‘Only,’ the priest said, ‘I wouldn’t tell her because the thought’s best not put in her head… . But her hell on earth will come when her husband goes running, blind, head down, mad after another woman.’
Mrs. Satterthwaite looked at nothing; then she nodded.
‘Yes,’ she said; ‘I hadn’t thought of it… . But will he? He is a very sound fellow, isn’t he?’
‘What’s to stop it?’ the priest asked. ‘What in the world but the grace of our blessed Lord, which he hasn’t got and doesn’t ask for? And then … he’s a young man, full-blooded, and they won’t be living … maritalement. Not if I know him. And then… . Then she’ll tear the house down. The world will echo with her wrongs.’
‘Do you mean to say,’ Mrs. Satterthwaite said, ‘that Sylvia would do anything vulgar?’
‘Doesn’t every woman who’s had a man to torture for years when she loses him?’ the priest asked. ‘The more she’s made an occupation of torturing him the less right she thinks she has to lose him.’
Mrs. Satterthwaite looked gloomily into the dusk.
‘That poor devil …’ she said. ‘Will he get any peace anywhere? … What’s the matter, Father?’
The Father said:
‘I’ve just remembered she gave me tea and cream and I drank it. Now I can’t take mass for Father Reinhardt. I’ll have to go and knock up his curate, who lives away in the forest.’
At the door, holding the candle, he said:
‘I’d have you not get up to-day nor yet to-morrow, if ye can stand it. Have a headache and let Sylvia nurse you… . You’ll have to tell how she nursed you when you get back to London. And I’d rather ye didn’t lie more out and out than ye need, if it’s to please me… . Besides, if ye watch Sylvia nursing you, you might hit on a characteristic touch to make it seem more truthful… . How her sleeves brushed the medicine bottles and irritated you, maybe … or – you’ll know! If we can save scandal to the congregation, we may as well.’
He ran downstairs.
III
AT THE SLIGHT creaking made by Macmaster in pushing open his door, Tietjens started violently. He was sitting in a smoking-jacket, playing patience engrossedly in a sort of garret bedroom. It had a sloping roof outlined by black oak beams, which cut into squares the cream-coloured patent distemper of the walls. The room contained also a four-post bedstead, a corner cupboard in black oak, and many rush mats on a polished oak floor of very irregular planking. Tietjens, who hated these disinterred and waxed relics of the past, sat in the centre of the room at a flimsy card-table beneath a white-shaded electric light of a brillance that, in those surroundings, appeared unreasonable. This was one of those restored old groups of cottages that it was at that date the fashion to convert into hostelries. To it Macmaster, who was in search of the inspiration of the past, had preferred to come. Tietjens, not desiring to interfere with his friend’s culture, had accepted the quarters, though he would have preferred to go to a comfortable modern hotel as being less affected and cheaper. Accustomed to what he called the grown oldnesses of a morose, rambling Yorkshire manor house, he disliked being among collected and rather pitiful bits which, he said, made him feel ridiculous, as if he were trying to behave seriously at a fancy-dress ball. Macmaster, on the other hand, with gratification and a serious air, would run his finger tips along the bevellings of a darkened piece of furniture, and would declare it genuine ‘Chippendale’ or ‘Jacobean oak’, as the case might be. And he seemed to gain an added seriousness and weight of manner with each piece of ancient furniture that down the years he thus touched. But Tietjens would declare that you could tell the beastly thing was a fake by just cocking an eye at it and, if the matter happened to fall under the test of professional dealers in old furniture, Tietjens was the more often in the right of it, and Macmaster, sighing slightly, would prepare to proceed still further along the difficult road to connoisseurship. Eventually, by conscientious study, he got so far as at times to be called in by Somerset House to value great properties for probate – an occupation at once distinguished and highly profitable.
Tietjens swore with the extreme vehemence of a man who has been made, but who much dislikes being seen, to start.
Macmaster – in evening dress he looked extremely miniature! – said:
‘I’m sorry, old man, I know how much you dislike being interrupted. But the General is in a terrible temper.’
