No More Parades 4 страница

“In the circumstances then… the little matter I came about… I couldn't of course think…”

Tietjens said:

“No; don't go. The matter you came about—I know all about it of course—had better be settled. ”

Port Scatho sat down again: his jaw fell slowly: under his bronzed complexion his skin became a shade paler. He said at last:

“You know what I came about? But then…”

His ingenuous and kindly mind could be seen to be working with reluctance: his athletic figure drooped. He pushed the letter that he still held along the tablecloth towards Tietjens. He said, in the voice of one awaiting a reprieve:

“But you can't be… aware… Not of this letter…”

Tietjens left the letter on the cloth, from there he could read the large handwriting on the blue-grey paper:

“Mrs Christopher Tietjens presents her compliments to Lord Port Scatho and the Honourable Court of Benchers of the Inn…” He wondered where Sylvia had got hold of that phraseology: he imagined it to be fantastically wrong. He said:

“I have already told you that I know about this letter, as I have already told you that I know—and I will add that I approve! —of all Mrs Tietjens' actions…” With his hard blue eyes he looked browbeatingly into Port Scatho's soft brown orbs, knowing that he was sending the message: “Think what you please and be damned to you! ”

The gentle brown things remained on his face; then they filled with an expression of deep pain. Port Scatho cried:

“But good God! Then…”

He looked at Tietjens again. His mind, which took refuge from life in the affairs of the Low Church, of Divorce Law Reform and of Sports for the People, became a sea of pain at the contemplation of strong situations. His eyes said:

“For heaven's sake do not tell me that Mrs Duchemin, the mistress of your dearest friend, is the mistress of yourself, and that you take this means of wreaking a vulgar spite on them. ”

Tietjens, leaning heavily forward, made his eyes as enigmatic as he could; he said very slowly and very clearly:

“Mrs Tietjens is, of course, not aware of all the circumstances. ”

Port Scatho threw himself back in his chair.

“I don't understand! ” he said. “I do not understand. How am I to act? You do not wish me to act on this letter? You can't! ”

Tietjens, who found himself, said:

“You had better talk to Mrs Tietjens about that. I will say something myself later. In the meantime let me say that Mrs Tietjens would seem to me to be quite within her rights. A lady, heavily veiled, comes here every Friday and remains until four on the Saturday morning… If you are prepared to palliate the proceeding you had better do so to Mrs Tietjens…”

Port Scatho turned agitatedly on Sylvia.

“I can't, of course, palliate, ” he said. “God forbid… But, my dear Sylvia… my dear Mrs Tietjens. In the case of two people so much esteemed! … We have, of course, argued the matter of principle. It is a part of a subject I have very much at heart: the granting of divorce… civil divorce, at least… in cases in which one of the parties to the marriage is in a lunatic asylum. I have sent you the pamphlets of E. S. P. Haynes that we publish. I know that as a Roman Catholic you hold strong views… I do not, I assure you, stand for latitude…” He became then simply eloquent: he really had the matter at heart, one of his sisters having been for many years married to a lunatic. He expatiated on the agonies of this situation all the more eloquently in that it was the only form of human distress which he had personally witnessed.

Sylvia took a long look at Tietjens: he imagined for counsel. He looked at her steadily for a moment, then at Port Scatho, who was earnestly turned to her, then back at her. He was trying to say:

“Listen to Port Scatho for a minute. I need time to think of my course of action! ”

He needed, for the first time in his life, time to think of his course of action.

