364. Some Do Not... - Part Two

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Part Two

P166 [Sylvia] She looked at Tietjens now with a sort of gloating curiosity. How was it possible that the most honorable man she knew should be so overwhelmed by foul and baseless rumors? It made you suspect that honor had, in itself, a quality of the evil eye. . . . 

So this brings up another aspect of this story that I intend to keep an eye on, the Stoic perspective. Christopher is for all intents and purposes the Stoic Job. Entirely honorable and yet everyone suspects him of every kind of dishonor. And he responds in good Stoic fashion by simply keeping on keeping on.

P173 [Sylvia to Christopher] “...But, oh, Christopher Tietjens, have you ever considered how foully you’ve used me!”

Tietjens looked at her attentively, as if with magpie anguish. [??]

“If,” Sylvia went on with her denunciation, “you had once in our lives said to me: ‘You whore! You bitch! You killed my mother. May you rot in hell for it. . . .’ If you’d only once said something like it . . . about the child! About Perowne! . . . you might have done something to bring us together. . . .”

Tietjens said:
“That’s, of course, true!”

“I know,” Sylvia said, “you can’t help it. . . . But when, in your famous country family pride -- though a youngest son! -- you say to yourself: And I daresay if . . . Of, Christ! . . . you’re shot in the trenches you’ll say it . . . oh, between the saddle and the ground! That you never did a dishonourable action. . . . And, mind you, I believe that no other man save one [Christ, presumably] ever had more right to say it than you. . . .”

Tietjens said:
“You believe that!”

P173 “As I hope to stand before my Redeemer,” Sylvia said, “I believe it. . . . But, in the name of the Almighty, how could any woman live beside you . . . and be for ever forgiven? Or no: not forgiven; ignored! . . . Well, be proud when you die because of your honor. But, God, you be humble about . . . your errors in judgement. You know what it is to ride a horse miles with too tight a curb-chain and it’s tongue cut almost in half. . . . You remember the groom your father had who had the trick of turning the hunters out like that. . . . And you horse-whipped him, and you’ve told me you’ve almost cried ever so often afterwards for thinking of that mare’s mouth. . . Well! Think of this mare’s mouth sometimes! You’ve ridden me like that for seven years. . . .”
...

“Don’t you know, Christopher Tietjens, that there is only one man from whom a woman could take ‘Neither I condemn thee’ and not hate him more than she hates the fiend! . . .”

So this is where I got the horse idea. I should have known if was from Ford.

Next Sylvia is talking about how Christopher should “sleep with the Wannop girl to-night; you’re going out to be killed to-morrow.”

“...I’ve been a wicked woman. I have ruined you. I am not going to listen to you.”

He said:
P174 “I daresay you have ruined me. That’s nothing to me. I am completely indifferent.”
...

“I don’t care. I can’t help it. Those are -- those should be -- the conditions of life amongst decent people...”
...

Now we come to the bit about the Groby curse and the heir of Groby which I must include.

P175 Sylvia said:
“You mean that I may bring the child up as a Catholic.”

Tietjens said:
“A Roman Catholic. . . . You’ll teach him, please, to use that term before myself if I ever see him again. . . .”

Sylvia said:
“Oh, I thank God that he has softened your heart. This will take the curse off this house.”

Tietjens shook his head:
“I think not,” he said, “off  you, perhaps. Off Groby very likely. It was, perhaps, time that there should be a Papist owner of Groby again...”
...

P176 “...I fought your influence because it was Papist, while I was a whole man. But I’m not a whole man any more, and the evil eye that is on me might transfer itself to him.”

He stopped and said:
“For I must to the greenwood go. Alone a banished man. . . . But have him well protected against the evil eye. . . .”
...

178 [Sylvia] “...Your father died of a broken heart,” she said, “because your brother’s best friend, Ruggles, told him you were a squit who lived on women’s money and had got the daughter of his oldest friend with child. . . .”

Tietjens said:
“Oh! Ah! Yes! . . . I suspected that. I knew it, really. I suppose the poor dear knows better now. Or perhaps he doesn’t. . . . It doesn’t matter.”

II

This is one of the sections that are slowly built up to where everything finally happens. Strangely though, there’s nothing I feel I need to quote.

But I did have an irresistible thought while reading this again. Keep in mind that I now have both the book and the Tom Stoppard miniseries starring Benedict Cumberbatch in my head as I read. At the climax of this scene after Christopher has been ruined by Brownie, a banker in love with Sylvia, he goes from being overdrawn for a matter of hours the previous day to having Sylvia being thwarted at depositing a thousand pounds into his account, his brother Mark offering him a thousand pounds a year, and finally Lord Port Scatho, Brownie’s uncle and the head of the bank, saying Christopher can draw on his personal account. 

So it seems to me that they could have done one take of this scene in which Cumberbatch reacts to all this by yelling “I’m rich!” and running out of the room. Then one take of the subsequent scene with Mark and Valentine could be shot with Cumberbatch holding bags of candy and with chocolate smeared on his face. If nothing else it would be the hit of the blooper reel.