Tietjens rose stiffly, lurched over to an eighteenth-century rosewood folding washstand, took from its top a glass of flat whisky and soda, and gulped down a large quantity. He looked about uncertainly, perceived a notebook on a ‘Chippendale’ bureau, made a short calculation in pencil and looked at his friend momentarily.
Macmaster said again:
‘I’m sorry old man. I must have interrupted one of your immense calculations.’
Tietjens said:
‘You haven’t. I was only thinking. I’m just as glad you’ve come. What did you say?’
Macmaster repeated:
‘I said the General is in a terrible temper. It’s just as well you didn’t come up to dinner.’
Tietjens said:
‘He isn’t … He isn’t in a temper. He’s as pleased as punch at not having to have these women up before him.’
Macmaster said:
‘He says he’s got the police scouring the whole county for them, and that you’d better leave by the first train to-morrow.’
Tietjens said:
‘I won’t. I can’t. I’ve got to wait here for a wire from Sylvia.’
Macmaster groaned:
‘Oh dear! Oh dear!’ Then he said hopefully: ‘But we could have it forwarded to Hythe.’
Tietjens said with some vehemence:
‘I tell you I won’t leave here. I tell you I’ve settled it with the police and that swine of a Cabinet Minister. I’ve mended the leg of the canary of the wife of the police-constable. Sit down and be reasonable. The police don’t touch people like us.’
Macmaster said:
‘I don’t believe you realise the public feeling there is …’
‘Of course I do, amongst people like Sandbach,’ Tietjens said. ‘Sit down I tell you… . Have some whisky… .’ He filled himself out another long tumbler and, holding it, dropped into a too low-seated, reddish wicker armchair that had cretonne fixings. Beneath his weight the chair sagged a good deal and his dress-shirt front bulged up to his chin.
Macmaster said:
‘What’s the matter with you?’ Tietjens’ eyes were bloodshot.
‘I tell you,’ Tietjens said, ‘I’m waiting for a wire from Sylvia.’
Macmaster said:
‘Oh!’ And then: ‘It can’t come to-night, it’s getting on for one.’
‘It can,’ Tietjens said, ‘I’ve fixed it up with the postmaster – all the way up to Town! It probably won’t come because Sylvia won’t send it until the last moment, to bother me. None the less I’m waiting for a wire from Sylvia, and this is what I look like.’
Macmaster said:
‘That woman’s the cruellest beast… .’
‘You might,’ Tietjens interrupted, ‘remember that you’re talking about my wife.’
‘I don’t see,’ Macmaster said, ‘how one can talk about Sylvia without …’
‘The line is a perfectly simple one to draw,’ Tietjens said. ‘You can relate a lady’s actions if you know them and are asked to. You mustn’t comment. In this case you don’t know the lady’s actions even, so you may as well hold your tongue.’ He sat looking straight in front of him.
Macmaster sighed from deep in his chest. He asked himself if this was what sixteen hours’ waiting had done for his friend, what were all the remaining hours going to do?
Tietjens said:
‘I shall be fit to talk about Sylvia after two more whiskies. Let’s settle your other perturbations first… . The fair girl is called Wannop: Valentine Wannop.’
‘That’s the Professor’s name,’ Macmaster said.
>
‘She’s the late Professor Wannop’s daughter,’ Tietjens said. ‘She’s also the daughter of the novelist.’
Macmaster interjected:
‘But …’
‘She supported herself for a year after the Professor’s death as a domestic servant,’ Tietjens said. ‘Now she’s housemaid for her mother, the novelist, in an inexpensive cottage. I should imagine the two experiences would make her desire to better the lot of her sex.’
Macmaster again interjected a ‘But …’
‘I got that information from the policeman whilst I was putting his wife’s canary’s leg in splints.’
Macmaster said:
‘The policeman you knocked down?’ His eyes expressed unreasoning surprise. He added: ‘He knew Miss … eh … Wannop then!’
‘You would not expect much intelligence from the police of Sussex,’ Tietjens said. ‘But you would be wrong. P.C. Finn is clever enough to recognise the young lady who for several years past has managed the constabulary’s wives’ and children’s annual tea and sports. He says Miss Wannop holds the quarter-mile, half-mile, high jump, long jump and putting the weight records for East Sussex. That explains how she went over that dyke in such tidy style… . And precious glad the good, simple man was when I told him he was to leave the girl alone. He didn’t know, he said, how he’d ever a had the face to serve the warrant on Miss Wannop. The other girl – the one that squeaked – is a stranger, a Londoner probably.’
