Parade's End (20 page)

Mrs. Wannop was talking to him now; he did not know what she said; he never knew afterwards what he had answered.

‘God!’ he said within himself, ‘if it’s sexual sins God punishes, He indeed is just and inscrutable!’ Because he had had physical contact with this woman before he married her; in a railway carriage, coming down from the Dukeries. An extravagantly beautiful girl!

Where was the physical attraction of her gone to now? Irresistible; reclining back as the shires rushed past… . His mind said that she had lured him on. His intellect put the idea from him. No gentleman thinks such things of his wife.

No gentleman thinks… . By God; she must have been with child by another man… . He had been fighting the conviction down all the last four months. He knew now that he had been fighting the conviction all the last four months whilst, anæsthetised, he had bathed in figures and wave-theories. Her last words had been, her very last words, late, all in white she had gone up to her dressing-room, and he had never seen her again; her last words had been about the child… . ‘Supposing,’ she had begun … He didn’t remember the rest. But he remembered her eyes. And her gesture as she peeled off her long white gloves… .

He was looking at Mrs. Wannop’s ingle; he thought it a mistake in taste, really, to leave logs in an ingle during the summer. But then what are you to do with an ingle in summer. In Yorkshire cottages they shut the ingles up with painted doors. But that is stuffy, too!

He said to himself:

‘By God! I’ve had a stroke!’ and he got out of his chair to test his legs… . But he hadn’t had a stroke. It must then, he thought, be that the pain of his last consideration must be too great for his mind to register, as certain great physical pains go unperceived. Nerves, like weighing machines, can’t register more than a certain amount, then they go out of action. A tramp who had had his leg cut off by a train had told him that he had tried to get up, feeling nothing at all… . The pain comes back though …

He said to Mrs. Wannop, who was still talking:

‘I beg your pardon. I really missed what you said.’

Mrs. Wannop said:

‘I was saying that that’s the best thing I can do for you.’

He said:

‘I’m really very sorry: it was that that I missed. I’m a little in trouble you know.’

She said:

‘I know, I know. The mind wanders; but I wish you’d listen. I’ve got to go to work, so have you. I said: after tea you and Valentine will walk into Rye to fetch your luggage.’

Straining his intelligence, for, in his mind, he felt a sudden strong pleasure: sunlight on pyramidal red roof in the distance: themselves descending in a long diagonal, a green hill. God, yes, he wanted open air. Tietjens said:

‘I see. You take us both under your protection. You’ll bluff it out.’

Mrs. Wannop said rather coolly:

‘I don’t know about you both. It’s you I’m taking under my protection (it’s
your
phrase!). As for Valentine: she’s made her bed; she must lie on it. I’ve told you all that already: I can’t go over it again.’

She paused, then made another effort:

‘It’s disagreeable,’ she said, ‘to be cut off the Mountby visiting list. They give amusing parties. But I’m too old to care and they’ll miss my conversation more than I do
theirs.
Of course, I back my daughter against the cats and monkeys. Of course, I back Valentine through thick and thin. I’d back her if she lived with a married man or had illegitimate children. But I don’t approve, I don’t approve of the suffragettes: I despise their aims, I detest their methods. I don’t think young girls ought to talk to strange men. Valentine spoke to you and look at the worry it has caused you. I disapprove. I’m a woman, but I’ve made my own way: other women could do it if they liked or had the energy. I disapprove! But don’t believe that I will ever go back on any suffragette, individual, in gangs; my Valentine or any other. Don’t believe that I will ever say a word against them that’s to be repeated –
you
won’t repeat them. Or that I will ever write a word against them. No, I’m a woman and I stand by my sex!’

She got up energetically:

‘I must go and write my novel,’ she said. ‘I’ve Monday’s instalment to send off by train to-night. You’ll go into my study: Valentine will give you paper, ink, twelve different kinds of nibs. You’ll find Professor Wannop’s books all round the room. You’ll have to put up with Valentine typing in the alcove. I’ve got two serials running, one typed, the other in manuscript.’

Tietjens said:

‘But
you
!’

