Parade's End

In the depth of her pictures of these horrors, snatches of his wisdom penetrated to her intelligence…. Queer snatches…. She was getting it certainly in the neck!… Someone, to add to the noise, had started some mechanical musical instrument in an adjacent hall.

“Corn an’ lasses

Served by Ras’us!”

a throaty voice proclaimed,

“I’d be tickled to death to know that I could go

And stay right there…”

The ex-sergeant-major was adding to her knowledge the odd detail that when he, Sergeant-Major Cowley, went to the wars — seven of them — his missus, Mrs. Cowley spent the first three days and nights unpicking and re-hemstitching every sheet and pillow-slip in the ’ouse. To keep ’erself f’m thinking… This was apparently meant as a reproof or an exhortation to her, Sylvia Tietjens…. Well, he was all right! Of the same class as Father Consett, and with the same sort of wisdom.

The gramophone howled; a new note of rumbling added itself to the exterior tumult and continued through six mitigated thumps of the gun in the garden…. In the next interval, Cowley was in the midst of a valedictory address to her. He was asking her to remember that the captain had had a sleepless night before.

There occurred to her irreverent mind a sentence of one of the Duchess of Marlborough’s letters to Queen Anne. The duchess had visited the general during one of his campaigns in Flanders. “My Lord,” she wrote, “did me the honour three times in his boots!”… The sort of thing she would remember…. She would — she would — have tried it on the sergeant-major, just to see Tietjens’ face, for the sergeant-major would not have understood…. And who cared if he did!… He was bibulously skirting round the same idea.

But the tumult increased to an incredible volume: even the thrillings of the near-by gramophone of two hundred horse-power, or whatever it was, became mere shimmerings of a gold thread in a drab fabric of sound. She screamed blasphemies that she was hardly aware of knowing. She had to scream against the noise; she was no more responsible for the blasphemy than if she had lost her identity under an anesthetic. She had lost her identity…. She was one of this crowd!

The general woke in his chair and gazed malevolently at their group as if they alone were responsible for the noise. It dropped. Dead! You only knew it, because you caught the tail end of a belated woman’s scream from the hall and the general, shouting: “For God’s sake don’t start that damned gramophone again!” In the blessed silence, after preliminary wheezings and guitar noises an astonishing voice burst out:

“Less than the dust…

Before thy char…”

And then, stopping after a murmur of voices, began:

“Pale hands I loved…”

The general sprang from his chair and rushed to the hall…. He came back crestfallenly.

“It’s some damned civilian big-wig…. A novelist, they say…. I can’t stop him….” He added with disgust: “The hall’s full of young beasts and harlots…. Dancing!” The melody had indeed, after a buzz, changed to a languorous and interrupted variation of a waltz. “Dancing in the dark!” the general said with enhanced disgust…. “And the Germans may be here at any moment…. If they knew what I know!…”

Sylvia called across to him:

“Wouldn’t it be fun to see the blue uniform with the silver but tons again and some decently set-up men? …”

The general shouted:

“I’d be glad to see them…. I’m sick to death of these….”

Tietjens took up something he had been saying to Cowley. What it was Sylvia did not hear, but Cowley answered, still droning on with an idea Sylvia thought they had got past:

“I remember when I was sergeant in Quetta, I detailed a man — called Herring — for watering the company horses, after he begged off it because he had a fear of horses…. A horse got him down in the river and drowned ’im…. Fell with him and put its foot on his face…. A fair sight he was…. It wasn’t any good my saying anything about military exigencies…. Fair put me off my feed, it did…. Cost me a fortune in Epsom salts….”

Sylvia was about to scream out that if Tietjens did not like men being killed it ought to sober him in his war- lust, but Cowley continued meditatively:

“Epsom salts they say is the cure for it…. For seeing your dead… And of course you should keep off women for a fortnight…. I know I did. Kept seeing Herring’s face with the hoof-mark. And… there was a piece, a decent bit of goods in what we called the Government Compound….”

He suddenly exclaimed:

“Saving your… Ma’am, I’m…” He stuck the stump of the cigar into his teeth and began assuring Tietjens that he could be trusted with the draft next morning, if only Tietjens would put him into the taxi.

He went away, leaning on Tietjens’ arm, his legs at an angle of sixty degrees with the carpet…

“He can’t…” Sylvia said to herself, “he can’t, not… if he’s a gentleman…. After all that old fellow’s hints…. He’d be a damn coward if he kept off…. For a fortnight… And who else is there not a public…” She said: “O God! …”

The old general, lying in his chair, turned his face aside to say:

“I wouldn’t, madam, not if I were you, talk about the blue uniform with silver buttons here…. We, of course, understand….”

To herself she said: “You see… even that extinct volcano… He’s undressing me with his eyes full of blood veins…. Then why can’t he?…”

She said aloud:

“Oh, but even you, general, said you were sick of your companions!”

She said to herself:

“Hang it!… I will have the courage of my convictions…. No man shall say I am a coward….”

She said:

“Isn’t it saying the same thing as you, general, to say that I’d rather be made love to by a well-set-up man in blue and silver — or anything else! — than by most of the people one sees here!…”

The general said:

“Of course, if you put it that way, madam….”

She said:

“What other way should a woman put it?”… She reached to the table and filled herself a lot of brandy. The old general was leering towards her:

“Bless me,” he said, “a lady who takes liquor like that…”

She said:

“You’re a Papist, aren’t you? With the name of O’Hara and the touch of the brogue you have… And the devil you no doubt are with… You know what…. Well, then… It’s with a special intention!… As you say your Hail, Maries…”

With the liquor burning inside her she saw Tietjens loom in the dim light.

The general, to her bitter amusement, said to him:

“Your friend was more than a bit on…. Not the society surely for madam!”

Tietjens said:

“I never expected to have the pleasure of dining with Mrs. Tietjens to-night…. That officer was celebrating his commission and I could not put him off….” The general said: “Oh, ah!… Of course not…. I dare say…” and settled himself again in his chair.

Tietjens was overwhelming her with his great bulk. She had still lost her breath…. He stooped over and said: It was the luck of the half-drunk:

“They’re dancing in the lounge….”

She coiled herself passionately into her wickerwork. It had dull blue cushions. She said: