Parade's End

Marie Leonie considered that, by now, she might have got down to the depth of the cask where you find sediment. She ran some cider into a clear glass, stopping the tube with her thumb. The cider was clear enough to let her bottle another dozen, she judged; then she would send for Gunning to take the spile-bung out of the next cask. Four sixty-gallon casks she had to attend to; two of them were done. She began to tire: she was not unfatigable if she was indefatigable. She began at any rate to feel drowsy. She wished Valentine could have helped her. But that girl had not much backbone and she, Marie Leonie, acknowledged that for the sake of the future it was good that she should rest and read books in Latin or Greek. And avoid nervous encounters.

She had tucked her up under an eiderdown on their four-post bed because They would have all the windows open and currents of air must above all be avoided by women…. Elle had smiled and said that it had once been her dream to read the works of ?schylus beside the blue Mediterranean. They had kissed each other….

The maid beside her was saying that orfen ’n orfen she’d ’eared ’er farver ’oo was a dealer wen a lot of ol’ ’ens, say, ’ad gone to three an nine say: “Make it two arf dollars!” They didn’ ’ave dollars in thet country but they did ’ave ’arf dollars. N Capt’n Kidd th’ pirate: ’e ’ad dollars, n’ pieces of eight ‘n’ moi-dors too!

A wasp annoyed Marie Leonie; it buzzed almost on her nose, retired, returned, made a wide circuit. There were already several wasps struggling in the glass of cider she had just drawn; there were others in circles round spots of cider on the slats of wood on which the barrels were arranged. They drew in their tails and then expanded, ecstatically. Yet only two nights before she and Valentine had gone with Gunning all over the orchard with a lantern, a trowel and a bottle of prussic acid, stopping up holes along the paths and in banks. She had liked the experience; the darkness, the ring of light from the lantern on the rough grass; the feeling that she was out, near Mark and that yet Gunning and his lantern kept spiritual visitors away…. What she suffered between the desire to visit her man in the deep nights and the possibility of coming up against revenants… Was it reasonable?… What women had to suffer for their men! Even if they were faithful….

What the unfortunate Elle had not suffered!…

Even on what you might call her nuit de noces…. At the time it had seemed incomprehensible. She had had no details. It had merely seemed fantastic: possibly even tragic because Mark had taken it so hardly. Truly she believed he had become insane. At two in the morning, beside Mark’s bed. They had — the two brothers — exchanged words of considerable violence whilst the girl shivered; and was determined. That girl had been determined. She would not go back to her mother. At two in the morning…. Well, if you refuse to go back to your mother at two in the morning you kick indeed your slipper over the mill!

The details of that night came back to her, amongst wasps and beneath the conversation of the unseen woman, in the shed where the water ran in the trough. She had set the bottles in the trough because it is a good thing to cool cider before the process of fermentation in the bottles begins. The bottles with their shining necks of green glass were an agreeable spectacle. The lady behind her back was talking of Oklahoma…. The cowboy with the large nose that she had seen on the film at the Piccadilly Cinema had come from Oklahoma. It was no doubt somewhere in America. She had been used to go to the Piccadilly Cinema on a Friday. You do not go to the theatre on a Friday if you are bien pensant, but you may regard the cinema as being to the theatre what a repas maigre is as against a meal with meat…. The lady speaking behind her came apparently from Oklahoma: she had eaten prairie chickens in her time. On a farm. Now, however, she was very rich. Or so she told the little maid. Her husband could buy half Lord Fittleworth’s estate and not miss the money. She said that if only people here would take example…

On that evening they had come thumping on her door. The bell had failed to wake her after all the noise in the street that day…. She had sprung into the middle of the floor and flown to save Mark… from an air-raid. She had forgotten that it was the Armistice…. But the knocking had gone on on the door.

