In the other room, whilst papers were signing, after the curé in his calotte and all, had done reading from his book, Mark had signed to her to bend her head down to him and had kissed her. He whispered:
“Thank God there is one woman-Tietjens who is not a whore and a bitch!” He winced a little; her tears had fallen on his face. For the first time, she had said:
“Mon pauvre homme, ce qu’ils ont fait de toil” She had been hurrying from the room when Christopher had stopped her. Mark had said:
“I regret to put you to further inconvenience…” in French. He had never spoken to her in French before. Marriage makes a difference. They speak to you with ceremony out of respect for themselves and their station in life. You also are at liberty to address them as your pauvre homme.
There had to be another ceremony. A man looking like a newly dressed gaol-bird stepped out with his book like an office register. With a blue-black jowl. He married them over again. A civil marriage, this time.
It was then that, for the first time, she had become aware of the existence of another woman-Tietjens, Christopher’s wife…. She had not known that Christopher had a wife. Why was not she there? But Mark with his labouring politeness and chest had told her that he exaggerated the formality of the marriage because if both he and Christopher died she, Marie Léonie Tietjens, might have trouble with a certain Sylvia. The Bitch!… Well, she, Marie Léonie, was prepared to face her legitimate sister-in-law.
III
THE LITTLE maid, Beatrice, as well as Gunning, regarded Marie Léonie with paralysed but bewildered obedience. She was ’Er Ladyship, a good mark, a foreign Frenchy. That was bad. She was extraordinarily efficient about the house and garden and poultry-yard, a matter for mixed feelings. She was fair, not black-avised, a good mark; she was buxom, not skinny, like the real Quality. A bad mark because she was, then, not real Quality; but a qualifiedly good mark because if you ’as to ’ave Quality all about you in the ’ouse tis better not to ’ave real Quality…. But on the whole the general feeling was favourable because like themselves she was floridly blond. It made ’er ’uman like. Never you trust a dark woman and if you marries a dark man ’e will treat you bad. In the English countryside it is like that.
Cabinet-maker Cramp who was a remnant of the little dark persistent race that once had peopled Sussex regarded her with distrust that mingled with admiration for the quality of the varnish that she imported from Paris. Proper French polish that were. He lived in the cottage just across the path on the Common. ’E couldn’ say as ’ow ’e liked the job the Governor give ’im. He had to patch up and polish with beeswax — not varnish — rough stuff such ’s ’is granf’er ’ad ’ad. An ’ad got rid of. Rough ol’ truck. Moren n ’undred yeers old. N’more!
He had to take bits of old wood out of one sort of old truck and fit it into missing bits of other old truck. Bought old Moley’s pig-pound boards that had been Little Kingsworth church stalls, the Cahptn ’ad; n ’ad ’im, Cramp, use’m for all manner of patchin’s up. The Captain had bought too ol Miss’ Cooper’s rabbit ‘utch. Beautifully bevelled the panels was too which cleaned up n beeswaxed. Cramp would acknowledge that. Made him match the bevelling in the timber from Kingsworth Church stalls for one of the missing doors, an’ more of the timber fer the patching. Proper job, he, Cramp, had made of it too; he would say that. ‘N it looked proper when it was finished — a long, low press, with six bevelled doors; beautiful purfling on the edges. Like some of the stuff ’Is Lordship ’ad in the Tujer Room at Fittleworth House. Moren n ‘undred yeers old. Three undred. Four… There’s no knowin.
’N no accountin’ fer tastes. ’E would say ’e ’ad n eye — the Cahptn ’ad. Look at a bit of ol’ rough truck the Cahptn would n see it was older than the Monument to Sir Richard Atchinson on Tadworth ’Ill that was set up in the year 1842 to celebrate the glorious victory of Free Trade. So the Monument said. Lug a bit of rough ol’ truck out of the back of a cow-house where it had been throwed — the Cahptn would. And his, Cramp’s, heart would sink to see the ol’ mare come back, some days, the cart full of ’en-coops, n leaden pig-truffs, n pewter plates that ’ad been used to stop up ’oles in cow-byres.
’N off it would all go to Murrikay. Queer place Murrikay must be — full of the leavins of ol’ England. Pig-troughs, hen-coops, rabbit-hutches, wash-house coppers that no one now had any use for. He loaded ’em when he’d scrubbed, and silver-sanded and beeswaxed-n-turpentined ’em, onto the ol’ cart, n put to ol’ mare, n down to station, n on to Southampton n off to New York. Must be a queer place yon! Hadn’t they no cabinet-makers or ol’ rough truck of ther own?
Well, it took all sorts to make a world n thank God fer that. He, Cramp, had a good job, likely to last ’im ’is lifetime because some folks wus queer in the ’ed. The ol’ lumber went out yon and his, Cramp’s missus, was gettin’ together a proper set of goods. A tidy treat their sittin’ room looked with aspidistras in mahogany tripods, ’n a Wilton carpet ’n bamboo cheers ’n mahogany whatnots. A proper woman Missus Cramp was, if sharp in the tongue.
Miss’s Cramp she didn’t give so much fer ‘Er Ladyship. She was agin Foreigners. All German spies they wus. Have no truck with them she wouldn’t. ’Oo noo if they wus ’s much ’s married. Some says they wus, some says they wasn’. But you couldn’ take in Miss’ Cramp… ‘N Quality! What was to show that they were real Quality. Livin how they did wasn’ Quality manners. Quality was stuck up ’n wore shiny clothes ’n had motor-cars ’n statues ’n palms ’n ball-rooms ’n conservatories. ’N didn’ bottle off the cider ’n take the eggs ’n speak queer lingo to th’ handy-man. ’N didn’ sell the cheers they sat on. The four younger children also didn’ like ’Er Ladyship. Never called ’em pretty dears she did nor give ’em sweeties nor rag-dolls nor apples. Smacked ’em if she found ’em in the orchard. Never so much s give ’em red flannel capes in the winter.
But Bill the eldest liked ’Er Ladyship. Called ’er a proper right ’un. Never stopped tarkin’ of ’er. ’N she ’ad statues in ’er bedroom, ’n fine gilt cheers, ’n clocks, ’n flowerin plants. Bill e’d made fer ’Er Ladyship what she called ’n eightyjare. In three stories, to stand in a corner ’n hold knick-knacks. Out of fretwork to a pettern she’d give ’im. Varnished proper, too. A good piece of work if he shouldn’t say so…. But Miss’s Cramp she’d never been allowed in ’er Ladyship’s bedroom. A proper place it was. Fit fer a Countess! If Miss’s Cramp could be allowed to see it she’d maybe change her opinions…. But Miss’s Cramp she said: “Never you trust a fair woman,” bein’ dark.
The matter of the cider however, did give him to think. Proper cider it was, when they was given a bottle or two. But it wasn’t Sussex cider. A little like Devonshire cider, more like Herefordshire. But not the same as any. More head it had ’n was sweeter, ’n browner. ’N not to be drunk s’ freely! Fair scoured you it did if you drunk’s much’s a quart!
The little settlement was advancing furtively to the hedge. Cramp put his bald poll out of his work-shed and then crept out. Mrs. Cramp, an untidy, dark, very thin woman emerged over her door-sill, wiping her hands on her apron. The four Cramp children at different stages of growth crept out of the empty pig-pound. Cramp was not going to buy his winter pigs till next fortnightly fair at Little Kingsworth. The Elliott children with the milk-can came at a snail’s pace down the green path from the farm; Mrs. Elliott, an enormous woman with untidy hair, peered over her own hedge which formed a little enclosure on the Common; Young Hogben, the farmer’s son, a man of forty, very thick-set, appeared on the path in the beech-wood, ostensibly driving a great black sow. Even Gunning left his brushing and lumbered to the edge of the stable. From there he could still see Mark in his bed, but also, looking downwards between the apple-trunks he could see Marie Léonie bottle the cider, large, florid and intent, in the open dairying-shed where water ran in a v-shaped wooden trough.