He had been thinking with his under mind ever since Sylvia had told him that she had written her letter to the benchers denouncing Macmaster and his woman; ever since Sylvia had reminded him that Mrs Duchemin in the Edinburgh to London express of the day before the war had been in his arms he had seen, with extraordinary clearness, a great many north country scenes though he could not affix names to all the places. The forgetfulness of the names was abnormal: he ought to know the names of places from Berwick down to the vale of York—but that he should have forgotten the incidents was normal enough. They had been of little importance: he preferred not to remember the phases of his friend's love affair; moreover, the events that happened immediately afterwards had been of a nature to make one forget quite normally what had just preceded them. That Mrs Duchemin should be sobbing on his shoulder in a locked corridor carriage hadn't struck him as in the least important: she was the mistress of his dearest friend: she had had a very trying time for a week or so, ending in a violent, nervous quarrel with her agitated lover. She was, of course, crying off the effects of the quarrel which had been all the more shaking in that Mrs Duchemin, like himself, had always been almost too self-contained. As a matter of fact, he did not himself like Mrs Duchemin, and he was pretty certain that she herself more than a little disliked him; so that nothing but their common feeling for Macmaster had brought them together. General Campion, however, was not to know that… He had looked into the carriage in the way one does in a corridor just after the train had left… He couldn't remember the name… Doncaster… No! … Darlington; it wasn't that. At Darlington there was a model of the Rocket… or perhaps it isn't the Rocket. An immense clumsy leviathan of a locomotive by… by… The great gloomy stations of the north-going trains… Durham… No! Alnwick… No! … Wooler… By God! Woolen! The junction for Bamborough…

It had been in one of the castles at Bamborough that he and Sylvia had been staying with the Sandbachs. Then… a name had come into his mind spontaneously! … Two names! … It was, perhaps, the turn of the tide! For the first time… To be marked with a red stone… after this: some names, sometimes, on the tip of the tongue, might come over! He had, however, to get on…

The Sandbachs, then, and he and Sylvia… others too… had been in Bamborough since mid-July: Eton and Harrow at Lord's, waiting for the real house parties that would come with the 12th… He repeated these names and dates to himself for the personal satisfaction of knowing that, amongst the repairs effected in his mind, these two remained: Eton and Harrow, the end of the London season: 12th of August, grouse shooting begins… It was pitiful…

When General Campion had come up to rejoin his sister he, Tietjens, had stopped only two days. The coolness between the two of them remained; it was the first time they had met, except in Court, after the accident… For Mrs Wannop, with grim determination, had sued the General for the loss of her horse. It had lived all right—but it was only fit to draw a lawn-mower for cricket pitches… Mrs Wannop, then, had gone bald-headed for the General, partly because she wanted the money, partly because she wanted a public reason for breaking with the Sandbachs. The General had been equally obstinate and had undoubtedly perjured himself in Court: not the best, not the most honourable, the most benevolent man in the world would not turn oppressor of the widow and orphan when his efficiency as a chauffeur was impugned or the fact brought to light that at a very dangerous turning he hadn't sounded his horn. Tietjens had sworn that he hadn't: the General that he had. There could not be any question of doubt, for the horn was a beastly thing that made a prolonged noise like that of a terrified peacock… So Tietjens had not, till the end of that July, met the General again. It had been quite a proper thing for gentlemen to quarrel over and was quite convenient, though it had cost the General fifty pounds for the horse and, of course, a good bit over for costs. Lady Claudine had refused to interfere in the matter: she was privately of opinion that the General hadn't sounded his horn, but the General was both a passionately devoted and explosive brother. She had remained closely intimate with Sylvia, mildly cordial with Tietjens and had continued to ask the Wannops to such of her garden parties as the General did not attend. She was also very friendly with Mrs Duchemin.

Tietjens and the General had met with the restrained cordiality of English gentlemen who had some years before accused each other of perjury in a motor accident. On the second morning a violent quarrel had broken out between them on the subject of whether the General had or hadn't sounded his horn. The General had ended up by shouting… really shouting:

“By God! If I ever get you under my command…”

Tietjens remembered that he had quoted and given the number of a succinct paragraph in King's Regs. dealing with the fate of general or higher field officers who gave their subordinates bad confidential reports because of private quarrels. The General had exploded into noise that ended in laughter.

“What a rag-bag of a mind you have, Chrissie! ” he said. “What's King's Regs. to you? And how do you know it's paragraph 66 or whatever you say it is? I don't. ” He added more seriously: “What a fellow you are for getting into obscure rows! What in the world do you do it for? ”

That afternoon Tietjens had gone to stop, a long way up in the moors, with his son, the nurse, his sister Effie and her children. They were the last days of happiness he was to know and he hadn't known so many. He was then content. He played with his boy, who, thank God, was beginning to grow healthy at last. He walked about the moors with his sister Effie, a large, plain, parson's wife, who had no conversation at all, though at times they talked of their mother. The moors were like enough to those above Groby to make them happy. They lived in a bare, grim farmhouse, drank great quantities of buttermilk and ate great quantities of Wensleydale. It was the hard, frugal life of his desire, and his mind was at rest.