Before it had stood monsieur the brother-in-law and that girl in a dark blue girl-guides’ sort of uniform. Both chalk-white and weary to death. As if they leaned one against another…. She had been for bidding them go away, but Mark had come out of the bedroom; in his nightshirt with his legs bare. And hairy! He had bidden them come in, roughly, and had got back into bed…. That had been the last time he had been on his legs! Now, he having been in bed so long, his legs were no longer hairy, but polished. Like thin glazed bones!

She had recalled his last gesture. He had positively used a gesture, like a man raving…. And indeed he was raving. At Christopher. And dripping with sweat. Twice she had wiped his face whilst they shouted at each other.

It had been difficult to understand what they said because they had spoken a sort of patois. Naturally they returned to the language they spoke in their childhoods — when they were excited, these unexcitable people! It resembled the patois of the Bretons. Harsh…

And, for herself she had been all concerned for the girl. Naturally she had been concerned for the girl. One is a woman…. At first she had taken her for a little piece from the streets…. But even for a little piece from the streets… Then she had noticed that there had been no rouge; no imitation pearl necklace….

Of course when she had gathered that Mark was pressing money on them she had felt different. Different in two ways. It could not be a little piece. And then her heart contracted at the idea of money being given away. They might be ruined. It might be these people instead of her Paris nephews who would pillage her corpse. But the brother-in-law pushed the thought of money away from him with both hands. If she — Elle — wanted to go with him she must share his fortune…. What a country! What people!

There had seemed to be no understanding them then…. It had appeared that Mark insisted that the girl should stop there with her lover; the lover on the contrary insisted that she should go home to her mother. The girl kept saying that on no account would she leave Christopher. He could not be left. He would die if he was left… And indeed that brother-in-law had seemed sick enough. He panted worse than Mark.

She had eventually taken the girl to her own room. A little, agonised, fair creature. She had felt inclined to enfold her in her arms but she had not done so. Because of the money…. She might as well have. It was impossible to get these people to touch money. She would now give no little to lend that girl twenty pounds for a frock and some undergarments.

The girl had sat there without speaking. It had seemed for hours. Then some drunken man on the church steps opposite had begun to play the bugle. Long calls…. Tee… Teee… TEEEE… Ta-heee… To-hee… Continuing for ever….

The girl had begun to cry. She had said that it was dreadful. But you could not object. It was the Last Post they were playing. For the Dead. You could not object to their playing the Last Post for the Dead that night. Even if it was a drunken man who played and even if it drove you mad. The Dead ought to have all they could get.

If she had not made the necessary allowance that would have seemed to Marie Leonie an exaggerated sentiment. The English bugle notes could do no good to the French dead and the English losses were so negligible in quantity that it hardly seemed worth while to become emotionnee when their funeral call was played by a drunken man. The French papers estimated the English losses at a few hundreds; what was that as against the millions of her own people?… But she gathered that this girl had gone through something terrible that night with the wife, and being too proud to show emotion over her personal vicissitudes she pretended to find an outlet because of the sounds of that bugle…. Well, it was mournful enough. She had understood it when Christopher, putting his face in at the crack of the door had whispered to her that he was going to stop the bugle because its sound was intolerable to Mark.

The girl apparently had been in a reverie for she had not heard him. She, Marie Leonie, had gone to look at Mark and the girl sat there, on the bed. Mark was by then quite quiescent. The bugle had stopped. To cheer him she had made a few remarks about the inappropriateness of playing, for a negligible number of dead, a funeral call at three in the morning. If it had been for the French dead — or if her country had not been betrayed. It was betraying her country to have given those assassins an armistice when they were far from their borders. Merely that was treachery on the part of these sham Allies. They should have gone right through those monsters slaying them by the million, defenceless, and then they should have laid waste their country with fire and sword. Let them too know what it was to suffer as France had suffered. It was treachery enough not to have done that and the child unborn would suffer for it.

But there they waited, then, even after that treachery had been done, to know what were the terms of even that treachery. They might even now not intend to be going to Berlin…. What then was Life for?