No More Parades 9 страница

So she had made little or no comment; sometimes she had even faintly agreed as to the demoralisation of Macmaster, and that had sufficed. For Mrs Duchemin had been certain of her rightness and cared nothing at all for the opinion of Valentine Wannop, or else took it for granted.

And when Tietjens had gone to France for a little time Mrs Duchemin seemed to forget the matter, contenting herself with saying that he might very likely not come back. He was the sort of clumsy man who generally got killed. In that case, since no I. O. U. s or paper had passed, Mrs Tietjens would have no claim. So that would be all right.

But two days after the return of Christopher—and that was how Valentine knew he had come back! —Mrs Duchemin with a lowering brow exclaimed:

“That oaf, Tietjens, is in England, perfectly safe and sound. And now the whole miserable business of Vincent's indebtedness… Oh! ”

She had stopped so suddenly and so markedly that even the stoppage of Valentine's own heart couldn't conceal the oddness from her. Indeed it was as if there were an interval before she completely realised what the news was and as if, during that interval, she said to herself:

“It's very queer. It's exactly as if Edith Ethel has stopped abusing him on my account… As if she knew! ” But how could Edith Ethel know that she loved the man who had returned? It was impossible! She hardly knew herself. Then the great wave of relief rolled over her: he was in England. One day she would see him, there: in the great room. For these colloquies with Edith Ethel always took place in the great room where she had last seen Tietjens. It looked suddenly beautiful, and she was resigned to sitting there, waiting for the distinguished.

It was indeed a beautiful room: it had become so during the years. It was long and high—matching the Tietjens'. A great cut-glass chandelier from the rectory hung dimly coruscating in the centre, reflected and re-reflected in convex gilt mirrors, topped by eagles. A great number of books had gone to make place on the white panelled walls for the mirrors, and for the fair orange and brown pictures by Turner, also from the rectory. From the rectory had come the immense scarlet and lapis lazuli carpet, the great brass fire-basket and appendages, the great curtains that, in the three long windows, on their peacock-blue Chinese silk showed parti-coloured cranes ascending in long flights—and all the polished Chippendale arm-chairs. Amongst all these, gracious, trailing, stopping with a tender gesture to rearrange very slightly the crimson roses in the famous silver bowls, still in dark blue silks, with an amber necklace and her elaborate black hair, waved exactly like that of Julia Domna in the Musé e Lapidaire at Arles, moved Mrs Macmaster—also from the rectory. Macmaster had achieved his desire: even to the shortbread cakes and the peculiarly scented tea that came every Friday morning from Princes Street. And, if Mrs Macmaster hadn't the pawky, relishing humour of the great Scots ladies of past days, she had in exchange her deep aspect of comprehension and tenderness. An astonishingly beautiful and impressive woman: dark hair; dark, straight eyebrows; a straight nose; dark blue eyes in the shadows of her hair and bowed, pomegranate lips in a chin curved like the bow of a Greek boat…

The etiquette of the place on Fridays was regulated as if by a royal protocol. The most distinguished and, if possible, titled person was led to a great walnut wood fluted chair that stood askew by the fire-place, its back and seat of blue velvet, heaven knows how old. Over him would hover Mrs Duchemin: or, if he were very distinguished, both Mr and Mrs Macmaster. The not so distinguished were led up by turns to be presented to the celebrity and would then arrange themselves in a half-circle in the beautiful arm-chairs; the less distinguished still, in outer groups in chairs that had no arms; the almost undistinguished stood, also in groups, or languished, awe-struck, on the scarlet leather window seats. When all were there Macmaster would establish himself on the incredibly unique hearthrug and would address wise sayings to the celebrity; occasionally, however, saying a kind thing to the youngest man present—to give him a chance of distinguishing himself. Macmaster's hair, at that date, was still black, but not quite so stiff or so well brushed; his beard had in it greyish streaks, and his teeth, not being quite so white, looked less strong. He wore also a single eyeglass, the retaining of which in his right eye gave him a slightly agonised expression. It gave him, however, the privilege of putting his face very close to the face of anyone upon whom he wished to make a deep impression. He had lately become much interested in the drama, so that there were usually several large—and, of course, very reputable and serious—actresses in the room. On rare occasions Mrs Duchemin would say across the room in her deep voice:

“Valentine, a cup of tea for his highness, ” or “Sir Thomas, ” as the case might be, and when Valentine had threaded her way through the chairs with a cup of tea, Mrs Duchemin, with a kind, aloof smile, would say: “Your highness, this is my little brown bird. ” But as a rule Valentine sat alone at the tea-table, the guests fetching from her what they wanted.

