Parade's End (125 page)

So that the only real pleasure she had was when, at night in a circle of cosy friends she could assert that she was not even yet out of his confidence. Normally she would not – the members of her circle would not have – made confidantes of her ex-husband’s domestics. But she had had to chance whether the details of Christopher’s
ménage
as revealed by the wife of his carpenter would prove to her friends sufficiently amusing to make them forget the social trespass she committed in consorting with her husband’s dependants and she had to chance whether the carpenter’s wife would not see that, by proclaiming her wrongs over the fact that her husband had left her, she was proclaiming her own unattractiveness.

She had hitherto chanced both, but the time, she was
aware,
was at hand when she would have to ask herself whether she would not be better off if she were what the French call
rangée
as was the wife of the Commander in Chief in India than as a free-lance woman owing her popularity entirely to her own exertions. It would be slightly ignominious to owe part of her prestige to a pantaloon like General Lord Edward Campion K.C.B., but how restful might it not be! To keep your place in a society of Marjies and Beatties – and even of Cammies, like the Countess of Fittleworth – meant constant exertion and watchfulness, even if you were comfortably wealthy and well-born – and it meant still more exertion when your staple capital for entertainment was the domestic misfortune of a husband that did not like you.

She might well point out to Marjie, Lady Stern, that her husband’s clothes lacked buttons and his companion all imaginable chic; she might well point out to Beattie, Lady Elsbacher, that according to her husband’s carpenter’s wife, the interior of her husband’s home resembled a cave encumbered with packing cases in dark-coloured wood, whereas in her day … Or she might even point out to Cammie, Lady Fittleworth, to Mrs. de Bray Pape and Mrs. Luther that, having a defective water supply, her husband’s woman probably provided him only with difficulty with baths… . But every now and then someone – as had been the case once or twice with the three American ladies – would point out, a little tentatively, that her husband was by now Tietjens of Groby to all intents and purposes. And people – and in particular American ladies – would attach particular importance before her to English county gentlemen who had turned down titles and the like. Her husband had not turned down a title; he had not been able to, for much as Mark had desired to refuse a baronetcy at the last moment he had been given to understand that he couldn’t. But her husband had practically turned down a whole great estate and the romantic aspect of that feat was beginning to filter through to her friends. For all her assertions that his seeming poverty was due to dissolute living and consequent bankruptcy, her friends would occasionally ask her whether in fact his poverty was not simply a voluntary affair, the result either of a wager or a strain of mysticism. They would point out that she and her son at least had
all
the symptoms of considerable wealth as a sign rather that Christopher did not desire wealth or was generous, than that he had no longer money to throw away… .

There were symptoms of that sort of questioning of the mind rising up in the American ladies whom Cammie Fittleworth liked to have staying with her. Hitherto Sylvia had managed to squash them. After all, the Tietjens household below her feet was a singular affair for those who had not the clue to its mystery. She had the clue herself; she knew both about the silent feud between the two brothers and about their attitude to life. And if it enraged her that Christopher should despise things that she so valued it none the less gratified her to know that, in the end, she was to be regarded as responsible for that silent feud and the renunciation that it had caused. It was her tongue that had set going the discreditable stories that Mark once had believed against his brother.

But if she was to retain her power to blast that household with her tongue she felt she ought to have details. She must have corroborative details. Otherwise she could not so very convincingly put over her picture of abandoned corruption. You might have thought that her coercing Mrs. de Bray Pape and her son into making that rather outrageous visit and in awakening Mrs. Lowther’s innocent curiosity as to the contents of the cottage she had been inspired solely by the desire to torment Valentine Wannop. But she was aware that there was more than that to it. She might get details of all sorts of queernesses that, triumphantly, to other groups of listeners she could retail as proof of her intimacy with that household.

