No More Parades_ A Novel - Ford Madox Ford [101]
'I presume you refuse to answer?'
That shook him cruelly.
He said desperately:
'I had to end what I took to be an unbearable position for both parties. In the interests of my son!' Why in the world had he said that?...He was going to be sick. It came back to him that the general had been talking of his separation from Sylvia. Last night that had happened. He said: 'I may have been right: I may have been wrong...'
The general said icily:
'If you don't choose to go into it...'
Tietjens said:
'I would prefer not to...'
The general said:
'There is no end to this...But there are questions it's my duty to ask...If you do not wish to go into your marital relations, I cannot force you...But, damn it, are you sane? Are you responsible? Do you intend to get Miss Wannop to live with you before the war is over? Is she, perhaps, here, in the town, now? Is that your reason for separating from Sylvia? Now, of all times in the world!'
Tietjens said:
'No, sir. I ask you to believe that I have absolutely no relations with that young lady. None! I have no intention of having any. None!...'
The general said:
'I believe that!'
'Circumstances last night,' Tietjens said, 'convinced me suddenly, there on the spot, that I had been wronging my wife...I had been putting a strain on the lady that was unwarrantable. It humiliates me to have to say it! I had taken a certain course for the sake of the future of our child. But it was an atrociously wrong course. We ought to have separated years ago. It has led to the lady's pulling the strings of all these shower-baths...'
The general said:
'Pulling the...'
Tietjens said:
'It expresses it, sir...Last night was nothing but pulling the string of a shower-bath. Perfectly justifiable. I maintain that it was perfectly justifiable.'
The general said:
'Then why have you given her Groby?...You're not a little soft, are you?...You don't imagine you've...say, got a mission? Or that you're another person?...That you have to...to forgive...' He took off his pretty hat and wiped his forehead with a tiny cambric handkerchief. He said: 'Your poor mother was a little...'
He said suddenly:
'To-night when you are coming to my dinner...I hope you'll be decent. Why do you so neglect your personal appearance? Your tunic is a disgusting spectacle...'
Tietjens said:
'I had a better tunic, sir...but it has been ruined by the blood of the man who was killed here last night...'
The general said:
'You don't say you have only two tunics?...Have you no mess clothes?'
Tietjens said:
'Yes, sir, I've my blue things. I shall be all right for to-night...But almost everything else I possessed was stolen from my kit when I was in hospital...Even Sylvia's two pair of sheets...'
'But hang it all,' the general exclaimed, 'you don't mean to say you've spaflled all your father left you?'
Tietjens said:
'I thought fit to refuse what my father left me owing to the way it was left...'
The general said:
'But, good God!...Read that!' He tossed the small sheet of paper at which he had been looking across the table. It fell face downwards. Tietjens read, in the minute handwriting of the general's:
'Colonel's horse: Sheets: Jesus Christ: Wannop girl: Socialism?'
The general said irritably:
'The other side...the other side...'
The other side of the paper displayed the words in large capitals: WORKERS OF THE WORLD, a wood-cut of a sickle and some other objects. Then high treason for a page.
The general said:
'Have you ever seen anything like that before? Do you know what it is?'
Tietjens answered:
'Yes, sir. I sent that to you. To your Intelligence...' The general thumped both his fists violently on the army blanket:
'You...' he said. 'It's incomprehensible...It's incredible...'
Tietjens said:
'No, sir...You sent out an order asking commanders of units to ascertain what attempts were being made by Socialists to undermine the discipline of their other ranks...I naturally asked my sergeant-major, and he produced this sheet, which one of the men had given to him as a curiosity. It had been handed to the man in the street in London. You can see my initials on the top of the sheet!'