“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, overrated the indispensableness of Tietjens, Mark. … That would have been a month before the Armistice. They were black days. … A good brother, though. …
In the other room, whilst papers were signing, after the curé in his calotte and all had done reading from his book, Mark had signed to her to bend her head down to him and had kissed her. He whispered:
“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 toi!” 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 pauvre homme.
There had to be another ceremony. A man looking like a newly dressed jailbird 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 Léonie Tietjens, might have trouble with a certain Sylvia. The Bitch! … Well, she, Marie Léonie, was prepared to face her sister-in-law.
III
The little maid, Beatrice, as well as Gunning, regarded Marie Léonie with paralysed but bewildered obedience. She was ’Er Ladyship, a good mark; a foreign Frenchy, bad; 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.
Cabinetmaker Cramp, who was a remnant of the little dark persistent race that once had peopled Sussex, regarded Marie Léonie 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 Governors 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. More ’nundred 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 ’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, when 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 for 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. More’n a ’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 Atchison 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 encoops, ’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, washhouse coppers that no one now had any use for. He loaded ’em, when he’d scrubbed, and silver-sanded and bees-waxed-’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 cabinetmakers 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