If her listeners showed any signs of saying that it was queer that a man like Christopher who appeared to be a kindly group of sacks should actually be a triply crossed being compounded of a Lovelace, Pandarus, and a Satyr she could always answer: ‘Ah, but what can you expect of people who have hams drying in their drawing-room!’ Or if others alleged that it was queer, if Valentine Wannop had Christopher as much under her thumb as she was said to have, even by Sylvia, that she should still allow Christopher to run an Agapemone in what was after all her own house, Sylvia would have liked to be able to reply: ‘Ah, but what can you expect of a woman upon whose stairs you will find, side by side, a hairbrush, a frying pan, and a copy of Sappho!’

That was the sort of detail that Sylvia needed. The one item she had: The Tietjenses, she knew from Mrs. Carpenter Cramp, had an immense fireplace in their living-room and, after the time-honoured custom they smoked their hams in that chimney. But to people who did not know that smoking hams in great chimneys was a time-honoured custom the assertion that Christopher was the sort of person who dried hams in his drawing-room would bring up images of your finding yourself in a sort of place where hams reclined on the sofa-cushions. Even that to the reflective would not necessarily be proof that the perpetrator was a Sadic lunatic – but few people are reflective and at any rate it was queer, and one queerness might be taken as implying another.

But as to Valentine she could not get details enough. You had to prove that she was a bad housekeeper and a blue stocking in order that it should be apparent that Christopher was miserable – and you had to prove that Christopher was miserable in order to make it apparent that the hold that Valentine Wannop certainly had over him was something unholy. For that, it was necessary to have details of misplaced hairbrushes, frying pans, and copies of Sappho.

It had, however, been difficult to get those details. Mrs. Cramp when appealed to had made it rather plain that, far from being a bad housekeeper Valentine Wannop did no housekeeping at all whereas Marie Léonie – Lady Mark – was a perfect devil of a ménagère. Apparently Mrs. Cramp was allowed no further into the dwelling than the wash house – because of half-pounds of sugar and dusters that Mrs. Cramp in the character of charwoman had believed to be her perquisites. Marie Léonie hadn’t.

The local doctor and the parson, both of whom visited the house, had contributed only palely coloured portraits of the young woman. Sylvia had gone to call on them and making use of the Fittleworth ægis – hinting that Lady Cammie wanted details of her humbler neighbours for her own instruction – Sylvia had tried to get behind the professional secrecy that distinguished parsons and doctors. But she had not got much behind. The parson gave her the idea that he thought Valentine rather a jolly girl, very hospitable and with a fine tap of cider at disposal and fond of reading under trees – the classics mostly. Very
much
interested also in rock-plants as you could see by the bank under Tietjens’s windows… . Their house was always called Tietjens’s. Sylvia had never been under those windows and that enraged her.

From the doctor, Sylvia, for a faint flash, gained the impression that Valentine enjoyed rather poor health. But it had only been an impression arising from the fact that the doctor saw her every day – and it was rather discounted by the other fact that the doctor said that his daily visits were for Mark who might be expected to pop off at any moment. So he needed careful watching. A little excitement and he was done for… . Otherwise Valentine seemed to have a sharp eye for old furniture as the doctor knew to his cost, for in a small way he collected himself. And he said that at minor cottage-sales and for small objects Valentine could drive a bargain that Tietjens himself never achieved.

Otherwise, from both the doctor and the parson, she had an impression of Tietjens’s as a queer household – queer because it was so humdrum and united. She really herself had expected something more exciting! Really. It did not seem possible that Christopher should settle down into tranquil devotion to brother and mistress after the years of emotion she had given him. It was as if a man should have jumped out of a frying pan into – a duckpond.

So, as she looked at the red flush on Fittleworth’s face an almost mad moment of impatience had overcome her. This fellow was about the only man who had ever had the guts to stand up to her… . A fox-hunting squire: an extinct animal!

The trouble was, you could not tell quite how extinct he was. He might be able to bite as hard as a fox. Otherwise she would be running down, right now, running down that zigzag orange path to that forbidden land.

That she had hitherto never dared. From a social point of view it would have been outrageous, but she was prepared to chance that. She was sure enough of her place in Society and if people will excuse a man’s leaving his wife they will excuse the wife’s making at least one or two demonstrations that are a bit thick. But she had simply not dared to meet Christopher; he might cut her.

Perhaps he would not. He was a gentleman and gentlemen do not usually cut women with whom they have slept.
…
But he might… . She might go down there and in a dark low-ceilinged room be making some sort of stipulation – God knew what, the first that came into her head – to Valentine. You can always make up some sort of reason for approaching the woman who has supplanted you. But he might come mooning in, and suddenly stiffen into a great, clumsy – oh adorable! – face of stone.

That was what you would not dare to face. That would be death. She could imagine him going out of the room, rolling his shoulders. Leaving the whole establishment to her, closing only himself in invisible bonds – closed to her by the angel with the flaming sword… . That was what he would do. And that before the other woman. He had come once very near it and she had hardly recovered from it. That pretended illness had not been so much pretended as all that! She had smiled angelically, under the great crucifix, in the convent that had been her nursing-home – angelically, amongst lilies, upon the General, the sisters, the many callers that gradually came to her teas. But she had had to think that Christopher was probably in the arms of his girl, and he had let her go when she had, certainly physically, needed his help.

But that had not been a calm occasion, in that dark empty house… . And he had not, at that date, enjoyed the favours, the domesticity, of that young woman. He hadn’t had a chance of comparison, so that the turning-down need not count. He had treated her barbarously – as social counters go it had been helpful to her – but only at the strong urge of a young woman driven to fury. That could be palliated. It hardly indeed affected her now as a reverse. Looked at reasonably, if a man comes home intending to go to bed with a young woman who has bewitched him for a number of years and finds another woman who tells him that she has cancer and does a very creditable faint from the top of the stairs and then – in spite of practice and being as hard as nails – puts her ankle out of joint, he has got to choose between the one and the other. And the other in this case had been vigorous, determined on her man, even vituperative. Obviously Christopher was not the sort of man who would
like
seducing a young woman whilst his wife was dying of internal cancer, let alone a sprained ankle. But the young woman
had
arrived at a stage when she did not care for any delicacies or their dictates.

No; that Sylvia had been able to bear. But if now the same thing happened, in dim, quiet daylight, in a tranquil old room … that she would not be able to face! It is one thing to acknowledge that your man has gone – there is no irrevocability about going. He may come back when the other woman is insignificant, a blue stocking, entirely unnoticeable… . But if he took the step – the responsibility! – of cutting you, that would be to put between you a barrier that no amount of weariness with your rival could overstep.

Impatience grew upon her. The fellow was away in an aeroplane. Gone North. It was the only time she had ever
known
of him as having gone away. It was her only chance of running down those orange zigzags. And now – it was all Lombard Street to a China apple that Fittleworth intended to disapprove of her running down. And you could not ignore Fittleworth.

II

NO, YOU COULD
not ignore Fittleworth. As a fox-hunting squire he might be an extinct monster – though then again he might not: there was no knowing. But as a wicked, dark adept with bad women, and come of a race that had been adepts with women good and bad for generations, he was about as dangerous a person as you could find. That gross, slow, earthy, obstinate fellow, Gunning, could stand grouchily up to Fittleworth, answer him back and chance what Fittleworth could do to him. So could any cottager. But then they were his people. She wasn’t … she, Sylvia Tietjens, and she did not believe she could afford to outface him. Nor could half England.

Old Campion wanted India – probably she herself wanted Campion to have India. Groby Great Tree was cut down and if you have not the distinction – if you rid yourself of the distinction, of Groby Great Tree just to wound a man to the heart – you may as well take India. Times were changing but there was no knowing how the circumstances of a man like Fittleworth changed. He sat
his
horse like a monkey and gazed out over his land as his people had done for generations, bastard or legitimate. And it was all very well to regard him as merely a country squire married to a Trans-Atlantic nobody and so out of it. He hopped up to London – he and his Cammie too – and he passed unnoticeably about the best places and could drop a word or so here and there; and for all the Countess’s foreign and unknown origin she had access to ears that could well be dangerous for aspirants to India. Campion might have his war-services and his constituency. But Cammie Fittleworth was popular in high places and Fittleworth had his hounds and, when it came even to constituencies, the tradesmen of a couple of counties. And he was wicked.