It was there that, for the first time, the thought went through Valentine Wannop’s mind, like a mad inspiration: this woman must at one time have been in love with Tietjens. It was possible, men being what they were, that she had even once been Tietjens’ mistress. For it was impossible otherwise to account for this spite, which to Valentine seemed almost meaningless. She had, on the other hand, no impulse to defend Tietjens against accusations that could not have any possible grounds.
Mrs. Duchemin was going on with her kind loftiness:
‘Of course a fellow like that – in that condition! – could not understand matters of high policy. It is imperative that these fellows should not have the higher command. It would pander to their insane spirit of militarism. They must be hindered. I’m talking, of course, between ourselves, but my husband says that that is the conviction in the very highest circles. To let them have their way, even if it led to earlier success, would be to establish a precedent – so my husband says! – compared with which the loss of a few lives… .’
Valentine sprang up, her face distorted.
‘For the sake of Christ,’ she cried out, ‘as you believe that Christ died for you, try to understand that millions of men’s lives are at stake… .’
Mrs. Duchemin smiled.
‘My poor child,’ she said, ‘if you moved in the higher circles you would look at these things with more aloofness… .’
Valentine leant on the back of a high chair for support.
‘You don’t move in the higher circles,’ she said. ‘For Heaven’s sake – for your own – remember that you are a woman, not for ever and for always a snob. You were a good woman once. You stuck to your husband for quite a long time… .’
Mrs. Duchemin, in her chair, had thrown herself back.
‘My good girl,’ she said, ‘have you gone mad?’
Valentine said:
‘Yes, very nearly. I’ve got a brother at sea; I’ve had a man I loved out there for an infinite time. You can understand that, I suppose, even if you can’t understand how one can go mad merely at the thoughts of suffering at all… . And I know, Edith Ethel, that you are afraid of my opinion of you, or you wouldn’t have put up all the subterfuges and concealments of all these years… .’
Mrs. Duchemin said quickly:
‘Oh, my good girl… . If you’ve got personal interests at stake you can’t be expected to take abstract views of the higher matters. We had better change the subject.’
Valentine said:
‘Yes, do. Get on with your excuses for not asking me and mother to your knighthood party.’
Mrs. Duchemin, too, rose at that. She felt at her amber beads with long fingers that turned very slightly at the tips. She had behind her all her mirrors, the drops of her lustres, shining points of gilt and of the polish of dark woods. Valentine thought that she had never seen anyone so absolutely impersonate kindness, tenderness, and dignity. She said:
‘My dear, I was going to suggest that it was the sort of party to which you might not care to come… . The people will be stiff and formal and you probably haven’t got a frock.’
Valentine said:
‘Oh, I’ve got a frock all right. But there’s a Jacob’s ladder in my party stockings and that’s the sort of ladder you can’t kick down.’ She couldn’t help saying that.
Mrs. Duchemin stood motionless and very slowly redness mounted into her face. It was most curious to see against that scarlet background the vivid white of the eyes and the dark, straight eyebrows that nearly met. And, slowly again her face went perfectly white; then her dark blue eyes became marked. She seemed to wipe her long, white hands one in the other, inserting her right hand into her left and drawing it out again.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said in a dead voice. ‘We had hoped that, if that man went to France – or if other things happened – we might have continued on the old friendly footing. But you yourself must see that, with our official position, we can’t be expected to connive …’
Valentine said:
‘I don’t understand!’
‘Perhaps you’d rather I didn’t go on!’ Mrs. Duchemin retorted. ‘I’d much rather not go on.’
‘You’d probably better,’ Valentine answered.
‘We had meant,’ the elder woman said, ‘to have a quiet little dinner – we two and you, before the party – for auld lang syne. But that fellow has forced himself in, and you see for yourself that we can’t have you as well.’
Valentine said:
‘I don’t see why not. I always like to see Mr. Tietjens!’
Mrs. Duchemin looked hard at her.
