The Minister had said with a sort of heavy joy that they were not going into Germany, and that had been the most dreadful moment of Marie Léonie’s life; but with her discipline she had just simply repeated the words to Mark. He had then said something she did not quite catch, and he would not repeat what he had said. She said as much to Lord Wolstonemark and the chuckling accent said that he supposed that that was the sort of news that would rattle the old boy. But one must adapt oneself to one’s day; the times were changed.
She had gone from the instrument to look at Mark. She spoke to him; she spoke to him again. And again – rapid words of panic. His face was dark purple and congested; he gazed straight before him. She raised him; he sank back inertly.
She remembered going to the telephone and speaking in French to the man at the other end. She had said that the man at the other end was a German and a traitor; her husband should never speak to him or his fellows again. The man had said: ‘Eh, what’s that? Eh? … Who are you?’
With appalling shadows chasing up and down in her mind she had said:
‘I am Lady Mark Tietjens. You have murdered my husband. Clear yourself from off my line, murderer!’
It had been the first time she had ever given herself that name; it was indeed the first time she had ever spoken in French to that Ministry. But Mark had finished with the Ministry, with the Government, with the nation… . With the world.
As soon as she could get that man off the wire she had rung up Christopher. He had come round with Valentine in tow. It had certainly not been much of a nuit de noces for that young couple.
PART TWO
SYLVIA TIETJENS, USING merely the persuasion of her left knee, edged her chestnut bay nearer to the bay mare of the shining General. She said:
‘If I divorce Christopher, will you marry me?’
He exclaimed with the vehemence of a shocked hen:
‘Good God, no!’
He shone everywhere except in such parts of his grey tweed suit as would have shown by shining that they had been put on more than once. But his little white moustache, his cheeks, the bridge but not the tip of his nose, his reins, his Guards’ tie, his boots, martingale, snaffle, curb, fingers, fingernails – all these gave evidence of interminable rubbings… . By himself, by his man, by Lord Fittleworth’s stable-hands, grooms… . Interminable rubbings and supervisions at the end of extended arms. Merely to look at him you would know that he was something like Lord Edward Campion, Lieutenant-General retired, K.C.M.G. (military), M.P.V.C., M.C., D.S.O… . So he exclaimed: ‘Good God, no!’ and using a little-finger touch on his snaffle-rein made his mare recoil from Sylvia Tietjens’ chestnut. Annoyed at its mate’s motion, the bad-tempered chestnut with the white forehead showed its teeth at the mare, danced a little and threw out some flakes of foam. Sylvia swayed a little backwards and forwards in her saddle, and smiled downwards into her husband’s garden.
‘You can’t, you know,’ she said, ‘expect to put an idea out of my head just by flurrying the horses… .’
‘A man,’ the General said between ‘Comeups’ to his mare, ‘does not marry his …’
His mare went backwards a pace or two into the bank and then a pace forwards.
‘His what?’ Sylvia asked with amiability. ‘You can’t be going to call me your cast mistress. No doubt most men would have a shot at it. But I never have been even your mistress… . I have to think of Michael!’
‘I wish,’ the General said vindictively, ‘that you would settle what that boy is to be called… . Michael or Mark!’ He added: ‘I was going to say: “his godson’s wife”… . A man may not marry his godson’s wife.’
Sylvia bent over to stroke the neck of the chestnut.
‘A man,’ she said, ‘cannot marry any man’s wife… . But if you think that I am going to be the second Lady Tietjens after that … French hairdresser’s widow …’
‘You would prefer,’ the General said, ‘to go to India… .’
Visions of India went through their hostile minds. They looked down from their horses over Tietjens’s in West Sussex, over a house with a high-pitched, tiled roof with deep windows in the grey local stone. He nevertheless saw names like Akhbar Khan, Alexander of Macedon, the son of Philip, Delhi, the Massacre at Cawnpore… . His mind, given over from boyhood to the contemplation of the largest jewel in the British Crown, spewed up those romances. He was member for the West Cleveland Division and a thorn in the side of the Government. They must give him India. They knew that if they did not he could publish revelations as to the closing days of the late war… . He would naturally never do that. One does not blackmail even a Government.
Still, to all intents he was India.
Sylvia also was aware that he was to all intents and purposes India. She saw receptions in Government Houses in which, habited with a tiara, she too would be INDIA… . As someone said in Shakespeare:
I am dying, Egypt, dying! Only
I will importune Death a while until
Of many thousand kisses this poor last
Is laid upon thy lips… .
She imagined it would be agreeable, supposing her to betray this old Pantaloon India, to have a lover, gasping at her feet, exclaiming: ‘I am dying, India, dying… .’ And she with her tiara, very tall. In white, probably. Probably satin!
The General said:
‘You know you cannot possibly divorce my godson. You are a Roman Catholic.’
She said, always with her smile:
‘Oh, can’t I? … Besides it would be of the greatest advantage to Michael to have for a step-father the Field Marshal… .’
He said with impotent irritation:
‘I wish you would settle whether that boy’s name is Michael or Mark!’
