Sylvia, who was thinking of other things, asked:
‘What was the name?’
Tietjens answered:
‘I don’t know, I don’t know to this day… . The point is that when I knew that I didn’t know that name, I was as ignorant, as uninstructed, as a new-born babe and much more worried about it… . The Koran says – I’ve got as far as K in my reading of the Encyclopædia Britannica every afternoon at Mrs. Wannop’s – “The strong man when smitten is smitten in his pride!” … Of course I got King’s Regs. And the M.M.L. and Infantry Field Training and all the A.C.I.s to date by heart very quickly. And that’s all a British officer is really encouraged to know… .’
‘Oh, Christopher!’ Sylvia said. ‘You read that Encyclopædia; it’s pitiful. You used to despise it so.’
‘That’s what’s meant by “smitten in his pride”,’ Tietjens said. ‘Of course what I read or hear now I remember… . But I haven’t got to M, much less V. That was why I was worried about Metternich and the Congress of Vienna. I try to remember things on my own, but I haven’t yet done so. You see it’s as if a certain area of my brain had been wiped white. Occasionally one name suggests another. You noticed, when I got Metternich it suggested Castlereagh and Wellington – and even other names… . But that’s what the Department of Statistics will get me on. When they fire me out. The real reason will be that I’ve served. But they’ll pretend it’s because I’ve no more general knowledge than is to be found in the Encyclopædia, or two-thirds or more or less – according to the duration of the war… . Or, of course, the real reason will be that I won’t fake statistics to dish the French with. They asked me to, the other day, as a holiday task. And when I refused you should have seen their faces.’
‘Have you really,’ Sylvia asked, ‘lost two brothers in action?’
‘Yes,’ Tietjens answered. ‘Curly and Longshanks. You never saw them because they were always in India. And they weren’t noticeable… .’
‘Two!’ Sylvia said. ‘I only wrote to your father about one called Edward. And your sister Caroline. In the same letter… .’
‘Carrie wasn’t noticeable either,’ Tietjens said. ‘She did Charity Organisation Society work… . But I remember: you didn’t like her. She was the born old maid… .’
‘Christopher!’ Sylvia asked, ‘do you still think your mother died of a broken heart because I left you?’
Tietjens said:
‘Good God; no. I never thought so and I don’t think so. I know she didn’t.’
‘Then!’ Sylvia exclaimed, ‘she died of a broken heart because I came back… . It’s no good protesting that you don’t think so. I remember your face when you opened the telegram at Lobscheid. Miss Wannop forwarded it from Rye. I remember the postmark. She was born to do me ill. The moment you got it I could see you thinking that you must conceal from me that you thought it was because of me she died. I could see you wondering if it wouldn’t be practicable to conceal from me that she was dead. You couldn’t, of course, do that because, you remember, we were to have gone to Wiesbaden and show ourselves; and we couldn’t do that because we should have to be in mourning. So you took me to Russia to get out of taking me to the funeral.’
‘I took you to Russia,’ Tietjens said. ‘I remember it all now – because I had an order from Sir Robert Ingleby to assist the British Consul-General in preparing a Blue Book statistical table of the Government of Kiev… . It appeared to be the most industrially promising region in the world in those days. It isn’t now, naturally. I shall never see back a penny of the money I put into it. I thought I was clever in those days… . And of course, yes, the money was my mother’s settlement. It comes back … yes, of course… .’
‘Did you,’ Sylvia asked, ‘get out of taking me to your mother’s funeral because you thought I should defile your mother’s corpse by my presence? Or because you were afraid that in the presence of your mother’s body you wouldn’t be able to conceal from me that you thought I killed her? … Don’t deny it. And don’t get out of it by saying that you can’t remember those days. You’re remembering now: that I killed your mother; that Miss Wannop sent the telegram – why don’t you score it against her that she sent the news? … Or, good God, why don’t you score it against yourself, as the wrath of the Almighty, that your mother was dying while you and that girl were croodling over each other? … At Rye! Whilst I was at Lobscheid… .’
Tietjens wiped his brow with his handkerchief.
‘Well, let’s drop that,’ Sylvia said. ‘God knows I’ve no right to put a spoke in that girl’s wheel or in yours. If you love each other you’ve a right to happiness and I daresay she’ll make you happy. I can’t divorce you, being a Catholic; but I won’t make it difficult for you other ways, and self-contained people like you and her will manage somehow. You’ll have learned the way from Macmaster and his mistress… . But, oh, Christopher Tietjens, have you ever considered how foully you’ve used me!’
Tietjens looked at her attentively, as if with magpie anguish.
‘If,’ Sylvia went on with her denunciation, ‘you had once in our lives said to me: “You whore! You bitch! You killed my mother. May you rot in hell for it… .” If you’d only once said something like it … about the child! About Perowne! … you might have done something to bring us together… .’
Tietjens said:
‘That’s, of course, true!’
‘I know,’ Sylvia said, ‘you can’t help it… . But when, in your famous county family pride – though a youngest son! – you say to yourself: And I daresay if … Oh, Christ! … you’re shot in the trenches you’ll say it … oh, between the saddle and the ground! that you never did a dishonourable action… . And, mind you, I believe that no other man save one has ever had more right to say it than you… .’
Tietjens said:
‘You believe that!’
‘As I hope to stand before my Redeemer,’ Sylvia said, ‘I believe it… . But, in the name of the Almighty, how could any woman live beside you … and be for ever forgiven? Or no: not forgiven; ignored! … Well, be proud when you die because of your honour. But, God, you be humble about … your errors in judgment. You know what it is to ride a horse for miles with too tight a curb-chain and its tongue cut almost in half… . You remember the groom your father had who had the trick of turning the hunters out like that… . And you horse-whipped him, and you’ve told me you’ve almost cried ever so often afterwards for thinking of that mare’s mouth… . Well! Think of this mare’s mouth sometimes! You’ve ridden me like that for seven years… .’
She stopped and then went on again:
‘Don’t you know, Christopher Tietjens, that there is only one man from whom a woman could take “Neither I condemn thee” and not hate him more than she hates the fiend! …’
Tietjens so looked at her that he contrived to hold her attention.
‘I’d like you to let me ask you,’ he said, ‘how I could throw stones at you? I have never disapproved of your actions.’
Her hands dropped dispiritedly to her sides.
‘Oh, Christopher,’ she said, ‘don’t carry on that old play acting. I shall never see you again, very likely, to speak to. You’ll sleep with the Wannop girl to-night; you’re going out to be killed to-morrow. Let’s be straight for the next ten minutes or so. And give me your attention. The Wannop girl can spare that much if she’s to have all the rest… .’
She could see that he was giving her his whole mind.
‘As you said just now,’ he exclaimed slowly, ‘as I hope to meet my Redeemer I believe you to be a good woman. One that never did a dishonourable thing.’
She recoiled a little in her chair.
‘Then!’ she said, ‘you’re the wicked man I’ve always made believe to think you, though I didn’t.’
Tietjens said:
‘No! … Let me try to put it to you as I see it.’
She exclaimed:
‘No! … I’ve been a wicked woman. I have ruined you. I am not
going to listen to you.’
He said:
‘I daresay you have ruined me. That’s nothing to me. I am completely indifferent.’
She cried out:
‘Oh! Oh! … Oh!’ on a note of agony.
Tietjens said doggedly:
‘I don’t care. I can’t help it. Those are – those should be – the conditions of life amongst decent people. When our next war comes I hope it will be fought out under those conditions. Let us, for God’s sake, talk of the gallant enemy. Always. We have got to plunder the French or millions of our people must starve: they have got to resist us successfully or be wiped out… . It’s the same with you and me… .’
She exclaimed:
‘You mean to say that you don’t think I was wicked when I … when I trepanned is what mother calls it? …’
He said loudly:
‘No! … You had been let in for it by some brute. I have always held that a woman who has been let down by one man has the right – has the duty for the sake of her child – to let down a man. It becomes woman against man: against one man. I happened to be that one man: it was the will of God. But you were within your rights. I will never go back on that. Nothing will make me, ever!’
She said:
‘And the others! And Perowne … I know you’ll say that anyone is justified in doing anything as long as they are open enough about it… . But it killed your mother. Do you disapprove of my having killed your mother? Or you consider that I have corrupted the child… .’
Tietjens said:
‘I don’t… . I want to speak to you about that.’
She exclaimed:
‘You don’t… .’
He said calmly:
‘You know I don’t … while I was certain that I was going to be here to keep him straight and an Anglican I fought your influence over him. I’m obliged to you for having brought up of yourself the considerations that I may be killed and that I am ruined. I am. I could not raise a hundred pounds between now and to-morrow. I am, therefore, obviously not the man to have sole charge of the heir of Groby.’
Sylvia was saying:
‘Every penny I have is at your disposal… .’ when the maid, Hullo Central, marched up to her master and placed a card in his hand. He said:
‘Tell him to wait five minutes in the drawing-room.’
Sylvia said:
‘Who is it?’
Tietjens answered:
‘A man … Let’s get this settled. I’ve never thought you corrupted the boy. You tried to teach him to tell white lies. On perfectly straight Papist lines. I have no objection to Papists and no objection to white lies for Papists. You told him once to put a frog in Marchant’s bath. I’ve no objection to a boy’s putting a frog in his nurse’s bath, as such. But Marchant is an old woman, and the heir to Groby should respect old women always and old family servants in particular… . It hasn’t, perhaps, struck you that the boy is heir to Groby.
Sylvia said:
‘If … if your second brother is killed… . But your eldest brother …’
‘He,’ Tietjens said, ‘has got a French woman near Euston station. He’s lived with her for over fifteen years, of afternoons, when there were no race meetings. She’ll never let him marry and she’s past the child-bearing stage. So there’s no one else… .’
Sylvia said:
‘You mean that I may bring the child up as a Catholic.’ Tietjens said:
‘A Roman Catholic… . You’ll teach him, please, to use that term before myself if I ever see him again… .’
Sylvia said:
‘Oh, I thank God that he has softened your heart. This will take the curse off this house.’
Tietjens shook his head:
‘I think not,’ he said, ‘off you, perhaps. Off Groby very likely. It was, perhaps, time that there should be a Papist owner of Groby again. You’ve read Speldon on sacrilege about Groby? …’
She said:
‘Yes! The first Tietjens who came over with Dutch William, the swine, was pretty bad to the Papist owners… .’
‘He was a tough Dutchman,’ Tietjens said, ‘but let us get on! There’s enough time, but not too much… . I’ve got this man to see.’
‘Who is he?’ Sylvia asked.
Tietjens was collecting his thoughts.
‘My dear!’ he said. ‘You’ll permit me to call you “my dear”? We’re old enemies enough and we’re talking about the future of our child.’
Sylvia said:
‘You said “our” child, not “the” child… .’
Tietjens said with a great deal of concern:
‘You will forgive me for bringing it up. You might prefer to think he was Drake’s child. He can’t be. It would be outside the course of nature… . I’m as poor as I am because … forgive me … I’ve spent a great deal of money on tracing the movements of you and Drake before our marriage. And if it’s a relief to you to know …’
‘It is,’ Sylvia said. ‘I … I’ve always been too beastly shy to put the matter before a specialist, or even before mother… . And we women are so ignorant… .’
Tietjens said:
‘I know … I know you were too shy even to think about it yourself, hard.’ He went into months and days; then he continued: ‘But it would have made no difference: a child born in wedlock is by law the father’s, and if a man who’s a gentleman suffers the begetting of his child he must, in decency, take the consequences; the woman and the child must come before the man, be he who he may. And worse-begotten children than ours have inherited statelier names. And I loved the little beggar with all my heart and with all my soul from the first minute I saw him. That may be the secret clue, or it may be sheer sentimentality… . So I fought your influence because it was Papist, while I was a whole man. But I’m not a whole man any more, and the evil eye that is on me might transfer itself to him.’
He stopped and said:
‘For I must to the greenwood go. Alone a banished man… . But have him well protected against the evil eye… .’
‘Oh, Christopher,’ she said, ‘it’s true I’ve not been a bad woman to the child. And I never will be. And I will keep Marchant with him till she dies. You’ll tell her not to interfere with his religious instruction, and she won’t… .’
Tietjens said with a friendly weariness:
‘That’s right … and you’ll have Father … Father … the priest that was with us for a fortnight before he was born to give him his teachings. He was the best man I ever met and one of the most intelligent. It’s been a great comfort to me to think of the boy as in his hands… .’
Sylvia stood up, her eyes blazing out of a pallid face of stone:
‘Father Consett,’ she said, ‘was hung on the day they shot Casement. They dare not put it into the papers because he was a priest and all the witnesses Ulster witnesses… . And yet I may not say this is an accursed war.’
Tietjens shook his head with the slow heaviness of an aged man.
‘You may for me …’ he said. ‘You might ring the bell, will you? Don’t go away… .’
He sat with the blue gloom of that enclosed space all over him, lumped heavily in his chair.
‘Speldon on sacrilege,’ he said, ‘may be right after all. You’d say so from the Tietjenses. There’s not been a Tietjens since the first Lord Justice cheated the Papist Loundeses out of Groby, but died of a broken neck or of a broken heart; for all the fifteen thousand acres of good farming land and iron land, and for all the heather on the top of it… . What’s the quotation: “Be ye something as something and something and ye shall not escape… .” What is it?’
‘Calumny!’ Sylvia said. She spoke with intense bitterness… . ‘Chaste as ice and cold as … as you are… .’
Tietjens said:
‘Yes! Yes… . And mind you none of the Tietjenses were ever soft. Not one! They had reason for their broken hearts… . Take my poor father… .’
Sylvia said:
‘Don’t!’
?
??Both my brothers were killed in Indian regiments on the same day and not a mile apart. And my sister in the same week, out at sea, not so far from them… . Unnoticeable people. But one can be fond of unnoticeable people… .’
Hullo Central was at the door. Tietjens told her to ask Lord Port Scatho to step down… .
‘You must, of course, know these details,’ Tietjens said, ‘as the mother to my father’s heir… . My father got the three notifications on the same day. It was enough to break his heart. He only lived a month. I saw him …’
Sylvia screamed piercingly:
‘Stop! stop! stop!’ She clutched at the mantelpiece to hold herself up. ‘Your father died of a broken heart,’ she said, ‘because your brother’s best friend, Ruggles, told him you were a squit who lived on women’s money and had got the daughter of his oldest friend with child… .’
Tietjens said:
‘Oh! Ah! Yes! … I suspected that. I knew it, really. I suppose the poor dear knows better now. Or perhaps he doesn’t… . It doesn’t matter.’
II
IT HAS BEEN remarked that the peculiarly English habit of self-suppression in matters of the emotions puts the Englishman at a great disadvantage in moments of unusual stresses. In the smaller matters of the general run of life he will be impeccable and not to be moved; but in sudden confrontations of anything but physical dangers he is apt – he is, indeed, almost certain – to go to pieces very badly. This, at least, was the view of Christopher Tietjens, and he very much dreaded his interview with Lord Port Scatho – because he feared that he must be near breaking point.