Tietjens came to the Fridays twice during the five months of his stay at Ealing. On each occasion he accompanied Mrs Wannop.

In earlier days—during the earliest Fridays—Mrs Wannop, if she ever came, had always been installed, with her flowing black, in the throne and, like an enlarged Queen Victoria, had sat there whilst suppliants were led up to this great writer. But now: on the first occasion Mrs Wannop got a chair without arms in the outer ring, whilst a general officer commanding lately in chief somewhere in the East whose military success had not been considered, but whose despatches were considered very literary, occupied, rather blazingly, the throne. But Mrs Wannop had chatted very contentedly all the afternoon with Tietjens, and it had been comforting to Valentine to see Tietjens' large, uncouth, but quite collected figure, and to observe the affection that these two had for each other.

But, on the second occasion, the throne was occupied by a very young woman who talked a great deal and with great assurance. Valentine didn't know who she was. Mrs Wannop, very gay and distracted, stood nearly the whole afternoon by a window. And even at that, Valentine was contented, quite a number of young men crowding round the old lady and leaving the younger one's circle rather bare.

There came in a very tall, clean-run and beautiful, fair woman, dressed in nothing in particular. She stood with extreme—with noticeable—unconcern near the doorway. She let her eyes rest on Valentine, but looked away before Valentine could speak. She must have had an enormous quantity of fair tawny hair, for it was coiled in a great surface over her ears. She had in her hand several visiting cards which she looked at with a puzzled expression and then laid on a card table. She was no one who had ever been there before.

Edith Ethel—it was for the second time! —had just broken up the ring that surrounded Mrs Wannop, bearing the young men tributary to the young woman in the walnut chair and leaving Tietjens and the older woman high and dry in a window: thus Tietjens saw the stranger, and there was no doubt left in Valentine's mind. He came, diagonally, right down the room to his wife and marched her straight up to Edith Ethel. His face was perfectly without expression.

Macmaster, perched on the centre of the hearthrug, had an emotion that was extraordinarily comic to witness, but that Valentine was quite unable to analyse. He jumped two paces forward to meet Mrs Tietjens, held out a little hand, half withdrew it, retreated half a step. The eyeglass fell from his perturbed eye: this gave him actually an expression less perturbed, but, in revenge, the hairs on the back of his scalp grew suddenly untidy. Sylvia, wavering along beside her husband, held out her long arm and careless hand. Macmaster winced almost at the contact, as if his fingers had been pinched in a vice. Sylvia wavered desultorily towards Edith Ethel, who was suddenly small, insignificant and relatively coarse. As for the young woman celebrity in the arm-chair, she appeared to be about the size of a white rabbit.

A complete silence had fallen on the room. Every woman in it was counting the pleats of Sylvia's skirt and the amount of material in it. Valentine Wannop knew that because she was doing it herself. If one had that amount of material and that number of pleats one's skirt might hang like that… For it was extraordinary: it fitted close round the hips, and gave an effect of length and swing—yet it did not descend as low as the ankles. It was, no doubt, the amount of material that did that, like the Highlander's kilt that takes twelve yards to make. And from the silence Valentine could tell that every woman and most of the men—if they didn't know that this was Mrs Christopher Tietjens—knew that this was a personage of Illustrated Weekly, as who should say of county family, rank. Little Mrs Swan, lately married, actually got up, crossed the room and sat down beside her bridegroom. It was a movement with which Valentine could sympathize.

