Mark said:
“Don’t go….” For she had got to the door. “He went out to stop the Last Post. But you may play the Last Post, for me. Perhaps he has gone back to the Square. He had presumably better see what has happened to his wife. I should not myself.”
Valentine had said with extraordinary bitterness:
“He shall not. He shall not.” She had gone.
It had come through to Marie Léonie partly then and partly subsequently that Christopher’s wife had turned up at Christopher’s empty house that was in the Square only a few yards away. They had gone back late at night probably for purposes of love and had found her there. She had come for the purpose of telling them that she was going to be operated on for cancer so that with their sensitive natures they could hardly contemplate going to bed together at that moment.
It had been a good lie. That Mrs. Tietjens was a maîtresse femme. There was no denying that. She herself was engaged for those others both by her own inclinations and the strong injunctions of her husband, but Mme Tietjens was certainly ingenious. She had managed to incommode and discredit that pair almost as much as any pair could be incommoded and discredited, although they were the most harmless couple in the world.
They had certainly not had an agreeable festival on that Armistice Day. Apparently one of the officers present at their dinner of celebration had gone raving mad; the wife of another of Christopher’s comrades of the regiment had been rude to Valentine; the colonel of the regiment had taken the opportunity to die with every circumstance of melodrama. Naturally all the other officers had run away and had left Christopher and Valentine with the madman and the dying colonel on their hands.
An agreeable voyage de noces…. It appeared that they had secured a four-wheel cab in which with the madman and the other they had driven to Balham — an obscure suburb, with sixteen celebrants hanging all over the outside of the cab and two on the horse’s back — at any rate for a couple of miles from Trafalgar Square; they were not of course interested in the interior of the cab; they were merely gay because there was to be no more suffering. Valentine and Christopher had got rid of the madman somewhere in Chelsea at an asylum for shell-shock cases. There he had remained ever since. But the authorities would not take the colonel so they had driven on to Balham, the colonel making dying speeches about the late war, his achievements, the money he owed Christopher…. Valentine had appeared to find that extremely trying. The man died in the cab.
They had had to walk back into Town because the driver of the four-wheeler was so upset by the death in his cab that he could not drive. Moreover the horse was foundered. It had been twelve, midnight, before they reached Trafalgar Square. They had had to struggle through packed crowds nearly all the way. Apparently they were happy at the accomplishment of their duty — or their benevolence. They stood on the top step of St. Martin’s Church, dominating the square that was all illuminated and packed and roaring, with bonfires made of the paving wood and omnibuses and the Nelson Column going up and the fountain-basins full of drunkards, and orators and bands…. They stood on the top step, drew deep breaths and fell into each other’s arms…. For the first time — though apparently they had loved each other for a lustrum or more…. What people!
Then, at the top of the stairs in the house in the Inn they had perceived Sylvia, all in white!…
Apparently she had been informed that Christopher and that girl were in communication — by a lady who did not like Christopher because she owed him money. A Lady Macmaster. Apparently there was no one in the world who did not dislike Christopher because they owed him money. The colonel and the lunatic and the husband of the lady who had been rude to Valentine… all, all! Right down to Mr. Schatzweiler who had only paid Christopher one cheque for a few dollars out of a great sum and had then contracted a nervous break-down on account of the sufferings he had gone through as a prisoner of war.
But what sort of a man was that Christopher to have in his hands the fortunes of a woman…. Any woman!
Those were practically the last words her Mark had ever spoken to her, Marie Léonie. She had been supporting him whilst he drank a tisane she had made in order that he might sleep, and he had said gravely:
“It is not necessary that I should ask you to be kind to Mademoiselle Wannop. Christopher is incapable of looking after her….” His last words, for immediately afterwards the telephone bell had rung. He had just before seemed to have a good deal of temperature and it had been whilst his eyes were goggling at her, the thermometer that she had stuck in his mouth gleaming on his dark lips, and whilst she was regretting letting him be tormented by his family that the sharp drilling of the telephone had sounded from the hall. Immediately the strong German accent of Lord Wolstonemark had, with its accustomed disagreeableness, burred in her ear. He had said that the Cabinet was still sitting and they desired to know at once the code that Mark used in his communications with various ports. His second-in-command appeared to be lost amongst the celebrations of that night. Mark had said with a sort of grim irony from the bedroom that if they wanted to stop his transport going out they might just as well not use cypher. If they wanted to use a twopenny halfpenny economy as window dressing for the elections they’d have to have, they might as well give it as much publicity as they could. Besides, he did not believe they would get into Germany with the transport they had. A good deal had been smashed lately.
The Minister had said with a sort of heavy joy that they were not going into Germany, and that had been the most dreadful moment of Marie Léonie’s life; but with her discipline she had just simply repeated the words to Mark. He had then said something she did not quite catch, and he would not repeat what he had said. She said as much to Lord Wolstonemark and the chuckling accent said that he supposed that that was the sort of news that would rattle the old boy. But one must adapt oneself to one’s day; the times were changed.
She had gone from the instrument to look at Mark. She spoke to him; she spoke to him again. And again — rapid words of panic. His face was dark purple and congested; he gazed straight before him. She raised him; he sank back inertly.
She remembered going to the telephone and speaking in French to the man at the other end. She had said that the man at the other end was a German and a traitor; her husband should never speak to him or his fellows again. The man had said: “Eh, what’s that? Eh?… Who are you?”
With appalling shadows chasing up and down in her mind she had said:
“I am Lady Mark Tietjens. You have murdered my husband. Clear yourself from off my line, murderer!”
It had been the first time she had ever given herself that name; it was indeed the first time she had ever spoken in French to that Ministry. But Mark had finished with the Ministry, with the Government, with the nation…. With the world.
As soon as she could get that man off the wire she had rung up Christopher. He had come round with Valentine in tow. It had certainly not been much of a nuit de noces for that young couple.
Part Two
SYLVIA TIETJENS, using merely the persuasion of her left knee edged her chestnut bay nearer to the bay mare of the shining General. She said:
“If I divorce Christopher, will you marry me?”
He exclaimed with the vehemence of a shocked hen:
“Good God, no!”
He shone everywhere except in such parts of his grey tweed suit as would have shown by shining that they had been put on more than once. But his little white moustache, his cheeks, the bridge but not the tip of his nose, his reins, his Guards’ tie, his boots, martingale, snaffle, curb, fingers, fingernails — all these gave evidence of interminable rubbings…. By himself, by his man, by Lord Fittleworth’s stable-hands, grooms…. Interminable rubbings and supervisions at the end of extended arms. Merely to look at him you would know that he was something like Lord Edward Campion, Lieutenant General retired, K.C.M.G. (military) M.P.V.C., M.C., D.S.O…. So he exclaimed: “Good God, no!” and using a little-finger touch on his snaffle-rein made his mare recoil from Sylvia Tietjens’ chestnut. Annoyed at its mate’s motion, the bad-tempered chestnut with the white forehead showed its teeth at the mare, danced a little and threw out some flakes of foam. Sylvia swayed a little backwards and forwards in her saddle, and smiled downwards into her husband’s garden.