Parade's End (112 page)

‘You fence your ’ogs in same’s other folks ’as to do,’ Young Hogben menaced.

‘Folks as abuts on Commons ’as to fence out, not fence in,’ Gunning menaced. They stood foot to foot on the soft sward menacing each other with their chins.

‘S Lordship sold Tietjens’s to the Cahptn without Common rights,’ the farmer said. ‘Ask Mr. Fuller.’

‘S Lordship could no more sell Tietjens’s ’thout Common rights ’n you could sell milk without drinking rights. Ast Lawyer Sturgis!’ Gunning maintained. Put arsenic in among ’is roots, Young Hogben maintained that he would. Spend seven years up to Lewes Jail if ’e did, Gunning maintained. They continued for long in the endless quarrel that obtains between tenant-farmer who is not Quality but used to brutalising his hinds, and gentleman’s henchman who is used to popularity amongst his class and the peasantry. The only thing upon which they agreed was that you wouldn’t think there ’adnt been no war. The war ought to have given tenant farmers the complete powers of local tyrants; it should have done the same for gentlemen’s bailiffs. The sow grunted round Gunning’s boots, looking up for grains of maize that Gunning usually dropped. In that way sows come to heel when you call them however far away they may be on the Common.

Down through the garden by the zigzag path that dropped right away from the hard road up the hill – Tietjens’s went up the slope to the hedge there – descended the elderly lady who was singularly attired in the eyes of the country people. She considered that she was descended, not by blood, but by moral affinity from Madame de Maintenon, therefore she wore a long grey riding skirt with panniers, and a three-cornered, grey felt hat and carried a riding switch of green shagreen. Her thin grey face was tired but authoritative, her hair which she wore in a knot beneath her hat was luminously grey, her pince-nez rimless.

Owing to the steepness of the bank on which the garden rose the path of sea-pebbles zigzagged across most of its width, orange-coloured because it had been lately sanded. She went furtively between quince-trunks, much like the hedge-sparrow, flitting a stretch and then stopping for the boy with the shining leggings stolidly to overtake her.

She said that it was dreadful to think that the sins of one’s youth could so find one out. It ought to make her
young
companion think. To come at the end of one’s life to inhabiting so remote a spot! You could not get there with automobiles. Her own Delarue-Schneider had broken down on the hill-road in the attempt to get there yesterday.

The boy, slim in the body, but heavy in the bright red cheeks, with brown hair, truly shiny leggings and a tie of green, scarlet and white stripes, had a temporarily glum expression. He said nevertheless with grumbling determination that he did not think this was playing the game. Moreover hundreds of motors got up that hill; how else would people come to buy the old furniture? He had already told Mrs. de Bray Pape that the carburettors of Delarue-Schneiders were a wash-out.

It was just that, Mrs. Pape maintained, that was so dreadful a thought. She went swiftly down another zigzag of the path and then faltered.

It was that that was dreadful in these old countries, she said. Why could they never learn? Take example! Here were the descendants of a great family, the Tietjenses of Groby, a haunt of ancient peace, the one reduced to a no doubt dreadful state by the sins of his youth, the other to making a living by selling old furniture.

The youth said she was mistaken. She must not believe all that his mother hinted to her. His mother was all right, but her hints went further than facts warranted. If he wanted to let Groby to Mrs. de Bray Pape it was because he hated swank. His uncle also hated swank… . He mumbled a little and added: ‘And … my father!’ Moreover it was not playing the game. He had soft brown eyes that were now clouded and he was blushing.

He mumbled that mother was splendid but he did not think she ought to have sent him there. Naturally she had her wrongs. For himself he was a Marxist-Communist. All Cambridge was. He therefore, of course, approved of his father’s living with whom he wished. But there were ways of doing things. Because you were advanced you did not have to treat women with discourtesy. The reverse, rather. He was painfully agitated by the time he overtook the tired lady at the corner of the next zigzag.

She wanted him not to misunderstand her. No discredit attached in her eyes to the pursuit of selling old furniture. Far from it. Mr. Lemuel of Madison Avenue
might
be called a dealer in old furniture. It was of course Oriental which made a difference. But Mr. Lemuel was a most cultivated man. His country house at Crugers in the State of New York was kept up in a style that would have done credit to the
grands seigneurs
of pre-Revolutionary France. But from that to this … what a downfall!

The house – the cottage – was by now nearly below her feet, the roof extremely high, the windows sunk very deep in grey stone and very small. There was a paved semicircular court before the door, the space having been cut out of the orchard bank and walled with stones. It was extravagantly green, sunk in greenery and the grass that came nearly to Mrs. Pape’s middle was filled with hiding profusions of flowers that were turning to seed. The four counties swept away from under her, hedges like string going away, enclosing fields, to the hills on the very distant horizon; the country near at hand wooded. The boy beside her took a deep breath as he always did when he saw a great view. On the moors above Groby, for instance. Purple they were.

‘It
isn’t
fit for human habitation!’ the lady exclaimed with the triumphant intonation of one who sees great truth confirmed. ‘The houses of the poor in these old countries beggar even pity. Do you suppose they so much as have a bath?’

‘I should think my father and uncle were personally
clean
!’ the boy said. He mumbled that this was supposed to be rather a show-place. He could trust his father indeed to find rather a show-place to live in. Look at the rock plants in the sunk garden! He exclaimed: ‘Look here! Let’s go back!’

Mrs. Pape’s perturbation gave way to obstinacy. She exclaimed.

‘Never!’ She had a mission from the poor boy’s injured mother. She would never look Sylvia Tietjens in the face if she flinched. Sanitation went before anything. She hoped to leave the world a better place before she passed over. She had Authority conferred on her. Metempsychosistically. She believed that the soul of Madame de Maintenon, the companion of Louis the Fourteenth had passed into her. How many convents had not the Maintenon set up and how rigidly had she not looked after the virtue and the sanitation of the inhabitants? That was what
she,
Mrs. Millicent de Bray Pape, looked to. She had in the South of France – the Riviera – a palace, erected by Mr. Behrens the celebrated architect – after the palace of the Maintenon at Sans Souci. But sanitated! She asked the young man to believe her. The boudoir appeared to be only a panelled boudoir: very large because of the useless vanity of le Raw Solale. Madame de Maintenon would have been content without such vanity… . But only touch a spring in the panels and every sort of bathing arrangement presented itself to you hidden in the wall. Sunken baths; baths above ground; douches with sea-water extra-iodised; lateral douches with and without bath-salts dissolved in the water. That was what she called making the world a little better.

The boy mumbled that he was not in principle against the old tree’s coming down. He was indeed in principle against his uncle’s and his father’s adoption of the peasant life. This was an industrial age. The peasant had always spoilt every advance in the ideas of the world. All the men at Cambridge were agreed as to that. He exclaimed:

‘Hi! You can’t do that… . Not go through standing
hay
!’

Every fibre of his country-boy landowner’s soul was outraged as he saw the long trail of satiny grey that followed Mrs. de Bray Pape’s long skirts. How were his father’s men to cut hay that had been trampled like that? But, unable to bear any longer the suspense of the spectacular advance towards Mark Tietjens along those orange zigzags, Mrs. de Bray Pape was running straight down the bank towards the unwalled, thatched hut. She could see it through the tops of the apple tree.

The boy, desperately nervous, continued to descend the zigzag paths that would take him into the very purlieus of his father’s house – onto the paved court where there were rock plants between the interstices. His mother
ought
not to have forced him to accompany Mrs. de Bray Pape. His mother was splendid. Divinely beautiful; athletic as Atalanta or Betty Nuthall, in spite of her sufferings. But she ought not to have sent Mrs. de Bray Pape. It was
meant
as a sort of revenge. General Campion had not approved. He could see that, though he had said: ‘My boy, you ought always to obey your dear mother! She has suffered so much. It is your duty to make it up to her
by
fulfilling her slightest whim. An Englishman always does his duty to his mother!’

Of course it was the presence of Mrs. de Bray Pape that forced the General to say that. Patriotism. General Campion was deadly afraid of mother. Who wasn’t? But he would hardly have enjoined upon a son to go and spy upon his father and his father’s … companion if he had not wanted to show Mrs. de Bray Pape how superior English family ties were to those of her country. They ragged each other about that all day long.

And yet he did not know. The dominion of women over those of the opposite sex was a terrible thing. He had seen the old General whimper like a whipped dog and mumble in his poor white moustache… . Mother was splendid. But wasn’t sex a terrible thing… . His breath came short.

He covered two foot of pebbles with the orange sand rolled into them. A tidy job it must be rolling on that slope! Still the actual gradient was not so steep on the zigzags. One in sixteen perhaps. He covered another two feet of pebbles with orange sand rolled in. How could he? How could he cover another two? His heels were trembling!

Four counties ran out below his feet. To the horizon!
He showed him the kingdoms of the earth
. As great a view as above Groby, but not purple and with no sea. Trust Father to settle where you could see a great view by going uphill.
Vox adhaesit
… . ‘His feet were rooted to the earth.’ … No,
vox adhaesit faucibus
meant that his voice stuck to his jaws. Palate rather. His palate was as dry as sawdust! How
could
he do it! … A terrible thing! They called it Sex! … His mother had coerced him into this dry palate and trembling heels by the force of her sex fever. Dreadful good-nights they had had in her boudoir, she forcing and forcing him with arguments to go. To come here. Beautiful Mother! … Cruel! Cruel!

The boudoir all lit up. Warm! Scented! Mother’s shoulders! A portrait of Nell Gwynn by Sir Peter Lely. Mrs. de Bray Pape wanted to buy it. Thought she could buy the earth, but Lord Fittleworth only laughed… . How had they all got forced down there? By Mother… . To spy on Father. Mother had never taken much stock of Fittleworth – good fellow Fittleworth, good landlord! – till last winter when she had got to know that Father had bought this
place.
Then it was Fittleworth, Fittleworth, Fittleworth! Lunches, dinner, dances at the Ambassador’s. Fittleworth wasn’t saying no. Who could say no to Mother, with her figure in the saddle, and her hair?

If he had known when they came down to Fittleworth’s last winter what he knew now! He knew now that his mother, come down for the hunting, though she had never taken much stock in hunting … Still, she could ride. Jove, she could ride. He had gone queer all over again and again at first in taking those leaps that she took laughing. Diana, that’s what she was… . Well, no, Diana was … His mother, come down for the hunting was there to torment Father and his … companion. She had told him. Laughing in that way she had… . It must be sex cruelty! … Laughing like those Leonardi-do-da … Well, Vinci women. A queer laugh, ending with a crooked smile… . In corresponding with Father’s servants… . Dressing up as a housemaid and looking over the hedge.

How
could
she do it?
How?
How could she force him to be here? What would Monty, the Prime Minister’s son, Dobles, Porter – fat ass because his father was too beastly rich! – what would his set think at Cambridge. They were all Marxist-Communists to a man. But still …

What would Mrs. Lowther think if she
really
knew… . If she could have been in the corridor one night when he came out from his mother’s boudoir! He would have had the courage to ask her then. Her hair was like floss silk, her lips like cut pomegranates. When she laughed she threw up her head… . He was now warm all over, his eyes wet and warm.

When he had asked if he ought to – if
she
wanted him to – do whatever his mother wanted whether or no he approved… . If his mother asked him to do what he thought was a mean action… . But that had been on the Peacock Terrace with the famous Fittleworth Seven Sister Roses… . How she went against the roses! … In a yellow … No, moth-coloured … Not yellow, not yellow. Green’s forsaken, but yellow’s forsworn. Great pity filled him at the thought that Mrs. Lowther might be forsaken. But she must not be forsworn … moth-coloured silk. Shimmering. Against pink roses. Her fine, fine hair, a halo. She had looked up and sideways. She had been going to laugh with her lips like cut pomegranates… . She had told him that
as
a rule it was a good thing to do what one’s mother wanted when she was like Mrs. Christopher Tietjens. Her soft voice … Soft Southern voice … Oh, when she laughed at Mrs. de Bray Pape… . How could she be a friend of Mrs. de Bray Pape’s? …

If it hadn’t been sunlight… . If he had come on Mrs. Lowther as he came out of his mother’s boudoir. He would have had courage. At night. Late. He would have said: ‘If you are really interested in my fate tell me if I ought to spy upon my father and his … companion!’ She would not have laughed, late at night. She would have given him her hand. The loveliest hands and the lightest feet. And her eyes would have dimmed… . Lovely, lovely pansies! Pansies are heartsease… .