Macmaster said:
‘You told the policeman …’
‘I gave him,’ Tietjens said, ‘the Rt. Hon. Stephen Fenwick Waterhouse’s compliments, and he’d be much obliged if the P.C. would hand in a “No Can Do” report in the matter of those ladies every morning to his inspector. I gave him also a brand new fi’ pun note – from the Cabinet Minister – and a couple of quid and the price of a new pair of trousers from myself. So he’s the happiest constable in Sussex. A very decent fellow; he told me how to know a dog otter’s spoor from a gravid bitch’s… . But that wouldn’t interest you.’
He began again:
‘Don’t look so inexpressibly foolish. I told you I’d been dining with that swine… . No, I oughtn’t to call him a swine after eating his dinner. Besides, he’s a very decent fellow… .’
‘You didn’t tell me you’d been dining with Mr. Waterhouse,’ Macmaster said. ‘I hope you remembered that, as he’s amongst other things the President of the Funded Debt Commission, he’s the power of life and death over the department and us.’
‘You didn’t think,’ Tietjens answered, ‘that you are the only one to dine with the great ones of the earth! I wanted to talk to that fellow … about those figures their cursed crowd made me fake. I meant to give him a bit of my mind.’
‘You didn’t!’ Macmaster said with an expression of panic. ‘Besides, they didn’t ask you to fake the calculation. They only asked you to work it out on the basis of given figures.’
‘Anyhow,’ Tietjens said, ‘I gave him a bit of my mind. I told him that, at threepence, it must run the country – and certainly himself as a politician! – to absolute ruin.’
Macmaster uttered a deep ‘Good Lord!’ and then: ‘But won’t you ever remember you’re a Government servant. He could …’
‘Mr. Waterhouse,’ Tietjens said, ‘asked me if I wouldn’t consent to be transferred to his secretary’s department. And when I said: “Go to hell!” he walked the streets with me for two hours arguing… . I was working out the chances on a 4½d. basis for him when you interrupted me. I’ve promised to let him have the figures when he goes by up the 1.30 on Monday.’
Macmaster said:
‘You haven’t… . But by Jove you’re the only man in England that could do it.’
‘That was what Mr. Waterhouse said,’ Tietjens commented. ‘He said old Ingleby had told him so.’
‘I do hope,’ Macmaster said, ‘that you answered him politely!’
‘I told him,’ Tietjens answered, ‘that there were a dozen men who could do it as well as I, and I mentioned your name in particular.’
‘But I couldn’t,’ Macmaster answered. ‘Of course I could convert a 3d. rate into 4½d. But these are the actuarial variations; they’re infinite. I couldn’t touch them.’
Tietjens said negligently: ‘I don’t want my name mixed up in the unspeakable affair. When I give him the papers on Monday I shall tell him you did most of the work.’
Again Macmaster groaned.
Nor was this distress mere altruism. Immensely ambitious for his brilliant friend, Macmaster’s ambition was one ingredient of his strong desire for security. At Cambridge he had been perfectly content with a moderate, quite respectable place on the list of mathematical postulants. He knew that that made him safe, and he had still more satisfaction in the thought that it would warrant him in never being brilliant in after life. But when Tietjens, two years after, had come out as a mere Second Wrangler, Macmaster had been bitterly and loudly disappointed. He knew perfectly well that Tietjens simply hadn’t taken trouble; and, ten chances to one, it was on purpose that Tietjens hadn’t taken trouble. For the matter of that, for Tietjens it wouldn’t have been trouble.
And, indeed, to Macmaster’s upbraidings, which Macmaster hadn’t spared him, Tietjens had answered that he hadn’t been able to think of going through the rest of his life with a beastly placard like Senior Wrangler hung round his neck.
