No More Parades 3 страница

“But good heavens, ” Sylvia cried out, “do you mean they carried a dead nurse past you? …”

“The poor dear wasn't dead, ” Tietjens said. “I wish she had been. Her name was Beatrice Carmichael… the first name I learned after my collapse. She's dead now of course… That seemed to wake up a fellow on the other side of the room with a lot of blood coming through the bandages on his head… He rolled out of his bed and, without a word, walked across the hut and began to strangle me…”

“But this isn't believable, ” Sylvia said. “I'm sorry, but I can't believe it… You were an officer: they couldn't have carried a wounded nurse under your nose. They must have known your sister Caroline was a nurse and was killed…”

“Carrie, ” Tietjens said, “was drowned on a hospital ship. I thank God I didn't have to connect the other girl with her… But you don't suppose that in addition to one's name, rank, unit, and date of admission they'd put that I'd lost a sister and two brothers in action and a father—of a broken heart, I dare say…”

“But you only lost one brother, ” Sylvia said. “I went into mourning for him and your sister…”

“No, two, ” Tietjens said; “but the fellow who was strangling me was what I wanted to tell you about. He let out a number of ear-piercing shrieks and lots of orderlies came and pulled him off me and sat all over him. Then he began to shout 'Faith! ' He shouted: 'Faith! … Faith! … Faith! … ' at intervals of two seconds, as far as I could tell by my pulse, until four in the morning, when he died… I don't know whether it was a religious exhortation or a woman's name, but I disliked him a good deal because he started my tortures, such as they were… There had been a girl I knew called Faith. Oh, not a love affair: the daughter of my father's head gardener, a Scotsman. The point is that every time he said Faith I asked myself 'Faith… Faith what? ' I couldn't remember the name of my father's head gardener. ”

Sylvia, who was thinking of other things, asked: “What was the name? ”

Tietjens answered:

“I don't know, I don't know to this day… The point is that when I knew that I didn't know that name, I was as ignorant, as uninstructed, as a new-born babe and much more worried about it… The Koran says—I've got as far as K in my reading of the Encyclopaedia Britannica every afternoon at Mrs Wannop's—'The strong man when smitten is smitten in his pride! '… Of course I got King's Regs. and the M. M. L. and Infantry Field Training and all the A. C. I. s to date by heart very quickly. And that's all a British officer is really encouraged to know…”

“Oh, Christopher! ” Sylvia said. “You read that encyclopaedia; it's pitiful. You used to despise it so. ”

“That's what's meant by 'smitten in his pride, '” Tietjens said. “Of course what I read or hear now I remember… But I haven't got to M, much less V. That was why I was worried about Metternich and the Congress of Vienna. I try to remember things on my own, but I haven't yet done so. You see, it's as if a certain area of my brain had been wiped white. Occasionally one name suggests another. You noticed, when I got Metternich it suggested Castlereagh and Wellington—and even other names… But that's what the Department of Statistics will get me on. When they fire me out. The real reason will be that I've served. But they'll pretend it's because I've no more general knowledge than is to be found in the encyclopaedia: or two-thirds more or less—according to the duration of the war… Or, of course, the real reason will be that I won't fake statistics to dish the French with. They asked me to, the other day, as a holiday task. And when I refused, you should have seen their faces. ”

“Have you really, ” Sylvia asked, “lost two brothers in action? ”

“Yes, ” Tietjens answered. “Curly and Longshanks. You never saw them because they were always in India. And they weren't noticeable…”

“Two! ” Sylvia said. “I only wrote to your father about one called Edward. And your sister Caroline. In the same letter…”

“Carrie wasn't noticeable either, ” Tietjens said. “She did Charity Organization Society work… But I remember: you didn't like her. She was the born old maid…”

“Christopher! ” Sylvia asked, “do you still think your mother died of a broken heart because I left you? ” Tietjens said:

“Good God, no. I never thought so and I don't think so. I know she didn't. ”

“Then! ” Sylvia exclaimed, “she died of a broken heart because I came back… It's no good protesting that you don't think so. I remember your face when you opened the telegram at Lobscheid. Miss Wannop forwarded it from Rye. I remember the postmark. She was born to do me ill. The moment you got it I could see you thinking that you must conceal from me that you thought it was because of me she died. I could see you wondering if it wouldn't be practicable to conceal from me that she was dead. You couldn't, of course, do that because, you remember, we were to have gone to Wiesbaden and show ourselves; and we couldn't do that because we should have to be in mourning. So you took me to Russia to get out of taking me to the funeral. ”

“I took you to Russia, ” Tietjens said. “I remember it all now—because I had an order from Sir Robert Ingleby to assist the British Consul-General in preparing a Blue Book statistical table of the Government of Kiev… It appeared to be the most industrially promising region in the world in those days. It isn't now, naturally. I shall never see back a penny of the money I put into it. I thought I was clever in those days… And of course, yes, the money was my mother's settlement. It comes back… yes, of course…”

“Did you, ” Sylvia asked, “get out of taking me to your mother's funeral because you thought I should defile your mother's corpse by my presence? Or because you were afraid that in the presence of your mother's body you wouldn't be able to conceal from me that you thought I killed her? … Don't deny it. And don't get out of it by saying that you can't remember those days. You're remembering now: that I killed your mother: that Miss Wannop sent the telegram—why don't you score it against her, that she sent the news? … Or, good God, why don't you score it against yourself, as the wrath of the Almighty, that your mother was dying while you and that girl were croodling over each other? … At Rye! Whilst I was at Lobscheid…”

Tietjens wiped his brow with his handkerchief.

“Well, let's drop that, ” Sylvia said. “God knows, I've no right to put a spoke in that girl's wheel or in yours. If you love each other you've a right to happiness and I daresay she'll make you happy. I can't divorce you, being a Catholic; but I won't make it difficult for you in other ways, and self-contained people like you and her will manage somehow. You'll have learned the way from Macmaster and his mistress… But, oh, Christopher Tietjens, have you ever considered how foully you've used me! ”

Tietjens looked at her attentively, as if with magpie anguish.

“If, ” Sylvia went on with her denunciation, “you had once in our lives said to me: “You whore! You bitch! You killed my mother. May you rot in hell for it…” If you'd only once said something like it… about the child! About Perowne! … you might have done something to bring us together…”

Tietjens said:

“That's, of course, true! ”

“I know, ” Sylvia said, “you can't help it… But when, in your famous county family pride—though a youngest son! —you say to yourself: And I daresay if… Oh, Christ! … you're shot in the trenches you'll say it… oh, between the saddle and the ground! that you never did a dishonourable action… And, mind you, I believe that no other man save one has ever had more right to say it than you…”

Tietjens said:

“You believe that! ”

“As I hope to stand before my Redeemer, ” Sylvia said, “I believe it: … But, in the name of the Almighty, how could any woman live beside you… and be for ever forgiven? Or no: not forgiven: ignored! … Well, be proud when you die because of your honour. But, God, be humble about… your errors in judgment. You know what it is to ride a horse for miles with too tight a curb-chain and its tongue cut almost in half… You remember the groom your father had who had the trick of turning the hunters out like that… And you horse-whipped him, and you've told me you've almost cried ever so often afterwards for thinking of that mare's mouth… Well! Think of this mare's mouth sometimes! You've ridden me like that for seven years…”

She stopped and then went on again:

“Don't you know, Christopher Tietjens, that there is only one man from whom a woman could take 'Neither do I condemn thee' and not hate him more than she hates the fiend! …”

Tietjens so looked at her that he contrived to hold her attention.

“I'd like you to let me ask you, ” he said, “how I could throw stones at you? I have never disapproved of your actions. ”

Her hands dropped dispiritedly to her sides.

“Oh, Christopher, ” she said, “don't carry on that old playacting. I shall never see you again, very likely, to speak to. You'll sleep with the Wannop girl to-night: you're going out to be killed to-morrow. Let's be straight for the next ten minutes or so. And give me your attention. The Wannop girl can spare that much if she's to have all the rest…”

She could see that he was giving her his whole mind.

