which she had chosen to begin. Thus, to-day having chosen to begin with navets de Paris, with Paris turnips she would end, and it amused him to observe how on each occasion she would bring the topic back. She might be concluding a long comment on ironclads and have to get back suddenly to custards because the door-bell rang while her maid was out, but accomplish the transition she would before she answered the bell. Otherwise she was frugal, shrewd, astonishingly clean and healthy.
Whilst she was giving him his soup, inserting the glass syringe in his lips at half minute intervals which she timed by her wrist-watch, she was talking about furniture…. Ils would not let her apply to the species of rabbit-hutches in the salon a varnish that she imported from Paris; Monsieur her brother-in-law had really exhibited when she had actually varnished a truly discreditable chair — had exhibited a distraction that had really filled her with amusement. It was possible that the fashion of the day was for furniture of decrepitude or gross forms. That they would not let her place in the salon the newly gilt arm-chair of her late mother or the sculptural group representing Niobe and some of her offspring by the late Monsieur Casimir-Bar or the over-mantel clock that was an exact reproduction in bronze of the Fountain of the Medicis in the gardens of the Luxembourg at Paris — that was a matter of taste. Elle might very well feel umbrage that she, Marie Leonie, should possess articles of such acknowledged prestige. For what could be more unapproachable than a Second Empire fauteuil newly gilt and maintained, she could assure the world, at such a pitch of glitter as dazzled the eyes? Elle might very well feel umbrage when you considered that the skirt that she wore when gardening was… Well, in short was what it was! Nevertheless in that skirt she allowed herself to be seen by the clergyman. But why did Il who was admittedly a man of honour and sensibility and reputed to know all the things of this world and perhaps of the next — why did He join in the infinitely stupid conspiracy against the work of the great genius Casimir-Bar? She, Marie Leonie, could understand that He, in his difficult situation would not wish to give permission to instal in the Salon works at which Elle took umbrage because her possessions did not include objects of art which all the world acknowledged to be of classic rank, not to mention the string of pearls which she, Marie Leonie, Riotor by birth, owed to the generosity of him, Mark, and her own economies. And other objects of value and taste. That was reasonable. If your woman is poorly dot-ed… let us call it dot- ed… because, certainly she, Marie Leonie, was not one to animadvert upon those in situations of difficulty…. It would ill become her so to do! Nevertheless a great period of years of honesty, frugality, regularity of life and cleanliness… And she asked Mark if he had ever seen in her parlour traces of mud such as on wet days she had certainly observed in the salon of a certain person…. And certain revelations she could make as to what had used to be the condition of a cupboard under the stairs and the state to be observed behind certain presses in the kitchen! But if you have not had experience in the control of domestics, what would you?… Nevertheless a stretch of years passed in the state of housewifeliness such as she had already adumbrated upon gave one the right to comment — of course — with delicacy, upon the menage of a young person even though her delicate situation might avert from her comment of an un-Christian nature as to certain other facts. It did however seem to her, Marie Leonie, that to appear before a clergyman in a skirt decorated with no less than three visible taches of petrol, wearing gloves encrusted with mud as you encrust a truffle with paste before baking it under the cinders — and holding, of all implements, a common gardening-trowel…. And to laugh and joke with him!… Surely the situation called for a certain — let them call it, retirement of demeanour. She was far from according to the Priest the extravagant privileges to which priests laid claim. The late Monsieur Casimir-Bar was accustomed to say that if we accorded to our soi-disant spiritual advisers all that they would take we should lie upon a bed that had neither sheets, eidredons, pillows, bolsters, nor settle. And she, Marie-Leonie, was inclined to agree with Monsieur Casimir-Bar, though, as one of the heroes of the barricades in 1848, he was apt to be a little extreme in his tenets. Still a vicar is in England a functionary of the State and as such should be received with a certain modesty and reserve. On the other hand — she, Marie Leonie — formerly Riotor, her mother having been born Lavigne-Bourdreau and having in consequence a suspicion of Huguenot blood so that she, Marie Leonie, might be expected to know how the Protestant clergy should be received — she, then, Marie Leonie, from the little window on the side of the stairs, had distinctly seen Elle lay one hand on the shoulder of that clergyman and point — point, mind you, with the trowel — to the open front door and say — she had distinctly heard the words: “Poor man, if you have hunger you will find Mr. Tietjens in the dining-room. He is just eating a sandwich. It’s hungry weather!”… That was six months ago, but Marie Leonie’s ears still tingled at the words and the gesture. A trowel! To point with a trowel; pensez y! If a trowel why not a main de fer, a dustpan? Or a vessel even more homely!… And Marie Leonie chuckled.
Her grandmother Bourdreau remembered a crockery-merchant of the ambulating sort who had once filled one of those implements — a vase de nuit — but of course new, with milk and had offered the whole gratuitously to any passer-by who would drink the milk. A young woman called Laborde accepted his challenge there in the market-place of Noisy-Lebrun. She has lost her fiance who found the gesture exaggerated. But he was a farceur, that crockery-dealer!
She drew from the pocket of her pinafore several folded pages of a newspaper and from under the bed a double picture-frame — two frames hinged together so that they would close. She inserted a sheet of the paper between the two frames and then hung the whole on a piece of picture wire that depended from the roof-tree beneath the thatch. Two braces of picture-wire too came from the supporting posts, to right and left. They held the picture-frames motionless and a little inclined towards Mark’s face. She was agreeable to look at, stretching up her arms. She lifted his torso with great strength and infinite solicitude, propped it a little with the pillows and looked to see that his eyes fell on the printed sheet. She said:
“You can see well, like that?”
His eyes took in the fact that he was to read of the Newbury Summer Meeting and the one at Newcastle. He closed them twice to signify Yes! The tears came into hers. She murmured:
“Mon pauvre homme! Mon pauvre homme! What they have clone to you!” She drew from another pocket in her pinafore a flask of eau de cologne and a wad of cotton-wool. With that, moistened, she wiped even more solicitously his face and then his thin, mahogany hands which she uncovered. She had the air of women in France when they change the white satin clothes and wash the faces of favourite Virgins at the church doors in August.
Then she stood back and apostrophised him. He took in that the King’s filly had won the Berkshire Foal plate and the horse of a friend the Seaton Delaval Handicap, at Newcastle. Both might have been expected. He had meant to go to the Newcastle meeting this year and give Newbury a by. During the last year when he had gone racing he had done rather well at Newbury so he had then thought he would try Newcastle for a change and, whilst he was there, take a look at Groby and see what that bitch Sylvia was doing with the house. Well, that was done with. They would presumably bury him at Groby.
She said, in deep, rehearsed, tones:
“My Man!” She might almost have well said: “My Deity!” “What sort of life is this we lead here? Was there ever anything so singular and unreasonable? If we sit to drink a cup of tea, the cup may at any moment be snatched from our mouths; if we recline upon a divan — at any moment the divan may go. I do not comment on this that you lie by night as by day for ever here in the open air, for I understand that it is by your desire and consent that you lie here and I will never exhibit aversion from that which you desire and that to which you consent. But cannot you bring it about that we should inhabit a house of some reason, one more suited to human beings of this age, and one that is less of a procession of goods and chattels? You can bring that about. You are all-powerful here. I do not know what are your resources. It was never your habit to tell me. You kept me in comfort. Never did I express a desire that you did not satisfy, though it is true that my desires were always reasonable. So I know nothing though I read once in a paper that you were a man of extravagant riches and that can hardly all have vanished for there can have been fewer men of as great a frugality and you were always fortunate and moderate in your wagers. So I know nothing and I would scorn to ask of these others, for that would imply doubt of your trust in me. I do not doubt that you have made arrangements for my future comfort and I am in no uncertainty of the continuance of those arrangements. It is not material fears that I have. But all this appears to be a madness. Why are we here? What is the meaning of all this? Why do you inhabit this singular erection? It may be that the open air is of necessity for your malady. I do not believe that you lived in perpetual currents of air in your chambers, though I never saw them. But on the days you gave to me you had everything of the most comfortable and you seemed contented with my arrangements. And your brother and his woman appear so mad in all the other affairs of life that
