Parade's End

Perowne became rigid, sunk into his deep chair.

“But he couldn’t!” he exclaimed agitatedly. “You said that he was playing the part of Jesus Christ. Our Lord wouldn’t hit people in an hotel lounge….”

“Our Lord!” Sylvia said contemptuously. “What do you know about our Lord? Our Lord was a gentleman…. Christopher is playing at being our Lord calling on the woman taken in adultery…. He’s giving me the social backing that his being my husband seems to him to call for.”

A one-armed, bearded maitre d’hotel approached them through groups of arm- chairs arranged for tete-a-tete. He said:

“Pardon… I did not see madame at first….” And displayed a card on a salver. Without looking at it, Sylvia said:

“Dites a ce monsieur… that I am occupied.” The maitre d’hotel moved austerely away.

“But he’ll smash me to pieces…” Perowne exclaimed. “What am I to do?… What the deuce am I to do?” There would have been no way of exit for him except across Tietjens’ face.

With her spine very rigid and the expression of a snake that fixes a bird, Sylvia gazed straight in front of her and said nothing until she exclaimed:

“For God’s sake leave off trembling…. He would not do anything to a girl like you. He’s a man….” The wickerwork of Pcrowne’s chair had been crepitating as if it had been in a railway car. The sound ceased with a jerk…. Suddenly she clenched both her hands and let out a hateful little breath of air between her teeth.

“By the immortal saints,” she exclaimed, “I swear I’ll make his wooden face wince yet.”

In the bluish looking-glass, a few minutes before, she had seen the agate-blue eyes of her husband, thirty feet away, over arm-chairs and between the fans of palms. He was standing, holding a riding-whip, looking rather clumsy in the uniform that did not suit him. Rather clumsy and worn out, but completely expressionless! He had looked straight into the reflection of her eyes and then looked away. He moved so that his profile was towards her, and continued gazing motionless at an elk’s head that decorated the space of wall above glazed doors giving into the interior of the hotel. The hotel servant approaching him, he had produced a card and had given it to the servant, uttering three words. She saw his lips move in the three words: Mrs. Christopher Tietjens. She said, beneath her breath:

“Damn his chivalry!… Oh, God damn his chivalry!” She knew what was going on in his mind. He had seen her, with Perowne, so he had neither come towards her nor directed the servant to where she sat. For fear of embarrassing her! He would leave it to her to come to him if she wished.

The servant, visible in the mirror, had come and gone deviously back, Tietjens still gazing at the elk’s head. He had taken the card and restored it to his pocket-book and then had spoken to the servant. The servant had shrugged his shoulders with the formal hospitality of his class and, with his shoulders still shrugged and his one hand pointing towards the inner door, had preceded Tietjens into the hotel. Not one line of Tietjens’ face had moved when he had received back his card. It had been then that Sylvia had sworn that she would yet make his wooden face wince….

His face was intolerable. Heavy; fixed. Not insolent, but simply gazing over the heads of all things and created beings, into a world too distant for them to enter. And yet it seemed to her, since he was so clumsy and worn out, almost not sporting to persecute him. It was like whipping a dying bulldog….

She sank back into her chair with a movement almost of discouragement. She said:

“He’s gone into the hotel….”

Perowne lurched agitatedly forward in his chair. He exclaimed that he was going. Then he sank discouragedly back again:

“No, I’m not,” he said, “I’m probably much safer here. I might run against him going out.”

“You’ve realised that my petticoats protect you,” Sylvia said contemptuously. “Of course, Christopher would never hit anyone in my presence.”

Major Perowne was interrupting her by asking:

“What’s he going to do? What’s he doing in the hotel?”

Mrs. Tietjens said:

“Guess!” She added: “What would you do in similar circumstances?”

“Go and wreck your bedroom,” Perowne answered with promptitude. “It’s what I did when I found you had left Yssingueux.”

Sylvia said:

“Ah, that was what the place was called.”

Perowne groaned:

“You’re callous,” he said. “There’s no other word for it. Callous. That’s what you are.”

Sylvia asked absently why he called her callous at just that juncture. She was imagining Christopher stumping clumsily along the hotel corridor looking at bedrooms, and then giving the hotel servant a handsome tip to ensure that he should be put on the same floor as herself. She could almost hear his not disagreeable male voice that vibrated a little from the chest and made her vibrate.

Perowne was grumbling on. Sylvia was callous because she had forgotten the name of the Brittany hamlet in which they had spent three blissful weeks together, though she had left it so suddenly that all her outfit remained in the hotel.

“Well, it wasn’t any kind of a beanfeast for me,” Sylvia went on, when she again gave him her attention. “Good heavens!… Do you think it would be any kind of a beanfeast with you, pour tout potage? Why should I remember the name of the hateful place?”

Perowne said:

“Yssingueux-les-Pervenches, such a pretty name,” reproachfully.

“It’s no good,” Sylvia answered, “your trying to awaken sentimental memories in me. You will have to make me forget what you were like if you want to carry on with me…. I’m stopping here and listening to your corncrake of a voice because I want to wait until Christopher goes out of the hotel… Then I am going to my room to tidy up for Lady Sachse’s party and you will sit here and wait for me.”

“I’m not,” Perowne said, “going to Lady Sachse’s. Why, he is going to be one of the principal witnesses to sign the marriage contract. And Old Campion and all the rest of the staff are going to be there…. You don’t catch me…. An unexpected prior engagement is my line. No fear.”

“You’ll come with me, my little man,” Sylvia said, “if you ever want to bask in my smile again…. I’m not going to Lady Sachse’s alone, looking as if I couldn’t catch a man to escort me, under the eyes of half the French house of peers…. If they’ve got a house of peers!… You don’t catch me…. No fear!” she mimicked his creaky voice. “You can go away as soon as you’ve shown yourself as my escort….”

“But, good God!” Perowne cried out, “that’s just what I mustn’t do. Campion said that if he heard any more of my being seen about with you he would have me sent back to my beastly regiment. And my beastly regiment is in the trenches…. You don’t see me in the trenches, do you?”

“I’d rather see you there than in my own room,” Sylvia said. “Any day!”

“Ah, there you are!” Perowne exclaimed with animation. “What guarantee have I that if I do what you want I shall bask in your smile as you call it? I’ve got myself into a most awful hole, bringing you here without any papers. You never told me you hadn’t any papers. General O’Hara, the P.M., has raised a most awful strafe about it. And what have I got for it?… Not the ghost of a smile…. And you should see old O’Hara’s purple face!… Someone woke him from his afternoon nap to report to him about your heinous case and he hasn’t recovered from the indigestion yet…. Besides, he hates Tietjens… Tietjens is always chipping away at his military police… O’Hara’s lambs….”

Sylvia was not listening, but she was smiling a slow smile at an inward thought. It maddened him.

“What’s your game?” he exclaimed. “Hell and hounds, what’s your game?… You can’t have come here to see… him. You don’t come here to see me, as far as I can see. Well then…”

Sylvia looked round at him with all her eyes, wide open as if she had just awakened from a deep sleep.

“I didn’t know I was coming,” she said. “It came into my head to come suddenly. Ten minutes before I started. And I came. I didn’t know papers were wanted. I suppose I could have got them if I had wanted them…. You never asked me if I had any papers. You just froze on to me and had me into your special carriage…. I didn’t know you were coming.”