that the priest was for marriage, with license of the Archeveque de Cantorberi such as in London you got in those days from Lambeth Palace for thirty pounds sterling. That enabled you to make any woman honest at any hour of the day or night. The lawyer was there to have a will re-signed. Marriage in this singular country invalidates any previous will. So, Tietjens (Christophere) assured her.
But then, if there was that haste there was danger of death! She had often speculated as to whether he would or would not marry her as an act of death-bed contrition. Rather contemptuously as great lords with
He crepitated out that his brother was doubling, in this new will, his posthumous provision for her. With provision for the purchase of a house in France if she would not inhabit the Dower House at Groby. A Louis Treize dower-house. It was his idea of consolation. He affected to be business-like… These English. But then, perhaps they do not go through your presses and wardrobes whilst your corpse is still warm!
She screamed out that they might take away their marriage papers and will-forms, but to give her her man again. If they had let her give him her
With her breast heaving she had cried into that man’s face:
“I swear that my first act when I am Madame Tietjens and have the legal power will be to turn out all these men and give him infusions of poppy-heads and lime-flowers.” She expected to see him recoil, but he had said:
“In heaven’s name do, my dear sister. It might save him and the nation!”
It was silly of him to talk like that. These fellows had too much pride of family. Mark did no more than attend to Transport. Well, perhaps transport in those days had its importance. Still, probably Tietjens, Christopher, over- rated the indispensableness of Tietjens, Mark…. That would have been three weeks or a month before the Armistice. They were black days…. A good brother, though….
In the other room, whilst papers were signing, after the
“Thank God there is one woman-Tietjens who is not a whore and a bitch!” He winced a little; her tears had fallen on his face. For the first time, she had said:
“Mon pauvre homme, ce qu’ils ont fait de toil” She had been hurrying from the room when Christopher had stopped her. Mark had said:
“I regret to put you to further inconvenience…” in French. He had never spoken to her in French before. Marriage makes a difference. They speak to you with ceremony out of respect for themselves and their station in life. You also are at liberty to address them as your
There had to be another ceremony. A man looking like a newly dressed gaol-bird stepped out with his book like an office register. With a blue-black jowl. He married them over again. A civil marriage, this time.
It was then that, for the first time, she had become aware of the existence of another woman-Tietjens, Christopher’s wife…. She had not known that Christopher had a wife. Why was not she there? But Mark with his labouring politeness and chest had told her that he exaggerated the formality of the marriage because if both he and Christopher died she, Marie Leonie Tietjens, might have trouble with a certain Sylvia. The Bitch!… Well, she, Marie Leonie, was prepared to face her legitimate sister-in-law.
III
THE LITTLE maid, Beatrice, as well as Gunning, regarded Marie Leonie with paralysed but bewildered obedience. She was ’Er Ladyship, a good mark, a foreign Frenchy. That was bad. She was extraordinarily efficient about the house and garden and poultry-yard, a matter for mixed feelings. She was fair, not black-avised, a good mark; she was buxom, not skinny, like the real Quality. A bad mark because she was, then, not real Quality; but a qualifiedly good mark because if you ’as to ’ave Quality all about you in the ’ouse tis better not to ’ave real Quality…. But on the whole the general feeling was favourable because like themselves she was floridly blond. It made ’er ’uman like. Never you trust a dark woman and if you marries a dark man ’e will treat you bad. In the English countryside it is like that.
Cabinet-maker Cramp who was a remnant of the little dark persistent race that once had peopled Sussex regarded her with distrust that mingled with admiration for the quality of the varnish that she imported from Paris. Proper French polish that were. He lived in the cottage just across the path on the Common. ’E couldn’ say as ’ow ’e liked the job the Governor give ’im. He had to patch up and polish with beeswax — not varnish — rough stuff such ’s ’is granf’er ’ad ’ad. An ’ad got rid of. Rough ol’ truck. Moren n ’undred yeers old. N’more!
He had to take bits of old wood out of one sort of old truck and fit it into missing bits of other old truck. Bought old Moley’s pig-pound boards that had been Little Kingsworth church stalls, the Cahptn ’ad; n ’ad ’im, Cramp, use’m for all manner of patchin’s up. The Captain had bought too ol Miss’ Cooper’s rabbit ‘utch. Beautifully bevelled the panels was too which cleaned up n beeswaxed. Cramp would acknowledge that. Made him match the bevelling in the timber from Kingsworth Church stalls for one of the missing doors, an’ more of the timber fer the patching. Proper job, he, Cramp, had made of it too; he would say that. ‘N it looked proper when it was finished — a long, low press, with six bevelled doors; beautiful purfling on the edges. Like some of the stuff ’Is Lordship ’ad in the Tujer Room at Fittleworth House. Moren n ‘undred yeers old. Three undred. Four… There’s no knowin.
’N no accountin’ fer tastes. ’E would say ’e ’ad n eye — the Cahptn ’ad. Look at a bit of ol’ rough truck the Cahptn would n see it was older than the Monument to Sir Richard Atchinson on Tadworth ’Ill that was set up in the year 1842 to celebrate the glorious victory of Free Trade. So the Monument said. Lug a bit of rough ol’ truck out of the back of a cow-house where it had been throwed — the Cahptn would. And his, Cramp’s, heart would sink to see the ol’ mare come back, some days, the cart full of ’en-coops, n leaden pig-truffs, n pewter plates that ’ad been used to stop up ’oles in cow-byres.
’N off it would all go to Murrikay. Queer place Murrikay must be — full of the leavins of ol’ England. Pig- troughs, hen-coops, rabbit-hutches, wash-house coppers that no one now had any use for. He loaded ’em when he’d scrubbed, and silver-sanded and beeswaxed-n-turpentined ’em, onto the ol’ cart, n put to ol’ mare, n down to station, n on to Southampton n off to New York. Must be a queer place yon! Hadn’t they no cabinet-makers or ol’ rough truck of ther own?
Well, it took all sorts to make a world n thank God fer that. He, Cramp, had a good job, likely to last ’im ’is lifetime because some folks wus queer in the ’ed. The ol’ lumber went out yon and his, Cramp’s missus, was gettin’ together a proper set of goods. A tidy treat their sittin’ room looked with aspidistras in mahogany tripods, ’n a Wilton carpet ’n bamboo cheers ’n mahogany whatnots. A proper woman Missus Cramp was, if sharp in the tongue.
Miss’s Cramp she didn’t give so much fer ‘Er Ladyship. She was agin Foreigners. All German spies they wus. Have no truck with them she wouldn’t. ’Oo noo if they wus ’s much ’s married. Some says they wus, some says they wasn’. But you couldn’ take in Miss’ Cramp… ‘N Quality! What was to show that they were real Quality. Livin how they did wasn’ Quality manners. Quality was stuck up ’n wore shiny clothes ’n had motor-cars ’n statues ’n palms ’n ball-rooms ’n conservatories. ’N didn’ bottle off the cider ’n take the eggs ’n speak queer lingo to th’ handy-man. ’N didn’ sell the cheers they sat on. The four younger children also didn’ like ’Er Ladyship. Never called ’em pretty dears she did nor give ’em sweeties nor rag-dolls nor apples. Smacked ’em if she found ’em in the orchard. Never so much s give ’em red flannel capes in the winter.
But Bill the eldest liked ’Er Ladyship. Called ’er a proper right ’un. Never stopped tarkin’ of ’er. ’N
The matter of the cider however, did give him to think. Proper cider it was, when they was given a bottle or two. But it wasn’t Sussex cider. A little like Devonshire cider, more like Herefordshire. But not the same as any. More head it had ’n was sweeter, ’n browner. ’N not to be drunk s’ freely! Fair scoured you it did if you drunk’s much’s a quart!
