Parade's End (110 page)

Was it to be thought that
Il
– Christopher Tietjens, clumsy, apparently slow-witted, but actually gifted with the insight of the supernatural … Gunning would say: The Captain, he never says anything, but who knows what he thinks? He perceives everything… . Was it to be thought
then
that, once Mark was dead and he actual owner of the place called Groby and the vast stretch of coal-bearing land that the newspaper had spoken of, Christopher Tietjens would maintain his benevolent and frugal dispositions of today? It was truly thinkable. But, just as he appeared slow-witted and was actually gifted with the insight of the supernatural, so he might well now maintain this aspect of despising wealth and yet develop into a true Harpagon as soon as he held the reins of power. The rich are noted for hardness of heart, and brother will prey upon brother’s widow sooner than on another.

So that, certainly, she ought to put herself under the protection of the Authorities. But then, what Authorities? The long arm of France would no doubt protect one of her nationals even in this remote and uncivilised land. But would it be possible to put that machinery in motion without the knowledge of Mark – and what dreadful steps might Mark not take in his wrath if he thought that she had set machinery in motion?

There appeared nothing for it but to wait, and that side of her nature being indolent, perhaps being alone indolent, she was aware that she was contented to wait. But was such a course right? Was it doing justice to herself or to France? For it is the duty of the French citizen, by industry, frugality, and vigilance to accumulate goods; and it was above all the duty of the French citizen to carry back accumulated hoards to that distressed country, stripped bare as she was by the perfidious Allies. She might herself rejoice in these circumstances, these grasses, orchards, poultry, cider-presses, vegetable-gardens – even if the turnips were not of the Paris
navet
variety! She might not ask for better. But there might be a little
pays
, near Falaise, or in the alternative, near Bayeux, a little spot that she might enrich with these spoils from the barbarians. If every inhabitant of a
pays
in France did the same would not France again be prosperous, with all its
clochers
tolling out contentment across smiling acres? Well, then!

Standing gazing at the poultry whilst Gunning with a hone smoothed out some notches from his bagging hook, previous to going on duty again, she began to reflect on the nature of Christopher Tietjens, for she desired to estimate what were her chances of retaining her furs,
pearls
and gilt articles of vertu… . By the orders of the doctor who attended daily on Mark – a dry, sandy, no doubt perfectly ignorant person – Mark was never to be left out of sight. He was of opinion, this doctor, that one day Mark might move – physically. And there might be great danger if ever he did move. The lesions, if lesions there were in his brain, might then be re-started with fatal effects – some such talk. So they must never let him out of their sight. For the night they had an alarm that was connected by a wire from his bed to hers. Hers was in a room that gave onto the orchard. If he so much as stirred in his bed the bell would ring in her ear. But indeed she rose every night, over and over again to look from her window into his hut; a dim lantern illuminated his sheets. These arrangements appeared to her to be barbarous, but they met the views of Mark and she was thus in no position to question them… . So she had to wait whilst Gunning honed out his sickle-shaped, short-handled blade.

It had all then begun – all the calamities of the world began amidst the clamours and intoxications of that dreadful day. Of Christopher Tietjens till then she had known little or nothing. For the matter of that, of Mark himself she had known little or nothing until a very few years ago. She had known neither his name, nor how he occupied himself, nor yet where he lived. It had not been her business to enquire so she had never made enquiries. Then one day – after thirteen years – he had awakened one morning with an attack of bronchitis after a very wet Newmarket Craven Meeting. He had told her to go to his office with a note addressed to his chief clerk, to ask for his letters and to tell them to send a messenger to his chambers to get some clothes and necessaries.

When she had told him that she did not know what his office was nor where were his chambers nor even his surname he had grunted. He had expressed neither surprise nor gratification, but she knew that he had been gratified – probably with himself for having chosen a woman companion who displayed no curiosity rather than with her for having displayed none. After that he had had a telephone installed in her rooms and not infrequently he would stay later of a morning than had been his habit, letting a messenger from the office bring letters or fetch
documents
that he had signed. When his father had died he had put her into mourning.

By that date, gradually, she had learned that he was Mark Tietjens of Groby, an immense estate somewhere in the North. He employed himself at an office of the Government in Whitehall – apparently with questions of railways. She gathered, chiefly from ejaculations of the messenger, that he treated his Ministry with contempt, but was regarded as so indispensable that he never lost his post. Occasionally the office would ring up and ask her if she knew where he was. She would gather from the papers afterwards that that was because there had been a great railway accident. On those occasions he would have been absent at a race-meeting. He gave the office, in fact, just as much of his time as he chose, no more and no less. She gathered that, with his overpowering wealth, it was of no account to him except as an occupation of leisure time between meetings and she gathered that he was regarded as an occult power amongst the rulers of the nation. Once, during the war when he had hurt his hand, he dictated to her a note of a confidential nature to one of the Cabinet Ministers. It had concerned itself with Transport and its tone had been that of singular polite contempt.

For her he was in no way astonishing. He was the English Milor with
le Spleen
. She had read of him in the novels of Alexander Dumas, Paul de Kock, Eugene Sue and Ponson du Terrail. He represented the England that the Continent applauded – the only England that the Continent applauded. Silent, obstinate, inscrutable, insolent, but immensely wealthy and uncontrollably generous. For herself,
elle ne demandait pas mieux
. For there was about him nothing of the unexpected. He was as regular as the Westminster Chimes; he never exacted the unexpected of her and he was all-powerful and never in the wrong. He was, in short, what her countrywomen called
sérieux
. No Frenchwoman asks better than that of lover or husband. It was the
collage sérieux
par excellence: they were as a
ménage
sober, honest, frugal, industrious, very wealthy, and seriously saving. For his dinner twice a week she cooked him herself two mutton chops with all but an eighth of an inch of the fat pared off, two mealy potatoes, as light and as white as flour, an apple pie with a very flaky
crust
which he ate with a wedge of Stilton and some pulled bread and butter. This dinner had never varied once in twenty years except during the season of game when on alternate weeks a pheasant, a brace of grouse or of partridges would come from Groby. Nor in the twenty years had they once been separated for a whole week except that every late summer he spent a month at Harrogate. She always had his dress-shirts washed for him by her own laundress in the Quartier. He spent almost every weekend in one country house or another using at most two dress-shirts and that only if he stayed till Tuesday. English people of good class do not dress for dinner on Sundays. That is a politeness to God because theoretically you attend evening service and you do not go to church in the country in evening dress. As a matter of fact you never go to evening service – but it is complimentary to suggest by your dress that you might be visited by the impulse. So, at least Marie Léonie Tietjens understood the affair.

She was looking out on the Common that sloped up to beech trees, at the poultry – bright chestnut birds extremely busy on the intense green of the browsed grass. The great rooster reminded her of the late Monsieur Rodin, the sculptor who had conspired against Casimir-Bar. She had once seen Rodin in his studio, conducting some American ladies round his work and he had precisely resembled a rooster kicking its leg back and drooping its wings in the dust round a new hen. Only round a new one. Naturally! … This rooster was a tremendous Frenchman.
Un vrai de la vraie!
You could imagine nothing more unlike Christopher Tietjens! … The backward-raking legs on the dancing toes; the gait of a true master of deportment at an academy of young ladies! The vigilant clear eye cocking up every minute… . Hark! A swift shadow ran over the ground: the sparrow hawk! The loud, piercing croon of that Father of his Country! How the hens all re-echoed it; how the chickens ran to their mothers and all together to the shadow of the hedge! Monsieur the hawk would have no chance amidst that outcry. The hawk flits silent and detests noise. It will bring the poultry-keeper with his gun! … All is discovered because of the vigilance of Milord Chantecler… . There are those who reprove him because his eyes are always on the sky, because he has a proud head. But that is his
function
– that and gallantry. Perceive him with a grain of corn; how he flies upon it; how he invites with cries! His favourite – the newest – hens run clucking joyously to him! How he bows, droops and prances, holding the grain of corn in his powerful bill, depositing it, pecking to bruise it and then depositing it before his sultana of the moment. Nor will he complain if a little ball of fluff runs quickly and pecks the grain from his bill before Madame Partlet can take it from him. His gallantry has been wasted, but he is a good father! … Perhaps there is not even a grain of corn when he issues his invitations: perhaps he merely calls his favourites to him that he may receive their praise or perform the act of Love… .