‘I,’ she exclaimed, ‘I shall write in my bedroom on my knee. I’m a woman and can. You’re a man and have to have a padded chair and sanctuary… . You feel fit to work? Then you’ve got till five; Valentine will get tea then. At half-past five you’ll set off to Rye. You’ll be back with your luggage and your friend and your friend’s luggage at seven.’

She silenced him imperiously with:

‘Don’t be foolish. Your friend will certainly prefer this house and Valentine’s cooking to the pub and the pub’s cooking. And he’ll save on it… . It’s
no
extra trouble. I suppose your friend won’t inform against that wretched little suffragette girl upstairs.’ She paused and said: ‘You’re
sure
you can do your work in the time and drive Valentine and her to that place … Why it’s necessary is that the girl daren’t travel by train and we’ve relations there who’ve never been connected with the suffragettes. The girl can live hid there for a bit… . But
sooner
than you shouldn’t finish your work I’d drive them myself… .’

She silenced Tietjens again: this time sharply:

‘I tell you it’s
no
extra trouble. Valentine and I
always
make our own beds. We don’t like servants among our intimate things. We can get three times as much help in the neighbourhood as we want. We’re liked here. The extra work you give will be met by extra help. We could have servants if we wanted. But Valentine and I like to be alone in the house together at night. We’re very fond of each other.’

She walked to the door and then drifted back to say:

‘You know I can’t get out of my head that unfortunate woman and her husband. We must
all
do what we can for them.’ Then she started and exclaimed: ‘But, good heavens, I’m keeping you from your work. The study’s in there, through that door.’

She hurried through the other doorway and no doubt along a passage, calling out:

‘Valentine! Valentine! Go to Christopher in the study. At once … at …’ Her voice died away.

VII

JUMPING DOWN FROM
the high step of the dog-cart the girl completely disappeared into the silver: she had on an otter-skin toque, dark, that should have been visible. But she was gone more completely than if she had dropped into deep water, into snow – or through tissue paper. More suddenly, at least! In darkness or in deep water a moving paleness would have been visible for a second, snow or a paper hoop would have left an opening. Here there had been nothing.

The constation interested him. He had been watching her intently and with concern for fear she should miss the hidden lower step, in which case she would certainly bark her shins. But she had jumped clear of the cart with unreasonable pluckiness, in spite of his: ‘Look out how you get down.’ He wouldn’t have done it himself: he couldn’t have faced jumping down into that white solidity …

He would have asked: ‘Are you all right?’ but to express more concern than the ‘look out’, which he had
expended
already, would have detracted from his stolidity. He was Yorkshire and stolid; she south country and soft, emotional, given to such ejaculations as ‘I hope you’re not hurt’, when the Yorkshireman only grunts. But soft because she was south country. She was as good as a man – a south country man. She was ready to acknowledge the superior woodenness of the north… . That was their convention, so he did not call down: ‘I hope you’re all right’, though he had desired to.

Her voice came, muffled, as if from the back of the top of his head. The ventriloquial effect was startling:

‘Make a noise from time to time. It’s ghostly down here and the lamp’s no good at all. It’s almost out.’

He returned to his constations of the concealing effect of water vapour. He enjoyed the thought of the grotesque appearance he must present in that imbecile landscape. On his right an immense, improbably brilliant horn of a moon, sending a trail as if down the sea, straight to his neck; beside the moon a grotesquely huge star; in an extravagant position above them the Plough, the only constellation that he knew; for, though a mathematician, he despised astronomy. It was not theoretical enough for the pure mathematician and not sufficiently practical for daily life. He had of course calculated the movements of abstruse heavenly bodies, but only from given figures; he had never looked for the stars of his calculations… . Above his head and all over the sky were other stars: large and weeping with light, or as the dawn increased, so paling that at times, you saw them, then missed them. Then the eye picked them up again.

Opposite the moon was a smirch or two of cloud; pink below, dark purple above, on the more pallid, lower blue of the limpid sky.

But the absurd thing was this mist! … It appeared to spread from his neck, absolutely level, absolutely silver, to infinity on each side of him. At great distances on his right black tree-shapes, in groups – there were four of them – were exactly like coral islands on a silver sea. He couldn’t escape the idiotic comparison: there wasn’t any other.