His mind was at rest because there was going to be a war. From the first moment of his reading the paragraph about the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand he had known that, calmly and with assurance. Had he imagined that his country would come in he would not have known a mind at rest. He loved this country for the run of its hills, the shape of its elm trees and the way the heather, running uphill to the skyline, meets the blue of heavens. War for this country could only mean humiliation, spreading under the sunlight, an almost invisible pall, over the elms, the hills, the heather, like the vapour that spread from… oh, Middlesbrough! We were fitted neither for defeat nor for victory: we could be true to neither friend nor foe. Not even to ourselves!

But of war for us he had no fear. He saw our Ministry sitting tight till the opportune moment and then grabbing a French channel port or a few German colonies as the price of neutrality. And he was thankful to be out of it; for his back-doorway out—his second! —was the French Foreign Legion. First Sylvia: then that! Two tremendous disciplines: for the soul and for the body.

The French he admired: for their tremendous efficiency, for their frugality of life, for the logic of their minds, for their admirable achievements in the arts, for their neglect of the industrial system, for their devotion, above all, to the eighteenth century. It would be restful to serve, if only as a slave, people who saw clearly, coldly, straight, not obliquely and with hypocrisy only, such things as should deviously conduce to the standard of comfort of hogs and to lecheries winked at… He would rather sit for hours on a bench in a barrack-room polishing a badge in preparation for the cruellest of route marches of immense lengths under the Algerian sun.

For, as to the Foreign Legion, he had had no illusion. You were treated not as a hero but as a whipped dog; he was aware of all the asticoteries, the cruelties, the weight of the rifle, the cells. You would have six months of training in the desert and then be hurtled into the line to be massacred without remorse… as foreign dirt. But the prospect seemed to him one of deep peace: he had never asked for soft living and now was done with it… The boy was healthy; Sylvia, with the economies they had made, very rich… and even at that date he was sure that if the friction of himself, Tietjens, were removed, she would make a good mother…

Obviously he might survive; but after that tremendous physical drilling what survived would not be himself, but a man with cleaned, sand-dried bones: a clear mind. His private ambition had always been for saintliness: he must be able to touch pitch and not be defiled. That he knew marked him off as belonging to the sentimental branch of humanity. He couldn't help it: Stoic or Epicurean: Caliph in the harem or Dervish desiccating in the sand: one or the other you must be. And his desire was to be a saint of the Anglican variety… as his mother had been, without convent, ritual, vows, or miracles to be performed by your relics! That sainthood, truly, the Foreign Legion might give you… The desire of every English gentleman from Colonel Hutchinson upwards… A mysticism…

Remembering the clear sunlight of those naiveté s—though in his blue gloom he had abated no jot of the ambition—Tietjens sighed deeply as he came back for a moment to regard his dining-room. Really, it was to see how much time he had left in which to think out what to say to Port Scatho… Port Scatho had moved his chair over to beside Sylvia and, almost touching her, was leaning over and recounting the griefs of his sister who was married to a lunatic. Tietjens gave himself again for a moment to the luxury of self-pity. He considered that he was dull-minded, heavy, ruined, and so calumniated that at times he believed in his own infamy, for it is impossible to stand up for ever against the obloquy of your kind and remain unhurt in the mind. If you hunch your shoulders too long against a storm your shoulders will grow bowed…

His mind stopped for a moment and his eyes gazed dully at Sylvia's letter which lay open on the tablecloth. His thoughts came together, converging on the loosely written words:

“For the last nine months a woman…”

He wondered swiftly what he had already said to Port Scatho: only that he had known of his wife's letter; not when! And that he approved! Well, on principle! He sat up. To think that one could be brought down to thinking so slowly!

He ran swiftly over what had happened in the train from Scotland and before…

Macmaster had turned up one morning beside their breakfast table in the farm house, much agitated, looking altogether too small in a cloth cap and a new grey tweed suit. He had wanted £ 50 to pay his bill with: at some place up the line above… above… Berwick suddenly flashed into Tietjens' mind…

That was the geographic position. Sylvia was at Bamborough on the coast (junction Wooler); he, himself, to the north-west, on the moors. Macmaster to the northeast of him, just over the border: in some circumspect beauty spot where you did not meet people. Both Macmaster and Mrs Duchemin would know that country and gurgle over its beastly literary associations… The Shirra! Maida! Pet Marjorie… Faugh I Macmaster would, no doubt, turn an honest penny by writing articles about it and Mrs Duchemin would hold his hand…

She had become Macmaster's mistress, as far as Tietjens knew, after a dreadful scene in the rectory, Duchemin having mauled his wife like a savage dog, and Macmaster in the house… It was natural: a Sadix reaction as it were. But Tietjens rather wished they hadn't. Now it appeared they had been spending a week together… or more. Duchemin by that time was in an asylum…

From what Tietjens had made out they had got out of bed early one morning to take a boat and see the sunrise on some lake and had passed an agreeable day together quoting, “Since when we stand side by side only hands may meet” and other poems of Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti, no doubt to justify their sin. On coming home they had run their boat's nose into the tea-table of the Port Scathos with Mr Brownlie, the nephew, just getting out of a motor to join them. The Port Scatho group were spending the night at the Macmasters' hotel which backed on to the lake. It was the ordinary damn sort of thing that must happen in these islands that are only a few yards across.

The Macmasters appear to have lost their heads frightfully, although Lady Port Scatho had been as motherly as possible to Mrs Duchemin; so motherly, indeed, that if they had not been unable to observe anything, they might have recognized the Port Scathos as backers rather than spies upon themselves. It was, no doubt, however, Brown-lie who had upset them: he wasn't very civil to Macmaster, whom he knew as a friend of Tietjens. He had dashed up from London in his motor to consult his uncle, who was dashing down from the west of Scotland, about the policy of the bank in that moment of crisis…

Macmaster, anyhow, did not spend the night in the hotel, but went to Jedburgh or Melrose or some such place, turning up again almost before it was light to have a frightful interview about five in the morning with Mrs Duchemin, who, towards three, had come to a disastrous conclusion as to her condition. They had lost their nerves for the first time in their association, and they had lost them very badly indeed, the things that Mrs Duchemin said to Macmaster seeming almost to have passed belief…

Thus, when Macmaster turned up at Tietjens' breakfast, he was almost out of his mind. He wanted Tietjens to go over in the motor he had brought, pay the bill at the hotel, and travel down to town with Mrs Duchemin, who was certainly in no condition to travel alone. Tietjens was also to make up the quarrel with Mrs Duchemin and to lend Macmaster £ 50 in cash, as it was then impossible to change cheques anywhere. Tietjens got the money from his old nurse, who, because she distrusted banks, carried great sums in £ 5 notes in a pocket under her under-petticoat.

Macmaster, pocketing the money, had said:

“That makes exactly two thousand guineas that I owe you. I'm making arrangements to repay you next week…”

Tietjens remembered that he had rather stiffened and had said: “For God's sake don't. I beg you not to. Have Duchemin properly put under trustee in lunacy, and leave his capital alone. I really beg you. You don't know what you'll be letting yourselves in for. You don't owe me anything and you can always draw on me. ”

Tietjens never knew what Mrs Duchemin had done about her husband's estate over which she had at that date had a power of attorney; but he had imagined that, from that time on, Macmaster had felt a certain coldness for himself and that Mrs Duchemin had hated him. During several years Macmaster had been borrowing hundreds at a time from Tietjens. The affair with Mrs Duchemin had cost her lover a good deal; he had week-ended almost continuously in Rye at the expensive hostel. Moreover, the famous Friday parties for geniuses had been going on for several years now, and these had meant new furnishings, bindings, carpets, and loans to geniuses—at any rate before Macmaster had had the ear of the Royal Bounty. So the sum had grown to £ 2, 000, and now to guineas. And, from that date, the Macmasters had not offered any repayment.

Macmaster had said that he dare not travel with Mrs Duchemin because all London would be going south by that train. All London had. It pushed in at every conceivable and inconceivable station all down the line—it was the great rout of the 3-8-14. Tietjens had got on board at Berwick, where they were adding extra coaches, and by giving a £ 5 note to the guard, who hadn't been able to promise isolation for any distance, had got a locked carriage. It hadn't remained locked for long enough to let Mrs Duchemin have her cry out—but it had apparently served to make some mischief. The Sandbach party had got on, no doubt at Wooler; the Port Scatho party somewhere else. Their petrol had run out somewhere and sales were stopped, even to bankers. Macmaster, who after all had travelled by the same train, hidden beneath two bluejackets, had picked up Mrs Duchemin at King's Cross and that had seemed the end of it.

Tietjens, back in his dining-room, felt relief and also anger. He said:

“Port Scatho. Time's getting short. I'd like to deal with this letter if you don't mind. ”

Port Scatho came as if up out of a dream. He had found the process of attempting to convert Mrs Tietjens to divorce law reform very pleasant—as he always did. He said:

“Yes! … Oh, yes! ”

Tietjens said slowly:

“If you can listen… Macmaster has been married to Mrs Duchemin exactly nine months… Have you got that? Mrs Tietjens did not know this till this afternoon. The period Mrs Tietjens complains of in her letter is nine months. She did perfectly right to write the letter. As such I approve of it. If she had known that the Macmasters were married she would not have written it. I didn't know she was going to write it. If I had known she was going to write it, I should have requested her not to. If I had requested her not to she would, no doubt, have done so. I did know of the letter at the moment of your coming in. I had heard of it at lunch only ten minutes before. I should, no doubt, have heard of it before, but this is the first time I have lunched at home in four months. I have to-day had a day's leave as being warned for foreign service. I have been doing duty at Ealing. To-day is the first opportunity I have had for serious business conversation with Mrs Tietjens… Have you got all that? …”

Port Scatho was running towards Tietjens, his hand extended, and over his whole shining personage the air of an enraptured bridegroom. Tietjens moved his right hand a little to the right, thus eluding the pink, well-fleshed hand of Port Scatho. He went on frigidly:

“You had better, in addition, know as follows: The late Mr Duchemin was a scatological—afterwards a homicidal—lunatic. He had recurrent fits, usually on a Saturday morning. That was because he fasted—not abstained merely—on Fridays. On Fridays he also drank. He had acquired the craving for drink when fasting, from finishing the sacramental wine after communion services. That is a not unknown occurrence. He behaved latterly with great physical violence to Mrs Duchemin. Mrs Duchemin, on the other hand, treated him with the utmost consideration and concern: she might have had him certified much earlier, but, considering the pain that confinement must cause him during his lucid intervals, she refrained. I have been an eye-witness of the most excruciating heroisms on her part. As for the behaviour of Macmaster and Mrs Duchemin, I am ready to certify—and I believe society accepts—that it has been most… oh, circumspect and right! … There has been no secret of their attachment to each other. I believe that their determination to behave with decency during their period of waiting has not been questioned…”

Lord Port Scatho said:

“No! no! Never… Most… as you say… circumspect and, yes… right! ”

“Mrs Duchemin, ” Tietjens continued, “has presided at Macmaster's literary Fridays for a long time; of course since long before they were married. But, as you know, Macmaster's Fridays have been perfectly open: you might almost call them celebrated…”

Lord Port Scatho said:

“Yes! yes! indeed… I sh'd be only too glad to have a ticket for Lady Port Scatho…”

“She's only got to walk in, ” Tietjens said. “I'll warn them: they'll be pleased… If, perhaps, you don't look in to-night! They have a special party… But Mrs Macmaster was always attended by a young lady who saw her off by the last train to Rye. Or I very frequently saw her off myself, Macmaster being occupied by the weekly article that he wrote for one of the papers on Friday nights… They were married on the day after Mr Duchemin's funeral…”

“You can't blame 'em! ” Lord Port Scatho proclaimed.