He is then the man that a woman desires to have vouchsafed her. When he smites his wing feathers behind his back and utters his clarion cry of victory over the hawk that now glides far away down the hill, his hens come out again from the shadows, the chickens from beneath their mothers’ wings. He has given security to his country and in confidence they can return to their avocations. Different indeed from that Monsieur Christopher who even when he was still a soldier more than anything resembled a full, grey, coarse meal-sack short in the wind and with rolling, hard-blue eyes. Not hard eyes, but of a hard blue! And yet, curiously, he too had some of the spirit of Chantecler beneath his rolling shoulders of a farmyard boar. Obviously you could not be your brother’s brother and not have some traces of the Milor… . The spleen too. But no one could say that her Mark was not a proper man.
Chic
in an eccentric manner, but, oh yes,
chic
! And that was his brother.

Naturally he might try to despoil her. That is what brother does to brother’s widow and children… . But, on occasion, he treated her with a pompous courtesy – a parade. On the first time he had seen her – not so long ago that; only during that period of the war that had been without measurable time – he had treated her to heavy but expressive gestures of respect and words of courtesy in an old-fashioned language that he must have learned at the Théâtre Français whilst they still played
Ruy Blas
. French was a different thing now, that she must acknowledge. When she went to Paris – which she did every late summer whilst her man went to Harrogate – the language
her
nephews spoke was a different affair – without grace, courtesy, intelligibility. Certainly without respect! Oh, la, la! When they came to divide up her inheritance that would be a sharper kind of despoilment than ever Christopher Tietjens’! Whilst she lay on her bed of death those young fellows and their wives would be all through her presses and armoires like a pack of wolves… .
La famille!
Well, that was very proper. It showed the appropriate spirit of acquisition. What was a good mother for if not to despoil her husband’s relatives in the interests of their joint children!

So Christopher had been as courteous as a well-trained meal-sack of the
dix-huitième
. Eighteenth-century! Older still,
période Molière!
When he had come into her room that had been dimly lit with a
veilleuse
– a night-light; they are so much more economical than shaded electric lights! – he had precisely suggested to her a lumbering character from Molière as presented at the Comédie Française; elaborate of phrase and character, but protuberant in odd places. She might in that case have supposed that he entertained designs on her person; but with his eyes sticking out in elaborate considerateness he had only come to break to her the news that his brother was about to make an honest woman of her. That had been Mark’s phrase. It is of course only God that can do that… . But the enterprise had had the full concurrence of Monsieur the Heir-Apparent.

He had indeed been active whilst she slumbered in a hooded-chair after four days and three nights on her feet. She would have surrendered the body of Mark to no human being but his brother. Now the brother had come to tell her not to be alarmed – panting with nervousness and shortness of breath… . Bad lungs both the brothers had! Panting he had come to tell her not to be alarmed at finding in her man’s room two priests, an official, a lawyer and a lawyer’s clerk… . These black-robed people attend on death, bringing will-forms and the holy oils. The doctor and a man with oxygen cylinders had been there when she had gone to repose herself. It was a pretty congregation of the vultures that attend on us during life.

She had started at once to cry out. That undoubtedly was what had made him nervous – the anticipation that she would cry out sharply in the black, silent London that
brooded
between air-raids. In that silence, before sleep had visited her peignoir-enveloped, and therefore clumsyish, form, she had been aware of Christopher’s activities on the telephone in the passage. It had struck her that he might have been warning the Pompes Funèbres! … So she had begun to scream: the sound that irresistibly you make when death is about to descend. But he had agitated himself to soothe her – for all the world like Monsieur Sylvain on the boards of Molière’s establishment! He spoke that sort of French, in a hoarse whisper, in the shadows of the night-light … assuring her that the priest was for marriage, with licence of the Archevêque de Cantorbéri such as in London you got in those days from Lambeth Palace for thirty pounds sterling. That enabled you to make any woman honest at any hour of the day or night. The lawyer was there to have a will re-signed. Marriage in this singular country invalidates any previous will. So, Tietjens (Christophère) assured her.