Parade's End (126 page)

It had been obvious to her for a long time that God would one day step in and intervene for the protection of Christopher. After all Christopher was a good man – a rather sickeningly good man. It is, in the end, she reluctantly admitted, the function of God and the invisible Powers to see that a good man shall eventually be permitted to settle down to a stuffy domestic life … even to chaffering over old furniture. It was a comic affair – but it was the sort of affair that you had to admit. God is probably – and very rightly – on the side of the stuffy domesticities. Otherwise the world could not continue – the children would not be healthy. And certainly God desired the production of large crops of healthy children. Mind doctors of to-day said that all cases of nervous breakdown occurred in persons whose parents had not led harmonious lives.

So Fittleworth might well have been selected as the lightning conductor over the house of Tietjens. And the selection was quite a good one on the part of the Unseen Powers. And no doubt predestined! There was no accident about Mark’s being under the ægis – if that was what you called it – of the Earl. Mark had for long been one of the powers of the land, so had Fittleworth. They had moved in the same spheres – the rather mysterious spheres of Good People – who ruled the destinies of the nation in so far as the more decorative and more splendid jobs were concerned. They must have met about, here and there, constantly for years. And Mark had indicated that it was in that neighbourhood that he wanted to end his
days
simply because he wanted to be near the Fittleworths who could be calculated on to look after his Marie Léonie and the rest of them.

For the matter of that, Fittleworth himself, like God, was on the side of the stuffy domesticities and on the side of women who were in the act of producing healthy children. Early in life he had had a woman to whom he was said to have been hopelessly attached and whom he had acquired in romantic circumstances – a famous dancer whom he had snapped up under the nose of a very Great Person indeed. And the woman had died in childbirth – or had given birth to an infant child and gone mad and committed suicide after that achievement. At any rate for months and months, Fittleworth’s friends had had to sit up night after night with him so that he might not kill himself.

Later – after he had married Cammie in the search for a domesticity that, except for his hounds he had made really almost stuffy – he had interested himself – and of course his countess – in the cause of providing tranquil conditions for women before childbirth. They had put up a perfectly lovely lying-in almshouse right under their own windows, down there.

So there it was – and, as she took her sideways glance at Fittleworth high up there in the air beside her, she was perfectly aware that she might be in for such a duel with him as had seldom yet fallen to her lot.

He had begun it by saying: ‘God damn it, Campion, ought Helen Lowther to be down there?’ Then he had put it, as upon her, Sylvia’s information, that the cottage was in effect a disorderly house. But he had added: ‘If what you say is true?’

That of course was distinctly dangerous, for Fittleworth probably knew quite well that it had been at her, Sylvia’s instigation that Helen Lowther
was
down there. And he was letting her know that if it
was
at her instigation and if the house was really in her belief a brothel, his countess would be frightfully displeased. Frightfully!

Helen Lowther was of no particular importance, except to the Countess – and, of course, to Michael. She was one of those not unattractive Americans that drift over here and enjoy themselves with frightfully simple things. She liked visiting ruins and chattering about nothing in
particular
and galloping on the downs and talking to old servants and she liked the adoration of Michael. Probably she would have turned down the adoration of anyone older.

And the Countess liked to preserve the innocence of young American women. The Countess was fiftyish now and of a generation that preserved a certain stiffness along with a certain old-fashioned broadness of mind and outspokenness. She was of a class of American that had once seemed outrageously wealthy and who, if in the present stage of things they did not seem overwhelming, yet retained an aspect of impressive comfort and social authority and she moved in a set most of whose individuals, American, English, or even French, were of much the same class, at least by marriage, as herself. She tolerated – she even liked – Sylvia, but she might well get mad if from under her roof Helen Lowther, who was in her charge, should come into social contact with an irregular couple. You never knew when that point of view might not crop up in women of that date and class.

Sylvia, however, had chanced it. She had to – and in the end it could only be pulling the string of one more shower-bath. It was a shower-bath formidably charged – but that was her vocation in life and, if Campion had to lose India, she could always pursue her vocation in other countrysides. She was tired, but not as tired as all that!

