Parade's End (21 page)

‘You’re
brilliant
!’ Brilliant! That stick! No, he was indispensable!

‘Upon my soul!’ Tietjens said to himself, ‘that girl down there is the only intelligent living soul I’ve met for years.’ A little pronounced in manner sometimes; faulty in reasoning naturally, but quite intelligent, with a touch of wrong accent now and then. But if she was wanted anywhere, there she’d be! Of good stock, of course: on both sides! But, positively, she and Sylvia were the only two human beings he had met for years whom he could respect: the one for sheer efficiency in killing; the other for having the constructive desire and knowing how to set about it. Kill or cure! The two functions of man. If you wanted something killed you’d go to Sylvia Tietjens in the sure faith that she would kill it: emotion, hope, ideal; kill it quick and sure. If you wanted something kept alive you’d go to Valentine: she’d find something to do for it… . The two types of mind: remorseless enemy, sure screen, dagger … sheath!

Perhaps the future of the world then was to women? Why not? He hadn’t in years met a man that he hadn’t to talk down to – as you talk down to a child, as he had talked down to General Campion or to Mr. Waterhouse … as he always talked down to Macmaster. All good fellows in their way… .

But why was he born to be a sort of lonely buffalo outside the herd? Not artist, not soldier, not bureaucrat, not certainly indispensable anywhere; apparently not even sound in the eyes of these dim-minded specialists. An exact observer… .

Hardly even that for the last six and a half hours:

‘Die Sommer Nacht hat mir’s angethan

Das war ein schweigsames Reiten …’

he said aloud.

How could you translate that: you couldn’t translate it: no one could translate Heine:

It was the summer night came over me:

That was silent riding …

A voice cut into his warm, drowsy thought:

‘Oh, you
do
exist. But you’ve spoken too late. I’ve run into the horse.’ He must have been speaking aloud. He had felt the horse quivering at the end of the reins. The horse, too, was used to her by now. It had hardly
stirred
… He wondered when he had left off singing ‘John Peel’… . He said:

‘Come along, then; have you found anything?’

The answer came:

‘Something … But you can’t talk in this stuff … I’ll just …’

The voice died away as if a door had shut. He waited, consciously waiting as an occupation! Contritely and to make a noise he rattled the whip-stock in its bucket. The horse started and he had to check in quickly: a damn fool he was. Of course a horse would start if you rattled a whip-stock. He called out:

‘Are you all right?’ The cart might have knocked her down. He had, however, broken the convention. Her voice came from a great distance:

‘I’m all right. Trying the other side …’

His last thought came back to him. He had broken their convention; he had exhibited concern, like any other man… . He said to himself:

‘By God! Why not take a holiday? Why not break all conventions?’

They erected themselves intangibly and irrefragably. He had not known this young woman twenty-four hours, not to speak to, and already the convention existed between them that he must play stiff and cold, she warm and clinging… . Yet she was obviously as cool a hand as himself; cooler no doubt, for at bottom he was certainly a sentimentalist.

A convention of the most imbecile type … Then break all conventions: with the young woman: with himself above all. For forty-eight hours … almost exactly forty-eight hours till he started for Dover… .

And I must to the greenwood go,

Alone: a banished man!

By the descending moon: it being then just after cockcrow of mid-summer night – what sentimentality! – it must be half-past four on Sunday. He had worked out that to catch the morning Ostend boat at Dover he must leave the Wannops’ at 5.15 on Tuesday morning, in a motor for the junction… . What incredible cross-country train connections! Five hours for not forty miles.

He had then forty-eight and three-quarter hours! Let them be a holiday! A holiday from himself above all; a
holiday
from his standards, from his convention with himself. From clear observation, from exact thought, from knocking over all the skittles of the exactitudes of others, from the suppression of emotions… . From all the weariness that made him intolerable to himself… . He felt his limbs lengthen, as if they too had relaxed.

Well, already he had had six and a half hours of it. They had started at 10 and, like any other man, he had enjoyed the drive, though it had been difficult to keep the beastly cart balanced, the girl had had to sit behind with her arm round the other girl who screamed at every oak tree.

