Parade's End

Miss Wannop suddenly exclaimed:

“Oh, no, mother.” But the handy-man having climbed in, Mrs. Wannop flirted her whip and started the horse. She pulled up at once and leaned over to Tietjens:

“What a life for that poor woman,” she said. “We must all do all we can for her. She could have her husband put in a lunatic asylum to-morrow. It’s sheer self-sacrifice that she doesn’t.”

The horse went off at a gentle, regular trot.

Tietjens addressed Miss Wannop:

“What hands your mother’s got,” he said, “it isn’t often one sees a woman with hands like that on a horse’s mouth. Did you see how she pulled up?…”

He was aware that, all this while, from the road-side, the girl had been watching him with shining eyes, intently, even with fascination.

“I suppose you think that a mighty fine performance,” she said.

“I didn’t make a very good job of the girth,” he said. “Let’s get off this road.”

“Setting poor, weak women in their places,” Miss Wannop continued. “Soothing the horse like a man with a charm. I suppose you soothe women like that too. I pity your wife…. The English country male! And making a devoted vassal at sight of the handy-man. The feudal system all complete….”

Tietjens said:

“Well, you know, it’ll make him all the better servant to you if he thinks you’ve friends in the know. The lower classes are like that. Let’s get off this road.”

She said:

“You’re in a mighty hurry to get behind the hedge. Are the police after us or aren’t they? Perhaps you were lying at breakfast: to calm the hysterical nerves of a weak woman.”

“I wasn’t lying,” he said, “but I hate roads when there are field-paths…”

“That’s a phobia, like any woman’s,” she exclaimed.

She almost ran through the kissing-gate and stood awaiting him:

“I suppose,” she said, “if you’ve stopped off the police with your high and mighty male ways you think you’ve destroyed my romantic young dream. You haven’t. I don’t want the police after me. I believe I’d die if they put me in Wandsworth. I’m a coward.”

“Oh, no, you aren’t,” he said, but he was following his own train of thought, just as she wasn’t in the least listening to him. “I daresay you’re a heroine all right. Not because you persevere in actions the consequences of which you fear. But I daresay you can touch pitch and not be defiled.”

Being too well brought up to interrupt she waited till he had said all he wanted to say, then she exclaimed:

“Let’s settle the preliminaries. It’s obvious mother means us to see a great deal of you. You’re going to be a mascot too, like your father. I suppose you think you are: you saved me from the police yesterday, you appear to have saved mother’s neck to-day. You appear, too, to be going to make twenty pounds profit on a horse deal. You say you will and you seem to be that sort of a person… Twenty pounds is no end in a family like ours… Well, then, you appear to be going to be the regular bel ami of the Wannop family…”

Tietjens said:

“I hope not.”

“Oh, I don’t mean,” she said, “that you’re going to rise to fame by making love to all the women of the Wannop family. Besides, there’s only me. But mother will press you into all sorts of odd jobs; and there will always be a plate for you at the table. Don’t shudder! I’m a regular good cook — cuisine bourgeoise of course. I learned under a real professed cook, though a drunkard. That meant I used to do half the cooking and the family was particular. Ealing people are: county councillors, half of them, and the like. So I know what men are…” She stopped and said good-naturedly: “But do, for goodness’ sake, get it over. I’m sorry I was rude to you. But it is irritating to have to stand like a stuffed rabbit while a man is acting like a regular Admirable Crichton, and cool and collected, with the English country gentleman air and all.”

Tietjens winced. The young woman had come a little too near the knuckle of his wife’s frequent denunciations of himself. And she exclaimed:

“No! That’s not fair! I’m an ungrateful pig! You didn’t show a bit more side really than a capable workman must who’s doing his job in the midst of a crowd of incapable duffers. But just get it out, will you? Say once and for all that — you know the proper, pompous manner: you are not without sympathy with our aims, but you disapprove — oh, immensely, strongly — of our methods.”

It struck Tietjens that the young woman was a good deal more interested in the cause — of votes for women — than he had given her credit for. He wasn’t much in the mood for talking to young women, but it was with considerably more than the surface of his mind that he answered:

“I don’t. I approve entirely of your methods: but your aims are idiotic.”

She said:

“You don’t know, I suppose, that Gertie Wilson, who’s in bed at our house, is wanted by the police: not only for yesterday, but for putting explosives in a whole series of letter-boxes?”

He said:

“I didn’t… but it was a perfectly proper thing to do. She hasn’t burned any of my letters or I might be annoyed, but it wouldn’t interfere with my approval.”

“You don’t think,” she asked earnestly, “that we… mother and I… are likely to get heavy sentences for shielding her. It would be beastly bad luck on mother. Because she’s an anti…”

“I don’t know about the sentence,” Tietjens said, “but we’d better get the girl off your premises as soon as we can…”

She said:

“Oh, you’ll help?”

He answered:

“Of course, your mother can’t be incommoded. She’s written the only novel that’s been fit to read since the eighteenth century.”

She stopped and said earnestly:

“Look here. Don’t be one of those ignoble triflers who say the vote won’t do women any good. Women have a rotten time. They do, really. If you’d seen what I’ve seen, I’m not talking through my hat.” Her voice became quite deep: she had tears in her eyes: “Poor women do!” she said, “little insignificant creatures. We’ve got to change the divorce laws. We’ve got to get better conditions. You couldn’t stand it if you knew what I know.”

Her emotion vexed him, for it seemed to establish a sort of fraternal intimacy that he didn’t at the moment want. Women do not show emotion except before their familiars. He said drily:

“I daresay I shouldn’t. But I don’t know, so I can!”

She said with deep disappointment:

“Oh, you are a beast! And I shall never beg your pardon for saying that. I don’t believe you mean what you say, but merely to say it is heartless.”

This was another of the counts of Sylvia’s indictment and Tietjens winced again. She explained:

“You don’t know the case of the Pimlico army clothing factory workers or you wouldn’t say the vote would be no use to women.”

“I know the case perfectly well,” Tietjens said: “It came under my official notice, and I remember thinking that there never was a more signal instance of the uselessness of the vote to anyone.”

“We can’t be thinking of the same case,” she said.

“We are,” he answered. “The Pimlico army clothing factory is in the constituency of Westminster; the Under- Secretary for War is member for Westminster; his majority at the last election was six hundred. The clothing factory employed seven hundred men at is. 6d. an hour, all these men having votes in Westminster. The seven hundred