She was looking out on the Common that sloped up to beech trees, at the poultry – bright chestnut birds extremely busy on the intense green of the browsed grass. The great rooster reminded her of the late Monsieur Rodin, the sculptor who had conspired against Casimir-Bar. She had once seen Rodin in his studio, conducting some American ladies round his work and he had precisely resembled a rooster kicking its leg back and drooping its wings in the dust round a new hen. Only round a new one. Naturally! … This rooster was a tremendous Frenchman. Un vrai de la vraie! You could imagine nothing more unlike Christopher Tietjens! … The backward-raking legs on the dancing toes; the gait of a true master of deportment at an academy of young ladies! The vigilant clear eye cocking up every minute… . Hark! A swift shadow ran over the ground: the sparrow hawk! The loud, piercing croon of that Father of his Country! How the hens all re-echoed it; how the chickens ran to their mothers and all together to the shadow of the hedge! Monsieur the hawk would have no chance amidst that outcry. The hawk flits silent and detests noise. It will bring the poultry-keeper with his gun! … All is discovered because of the vigilance of Milord Chantecler… . There are those who reprove him because his eyes are always on the sky, because he has a proud head. But that is his function – that and gallantry. Perceive him with a grain of corn; how he flies upon it; how he invites with cries! His favourite – the newest – hens run clucking joyously to him! How he bows, droops and prances, holding the grain of corn in his powerful bill, depositing it, pecking to bruise it and then depositing it before his sultana of the moment. Nor will he complain if a little ball of fluff runs quickly and pecks the grain from his bill before Madame Partlet can take it from him. His gallantry has been wasted, but he is a good father! … Perhaps there is not even a grain of corn when he issues his invitations: perhaps he merely calls his favourites to him that he may receive their praise or perform the act of Love… .
He is then the man that a woman desires to have vouchsafed her. When he smites his wing feathers behind his back and utters his clarion cry of victory over the hawk that now glides far away down the hill, his hens come out again from the shadows, the chickens from beneath their mothers’ wings. He has given security to his country and in confidence they can return to their avocations. Different indeed from that Monsieur Christopher who even when he was still a soldier more than anything resembled a full, grey, coarse meal-sack short in the wind and with rolling, hard-blue eyes. Not hard eyes, but of a hard blue! And yet, curiously, he too had some of the spirit of Chantecler beneath his rolling shoulders of a farmyard boar. Obviously you could not be your brother’s brother and not have some traces of the Milor… . The spleen too. But no one could say that her Mark was not a proper man. Chic in an eccentric manner, but, oh yes, chic! And that was his brother.
Naturally he might try to despoil her. That is what brother does to brother’s widow and children… . But, on occasion, he treated her with a pompous courtesy – a parade. On the first time he had seen her – not so long ago that; only during that period of the war that had been without measurable time – he had treated her to heavy but expressive gestures of respect and words of courtesy in an old-fashioned language that he must have learned at the Théâtre Français whilst they still played Ruy Blas. French was a different thing now, that she must acknowledge. When she went to Paris – which she did every late summer whilst her man went to Harrogate – the language her nephews spoke was a different affair – without grace, courtesy, intelligibility. Certainly without respect! Oh, la, la! When they came to divide up her inheritance that would be a sharper kind of despoilment than ever Christopher Tietjens’! Whilst she lay on her bed of death those young fellows and their wives would be all through her presses and armoires like a pack of wolves… . La famille! Well, that was very proper. It showed the appropriate spirit of acquisition. What was a good mother for if not to despoil her husband’s relatives in the interests of their joint children!
So Christopher had been as courteous as a well-trained meal-sack of the dix-huitième. Eighteenth-century! Older still, période Molière! When he had come into her room that had been dimly lit with a veilleuse – a night-light; they are so much more economical than shaded electric lights! – he had precisely suggested to her a lumbering character from Molière as presented at the Comédie Française; elaborate of phrase and character, but protuberant in odd places. She might in that case have supposed that he entertained designs on her person; but with his eyes sticking out in elaborate considerateness he had only come to break to her the news that his brother was about to make an honest woman of her. That had been Mark’s phrase. It is of course only God that can do that… . But the enterprise had had the full concurrence of Monsieur the Heir-Apparent.
