And Monsieur must needs seize the moment of his entry on this thus enlivened scene to exhibit the only display of emotion that she had ever known him vouchsafe. For otherwise Monsieur had the pose of being at least as self-contained if not as absolutely taciturn as Mark himself. She asked Mark: was that the moment for what was after all, if you analysed it, a manifestation of attachment for his young woman? What else could it be? Il – Monsieur their relative, passed for a man of unbounded knowledge. He knew all knowledge. He could not but be aware of the supreme value of the work of Casimir-Bar who, but for the machinations of his rival Monsieur Rodin and his confrères, must have attained to the highest honours in France. But not only had Monsieur with hisses and tut-tuts of anger ordered Gunning and the carpenter at once to remove the statuary and the fauteuil from the salon where she had exhibited them – with heaven knew how much reluctance – with a view to their attracting the attention of a chance customer – for chance customers did come in Their absence without rendezvous… . Not only that, but Monsieur to gratify the perhaps not unnatural envy of Elle had cast meretricious doubts on the pecuniary value of the works of Casimir-Bar themselves. Everyone knew how the Americans to-day were stripping the unfortunate land of France of her choicest art treasures; the enormous prices they paid; the avidity they showed. Yet that man had tried to persuade her that her statues were worth no more than a few shillings a-piece. It was incomprehensible. He was in want of money to the extent of turning their house into a mere depot for dilapidated objects in rough wood and battered brass. He had contrived to obtain singular prices for these forlorn objects from insane Yankees who came great distances to purchase these débris from him. Yet when he was offered pieces of the utmost beauty in the most perfect condition he just simply turned the objects down with scoffing.
For herself, she respected passion – though she could have imagined an object of passion more calculated to excite that feeling than Elle, whom for convenience she would call her belle-sœur. She at least was broad-minded and moreover she understood the workings of the human heart. It was creditable for a man to ruin himself for the object of his affections. But this at least she found exaggerated.
And what, then, was this determination to ignore the developments of modern genius? Why would they not purchase for Mark a reading-desk with a brass arm that should indicate to the neighbours and dependants that at least he was a person of condition? Why no revolving hut? There were certain symptoms of that age that were disquieting. She would be the first to acknowledge that. They had only to read in the papers of the deeds of assassins, highway robbers, of the subversive and the ignorant who everywhere seized the reins of power. But what was to be said against such innocent things as the reading-desk, the revolving hut, and the aeroplane? Yes, the aeroplane!
Why did they ignore the aeroplane? They had told her that the reason why they had been unable to provide her with navets de Paris was that the season was becoming too advanced for the sowing of the seeds of those admirable and amusing vegetables which, seen advancing through the pale electric lights of the early hours of the morning, piled symmetrically as high as the first floors of the hotels, on the marketcarts, provided one of the gayest spectacles of the night-life of la Ville Lumière. They had said that to procure the seeds from Paris would demand at least a month. But supposing they had sent a letter by aeroplane, requesting the despatch of the seeds equally by aeroplane, to procure them, as all the world knew, would be a matter merely of a few hours. And, having thus brought the matter back to turnips again she concluded:
‘Yes, mon pauvre homme, they have singular natures, our relatives – for I will include the young woman in that category. I at least am broad-minded enough for that. But they have singular natures. It is a strange affair!’
She departed up the path towards the stable, speculating on the nature of her man’s relatives. They were the relatives of a godhead – but godheads had relatives of a singular nature. Let Mark figure as Jupiter; well, Jupiter had a son called Apollo who could not be regarded as exactly fils de famille. His adventures had been of the most irregular. Was it not known that he had spent a long space of time with the shepherds of King Admetus, singing and carousing? Well, Monsieur Tietjens might for convenience be regarded as a sort of Apollo, now amongst the shepherds of Admetus and complete with female companion. If he did not often sing he also concealed the tendencies that had brought about his downfall. He was quiet enough about the house, extraordinary as the house might be. Elle also. If their relationship was irregular it presented no aspects of reprehensible festivity. It was a sufficiently serious collage. That at least ran in the family.