And Sylvia, having just faintly greeted Mrs Duchemin. and completely ignored the celebrity in the arm-chair—in spite of the fact that Mrs Duchemin had tried halfheartedly to effect an introduction—stood still, looking round her. She gave the effect of a lady in a nurseryman's hothouse considering what flower should interest her, collectively ignoring the nurserymen who bowed round her. She had just dropped her eyelashes, twice, in recognition of two small staff officers with a good deal of scarlet streak about them who were tentatively rising from their chairs. The staff officers who came to the Tietjens were not of the first vintages; still they had the labels and passed as such.

Valentine was by that time beside her mother, who had been standing all alone between two windows. She had dispossessed, in hot indignation, a stout musical critic of his chair and had sat her mother in it. And, just as Mrs Duchemin's deep voice sounded, yet a little waveringly:

“Valentine… a cup of tea for…” Valentine was carrying a cup of tea to her mother.

Her indignation had conquered her despairing jealousy, if you could call it jealousy. For what was the good of living or loving when Tietjens had beside him, for ever, the radiant, kind and gracious perfection. On the other hand, of her two deep passions, the second was for her mother.

Rightly or wrongly, Valentine regarded Mrs Wannop as a great, an august figure: a great brain, a high and generous intelligence. She had written, at least, one great book, and if the rest of her time had been frittered away in the desperate struggle to live that had taken both their lives, that could not detract from that one achievement that should last and for ever take her mother's name down time. That this greatness should not weigh with the Macmasters had hitherto neither astonished nor irritated Valentine. The Macmasters had their game to play and, for the matter of that, they had their predilections. Their game kept them amongst the officially influential, the semiofficial and the officially accredited. They moved with such C. B. s, knights, presidents and the rest as dabbled in writing or the arts: they went upwards with such reviewers, art critics, musical writers and archaeologists as had posts in, if possible, first-class public offices or permanent positions on the more august periodicals. If an imaginative author seemed assured of position and lasting popularity Macmaster would send out feelers towards him, would make himself dumbly useful, and sooner or later either Mrs Duchemin would be carrying on with him one of her high-souled correspondences—or she wouldn't.

Mrs Wannop they had formerly accepted as permanent leader writer and chief critic of a great organ, but the great organ having dwindled and now disappeared the Macmasters no longer wanted her at their parties. That was the game—and Valentine accepted it. But that it should have been with such insolence, so obviously meant to be noted—for in twice breaking up Mrs Wannop's little circle Mrs Duchemin had not even once so much as said: “How d'ye do? ” to the elder lady I—that was almost more than Valentine could, for the moment, bear, and she would have taken her mother away at once and would never have re-entered the house, but for the compensations.

Her mother had lately written and even found a publisher for a book—and the book had showed no signs of failing powers. On the contrary, having been perforce stopped off the perpetual journalism that had dissipated her energies, Mrs Wannop had turned out something that Valentine knew was sound, sane and well done. Abstractions of failing attention to the outside world are not necessarily in a writer signs of failing, as a writer. It may mean merely that she is giving so much thought to her work that her outside contacts suffer. If that is the case her work will gain. That this might be the case with her mother was Valentine's great and secret hope. Her mother was barely sixty: many great works have been written by writers aged between sixty and seventy…

And the crowding of youngish men round the old lady had given Valentine a little confirmation of that hope. The book naturally, in the maelstrom flux and reflux of the time, had attracted no attention, and poor Mrs Wannop had not succeeded in extracting a penny for it from her adamantine publisher: she hadn't, indeed, made a penny for several months, and they existed almost at starvation point in their little den of a villa—on Valentine's earnings as athletic teacher… But that little bit of attention in that semi-public place had seemed, at least, as a confirmation to Valentine: there probably was something sound, sane and well done in her mother's work. That was almost all she asked of life.

And, indeed, while she stood by her mother's chair, thinking with a little bitter pathos that if Edith Ethel had left the three or four young men to her mother the three or four might have done her poor mother a little good, with innocent puffs and the like—and heaven knew they needed that little good badly enough! —a very thin and untidy young man did drift back to Mrs Wannop and asked, precisely, if he might make a note or two for publication as to what Mrs Wannop was doing. “Her book, ” he said, “had attracted so much attention. They hadn't known that they had still writers among them…”

A singular, triangular drive had begun through the chairs from the fireplace. That was how it had seemed to Valentine! Mrs Tietjens had looked at them, had asked Christopher a question and, immediately, as if she were coming through waist-high surf, had borne down Macmaster and Mrs Duchemin, flanking her obsequiously, setting aside chairs and their occupants, Tietjens and the two, rather bashfully following staff officers, broadening out the wedge.