He had indeed been active whilst she slumbered in a hooded-chair after four days and three nights on her feet. She would have surrendered the body of Mark to no human being but his brother. Now the brother had come to tell her not to be alarmed – panting with nervousness and shortness of breath… . Bad lungs both the brothers had! Panting he had come to tell her not to be alarmed at finding in her man’s room two priests, an official, a lawyer and a lawyer’s clerk… . These black-robed people attend on death, bringing will-forms and the holy oils. The doctor and a man with oxygen cylinders had been there when she had gone to repose herself. It was a pretty congregation of the vultures that attend on us during life.
She had started at once to cry out. That undoubtedly was what had made him nervous – the anticipation that she would cry out sharply in the black, silent London that brooded between air-raids. In that silence, before sleep had visited her peignoir-enveloped, and therefore clumsyish, form, she had been aware of Christopher’s activities on the telephone in the passage. It had struck her that he might have been warning the Pompes Funèbres! … So she had begun to scream: the sound that irresistibly you make when death is about to descend. But he had agitated himself to soothe her – for all the world like Monsieur Sylvain on the boards of Molière’s establishment! He spoke that sort of French, in a hoarse whisper, in the shadows of the night-light … assuring her that the priest was for marriage, with licence of the Archevêque de Cantorbéri such as in London you got in those days from Lambeth Palace for thirty pounds sterling. That enabled you to make any woman honest at any hour of the day or night. The lawyer was there to have a will re-signed. Marriage in this singular country invalidates any previous will. So, Tietjens (Christophère) assured her.
But then, if there was that haste there was danger of death! She had often speculated as to whether he would or would not marry her as an act of death-bed contrition. Rather contemptuously as great lords with le Spleen make their peace with God. She screamed; in silent, black London. The night-light wavered in its saucer.
He crepitated out that his brother was doubling, in this new will, his posthumous provision for her. With provision for the purchase of a house in France if she would not inhabit the Dower House at Groby. A Louis Treize dower-house. It was his idea of consolation. He affected to be business-like… . These English. But then, perhaps they do not go through your presses and wardrobes whilst your corpse is still warm!
She screamed out that they might take away their marriage papers and will-forms, but to give her her man again. If they had let her give him her tisanes instead of …
With her breast heaving she had cried into that man’s face:
‘I swear that my first act when I am Madame Tietjens and have the legal power will be to turn out all these men and give him infusions of poppy-heads and lime-flowers.’ She expected to see him recoil, but he had said:
‘In heaven’s name do, my dear sister. It might save him and the nation!’
It was silly of him to talk like that. These fellows had too much pride of family. Mark did no more than attend to Transport. Well, perhaps transport in those days had its importance. Still, probably Tietjens, Christopher, over-rated the indispensableness of Tietjens, Mark… . That would have been three weeks or a month be
fore the Armistice. They were black days… . A good brother, though… .
In the other room, whilst papers were signing, after the curé in his calotte and all, had done reading from his book, Mark had signed to her to bend her head down to him and had kissed her. He whispered:
‘Thank God there is one woman-Tietjens who is not a whore and a bitch!’ He winced a little; her tears had fallen on his face. For the first time, she had said:
‘Mon pauvre homme, ce qu’ils ont fait de toi!’ She had been hurrying from the room when Christopher had stopped her. Mark had said:
‘I regret to put you to further inconvenience …’ in French. He had never spoken to her in French before. Marriage makes a difference. They speak to you with ceremony out of respect for themselves and their station in life. You also are at liberty to address them as your pauvre homme.
There had to be another ceremony. A man looking like a newly dressed gaol-bird stepped out with his book like an office register. With a blue-black jowl. He married them over again. A civil marriage, this time.
It was then that, for the first time, she had become aware of the existence of another woman-Tietjens, Christopher’s wife… . She had not known that Christopher had a wife. Why was not she there? But Mark with his labouring politeness and chest had told her that he exaggerated the formality of the marriage because if both he and Christopher died she, Marie Léonie Tietjens, might have trouble with a certain Sylvia. The Bitch! … Well, she, Marie Léonie, was prepared to face her legitimate sister-in-law.