But Macmaster had early made up his mind that life for him would be safest if he could go about, not very much observed but still an authority, in the midst of a body of men all labelled. He wanted to walk down Pall Mall on the arm, precisely, of a largely-lettered Senior Wrangler; to return eastward on the arm of the youngest Lord Chancellor England had ever seen; to stroll down Whitehall in familiar converse with a world-famous novelist, saluting on the way a majority of My Lords Commissioners of the Treasury. And, after tea, for an hour at the club all these, in a little group, should treat him with the courtesy of men who respected him for his soundness. Then he would be safe.
And he had no doubt that Tietjens was the most brilliant man in England of that day, so that nothing caused him more anguish than the thought that Tietjens might not make a brilliant and rapid career towards some illustrious position in the public services. He would very willingly – he desired, indeed, nothing better! – have seen Tietjens pass over his own head! It did not seem to him a condemnation of the public services that this appeared to be unlikely.
Yet Macmaster was still not without hope. He was quite aware that there are other techniques of careers than that which he had prescribed for himself. He could not imagine himself, even in the most deferential way, correcting a superior; yet he could see that, though Tietjens treated almost every hierarch as if he were a born fool, no one very much resented it. Of course Tietjens was a Tietjens of Groby; but was that going to be enough to live on for ever? Times were changing, and Macmaster imagined this to be a democratic age.
But Tietjens went on, with both hands as it were, throwing away opportunity and committing outrage… .
That day Macmaster could only consider to be one of disaster. He got up from his chair and filled himself another drink; he felt himself to be distressed and to need it. Slouching amongst his cretonnes, Tietjens was gazing in front of him. He said:
‘Here!’ without looking at Macmaster, and held out his long glass. Into it Macmaster poured whisky with a hesitating hand. Tietjens said: ‘Go on!’
Macmaster said:
‘It’s late; we’re breakfasting at the Duchemins’ at ten.’
Tietjens answered:
‘Don’t worry, sonny. We’ll be there for your pretty lady.’ He added: ‘Wait another quarter of an hour. I want to talk to you.’
Macmaster sat down again and deliberately began to review the day. It had begun with disaster, and in disaster it had continued.
And, with something like a bitter irony, Macmaster remembered and brought up now for digestion the parting words of Gener
al Campion to himself. The General had limped with him to the hall door up at Mountsby and, standing patting him on the shoulder, tall, slightly bent and very friendly, had said:
‘Look here. Christopher Tietjens is a splendid fellow. But he needs a good woman to look after him. Get him back to Sylvia as quick as you can. Had a little tiff, haven’t they? Nothing serious? Chrissie hasn’t been running after the skirts? No? I daresay a little. No? Well then …’
Macmaster had stood like a gate-post, so appalled. He had stuttered:
‘No! No.’
‘We’ve known them both so long,’ the General went on. ‘Lady Claudine in particular. And, believe me, Sylvia is a splendid girl. Straight as a die; the soul of loyalty to her friends. And fearless. She’d face the devil in his rage. You should have seen her out with the Belvoir! Of course you know her… . Well then!’
Macmaster had just managed to say that he knew Sylvia, of course.
‘Well then,’ the General had continued, ‘you’ll agree with me that if there is anything wrong between them he’s to blame. And it will be resented. Very bitterly. He wouldn’t set foot in this house again. But he says he’s going out to her and Mrs. Satterthwaite… .’
‘I believe …’ Macmaster had begun, ‘I believe he is …’
‘Well then!’ the General had said: ‘It’s all right… . But Christopher Tietjens needs a good woman’s backing. He’s a splendid fellow. There are few young fellows for whom I have more … I could almost say respect… . But he needs that. To ballast him.’
In the car, running down the hill from Mountby, Macmaster had exhausted himself in the effort to restrain his execrations of the General. He wanted to shout that he was a pig-headed old fool: a meddlesome ass. But he was in the car with the two secretaries of the Cabinet Minister: the Rt. Hon. Edward Fenwick Waterhouse, who, being himself an advanced Liberal down for a week-end of golf, preferred not to dine at the house of the Conservative member. At that date there was, in politics, a phase of bitter social feud between the parties: a condition that had not till lately been characteristic of English political life. The prohibition had not extended itself to the two younger men.