Sylvia, her long arm held out from a yard or so away, was stretching out her hand to Valentine's mother. With her clear, high, unembarrassed voice she exclaimed, also from a yard or so away, so as to be heard by everyone in the room:

“You're Mrs Wannop. The great writer. I'm Christopher Tietjens' wife. ”

The old lady, with her dim eyes, looked up at the younger woman towering above her.

“You're Christopher's wife! ” she said. “I must kiss you for all the kindness he has shown me”

Valentine felt her eyes filling with tears. She saw her mother stand up, place both her hands on the other woman's shoulders. She heard her mother say:

“You're a most beautiful creature. I'm sure you're good! ”

Sylvia stood, smiling faintly, bending a little to accept the embrace. Behind the Macmasters, Tietjens and the staff officers, a little crowd of goggle eyes had ranged itself.

Valentine was crying. She slipped back behind the tea-urns, though she could hardly feel the way. Beautiful! The most beautiful woman she had ever seen! And good! Kind! You could see it in the lovely way she had given her cheek to that poor old woman's lips… And to live all day, for ever, beside him… she, Valentine, ought to be ready to lay down her life for Sylvia Tietjens…

The voice of Tietjens said, just above her head:

“Your mother seems to be having a regular triumph, ” and, with his good-natured cynicism, he added, “it seems to have upset some apple-carts! ” They were confronted with the spectacle of Macmaster conducting the young celebrity from her deserted arm-chair across the room to be lost in the horseshoe of crowd that surrounded Mrs Wannop.

Valentine said:

“You're quite gay to-day. Your voice is different. I suppose you're better? ” She did not look at him. His voice came:

“Yes! I'm relatively gay! ” It went on: “I thought you might like to know. A little of my mathematical brain seems to have come to life again. I've worked out two or three silly problems…”

She said:

“Mrs Tietjens will be pleased. ”

“Oh! ” the answer came. “Mathematics don't interest her any more than cock-fighting. ” With immense swiftness, between word and word, Valentine read into that a hope! This splendid creature did not sympathise with her husband's activities. But he crushed it heavily by saying: “Why should she? She's so many occupations of her own that she's unrivalled at! ”

He began to tell her, rather minutely, of a calculation he had made only that day at lunch. He had gone into the Department of Statistics and had had rather a row with Lord Ingleby of Lincoln. A pretty title the fellow had taken! They had wanted him to ask to be seconded to his old department for a certain job. But he had said he'd be damned if he would. He detested and despised the work they were doing.

Valentine, for the first time in her life, hardly listened to what he said. Did the fact that Sylvia Tietjens had so many occupations of her own mean that Tietjens found her unsympathetic? Of their relationships she knew nothing. Sylvia had been so much of a mystery as hardly to exist as a problem hitherto. Macmaster, Valentine knew, hated her. She knew that through Mrs Duchemin; she had heard it ages ago, but she didn't know why. She had never come to the Macmasters' afternoons; but that was natural. Macmaster passed for a bachelor, and it was excusable for a young woman of the highest fashion not to come to bachelor teas of literary and artistic people. On the other hand, Macmaster dined at the Tietjens' quite often enough to make it public that he was a friend of that family. Sylvia, too, had never come down to see Mrs Wannop. But then it would, in the old days, have been a long way to come for a lady of fashion with no especial literary interests. And no one, in mercy, could have been expected to call on poor them in their dog-kennel in an outer suburb. They had had to sell almost all their pretty things.

Tietjens was saying that after his tempestuous interview with Lord Ingleby of Lincoln—she wished he would not be so rude to powerful people! —he had dropped in on Macmaster in his private room, and finding him puzzled over a lot of figures had, in the merest spirit of bravado, taken Macmaster and his papers out to lunch. And, he said, chancing to look, without any hope at all, at the figures, he had suddenly worked out an ingenious mystification. It had just come!

His voice had been so gay and triumphant that she hadn't been able to resist looking up at him. His cheeks were fresh coloured, his hair shining; his blue eyes had a little of their old arrogance—and tenderness! Her heart seemed to sing with joy! He was, she felt, her man. She imagined the arms of his mind stretching out to enfold her.

He went on explaining. He had rather, in his recovered self-confidence, gibed at Macmaster. Between themselves, wasn't it easy to do what the Department, under orders, wanted done? They had wanted to rub into our allies that their losses by devastation had been nothing to write home about—so as to avoid sending reinforcements to their lines! Well, if you took just the bricks and mortar of the devastated districts, you could prove that the loss in bricks, tiles, woodwork, and the rest didn't—and the figures with a little manipulation would prove it I—amount to more than a normal year's dilapidation spread over the whole country in peace time… House repairs in a normal year had cost several million sterling. The enemy had only destroyed just about so many million sterling in bricks and mortar. And what was a mere year's dilapidations in house property! You just neglected to do them and did them next year.

So, if you ignored the lost harvests of three years, the lost industrial output of the richest industrial region of the country, the smashed machinery, the barked fruit trees, the three years' loss of four and a half-tenths of the coal output for three years—and the loss of life! —we could go to our allies and say:

“All your yappings about losses are the merest bulls. You can perfectly well afford to reinforce the weak places of your own lines. We intend to send our new troops to the Near East, where lies our true interest! ” And, though they might sooner or later point out the fallacy, you would by so much have put off the abhorrent expedient of a single command.

Valentine, though it took her away from her own thoughts, couldn't help saying:

“But weren't you arguing about your own convictions? ” He said:

“Yes, of course I was. In the lightness of my heart! It's always a good thing to formulate the other fellow's objections. ”

She had turned half round in her chair. They were gazing into each other's eyes, he from above, she from below. She had no doubt of his love: he, she knew, could have no doubt of hers. She said:

“But isn't it dangerous? To show these people how to do it? ”

He said:

“Oh, no, no. No! You don't know what a good soul little Vinnie is. I don't think you've ever been quite just to Vincent Macmaster! He'd as soon think of picking my pocket as of picking my brains. The soul of honour! ”

Valentine had felt a queer, queer sensation. She was not sure afterwards whether she had felt it before she had realized that Sylvia Tietjens was looking at them. She stood there, very erect, a queer smile on her face. Valentine could not be sure whether it was kind, cruel, or merely distantly ironic; but she was perfectly sure it showed, whatever was behind it, that its wearer knew all that there was to know of her, Valentine's, feelings for Tietjens and for Tietjens' feelings for her… It was like being a woman and man in adultery in Trafalgar Square.

Behind Sylvia's back, their mouths agape, were the two staff officers. Their dark hairs were too untidy for them to amount to much, but, such as they were, they were the two most presentable males of the assembly—and Sylvia had snaffled them.

Mrs Tietjens said:

“Oh, Christopher! I'm going on to the Basils'. ”

Tietjens said:

“All right. I'll pop Mrs Wannop into the tube as soon as she's had enough of it, and come along and pick you up! ”

Sylvia had just drooped her long eyelashes, in sign of salutation, to Valentine Wannop, and had drifted through the door, followed by her rather unmilitary military escort in khaki and scarlet.

From that moment Valentine Wannop never had any doubt. She knew that Sylvia Tietjens knew that her husband loved her, Valentine Wannop, and that she, Valentine Wannop, loved her husband—with a passion absolute and ineffable. The one thing she, Valentine, didn't know, the one mystery that remained impenetrable, was whether Sylvia Tietjens was good to her husband!

A long time afterwards Edith Ethel had come to her beside the tea-cups and had apologized for not having known, earlier than Sylvia's demonstration, that Mrs Wannop was in the room. She hoped that they might see Mrs Wannop much more often. She added after a moment that she hoped Mrs Wannop wouldn't, in future, find it necessary to come under the escort of Mr Tietjens. They were too old friends for that, surely.

Valentine said:

“Look here, Ethel, if you think that you can keep friends with mother and turn on Mr Tietjens after all he's done for you, you're mistaken. You are really. And mother's a great deal of influence. I don't want to see you making any mistakes: just at this juncture. It's a mistake to make nasty rows. And you'd make a very nasty one if you said anything against Mr Tietjens to mother. She knows a great deal. Remember. She lived next door to the rectory for a number of years. And she's got a dreadfully incisive tongue…”

Edith Ethel coiled back on her feet as if her whole body were threaded by a steel spring. Her mouth opened, but she bit her lower lip and then wiped it with a very white handkerchief. She said:

“I hate that man! I detest that man! I shudder when he comes near me. ”

“I know you do! ” Valentine Wannop answered. “But I wouldn't let other people know it if I were you. It doesn't do you any real credit. He's a good man. ”

Edith Ethel looked at her with a long, calculating glance. Then she went to stand before the fireplace.

That had been five—or at most six—Fridays before Valentine sat with Mark Tietjens in the War Office waiting-hall, and, on the Friday immediately before that again, all the guests being gone, Edith Ethel had come to the tea-table and, with her velvet kindness, had placed her right hand on Valentine's left. Admiring the gesture with a deep fervour, Valentine knew that that was the end.

Three days before, on the Monday, Valentine, in her school uniform, in a great store to which she had gone to buy athletic paraphernalia, had run into Mrs Duchemin, who was buying flowers. Mrs Duchemin had been horribly distressed to observe the costume. She had said:

“But do you go about in that? It's really dreadful. ” Valentine had answered:

“Oh, yes. When I'm doing business for the school in school hours I'm expected to wear it. And I wear it if I'm going anywhere in a hurry after school hours. It saves my dresses. I haven't got too many. ”

“But any one might meet you, ” Edith Ethel said in a note of agony. “It's very inconsiderate. Don't you think you've been very inconsiderate? You might meet any of the people who come to our Fridays! ”

“I frequently do, ” Valentine said. “But they don't seem to mind. Perhaps they think I'm a Waac officer. That would be quite respectable…”

Mrs Duchemin drifted away, her arms full of flowers and real agony upon her face.

Now, beside the tea-table she said, very softly:

“My dear, we've decided not to have our usual Friday afternoon next week. ” Valentine wondered whether this was merely a lie to get rid of her. But Edith Ethel went on: “We've decided to have a little evening festivity. After a great deal of thought we've come to the conclusion that we ought, now, to make our union public. ” She paused to await comment, but Valentine making none she went on: “It coincides very happily—I can't help feeling it coincides very happily! —with another event. Not that we set much store by these things… But it has been whispered to Vincent that next Friday… Perhaps, my dear Valentine, you, too, will have heard…”

Valentine said:

“No, I haven't. I suppose he's got the O. B. E. I'm very glad. ”

“The Sovereign, ” Mrs Duchemin said, “is seeing fit to confer the honour of knighthood on him. ”

“Well! ” Valentine said. “He's had a quick career. I've no doubt he deserves it. He's worked very hard. I do sincerely congratulate you. It'll be a great help to you. ”

“It's, ” Mrs Duchemin said, “not for mere plodding. That's what makes it so gratifying. It's for a special piece of brilliance, that has marked him out. It's, of course, a secret. But…”

“Oh, I know! ” Valentine said. “He's worked out some calculations to prove that losses in the devastated districts, if you ignore machinery, coal output, orchard trees, harvests, industrial products, and so on, don't amount to more than a year's household dilapidations for the…”

Mrs Duchemin said with real horror:

“But how did you know? How on earth did you know? …” She paused. “It's such a dead secret… That fellow must have told you… But how on earth could he know? ”

“I haven't seen Mr Tietjens to speak to since the last time he was here, ” Valentine said. She saw, from Edith Ethel's bewilderment, the whole situation. The miserable Macmaster hadn't even confided to his wife that the practically stolen figures weren't his own. He desired to have a little prestige in the family circle; for once a little prestige! Well! Why shouldn't he have it? Tietjens, she knew, would wish him to have all he could get. She said therefore:

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