‘Oh, they’ll find that!’ Tietjens said… . He continued his other speech: ‘When we go to war with France,’ he said dully… . And Sylvia knew he was only now formulating his settled opinion so as not to have his active brain to give to the discussion. He must be thinking hard of the Wannop girl! With her littleness: her tweed-skirtishness… . A provincial miniature of herself, Sylvia Tietjens… . If she, then, had been miniature, provincial… . But Tietjens’ words cut her as if she had been lashed with a dog-whip. ‘We shall behave more creditably,’ he had said, ‘because there will be less heroic impulse about it. We shall … half of us … be ashamed of ourselves. So there will be much less incidental degeneration.’
Sylvia, who by that was listening to him, abandoned the consideration of Miss Wannop and the pretence that obsessed her, of Tietjens talking to the girl, against a background of books at Macmaster’s party. She exclaimed:
‘Good God! What are you talking about? …’
Tietjens went on:
‘About our next war with France… . We’re the natural enemies of the French. We have to make our bread either by robbing them or making catspaws of them… .’
Sylvia said:
‘We can’t! We couldn’t …’
‘We’ve got to!’ Tietjens said. ‘It’s the condition of our existence. We’re a practically bankrupt, overpopulated, northern country; they’re rich southerners, with a falling population. Towards 1930 we shall have to do what Prussia did in 1914. Our conditions will be exactly those of Prussia then. It’s the … what is it called? …’
‘But …’ Sylvia cried out. ‘You’re a Franco-maniac… . You’re thought to be a French agent… . That’s what’s bitching your career!’
‘I am?’ Tietjens asked uninterestedly. He added: ‘Yes, that propably would bitch my career… .’ He went on, with a little more animation and a little more of his mind:
‘Ah! that will be a war worth seeing… . None of their drunken rat-fighting for imbecile boodlers …’
‘It would drive mother mad!’ Sylvia said.
‘Oh, no it wouldn’t,’ Tietjens said. ‘It will stimulate her if she is still alive… . Our heroes won’t be drunk with wine and lechery; our squits won’t stay at home and stab the heroes in the back. Our Minister for Water-closets won’t keep two and a half million men in any base in order to get the votes of their women at a General Election – that’s been the first evil effects of giving women the vote! With the French holding Ireland and stretching in a solid line from Bristol to Whitehall, we should hang the Minister before he had time to sign the papers. And we should be decently loyal to our Prussian allies and brothers. Our Cabinet won’t hate them as they hate the French for being frugal and strong in logic and well-educated and remorselessly practical. Prussians are the sort of fellows you can be hoggish with when you want to… .’
Sylvia interjected violently:
‘For God’s sake stop it. You almost make me believe what you say is true. I tell you mother would go mad. Her greatest friend is the Duchesse Tonnerre Châteaulherault… .’
‘Well!’ Tietjens said. ‘Your greatest friends are the Med … Med … the Austrian officers you take chocolates and flowers to. That there was all the row about … we’re at war with them and you haven’t gone mad!’
‘I don’t know,’ Sylvia said. ‘Sometimes I think I am going mad!’ She drooped. Tietjens, his face very strained, was looking at the table-cloth. He muttered: ‘Med … Met … Kos …’ Sylvia said:
‘Do you know a poem called Somewhere? It begins: “Somewhere or other there must surely be …”’
Tietjens said:
‘I’m sorry. No! I haven’t been able to get up my poetry again.’
Sylvia said:
‘Don’t!’ She added: ‘You’ve got to be at the War Office at 4.15, haven’t you? What’s the time now?’ She extremely wanted to give him her bad news before he went; she extremely wanted to put off giving it as long as she could. She wanted to reflect on the matter first; she wanted also to keep up a desultory conversation, or he might leave the room. She didn’t want to have to say to him: ‘Wait a minute, I’ve something to say to you!’ for she might not, at that moment, be in the mood. He said it was not yet two. He could give her an hour and a half more.
To keep the conversation going, she said:
‘I suppose the Wannop girl is making bandages or being a Waac. Something forceful.’
Tietjens said:
‘No; she’s a pacifist. As pacifist as you. Not so impulsive; but, on the other hand, she has more arguments. I should say she’ll be in prison before the war’s over… .’