Yet it didn’t actually spread from his neck; when he now held his hands, nipple-high, like pallid fish they held black reins which ran downwards into nothingness. If he jerked the rein, the horse threw its head up. Two pricked
ears
were visible in greyness: the horse being sixteen two and a bit over, the mist might be ten-foot-high. Thereabouts… . He wished the girl would come back and jump out of the cart again. Being ready for it he would watch her disappearance more scientifically. He couldn’t of course ask her to do it again: that was irritating. The phenomenon would have proved – or it might of course disprove – his idea of smoke screens. The Chinese of the Ming dynasty were said to have approached and overwhelmed their enemies under clouds of – of course, not acrid – vapour. He had read that the Patagonians, hidden by smoke, were accustomed to approach so near to birds or beasts as to be able to take them by hand. The Greek under Paleologus the …

Miss Wannop’s voice said – from beneath the bottom board of the cart:

‘I wish you’d make some noise. It’s lonely down here, besides being possibly dangerous. There might be dicks on each side of the road.’

If they were on the marsh there certainly would be dykes – why did they call ditches ‘dykes’, and why did she pronounce it ‘dicks’? – on each side of the road. He could think of nothing to say that wouldn’t express concern and he couldn’t do that by the rules of the game. He tried to whistle ‘John Peel’! But he was no hand at whistling. He sang:

‘D’ye ken, John Peel at the break of day …’ and felt like a fool. But he kept on at it, the only tune that he knew. It was the Yorkshire Light Infantry quick-step: the regiment of his brothers in India. He wished he had been in the army, but his father hadn’t approved of having more than two younger sons in the army. He wondered if he would ever run with John Peel’s hounds again: he had once or twice. Or with any of the trencher-fed foot packs of the Cleveland district, of which there had been still several when he had been a boy. He had been used to think of himself as being like John Peel with his coat so grey. ‘Up through the heather, over Wharton’s place, the pack running wild, the heather dripping; the mist rolling up … another kind of mist than this south country silver sheet. Silly stuff! Magical! That was the word. A silly word… .’ South country … In the north the old grey mists rolled together, revealing black hillsides!

He didn’t suppose he’d have the wind now: this rotten bureaucratic life! … If he had been in the army like the two brothers, Ernest and James, next above him … But no doubt he would not have liked the army. Discipline! He supposed he would have put up with the discipline: a gentleman had to. Because
noblesse oblige
: not for fear of consequences … But army officers seemed to him pathetic. They spluttered and roared to make men jump smartly: at the end of apoplectic efforts the men jumped smartly. But there was the end of it… .

Actually, this mist was not silver, or was, perhaps, no longer silver: if you looked at it with the eye of the artist … With the exact eye! It was smirched with bars of purple, of red, of orange, delicate reflections; dark blue shadows from the upper sky where it formed drifts like snow… . The exact eye: exact observation; it was a man’s work. The only work for a man. Why then, were artists soft, effeminate, not men at all; whilst the army officer, who had the inexact mind of the schoolteacher, was a manly man? Quite a manly man, until he became an old woman!

And the bureaucrat then? Growing fat and soft like himself, or dry and stringy like Macmaster or old Ingleby? They did men’s work: exact observation: return no. 17642 with figures exact. Yet they grew hysterical: they ran about corridors or frantically rang table bells, asking with high voices of querulous eunuchs why form ninety thousand and two wasn’t ready. Nevertheless men liked the bureaucratic life: his own brother, Mark, head of the family, heir to Groby… . Fifteen years older, a quiet stick, wooden, brown, always in a bowler hat, as often as not with his racing-glasses hung around him. Attending his first-class office when he liked: too good a man for any administration to lose by putting on the screw… . But heir to Groby: what would that stick make of the place? … Let it, no doubt, and go on pottering from the Albany to race meetings – where he never betted – to Whitehall, where he was said to be indispensable… . Why indispensable? Why in heaven’s name? That stick who had never hunted, never shot; couldn’t tell coulter from plough-handle and lived in his bowler hat! … A ‘sound’ man: the archetype of all sound men. Never in his life had anyone shaken his head at Mark and said: