Complete Works of Ford Madox Ford, page 586
‘Well, then,’ Tietjens said, ‘keep the poor animals warm.’
He considered that here was the makings of a very nasty row for himself if, by any means, his sayings came round to the ears of Lord Beichan. But that he had to chance. He coud not let a horse for which he was responsible be martyred...There was too much to think about...so that nothing at all stood out to be thought of. The sun was glowing. The valley of the Seine was blue-grey, like a Gobelin tapestry. Over it all hung the shadow of a deceased Welsh soldier. An odd skylark was declaiming over an empty field behind the incinerators’ headquarters...An odd lark. For as a rule larks do not sing in December. Larks sing only when courting, or over the nest...The bird must be oversexed. 0 Nine Morgan was the other thing, that accounting for the prize-fighter!
They dropped down a mud lane between brick walls into the town...
PART TWO
I
In the admirably appointed, white-enamelled, wicker-worked, bemirrored lounge of the best hotel of that town Sylvia Tietjens sat in a wickerwork chair, not listening rather abstractedly to a staff-major who was lachrymosely and continuously begging her to leave her bedroom door unlocked that night. She said:
‘I don’t know...Yes, perhaps...I don’t know...And looked distantly into a bluish wall-mirror that, like all the rest, was framed with white-painted cork bark. She stiffened a little and said:
‘There’s Christopher!’
The staff-major dropped his hat, his stick and his gloves. His black hair, which was without parting and heavy with some preparation of a glutinous kind, moved agitatedly on his scalp. He had been saying that Sylvia had ruined his life. Didn’t Sylvia know that she had ruined his life? But for her he might have married some pure young thing. Now he exclaimed:
‘But what does he want?...Good God!...what does he want?’
‘He wants,’ Sylvia said, ‘to play the part of Jesus Christ.’
Major Perowne exclaimed:
‘Jesus Christ!...But he’s the most foul-mouthed officer in the general’s command...
‘Well,’ Sylvia said, ‘if you had married your pure young thing she’d have...What is it?...cuckolded you within nine months...
Perowne shuddered a little at the word. He mumbled:
‘I don’t see...It seems to be the other way...’
‘Oh, no, it isn’t,’ Sylvia said. ‘Think it over...Morally, you’re the husband...Immorally, I should say...Because he’s the man I want...He looks ill...Do hospital authorities always tell wives what is the matter with their husbands?’
From his angle in the chair from which he had half-emerged Sylvia seemed to him to be looking at a blank wall. ‘I don’t see him,’ Perowne said.
‘I can see him in the glass,’ Sylvia said. ‘Look! From here you can see him.’
Perowne shuddered a little more.
‘I don’t want to see him...I have to see him sometimes in the course of duty...I don’t like to...
Sylvia said:
‘You,’ in a tone of very deep contempt. ‘You only carry chocolate boxes to flappers...How can he come across you in the course of duty?...You’re not a soldier!’
Perowne said:
‘But what are we going to do? What will he do?’
‘I,’ Sylvia answered, ‘shall tell the page-boy when he comes with his card to say that I’m engaged...I don’t know what he’ll do. Hit you, very likely...He’s looking at your back now...
Perowne became rigid, sunk into his deep chair.
‘But he couldn’t!’ he exclaimed agitatedly. ‘You said that he was playing the part of Jesus Christ. Our Lord wouldn’t hit people in an hotel lounge...
‘Our Lord!’ Sylvia said contemptuously. ‘What do you know about our Lord?...Our Lord was a gentleman...Christopher is playing at being our Lord calling on the woman taken in adultery...He’s giving me the social backing that his being my husband seems to him to call for.’
A one-armed, bearded maitre d’hôtel approached them through groups of arm-chairs arranged for tête-à-tête. He said:
‘Pardon.. I did not see madame at first...’ And displayed a card on a salver. Without looking at it, Sylvia said:
‘Dites à ce monsieur...that I am occupied.’ The maitre d’hôtel moved austerely away.
‘But he’ll smash me to pieces...’ Perowne exclaimed. ‘What am I to do?...What the deuce am I to do?’ There would have been no way of exit for him except across Tietjens’ face.
With her spine very rigid and the expression of a snake that fixes a bird, Sylvia gazed straight in front of her and said nothing until she exclaimed:
‘For God’s sake leave off trembling...He would not do anything to a girl like you...He’s a man...’ The wickerwork of Perowne’s chair had been crepitating as if it had been in a railway car. The sound ceased with a jerk...Suddenly she clenched both her hands and let out a hateful little breath of air between her teeth.
‘By the immortal saints,’ she exclaimed, ‘I swear I’ll make his wooden face wince yet.’
In the bluish looking-glass, a few minutes before, she had seen the agate-blue eyes of her husband, thirty feet away, over arm-chairs and between the fans of palms. He was standing, holding a riding-whip, looking rather clumsy in the uniform that did not suit him. Rather clumsy and worn out, but completely expressionless! He had looked straight into the reflection of her eyes and then looked away. He moved so that his profile was towards her, and continued gazing motionless at an elk’s head that decorated the space of wall above glazed doors giving into the interior of the hotel. The hotel servant approaching him, he had produced a card and had given it to the servant, uttering three words. She saw his lips move in the three words: Mrs Christopher Tietjens. She said, beneath her breath:
‘Damn his chivalry!...Oh, God damn his chivalry She knew what was going on in his mind. He had seen her, with Perowne, so he had neither come towards her nor directed the servant to where she sat. For fear of embarrassing her! He would leave it to her to come to him if she wished.
The servant, visible in the mirror, had come and gone deviously back, Tietjens still gazing at the elk’s head. He had taken the card and restored it to his pocket-book and then had spoken to the servant. The servant had shrugged his shoulders with the formal hospitality of his class and, with his shoulders still shrugged and his one hand pointing towards the inner door, had preceded Tietjens into the hotel. Not one line of Tietjens’ face had moved when he had received back his card. It had been then that Sylvia had sworn that she would yet make his wooden face wince...
His face was intolerable. Heavy; fixed. Not insolent, but simply gazing over the heads of all things and created beings, into a world too distant for them to enter...And yet it seemed to her, since he was so clumsy and worn out, almost not sporting to persecute him. It was like whipping a dying bulldog...
She sank back into her chair with a movement almost of discouragement. She said:
‘He’s gone into the hotel...’
Perowne lurched agitatedly forward in his chair. He exclaimed that he was going. Then he sank discouragedly back again:
‘No, I’m not,’ he said, ‘I’m probably much safer here. I might run against him going out.’
‘You’ve realized that my petticoats protect you,’ Sylvia said contemptuously. ‘Of course, Christopher would never hit anyone in my presence.’
Major Perowne was interrupting her by asking:
‘What’s he going to do? What’s he doing in the hotel?’ Mrs Tietjens said:
‘Guess!’ She added: ‘What would you do in similar circumstances?’
‘Go and wreck your bedroom,’ Perowne answered with promptitude. ‘It’s what I did when I found you had left Yssingueux.’
Sylvia said:
‘Ah, that was what the place was called.’
Perowne groaned:
‘You’re callous,’ he said. ‘There’s no other word for it. Callous. That’s what you are.’
Sylvia asked absently why he called her callous at just that juncture. She was imagining Christopher stumping clumsily along the hotel corridor looking at bedrooms, and then giving the hotel servant a handsome tip to ensure that he should be put on the same floor as herself. She could almost hear his not disagreeable male voice that vibrated a little from the chest and made her vibrate.
Perowne was grumbling on. Sylvia was callous because she had forgotten the name of the Brittany hamlet in which they had spent three blissful weeks together, though she had left it so suddenly that all her outfit remained in the hotel.
‘Well, it wasn’t any kind of a beanfeast for me.’ Sylvia went on, when she again gave him her attention. ‘Good heavens!...Do you think it would be any kind of a beanfeast with you, pour tout potage? Why should I remember the name of the hateful place?’
Perowne said:
‘Yssingueux-les-Pervenches, such a pretty name,’ reproachfully.
‘It’s no good,’ Sylvia answered, ‘your trying to awaken sentimental memories in me. You will have to make me forget what you were like if you want to carry on with me...I’m stopping here and listening to your corncrake of a voice because I want to wait until Christopher goes out of the hotel...Then I am going to my room to tidy up for Lady Sachse’s party and you will sit here and wait for me.’
‘I’m not,’ Perowne said, ‘going to Lady Sachse’s. Why, he is going to be one of the principal witnesses to sign the marriage contract. And Old Campion and all the rest of the staff are going to be there...You don’t catch me...An unexpected prior engagement is my line. No fear.’
‘You’ll come with me, my little man,’ Sylvia said, ‘if you ever want to bask in my smile again...I’m not going to Lady Sachse’s alone, looking as if I couldn’t catch a man to escort me, under the eyes of half the French house of peers...If they’ve got a house of peers!...You don’t catch me...No fear!’ she mimicked his creaky voice. ‘You can go away as soon as you’ve shown yourself as my escort...
‘But, good God!’ Perowne cried out, ‘that’s just what I mustn’t do. Campion said that if he heard any more of my being seen about with you he would have me sent back to my beastly regiment. And my beastly regiment is in the trenches...You don’t see me in the trenches, do you?’
‘I’d rather see you there than in my own room,’ Sylvia said. ‘Any day!’
‘Ah, there you are!’ Perowne exclaimed with animation. ‘What guarantee have I that if I do what you want I shall bask in your smile as you call it? I’ve got myself into a most awful hole, bringing you here without papers. You never told me you hadn’t any papers. General O’Hara, the P.M., has raised a most awful strafe about it...And what have I got for it?...Not the ghost of a smile...And you should see old O’Hara’s purple face!...Someone woke him from his afternoon nap to report to him about your heinous case and he hasn’t recovered from the indigestion yet...Besides, he hates Tietjens Tietjens is always chipping away at his military police...O’Hara’s lambs...’
Sylvia was not listening, but she was smiling a slow smile at an inward thought. It maddened him.
‘What’s your game?’ he exclaimed. ‘Hell and hounds, what’s your game?...You can’t have come here to see...him. You don’t come here to see me, as far as I can see. Well then...’
Sylvia looked round at him with all her eyes, wide open as if she had just awakened from a deep sleep.
‘I didn’t know I was coming,’ she said. ‘It came into my head to come suddenly. Ten minutes before I started. And I came. I didn’t know papers were wanted. I suppose I could have got them if I had wanted them...You never asked me if I had any papers. You just froze on to me and had me into your special carriage...I didn’t know you were coming.’
That seemed to Perowne the last insult. He exclaimed:
‘Oh, damn it, Sylvia! you must have known...You were at the Quirks’ squash on Wednesday evening. And they knew. My best friends.’
‘Since you ask for it,’ she said, ‘I didn’t know...And I would not have come by that train if I had known you would be going by it. You force me to say rude things to you.’ She added: ‘Why can’t you be more conciliatory?’ to keep him quiet for a little. His jaw dropped down.
She was wondering where Christopher had got the money to pay for a bed at the hotel. Only a very short time before she had drawn all the balance of his banking account, except for a shilling. It was the middle of the month and he could not have drawn any more pay...That, of course, was a try on her part. He might be forced into remonstrating. In the same way she had tried on the accusation that he had carried off her sheets. It was sheer wilfulness, and when she looked again at his motionless features she knew that she had been rather stupid...But she was at the end of her tether: she had before now tried making accusations against her husband, but she had never tried inconveniencing him...Now she suddenly realized the full stupidity of which she had been guilty. He would know perfectly well that those petty frightfulnesses of hers were not in the least her note; so he would know, too, that each of them was just a try on. He would say: ‘She is trying to make me squeal. I’m damned if I will!’
She would have to adopt much more formidable methods. She said: ‘He shall...he shall...he shall come to heel.’
Major Perowne had now closed his jaw. He was reflecting. Once he mumbled: ‘More conciliatory! Holy smoke!’