III
THE LITTLE MAID, Beatrice, as well as Gunning, regarded Marie Léonie with paralysed but bewildered obedience. She was ’Er Ladyship, a good mark, a foreign Frenchy. That was bad. She was extraordinarily efficient about the house and garden and poultry-yard, a matter for mixed feelings. She was fair, not black-avised, a good mark; she was buxom, not skinny, like the real Quality. A bad mark because she was, then, not real Quality; but a qualifiedly good mark because if you ’as to ’ave Quality all about you in the ’ouse ’tis better not to ’ave real Quality… . But on the whole the general feeling was favourable because like themselves she was floridly blond. It made ’er ’uman like. Never you trust a dark woman and if you marries a dark man ’e will treat you bad. In the English countryside it is like that.
Cabinet-maker Cramp who was a remnant of the little dark persistent race that once had peopled Sussex regarded her with distrust that mingled with admiration for the quality of the varnish that she imported from Paris. Proper French polish that were. He lived in the cottage just across the path on the Common. ’E couldn’ say as ’ow ’e liked the job the Governor give ’im. He had to patch up and polish with beeswax – not varnish – rough stuff such ’s ’is granf ’er ’ad ’ad. An ’ad got rid of. Rough ol’ truck. Moren n ’undred yeers old. ’N more!
He had to take bits of old wood out of one sort of old truck and fit it into missing bits of other old truck. Bought old Moley’s pig-pound boards that had been Little Kingsworth church stalls, the Cahptn ’ad; ’n ’ad ’im, Cramp, use’m for all manner of patchin’s up. The Captain had bought too ol’ Miss’ Cooper’s rabbit ’utch. Beautifully bevelled the panels was too which cleaned up ’n beeswaxed. Cramp would acknowledge that. Made him match the bevelling in the timber from Kingsworth Church stalls for one of the missing doors, an’ more of the timber fer the patching. Proper job, he, Cramp, had made of it too; he would say that. ’N it looked proper when it was finished – a long, low press, with six bevelled doors; beautiful purfling on the edges. Like some of the stuff ’Is Lordship ’ad in the Tujer Room at Fittleworth House. Moren ’n ’undred yeers old. Three ’undred. Four … There’s no knowin’.
’N no accountin’ fer tastes. ’E would say ’e ’ad ’n eye – the Cahptn ’ad. Look at a bit of ol’ rough truck the Cahptn would ’n see it was older than the Monument to Sir Richard Atchinson on Tadworth ’Ill that was set up in the year 1842 to celebrate the glorious victory of Free Trade. So the Monument said. Lug a bit of rough ol’ truck out of the back of a cow-house where it had been throwed – the Cahptn would. And his, Cramp’s, heart would sink to see the ol’ mare come back, some days, the cart full of ’en-coops, ’n leaden pig-truffs, ’n pewter plates that ’ad been used to stop up ’oles in cow-byres.
’N off it would all go to Murrikay. Queer place Murrikay must be – full of the leavins of ol’ England. Pig-troughs, hen-coops, rabbit-hutches, wash-house coppers that no one now had any use for. He loaded ’em when he’d scrubbed, and silver-sanded and beeswaxed-’n-turpentined ’em, onto the ol’ cart, ’n put to ol’ mare, ’n down to station, ’n on to Southampton ’n off to New York. Must be a queer place yon! Hadn’t they no cabinet-makers or ol’ rough truck of ther own?
Well, it took all sorts to make a world n thank God fer that. He, Cramp, had a good job, likely to last ’im ’is lifetime because some folks wus queer in the ’ed. The ol’ lumber went out yon and his, Cramp’s missus, was gettin’ together a proper set of goods. A tidy treat their sittin’ room looked with aspidistras in mahogany tripods, ’n a Wilton carpet ’n bamboo cheers ’n mahogany whatnots. A proper woman Missus Cramp was, if sharp in the tongue.
