No More Parades - Ford Madox Ford (the gingerbread man read aloud .TXT) 📗

“Pardon⁠ ⁠… I did not see madame at first⁠ ⁠…” And displayed a card on a salver. Without looking at it, Sylvia said:

“Dites à ce monsieur⁠ ⁠… that I am occupied.” The maitre d’hôtel moved austerely away.

“But he’ll smash me to pieces⁠ ⁠…” Perowne exclaimed. “What am I to do?⁠ ⁠… What the deuce am I to do?” There would have been no way of exit for him except across Tietjens’ face.

With her spine very rigid and the expression of a snake that fixes a bird, Sylvia gazed straight in front of her and said nothing until she exclaimed:

“For God’s sake leave off trembling⁠ ⁠… He would not do anything to a girl like you⁠ ⁠… He’s a man⁠ ⁠…” The wickerwork of Perowne’s chair had been crepitating as if it had been in a railway car. The sound ceased with a jerk⁠ ⁠… Suddenly she clenched both her hands and let out a hateful little breath of air between her teeth.

“By the immortal saints,” she exclaimed, “I swear I’ll make his wooden face wince yet.”

In the bluish looking-glass, a few minutes before, she had seen the agate-blue eyes of her husband, thirty feet away, over armchairs and between the fans of palms. He was standing, holding a riding-whip, looking rather clumsy in the uniform that did not suit him. Rather clumsy and worn out, but completely expressionless! He had looked straight into the reflection of her eyes and then looked away. He moved so that his profile was towards her, and continued gazing motionless at an elk’s head that decorated the space of wall above glazed doors giving into the interior of the hotel. The hotel servant approaching him, he had produced a card and had given it to the servant, uttering three words. She saw his lips move in the three words: Mrs. Christopher Tietjens. She said, beneath her breath:

“Damn his chivalry!⁠ ⁠… Oh, God damn his chivalry!” She knew what was going on in his mind. He had seen her, with Perowne, so he had neither come towards her nor directed the servant to where she sat. For fear of embarrassing her! He would leave it to her to come to him if she wished.

The servant, visible in the mirror, had come and gone deviously back, Tietjens still gazing at the elk’s head. He had taken the card and restored it to his pocketbook and then had spoken to the servant. The servant had shrugged his shoulders with the formal hospitality of his class and, with his shoulders still shrugged and his one hand pointing towards the inner door, had preceded Tietjens into the hotel. Not one line of Tietjens’ face had moved when he had received back his card. It had been then that Sylvia had sworn that she would yet make his wooden face wince⁠ ⁠…

His face was intolerable. Heavy; fixed. Not insolent, but simply gazing over the heads of all things and created beings, into a world too distant for them to enter⁠ ⁠… And yet it seemed to her, since he was so clumsy and worn out, almost not sporting to persecute him. It was like whipping a dying bulldog⁠ ⁠…

She sank back into her chair with a movement almost of discouragement. She said:

“He’s gone into the hotel⁠ ⁠…”

Perowne lurched agitatedly forward in his chair. He exclaimed that he was going. Then he sank discouragedly back again:

“No, I’m not,” he said, “I’m probably much safer here. I might run against him going out.”

“You’ve realized that my petticoats protect you,” Sylvia said contemptuously. “Of course, Christopher would never hit anyone in my presence.”

Major Perowne was interrupting her by asking:

“What’s he going to do? What’s he doing in the hotel?” Mrs. Tietjens said:

“Guess!” She added: “What would you do in similar circumstances?”

“Go and wreck your bedroom,” Perowne answered with promptitude. “It’s what I did when I found you had left Yssingueux.”

Sylvia said:

“Ah, that was what the place was called.”

Perowne groaned:

“You’re callous,” he said. “There’s no other word for it. Callous. That’s what you are.”

Sylvia asked absently why he called her callous at just that juncture. She was imagining Christopher stumping clumsily along the hotel corridor looking at bedrooms, and then giving the hotel servant a handsome tip to ensure that he should be put on the same floor as herself. She could almost hear his not disagreeable male voice that vibrated a little from the chest and made her vibrate.

Perowne was grumbling on. Sylvia was callous because she had forgotten the name of the Brittany hamlet in which they had spent three blissful weeks together, though she had left it so suddenly that all her outfit remained in the hotel.

“Well, it wasn’t any kind of a beanfeast for me.” Sylvia went on, when she again gave him her attention. “Good heavens!⁠ ⁠… Do you think it would be any kind of a beanfeast with you, pour tout potage? Why should I remember the name of the hateful place?”

Perowne said:

“Yssingueux-les-Pervenches, such a pretty name,” reproachfully.

“It’s no good,” Sylvia answered, “your trying to awaken sentimental memories in me. You will have to make me forget what you were like if you want to carry on with me⁠ ⁠… I’m stopping here and listening to your corncrake of a voice because I want to wait until Christopher goes out of the hotel⁠ ⁠… Then I am going to my room to tidy up for Lady Sachse’s party and you will sit here and wait for me.”

“I’m not,” Perowne said, “going to Lady Sachse’s. Why, he is going to be one of the principal witnesses to sign the marriage contract. And Old Campion and all the rest of the staff are going to be there⁠ ⁠… You don’t catch me⁠ ⁠… An unexpected prior engagement is my line. No fear.”

“You’ll come with me, my little man,” Sylvia said, “if you ever want to bask in my smile again⁠ ⁠… I’m not going to Lady Sachse’s alone, looking as if I couldn’t catch a man to escort me, under the eyes of half the French house of peers⁠ ⁠… If they’ve got a house