Sylvia felt that her lids were suddenly wavering:
“I might have been myself,” she said, “in a cold camp, too… if I hadn’t thrown myself on the captain’s mercy!… At Birkenhead, you know…. I happened to be there till three weeks ago…. It’s strange that you mentioned it…. There are things like signs… but you’re not a Catholic! They could hardly be coincidences….”
She was trembling…. She looked, fumblingly opening it, into the little mirror of her powder-box — of chased, very thin gold with a small blue stone, like a forget-me-not in the centre of the concentric engravings…. Drake — the possible father of Michael — had given it to her…. The first thing he had ever given her. She had brought it down to-night out of defiance. She imagined that Tietjens disliked it. She said breathlessly to herself: “Perhaps the damn thing is an ill omen….” Drake had been the first man who had ever… A hot-breathed brute!… In the little glass her features were chalk-white…. She looked like… she looked like… She had a dress of golden tissue…. The breath was short between her white set teeth…. Her face was as white as her teeth…. And… Yes! Nearly! Her lips…. What was her face like?… In the chapel of the convent of Birkenhead there was a tomb all of alabaster…. She said to herself:
“He was near fainting…. I’m near fainting…. What’s this beastly thing that’s between us?… If I let myself faint… But it would not make that beast’s face any less wooden!…”
She leaned across the table and patted the ex-sergeant-major’s lack-haired hand:
“I’m sure,” she said, “you’re a very good man….” She did not try to keep the tears out of her eyes, remembering his words: “Up in the cold camp.”… “I’m glad the captain, as you call him, did not leave you in the cold camp…. You’re devoted to him, aren’t you?… There are others he does leave… up in… the cold camp…. For punishment, you know….”
The ex-sergeant-major, the tears in his eyes too, said:
“Well, there is men you ’as to give the C.B. to…. C.B. means confined to barracks….”
“Oh, there are!” she exclaimed. “There are!… And women, too… Surely there are women, too?…”
The sergeant-major said:
“Waacs, per’aps… I don’t know…. They say women’s discipline is much like ours…. Founded on hours!”
She said:
“Do you know what they used to say of the captain?…” She said to herself: “I pray to God the stiff, fatuous beast likes sitting here listening to this stuff…. Blessed Virgin, mother of God, make him take me…. Before midnight. Before eleven…. As soon as we get rid of this… No, he’s a decent little man…. Blessed Virgin!”… “Do you-know what they used to say of the captain?… I heard the warmest banker in England say it of him….”
The sergeant-major, his eyes enormously opened, said:
“Did you know the warmest banker in England?… But there, we always knew the captain was well connected….” She went on:
“They said of him…. He was always helping people.”… “Holy Mary, mother of God!… He’s my husband. It’s not a sin…. Before midnight…. Oh, give me a sign…. Or before… the termination of hostilities…. If you give me a sign I could wait.”… “He helped virtuous Scotch students, and broken-down gentry…. And women taken in adultery…. All of them…. Like… You know Who…. That is his model….” She said to herself: “Curse him!… I hope he likes it…. You’d think the only thing he thinks about is the beastly duck he’s wolfing down.” And then aloud: “They used to say: ‘He saved others; himself he could not save….’”
The ex-sergeant-major looked at her gravely:
“Ma’am,” he said, “we couldn’t say exactly that of the captain…. For I fancy it was said of our Redeemer…. But we ’ave said that if ever there was a poor bloke the captain could ’elp, ’clp ’im ’e would…. Yet the unit was always getting ’ellish strafe from headquarters….”
Suddenly Sylvia began to laugh…. As she began to laugh she had remembered… The alabaster image in the nun’s chapel at Birkenhead the vision of which had just presented itself to her, had been the recumbent tomb of an honourable Mrs. Tremayne-Warlock…. She was said to have sinned in her youth and her husband had never forgiven her. That was what the nuns said…. She said aloud:
“A sign…” Then to herself: “Blessed Mary! You’ve given it me in the neck…. Yet you could not name a father for your child, and I can name two…. I’m going mad…. Both I and he are going to go mad….”
She thought of dashing an enormous patch of red upon either cheek. Then she thought it would be rather melodramatic….
She made in the smoking-room, whilst she was waiting for both Tietjens and Cowley to come back from the telephone, another pact, this time with Father Consett in heaven! She was fairly sure that Father Consett — and quite possibly other of the heavenly powers — wanted Christopher not to be worried, so that he could get on with the war — or because he was a good sort of dullish man such as the heavenly authorities are apt to like…. Something like that….
She was by that time fairly calm again. You cannot keep up fits of emotion by the hour. At any rate, with her, the fits of emotion were periodical and unexpected, though her colder passion remained always the same…. Thus, when Christopher had come into Lady Sachse’s that afternoon, she had been perfectly calm. He had mooned through a number of officers, both French and English, in a great octagonal, bluish salon where Lady Sachse gave her teas, and had come to her side with just a nod — the merest inflexion of the head!… Perowne had melted away somewhere behind the disagreeable duchess. The general, very splendid and white-headed and scarlet-tipped and gilt, had also borne down upon her at that…. At the sight of Perowne with her he had been sniffing and snorting whilst he talked to the young nobleman — a dark fellow in blue with a new belt who seemed just a shade too theatrical, he being chauffeur to a marshal of France and first cousin and nearest relative, except for parents and grandparents, of the prospective bride.
The general had told her that he was running the show pretty strong on purpose because he thought it might do something to cement the Entente Cordiale. But it did not seem to be doing it. The French — officers, soldiers, and women — kept pretty well all on the one side of the room — the English on the other. The French were as a rule more gloomy than men and women are expected to be. A marquis of sorts — she understood that these were all Bonapartist nobility — having been introduced to her had distinguished himself no more than by saying that, for his part, he thought the duchess was right, and by saying that to Perowne who, knowing no French, had choked exactly as if his tongue had suddenly got too big for his mouth.
She had not heard what the duchess — a very disagreeable duchess who sat on a sofa and appeared savagely careworn — had been saying, so that she had inclined herself, in the courtly manner that at school she had been taught to reserve for the French legitimist nobility, but that she thought she might expend upon a rather state function even for the Bonapartists, and had replied that without the least doubt the duchess had the right of the matter…. The marquis had given her from dark eyes one long glance, and she had returned it with a long cold glance that certainly told him she was meat for his masters. It extinguished him….
Tietjens had staged his meeting with herself remarkably well. It was the sort of lymphatic thing he could do, so that, for the fifth of a minute, she wondered if he had any feelings or emotions at all. But she knew that he had…. The general, at any rate, bearing down upon them with satisfaction, had remarked: