In electing to be peculiarly English in habits and in as much of his temperament as he could control – for, though no man can choose the land of his birth or his ancestry, he can, if he have industry and determination, so watch over himself as materially to modify his automatic habits – Tietjens had quite advisedly and of set purpose adopted a habit of behaviour that he considered to be the best in the world for the normal life. If every day and all day long you chatter at high pitch and with the logic and lucidity of the Frenchman; if you shout in self-assertion, with your hat on your stomach, bowing from a stiff spine and by implication threaten all day long to shoot your interlocutor, like the Prussian; if you are as lachrymally emotional as the Italian, or as drily and epigrammaticaly imbecile over unessentials as the American, you will have a noisy, troublesome, and thoughtless society without any of the surface calm that should distinguish the atmosphere of men when they are together. You will never have deep arm-chairs in which to sit for hours in clubs thinking of nothing at all – or of the off-theory in bowling. On the other hand, in the face of death – except at sea, by fire, railway accident or accidental drowning in rivers; in the face of madness, passion, dishonour or – and particularly – prolonged mental strain, you will have all the disadvantage of the beginner at any game and may come off very badly indeed. Fortunately death, love, public dishonour and the like are rare occurrences in the life of the average man, so that the great advantage would seem to have lain with English society; at any rate before the later months of the year 1914. Death for man came but once: the danger of death so seldom as to be practically negligible; love of a distracting kind was a disease merely of the weak; public dishonour for persons of position, so great was the hushing-up power of the ruling class, and the power of absorption of the remoter Colonies, was practically unknown.
Tietjens found himself now faced by all these things, coming upon him cumulatively and rather suddenly, and he had before him an interview that might cover them all and with a man whom he much respected and very much desired not to hurt. He had to face these, moreover, with a brain two-thirds of which felt numb. It was exactly like that.
It was not so much that he couldn’t use what brain he had as trenchantly as ever: it was that there were whole regions of fact upon which he could no longer call in support of his argument. His knowledge of history was still practically negligible: he knew nothing whatever of the humaner letters and, what was far worse, nothing at all of the higher and more sensuous phases of mathematics. And the coming back of these things was much slower than he had confessed to Sylvia. It was with these disadvantages that he had to face Lord Port Scatho.
Lord Port Scatho was the first man of whom Sylvia Tietjens had thought when she had been considering of men who were absolutely honourable, entirely benevolent … and rather lacking in constructive intelligence. He had inherited the management of one of the most respected of the great London banks, so that his commercial and social influences were very extended; he was extremely interested in promoting Low Church interests, the reform of the divorce laws and sports for the people, and he had a great affection for Sylvia Tietjens. He was forty-five, beginning to put on weight, but by no means obese; he had a large, quite round head, very high-coloured cheeks that shone as if with frequent ablutions, an uncropped, dark moustache, dark, very cropped, smooth hair, brown eyes, a very new grey tweed suit, a very new grey Trilby hat, a black tie in a gold ring and very new patent leather boots that had white calf tops. He had a wife almost the spit of himself in face, figure, probity, kindliness, and interests, except that for his interest in sports for the people she substituted that for maternity hospitals. His heir was his nephew, Mr. Brownlie, known as Brownie, who would also be physically the exact spit of his uncle, except that, not having put on flesh, he appeared to be taller and that his moustache and hair were both a little longer and more fair. This gentleman entertained for Sylvia Tietjens a gloomy and deep passion that he considered to be perfectly honourable because he desired to marry her after she had divorced her husband. Tietjens he desired to ruin because he wished to marry Mrs. Tietjens and partly because he considered Tietjens to be an undesirable person of no great means. Of this passion Lord Port Scatho was ignorant.
He now came into the Tietjenses’ dining-room, behind the servant, holding an open letter; he walked rather stiffly because he was very much worried. He observed that Sylvia had been crying and was still wiping her eyes. He looked round the room to see if he could see in it anything to account for Sylvia’s crying. Tietjens was still sitting at the head of the lunch-table. Sylvia was rising from a chair beside the fireplace.
Lord Port Scatho said:
‘I want to see you, Tietjens, for a minute on business.’
Tietjens said:
‘I can give you ten minutes… .’
Lord Port Scatho said:
‘Mrs. Tietjens perhaps …’
He waved the open letter towards Mrs. Tietjens. Tietjens said:
‘No! Mrs. Tietjens will remain.’ He desired to say something more friendly. He said: ‘Sit down.’
Lord Port Scatho said:
‘I shan’t be stopping a minute. But really …’ and he moved the letter, but not with so wide a gesture, towards Sylvia.
‘I have no secrets from Mrs. Tietjens,’ Tietjens said. ‘Absolutely none …’
Lord Port Scatho said:
‘No … No, of course not … But …’
Tietjens said:
‘Similarly, Mrs. Tietjens has no secrets from me. Again absolutely none.’
Sylvia said:
‘I don’t, of course, tell Tietjens about my maid’s love affairs or what the fish costs every day.’
Tietjens said:
‘You’d better sit down.’ He added on an impulse of kindness: ‘As a matter of fact I was just clearing up things for Sylvia to take over … this command.’ It was part of the disagreeableness of his mental disadvantages that upon occasion he could not think of other than military phrases. He felt intense annoyance. Lord Port Scatho affected him with some of the slight nausea that in those days you felt at contact with the civilian who knew none of your thoughts, phrases, or preoccupations. He added, nevertheless equably:
‘One has to clear up. I’m going out.’
Lord Port Scatho said hastily:
‘Yes; yes. I won’t keep you. One has so many engagements in spite of the war… .’ His eyes wandered in bewilderment. Tietjens could see them at last fixing themselves on the oil stains that Sylvia’s salad dressing had left on his collar and green tabs. He said to himself that he must remember to change his tunic before he went to the War Office. He must not forget. Lord Port Scatho’s bewilderment at these oil stains was such that he had lost himself in the desire to account for them… . You could see the slow thoughts moving inside his square, polished brown forehead. Tietjens wanted very much to help him. He wanted to say: ‘It’s about Sylvia’s letter that you’ve got in your hand, isn’t it?’ But Lord Port Scatho had entered the room with the stiffness, with the odd, high-collared sort of gait that on formal and unpleasant occasions Englishmen use when they approach each other; braced up, a little like strange dogs meeting in the street. In view of that, Tietjens couldn’t say ‘Sylvia’… . But it would add to the formality and unpleasantness if he said again ‘Mrs. Tietjens!’ That wouldn’t help Port Scatho… .
Sylvia said suddenly:
‘You don’t understand, apparently. My husband is going out to the front line. To-morrow morning. It’s for the second time.’
Lord Port Scatho sat down suddenly on a chair beside the table. With his fresh face and brown eyes suddenly anguished he exclaimed:
‘But, my dear fellow! You! Good God!’ and then to Sylvia: ‘I beg your pardon!’ To clear his mind he said again to Tietjens: ‘You! Going out to-morrow!’ And, when the idea was really there, his face suddenly cleared. He looked with a swift, averted glance at Sylvia’s face and then for a fixed moment at Tietjens’ oil-stained tunic. Tietje
ns could see him explaining to himself with immense enlightenment that that explained both Sylvia’s tears and the oil on the tunic. For Port Scatho might well imagine that officers went to the conflict in their oldest clothes… .
But, if his puzzled brain cleared, his distressed mind became suddenly distressed doubly. He had to add to the distress he had felt on entering the room and finding himself in the midst of what he took to be a highly emotional family parting. And Tietjens knew that during the whole war Port Scatho had never witnessed a family parting at all. Those that were not inevitable he would avoid like the plague, and his own nephew and all his wife’s nephews were in the bank. That was quite proper for, if the ennobled family of Brownlie were not of the Ruling Class – who had to go! – they were of the Administrative Class, who were privileged to stay. So he had seen no partings.
Of his embarrassed hatred of them he gave immediate evidence. For he first began several sentences of praise of Tietjens’ heroism which he was unable to finish and then getting quickly out of his chair exclaimed:
‘In the circumstances then … the little matter I came about … I couldn’t of course think …’
Tietjens said:
‘No; don’t go. The matter you came about – I know all about it of course – had better be settled.’
Port Scatho sat down again; his jaw fell slowly; under his bronzed complexion his skin became a shade paler. He said at last:
‘You know what I came about? But then …’
His ingenuous and kindly mind could be seen to be working with reluctance; his athletic figure drooped. He pushed the letter that he still held along the table-cloth towards Tietjens. He said, in the voice of one awaiting a reprieve:
‘But you can’t be … aware … Not of this letter… .’
Tietjens left the letter on the cloth; from there he could read the large handwriting on the blue-grey paper:
‘Mrs. Christopher Tietjens presents her compliments to Lord Port Scatho and the Honourable Court of Benchers of the Inn… .’ He wondered where Sylvia had got hold of that phraseology; he imagined it to be fantastically wrong. He said:
‘I have already told you that I know about this letter, as I have already told you that I know – and I will add that I approve! – of all Mrs. Tietjens’ actions… .’ With his hard blue eyes he looked brow-beatingly into Port Scatho’s soft brown orbs, knowing that he was sending the message: ‘Think what you please and be damned to you!’
The gentle brown things remained on his face; then they filled with an expression of deep pain. Port Scatho cried:
‘But good God! Then …’
He looked at Tietjens again. His mind, which took refuge from life in the affairs of the Low Church, of Divorce Law Reform, and of Sports for the People, became a sea of pain at the contemplation of strong situations. His eye said:
‘For heaven’s sake do not tell me that Mrs. Duchemin, the mistress of your dearest friend, is the mistress of yourself, and that you take this means of wreaking a vulgar spite on them.’
Tietjens, leaning heavily forward, made his eyes as enigmatic as he could; he said very slowly and very clearly:
‘Mrs. Tietjens is, of course, not aware of all the circumstances.’
Port Scatho threw himself back in his chair.
‘I don’t understand!’ he said. ‘I do not understand. How am I to act? You do not wish me to act on this letter? You can’t!’
Tietjens, who found himself, said:
‘You had better talk to Mrs. Tietjens about that. I will say something myself later. In the meantime let me say that Mrs. Tietjens would seem to me to be quite within her rights. A lady, heavily veiled, comes here every Friday and remains until four of the Saturday morning… . If you are prepared to palliate the proceeding you had better do so to Mrs. Tietjens… .’
Port Scatho turned agitatedly on Sylvia.
‘I can’t, of course, palliate,’ he said. ‘God forbid… . But, my dear Sylvia … my dear Mrs. Tietjens… . In the case of two people so much esteemed! … We have, of course, argued the matter of principle. It is a part of a subject I have very much at heart: the granting of divorce … civil divorce, at least … in cases in which one of the parties to the marriage is in a lunatic asylum. I have sent you the pamphlets of E.S.P. Haynes that we publish. I know that as a Roman Catholic you hold strong views… . I do not, I assure you, stand for latitude… .’ He became then simply eloquent: he really had the matter at heart, one of his sisters having been for many years married to a lunatic. He expatiated on the agonies of this situation all the more eloquently in that it was the only form of human distress which he had personally witnessed.
Sylvia took a long look at Tietjens: he imagined for counsel. He looked at her steadily for a moment, then at Port Scatho, who was earnestly turned to her, then back at her. He was trying to say:
‘Listen to Port Scatho for a minute. I need time to think of my course of action!’
He needed, for the first time in his life, time to think of his course of action.
He had been thinking with his under mind ever since Sylvia had told him that she had written her letter to the benchers denouncing Macmaster and his woman; ever since Sylvia had reminded him that Mrs. Duchemin in the Edinburgh to London express of the day before the war had been in his arms, he had seen, with extraordinary clearness a great many north-country scenes though he could not affix names to all the places. The forgetfulness of the names was abnormal: he ought to know the names of places from Berwick down to the vale of York – but that he should have forgotten the incidents was normal enough. They had been of little importance: he preferred not to remember the phases of his friend’s love affair; moreover, the events that happened immediately afterwards had been of a nature to make one forget quite normally what had just preceded them. That Mrs. Duchemin should be sobbing on his shoulder in a locked corridor carriage hadn’t struck him as in the least important: she was the mistress of his dearest friend; she had had a very trying time for a week or so, ending in a violent, nervous quarrel with her agitated lover. She was, of course, crying off the effects of the quarrel which had been all the more shaking in that Mrs. Duchemin, like himself, had always been almost too self-contained. As a matter of fact he did not himself like Mrs. Duchemin, and he was pretty certain that she herself more than a little disliked him; so that nothing but their common feeling for Macmaster had brought them together. General Campion, however, was not to know that… . He had looked into the carriage in the way one does in a corridor just after the train had left… . He couldn’t remember the name… . Doncaster … No! … Darlington; it wasn’t that. At Darlington there was a model of the Rocket … or perhaps it isn’t the Rocket. An immense clumsy leviathan of a locomotive by … by … The great gloomy stations of the north-going trains … Durham … No! Alnwick… . No! … Wooler … By God! Wooler! The junction for Bamborough… .
It had been in one of the castles at Bamborough that he and Sylvia had been staying with the Sandbachs. Then … a name had come into his mind spontaneously! … Two names! … It was, perhaps, the turn of the tide! For the first time … To be marked with a red stone … after this: some names, sometimes, on the tip of the tongue, might come over! He had, however, to get on… .
The Sandbachs, then, and he and Sylvia … others too … had been in Bamborough since mid-July: Eton and Harrow at Lord’s, waiting for the real house parties that would come with the 12th… . He repeated these names and dates to himself for the personal satisfaction of knowing that, amongst the repairs effected in his mind, these two remained: Eton and Harrow, the end of the London season: 12th of August, grouse shooting begins… . It was pitiful… .
When General Campion had come up to rejoin his sister he, Tietjens, had stopped only two days. The coolness between the two of them remained; it was the first time they had met, except in Court, after the accident… . For Mrs. Wannop, with grim determination, had sued the General for the loss of her horse. It had lived all right – but it was on
ly fit to draw a lawn-mower for cricket pitches… . Mrs. Wannop, then, had gone bald-headed for the General, partly because she wanted the money, partly because she wanted a public reason for breaking with the Sandbachs. The General had been equally obstinate and had undoubtedly perjured himself in Court: not the best, not the most honourable, the most benevolent man in the world would not turn oppressor of the widow and orphan when his efficiency as a chauffeur was impugned or the fact brought to light that at a very dangerous turning he hadn’t sounded his horn. Tietjens had sworn that he hadn’t, the General that he had. There could not be any question of doubt, for the horn was a beastly thing that made a prolonged noise like that of a terrified peacock… . So Tietjens had not, till the end of that July, met the General again. It had been quite a proper thing for gentlemen to quarrel over and was quite convenient, though it had cost the General fifty pounds for the horse and, of course, a good bit over for costs. Lady Claudine had refused to interfere in the matter; she was privately of opinion that the General hadn’t sounded his horn, but the General was both a passionately devoted and explosive brother. She had remained closely intimate with Sylvia, mildly cordial with Tietjens and had continued to ask the Wannops to such of her garden parties as the General did not attend. She was also very friendly with Mrs. Duchemin.
Tietjens and the General had met with the restrained cordiality of English gentlemen who had some years before accused each other of perjury in a motor accident. On the second morning a violent quarrel had broken out between them on the subject of whether the General had or hadn’t sounded his horn. The General had ended up by shouting … really shouting:
‘By God! If I ever get you under my command… .’
Tietjens remembered that he had quoted and given the number of a succinct paragraph in King’s Regs. dealing with the fate of general or higher field officers who gave their subordinates bad confidential reports because of private quarrels. The General had exploded into noises that ended in laughter.