“I don't propose to, ” Tietjens said. “The really frightful tortures Mrs Duchemin had suffered justified—and indeed necessitated—her finding protection and sympathy at the earliest possible moment. They have deferred this announcement of their union partly out of respect for the usual period of mourning, partly because Mrs Duchemin feels very strongly that, with all the suffering that is now abroad, wedding feasts and signs of rejoicing on the part of non-participants are eminently to be deprecated. Still, the little party of to-night is by the way of being an announcement that they are married…” He paused to reflect for a moment.

“I perfectly understand! ” Lord Port Scatho exclaimed. “I perfectly approve. Believe me, I and Lady Port Scatho will do everything… Everything! Most admirable people… Tietjens, my dear fellow, your behaviour… most handsome…”

Tietjens said:

“Wait a minute… There was an occasion in August, '14. In a place on the border. I can't remember the name…”

Lord Port Scatho burst out:

“My dear fellow… I beg you won't… I beseech you not to…”

Tietjens went on:

“Just before then Mr Duchemin had made an attack on his wife of an unparalleled violence. It was that that caused his final incarceration. She was not only temporarily disfigured, but she suffered serious internal injuries and, of course, great mental disturbance. It was absolutely necessary that she should have change of scene… But I think you will bear me out that, in that case too, their behaviour was… again, circumspect and right…”

Port Scatho said:

“I know; I know… Lady Port Scatho and I agreed—even without knowing what you have just told me—that the poor things almost exaggerated it… He slept, of course, at Jedburgh? ”

Tietjens said:

“Yes! They almost exaggerated it… I had to be called in to take Mrs Duchemin home… It caused, apparently, misunderstandings…”

Port Scatho—full of enthusiasm at the thought that at least two unhappy victims of the hateful divorce laws had, with decency and circumspectness, found the haven of their desires—burst out:

“By God, Tietjens, if I ever hear a man say a word against you… Your splendid championship of your friend… Your… your unswerving devotion…”

Tietjens said:

“Wait a minute, Port Scatho, will you? ” He was unbuttoning the flap of his breast pocket.

“A man who can act so splendidly in one instance, ” Port Scatho said…”And your going to France… If any one… if any one… dares…”

At the sight of a vellum-coloured, green-edged book in Tietjens' hand Sylvia suddenly stood up; as Tietjens took from an inner flap a cheque that had lost its freshness she made three great strides over the carpet to him.

“Oh, Chrissie! …” she cried out. “He hasn't… That beast hasn't…”

Tietjens answered:

“He has…” He handed the soiled cheque to the banker. Port Scatho looked at it with slow bewilderment.

“'Account overdrawn, '” he read. “Brownie's… my nephew's handwriting… To the club… It's…”

“You aren't going to take it lying down? ” Sylvia said. “Oh, thank goodness, you aren't going to take it lying down! ”

“No! I'm not going to take it lying down, ” Tietjens said. “Why should I? ” A look of hard suspicion came over the banker's face.

“You appear, ” he said, “to have been overdrawing your account. People should not overdraw their accounts. For what sum are you overdrawn? ”

Tietjens handed his pass-book to Port Scatho.

“I don't understand on what principle you work, ” Sylvia said to Tietjens. “There are things you take lying down; this you don't. ”

Tietjens said:

“It doesn't matter, really. Except for the child. ”

Sylvia said:

“I guaranteed an overdraft for you up to a thousand pounds last Thursday. You can't be overdrawn over a thousand pounds. ”

“I'm not overdrawn at all, ” Tietjens said. “I was for about fifteen pounds yesterday. I didn't know it. ”

Port Scatho was turning over the pages of the passbook, his face completely blank.

“I simply don't understand, ” he said. “You appear to be in credit… You appear always to have been in credit except for a small sum now and then. For a day or two. ”

“I was overdrawn, ” Tietjens said, “for fifteen pounds yesterday. I should say for three or four hours: the course of a post, from my army agent to your head office. During these two or three hours your bank selected two out of six of my cheques to dishonour—both being under two pounds. The other one was sent back to my mess at Ealing, who won't, of course, give it back to me. That also is marked 'account overdrawn, ' and in the same handwriting. ”

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