‘A nice time you must have between the two of us,’ Sylvia said. The memory of her interview with the great lady nicknamed Glorvina – though it was not at all a good nickname – was coming over her forcibly.
She said:
‘I suppose you’re always talking it over with her? You see her every day.’
She imagined that that might keep him occupied for a minute or two. He said – she caught the sense of it only – and quite indifferently that he had tea with Mrs. Wannop every day. She had moved to a place called Bedford Park, which was near his office: not three minutes’ walk. The War Office had put up a lot of huts on some public green in that neighbourhood. He only saw the daughter once a week, at most. They never talked about the war; it was too disagreeable a subject for the young woman. Or rather, too painful… . His talk gradually drifted into unfinished sentences.
They played that comedy occasionally, for it is impossible for two people to live in the same house and not have some common meeting ground. So they would each talk, sometimes talking at great length and with politeness, each thinking his or her thoughts till they drifted into silence.
And, since she had acquired the habit of going into retreat – with an Anglican sisterhood in order to annoy Tietjens, who hated convents and considered that the communions should not mix – Sylvia had acquired also the habit of losing herself almost completely in reveries. Thus she was now vaguely conscious that a greyish lump, Tietjens, sat at the head of a whitish expanse: the lunch-table. There were also books … actually she was seeing a quite different figure and other books – the books of Glorvina’s husband, for the great lady had received Sylvia in that statesman’s library.
Glorvina, who was the mother of two of Sylvia’s absolutely most intimate friends, had sent for Sylvia. She wished, kindly and even wittily, to remonstrate with Sylvia because of her complete abstention from any patriotic activity. She offered Sylvia the address of a place in the city where she could buy wholesale and ready-made diapers for babies which Sylvia could present to some charity or other as being her own work. Sylvia said she would do nothing of the sort, and Glorvina said she would present the idea to poor Mrs. Pilsenhauser. She – Glorvina – said she spent some time every day thinking out acts of patriotism for the distressed rich with foreign names, accents or antecedents… .
Glorvina was a fiftyish lady with a pointed, grey face and a hard aspect; but when she was inclined to be witty or to plead earnestly she had a kind manner. The room in which they were was over a Belgravia back garden. It was lit by a skylight and the shadows from above deepened the lines of her face, accentuating the rather dusty grey of the hair as well as both the hardness and the kind manner. This very much impressed Sylvia, who was used to seeing the lady by artificial light… .
She said, however:
‘You don’t suggest, Glorvina, that I’m the distressed rich with a foreign name!’
The great lady had said:
‘My dear Sylvia; it isn’t so much you as your husband. Your last exploit with the Esterhazys and Metternichs has pretty well done for him. You forget that the present powers that be are not logical… .’
Sylvia remembered that she had sprung up from her leather saddle-back chair, exclaiming:
‘You mean to say that those unspeakable swine think that I’m …’
Glorvina said patiently:
/>
‘My dear Sylvia, I’ve already said it’s not you. It’s your husband that suffers. He appears to be too good a fellow to suffer. Mr. Waterhouse says so. I don’t know him myself, well.’
Sylvia remembered that she had said:
‘And who in the world is Mr. Waterhouse?’ and, hearing that Mr. Waterhouse was a late Liberal Minister, had lost interest. She couldn’t, indeed, remember any of the further words of her hostess, as words. The sense of them had too much overwhelmed her… .
She stood now, looking at Tietjens and only occasionally seeing him, in her mind completely occupied with the effort to recapture Glorvina’s own words in the desire for exactness. Usually she remembered conversations pretty well; but on this occasion her mad fury, her feeling of nausea, the pain of her own nails in her palms, an unrecoverable sequence of emotions had overwhelmed her.
She looked at Tietjens now with a sort of gloating curiosity. How was it possible that the most honourable man she knew should be so overwhelmed by foul and baseless rumours? It made you suspect that honour had, in itself, a quality of the evil eye… .
Tietjens, his face pallid, was fingering a piece of toast. He muttered:
‘Met … Met … It’s Met …’ He wiped his brow with a table-napkin, looked at it with a start, threw it on the floor and pulled out a handkerchief… . He muttered: ‘Mett … Metter …’ His face illuminated itself like the face of a child listening at a shell.