“As you said just now, ” he exclaimed slowly, “as I hope to meet my Redeemer, I believe you to be a good woman. One that never did a dishonourable thing. ”

She recoiled a little in her chair.

“Then, ” she said, “you're the wicked man I've always made believe to think you, though I didn't. ”

Tietjens said:

“No! … Let me try to put it to you as I see it. ”

She exclaimed:

“No! … I've been a wicked woman. I have ruined you. I am not going to listen to you. ”

He said:

“I daresay you have ruined me. That's nothing to me. I am completely indifferent. ”

She cried out:

“Oh! Oh! … Oh! ” on a note of agony.

Tietjens said doggedly:

“I don't care. I can't help it. Those are—those should be—the conditions of life amongst decent people. When our next war comes I hope it will be fought out under those conditions. Let us, for God's sake, talk of the gallant enemy. Always. We have got to plunder the French or millions of our people must starve: they have got to resist us successfully or be wiped out… It's the same with you and me…”

She exclaimed:

“You mean to say that you don't think I was wicked when I… when I trepanned is what mother calls it? …”

He said loudly:

“No! … You had been let in for it by some brute. I have always held that a woman who has been let down by one man has the right—has the duty for the sake of her child—to let down a man. It becomes woman against man: against one man. I happened to be that one man: it was the will of God. But you were within your rights. I will never go back on that. Nothing will make me, ever! ”

She said:

“And the others! And Perowne… I know you'll say that anyone is justified in doing anything as long as they are open enough about it… But it killed your mother. Do you disapprove of my having killed your mother? Or you consider that I have corrupted the child…”

Tietjens said:

“I don't… I want to speak to you about that. ”

She exclaimed:

“You don't…! ”

He said calmly:

“You know I don't… while I was certain that I was going to be here to keep him straight and an Anglican, I fought your influence over him. I'm obliged to you for having brought up of yourself the considerations that I may be killed and that I am ruined. I am. I could not raise a hundred pounds between now and tomorrow. I am, therefore, obviously not the man to have sole charge of the heir of Groby. ”

Sylvia was saying:

“Every penny I have is at your disposal…” when the maid, Hullo Central, marched up to her master and placed a card in his hand. He said:

“Tell him to wait five minutes in the drawing-room. ” Sylvia said:

“Who is it? ”

Tietjens answered:

“A man… Let's get this settled. I've never thought you corrupted the boy. You tried to teach him to tell white lies. On perfectly straight Papist lines. I have no objection to Papists and no objection to white lies for Papists. You told him once to put a frog in Marchant's bath. I've no objection to a boy putting a frog in his nurse's bath, as such. But Marchant is an old woman, and the heir to Groby should respect old women always and old family servants in particular… It hasn't, perhaps, struck you that the boy is heir to Groby…”

Sylvia said:

“If… if your second brother is killed… But your eldest brother…”

“He, ” Tietjens said, “has got a French woman near Euston station. He's lived with her for over fifteen years, of afternoons, when there were no race meetings. She'll never let him marry and she's past the child-bearing stage. So there's no one else…”

Sylvia said:

“You mean that I may bring the child up as a Catholic. ” Tietjens said:

“A Roman Catholic… You'll teach him, please, to use that term before myself if I ever see him again…”

Sylvia said:

“Oh, I thank God that He has softened your heart. This will take the curse off this house. ”

Tietjens shook his head:

“I think not, ” he said, “off you perhaps. Off Groby very likely. It was, perhaps, time that there should be a Papist owner of Groby again. You've read Spelden on sacrilege about Groby? …”

She said:

“Yes! The first Tietjens who came over with Dutch William, the swine, was pretty bad to the Papist owners…”

“He was a tough Dutchman, ” Tietjens said, “but let us get on! There's enough time, but not too much… I've got this man to see. ”

“Who is he? ” Sylvia asked.

Tietjens was collecting his thoughts.