She came round the rough balks of the side of the stable upon Gunning, seated on the stone-sill of the door, cutting with a broad-bladed clasp-knife considerable chunks out of a large meat pasty. She surveyed his extended leggings, his immense be-mired boots and his unshaven countenance and remarked in French that the shepherds of Admetus were probably differently dressed. They certainly were in all the performances of the Alceste that she had seen. But perhaps he served his turn.
Gunning said that he supposed he had to go on duty again. She, he supposed, was going to bottle off the cider or she would not have had him bring down that ’ere cask. She was to be careful to tie the carks tight; it would get itself a ’ed, proper.
She said that if she, a Norman of a hundred generations did not know how to handle cider it would be a strange thing and he said that it would be a pity if that cider went wrong after all the trouble they ’ad ’ad.
He brushed the crumbs of his demolished pipe off the cords of his breeches, carefully picking up the larger fragments of crust and inserting them into his mouth between his broad, red lips. He asked if ’er Ladyship knew whether the Cahptn wanted the mare that afternoon. If not ’e might’s well turn ’er on the Common. She said that she did not know; the Captain had said nothing to her about it. He said he supposed ’e might’s well. Cramp said ’e would not have the settee ready to go to the station ’fore mornin’. If she would wait there he would go git some tepid water and they would moisten the eggs. She did not ask better.
He scrambled to his feet and lumbered down the stone path towards the house. She stood in the bright day regarding the long grass of the orchard, the gnarled, whitened trunks of the fruit trees, the little lettuces like aligned rosettes in the beds, and the slope of the land towards the old stones of the house that the boughs of the apple trees mostly hid. And she acknowledged that, in effect, she did not ask better. A Norman, if Mark had died in the ordinary course, she would no doubt have gone back to the neighbourhood either of Falaise or Bayeux from which place came the families of her grandmother and grandfather respectively. She would probably have married a rich farmer or a rich grazier and, by choice, she would have pursued a life of bottling off cider and moistening the eggs of sitting hens. She had had her training as a coryphée at the Paris Opera and no doubt if she had not made her visit to London with the Paris Opera troupe and if Mark had not picked her up in the Edgware Road where her lodgings had been, she would have lived with some man in Clichy or Auteuil until with her economies she would have been able, equally, to retire to one or other of the pays of her families, and marry a farmer, a butcher, or a grazier. She acknowledged, for the matter of that, that she would probably not have raised more succulent poulets au grain or more full-bodied cider than came from the nest-boxes and the presses here and that she was leading no other life than that which she had always contemplated. Nor indeed would she have wanted any other henchman than Gunning who if you had given him a blue-blouse with stitchery and a casquette with a black leather peak would have passed for any peasant in Caen market.
He swung up the path, carrying gingerly a large blue bowl, just as if his blouse bellied out round him; he had the same expression of the mouth, the same intonation. It was nothing that she obstinately spoke French to him. On his subjects he could tell by intuition what her answers to his questions were and by now she und
erstood him well enough.
He said that he had better take the ’ens off the nesteses fer fear they peck ’er ’ands and giving her the bowl, brought out from the shadows a protesting, ruffled and crooning hen before which he dropped a handful of bran paste and a lettuce leaf. He came out with another and another. Many more! Then he said she could go in and sprinkle the eggs. He said that it always bothered him to turn the eggs; his clumsy ol’ ’ands bruk ’em ’s often as not. He said:
‘Wait whilst I brings out ol’ mare. Bit o’ grass wunt do’er much mischief.’
The hens swollen to an enormous size paraded hostilely against one another about her feet; they clucked, crooned, pecked at lumps of paste, drank water eagerly from an iron dog-trough. With an exaggerated clatter of hoofs old mare emerged from the stable. She was aged nineteen, obstinate, bitter, very dark bay, extremely raw-boned. You might fill her with oats and mash five times a day, but she would not put on flesh. She emerged into the light from the door with the trot of a prima donna, for she knew she had once been a famous creature. The hens fled; she bit into the air showing immense teeth. Gunning opened the orchard gate, just at hand; she went out at a canter, checked, crumpled her knees together, fell on her side and rolled and rolled; her immense lean legs were incongruous, up in the air.
‘Yes,’ Marie Léonie said, ‘pour moi-même je ne demanderais pas mieux!’