So Sylvia had chanced saying that she supposed Helen Lowther could look after herself and had added a salacious quip to keep the speech in character. She knew nothing really of Helen Lowther’s husband, who was probably a lean man with some avocation in a rather dim West. But he could not be very
impressionné
or he would not let his attractive young wife roam for ever over Europe, alone.

His Lordship gave no further sign beyond repeating that if that fellow was the sort of fellow Mrs. Tietjens said he was, Her Ladyship would properly curl his whiskers. And in face of that Sylvia simply had to make a concession to the extent of saying that she did not see why Helen Lowther could not visit a show cottage that was known, apparently, over half America. And perhaps buy some old sticks.

His Lordship removed his gaze from the distant hills and turned a long, cool, rather impertinent glance on her. He said:

‘Ah, if it’s only that …’ and nothing more. And, at that, she chanced it again:

‘If,’ she said slowly too, ‘you think Helen Lowther is in need of protection I don’t mind if I go down and look after her myself!’

The General, who had tried several interjections, now exclaimed:

‘Surely you wouldn’t meet that fellow!’ … And that rather spoilt it.

For Fittleworth could take the opportunity to leave her to do what he was at liberty to regard as the directions of her natural protector. Otherwise he must have said something to give away his attitude. So she had to give away more of her own with the words:

‘Christopher is not down here. He has taken an aeroplane to York – to save Groby Great Tree. Your man Speeding saw him when he went to get your saddle. Getting into a plane.’ She added: ‘But he’s too late. Mrs. de Bray Pape had a letter yesterday to say the tree had been cut down. At her orders!’

Fittleworth said: ‘Good God!’ Nothing more!

The General regarded him as one fearing to be struck by lightning. Campion had already told her over and over again that Fittleworth would rage like a town bull at the bare idea that the tenant of a furnished house should interfere with its owner’s timber… . But Fittleworth merely continued to look away, communing with the handle of his crop. That called, Sylvia knew, for another concession and she said:

‘Now, Mrs. de Bray Pape has got cold feet. Horribly cold feet. That’s why she’s down there. She’s got the idea that Mark may have her put in prison!’ She added further:

‘She wanted to take my boy, Michael, with her to intercede. As the heir he has some right to a view!’

And from those speeches of hers Sylvia had the measure of her dread of that silent man. She was more tired than she thought and the idea of India more attractive.

At that point Fittleworth exclaimed:

‘Damn it all, I’ve got to settle the hash of that fellow Gunning!’

He turned his horse’s head along the road and beckoned the General towards him with his crop-handle. The General gazed back at her appealingly, but Sylvia knew that she had to stop there and await Fittleworth’s verdict from the General’s lips. She wasn’t even to have any duel of
sous-entendus
with Fittleworth.

She clenched her fingers on her crop and looked towards Gunning… . If she was going to be asked by the Countess through old Campion to pack up, bag and baggage, and leave the house she would at least get what she could out of that fellow whom she had never yet managed to approach.

The horses of the General and Fittleworth, relieved to be out of the neighbourhood of Sylvia’s chestnut, minced friendlily along the road, the mare liking her companion.

‘This fellow Gunning,’ His Lordship began … He continued with great animation:

‘About these gates … You are aware that my estate carpenter repairs… .’

Those were the last words she heard and she imagined Fittleworth continuing for a long time about his bothering gates in order to put the General quite off his guard – and no doubt for the sake of manners. Then he would drop in some shot that would be terrible to the old General. He might even cross-question him as to facts, with sly, side questions, looking away over the country.

For that she cared very little. She did not pretend to be a historian: she entertained rather than instructed. And she had conceded enough to Fittleworth. Or perhaps it was to Cammie. Cammie was a great, fat, good-natured dark thing with pockets under her liquid eyes. But she had a will. And by telling Fittleworth that she had not incited Helen Lowther and the two others to make an incursion into the Tietjenses’ household Sylvia was aware that she had made an important concession.

She hadn’t intended to weaken. It had happened. She had intended to chance conveying the idea that she wanted to worry Christopher and his companion into leaving that country.

