Macmaster was not unpleasurably aware that these two fellows treated him with a certain deference. They had seen Macmaster being talked to familiarly by General Lord Edward Campion. Indeed, they and the car had been kept waiting whilst the General patted their fellow guest on the shoulder; held his upper arm and spoke in a low voice into his ear.
But that was the only pleasure that Macmaster got out of it.
Yes, the day had begun disastrously with Sylvia’s letter; it ended – if it was ended! – almost more disastrously with the General’s eulogy of that woman. During the day he had nerved himself to having an immensely disagreeable scene with Tietjens. Tietjens must divorce the woman; it was necessary for the peace of mind of himself, of his friends, of his family; for the sake of his career; in the very name of decency!
In the meantime Tietjens had rather forced his hand. It had been a most disagreeable affair. They had arrived at Rye in time for lunch – at which Tietjens had consumed the best part of a bottle of Burgundy. During lunch Tietjens had given Macmaster Sylvia’s letter to read, saying that, as he should later consult his friend, his friend had better be made acquainted with the document.
The letter had appeared extraordinary in its effrontery, for it said nothing. Beyond the bare statement, ‘I am now ready to return to you’, it occupied itself simply with the fact that Mrs. Tietjens wanted – could no longer get on without – the services of her maid, whom she called Hullo Central. If Tietjens wanted her, Mrs. Tietjens, to return to him he was to see that Hullo Central was waiting on the doorstep for her, and so on. She added the detail that there was no one else, underlined, she could bear round her while she was retiring for the night. On reflection Macmaster could see that this was the best letter the woman could have written if she wanted to be taken back; for, had she extended herself into either excuses or explanations, it was ten chances to one Tietjens would have taken the line that he couldn’t go on living with a woman capable of such a lapse in taste. But Macmaster had never thought of Sylvia as wanting in savoir faire.
It had none the less hardened him in his determination to urge his friend to divorce. He had intended to begin this campaign in the fly, driving to pay his call on the Rev. Mr. Duchemin, who, in early life, had been a personal disciple of Mr. Ruskin and a patron and acquaintance of the poet-painter, the subject of Macmaster’s monograph. On this drive Tietjens preferred not to come. He said that he would loaf about the town and meet Macmaster at the golf club towards four-thirty. He was not in the mood for making new acquaintances. Macmaster, who knew the pressure under which his friend must be suffering, thought this reasonable enough, and drove off up Iden Hill by himself.
Few women had ever made so much impression on Macmaster as Mrs. Duchemin. He knew himself to be in a mood to be impressed by almost any woman, but he considered that that was not enough to account for the very strong influence she at once exercised over him. There had been two young girls in the drawing-room when he had been ushered in, but they had disappeared almost simultaneously, and although he had noticed them immediately afterwards riding past the window on bicycles, he was aware that he would not have recognised them again. From her first words on rising to greet him: ‘Not the Mr. Macmaster!’ he had had eyes for no one else.
It was obvious that the Rev. Mr. Duchemin must be one of those clergymen of considerable wealth and cultured taste who not infrequently adorn the Church of England. The rectory itself, a great, warm-looking manor house of very old red brick, was abutted on to by one of the largest tithe barns that Macmaster had ever seen; the church itself, with a primitive roof of oak shingles, nestled in the corner formed by the ends of rectory and tithe barn, and was by so much the smallest of the three and so undecorated that but for its little belfry it might have been a good cow-byre. All three buildings stood on the very edge of the little row of hills that looks down on the Romney Marsh; they were sheltered from the north wind by a great symmetrical fan of elms and from the south-west by a very tall hedge and shrubbery, all of remarkable yews. It was, in short, an ideal cure of souls for a wealthy clergyman of cultured tastes, for there was not so much as a peasant’s cottage within a mile of it.
To Macmaster, in short, this was the ideal English home. Of Mrs. Duchemin’s drawing-room itself, contrary to his habit, for he was sensitive and observant in such things, he could afterwards remember little except that it was perfectly sympathetic. Three long windows gave on to a perfect lawn, on which, isolated and grouped, stood standard rose trees, symmetrical half globes of green foliage picked out with flowers like bits of carved pink marble. Beyond the lawn was a low stone wall; beyond that the quiet expanse of the marsh shimmered in the sunlight.
The furniture of the room was, as to its woodwork, brown, old, with the rich softnesses of much polishing with beeswax. What pictures there were Macmaster recognised at once as being by Simeon Solomon, one of the weaker and more frail æsthetes – aureoled, palish heads of ladies carrying lilies that were not very like lilies. They were in the tradition – but not the best of the tradition. Macmaster understood – and later Mrs. Duchemin confirmed him in the idea – that Mr. Duchemin kept his more precious specimens of work in a sanctum, leaving to the relatively public room, good-humouredly and with slight contempt, these weaker specimens. That seemed to stamp Mr. Duchemin at once as being of the elect.
Mr. Duchemin in person was, however, not present; and there seemed to be a good deal of difficulty in arranging a meeting between the two men. Mr. Duchemin, his wife said, was much occupied at the week-ends. She added, with a faint and rather absent smile, the word, ‘Naturally.’ Macmaster at once saw that it was natural for a clergyman to be much occupied during the week-ends. With a little hesitation Mrs. Duchemin suggested that Mr. Macmaster and his friend might come to lunch on the next day – Saturday. But Macmaster had made an engagement to play the foursome with General Campion – half the round from twelve till one-thirty: half the round from three to half-past four. And, as their then present arrangements stood, Macmaster and Tietjens were to take the 6.30 train to Hythe; that ruled out either tea or dinner next day.
