Parade's End (26 page)

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Sylvia said. ‘What
are
presentation copies? I should have thought you’d had enough of the beastly Russian smells Kiev stunk of.’

Tietjens considered for a moment.

‘No! I don’t remember it,’ he said. ‘Kiev? … Oh, it’s where we were …’

‘You put half your mother’s money,’ Sylvia said, ‘into the Government of Kiev 12½ per cent. City Tramways… .’

At that Tietjens certainly winced, a type of wincing that Sylvia hadn’t wanted.

‘You’re not fit to go out to-morrow,’ she said. ‘I shall wire to old Campion.’

‘Mrs. Duchemin,’ Tietjens said woodenly. ‘Mrs. Macmaster that is, also used to burn a little incense in the room before the parties… . Those Chinese stinks … what do they call them? Well, it doesn’t matter’; he added that resignedly. Then he went on: ‘Don’t you make any mistake. Mrs. Macmaster is a very superior woman. Enormously efficient! Tremendously respected. I shouldn’t advise even you to come up against her, now she’s in the saddle.’

Mrs. Tietjens said:

‘
That
sort of woman!’

Tietjens said:

‘I don’t say you ever will come up against her. Your spheres differ. But, if you do, don’t … I say it because you seem to have got your knife into her.’

‘I don’t like that sort of thing going on under my windows,’ Sylvia said.

Tietjens said:

‘What sort of thing? … I was trying to tell you a little about Mrs. Macmaster … she’s like the woman who was the mistress of the man who burned the other fellow’s horrid book… . I can’t remember the names.’

Sylvia said quickly:

‘Don’t try!’ In a slower tone she added: ‘I don’t in the least want to know… .’

‘Well, she was an Egeria!’ Tietjens said. ‘An inspiration to the distinguished. Mrs. Macmaster is all that. The geniuses swarm round her, and with the really select ones she corresponds. She writes superior letters, about the Higher Morality usually; very delicate in feeling. Scotch naturally. When they go abroad she sends them snatches of London literary happenings; well done, mind you! And then, every now and then, she slips in something she wants Macmaster to have. But with great delicacy… . Say it’s this C.B… . she transfuses into the minds of Genius One, Two and Three the idea of a C.B. for Macmaster… . Genius No. One lunches with the Deputy Sub-Patronage Secretary, who looks after literary honours and lunches with geniuses to get the gossip… .’

‘Why,’ Sylvia said, ‘did you lend Macmaster all that money?’ Sylvia asked… .

‘Mind you,’ Tietjens continued his own speech, ‘it’s perfectly proper. That’s the way patronage
is
distributed in this country; it’s the way it should be. The only clean way. Mrs. Duchemin backs Macmaster because he’s a first-class fellow for his job. And
she
is an influence over the geniuses because she’s a first-class person for hers… . She represents the higher, nicer morality for really nice Scots. Before long she will be getting tickets stopped from being sent to people for the Academy soirées. She already does it for the Royal Bounty dinners. A little later, when Macmaster is knighted for bashing the French in the eye,
she’ll
have a tiny share in auguster assemblies… . Those people have to ask
somebody
for advice. Well, one day you’ll want to present some débutante. And you won’t get a ticket… .’

‘Then I’m glad,’ Sylvia exclaimed, ‘that I wrote to Brownie’s uncle about the woman. I was a little sorry this morning because, from what Glorvina told me, you’re in such a devil of a hole… .’

‘Who’s Brownie’s uncle?’ Tietjens asked. ‘Lord … Lord … The banker! I know Brownie’s in his uncle’s bank.’

‘Port Scatho!’ Sylvia said. ‘I wish you wouldn’t act forgetting people’s names. You overdo it.’

Tietjens’ face went a shade whiter… .

‘Port Scatho,’ he said, ‘is the chairman of the Inn Billeting Committees, of course. And you wrote to him?’

‘I’m sorry,’ Sylvia said. ‘I mean I’m sorry I said that about your forgetting… . I wrote to him and said that as a resident of the Inn I objected to your mistress – he knows the relationship, of course! – creeping in every Friday under a heavy veil and creeping out every Saturday at four in the morning.’

‘Lord Port Scatho knows about my relationship,’ Tietjens began.

‘He saw her in your arms in the train,’ Sylvia said. ‘It upset Brownie so much he offered to shut down your overdraft and return any cheques you had out marked R.D.’

‘To please you?’ Tietjens asked. ‘
Do
bankers do that sort of thing? It’s a new light on British society.’

‘I suppose bankers try to please their women friends, like other men,’ Sylvia said. ‘I told him very emphatically it wouldn’t please me … But …’ She hesitated: ‘I wouldn’t give him a chance to get back on you. I don’t want to interfere in your affairs. But Brownie doesn’t like you… .’

‘He wants you to divorce me and marry him?’ Tietjens asked.

‘How did you know?’ Sylvia asked indifferently. ‘I let him give me lunch now and then because it’s convenient to have him manage my affairs, you being away… . But of course he hates you for being in the army. All the men who aren’t hate all the men that are. And, of course, when
there’s
a woman between them the men who aren’t do all they can to do the others in. When they’re bankers they have a pretty good pull… .’

‘I suppose they have,’ Tietjens said, vaguely; ‘of course they would have… .’

Sylvia abandoned the blind-cord on which she had been dragging with one hand. In order that light might fall on her face and give more impressiveness to her words, for, in a minute or two, when she felt brave enough, she meant really to let him have her bad news! – she drifted to the fireplace. He followed her round, turning on his chair to give her his face.

She said:

‘Look here, it’s all the fault of this beastly war, isn’t it? Can you deny it? … I mean that decent, gentlemanly fellows like Brownie have turned into beastly squits!’

‘I suppose it is,’ Tietjens said dully. ‘Yes, certainly it is. You’re quite right. It’s the incidental degeneration of the heroic impulse: if the heroic impulse has too even a strain put on it the incidental degeneration gets the upper hand. That accounts for the Brownies … all the Brownies … turning squits… .’

‘Then why do you go on with it?’ Sylvia said. ‘God knows I could wangle you out if you’d back me in the least little way.’

Tietjens said:

‘Thanks! I prefer to remain in it… . How else am I to get a living? …’

‘You know then,’ Sylvia exclaimed almost shrilly. ‘You know that they won’t have you back in the office if they can find a way of getting you out… .’

‘Oh, they’ll find that!’ Tietjens said… . He continued his other speech: ‘When we go to war with France,’ he said dully… . And Sylvia knew he was only now formulating his settled opinion so as not to have his active brain to give to the discussion. He must be thinking hard of the Wannop girl! With her littleness: her tweed-skirtishness… . A provincial miniature of herself, Sylvia Tietjens… . If she, then, had been miniature, provincial… . But Tietjens’ words cut her as if she had been lashed with a dog-whip. ‘We shall behave more creditably,’ he had said, ‘because there will be less heroic impulse about it. We shall … half of us … be ashamed
of
ourselves. So there will be much less incidental degeneration.’

Sylvia, who by that was listening to him, abandoned the consideration of Miss Wannop and the pretence that obsessed her, of Tietjens talking to the girl, against a background of books at Macmaster’s party. She exclaimed:

‘Good God! What are you talking about? …’

Tietjens went on:

‘About our next war with France… . We’re the natural enemies of the French. We have to make our bread either by robbing them or making catspaws of them… .’

Sylvia said:

‘We can’t! We couldn’t …’

‘We’ve got to!’ Tietjens said. ‘It’s the condition of our existence. We’re a practically bankrupt, overpopulated, northern country; they’re rich southerners, with a falling population. Towards 1930 we shall have to do what Prussia did in 1914. Our conditions will be exactly those of Prussia then. It’s the … what is it called? …’

‘But …’ Sylvia cried out. ‘You’re a Franco-maniac… . You’re thought to be a French agent… . That’s what’s bitching your career!’

‘I am?’ Tietjens asked uninterestedly. He added: ‘Yes, that propably
would
bitch my career… .’ He went on, with a little more animation and a little more of his mind:

‘Ah!
that
will be a war worth seeing… . None of their drunken rat-fighting for imbecile boodlers …’

‘It would drive mother mad!’ Sylvia said.

‘Oh, no it wouldn’t,’ Tietjens said. ‘It will stimulate her if she is still alive… . Our heroes won’t be drunk with wine and lechery; our squits won’t stay at home and stab the heroes in the back. Our Minister for Water-closets won’t keep two and a half million men in any base in order to get the votes of their women at a General Election – that’s been the first evil effects of giving women the vote! With the French holding Ireland and stretching in a solid line from Bristol to Whitehall, we should hang the Minister before he had time to sign the papers. And we should be decently loyal to our Prussian allies and brothers. Our Cabinet won’t hate them as they hate the French for being frugal and strong in logic and well-educated and remorselessly practical. Prussians are the sort of fellows you can be hoggish with when you want to… .’

Sylvia interjected violently:

‘For God’s sake stop it. You almost make me believe what you say is true. I tell you mother would go mad. Her greatest friend is the Duchesse Tonnerre Châteaulherault… .’

‘Well!’ Tietjens said. ‘Your greatest friends are the Med … Med … the Austrian officers you take chocolates and flowers to. That there was all the row about … we’re at war with
them
and you haven’t gone mad!’

‘I don’t know,’ Sylvia said. ‘Sometimes I think I am going mad!’ She drooped. Tietjens, his face very strained, was looking at the table-cloth. He muttered: ‘Med … Met … Kos …’ Sylvia said:

‘Do you know a poem called
Somewhere
? It begins: “Somewhere or other there must surely be …”’

Tietjens said:

‘I’m sorry. No! I haven’t been able to get up my poetry again.’

Sylvia said:

‘
Don’t!
’ She added: ‘You’ve got to be at the War Office at 4.15, haven’t you? What’s the time now?’ She extremely wanted to give him her bad news before he went; she extremely wanted to put off giving it as long as she could. She wanted to reflect on the matter first; she wanted also to keep up a desultory conversation, or he might leave the room. She didn’t want to have to say to him: ‘Wait a minute, I’ve something to say to you!’ for she might not, at that moment, be in the mood. He said it was not yet two. He could give her an hour and a half more.

To keep the conversation going, she said:

‘I suppose the Wannop girl is making bandages or being a Waac. Something forceful.’

Tietjens said:

‘No; she’s a pacifist. As pacifist as you. Not so impulsive; but, on the other hand, she has more arguments. I should say she’ll be in prison before the war’s over… .’

‘A nice time you must have between the two of us,’ Sylvia said. The memory of her interview with the great lady nicknamed Glorvina – though it was not at all a good nickname – was coming over her forcibly.

She said:

‘I suppose you’re always talking it over with her? You see her every day.’

She imagined that that might keep him occupied for a minute or two. He said – she caught the sense of it only – and quite indifferently that he had tea with Mrs. Wannop every day. She had moved to a place called Bedford Park, which was near his office: not three minutes’ walk. The War Office had put up a lot of huts on some public green in that neighbourhood. He only saw the daughter once a week, at most. They never talked about the war; it was too disagreeable a subject for the young woman. Or rather, too painful… . His talk gradually drifted into unfinished sentences.

They played that comedy occasionally, for it is impossible for two people to live in the same house and not have some common meeting ground. So they would each talk, sometimes talking at great length and with politeness, each thinking his or her thoughts till they drifted into silence.

And, since she had acquired the habit of going into retreat – with an Anglican sisterhood in order to annoy Tietjens, who hated convents and considered that the communions should not mix – Sylvia had acquired also the habit of losing herself almost completely in reveries. Thus she was now vaguely conscious that a greyish lump, Tietjens, sat at the head of a whitish expanse: the lunch-table. There were also books … actually she was seeing a quite different figure and other books – the books of Glorvina’s husband, for the great lady had received Sylvia in that statesman’s library.

Glorvina, who was the mother of two of Sylvia’s absolutely most intimate friends, had sent for Sylvia. She wished, kindly and even wittily, to remonstrate with Sylvia because of her complete abstention from any patriotic activity. She offered Sylvia the address of a place in the city where she could buy wholesale and ready-made diapers for babies which Sylvia could present to some charity or other as being her own work. Sylvia said she would do nothing of the sort, and Glorvina said she would present the idea to poor Mrs. Pilsenhauser. She – Glorvina – said she spent some time every day thinking out acts of patriotism for the distressed rich with foreign names, accents or antecedents… .

Glorvina was a fiftyish lady with a pointed, grey face and a hard aspect; but when she was inclined to be witty
or
to plead earnestly she had a kind manner. The room in which they were was over a Belgravia back garden. It was lit by a skylight and the shadows from above deepened the lines of her face, accentuating the rather dusty grey of the hair as well as both the hardness and the kind manner. This very much impressed Sylvia, who was used to seeing the lady by artificial light… .

She said, however:

‘You don’t suggest, Glorvina, that I’m the distressed rich with a foreign name!’