“My dear! ” he said. “You'll permit me to call you 'my dear'? We're old enemies enough and we're talking about the future of our child. ”

Sylvia said:

“You said 'our' child, not 'the' child…”

Tietjens said with a great deal of concern:

“You will forgive me for bringing it up. You might prefer to think he was Drake's child. He can't be. It would be outside the course of nature… I'm as poor as I am because… forgive me… I've spent a great deal of money on tracing the movements of you and Drake before our marriage. And if it's a relief to you to know…”

“It is, ” Sylvia said. “I… I've always been too beastly shy to put the matter before a specialist, or even before mother… And we women are so ignorant…”

Tietjens said:

“I know… I know you were too shy even to think about it yourself, hard. ” He went into months and days; then he continued: “But it would have made no difference: a child born in wedlock is by law the father's, and if a man who's a gentleman suffers the begetting of his child he must, in decency, take the consequences: the woman and the child must come before the man, be he who he may. And worse-begotten children than ours have inherited statelier names. And I loved the little beggar with all my heart and with all my soul from the first minute I saw him. That may be the secret clue, or it may be sheer sentimentality… So I fought your influence because it was Papist, while I was a whole man. But I'm not a whole man any more, and the evil eye that is on me might transfer itself to him. ”

He stopped and said:

“For I must to the greenwood go. Alone a broken man… But have him well protected against the evil eye…”

“Oh, Christopher, ” she said, “it's true I've not been a bad woman to the child. And I never will be. And I will keep Marchant with him till she dies. You'll tell her not to interfere with his religious instruction, and she won't…”

Tietjens said with a friendly weariness:

“That's right… and you'll have Father… Father… the priest that was with us for a fortnight before he was born to give him his teachings. He was the best man I ever met and one of the most intelligent. It's been a great comfort to me to think of the boy as in his hands…”

Sylvia stood up, her eyes blazing out of a pallid face of stone:

“Father Consett, ” she said, “was hung on the day they shot Casement. They dare not put it into the papers because he was a priest and all the witnesses Ulster witnesses… And yet I may not say this is an accursed war. ”

Tietjens shook his head with the slow heaviness of an aged man.

“You may for me…” he said. “You might ring the bell, will you? Don't go away…”

He sat with the blue gloom of that enclosed space all over him, lumped heavily in his chair.

“Spelden on sacrilege, ” he said, “may be right after all. You'd say so from the Tietjenses. There's not been a Tietjens since the first Lord Justice cheated the Papist Loundeses out of Groby, but died of a broken neck or of a broken heart: for all the fifteen thousand acres of good farming land and iron land, and for all the heather on the top of it… What's the quotation: 'Be ye something as something and something and ye shall not escape… ' What is it? ”

“Calumny! ” Sylvia said. She spoke with intense bitterness…”Chaste as ice and cold as… as you are…” Tietjens said:

“Yes! Yes… And mind you none of the Tietjens were ever soft. Not one! They had reason for their broken hearts… Take my poor father…”

Sylvia said:

“Don't! ”

“Both my brothers were killed in Indian regiments on the same day and not a mile apart. And my sister in the same week: out at sea, not so far from them… Unnoticeable people. But one can be fond of unnoticeable people…”

Hullo Central was at the door. Tietjens told her to ask Lord Port Scatho to step down…

“You must, of course, know these details, ” Tietjens said, “as the mother to my father's heir… My father got the three notifications on the same day. It was enough to break his heart. He only lived a month. I saw him…”

Sylvia screamed piercingly:

“Stop! stop! stop! ” She clutched at the mantelpiece to hold herself up. “Your father died of a broken heart, ” she said, “because your brother's best friend, Ruggles, told him you were a squit who lived on women's money and had got the daughter of his oldest friend with child…”

Tietjens said:

“Oh! Ah! Yes! … I suspected that. I know it, really. I suppose the poor dear knows better now. Or perhaps he doesn't… It doesn't matter. ”

It has been remarked that the peculiarly English habit of self-suppression in matters of the emotion puts the Englishman at a great disadvantage in moments of unusual stresses. In the smaller matters of the general run of life he will be impeccable and not to be moved; but in sudden confrontations of anything but physical dangers he is apt—he is, indeed, almost certain—to go to pieces very badly. This, at least, was the view of Christopher Tietjens, and he very much dreaded his interview with Lord Port Scatho—because he feared that he must be near breaking point.

In electing to be peculiarly English in habits and in as much of his temperament as he could control—for, though no man can choose the land of his birth or his ancestry, he can, if he have industry and determination, so watch over himself as materially to modify his automatic habits—Tietjens had quite advisedly and of set purpose adopted a habit of behaviour that he considered to be the best in the world for the normal life. If every day and all day long you chatter at high pitch and with the logic and lucidity of the Frenchman; if you shout in self-assertion, with your hat on your stomach, bowing from a stiff spine and by implication threaten all day long to shoot your interlocutor, like the Prussian; if you are as lachrymally emotional as the Italian, or as drily and epigrammatically imbecile over inessentials as the American, you will have a noisy, troublesome and thoughtless society without any of the surface calm that should distinguish the atmosphere of men when they are together. You will never have deep arm-chairs in which to sit for hours in clubs, thinking of nothing at all—or of the off-theory in bowling. On the other hand, in the face of death—except at sea, by fire, railway accident, or accidental drowning in rivers; in the face of madness, passion, dishonour or—and particularly—prolonged mental strain, you will have all the disadvantages of the beginner at any game and may come off very badly indeed. Fortunately death, love, public dishonour and the like are rare occurrences in the life of the average man, so that the great advantage would seem to have lain with English society; at any rate before the later months of the year 1914. Death for man came but once: the danger of death so seldom as to be practically negligible: love of a distracting kind was a disease merely of the weak: public dishonour for persons of position, so great was the hushing-up power of the ruling class and the power of absorption of the remoter Colonies, was practically unknown.

Tietjens found himself now faced by all these things, coming upon him cumulatively and rather suddenly, and he had before him an interview that might cover them all and with a man whom he much respected and very much desired not to hurt. He had to face these, moreover, with a brain two-thirds of which felt numb. It was exactly like that.

It was not so much that he couldn't use what brain he had as trenchantly as ever: it was that there were whole regions of fact upon which he could no longer call in support of his argument. His knowledge of history was still practically negligible: he knew nothing whatever of the humaner letters and, what was far worse, nothing at all of the higher and more sensuous phrases of mathematics. And the coming back of these things was much slower than he had confessed to Sylvia. It was with these disadvantages that he had to face Lord Port Scatho.

Lord Port Scatho was the first man of whom Sylvia Tietjens had thought when she had been considering of men who were absolutely honourable, entirely benevolent… and rather lacking in constructive intelligence. He had inherited the management of one of the most respected of the great London banks, so that his commercial and social influences were very extended: he was extremely interested in promoting Low Church interests, the reform of the divorce laws and sports for the people, and he had a great affection for Sylvia Tietjens. He was forty-five, beginning to put on weight, but by no means obese; he had a large, quite round head; very high-coloured cheeks that shone as if with frequent ablutions; an uncropped, dark moustache, dark, very cropped, smooth hair; brown eyes; a very new grey tweed suit, a very new grey Trilby hat, a black tie in a gold ring, and very new patent leather boots that had white calf tops. He had a wife almost the spit of himself in face, figure, probity, kindliness, and interests, except that for his interest in sports for the people she substituted that for maternity hospitals. His heir was his nephew, Mr Brownlie, known as Brownie, who would also be physically the exact spit of his uncle, except that, not having put on flesh, he appeared to be taller and that his moustache and hair were both a little longer and more fair. This gentleman entertained for Sylvia Tietjens a gloomy and deep passion that he considered to be perfectly honourable because he desired to marry her after she had divorced her husband. Tietjens he desired to ruin because he considered Tietjens to be an undesirable person of no great means. Of this passion Lord Port Scatho was ignorant.

He now came into the Tietjens' dining-room, behind the servant, holding an open letter: he walked rather stiffly because he was very much worried. He observed that Sylvia had been crying and was still wiping her eyes. He looked round the room to see if he could see in it anything to account for Sylvia's crying. Tietjens was still sitting at the head of the lunch-table: Sylvia was rising from a chair beside the fireplace.

Lord Port Scatho said:

“I want to see you, Tietjens, for a minute on business. ” Tietjens said:

“I can give you ten minutes…”

Lord Port Scatho said:

“Mrs Tietjens perhaps…”

He waved the open letter towards Mrs Tietjens. Tietjens said:

“No! Mrs Tietjens will remain. ” He desired to say something more friendly. He said: “Sit down. ”

Lord Port Scatho said:

“I shan't be stopping a minute. But really…” And he moved the letter, but not with so wide a gesture, towards Sylvia.

“I have no secrets from Mrs Tietjens, ” Tietjens said. “Absolutely none…”

Lord Port Scatho said:

“No, of course not… But…”

Tietjens said:

“Similarly, Mrs Tietjens has no secrets from me. Again absolutely none. ”

Sylvia said:

“I don't, of course, tell Tietjens about my maid's love affairs or what the fish costs every day. ”

Tietjens said:

“You'd better sit down. ” He added on an impulse of kindness: “As a matter of fact, I was just clearing up things for Sylvia to take over… this command. ” It was part of the disagreeableness of his mental disadvantages that upon occasion he could not think of other than military phrases. He felt intense annoyance. Lord Port Scatho affected him with some of the slight nausea that in those days you felt at contact with the civilian who knew none of your thoughts, phrases or preoccupations. He added, nevertheless equably:

“One has to clear up. I'm going out. ”

Lord Port Scatho said hastily:

“Yes; yes, I won't keep you. One has so many engagements in spite of the war…” His eyes wandered in bewilderment. Tietjens could see them at last fixing themselves on the oil stains that Sylvia's salad dressing had left on his collar and green tabs. He said to himself that he must remember to change his tunic before he went to the War Office. He must not forget. Lord Port Scatho's bewilderment at these oil stains was such that he had lost himself in the desire to account for them… You could see the slow thoughts moving inside his square, polished brown forehead. Tietjens wanted very much to help him. He wanted to say: “It's about Sylvia's letter that you've got in your hand, isn't it? ” But Lord Port Scatho had entered the room with the stiffness, with the odd, high-collared sort of gait that on formal and unpleasant occasions Englishmen use when they approach each other; braced up, a little like strange dogs meeting in the street. In view of that, Tietjens couldn't say “Sylvia. ”… But it would add to the formality and unpleasantness if he said again “Mrs Tietjens! ” That wouldn't help Port Scatho…

Sylvia said suddenly:

“You don't understand, apparently. My husband is going out to the front line. To-morrow morning. It's for the second time. ”

Lord Port Scatho sat down suddenly on a chair beside the table. With his fresh face and brown eyes suddenly anguished he exclaimed:

“But, my dear fellow! You! Good God! ” and then to Sylvia: “I beg your pardon! ” To clear his mind he said again to Tietjens: “You! Going out to-morrow! ” And, when the idea was really there, his face suddenly cleared. He looked with a swift, averted glance at Sylvia's face and then for a fixed moment at Tietjens' oil-stained tunic. Tietjens could see him explaining to himself with immense enlightenment that that explained both Sylvia's tears and the oil on the tunic. For Port Scatho might well imagine that officers went to the conflict in their oldest clothes…

But, if his puzzled brain cleared, his distressed mind became suddenly distressed doubly. He had to add to the distress he had felt on entering the room and finding himself in the midst of what he took to be a highly emotional family parting. And Tietjens knew that during the whole war Port Scatho had never witnessed a family parting at all. Those that were not inevitable he would avoid like the plague, and his own nephew and all his wife's nephews were in the bank. That was quite proper, for if the ennobled family of Brownlie were not of the Ruling Class—who had to go! —they were of the Administrative Class, who were privileged to stay. So he had seen no partings.

Of his embarrassed hatred of them he gave immediate evidence. For he first began several sentences of praise of Tietjens' heroism which he was unable to finish and then, getting quickly out of his chair, exclaimed:

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