The heavy man with the three horses approached slowly, with the air of a small army in the narrow road. He was grubby and unbuttoned, but he regarded her intently with eyes a little bloodshot. He said from a distance something
that
she did not altogether understand. It was about her chestnut. He was asking her to back that ’ere chestnut’s tail into the hedge. She was not used to being spoken to by the lower classes. She kept her horse along the road. In that way the fellow could not pass. She knew what was the matter. Her chestnut would lash out at Gunning’s charges if they got near its stern. In the hunting season it wore a large ‘K’ on its tail.

Nevertheless the fellow must be a good man with horses; otherwise he would not be perched on one with the stirrups crossed over the saddle in front of him and lead two others. She did not know that she would care to do that herself nowadays; there had been a time when she would have. She had intended to slip down from the chestnut and hand it over to Gunning. Once she was down on the road he could not very well refuse. But she felt disinclined to cock her leg over the saddle. He looked like a fellow who could refuse.

He refused. She had asked him to hold her horse whilst she went down and spoke to his master. He had made no motion towards doing so; he had continued to stare fixedly at her. She had said:

‘You’re Captain Tietjens’ servant, aren’t you? I’m his wife. Staying with Lord Fittleworth!’

He had made no answer and no movement except to draw the back of his right hand across his left nostril – for lack of a handkerchief. He said something incomprehensible – but not conciliatory. Then he began a longer speech. That she understood. It was to the effect that he had been thirty years, boy and man with His Lordship and the rest of his time with the Cahptn. He also pointed out that there was a hitching post and chain by the gate there. But he did not advise her to hitch to it. The chestnut would kick to flinders any cart that came along the road. And the mere idea of the chestnut lashing out and injuring itself caused her to shudder; she was a good horsewoman.

The conversation went with long pauses. She was in no hurry; she would have to wait till Campion or Fittleworth came back – with the verdict, probably. The fellow, when he used short sentences, was incomprehensible because of his dialect. When he spoke longer she got a word or two out of it.

It troubled her a little, now, that Edith Ethel might be coming along the road. Practically she had promised to meet her at that spot and at about that moment, Edith Ethel proposing to sell her love-letters to Christopher – or through him… . The night before she had told Fittleworth that Christopher had bought that place below her with money he had from Lady Macmaster because Lady Macmaster had been his mistress. Fittleworth had boggled at that … it had been at that moment that he had gone rather stiff to her.

As a matter of fact Christopher had bought that place out of a windfall. Years before – even before she had married him – he had had a legacy from an aunt and in his visionary way had invested it in some Colonial – very likely Canadian – property or invention or tramway concession because he considered that some remote place, owing to its geographical position on some road – was going to grow. Apparently during the war it had grown and the completely forgotten investment had paid nine and sixpence in the pound. Out of the blue. It could not be helped. With a monetary record of visionariness and generosity such as Christopher had behind him, some chickens must now and then come home – some visionary investment turn out sound, some debtor turn honest. She understood even that some colonel who had died on Armistice night and to whom Christopher had lent a good sum in hundreds had turned honest. At any rate his executors had written to ask her for Christopher’s address with a view to making payments. She hadn’t at the time known Christopher’s address, but no doubt they had got it from the War Office or somewhere.

No doubt with windfalls like those he had kept afloat, for she did not believe the old-furniture business as much as paid its way. She had heard through Mrs. Cramp that the American partner had embezzled most of the money that should have gone to Christopher. You should not do business with Americans. Christopher, it is true, had years ago – during the war – predicted an American invasion – as he always predicted everything. He had indeed said that if you wanted to have money you must get it from where money was going to; in other words, if you wanted to sell, you must prepare to sell what was wanted. And they wanted old furniture more than anything else. She didn’t
mind.
She was already beginning a little campaign with Mrs. de Bray Pape to make her re-furnish Groby – to make her export all the clumsy eighteen-forty mahogany that the great house contained, to Sante Fé or wherever it was that Mr. Pape lived alone, and to re-furnish with Louis Quatorze as befitted the spiritual descendant of the Maintenon. The worst of it was that Mr. Pape was stingy.