Sylvia screamed with a passion of hatred:
‘For God’s sake say Metternich … you’re driving me mad!’
When she looked at him again, his face had cleared and he was walking quickly to the telephone in the corner of the room. He asked her to excuse him and gave a number at Ealing. He said after a moment:
‘Mrs. Wannop? Oh! My wife has just reminded me that Metternich was the evil genius of the Congress of Vienna… .’ He said: ‘Yes! Yes!’ and listened. After a time he said: ‘Oh, you could put it stronger than that. You could put it that the Tory determination to ruin Napoleon at all costs was one of those pieces of party imbecility that, etc… . Yes; Castlereagh. And of course Wellington… . I’m very sorry I must ring off… . Yes; to-morrow at 8.30 from Waterloo… . No; I shan’t be seeing her again… . No; she’s made a mistake… . Yes; give her my love … goodbye.’ He was reversing the earpiece to hang it up, but a high-pitched series of yelps from the instrument forced it back to his ear: ‘Oh! War babies!’ he exclaimed. ‘I’ve already sent the statistics off to you! No! there isn’t a marked increase of the illegitimacy rate, except in patches. The rate’s appallingly high in the lowlands of Scotland; but it always is appallingly high there …’ He laughed and said good-naturedly: ‘Oh, you’re an old journalist: you won’t let fifty quid go for that …’ He was breaking off. But: ‘Or,’ he suddenly exclaimed, ‘here’s another idea for you. The rate’s about the same, probably because of this: half the fellows who go out to France are reckless because it’s the last chance, as they see it. But the other half are made twice as conscientious. A decent Tommie thinks twice about leaving his girl in trouble just before he’s killed. The divorce statistics are up, of course, because people will chance making new starts within the law. Thanks … thanks …’ He hung up the earpiece… .
Listening to that conversation had extraordinarily cleared Sylvia’s mind. She said, almost sorrowfully:
‘I suppose that that’s why you don’t seduce that girl.’ And she knew – she had known at once from the suddenly changed inflection of Tietjens’ voice when he had said ‘a decent Tommie thinks twice before leaving his girl in trouble’! – that Tietjens himself had thought twice.
She looked at him now almost incredulously, but with great coolness. Why shouldn’t he, she asked herself, give himself a little pleasure with his girl before going to almost certain death… . She felt a real, sharp pain at her heart. A poor wretch in such a devil of a hole… .
She had moved to a chair close beside the fireplace and now sat looking at him, leaning interestedly forward, as if at a garden party she had been finding – par impossible! – a pastoral play not so badly produced. Tietjens was a fabulous monster… .
He was a fabulous monster not because he was honourable and virtuous. She had known several very honourable and very virtuous men. If she had never known an honourable or virtuous woman except among her French or Austrian friends, that was, no doubt, because virtuous and honourable women did not amuse her or because, except just for the French and Austrians, they were not Roman Catholics… . But the honourable and virtuous men she had known had usually prospered and been respected. They weren’t the great fortunes, but they were well-offish: well spoken of, of the country gentleman type … Tietjens… .
She arranged her thoughts. To get one point settled in her mind, she asked:
‘What really happened to you in France? What is really the matter with your memory? Or your brain; is it?’
He said carefully:
‘It’s half of it, an irregular piece of it, dead. Or rather pale. Without a proper blood supply… . So a great portion of it, in the shape of memory, has gone.’
She said:
‘But you! … without a brain! …’ As this was not a question he did not answer.
His going at once to the telephone, as soon as he was in the possession of the name ‘Metternich’, had at last convinced her that he had not been, for the last four months, acting hypochondriacal or merely lying to obtain sympathy or extended sick leave. Amongst Sylvia’s friends a wangle known as shell-shock was cynically laughed at and quite approved of. Quite decent and, as far as she knew, quite brave menfolk of her women would openly boast that, when they had had enough of it over there, they would wangle a little leave or get a little leave extended by simulating this purely nominal disease, and in the general carnival of lying, lechery, drink, and howling that this affair was, to pretend to a little shell-shock had seemed to her to be almost virtuous. At any rate if a man passed his time at garden parties – or, as for the last months Tietjens had done, passed his time in a tin hut amongst dust heaps, going to tea every afternoon in order to help Mrs. Wannop with her newspaper articles – when men were so engaged they were, at least, not trying to kill each other.
She said now:
‘Do you mind telling me what actually happened to you?’
He said:
‘I don’t know that I can very well… . Something burst – or “exploded” is probably the right word – near me, in the dark. I expect you’d rather not hear about it? …’
‘I want to!’ Sylvia said.
He said:
‘The point about it is that I don’t know what happened and I don’t remember what I did. There are three weeks of my life dead… . What I remember is being in a C.C.S. and not being able to remember my own name.’
‘You mean that?’ Sylvia asked. ‘It’s not just a way of talking?’
‘No, it’s not just a way of talking,’ Tietjens answered. ‘I lay in bed in the C.C.S… . Your friends were dropping bombs on it.’
‘You might not call them my friends,’ Sylvia said.
Tietjens said:
‘I beg your pardon. One gets into a loose way of speaking. The poor bloody Huns then were dropping bombs from aeroplanes on the hospital huts… . I’m not suggesting they knew it was a C.C.S.; it was, no doubt, just carelessness… .’
‘You needn’t spare the Germans for me!’ Sylvia said. ‘You needn’t spare any man who has killed another man.’
‘I was, then, dreadfully worried,’ Tietjens went on. ‘I was composing a preface for a book on Arminianism… .’
‘You haven’t written a book!’ Sylvia exclaimed eagerly, because she thought that if Tietjens took to writing a book there might be a way of his earning a living. Many people had told her that he ought to write a book.
‘No, I hadn’t written a book,’ Tietjens said, ‘and I didn’t know what Arminianism was… .’
‘You know perfectly well what the Arminian heresy
is,’ Sylvia said sharply; ‘you explained it all to me years ago.’
‘Yes,’ Tietjens exclaimed. ‘Years ago I could have, but I couldn’t then. I could now, but I was a little worried about it then. It’s a little awkward to write a preface about a subject of which you know nothing. But it didn’t seem to me to be discreditable in an army sense… . Still it worried me dreadfully not to know my own name. I lay and worried and worried and thought how discreditable it would appear if a nurse came along and asked me and I didn’t know. Of course my name was on a luggage label tied to my collar; but I’d forgotten they did that to casualties… . Then a lot of people carried pieces of a nurse down the hut; the Germans’ bombs had done that of course. They were still dropping about the place.’
‘But good heavens,’ Sylvia cried out, ‘do you mean they carried a dead nurse past you?’
‘The poor dear wasn’t dead,’ Tietjens said. ‘I wish she had been. Her name was Beatrice Carmichael … the first name I learned after my collapse. She’s dead now of course… . That seemed to wake up a fellow on the other side of the room with a lot of blood coming through the bandages on his head… . He rolled out of his bed and, without a word, walked across the hut and began to strangle me… .’
‘But this isn’t believable,’ Sylvia said. ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t believe it… . You were an officer: they couldn’t have carried a wounded nurse under your nose. They must have known your sister Caroline was a nurse and was killed… .’
‘Carrie!’ Tietjens said, ‘was drowned on a hospital ship. I thank God I didn’t have to connect the other girl with her… . But you don’t suppose that in addition to one’s name, rank, unit, and date of admission they’d put that I’d lost a sister and two brothers in action and a father – of a broken heart I daresay… .’
‘But you only lost one brother,’ Sylvia said. ‘I went into mourning for him and your sister… .’
‘No, two,’ Tietjens said; ‘but the fellow who was strangling me was what I wanted to tell you about. He let out a number of earpiercing shrieks and lots of orderlies came and pulled him off me and sat all over him. Then he began to shout “Faith!” He shouted: “Faith! … Faith! … Faith! …” at intervals of two seconds, as far as I could tell by my pulse, until four in the morning, when he died… . I don’t know whether it was a religious exhortation or a woman’s name, but I disliked him a good deal because he started my tortures, such as they were… . There had been a girl I knew called Faith. Oh, not a love affair: the daughter of my father’s head gardener, a Scotsman. The point is that every time he said Faith I asked myself “Faith … Faith what?” I couldn’t remember the name of my father’s head gardener.’