Parade's End (18 page)

Nevertheless, when at the roadside he stood level with Miss Wannop who did not look at him, and saw the white road running to right and left with no stile opposite, he said gruffly to her:

‘Where’s the next stile? I hate walking on roads!’ She pointed with her chin along the opposite hedgerow. ‘Fifty yards!’ she said.

‘Come along!’ he exclaimed, and set off at a trot almost. It had come into his head that it would be just the beastly sort of thing that would happen if a car with General Campion and Lady Claudine and Paul Sandbach all aboard should come along that blinding stretch of road, or one alone – perhaps the General driving the dog-cart he affected. He said to himself:

‘By God! If they cut this girl I’d break their backs over my knee!’ and he hastened. ‘Just the beastly thing that
would
happen.’ The road probably led straight in at the front door of Mountby!

Miss Wannop trotted along a little in his rear. She thought him the most extraordinary man: as mad as he was odious. Sane people, if they’re going to hurry – but
why
hurry! – do it in the shade of field hedgerows, not in the white blaze of county council roads. Well, he could go ahead. In the next field she was going to have it out with him: she didn’t intend to be hot with running; let him be, his hateful, but certainly noticeable eyes, protruding at her like a lobster’s; but she cool and denunciatory in her pretty blouse… .

There was a dog-cart coming behind them!

Suddenly it came into her head: that fool had been lying when he had said that the police meant to let them
alone:
lying over the breakfast-table… . The dog-cart contained the police: after them! She didn’t waste time looking round: she wasn’t a fool like Atalanta in the egg race. She picked up her heels and sprinted. She beat him by a yard and a half to the kissing-gate, white in the hedge: panicked, breathing hard. He panted into it, after her: the fool hadn’t the sense to let her through first. They were jammed in together: face to face, panting! An occasion on which sweethearts kiss in Kent: the gate being made in three, the inner flange of the V moving on hinges. It stops cattle getting through, but this great lout of a Yorkshireman didn’t know, trying to push through like a mad bullock! Now they were caught. Three weeks in Wandsworth gaol… . Oh hang… .

The voice of Mrs. Wannop – of course it was only mother! Twenty feet on high or so behind the kicking mare, with a good, round face like a peony – said:

‘Ah, you can jam my Val in a gate and hold her … but she gave you seven yards in twenty and beat you to the gate. That was her father’s ambition!’ She thought of them as children running races. She beamed down, round-faced and simple, on Tietjens from beside the driver, who had a black, slouch hat and the grey beard of St. Peter.

‘My dear boy!’ she said, ‘my dear boy; it’s such a satisfaction to have you under my roof!’

The black horse reared on end, the patriarch sawing at its mouth. Mrs. Wannop said unconcernedly: ‘Stephen Joel! I haven’t done talking.’

Tietjens was gazing enragedly at the lower part of the horse’s sweat-smeared stomach.

‘You soon will have,’ he said, ‘with the girth in that state. Your neck will be broken.’

‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ Mrs. Wannop said. ‘Joel only bought the turn-out yesterday.’

Tietjens addressed the driver with some ferocity:

‘Here; get down, you,’ he said. He held, himself, the head of the horse whose nostrils were wide with emotion; it rubbed its forehead almost immediately against his chest. He said: ‘Yes! yes! There! there!’ Its limbs lost their tautness. The aged driver scrambled down from the high seat, trying to come down at first forward and then backwards. Tietjens fired indignant orders at him:

‘Lead the horse into the shade of that tree. Don’t touch his bit: his mouth’s sore. Where did you get this job lot? Ashford market, thirty pounds; it’s worth more… . But, blast you, don’t you see you’ve got a thirteen hands pony’s harness for a sixteen and a half hands horse. Let the bit out three holes: it’s cutting the animal’s tongue in half… . This animal’s a rig. Do you know what a rig is? If you give it corn for a fortnight it will kick you and the cart and the stable to pieces in five minutes one day.’ He led the conveyance, Mrs. Wannop triumphantly complacent and all, into a patch of shade beneath elms.

‘Loosen that bit, confound you,’ he said to the driver. ‘Ah! you’re afraid.’

He loosened the bit himself, covering his fingers with greasy harness polish which he hated. Then he said:

‘Can you hold his head or are you afraid of that too? You
deserve
to have him bite your hands off.’ He addressed Miss Wannop: ‘Can
you
?’ She said: ‘No! I’m afraid of horses. I can drive any sort of car, but I’m afraid of horses.’ He said: ‘Very proper!’ He stood back and looked at the horse: it had dropped its head and lifted its near hind foot, resting the toe on the ground: an attitude of relaxation.

‘He’ll stand now!’ he said. He undid the girth, bending down uncomfortably, perspiring and greasy; the girth-strap parted in his hand.

‘It’s true,’ Mrs. Wannop said. ‘I’d have been dead in three minutes if you hadn’t seen that. The cart would have gone over backwards …’

Tietjens took out a large, complicated, horn-handled knife like a schoolboy’s. He selected a punch and pulled it open. He said to the driver:

‘Have you got any cobbler’s thread? Any string? Any copper wire? A rabbit wire, now? Come, you’ve got a rabbit wire or you’re not a handy-man.’

The driver moved his slouch hat circularly in negation. This seemed to be Quality who summons you for poaching if you own to possessing rabbit wires.

Tietjens laid the girth along the shaft and punched into it with his punch.

‘Woman’s work!’ he said to Mrs. Wannop, ‘but it’ll take you home and last you six months as well … But I’ll sell this whole lot for you to-morrow.’

Mrs. Wannop sighed:

‘I suppose it’ll fetch a ten-pound note …’ She said: ‘I ought to have gone to market myself.’

‘No!’ Tietjens answered: ‘I’ll get you fifty for it or I’m no Yorkshireman. This fellow hasn’t been swindling you. He’s got you deuced good value for money, but he doesn’t know what’s suited for ladies; a white pony and a basket-work chaise is what you want.’

‘Oh, I like a bit of spirit,’ Mrs. Wannop said.

‘Of course you do,’ Tietjens answered: ‘but this turnout’s too much.’

He sighed a little and took out his surgical needle.

‘I’m going to hold this band together with this,’ he said. ‘It’s so pliant it will make two stitches and hold for ever… .’

But the handy-man was beside him, holding out the contents of his pockets: a greasy leather pouch, a ball of beeswax, a knife, a pipe, a bit of cheese and a pale rabbit wire. He had made up his mind that
this
Quality was benevolent and he made offering of all his possessions.

Tietjens said: ‘Ah,’ and then, while he unknotted the wire:

‘Well! Listen … you bought this turn-out off a higgler at the back door of the Leg of Mutton Inn.’

‘Saracen’s ’Ed!’ the driver muttered.

‘You got it for thirty pounds because the higgler wanted money bad.
I
know. And dirt cheap… . But a rig isn’t everybody’s driving. All right for a vet or a horse-coper. Like the cart that’s too tall! … But you did damn well. Only you’re not what you were, are you, at thirty? And the horse looked to be a devil and the cart so high you couldn’t get out once you were in. And you kept it in the sun for two hours waiting for your mistress.’

‘There wer’ a bit o’ lewth’ longside stable wall,’ the driver muttered.

‘Well! He didn’t like waiting,’ Tietjens said placably. ‘You can be thankful your old neck’s not broken. Do this band up, one hole less for the bit I’ve taken in.’

He prepared to climb into the driver’s seat, but Mrs. Wannop was there before him, at an improbable altitude on the sloping watch-box with strapped cushions.

‘Oh, no, you don’t,’ she said, ‘no one drives me and my horse but me or my coachman when I’m about. Not even you, dear boy.’

‘I’ll come with you then,’ Tietjens said.

‘Oh, no, you don’t,’ she answered. ‘No one’s neck’s to be broken in this conveyance but mine and Joel’s,’ she added: ‘perhaps to-night if I’m satisfied the horse is fit to drive.’

Miss Wannop suddenly exclaimed:

‘Oh,
no
, mother.’ But the handy-man having climbed in, Mrs. Wannop flirted her whip and started the horse. She pulled up at once and leaned over to Tietjens:

‘
What
a life for that poor woman,’ she said. ‘We must
all
do all we can for her. She could have her husband put in a lunatic asylum to-morrow. It’s sheer self-sacrifice that she doesn’t.’

The horse went off at a gentle, regular trot.

Tietjens addressed Miss Wannop:

‘What hands your mother’s got,’ he said, ‘it isn’t often one sees a woman with hands like that on a horse’s mouth. Did you see how she pulled up? …’

He was aware that, all this while, from the road-side, the girl had been watching him with shining eyes, intently, even with fascination.

‘I suppose you think that a mighty fine performance,’ she said.

‘I didn’t make a very good job of the girth,’ he said. ‘Let’s get off this road.’

‘Setting poor, weak women in their places,’ Miss Wannop continued. ‘Soothing the horse like a man with a charm. I suppose you soothe women like that too. I pity your wife… . The English country male! And making a devoted vassal at sight of the handy-man. The feudal system all complete… .’