‘I don’t see the use,’ she said, ‘of your keeping on that mask. It is surely bad enough that your mother should go about with that man and that terrible scenes like that of the other Friday should occur. Mrs. Tietjens was heroic; nothing less than heroic. But you have no right to subject us, your friends, to such ordeals.’
Valentine said:
‘You mean … Mrs. Christopher Tietjens …’
Mrs. Duchemin went on:
‘My husband insists that I should ask you. But I will not. I simply will not. I invented for you the excuse of the frock. Of course we could have given you a frock if that man is so mean or so penniless as not to keep you decent. But I repeat, with our official position we cannot – we cannot; it would be madness! – connive at this intrigue. And all the more as the wife appears likely to be friendly with us. She has been once: she may well come again.’ She paused and went on solemnly: ‘And I warn you, if the split comes – as it must, for what woman could stand it! – it is Mrs. Tietjens we shall support. She will always find a home here.’
An extraordinary picture of Sylvia Tietjens standing beside Edith Ethel and dwarfing her as a giraffe dwarfs an emu, came into Valentine’s head. She said:
‘Ethel! Have I gone mad? Or is it you? Upon my word I can’t understand… .’
Mrs. Duchemin exclaimed:
‘For God’s sake hold your tongue, you shameless thing! You’ve had a child by the man, haven’t you?’
Valentine saw suddenly the tall silver candlesticks, the dark polished panels of the rectory and Edith Ethel’s mad face and mad hair whirling before them.
She said:
‘No! I certainly haven’t. Can you get that into your head? I certainly haven’t.’ She made a further effort over immense fatigue. ‘I assure you – I beg you to believe if it will give you any ease – that Mr. Tietjens has never addressed a word of love to me in his life. Nor have I to him. We have hardly talked to each other in all the time we have known each other.’
Mrs. Duchemin said in a harsh voice:
‘Seven people in the last five weeks have told me you have had a child by that brute beast: he’s ruined because he has to keep you and your mother and the child. You won’t deny that he has a child somewhere hidden away? …’
Valentine exclaimed suddenly:
‘Oh, Ethel, you mustn’t … you mustn’t be jealous of me! If you only knew you wouldn’t be jealous of me… . I suppose the child you were going to have was by Christopher? Men are like that… . But not of me! You need never, never. I’ve been the best friend you can ever have had… .’
Mrs. Duchemin exclaimed harshly, as if she were being strangled:
‘A sort of blackmail! I knew it would come to that! It always does with your sort. Then do your damnedest, you harlot. You never set foot in this house again! Go you and rot… .’ Her face suddenly expressed extreme fear and with great swiftness she ran up the room. Immediately afterwards she was tenderly bending over a great bowl of roses beneath the lustre. The voice of Vincent Macmaster from the door had said:
‘Come in, old man. Of course I’ve got ten minutes. The book’s in here somewhere… .’
Macmaster was beside her, rubbing his hands, bending with his curious, rather abject manner, and surveying her agonisedly with his eyeglass, which enormously magnified his lashes, his red lower lid and the veins on his cornea.
&
nbsp; ‘Valentine!’ he said, ‘my dear Valentine… . You’ve heard? We’ve decided to make it public… . Guggums will have invited you to our little feast. And there will be a surprise, I believe… .’
Edith Ethel looked, as she bent, lamentably and sharply, over her shoulder at Valentine.
‘Yes,’ she said bravely, aiming her voice at Edith Ethel, ‘Ethel has invited me. I’ll try to come… .’
‘Oh, but you must,’ Macmaster said, ‘just you and Christopher, who’ve been so kind to us. For old times’ sake. You could not …’
Christopher Tietjens was ballooning slowly from the door, his hand tentatively held out to her. As they practically never shook hands at home it was easy to avoid his hand. She said to herself: ‘Oh! How is it possible! How could he have …’ And the terrible situation poured itself over her mind: the miserable little husband, the desperately nonchalant lover – and Edith Ethel mad with jealousy! A doomed household. She hoped Edith Ethel had seen her refuse her hand to Christopher.