She was feeling suddenly in spirits: it was the sight of Christopher had done it: the perfect assurance that they were going to live under the same roof again. She would have betted all she possessed and her immortal soul on the chance that he would not take up with the Wannop girl. And it would have been betting on a certainty!...But she had had no idea what their relations were to be, after the war. At first she had thought that they had parted for good when she had gone off from their flat at four o’clock in the morning. It had seemed logical. But, gradually, in retreat at Birkenhead, in the still, white, nun’s room, doubt had come upon her. It was one of the disadvantages of living as they did that they seldom spoke their thoughts. But that was also at times an advantage. She had certainly meant their parting to be for good. She had certainly raised her voice in giving the name of her station to the taxi-man with the pretty firm conviction that he would hear her; and she had been pretty well certain that he would take it as a sign that the breath had gone out of their union...Pretty certain. But not quite!...
She would have died rather than write to him; she would die, now, rather than give any inkling that she wanted them to live under the same roof again...She said to herself:
‘Is he writing to that girl?’ And then: ‘No!...I’m certain that he isn’t.’...She had had all his letters stopped at the flat, except for a few circulars that she let dribble through to him, so that he might imagine that all his correspondence was coming through. From the letters to him that she did read she was pretty sure that he had given no other address than the flat in Gray’s Inn...But there had been no letters from Valentine Wannop...Two from Mrs. Wannop, two from his brother Mark, one from Port Scatho, one or two from brother officers and some official chits...She said to herself that, if there had been any letters from that girl, she would have let all his letters go through, including the girl’s...Now she was not so certain that she would have.
In the glass she saw Christopher marching woodenly out of the hotel, along the path that led from door to door behind her...It came to her with extraordinary gladness — the absolute conviction that he was not corresponding with Miss Wannop. The absolute conviction...If he had come alive enough to do that he would have looked different. She did not know how he would have looked. But different...Alive! Perhaps self-conscious: perhaps...satisfied...
For some time the major had been grumbling about his wrongs. He said that he followed her about all day, like a lap-dog, and got nothing for it. Now she wanted him to be conciliatory. She said she wanted to have a man on show as escort. Well then, an escort got something...At just this moment he was beginning again with:
‘Look here...will you let me come to your room to-night or will you not?’
She burst into high, loud laughter. He said:
‘Damn it all, it isn’t any laughing matter!...Look here! You don’t know what I risk...There are A.P.M.’s and P.M.’s and deputy sub-acting A.P.M.’s walking about the corridors of all the hotels in this town, all night long...It’s as much as my job is worth...’
She put her handkerchief to her lips to hide a smile that she knew would be too cruel for him not to notice. And even when she took it away, he said:
‘Hang it all, what a cruel-looking fiend you are!...Why the devil do I hang around you?...There’s a picture that my mother’s got, by Burne-Jones...A cruel-looking woman with a distant smile...Some vampire...La Belle Dame sans Merci...That’s what you’re like.’
She looked at him suddenly with considerable seriousness...
‘See here, Potty...’ she began. He groaned:
‘I believe you’d like me to be sent to the beastly trenches...Yet a big, distinguished-looking chap like me wouldn’t have a chance...At the first volley the Germans fired, they’d pick me off...
‘Oh, Potty,’ she exclaimed, ‘try to be serious for a minute...I tell you I’m a woman who’s trying...who’s desperately wanting...to be reconciled to her husband!...I would not tell that to another soul...I would not tell it to myself...But one owes something...a parting scene, if nothing else...Well, something...to a man one’s been in bed with...I didn’t give you a parting scene at...ah, Yssingueux-les-Pervenches...so I give you this tip instead...’
He said:
‘Will you leave your bedroom door unlocked, or won’t you?’
She said:
‘If that man would throw his handkerchief to me, I would follow him round the world in my shift!...Look here...see me shake when I think of it...’ She held out her hand at the end of her long arm: hand and arm trembled together, minutely, then very much...’Well,’ she finished, ‘if you see that and still want to come to my room...your blood be on your own head...’ She paused for a breath or two and then said:
