The General

by C. S. Forester

  When Curzon rode away the rumour was ready to circulate through the Division that ‘Curzon was just as mad about horse-lines as about cookhouses’. Yet nobody knew the reason of this savage bad temper which he had displayed – those who were in the secret of the General’s private life were inclined to attribute it to the fact that he was being married that afternoon, but they were wrong. A letter had come to Curzon that morning, in a cheap shabby envelope, addressed originally to the regimental depot, and readdressed three times before it had reached him. Curzon had read it while he ate his breakfast, and the sight of it had spoiled his day.

  117 Shoesmith St

  Brixton

  16th December, 1914

  MY DEAR BERTIE,

  I suppose I must call you that still although you are a General now and going to marry a great Lady. We are all of us here very pleased to see how well you are getting on. Your Uncle Stanley reads the papers a great deal and has shown us lots about you in them. He did not approve of the war at first but when he heard about what the Germans did in Belgium he feels differently about it now. Maud has just got married, too, to a gentleman in a very good way of business as a tailor. It seems only like yesterday since she was a little girl like when you saw her last. Gertie is in a government office and doing very well, and our Dick has just made up his mind that he must do his bit and he is going to join the army as soon as Christmas is over. Your Uncle Stanley is very well considering although his chest troubles him a lot, and of course I am all right as usual except for my leg. This is just a line to wish you much joy and happiness in your new life with your bride and to say that if ever you are in Brixton again we shall be glad the same as ever, although you are so grand now, if you would pop in and see us just for a minute.

  Your loving

  AUNT KATE

  P.S. – We saw your photograph in the paper and you look just the same as ever which is why I wrote to you dear.

  That was a very disturbing letter for a man about to marry a duke’s daughter to receive on his wedding morning. Curzon’s flesh had crept as he read it. He had been perfectly sincere when he told Emily and the Duchess that he had not a relation in the world – he had forgotten all about the Coles of Brixton, honestly and sincerely forgotten all about them. It was a shock to be reminded of their existence. If any word about them should reach the Duchess’s ears it would make her into his deadly enemy, for she would never forgive him the deception. Even now she was hardly a benevolent neutral. Any revelation would turn the scale. It would lose him Emily’s good opinion and regard. Probably it would ruin his life and his career as well, and that was an important although a minor consideration. Curzon felt slightly sick, like a man with no head for heights looking over the edge of a precipice. Why in the world had Aunt Kate married beneath her station instead of above it as his own mother had very sensibly seen fit to do?

  He had plenty of time to think about it during the long motor journey up to London. There had been no time for lunch after the artillery inspection, and he and Horatio Winter-Willoughby and Greven ate sandwiches in the stuffy saloon car as they raced along past the Devil’s Punchbowl and on to Guildford. They were cumbered with their greatcoats and swords. Curzon actually found himself thankful that he had been compelled to put aside the Duchess’s suggestion that he should be married in all the glory of his Lancer full-dress. He simply had not been able to make allowance in the day’s timetable for that change of clothing, and he was glad now, swaying about in the motor car, feeling slightly sick, what with the motion, and the sandwiches, and the imminence of marriage, and that letter from Aunt Kate. From Guildford onwards he was looking at his watch. It was going to be a near-run thing. There were only a few minutes left when they ran through Esher, and he called on the driver for yet more speed. Kingston – Putney Bridge – King’s Road, crowded with people shopping industriously on this, the first Christmas Eve of the war.

  Big Ben showed one minute to two as they swung out of Victoria Street. The paragraphs in the newspapers about the romantic war wedding of a duke’s daughter and the sight of the carpet and awning outside St Margaret’s had called together a big crowd on the pavement. The Vauxhall stopped at the end of the awning, and Curzon and his two aides got out while the crowd surged under the control of the police. They had hardly sat down up by the chancel rails when the organ changed its tune and up the aisle came Emily in her bridal white, her bridesmaids and her pages behind her, and the Duke in support.

  As the Duchess had said, the fact that Emily was marrying a General was a very adequate excuse for so much ceremony at the wedding, when otherwise it might not be quite good taste in war-time. The Bishop (he was a Winter-Willoughby too; by common report the only one with any brains, and he had too many) went through the service, while Curzon rasped out the responses and Emily whispered them. Then the signing of the register, and the march out through the church, while the guests stood up on their seats to catch a better glimpse of the bride and the beribboned bridegroom.

  While Curzon was waiting for Emily, encumbered with train and veil, to get into the motor car, the crowd surged more violently than ever. He looked round. Between two policemen, and waving violently, was Aunt Kate – there was no mistaking her; and the two women beside her were presumably Maud and Gertie. It was only for a second that their eyes met. Aunt Kate had the decency and the common sense not to call out ‘Bertie!’ although for an idiotic second Curzon was filled with fear in case she should say something about her sore leg. He had not time to betray recognition, as he had to climb in at once beside Emily. Next instant they were off, with Curzon sitting shaken beside Emily, who for some woman’s reason or other had tears on her face.

  So that on the way to Bude House Curzon had time to reflect that there were some relatives of his at his wedding. The church had been crammed with Winter-Willoughbys and Grevens, hordes of them. There had not been more than half a dozen people invited at Curzon’s request – three or four members of the Cavalry Club, and Mackenzie, who (perhaps for reasons of his own) had intimated that he might be able to get away from his duties at the War Office for an hour. Curzon had not even been able to find a friend close enough to be asked to be groom’s man – the one or two possibles were in France, which was why the egregious Horatio had had to fulfil that duty.

  There was an hour’s torment in Bude House, where even those colossal rooms were not big enough to shelter all the seething horde without crushing. The sparse khaki amidst the morning coats and the elaborate dresses would have been significant to an attentive observer. Those uniforms were like the secret seeds of decay in the midst of an apparently healthy body. They were significant of the end of a great era. The decline had set in, although those most intimately concerned (despite the fact that they already were talking sorrowfully about the good old days, and lamenting the changes all about them) obstinately refused to recognize it. In ten years’ time the world would have no room for Bude House. It would be torn to pieces; the British public would be blackmailed into buying its paintings by the threat of selling them to America; its Adams fireplaces would be sold with less advertisement to the same country; and the people who thronged its rooms would be stockbroking on half-commission or opening little hat shops in the side streets.

  But nobody cared to think about all this at the moment, least of all Curzon, the most significant figure present, with his hand nervously resting on his sword hilt and the letter from Aunt Kate in his pocket. He greeted starchily the people who came up to wish him happiness and to look him over covertly; he did not feel in the least complimented when he overheard withered little Mr Anstey whispering to an aged female crony, ‘Most romantic. A real cloak and sword wedding just like Napoleon’s’; he had not even found any real pleasure in the contemplation of the inkstand which was a present from the King. The longer the reception lasted, the stiffer and more formal he became, and the attempts at boisterousness made by the few younger people (among whom should be reckoned his two aides-de-camp) irritated him unb
earably.

  By the time Emily appeared again in a sober travelling costume, and still in unaccountable tears, his nerves were on edge – although Curzon would have indignantly denied the possession of any nerves at all if anyone had been rash enough to impute them to him. The premature evening had already fallen as he climbed after Emily into the big Vauxhall. They slid through the darkened streets (the A.S.C. driver keeping his eye rigidly to the front) and Curzon still sat cold and formal in his corner, while Emily drooped from her stiff uprightness in hers. From the darkness that surrounded her there came at intervals something suspiciously like a sniff – unbelievable though it might be that a duke’s daughter, and one moreover of her Spartan upbringing, should ever sniff.

  Curzon was not given to self-contemplation. He would have seen nothing incongruous in the spectacle of the Major-General, who that morning had reduced an artillery brigade to a condition of gibbering terror, caressing his bride on their bridal journey. When he held aloof from her during that first hour was merely because he did not feel like doing otherwise. The events of the day had left him unfitted for love. Emily was like a stranger to him at present.

  Later on, as the headlights tore lanes through the darkness, and the car weaved its way precariously round the curves at Hindhead, he put his hand out and groped for hers. He touched it, and she leaped in panic. Her nerves were in as bad a state as his, and for all this hour she had been expecting and dreading this contact. She was consumed with misgivings regarding the unbelievable things that men do to women when they are married to them, and to which the woman has to submit – the half-knowledge she had gained of these matters during her cloistered existence made the future absolutely terrifying to her. It was five days since she had last had the comfort and stimulus of Curzon’s presence, and during those five days she had lapsed from her mood of reckless passion into one more consonant with an upbringing dating from the eighties. She was brooding darkly over the prospect of ‘that kind of thing’; and this new, wordless, reserved, cold, formal Curzon beside her was of no help to her. From the way she jumped at his touch one might have guessed that she feared lest he should begin at once.

  There was no fear of that, nor of the least resemblance to it. When Curzon felt the gloved hand snatched away from him he withdrew further into himself than ever. They sat stiffly silent, one in each corner, while the Vauxhall nosed its way through Petersfield, out into the main road beyond, and then swung aside into the by-roads which led to Narling Priory. The servants came out to welcome them – the grim housekeeper, and the prim elderly parlourmaid, and Curzon’s groom and soldier servant. The A.S.C. driver was left to unstrap the trunks from the grid at the back, while the housekeeper walked up the stairs to the bridal chamber with the bride, while Curzon trailed behind. They found themselves alone together at last in her bedroom. Emily looked round for comfort, and found none in the unpleasant furniture which the War Office had taken over at a thumping rental along with the house. She saw Curzon standing waiting, with the predatory nose and cruel moustache.

  ‘I – I want to lie down,’ she said wildly. ‘I – I’m tired.’

  The arrival of the parlourmaid and servant with the trunks eased the situation for a moment. As the servant withdrew the parlourmaid addressed herself with decision to the business of unpacking. Curzon was glad that in the circumstances he could be expected to say nothing beyond pure formalities.

  ‘I shall see you at dinner, then,’ he said, backing away with his spurs clinking.

  Dinner was an ordeal, too, with the elderly parlourmaid breathing discretion at every pore. They looked at each other across the little table and tried to make conversation, but it was not easy. Both of them would have been interested if they had told each other the stories of their lives, for they were still extraordinarily ignorant of each other’s past, but it hardly became a husband and wife to tell facts about themselves to the other. In the absence of that resource, and after the inevitable comments about the dreariness of the weather, conversation came to a standstill. Lady Emily looked with bewilderment at the spruce dinner-jacketed man with the red face whom she had married. She told herself that he did not look in the least like the man she had fallen in love with. And Curzon looked at Emily, a little drawn and haggard, and marvelled to himself at the contrariness of women, and felt ill at ease because on the other occasions when he had dined with a woman previous to sleeping with her the circumstances had not been in the least like these.

  As soon as dinner was over Emily withdrew to the drawing-room, leaving Curzon alone to his port and his brandy, and when Curzon came into the drawing-room she shrank down nervously in her chair and fluttered the weekly newspaper she had been pretending to read. Curzon sat on the edge of his chair and tugged at his moustache; the clock ticked away inexorably on the mantelpiece while he stared into the fire. Emily kept her eyes on the page before her although she could read no word of its print; she was making an effort now at this late hour to rally her self-control as became one of her blue blood and to go stoically through the ordeal before her without a sign of weakness, like a French aristocrat on the way to the guillotine. It was not easy, all the same.

  She put down her paper and got to her feet.

  ‘I think I shall go to bed now,’ she said; only the acutest ear could have caught the quaver in her voice.

  ‘Yes,’ said Curzon. He could not help drawling on occasions like the present of extreme nervous tension. ‘You’ve had a tiring day, m’dear.’

  By an effort of rigid self-control Emily kept her upper lip from trembling. Curzon’s face was blank and expressionless, like a block of wood, as though he were playing at poker, and when he looked at her he looked right through her – he could not help it; it was only a natural reaction to his shyness. He opened the door for her, and she cast one more glance at that wooden countenance before she fled up the stairs.

  Curzon went back beside the fire and drew deeply on a fresh cigar. He stared again into the fire. Somehow his thoughts were jumbled. He tried to think about the Division, that hotchpotch of jarring personalities which he had to straighten out, but he could not think of it for long. For some reason other mental pictures obtruded themselves. For the first time for years he found himself thinking about Manningtree-Field, his captain at Volkslaagte, lying in a mess of blood and brains at his feet. Then his thoughts leaped back a dozen years more, until he was a small boy coming home from preparatory school, being met at Victoria Station by his mother. He thought of Mackenzie with his pink face and sandy hair. He thought of Miss Cissie Barnes, the lady with whom he had spent many joyful evenings. Miss Barnes wore decorative garters whose clasps were miniature five-barred gates with ‘trespassers will be prosecuted’ engraved upon them. Curzon remembered vividly how they had looked encircling the black-stockinged leg with the luscious white thigh showing above the stocking. Curzon flung the cigar into the fire and strode twice up and down the room. Then he went out, up the stairs, to the upper landing. On the right was the door into his small bedroom and dressing-room. On the left was the door into Emily’s room – there was a connecting door between the two, but he did not consider that. He stood still for a moment before he knocked on the door on the left and entered abruptly.

  Emily stood by the fire. There were candles alight on the dressing-table, on the mantelpiece, beside the wardrobe, so that the room was brightly illuminated. Emily’s clothes, save for her evening frock, lay neatly on the chair where her maid had placed them; the long formidable corset was on the top, with the suspenders hanging down. Emily was wearing a nightdress of the kind considered by orthodox people in 1914 as the most frivolous possible (the kind of nightdress worn by suburban housewives thirty years later was at that time only worn by prostitutes) and she stood there by the fire with a cataract of lace falling over her breast and her long hair in a rope down her back.

  She saw him come in, his face a little flushed, the cruel mouth and the big nose much in evidence, and she saw him shut and lock the door.
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  ‘Bertie,’ she said, and she wanted to add: ‘be kind to me,’ but she could say no more than the one word, because pride on the one hand and passion on the other dried up in her throat. Curzon came slowly over to her, his face wearing the expression of stony calm which always characterized it at tense moments. He put out his hands to her, and she came towards him, fascinated.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Perhaps it was Emily’s stoic upbringing which made that marriage a success. Certainly she knew more misery in the opening few weeks of her married life than she had ever known before – the misery of loneliness, and the misery of doubt. But she had long been taught to bear her troubles uncomplaining, along with the doctrine, comforting in its fatalism, that the ways of mankind (as compared with those of womankind) are inscrutable. Thanks to her patience and powers of endurance they learned after a short interval to live together as happy as two people of their limited capacity for happiness could expect to be.

  Miss Cissie Barnes had much to answer for. The memory of joyous unrepressed evenings with her influenced Curzon profoundly. He could not dream of treating his wife in the same way as he had once treated Cissie Barnes, with the unfortunate result that he made love to Emily with a stern aloofness that could raise no response in her virginal body. As Emily never expected anything else, however, not so much harm was done as might have been the case. Emily went through that part of the business as her necessary duty, like opening Girl Guides’ displays or going to church. It was her duty, something it was incumbent upon her to do, so she did it with the best grace possible short of taking an active interest in it – women were not supposed to do that.