Gunning remarked:
‘Don’t show ’er age, do she? Gambolling like a five-day lamb!’ His voice was full of pride, his grey face joyful. ’Is Lordship once sed thet ol’ mare had orter be put in the ’Orse Show up to Lunnon. Some yeers ago that was!
She went into the dark, warm, odorous depths of the hen-house-stable shed; the horse-box being divided off from the hen half by wire netting, nest-boxes, blankets extended on use-poles. She had to bend down to get into the hen-half. The cracks of light between the uprights of the walls blinked at her. She carried the bowl of tepid water gingerly, and thrust her hand into the warm hay hollows. The eggs were fever-heat or thereabouts; she turned them and sprinkled in the tepid water; thirteen, fourteen, fourteen, eleven – that hen was a breaker! – and fifteen. She emptied out the tepid water and from other nests took out egg after egg. The acquisition gratified her.
In an upper box a hen brooded low. It crooned menacingly, then screamed with the voice of poultry disaster as her hand approached it. The sympathetic voices of other hens outside came to her, screaming with poultry disaster – and other hens on the Common. A rooster crowed.
She repeated to herself that she did not demand a better life than this. But was it not the self-indulgence to be so contented? Ought she not to be, still, taking steps for her future – near Falaise or Bayeux? Did one not owe that to oneself? How long would this life last here? And, still more, when it broke up, how would it break up? What would Ils – the strange people – do to her, her savings, her furs, trunks, pearls, turquoises, statuary, and newly gilt Second Empire chairs and clocks? When the Sovereign died what did the Heir, his concubines, courtiers, and sycophants do to the Maintenon of the day? What precautions ought she not to be taking against that wrath to come? There must be French lawyers in London… .
Was it to be thought that Il – Christopher Tietjens, clumsy, apparently slow-witted, but actually gifted with the insight of the supernatural … Gunning would say: The Captain, he never says anything, but who knows what he thinks? He perceives everything… . Was it to be thought then that, once Mark was dead and he actual owner of the place called Groby and the vast stretch of coal-bearing land that the newspaper had spoken of, Christopher Tietjens would maintain his benevolent and frugal dispositions of today? It was truly thinkable. But, just as he appeared slow-witted and was actually gifted with the insight of the supernatural, so he might well now maintain this aspect of despising wealth and yet develop into a true Harpagon as soon as he held the reins of power. The rich are noted for hardness of heart, and brother will prey upon brother’s widow sooner than on another.
So that, certainly, she ought to put herself under the protection of the Authorities. But then, what Authorities? The long arm of France would no doubt protect one of her nationals even in this remote and uncivilised land. But would it be possible to put that machinery in motion without the knowledge of Mark – and what dreadful steps might Mark not take in his wrath if he thought that she had set machinery in motion?
There appeared nothing for it but to wait, and that side of her nature being indolent, perhaps being alone indolent, she was aware that she was contented to wait. But was such a course right? Was it doing justice to herself or to France? For it is the duty of the French citizen, by industry, frugality, and vigilance to accumulate goods; and it was above all the duty of the French citizen to carry back accumulated hoards to that distressed country, stripped bare as she was by the perfidious Allies. She might herself rejoice in these circumstances, these grasses, orchards, poultry, cider-presses, vegetable-gardens – even if the turnips were not of the Paris navet variety! She might not ask for better. But there might be a little pays, near Falaise, or in the alternative, near Bayeux, a little spot that she might enrich with these spoils from the barbarians. If every inhabitant of a pays in France did the same would not France again be prosperous, with all its clochers tolling out contentment across smiling acres? Well, then!
Standing gazing at the poultry whilst Gunning with a hone smoothed out some notches from his bagging hook, previous to going on duty again, she began to reflect on the nature of Christopher Tietjens, for she desired to estimate what were her chances of retaining her furs, pearls and gilt articles of vertu… . By the orders of the doctor who attended daily on Mark – a dry, sandy, no doubt perfectly ignorant person – Mark was never to be left out of sight. He was of opinion, this doctor, that one day Mark might move – physically. And there might be great danger if ever he did move. The lesions, if lesions there were in his brain, might then be re-started with fatal effects – some such talk. So they must never let him out of their sight. For the night they had an alarm that was connected by a wire from his bed to hers. Hers was in a room that gave onto the orchard. If he so much as stirred in his bed the bell would ring in her ear. But indeed she rose every night, over and over again to look from her window into his hut; a dim lantern illuminated his sheets. These arrangements appeared to her to be barbarous, but they met the views of Mark and she was thus in no position to question them… . So she had to wait whilst Gunning honed out his sickle-shaped, short-handled blade.
It had all then begun – all the calamities of the world began amidst the clamours and intoxications of that dreadful day. Of Christopher Tietjens till then she had known little or nothing. For the matter of that, of Mark himself she had known little or nothing until a very few years ago. She had known neither his name, nor how he occupied himself, nor yet where he lived. It had not been her business to enquire so she had never made enquiries. Then one day – after thirteen years – he had awakened one morning with an attack of bronchitis after a very wet Newmarket Craven Meeting. He had told her to go to his office with a note addressed to his chief clerk, to ask for his letters and to tell them to send a messenger to his chambers to get some clothes and necessaries.
When she had told him that she did not know what his office was nor where were his chambers nor even his surname he had grunted. He had expressed neither surprise nor gratification, but she knew that he had been gratified – probably with himself for having chosen a woman companion who displayed no curiosity rather than with her for having displayed none. After that he had had a telephone installed in her rooms and not infrequently he would stay later of a morning than had been his habit, letting a messenger from the office bring letters or fetch documents that he had signed. When his father had died he had put her into mourning.
By that date, gradually, she had learned that he was Mark Tietjens of Groby, an immense estate somewhere in the North. He employed himself at an office of the Government in Whitehall – apparently
with questions of railways. She gathered, chiefly from ejaculations of the messenger, that he treated his Ministry with contempt, but was regarded as so indispensable that he never lost his post. Occasionally the office would ring up and ask her if she knew where he was. She would gather from the papers afterwards that that was because there had been a great railway accident. On those occasions he would have been absent at a race-meeting. He gave the office, in fact, just as much of his time as he chose, no more and no less. She gathered that, with his overpowering wealth, it was of no account to him except as an occupation of leisure time between meetings and she gathered that he was regarded as an occult power amongst the rulers of the nation. Once, during the war when he had hurt his hand, he dictated to her a note of a confidential nature to one of the Cabinet Ministers. It had concerned itself with Transport and its tone had been that of singular polite contempt.
For her he was in no way astonishing. He was the English Milor with le Spleen. She had read of him in the novels of Alexander Dumas, Paul de Kock, Eugene Sue and Ponson du Terrail. He represented the England that the Continent applauded – the only England that the Continent applauded. Silent, obstinate, inscrutable, insolent, but immensely wealthy and uncontrollably generous. For herself, elle ne demandait pas mieux. For there was about him nothing of the unexpected. He was as regular as the Westminster Chimes; he never exacted the unexpected of her and he was all-powerful and never in the wrong. He was, in short, what her countrywomen called sérieux. No Frenchwoman asks better than that of lover or husband. It was the collage sérieux par excellence: they were as a ménage sober, honest, frugal, industrious, very wealthy, and seriously saving. For his dinner twice a week she cooked him herself two mutton chops with all but an eighth of an inch of the fat pared off, two mealy potatoes, as light and as white as flour, an apple pie with a very flaky crust which he ate with a wedge of Stilton and some pulled bread and butter. This dinner had never varied once in twenty years except during the season of game when on alternate weeks a pheasant, a brace of grouse or of partridges would come from Groby. Nor in the twenty years had they once been separated for a whole week except that every late summer he spent a month at Harrogate. She always had his dress-shirts washed for him by her own laundress in the Quartier. He spent almost every weekend in one country house or another using at most two dress-shirts and that only if he stayed till Tuesday. English people of good class do not dress for dinner on Sundays. That is a politeness to God because theoretically you attend evening service and you do not go to church in the country in evening dress. As a matter of fact you never go to evening service – but it is complimentary to suggest by your dress that you might be visited by the impulse. So, at least Marie Léonie Tietjens understood the affair.