Parade's End (30 page)

Tietjens and the General had met with the restrained cordiality of English gentlemen who had some years before accused each other of perjury in a motor accident. On the second morning a violent quarrel had broken out between them on the subject of whether the General had or hadn’t sounded his horn. The General had ended up by shouting … really shouting:

‘By God! If I ever get you under my command… .’

Tietjens remembered that he had quoted and given the number of a succinct paragraph in King’s Regs. dealing with the fate of general or higher field officers who gave their subordinates bad confidential reports because of private quarrels. The General had exploded into noises that ended in laughter.

‘What a rag-bag of a mind you have, Chrissie!’ he said. ‘What’s King’s Regs. to you? And how do you know it’s paragraph 66 or whatever you say it is? I don’t.’ He added more seriously: ‘
What
a fellow you are for getting into obscure rows! What in the world do you do it for?’

That afternoon Tietjens had gone to stop, a long way up in the moors, with his son, the nurse, his sister Effie and her children. They were the last days of happiness he was to know and he hadn’t known so many. He was then content. He played with his boy who, thank God, was beginning to grow healthy at last. He walked about the moors with his sister Effie, a large, plain, parson’s wife, who had no conversation at all, though at times they talked of their mother. The moors were like enough to those above Groby to make them happy. They lived in a bare, grim farmhouse, drank great quantities of buttermilk and ate great quantities of Wensleydale. It was the hard, frugal life of his desire and his mind was at rest.

His mind was at rest because there was going to be a war. From the first moment of his reading the paragraph about the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand he had known that, calmly and with assurance. Had he imagined that this country would come in he would not have known a mind at rest. He loved this country for the run of its hills, the shape of its elm trees and the way the heather, running uphill to the skyline, meets the blue of
the
heavens. War for this country could only mean humiliation, spreading under the sunlight, an almost invisible pall over the elms, the hills, the heather, like the vapour that spread from … oh, Middlesbrough! We were fitted neither for defeat nor for victory; we could be true to neither friend nor foe. Not even to ourselves!

But of war for us he had no fear. He saw our Ministry sitting tight till the opportune moment and then grabbing a French channel port or a few German colonies as the price of neutrality. And he was thankful to be out of it; for his back-doorway out – his second! – was the French Foreign Legion. First Sylvia: then that! Two tremendous disciplines, for the soul and for the body.

The French he admired: for their tremendous efficiency, for their frugality of life, for the logic of their minds, for their admirable achievements in the arts, for their neglect of the industrial system, for their devotion, above all, to the eighteenth century. It would be restful to serve, if only as a slave, people who saw clearly, coldly, straight; not obliquely and with hypocrisy only such things as should deviously conduce to the standard of comfort of hogs and to lecheries winked at… . He would rather sit for hours on a bench in a barrack-room polishing a badge in preparation for the cruellest of route marches of immense lengths under the Algerian sun.

For, as to the Foreign Legion, he had had no illusion. You were treated not as a hero, but as a whipped dog; he was aware of all the
asticoteries
, the cruelties, the weight of the rifle, the cells. You would have six months of training in the desert and then be hurtled into the line to be massacred without remorse … as foreign dirt. But the prospect seemed to him one of deep peace: he had never asked for soft living and now was done with it… . The boy was healthy; Sylvia, with the economies they had made, very rich … and even at that date he was sure that, if the friction of himself, Tietjens, were removed, she would make a good mother… .

Obviously he might survive; but after that tremendous physical drilling what survived would not be himself, but a man with cleaned, sand-dried bones: a clear mind. His private ambition had always been for saintliness: he must be able to touch pitch and not be defiled. That he knew marked him off as belonging to the sentimental branch
of
humanity. He couldn’t help it: Stoic or Epicurean; Caliph in the harem or Dervish desiccating in the sand; one or the other you must be. And his desire was to be a saint of the Anglican variety … as his mother had been, without convent, ritual, vows, or miracles to be performed by your relics! That sainthood, truly, the Foreign Legion might give you… . The desire of every English gentleman from Colonel Hutchinson upwards. A mysticism… .

Remembering the clear sunlight of those naïvetés – though in his blue gloom he had abated no jot of the ambition – Tietjens sighed deeply as he came back for a moment to regard his dining-room. Really, it was to see how much time he had left in which to think out what to say to Port Scatho… . Port Scatho had moved his chair over to beside Sylvia and, almost touching her, was leaning over and recounting the griefs of his sister who was married to a lunatic. Tietjens gave himself again for a moment to the luxury of self-pity. He considered that he was dull-minded, heavy, ruined, and so calumniated that at times he believed in his own infamy, for it is impossible to stand up for ever against the obloquy of your kind and remain unhurt in the mind. If you hunch your shoulders too long against a storm your shoulders will grow bowed… .

His mind stopped for a moment and his eyes gazed dully at Sylvia’s letter which lay open on the table-cloth. His thoughts came together, converging on the loosely-written words:

‘For the last nine months a woman …’

He wondered swiftly what he had already said to Port Scatho: only that he had known of his wife’s letter; not when! And that he approved! Well, on principle! He sat up. To think that one could be brought down to thinking so slowly!

He ran swiftly over what had happened in the train from Scotland and before… .

Macmaster had turned up one morning beside their breakfast table in the farmhouse, much agitated, looking altogether too small in a cloth cap and a new grey tweed suit. He had wanted £50 to pay his bill with; at some place up the line above … above … Berwick suddenly flashed into Tietjens’ mind… .

That was the geographic position. Sylvia was at Bamborough on the coast (junction Wooler); he, himself, to the north-west, on the moors. Macmaster to the north-east of him, just over the border, in some circumspect beauty spot where you did not meet people. Both Macmaster and Mrs. Duchemin would know that country and gurgle over its beastly literary associations… . The Shirra! Maida! Pet Marjorie … Faugh! Macmaster would, no doubt, turn an honest penny by writing articles about it and Mrs. Duchemin would hold his hand… .

She had become Macmaster’s mistress, as far as Tietjens knew, after a dreadful scene in the rectory, Duchemin having mauled his wife like a savage dog, and Macmaster in the house… . It was natural: a Sadic reaction as it were. But Tietjens rather wished they hadn’t. Now it appeared they had been spending a week together … or more. Duchemin by that time was in an asylum… .

From what Tietjens had made out they had got out of bed early one morning to take a boat and see the sunrise on some lake and had passed an agreeable day together quoting, ‘Since when we stand side by side only hands may meet’ and other poems of Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti, no doubt to justify their sin. On coming home they had run their boat’s nose into the tea-table of the Port Scathos with Mr. Brownlie, the nephew, just getting out of a motor to join them. The Port Scatho group were spending the night at the Macmasters’ hotel which backed on to the lake. It was the ordinary damn sort of thing that must happen in these islands that are only a few yards across.

The Macmasters appear to have lost their heads frightfully, although Lady Port Scatho had been as motherly as possible to Mrs. Duchemin; so motherly, indeed, that if they had not been unable to observe anything, they might have recognised the Port Scathos as backers rather than spies upon themselves. It was, no doubt, however, Brownlie who had upset them: he wasn’t very civil to Macmaster, whom he knew as a friend of Tietjens. He had dashed up from London in his motor to consult his uncle, who was dashing down from the west of Scotland, about the policy of the bank in that moment of crisis… .

Macmaster, anyhow, did not spend the night in the hotel, but went to Jedburgh or Melrose or some such
place,
turning up again almost before it was light to have a frightful interview about five in the morning with Mrs. Duchemin, who, towards three, had come to a disastrous conclusion as to her condition. They had lost their nerves for the first time in their association, and they had lost them very badly indeed, the things that Mrs. Duchemin said to Macmaster seeming almost to have passed belief… .

Thus, when Macmaster turned up at Tietjens’ breakfast, he was almost out of his mind. He wanted Tietjens to go over in the motor he had brought, pay the bill at the hotel, and travel down to town with Mrs. Duchemin, who was certainly in no condition to travel alone. Tietjens was also to make up the quarrel with Mrs. Duchemin and to lend Macmaster £50 in cash, as it was then impossible to change cheques anywhere. Tietjens got the money from his old nurse, who, because she distrusted banks, carried great sums in £5 notes in a pocket under her underpetticoat.

Macmaster, pocketing the money, had said:

‘That makes exactly two thousand guineas that I owe you. I’m making arrangements to repay you next week… .’

Tietjens remembered that he had rather stiffened and had said: ‘For God’s sake don’t. I beg you not to. Have Duchemin properly put under trustees in lunacy, and leave his capital alone. I really beg you. You don’t know what you’ll be letting yourselves in for. You don’t owe me anything and you can always draw on me.’

Tietjens never knew what Mrs. Duchemin had done about her husband’s estate over which she had at that date had a power of attorney; but he had imagined that, from that time on, Macmaster had felt a certain coldness for himself and that Mrs. Duchemin had hated him. During several years Macmaster had been borrowing hundreds at a time from Tietjens. The affair with Mrs. Duchemin had cost her lover a good deal: he had week-ended almost continuously in Rye at the expensive hostel. Moreover, the famous Friday parties for geniuses had been going on for several years now, and these had meant new furnishings, bindings, carpets, and loans to geniuses – at any rate before Macmaster had had the ear of the Royal Bounty. So the sum had grown to £2,000, and now
to
guineas. And, from that date, the Macmasters had not offered any repayment.

Macmaster had said that he dare not travel with Mrs. Duchemin because all London would be going south by that train. All London had. It pushed in at every conceivable and inconceivable station all down the line – it was the great rout of the 3–8–14. Tietjens had got on board at Berwick, where they were adding extra coaches, and by giving a £5 note to the guard, who hadn’t been able to promise isolation for any distance, had got a locked carriage. It hadn’t remained locked for long enough to let Mrs. Duchemin have her cry out – but it had apparently served to make some mischief. The Sandbach party had got on, no doubt at Wooler; the Port Scatho party somewhere else. Their petrol had run out somewhere and sales were stopped, even to bankers. Macmaster, who, after all, had travelled by the same train, hidden beneath two blue-jackets, had picked up Mrs. Duchemin at King’s Cross and that had seemed the end of it.

Tietjens, back in his dining-room, felt relief and also anger. He said:

‘Port Scatho. Time’s getting short. I’d like to deal with this letter if you don’t mind.’

Port Scatho came as if up out of a dream. He had found the process of attempting to convert Mrs. Tietjens to divorce law reform very pleasant – as he always did. He said:

‘Yes! … Oh, yes!’

Tietjens said slowly:

‘If you can listen… . Macmaster has been married to Mrs. Duchemin exactly nine months… . Have you got that? Mrs. Tietjens did not know this till this afternoon. The period Mrs. Tietjens complains of in her letter is nine months. She did perfectly right to write the letter. As such I approve of it. If she had known that the Macmasters were married she would not have written it. I didn’t know she was going to write it. If I had known she was going to write it I should have requested her not to. If I had requested her not to she would, no doubt, not have done so. I did know of the letter at the moment of your coming in. I had heard of it at lunch only ten minutes before. I should, no doubt, have heard of it before, but this is the first time I have lunched at home in four months. I have to-day had
a
day’s leave as being warned for foreign service. I have been doing duty at Ealing. To-day is the first opportunity I have had for serious business conversation with Mrs. Tietjens… . Have you got all that? …’

Port Scatho was running towards Tietjens, his hand extended, and over his whole shining personage the air of an enraptured bridegroom. Tietjens moved his right hand a little to the right, thus eluding the pink, well-fleshed hand of Port Scatho. He went on frigidly:

‘You had better, in addition, know as follows: The late Mr. Duchemin was a scatological – afterwards a homicidal – lunatic. He had recurrent fits, usually on a Saturday morning. That was because he fasted – not abstained merely – on Fridays. On Fridays he also drank. He had acquired the craving for drink when fasting, from finishing the sacramental wine after communion services. That is a not unknown occurrence. He behaved latterly with great physical violence to Mrs. Duchemin. Mrs. Duchemin, on the other hand, treated him with the utmost consideration and concern: she might have had him certified much earlier, but, considering the pain that confinement must cause him during his lucid intervals, she refrained. I have been an eye-witness of the most excruciating heroisms on her part. As for the behaviour of Macmaster and Mrs. Duchemin, I am ready to certify – and I believe society accepts – that it has been most … oh, circumspect and right! … There has been no secret of their attachment to each other. I believe that their determination to behave with decency during their period of waiting has not been questioned… .’