Parade's End

“I cannot order you to come back if it would kill you not to be with him.” Valentine could feel her late- Victorian advanced mind, desperately seeking for the right plea — for any plea that would let her do without seeming to employ maternal authority. She began to talk like a book, an august Victorian book; Morley’s Life of Gladstone. That was reasonable: she wrote books like that.

She said they were both good creatures of good stock. If their consciences let them commit themselves to a certain course of action they were probably in the right. But she begged them, in God’s name to assure themselves that their consciences did urge that course. She had to talk like a book!

Valentine said:

“It is nothing to do with conscience.” That seemed harsh. Her mind was troubled with a quotation. She could not find it. Quotations ease strain; she said: “One is urged by blind destiny!” A Greek quotation, then! “Like a victim upon an altar. I am afraid; but I consent!”… Probably Euripides; the Alcestis very likely! If it had been a Latin author the phrases would have occurred to her in Latin. Being with her mother made her talk like a book. Her mother talked like a book: then she did. They must; if they did not they would scream…. But they were English ladies. Of scholarly habits of mind. It was horrible. Her mother said:

“That is probably the same as conscience — race conscience!” She could not urge on them the folly and disastrousness of the course they appeared to propose. She had, she said, known too many irregular unions that had been worthy of emulation and too many regular ones that were miserable and a cause of demoralisation by their examples…. She was a gallant soul. She could not in conscience go back on the teachings of her whole life. She wanted to. Desperately! Valentine could feel the almost physical strainings of her poor, tired brain. But she could not recant. She was not Cran-mer! She was not even Joan of Arc. So she went on repeating:

“I can only beg and pray you to assure yourself that not to live with that man will cause you to die or to be seriously mentally injured. If you think you can live without him or wait for him, if you think there is any hope of later union without serious mental injury I beg and pray…”

She could not finish the sentence… It was fine to behave with dignity at the crucial moment of your life! It was fitting, it was proper. It justified your former philosophic life. And it was cunning. Cunning!

For now she said:

“My child! my little child! You have sacrificed all your life to me and my teaching. How can I ask you now to deprive yourself of the benefit of them?”

She said:

“I can’t persuade you to a course that might mean your eternal unhappiness!”… The can’t was like a flame of agony!

Valentine shivered. That was cruel pressure. Her mother was no doubt doing her duty; but it was cruel pressure. It was very cold. November is a cold month. There were footsteps on the stairs. She shook.

“Oh, he is coming. He is coming!” she cried out. She wanted to say: “Save me!” She said: “Don’t go away! Don’t… Don’t go away!” What do men do to you, men you love? Mad men. He was carrying a sack. The sack was the first she saw as he opened the door. Pushed it open; it was already half-open. A sack was a dreadful thing for a madman to carry. In an empty house. He dumped the sack down on the hearthstone. He had coal-dust on his right forehead. It was a heavy sack. Bluebeard would have had in it the corpse of his first wife. Borrow says that the gipsies say: “Never trust a young man with grey hair!” He had only half-grey hair and he was only half young. He was panting. He must be stopped carrying heavy sacks. Panting like a fish. A great motionless carp, hung in a tank.

He said:

“I suppose you would want to go out. If you don’t we will have a fire. You can’t stop here without a fire.”

At the same moment her mother said:

“If that is Christopher I will speak to him.”

She said away from the mouthpiece:

“Yes, let’s go out. Oh, oh, oh. Let’s go out…. Armistice… My mother wants to speak to you.” She felt herself to be suddenly a little Cockney shop-girl. A midinette in an imitation Girl Guide’s uniform. “Afride of the gentleman, my dear.” Surely one could protect oneself against a great carp! She could throw him over her shoulder. She had enough Ju Jitsu for that. Of course a little person trained to Ju Jitsu can’t overcome an untrained giant if he expects it. But if he doesn’t expect it she can.

His right hand closed over her left wrist. He had swum towards her and had taken the telephone in his left. One of the window-panes was so old it was bulging and purplish. There was another. There were several. But the first one was the purplishest. He said:

“Christopher Tietjens speaking!” He could not think of anything more recherche to say than that — the great inarticulate fellow! His hand was cool on her wrist. She was calm, but streaming with bliss. There was no other word for it. As if you had come out of a bath of warm nectar and bliss streamed off you. His touch had calmed her and covered her with bliss.

He let her wrist go very slowly. To show that the grasp was meant for a caress! It was their first caress!

Before she had surrendered the telephone she had said to her mother:

“He doesn’t know…. Oh, realise that he doesn’t know!”

She went to the other end of the room and stood watching him.

He heard the telephone from its black depths say:

“How are you, my dear boy? My dear, dear boy; you’re safe for good.” It gave him a disagreeable feeling. This was the mother of the young girl he intended to seduce. He intended to. He said:

“I’m pretty well. Weakish. I’ve just come out of hospital. Four days ago.” He was never going back to that bloody show. He had his application for demobilisation in his pocket. The voice said:

“Valentine thinks you are very ill. Very ill, indeed. She came to you because she thinks that.” She hadn’t come, then, because… But, of course, she would not have. But she might have wanted them to spend Armistice Day together! She might have! A sense of disappointment went over him. Discouragement. He was very raw. That old devil, Campion! Still, one ought not to be as raw as that. He was saying, deferentially:

“Oh, it was mental rather than physical. Though I had pneumonia all right.” He went on saying that General Campion had put him in command over the escorts of German prisoners all through the lines of several armies. That really nearly had driven him mad. He couldn’t bear being a beastly gaoler.

Still — Still! — he saw those grey spectral shapes that had surrounded and interpenetrated all his later days. The image came over him with the mood of repulsion at odd moments — at the very oddest; without suggestion there floated before his eyes the image, the landscape of greyish forms. In thousands, seated on upturned buckets, with tins of fat from which they ate at their sides on the ground, holding up newspapers that were not really newspapers; on grey days. They were all round him. And he was their gaoler. He said: “A filthy job!”

Mrs. Wannop’s voice said:

“Still, it’s kept you alive for us!”

He said:

“I sometimes wish it hadn’t!” He was astonished that he had said it; he was astonished at the bitterness of his voice. He added: “I don’t mean that in cold blood of course,” and he was again astonished at the deference in his voice. He was leaning down, positively, as if over a very distinguished, elderly, seated lady. He straightened himself. It struck him as distasteful hypocrisy to bow before an elderly lady when you entertained designs upon her daughter. Her voice said:

“My dear boy… my dear, almost son…”

Panic overcame him. There was no mistaking those tones. He looked round at Valentine. She had her hands together as if she were wringing them. She said, exploring his face painfully with her eyes:

“Oh, be kind to her. Be kind to her….”

Then there had been revelation of their… you couldn’t call it intimacy!

He never liked her Girl Guides’ uniform. He liked her best in a white sweater and a fawn-coloured short skirt. She had taken off her hat — her cowboyish hat. She had had her hair cut. Her fair hair.

Mrs. Wannop said: