No More Parades_ A Novel - Ford Madox Ford [53]
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 of peers!...You don't catch me...No fear!' she mimicked his creaky voice. 'You can go away as soon as you've shown yourself as my escort...
'But, good God!' Perowne cried out, 'that's just what I mustn't do. Campion said that if he heard any more of my being seen about with you he would have me sent back to my beastly regiment. And my beastly regiment is in the trenches...You don't see me in the trenches, do you?'
'I'd rather see you there than in my own room,' Sylvia said. 'Any day!'
'Ah, there you are!' Perowne exclaimed with animation. 'What guarantee have I that if I do what you want I shall bask in your smile as you call it? I've got myself into a most awful hole, bringing you here without papers. You never told me you hadn't any papers. General O'Hara, the P.M., has raised a most awful strafe about it...And what have I got for it?...Not the ghost of a smile...And you should see old O'Hara's purple face!...Someone woke him from his afternoon nap to report to him about your heinous case and he hasn't recovered from the indigestion yet...Besides, he hates Tietjens Tietjens is always chipping away at his military police...O'Hara's lambs...'
Sylvia was not listening, but she was smiling a slow smile at an inward thought. It maddened him.
'What's your game?' he exclaimed. 'Hell and hounds, what's your game?...You can't have come here to see...him. You don't come here to see me, as far as I can see. Well then...'
Sylvia looked round at him with all her eyes, wide open as if she had just awakened from a deep sleep.
'I didn't know I was coming,' she said. 'It came into my head to come suddenly. Ten minutes before I started. And I came. I didn't know papers were wanted. I suppose I could have got them if I had wanted them...You never asked me if I had any papers. You just froze on to me and had me into your special carriage...I didn't know you were coming.'
That seemed to Perowne the last insult. He exclaimed:
'Oh, damn it, Sylvia! you must have known...You were at the Quirks' squash on Wednesday evening. And they knew. My best friends.'
'Since you ask for it,' she said, 'I didn't know...And I would not have come by that train if I had known you would be going by it. You force me to say rude things to you.' She added: 'Why can't you be more conciliatory?' to keep him quiet for a little. His jaw dropped down.
She was wondering where Christopher had got the money to pay for a bed at the hotel. Only a very short time before she had drawn all the balance of his banking account, except for a shilling. It was the middle of the month and he could not have drawn any more pay...That, of course, was a try on her part. He might be forced into remonstrating. In the same way she had tried on the accusation that he had carried off her sheets. It was sheer wilfulness, and when she looked again at his motionless features she knew that she had been rather stupid...But she was at the end of her tether: she had before now tried making