honourable and virtuous men she had known had usually prospered and been respected. They weren't the great fortunes, but they were well-offish: well spoken of: of the country gentleman type… Tietjens…

She arranged her thoughts. To get one point settled in her mind, she asked:

“What really happened to you in France? What is really the matter with your memory? Or your brain, is it? ” He said carefully:

“It's half of it, an irregular piece of it, dead. Or rather pale. Without a proper blood supply… So a great portion of it, in the shape of memory, has gone. ”

She said:

“But you! … without a brain! …” As this was not a question, he did not answer.

His going at once to the telephone, as soon as he was in the possession of the name “Metternich, ” had at last convinced her that he had not been, for the last four months, acting the hypochondriac or merely lying to obtain sympathy or extended sick leave. Amongst Sylvia's friends a wangle known as shell-shock was cynically laughed at and quite approved of. Quite decent and, as far as she knew, quite brave menfolk of her women would openly boast that, when they had had enough of it over there, they would wangle a little leave or get a little leave extended by simulating this purely nominal disease, and in the general carnival of lying, lechery, drink, and howling that this affair was, to pretend to a little shell-shock had seemed to her to be almost virtuous. At any rate if a man passed his time at garden parties—or, as for the last months Tietjens had done, passed his time in a tin hut amongst dust heaps, going to tea every afternoon in order to help Mrs Wannop with her newspaper articles—when men were so engaged they were, at least, not trying to kill each other.

She said now:

“Do you mind telling me what actually happened to you? ” He said:

“I don't know that I can very well… Something burst—or 'exploded' is probably the right word—near me, in the dark. I expect you'd rather not hear about it? …”

“I want to! ” Sylvia said.

He said:

“The point about it is that I don't know what happened and I don't remember what I did. There are three weeks of my life dead… What I remember is being in a C. C. S. and not being able to remember my own name. ”

“You mean that? ” Sylvia asked. “It's not just a way of talking? ”

“No, it's not just a way of talking, ” Tietjens answered. “I lay in bed in the C. C. S… Your friends were dropping bombs on it. ”

“You might not call them my friends, ” Sylvia said. Tietjens said:

“I beg your pardon. One gets into a loose way of speaking. The poor bloody Huns, then, were dropping bombs from aeroplanes on the hospital huts… I'm not suggesting they knew it was a C. C. S.; it was, no doubt, just carelessness…”

“You needn't spare the Germans for me! ” Sylvia said. “You needn't spare any man who has killed another man. ”

“I was, then, dreadfully worried, ” Tietjens went on. “I was composing a preface for a book on Arminianism…”

“You haven't written a book! “ Sylvia exclaimed eagerly, because she thought that if Tietjens took to writing a book there might be a way of his earning a living. Many people had told her that he ought to write a book.

“No, I hadn't written a book, ” Tietjens said, “and I didn't know what Arminianism was…”

“You know perfectly well what the Arminian heresy is, ” Sylvia said sharply; “you explained it all to me years ago. ”

“Yes, ” Tietjens exclaimed. “Years ago I could have, but I couldn't then. I could now, but I was a little worried about it then. It's a little awkward to write a preface about a subject of which you know nothing. But it didn't seem to me to be discreditable in an army sense… Still it worried me dreadfully not to know my own name. I lay and worried and worried, and thought how discreditable it would appear if a nurse came along and asked me and I didn't know. Of course my name was on a luggage label tied to my collar; but I'd forgotten they did that to casualties… Then a lot of people carried pieces of a nurse down the hut: the Germans' bombs had done that of course. They were still dropping about the place. ”

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