But Edith Ethel, bent over her rose bowl, was burying her beautiful face in flower after flower. She was accustomed to do this for many minutes on end: she thought that, so, she resembled a picture by the subject of her husband’s first little monograph. And so, Valentine thought, she did. She was trying to tell Macmaster that Friday evenings were difficult times for her to get away. But her thoat ached too much. That, she knew, was her last sight of Edith Ethel, whom she had loved very much. That also, she hoped, would be her last sight of Christopher Tietjens – whom also she had loved very much… . He was browsing along a bookshelf, very big and very clumsy.
Macmaster pursued her into the stony hall with clamorous repetitions of his invitation. She couldn’t speak. At the great iron-lined door he held her hand for an eternity, gazing lamentably, his face close up against hers. He exclaimed in accents of great fear:
‘Has Guggums? … She hasn’t …’ His face, which when you saw it so closely was a little blotched, distorted itself with anxiety: he glanced aside with panic at the drawing-room door.
Valentine burst a voice through her agonised throat.
‘Ethel,’ she said, ‘has told me she’s to be Lady Macmaster. I’m so glad. I’m so truly glad for you. You’ve got what you wanted, haven’t you?’
His relief let him get out distractedly, yet as if he were too tired to be any more agitated:
‘Yes! yes! … It’s, of course, a secret… . I don’t want him told till Friday next … so as to be a sort of bonne bouche … He’s practically certain to go out again on Saturday… . They’re sending out a great batch of them … for the big push… .’ At that she tried to draw her hand from his: she missed what he was saying. It was something to the effect that he would give it all for a happy little party. She caught the rather astonishing words: ‘Wie im alten schoenen Zeit.’ She couldn’t tell whether it was his or her eyes that were full of tears. She said:
‘I believe … I believe you’re a kind man!’
In the great stone hall, hung with long Japanese paintings on silk, the electric light suddenly jumped; it was at best a sad, brown place.
He exclaimed:
‘I, too, beg you to believe that I will never abandon …’ He glanced again at the inner door and added: ‘You both … I will never abandon … you both!’ he repeated.
He let go her hand: she was on the stone stairs in the damp air. The great door closed irresistibly behind her, sending a whisper of air downwards.
V
MARK TIETJENS’ ANNOUNCEMENT that his father had after all carried out his long-standing promise to provide for Mrs. Wannop in such a way as to allow her to write for the rest of her life only the more lasting kind of work, delivered Valentine Wannop of all her problems except one. That one loomed, naturally and immediately, immensely large.
She had passed a queer, unnatural week, the feeling dominating its numbness having been, oddly, that she would have nothing to do on Friday! This feeling recurred to her whilst she was casting her eyes over a hundred girls all in their cloth jumpers and men’s black ties, aligned upon asphalt; whilst she was jumping on trams; whilst she was purchasing the tinned or dried fish that formed the staple diet of herself and her mother; whilst she was washing-up the dinner-things; upbraiding the house agent for the state of the bath, or bending closely over the large but merciless handwriting of the novel of her mother’s that she was typing. It came, half as a joy, half mournfully across her familiar businesses; she felt as a man might feel who, luxuriating in the anticipation of leisure, knew that it was obtained by being compulsorily retired from some laborious but engrossing job. There would be nothing to do on Fridays!
It was, too, as if a novel had been snatched out of her hand so that she would never know the end. Of the fairytale she knew the end: the fortunate and adventurous tailor had married his beautiful and be-princessed goose-girl, and was well on the way to burial in Westminster Abbey – or at any rate to a memorial service, the squire being actually buried amongst his faithful villagers. But she would never know whether they, in the end, got together all the blue Dutch tiles they wanted to line their bathroom… . She would never know. Yet witnessing similar ambitions had made up a great deal of her life.
And, she said to herself, there was another tale ended. On the surface the story of her love for Tietjens had been static enough. It had begun in nothing and in nothing it had ended. But, deep down in her being – ah! it had progressed enough. Through the agency of two women! Before the scene with Mrs. Duchemin there could, she thought, have been few young women less preoccupied than she with the sexual substrata, either of passion or of life. Her months as a domestic servant had accounted for that, sex, as she had seen it from a back kitchen, having been a repulsive affair, whilst the knowledge of its manifestations that she had thus attained had robbed it of the mystery which caused most of the young women whom she knew to brood upon these subjects.
Her convictions as to the moral incidence of sex were, she knew, quite opportunist. Brought up amongst rather ‘advanced’ young people, had she been publicly challenged to pronounce her views she would probably, out of loyalty to her comrades, have declared that neither morality nor any ethical aspects were concerned in the matter. Like most of her young friends, influenced by the advanced teachers and tendential novelists of the day, she would have stated herself to advocate an, of course, enlightened promiscuity. That, before the revelations of Mrs. Duchemin! Actually she had thought very little about the matter.
Nevertheless, even before that date, had her deeper feelings been questioned she would have reacted with the idea that sexual incontinence was extremely ugly and chastity to be prized in the egg-and-spoon race that life was. She had been brought up by her father – who, perhaps, was wiser than appeared on the surface – to admire athleticism, and she was aware that proficiency of the body calls for chastity, sobriety, cleanliness, and the various qualities that group themselves under the heading of abnegation. She couldn’t have lived amongst the Ealing servant-class – the eldest son of the house in which she had been employed had been the defendant in a peculiarly scabrous breach of promise case, and the comments of the drunken cook on this and similar affairs had run the whole gamut from the sentimentally reticent to the extreme of coarseness according to the state of her alcoholic barometer – she couldn’t then have lived among the Ealing servant-class and come to any other subliminal conclusion. So that, dividing the world into bright beings on the one hand and, on the other, into the mere stuff to fill graveyards whose actions during life couldn’t matter, she had considered that the bright beings must be people whose public advocating of enlightened promiscuity went along with an absolute continence. She was aware that enlightened beings occasionally fell away from these standards in order to become portentous Egerias; but the Mary Wollstonecrafts, the Mrs. Taylors, and the George Eliots of the last century she had regarded humorously as rather priggish nuisances. Indeed, being very healthy and very hard-worked, she had been in the habit of re
garding the whole matter, if not humorously, then at least good-humouredly, as a nuisance.
But being brought right up against the sexual necessities of a first-class Egeria had been for her a horrible affair. For Mrs. Duchemin had revealed the fact that her circumspect, continent, and suavely æsthetic personality was doubled by another at least as coarse as, and infinitely more incisive in expression than, that of the drunken cook. The language that she had used about her lover – calling him always ‘that oaf’ or ‘that beast’! – had seemed literally to pain the girl internally, as if it had caused so many fallings away of internal supports at each two or three words. She had hardly been able to walk home through the darkness from the rectory.
And she had never heard what had become of Mrs. Duchemin’s baby. Next day Mrs. Duchemin had been as suave, as circumspect, and as collected as ever. Never a word more had passed between them on the subject. This left in Valentine Wannop’s mind a dark patch – as it were of murder – at which she must never look. And across the darkened world of her sexual tumult there flitted continually the quick suspicion that Tietjens might have been the lover of her friend. It was a matter of the simplest analogy. Mrs. Duchemin had appeared a bright being: so had Tietjens. But Mrs. Duchemin was a foul whore… . How much more then must Tietjens, who was a man, with the larger sexual necessities of the male … Her mind always refused to complete the thought.
Its suggestion wasn’t to be combated by the idea of Vincent Macmaster himself; he was, she felt, the sort of man that it was almost a necessity for either mistress or comrade to betray. He seemed to ask for it. Besides, she once put it to herself, how could any woman, given the choice and the opportunity – and God knows there was opportunity enough – choose that shadowy, dried leaf, if there were the splendid masculinity of Tietjens in whose arms to lie. She so regarded these two men. And that shadowy conviction was at once fortified and appeased when, a little later, Mrs. Duchemin herself began to apply to Tietjens the epithets of ‘oaf’ and ‘beast’ – the very ones that she had used to designate the father of her putative child!