was an eminence. His life-hero’s… woman!
The V.C. was in the mood to argue about politics. He always was. She had met him twice during evenings at friends’ called Prinsep. She had not known him because of his eye-glasses; he must have put that up along with his ribbon. It took your breath away: like a drop of blood illuminated by a light that never was.
He said:
“They say you’re receiving for Tietjens! Who’d have thought it? You’re a pro-German — he’s such a sound Tory. Squire of Groby and all, eh what?”
He said:
“Know Groby?” He squinted through his glasses round the room. “Looks like a mess this… Only needs the
He said:
“But you and old Tory Tietjens in the same room… By Jove the war’s over…. The lion lying down with the lamb’s nothing…” He exclaimed “Oh damn! Oh, damn, damn, damn…. I say… I didn’t mean it…. Don’t cry. My dear little girl. My dear Miss Wannop. One of the best I always thought you. You don’t suppose…”
She said:
“I’m crying because of Groby really…. It’s a day to cry on anyhow…. You’re quite a good sort, really!”
He said:
“Thank you! Thank you! Drink some more port! He’s a good fat old beggar, old Tietjens. A good officer!” He added: “Drink a
He had been the most asinine, creaking, “what about your king and country,” shocked, outraged and speechless creature of all the many who for years had objected to her objecting to men being unable to stand up…. Now he was a rather kind brother!
They were all yelling.
“Good old Tietjens! Good old Fat Man! Pre-war hooch! He’d be the one to get it!” No one like Fat Man Tietjens. He lounged at the door; easy; benevolent. In uniform now. That was better. An officer, yelling like an enraged Redskin, dealt him an immense blow behind the shoulder blades. He staggered, smiling into the centre of the room. An officer gently pushed her into the centre of the room. She was against him. Khaki encircled them. They began to yell and to prance, most joining hands. Others waved the bottles and smashed underfoot the glasses. Gipsies break glasses at their weddings. The bed was against the wall. She did not like the bed to be against the wall. It had been brushed by…
They were going round them: yelling in unison:
“Over here! Pom Pom Over here! Pom Pom!
That’s the word, that’s the word; Over here…”
At least they weren’t over there! They were prancing. The whole world round them was yelling and prancing round. They were the centre of unending roaring circles. The man with the eye-glass had stuck a half-crown in his other eye. He was well-meaning. A brother. She had a brother with the V.C. All in the family.
Tietjens was stretching out his two hands from the waist. It was incomprehensible. His right hand was behind her back, his left in her right hand. She was frightened. She was amazed. Did you ever! He was swaying slowly. The elephant! They were dancing! Aranjuez was hanging on to the tall woman like a kid on a telegraph pole. The officer who had said he had picked up a little bit of fluff… well, he had! He had run out and fetched it. It wore white cotton gloves and a flowered hat. It said: “Ow! Now!”… There was a fellow with a most beautiful voice. He led: better than a gramophone. Better….
On an elephant. A dear, meal-sack elephant. She was setting out on…
The Last Post
Part One
HE LAY STARING at the withy binders of his thatch shelter; the grass was infinitely green; his view embraced four counties; the roof was supported by six small oak sapling-trunks, roughly trimmed and brushed from above by apple boughs. French crab-apple! The hut had no sides.
The Italian proverb says: He who allows the boughs of trees to spread above his roof invites the doctor daily. Words to that effect! He would have grinned, but that might have been seen.
For a man who never moved, his face was singularly walnut-coloured; his head, indenting the skim-milk white of the pillows should have been a gipsy’s, the dark, silvered hair cut extremely close, the whole face very carefully shaven and completely immobile. The eyes moved, however, with unusual vivacity, all the life of the man being concentrated in them and their lids.
Down the path that had been cut in swathes from the knee-high grass and led from the stable to the hut, a heavy elderly peasant rolled in his gait. His over-long, hairy arms swung as if he needed an axe or a log or a full sack to make him a complete man. He was broad-bcamed, in cord breeches very tight in the buttocks; he wore black leggings, an unbuttoned blue waistcoat, a striped flannel shirt, open at the perspiring neck and a square, high hat of black felt.
He said:
“Want to be shifted?”
The man in the bed closed his eyelids slowly.
“’Ave a droper cider?”
The other again similarly closed his eyes. The standing man supported himself with an immense hand, gorilla-like, by one of the oaken posts.
“Best droper cider ever I tasted,” he said, “’Is Lordship give me. ’Is Lordship sester me: ‘Gunning,’ ’e ses…. The day the vixen got into keeper’s coop enclosure…”
He began and slowly completed a very long story going to prove that English noble landlords preferred foxes to pheasants. Or should! English landowners of the right kidney.
’Is Lordship would no more ’ave that vixen killed or so much as flurried, she being gravid like than… Dreadful work a gravid vixen can do among ’encoops with pheasant poults…. Have to eat fer six or seven, she have! All a- growing…. So ’is Lordship sester Gunning….
And then the description of the cider…. ’Ard! Thet cider was ’arder than a miser’s ’art or ’n ole maid’s tongue. Body it ’ad. Strength it ’ad. Stans to reason. Ten-year cider. Not a drop was drunk in Lordship’s ’ouse under ten years in cask. Killed three sheep a week fer his indoor and outdoor servants. An’ three hundred pigeons. The pigeon-cotes is a hundred feet high an’ the pigeons nesteses in ’oles in the inside walls. Clap-nests a ’ole wall at a go an’ takes the squabs. Times is not what they was but ’is Lordship keeps on. An always will!
The man in the bed — Mark Tietjens — continued his own thoughts:
Old Gunning lumbered slowly up the path towards the stable, his hands swinging. The stable was a tile- healed, thatched affair, no real stable in the North Country sense — a place where the old mare sheltered among chickens and ducks. There was no tidiness amongst South Country folk. They hadn’t it in them, though Gunning could bind a tidy thatch and trim a hedge properly. All-round man. Really an all-round man; he could do a great many things. He knew all about fox-hunting, pheasant-rearing, wood-craft, hedging, dyking, pig-rearing and the habits of King Edward when shooting. Smoking endless great cigars! One finished, light another, throw away the stub…
Fox-hunting, the sport of kings with only twenty per cent of the danger of war! He, Mark Tietjens, had never cared for hunting; now he would never do any more; he had never cared for pheasant-shooting. He would never do any more. Not couldn’t; wouldn’t from henceforth…. It annoyed him that he had not taken the trouble to ascertain what it was Iago said, before he had taken Iago’s resolution….
Perhaps Iago had not been speaking blank verse when he had taken his, Mark Tietjens’ resolution…