Tietjens said:

‘Well, you know, it’ll make him all the better servant to you if he thinks you’ve friends in the know. The lower classes are like that. Let’s get off this road.’

She said:

‘You’re in a mighty hurry to get behind the hedge. Are the police after us or aren’t they? Perhaps you were lying at breakfast: to calm the hysterical nerves of a weak woman.’

‘I wasn’t lying,’ he said, ‘but I hate roads when there are field-paths …’

‘That’s a phobia, like any woman’s,’ she exclaimed.

She almost ran through the kissing-gate and stood awaiting him.

‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘if you’ve stopped off the police with your high and mighty male ways you think you’ve destroyed my romantic young dream. You haven’t. I don’t
want
the police after me. I believe I’d
die
if they put me in Wandsworth. I’m a coward.’

‘Oh, no, you aren’t,’ he said, but he was following his own train of thought, just as she wasn’t in the least listening to him. ‘I daresay you’re a heroine all right.
Not
because you persevere in actions the consequences of which you fear. But I daresay you can touch pitch and not be defiled.’

Being too well brought up to interrupt she waited till he had said all he wanted to say, then she exclaimed:

‘Let’s settle the preliminaries. It’s obvious mother means us to see a great deal of you.
You’re
going to be a mascot too, like your father. I suppose you think you are: you saved me from the police yesterday, you appear to have saved mother’s neck to-day. You appear, too, to be going to make twenty pounds’ profit on a horse deal. You say you will and you seem to be that sort of a person … Twenty pounds is no end in a family like ours … Well, then, you appear to be going to be the regular
bel ami
of the Wannop family …’

Tietjens said:

‘I hope not.’

‘Oh, I don’t mean,’ she said, ‘that you’re going to rise to fame by making love to all the women of the Wannop family. Besides, there’s only me. But mother will press you into all sorts of odd jobs; and there will always be a plate for you at the table. Don’t shudder! I’m a regular good cook –
cuisine bourgeoise
of course. I learned under a real professed cook, though a drunkard. That meant I used to do half the cooking and the family was particular. Ealing people are: county councillors, half of them, and the like. So I know what men are …’ She stopped and said good-naturedly: ‘But do, for goodness’ sake, get it over. I’m sorry I was rude to you. But it
is
irritating to have to stand like a stuffed rabbit while a man is acting like a regular
Admirable
Crichton, and cool and collected, with the English country gentleman air and all.’

Tietjens winced. The young woman had come a little too near the knuckle of his wife’s frequent denunciations of himself. And she exclaimed:

‘No! That’s not fair! I’m an ungrateful pig! You didn’t show a bit more side really than a capable workman must who’s doing his job in the midst of a crowd of incapable duffers. But just get it out, will you? Say once and for all that – you know the proper, pompous manner: you are not without sympathy with our aims, but you disapprove – oh, immensely, strongly – of our methods.’

It struck Tietjens that the young woman was a good deal more interested in the cause – of votes for women – than he had given her credit for. He wasn’t much in the mood for talking to young women, but it was with considerably more than the surface of his mind that he answered:

‘I don’t. I approve entirely of your methods: but your aims are idiotic.’

She said:

‘You don’t know, I suppose, that Gertie Wilson, who’s in bed at our house, is wanted by the police: not only for yesterday, but for putting explosives in a whole series of letter-boxes?’

He said:

‘I didn’t … but it was a perfectly proper thing to do. She hasn’t burned any of my letters or I might be annoyed, but it wouldn’t interfere with my approval.’

‘You don’t think,’ she asked earnestly, ‘that we … mother and I … are likely to get heavy sentences for shielding her. It would be beastly bad luck on mother. Because she’s an anti …’

‘I don’t know about the sentence,’ Tietjens said, ‘but we’d better get the girl off your premises as soon as we can… .’

She said:

‘Oh, you’ll
help
?’

He answered:

‘Of course, your mother can’t be incommoded. She’s written the only novel that’s been fit to read since the eighteenth century.’

She stopped and said earnestly:

‘Look here.
Don’t
be one of those ignoble triflers who say the vote won’t do women any good. Women have a rotten time. They do, really. If you’d seen what I’ve seen, I’m not talking through my hat.’ Her voice became quite deep: she had tears in her eyes: ‘
Poor
women
do
!’ she said, ‘little insignificant creatures. We’ve
got
to change the divorce laws. We’ve
got
to get better conditions.
You
couldn’t stand it if you knew what I know.’