She said:
‘He calls himself Mark… . I call him Michael because I hate the name of Mark… .’
She regarded Campion with real hatred. She said that upon occasion she would be exemplarily revenged upon him. ‘Michael’ was a Satterthwaite name, ‘Mark’, the name for a Tietjens eldest son. The boy had originally been baptised and registered as Michael Tietjens. At his reception into the Roman Church he had been baptised ‘Michael Mark’. Then had followed the only real deep humiliation of her life. After his Papist baptism the boy had asked to be called Mark. She had asked him if he really meant that. After a long pause – the dreadful long pauses of children before they render a verdict! – he had said that he intended to call himself Mark from then on… . By the name of his father’s brother, of his father’s father, grandfather, great-grandfather… . By the name of the irascible apostle of the lion and the sword… . The Satterthwaites, his mother’s family, might go by the board.
For herself, she hated the name of Mark. If there was one man in the world whom she hated because he was insensible of her attraction it was Mark Tietjens who lay beneath the thatched roof beneath her eyes… . Her boy, however, intended, with a child’s cruelty to call himself Mark Tietjens… .
The General grumbled:
‘There is no keeping track with you… . You say now you would be humiliated to be Lady Tietjens after that Frenchwoman… . But you have always said that that Frenchwoman is only the concubine of Sir Mark… . You say one thing, then you say another… . What is one to believe?’
She regarded him with sunny condescension. He grumbled on:
‘One thing, then another… . You say you cannot divorce my godson because you are a Roman Catholic. Nevertheless you begin divorce proceedings and throw all the mud you can over the miserable fellow. Then you remember your creed and don’t go on… . What sort of game is this?’ She regarded him still ironically but with good humour across the neck of her horse.
He said:
‘There’s really no fathoming you… . A little time ago – for months on end – you were dying of … of internal cancer in short …’
She commented with the utmost good temper:
‘I didn’t want that girl to be Christopher’s mistress… .
You would think that no man with any imagination at all could … I mean with his wife in that condition… . But of course when she insisted … Well, I wasn’t going to stop in bed, in retreat, all my life… .’
She laughed good-humouredly at her companion.
‘I don’t believe you know anything about women,’ she said. ‘Why should you? Naturally Mark Tietjens married his concubine. Men always do as a sort of deathbed offering. You will eventually marry Mrs. Partridge if I do not choose to go to India. You think you will not, but you will… . As for me I think it would be better for Michael if his mother were Lady Edward Campion – of India! – than if she were merely Lady Tietjens the second of Groby with a dowager who was once a cross-Channel fly-by-night… .’ She laughed and added: ‘Anyhow, the sisters at the Blessed Child said that they never saw so many lilies – symbols of purity – as there were at my tea-parties when I was dying… . You’ll admit yourself you never saw anything so ravishing as me amongst the lilies and the tea-cups with the great crucifix above my head… . You were singularly moved! You swore you would cut Christopher’s throat yourself on the day the detective told us that he was really living here with that girl… .’
The General exclaimed:
‘About the Dower House at Groby… . It’s really damned awkward… . You swore to me that when you let Groby to that damned American madwoman I could have the Dower House and keep my horses in Groby stables. But now it appears I can’t… . It appears …’
‘It appears,’ Sylvia said, ‘that Mark Tietjens means to leave the Dower House at the disposal of his French concubine… . Anyhow you can afford a house of your own. You’re rich enough!’
The General groaned:
‘Rich enough! My God!’
She said:
‘You have still – trust you! – your younger son’s settlement. You have still your Field Marshal’s pay. You have the interest on the grant the nation made you at the end of the war. You have four hundred a year as a member of Parliament. You have cadged on me for your keep and your man’s keep and your horses’ and grooms’ at Groby for years and years… .’
Immense dejection covered the face of her companion. He said:
‘Sylvia… . Consider the expenses of my constituency… . One would almost say you hated me!’
Her eyes continued to devour the orchard and garden that were spread out below her. A furrow of raw, newly turned earth ran from almost beneath their horses’ hoofs nearly vertically to the house below. She said:
‘I suppose that is where they get their water-supply. From the spring above here. Cramp the carpenter says they are always having trouble with the pipes!’
The General exclaimed:
‘Oh, Sylvia. And you told Mrs. de Bray Pape that they had no water-supply so they could not take a bath!’
Sylvia said:
‘If I hadn’t she would never have dared to cut down Groby Great Tree… . Don’t you see that for Mrs. de Bray Pape people who do not take baths are outside the law? So, though she’s not really courageous, she will risk cutting down their old trees… .’ She added: ‘Yes, I almost believe I do hate misers, and you are more next door to a miser than anyone else I ever honoured with my acquaintance… .’ She added further: ‘But I should advise you to calm yourself. If I let you marry me you will have Satterthwaite pickings. Not to mention the Groby pickings till Michael comes of age and the – what is it – ten thousand a year you will get from India. If out of all that you cannot skimp enough to make up for house-room at my expense at Groby you are not half the miser I took you for!’
A number of horses with Lord Fittleworth and Gunning came up from the soft track outside the side of the garden and onto the hard road that bordered the garden’s top. Gunning sat one horse without his feet in the stirrups and had the bridles of two others over his elbows. They were the horses of Mrs. de Bray Pape, Mrs. Lowther and Mark Tietjens. The garden with its quince trees, the old house with its immensely high-pitched roof such as is seen in countries where wood was plentiful, the thatch of Mark Tietjens’ shelter and the famous four counties ran from the other side of the hedge out to infinity. An aeroplane droned down towards them, miles away. Up from the road ran a slope covered with bracken to many great beech trees, along a wire hedge. That was the summit of Cooper’s Common. In the stillness the hoofs of all those horses made a noise like that of desultorily approaching cavalry. Gunning halted his horses at a little distance; the beast Sylvia rode was too ill-tempered to be approached.
Lord Fittleworth rode up to the General and said:
‘God damn it, Campion, Helen Lowther ought not to be down there. Her ladyship will give me no rest for a fortnight!’ He shouted at Gunning: ‘Here you, blast you, you old scoundrel, where’s the gate Speeding complains you have been interfering with?’ He added to the General: ‘This old scoundrel was in my service for thirty years yet he’s always counterswinging the gates in your godson’s beastly fields. Of course a man has to look after his master’s interests, but we shall have to come to some arrangement. We can’t go on like this.’ He added to Sylvia:
‘It isn’t the sort of place Helen ought to go to, is it? All sorts of people living with all sorts. If what you say is true …’
The Earl of Fittleworth gave in all places the impression that he wore a scarlet tail coat, a white stock with a fox-hunting pin, white buckskin breeches, a rather painful eyeglass and a silk top-hat attached to his person by a silken cord. Actually he was wearing a square, black felt hat, pepper and salt tweeds and no eyeglass. Still he screwed up one eye to look at you and his lucid dark pupils, his contracted swarthy face with grey whiskers and bristling black-grey moustache gave him, perched on his immense horse, the air of a querulous but very masterful monkey.
He considered that he was out of earshot of Gunning and so continued to the other two: ‘Oughtn’t to give away masters before their servants… . But it isn’t any place for the niece of the President of a Show that Cammie has most of her money in. Anyhow she will comb my whiskers!’ Before marrying the Earl Lady Fittleworth had been Miss Camden Grimm. ‘Regular Aga … Agapemone if what you say is true. A queer go for old Mark at his age.’
The General said to Fittleworth:
‘Here, I say, she says I am a regular miser… . You don’t have any complaints, say, from your keepers that I don’t tip enough? That’s the real sign of a miser!’
Fittleworth said to Sylvia:
‘You don’t mind my talking like that of your husband’s establishment, do you?’ He added that in the old days they would not have talked like that before a lady about her husband. Or perhaps, by Jove, they would have! His grandfather had kept a …
Sylvia was of opinion that Helen Lowther could look after herself. Her husband was said not to pay her the attentions that a lady has a right to expect of a husband. So if Christopher …
She took an appraising sideways glance at Fittleworth. That peer was going slightly purple under his brown skin. He gazed out over the landscape and swallowed in his throat. She felt that her time for making a decision had come. Times changed, the world changed; she felt heavier in the mornings than she had ever used to. She had had a long, ingenious talk with Fittleworth the night before, on a long terrace. She had been ingenious even for her, but she was aware that afterwards Fittleworth had had a longer bedroom talk with his Cammie. Over even the greatest houses a certain sense of suspense broods when the Master is talking to the Mistress. The Master and the Mistress – upon a word, usually from the Master – take themselves off and the house-guests, at any rate in a small party, straggle, are uncertain as to who gives the signal to retire, suppress yawns even. Finally the butler approaches the most intimate guest and says that the Countess will not be coming down again.
That night Sylvia had shot her bolt. On the terrace she had drawn for the Earl a picture of the ménage whose garden she now looked down on. It stretched out below her, that little domain, as if she were a goddess dominating its destinies. But she was not
so certain of that. The dusky purple under Fittleworth’s skin showed no diminution. He continued to gaze away over his territory, reading it as if it were a book – a clump of trees gone here, the red roof of a new villa grown up there in among the trees, a hop-oast with its characteristic cowl gone from a knoll. He was getting ready to say something. She had asked him the night before to root that family out of that slope.
Naturally not in so many words. But she had drawn such a picture of Christopher and Mark as made it, if the peer believed her, almost a necessity for a conscientious nobleman to do his best to rid his countryside of a plague-spot… . The point was whether Fittleworth would choose to believe her because she was a beautiful woman with a thrilling voice. He was terribly domestic and attached to his Trans-Atlantic female as only very wicked dark men late in life can contrive to be when they come of very wicked, haughty, and influential houses. They have as it were attended on the caprices of so many opera singers and famous professionals that they get the knack when, later in life they take capricious or influential wives, of very stiffly but minutely showing every sort of elaborate deferences to their life-partners. That is born with them.