She could, nevertheless, see that her man was exhausted in his inner being and obviously that girl was tried beyond endurance. Whilst she talked she appeared to listen for distant sounds. … She kept on recurring to the idea that punishment was abhorrent to the modern mind. Mark stuck to his point that to occupy Berlin was not punishment, but that not to occupy Berlin was to commit an intellectual sin. The consequence of invasion is counter-invasion and symbolical occupation, as the consequence of over-pride is humiliation. For the rest of the world, he knew nothing of it; for his own country that was logic—the logic by which she had lived. To abandon that logic was to abandon clearness of mind: it was mental cowardice. To show the world Berlin occupied, with stands of arms and colours on her public places, was to show that England respected logic. Not to show the world that, was to show that England was mentally cowardly. We dared not put the enemy nations to pain because we shrank from the contemplation.
Valentine had said: “There has been too much suffering!”
He had said:
“Yes, you are afraid of suffering. … But England is necessary to the world. … To my world. … Well, make it your world and it may go to rack and ruin how it will. I am done with it. But then … you must accept the responsibility. A world with England presenting the spectacle of moral cowardice would be a world on a lower plane. … If you lower the record for the mile you lower the standard of bloodstock. Try to think of that. If Persimmon had not achieved what it did the French Grand Prix would be less of an event and the trainers at Maisons Laffitte would be less efficient. And the jockeys. And the stable lads. And the sporting writers. … A world profits by the example of a steadfast nation. …”
Suddenly Valentine said:
“Where is Christopher?” with such intenseness that it was like a blow.
Christopher had gone out. She exclaimed:
“But you must not let him go out. … He is not fit to go out alone. … He has gone out to go back. …”
Mark said:
“Don’t go. …” For she had got to the door. “He went out to stop the Last Post. But you may play the Last Post for me. Perhaps he has gone back to the Square. He had presumably better see what has happened to his wife. I should not myself.”
Valentine had said with extraordinary bitterness:
“He shall not. He shall not.” She had gone.
It had come through to Marie Léonie partly then and partly subsequently that Christopher’s wife had turned up at Christopher’s empty house, that was in the Square a few yards away only. They had gone back late at night probably for purposes of love and had found her there. She had come for the purpose of telling them that she was going to be operated on for cancer, so that with their sensitive natures they could hardly contemplate going to bed together at that moment.
It had been a good lie. That Mrs. Tietjens was a maîtresse femme. There was no denying that. She herself was engaged for those others both by her own inclinations and the strong injunctions of her husband, but Mme. Tietjens was certainly ingenious. She had managed to incommode and discredit that pair almost as much as any pair could be incommoded and discredited, although they were the most harmless couple in the world.
They had certainly not had an agreeable festival on that Armistice Day. Apparently one of the officers present at their dinner of celebration had gone raving mad; the wife of another of Christopher’s comrades of the regiment had been rude to Valentine; the colonel of the regiment had taken the opportunity to die with every circumstance of melodrama. Naturally all the other officers had run away and had left Christopher and Valentine with the madman and the dying colonel on their hands.
An agreeable voyage de noces. … It appeared that they had secured a four-wheel cab in which, with the madman and the other, they had driven to Balham—an obscure suburb, with sixteen celebrants hanging all over the outside of the cab and two on the horse’s back—at any rate for a couple of miles from Trafalgar Square. They were not, of course, interested in the interior of the cab; they were merely gay because there was to be no more suffering. No doubt Valentine and Christopher had got rid of the madman somewhere in Chelsea at an asylum for shell-shock cases; but the authorities would not take the colonel, so they had driven on to Balham, the colonel making dying speeches about the late war, his achievements, the money he owed Christopher. … Valentine had appeared to find that extremely trying. The man died in the cab.
They had had to walk back into Town because the driver of the four-wheeler was so upset by the death in his cab that he could not drive. Moreover, the horse was foundered. It had been twelve midnight before they reached Trafalgar Square. They had had to struggle through packed crowds nearly all the way. Apparently they were happy at the accomplishment of their duty—or their benevolence. They stood on the top step of St. Martin’s Church, dominating the square, that was all illuminated and packed and roaring, with bonfires made of the paving wood and omnibuses, and the Nelson Column going up and the fountain-basins full of drunkards, and orators and bands. … They stood on the top step, drew deep breaths and fell into each other’s arms. … For the first time—though apparently they had loved each other for a lustre or more. … What people!
Then, at the top of the stairs in the house in the Inn, they had perceived Sylvia, all in white! …
Apparently she had been informed that Christopher and that girl were in communication—by