But he had – if he put himself to the question – mooned along under the absurd moon that had accompanied them down the heaven, to the scent of hay, to the sound of nightingales, hoarse by now, of course – in June he changes his tune; of corncrakes, of bats, of a heron twice, overhead. They had passed the blue-black shadows of corn stacks, of heavy, rounded oaks, of hop oasts that are half church-tower, half finger-post. And the road silver grey, and the night warm… . It was mid-summer night that had done that to him… .

Hat mir’s angethan
.

Das war ein schweigsames Reiten
… .

Not absolutely silent of course, but silentish! Coming back from the parson’s, where they had dropped the little London sewer rat, they had talked very little… . Not unpleasant people the parson’s: an uncle of the girl’s; three girl cousins, not unpleasant, like the girl, but without the individuality… . A remarkably good bite of beef, a truly meritorious Stilton and a drop of whisky that proved the parson to be a man. All in candelight. A motherly mother of the family to take the rat up some stairs … a great deal of laughter of girls … then a re-start an hour later than had been scheduled… . Well, it hadn’t mattered: they had the whole of eternity before them; the good horse –
really
it was a good horse! – putting its shoulders into the work… .

They had talked a little at first; about the safeness of the London girl from the police now; about the brickishness of the parson in taking her in. She certainly would never have reached Charing Cross by train… .

There had fallen long periods of silences. A bat had whirled very near their off-lamp.

‘What a large bat!’ she had said. ‘
Noctilux major
…’

He said:

‘Where do you get your absurd Latin nomenclature from? Isn’t it
phalœna
…’ She had answered:

‘From White …
The Natural History of Selborne
is the only natural history I ever read… .’

‘He’s the last English writer that could write,’ said Tietjens.

‘He calls the downs “those majestic and amusing mountains”,’ she said. ‘Where do you get your dreadful Latin pronunciation from? Phal … i … i … na! To rhyme with Dinah!’

‘It’s “
sublime
and amusing mountains”, not “majestic and amusing”,’ Tietjens said. ‘I got my Latin pronunciation, like all public schoolboys of to-day, from the German.’

She answered:

‘You would! Father used to say it made him sick.’

‘Cæsar equals Kaiser,’ Tietjens said… .

‘Bother your Germans,’ she said, ‘they’re no ethnologists; they’re rotten at philology!’ She added: ‘Father used to say so,’ to take away from an appearance of pedantry.

A silence then! She had right over her head a rug that her aunt had lent her; a silhouette beside him, with a cocky nose turned up straight out of the descending black mass. But for the square toque she would have had the silhouette of a Manchester cotton-hand: the toque gave it a different line; like the fillet of Diana. It was piquant and agreeable to ride beside a quite silent lady in the darkness of the thick Weald that let next to no moonlight through. The horse’s hoofs went clock, clock: a good horse. The near lamp illuminated the russet figure of a man with a sack on his back, pressed into the hedge, a blinking lurcher beside him.

‘Keeper between the blankets!’ Tietjens said to himself: ‘All these south country keepers sleep all night… . And then you give them a five-quid tip for the week-end shoot… .’ He determined that, as to that too he would put his foot down. No more week-ends with Sylvia in the mansions of the Chosen People… .

The girl said suddenly; they had run into a clearing of the deep underwoods:

‘I’m not stuffy with you over that Latin, though you were unnecessarily rude. And I’m not sleepy. I’m loving it all.’

He hesitated for a minute. It was a silly-girl thing to say. She didn’t usually say silly-girl things. He ought to snub her for her own sake… .

He had said:

‘I’m rather loving it too!’ She was looking at him; her nose had disappeared from the silhouette. He hadn’t been able to help it; the moon had been just above her head; unknown stars all round her; the night was warm. Besides, a really manly man may condescend at times! He rather owes it to himself… .

She said:

‘That was nice of you! You might have hinted that the rotten drive was taking you away from your so important work… .’

‘Oh, I can think as I drive,’ he said. She said:

‘Oh!’ and then: ‘The reason why I’m unconcerned over your rudeness about my Latin is that I know I’m a much better Latinist than you. You can’t quote a few lines of Ovid without sprinkling howlers in… . It’s
vastum
, not
longum
… “Terra tribus scopulis vastum procurrit” … It’s
alto
, not
coelo
… . “Uvidus ex alto desilientis… .” How could Ovid have written
ex coelo
? The “c” after the “x” sets your teeth on edge.’

Tietjens said:

‘
Excogitabo!
’

‘That’s purely canine!’ she said with contempt.

‘Besides,’ Tietjen said, ‘
longum
is much better than
vastum
. I hate cant adjectives like “vast”… .’

‘It’s like your modesty to correct Ovid,’ she exclaimed. ‘Yet you say Ovid and Catullus were the only two Roman poets to
be
poets. That’s because they
were
sentimental and used adjectives like
vastum
… . What’s “Sad tears mixed with kisses” but the sheerest sentimentality!’

‘It ought, you know,’ Tietjens said with soft dangerousness, ‘to be “Kisses mingled with sad tears” … “Tristibus et lacrimis oscula mixta dabis.” …’

‘I’m hanged if I ever could,’ she exclaimed explosively. ‘A man like you could die in a ditch and I’d never come near. You’re desiccated even for a man who has learned his Latin from the Germans.’

‘Oh, well, I’m a mathematician,’ Tietjens said. ‘Classics is not my line!’

‘It
isn’t
,’ she answered tartly.

A long time afterwards from her black figure came the words:

‘You used “mingled” instead of “mixed” to translate
mixta
. I shouldn’t think you took English at Cambridge, either! Though they’re as rotten at that as at everything else, father used to say.’

‘Your father was Balliol, of course,’ Tietjens said with the snuffy contempt of a scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge. But having lived most of her life amongst Balliol people she took this as a compliment and an olive branch.

Some time afterwards Tietjens, observing that her silhouette was still between him and the moon, remarked:

‘I don’t know if you know that for some minutes we’ve been running nearly due west. We ought to be going south-east by a bit south. I suppose you
do
know this road… .’

‘Every inch of it,’ she said, ‘I’ve been on it over and over again on my motor-bicycle with mother in the side-car. The next cross-road is called Grandfather’s Want-ways. We’ve got eleven miles and a quarter still to do. The road turns back here because of the old Sussex iron pits; it goes in and out amongst them, hundreds of them. You know the exports of the town of Rye in the eighteenth century were hops, cannon, kettles and chimney backs. The railings round St. Paul’s are made of Sussex iron.’

‘I knew that, of course,’ Tietjens said: ‘I come of an iron county myself. Why didn’t you let me run the girl over in the side-car, it would have been quicker?’

‘Because,’ she said, ‘three weeks ago I smashed up the side-car on the milestone at Hog’s Corner: doing forty.’

‘It must have been a pretty tidy smash!’ Tietjens said. ‘Your mother wasn’t aboard?’

‘No,’ the girl said, ‘suffragette literature. The side-car was full. It
was
a pretty tidy smash. Hadn’t you observed I still limp a little? …’

A few minutes later she said:

‘I haven’t the least notion where we really are. I clean forgot to notice the road. And I don’t care… . Here’s a signpost though; pull into it.’

The lamps would not, however, shine on the arms of the post; they were burning dim and showing low. A good deal of fog was in the air. Tietjens gave the reins to the girl and got down. He took out the near light and, going back a yard or two to the signpost, examined its bewildering ghostlinesses… .

The girl gave a little squeak that went to his backbone; the hoofs clattered unusually; the cart went on. Tietjens went after it; it was astonishing – it had completely disappeared. Then he ran into it: ghostly, reddish and befogged. It must have got much thicker suddenly. The fog swirled all round the near lamp as he replaced it in its socket.

‘Did you do that on purpose?’ he asked the girl. ‘Or can’t you hold a horse?’

‘I can’t drive a horse,’ the girl said; ‘I’m afraid of them. I can’t drive a motor-bike either. I made that up because I
knew
you’d say you’d rather have taken Gertie over in the side-car than driven with me.’

‘Then do you mind,’ Tietjens said, ‘telling me if you know this road at all?’

‘Not a bit!’ she answered cheerfully. ‘I never drove it in my life. I looked it up on the map before we started because I’m sick to death of the road we went by. There’s a one-horse ’bus from Rye to Tenterden, and I’ve walked from Tenterden to my uncle’s over and over again… .’

‘We shall probably be out all night then,’ Tietjens said. ‘Do you mind? The horse may be tired… .’