Parade's End (127 page)

She was, indeed, in a fine taking that morning – Mrs. de Bray Pape. In hauling out the stump of Groby Great Tree the wood-cutters had apparently brought down two-thirds of the ball-room exterior wall and that vast, gloomy room, with its immense lustres was wrecked along with the old school-rooms above it. As far as she could make out from the steward’s letter, Christopher’s boyhood’s bedroom had practically disappeared… . Well, if Groby Great Tree did not like Groby House it had finely taken its dying revenge… . A nice shock Christopher would get! Anyhow Mrs. de Bray Pape had pretty well mangled the great dovecote in erecting in it a new power station.

But apparently it was going to mangle the Papes to the tune of a pretty penny and apparently Mr. Pape might be expected to give his wife no end of a time… . Well, you can’t expect to be God’s Vicegerent of England without barking your shins on old, hard things.

No doubt Mark knew all about it by now. Perhaps it had killed him. She hoped it hadn’t because she still hoped to play him some tidy little tricks before she had done with him… . If he were dead or dying beneath that parallelogram of thatch down among the apple boughs all sorts of things might be going to happen. Quite inconvenient things.

There would be the title. She quite definitely did not want the title and it would become more difficult to decry Christopher. People with titles and great possessions are vastly more difficult to decry than impoverished commoners, because the scale of morality changes. Titles and great possessions expose you to great temptations – you may be excused if you succumb. It is scandalous, on the other hand, that the indigent should have any fun!

So that sitting rather restfully in the sunlight on her horse, Sylvia felt like a general who is losing the fruits of victory. She did not much care. She had got down Groby
Great
Tree: that was as nasty a blow as the Tietjenses had had in ten generations.

But then a queer, disagreeable thought went through her mind, just as Gunning at last made again a semi-comprehensible remark. Perhaps in letting Groby Great Tree be cut down God was lifting the ban off the Tietjenses. He might well.

Gunning, however, had said something like:

‘Shuddn’ gaw dahn theer. Ride Boldero up to farm ’n put he in loose box.’ She gathered that if she would ride her horse to some farm he could be put in a loose box and she could rest in the farmer’s parlour. Gunning was looking at her with a queer, intent look. She could not just think what it meant.

Suddenly it reminded her of her childhood. Her father had had a head gardener just as gnarled and just as apparently autocratic. That was it. She had not been much in the country for thirty years. Apparently country people had not changed much. Times change; probably people do not, much.

For it came back to her with sudden extraordinary clearness. The side of a greenhouse, down there in the west where she had been ‘Miss Sylvia, oh, Miss
Sylvia
’, for a whole army of protesting retainers, and that old, brown, gnarled fellow, who was equally ‘Mr. Carter’ for them all, except her father. Mr. Carter had been potting geranium shoots and she had been teasing a little white kitten. She was thirteen with immense plaits of blond hair. The kitten had escaped from her and was rubbing itself, its back arched against the leggings of Mr. Carter, who had a special affection for it. She had proposed – merely to torment Mr. Carter – to do something to the kitten, to force its paws into walnut shells perhaps. She had so little meant to hurt the kitten that she had forgotten what it was she had proposed to do. And suddenly the heavy man, his bloodshot eyes fairly blazing, had threatened if she so much as blew on that kitten’s fur, to thrash her on a part of her anatomy on which public school-boys rather than young ladies are usually chastised … so that she would not be able to sit down for a week, he had said.

Oddly enough it had given a queer pleasure, that returned always with the recollection. She had never otherwise in her life been threatened with physical
violence,
but she knew that within herself the emotion had often and often existed: If only Christopher had thrashed her within an inch of her life … Or yes – there had been Drake… . He had half killed her on the night before her wedding to Christopher. She had feared for the child within her! That emotion had been unbearable!

She said to Gunning – and she felt for all the world as if she were trying a torment on Mr. Carter of years ago:

‘I don’t see why I need go to the farm. I can perfectly well ride Boldero down this path. I must certainly speak to your master.’

She had really no immediate notion of doing anything of the sort, but she turned her horse towards the wicket gate that was a little beyond Gunning.

He scrambled off his horse with singular velocity and under the necks of those he led. It was like the running of an elephant and, with all the reins bunched before him, he almost fell with his back on the little wicket back towards whose latch she had been extending the handle of her crop… . She had not meant to raise it. She swore she had not meant to raise it. The veins stood out in his hairy, open neck and shoulders. He said: No, she didn’!

Her chestnut was reaching its teeth out towards the led horses. She was not certain that he heard her when she asked if he did not know that she was the wife of the Captain, his master; and guest of Lord Fittleworth, his ex-master. Mr. Carter certainly had not heard her years ago when she had reminded him that she was his master’s daughter. He had gone on fulminating. Gunning was doing that, too – but more slowly and heavily. He said first that the Cahptn would tan her hide if she so much as disturbed his brother by a look; he would hide her within an inch of her life. As he had done already.

Sylvia said that by God he never had; if he said he had, he lied. Her immediate reaction was to resent the implication that she was not as good a man as Christopher. He seemed to have been boasting that he had physically corrected her.

Gunning continued drily:

‘You put it in th’ papers yourself. My ol’ missus read it me. Powerful set on Sir Mark’s comfort, the Cahptn is. Throw you downstairs, the Cahptn did ’n give you cancer. It doesn’ show!’

That was the worst of attracting chivalrous attentions from professional people. She had begun divorce proceedings against Christopher, in the way of a petition for restitution of conjugal rights, compounding with the shade of Father Consett and her conscience as a Roman Catholic by arguing that a petition for the restoration of your husband from a Strange Woman is not the same as divorce proceedings. In England at that date it was a preliminary measure and caused as much publicity as the real thing to which she had no intention of proceeding. It caused quite a terrific lot of publicity because her counsel, in his enthusiasm for the beauty and wit of his client – in his chambers the dark, Gaelic, youthful K. C. had been impressively sentimental in his enthusiasm – learned counsel had overstepped the rather sober bounds of the preliminary stage of these cases. He knew that Sylvia’s aim was not divorce, but the casting of all possible obloquy on Christopher, and in his fervid Erse oratory he had cast as much mud as an enthusiastic terrier with its hind legs out of a fox’s hole. It had embarrassed Sylvia herself, sitting brilliantly in Court. And it had roused the judge, who knew something of the case, having, like half London of his class, taken tea with the dying Sylvia beneath the crucifix and amongst the lilies of the nursing-home that was also a convent. The judge had protested against the oratory of Mr. Sylvian Hatt but Mr. Hatt had got in already a lurid picture of Christopher and Valentine in a dark, empty house on Armistice Night, throwing Sylvia downstairs and so occasioning her a fell disease from which, under the Court’s eyes, she was now fading. This had distressed Sylvia herself, for, rather with the idea of showing the Court and the world in general what a fool Christopher was to have left her for a little brown sparrow, she had chosen to appear in all radiance and health. She had hoped for the appearance of Valentine in Court. It had not occurred.

The judge had asked Mr. Hatt if he really proposed to bring in evidence that Captain Tietjens and Miss Wannop had enticed Mrs. Tietjens into a dark house – and on a shake of the head that Sylvia had not been able to refrain from giving Mr. Hatt, the judge had made some extremely rude remarks to her counsel. Mr. Hatt was at that time standing as parliamentary candidate for a Midland
borough
and was anxious to attract as much publicity as that or any other case would give him. He had, therefore, gone bald-headed for the judge, even accusing him of being indifferent to the sufferings he was causing to Mr. Hatt’s fainting client. Rightly handled impertinence to a judge will gain quite a number of votes on the Radical side of Midland constituencies, judges being supposed to be all Tories.

Anyhow the case had been a fiasco and for the first time in her life Sylvia had felt mortification; in addition she had felt a great deal of religious fear. It had come into her mind in Court – and it came with additional vividness there above that house, that, years ago in her mother’s sitting-room in a place called Lobscheid, Father Consett had predicted that if Christopher fell in love with another woman, she, Sylvia, would perpetrate acts of vulgarity. And there she had been, not only toying with the temporal courts in a matter of marriage, which is a sacrament, but led undoubtedly into a position that she had to acknowledge was vulgar. She had precipitately left the Court when Mr. Hatt had for the second time appealed for pity for her – but she had not been able to stop him… . Pity! She appeal for pity! She had regarded herself as – she had certainly desired to be regarded as – the sword of the Lord smiting the craven and the traitor to Beauty! And was it to be supported that she was to be regarded as such a fool as to be decoyed into an empty house! Or as to let herself be thrown downstairs! … But
qui facit per alium
is herself responsible and there she had been in a position as mortifying as would have been that of any city clerk’s wife. The florid periods of Mr. Hatt had made her shiver all over and she had never spoken to him again.

And her position had been broadcast all over England – and now, here in the mouth of this gross henchman it had recurred. At the most inconvenient moment. For the thought suddenly recurred, sweeping over with immense force: God had changed sides at the cutting down of Groby Great Tree.

The first intimation she had had that God might change sides had occurred in that hateful court and had, as it were, been prophesied by Father Consett. That dark saint and martyr was in Heaven, having died for the Faith, and undoubtedly he had the ear of God. He had prophesied
that
she would toy with the temporal courts. Immediately she had felt herself degraded, as if strength had gone out from her.

Strength had undoubtedly gone out from her. Never before in her life had her mind not sprung to an emergency. It was all very well to say that she could not move physically either backwards or forwards for fear of causing a stampede amongst all those horses and that, therefore, her mental uncertainty might be excused. But it was the finger of God – or of Father Consett, who as saint and martyr, was the agent of God… . Or, perhaps, God, Himself, was here really taking a hand for the protection of His Christopher, who was undoubtedly an Anglican saint… . The Almighty might well be dissatisfied with the relatively amiable Catholic saint’s conduct of the case in which the saint of the other persuasion was involved. For surely Father Consett might be expected to have a soft spot for her whereas you could not expect the Almighty to be unfair even to Anglicans… . At any rate, up over the landscape, the hills, the sky, she felt the shadow of Father Consett, the arms extended as if in a gigantic cruciform – and then above and behind that an … an August Will!

Gunning, his bloodshot eyes fixed on her, moved his lips vindictively. She had, in face of those ghostly manifestations across hills and sky, a moment of real panic. Such as she had felt when they had been shelling near the hotel in France when she had sat amidst palms with Christopher under a glass roof… . A mad desire to run – or as if your soul ran about inside you like a parcel of rats in a pit awaiting an unseen terrier.

What was she to do? What the devil was she to do? … She felt an itch… . She felt the very devil of a desire to confront at least Mark Tietjens … even if it should kill the fellow. Surely God could not be unfair! What was she given beauty – the dangerous remains of beauty! – for if not to impress it on the unimpressible! She ought to be given the chance at least once more to try her irresistible ram against that immovable post… . She was aware… .

Gunning was saying something to the effect that if she caused Mrs. Valentine to have a miscarriage or an idiot child ’Is Lordship would flay all the flesh off ’er bones with ’is own ridin’ crop. ’Is Lordship ’ad fair done it to ’im,
Gunning
’isself, when ’e lef ’is missis then eight and a ’arf munce gone to live with old Mother Cressy! The child was bore dead.

The words conveyed little to her… . She was aware… . She was aware… . What was she aware of? She was aware that God – or perhaps it was Father Consett that so arranged it, more diplomatically, the dear! – desired that she should apply to Rome for the dissolution of her marriage with Christopher and that she should then apply to the civil courts. She thought that probably God desired that Christopher should be freed as early as possible, Father Consett suggesting to Him the less stringent course.

A fantastic object was descending at a fly-crawl the hill road that went almost vertically up to the farm amongst the beeches. She did not care!

Gunning was saying that that wer why ’Is Lordship giv ’im th’ sack. Took away the cottage an’ ten bob a week that ’Is Lordship allowed to all as had been in his service thritty yeer.

She said: ‘What! What’s that?’ Then it came back to her that Gunning had suggested that she might give Valentine a miscarriage… .

Her breath made in her throat a little clittering sound like the trituration of barley ears; her gloved hands, reins and all, were over her eyes, smelling of morocco leather; she felt as if within her a shelf dropped away – as the platform drops away from beneath the feet of a convict they are hanging. She said: ‘Could …’ Then her mind stopped, the clittering sound in her throat continuing. Louder. Louder.