Missus Cramp she didn’t give so much fer ’Er Ladyship. She was agin Foreigners. All German spies they wus. Have no truck with them she wouldn’t. ’Oo noo if they wus ’s much ’s married. Some says they wus, some says they wasn’. But you couldn’ take in Missus Cramp …’N Quality! What was to show that they were real Quality. Livin how they did wasn’ Quality manners. Quality was stuck up ’n wore shiny clothes ’n had motor-cars ’n statues ’n palms ’n ball-rooms ’n conservatories. ’N didn’ bottle off the cider ’n take the eggs ’n speak queer lingo to th’ handy-man. ’N didn’ sell the cheers they sat on. The four younger children also didn’t like ’Er Ladyship. Never called ’em pretty dears she did nor give ’em sweeties nor rag-dolls nor apples. Smacked ’em if she found ’em in the orchard. Never so much ’s give ’em red flannel capes in the winter.
But Bill the eldest liked ’Er Ladyship. Called ’er a proper right ’un. Never stopped tarkin’ of ’er. ’N she ’ad statues in ’er bedroom, ’n fine gilt cheers, ’n clocks, ’n flowerin plants. Bill e’d made fer ’Er Ladyship what she called ’n eightyjare. In three storey, to stand in a corner ’n hold knick-knacks. Out of fretwork to a pettern she’d give ’im. Varnished proper, too. A good piece of work if he shouldn’t say so… . But Missus Cramp she’d never been allowed in ’Er Ladyship’s bedroom. A proper place it was. Fit fer a Countess! If Missus Cramp could be allowed to see it she’d maybe change her opinions… . But Missus Cramp she said: ‘Never you trust a fair woman,’ bein’ dark.
The matter of the cider however, did give him to think. Proper cider it was, when they was given a bottle or two. But it wasn’t Sussex cider. A little like Devonshire cider, more like Herefordshire. But not the same as any. More head it had ’n was sweeter, ’n browner. ’N not to be drunk s’ freely! Fair scoured you it did if you drunk’s much’s a quart!
The little settlement was advancing furtively to the hedge. Cramp put his bald poll out of his work-shed and then crept out. Mrs. Cramp, an untidy, dark, very thin woman emerged over her door-sill, wiping her hands on her apron. The four Cramp children at different stages of growth crept out of the empty pig-pound. Cramp was not going to buy his winter pigs till next fortnightly fair at Little Kingsworth. The Elliott children with the milk-can came at a snail’s pace down the green path from the farm; Mrs. Elliott, an enormous woman with untidy hair, peered over her own hedge which formed a little enclosure on the Common; Young Hogben, the farmer’s son, a man of forty, very thick-set, appeared on the path in the beech-wood, ostensibly driving a great black sow. Even Gunning left his brushing and lumbered to the edge of the stable. From there he could still see Mark in his bed, but also, looking downwards between the apple-trunks he could see Marie Léonie bottle the cider, large, florid and intent, in the open dairying-shed where water ran in a v-shaped
wooden trough.
‘Runnin’ t’ cider out of cask with a chube!’ Mrs. Cramp screamed up the hill to Mrs. Elliott. ‘’Ooever ’eered!’ Mrs. Elliot rumbled huskily back at Mrs. Cramp. All these figures closed in furtively; the children peering through tiny interstices in the hedge and muttering one to the other: ‘’Ooever ’eered… . Foreign ways I call it… . A glass chube …’Ooever ’eered.’ Even Cramp, though, wiping his bald head with his carpenter’s apron, he admonished Mrs. Cramp to remember that he had a good job – even Cramp descended from the path to the hedge-side and stood so close – peering over – that the thorns pricked his perspiring chest through his thin shirt. They said to the baker who wearily followed his weary horse up the steep path, coming from the deep woods below: It had ought to be stopped. The police had ought to know. Bottling cider by means of a glass tube. And standing the cider in running water. Where was the excise? Rotting honest folks’ guts! Poisoning them. No doubt the governor could tell them a tale about that if he could speak or move. The police had ought to know… . Showing off, with cider in running water – to cool it when first bottled! ’Ooever ’eered! Just because they ’ad a Ladyship to their tail. ’N more money than better folks. Not so much money either. Reckon they’d come to smash ’n be sold up like ’Igginson at Fittleworth. Set ’isself up fer Quality, ’e did too! …’N not so much of a Ladyship, neither. Not so much more of a Ladyship as us if the truth was known. Not an Earl or a Lord, only a baronite-ess at that, supposin’ we all ’ad our rights… . The police had ought to be brought into this affair!