With sufficient, but not too extravagant regret, Mrs. Duchemin raised her voice to say:
‘Oh dear! Oh dear! But you must see my husband and the pictures after you have come so far.’
A rather considerable volume of harsh sound was coming through the end wall of the room – the barking of dogs, apparently the hurried removal of pieces of furniture or perhaps of packing cases, guttural ejaculations. Mrs. Duchemin said, with her far-away air and deep voice:
‘They are making a good deal of noise. Let us go into the garden and look at my husband’s roses, if you’ve a moment more to give us.’
Macmaster quoted to himself:
‘“I looked and saw your eyes in the shadow of your hair… .”’
There was no doubt that Mrs. Duchemin’s eyes, which were of a dark, pebble blue, were actually in the shadow of her blue-black, very regularly waved hair. The hair came down on the square, low forehead. It was a phenomenon that Macmaster had never before really seen, and, he congratulated himself, this was one more confirmation – if confirmation were needed! – of the powers of observation of the subject of his monograph!
Mrs. Duchemin bore the sunlight! Her dark complexion was clear; there was, over the cheekbones, a delicate suffusion of light carmine. Her jawbone was singularly clear-cut, to the pointed chin – like an alabaster, mediæval saint’s.
She said:
‘Of course you’re Scotch. I’m from Auld Reekie myself.’
Macmaster would have known it. He said he was from the Port of Leith. He could not imagine hiding anything from Mrs. Duchemin. Mrs. Duchemin said with renewed insistence:
‘Oh, but of course you must see my husband and the pictures. Let me see… . We must think… . Would breakfast now? …’
Macmaster said that he and his friend were Government servants and up to rising early. He had a great desire to breakfast in that house. She said:
‘At a quarter to ten, then, our car will be at the bottom of your street. It’s a matter of ten minutes only, so you won’t go hungry long!’
She said, gradually gaining animation, that of course Macmaster would bring his friend. He could tell Tietjens that he should meet a very charming girl. She stopped and added suddenly: ‘Probably, at any rate.’ She said the name which Macmaster caught as ‘Wanstead’. And possibly another girl. And Mr. Horsted, or something like it, her husband’s junior curate. She said reflectively:
‘Yes, we might try quite a party …’ and added, ‘quite noisy and gay. I hope your friend’s talkative!’
Macmaster said something about trouble.
‘Oh, it can’t be too much trouble,’ she said. ‘Besides it might do my husband good.’ She went on: ‘Mr. Duchemin is apt to brood. It’s perhaps too lonely here.’ And added the rather astonishing words: ‘After all.’
*
And, driving back in the fly, Macmaster said to himself that you couldn’t call Mrs. Duchemin ordinary, at least. Yet meeting her was like going into a room that you had long left and never ceased to love. It felt good. It was perhaps partly her Edinburgh-ness. Macmaster allowed himself to coin that word. There was in Edinburgh a society – he himself had never been privileged to move in it, but its annals are part of the literature of Scotland! – where the ladies are all great ladies in tall drawing-rooms; circumspect yet shrewd; still yet with a sense of the comic; frugal yet warmly hospitable. It was perhaps just Edinburgh-ness that was wanting in the drawing-rooms of his friends in London. Mrs. Cressy, the Hon. Mrs. Limoux and Mrs. Delawnay were all almost perfection in manner, in speech, in composure. But, then, they were not young, they weren’t Edinburgh – and they weren’t strikingly elegant!
Mrs. Duchemin was all three! Her assured, tranquil manner she would retain to any age: it betokened the enigmatic soul of her sex, but, physically, she couldn’t be more than thirty. That was unimportant, for she would never want to do anything in which physical youth counted. She would never, for instance, have occasion to run; she would always just ‘move’ – floatingly! He tried to remember the details of her dress.
It had certainly been dark blue – and certainly of silk: that rather coarsely-woven, exquisite material that has on its folds as of a silvery shimmer with minute knots. But very dark blue. And it contrived to be at once artistic – absolutely in the tradition! And yet well cut! Very large sleeves, of course, but still with a certain fit. She had worn an immense necklace of yellow polished amber: on the dark blue! And Mrs. Duchemin had said, over her husband’s roses, that the blossoms always reminded her of little mouldings of pink cloud come down for the cooling of the earth… . A charming thought!
Suddenly he said to himself:
‘What a mate for Tietjens!’ And his mind added: ‘Why should she not become an Influence!’
A vista opened before him, in time! He imagined Tietjens, in some way proprietorily responsible for Mrs. Duchemin: quite pour le bon, tranquilly passionate and accepted, motif; and ‘immensely improved’ by the association. And himself, in a year or two, bringing the at last found Lady of his Delight to sit at the feet of Mrs. Duchemin – the Lady of his Delight whilst circumspect would be also young and impressionable! – to learn the mysterious assuredness of manner, the gift of dressing, the knack of wearing amber and bending over standard roses – and the Edinburgh-ness!
Macmaster was thus not a little excited, and finding Tietjens at tea amid the green-stained furnishings and illustrated papers of the large, corrugated iron golf-house, he could not help exclaiming:
‘I’ve accepted the invitation to breakfast with the Duchemins tomorrow for us both. I hope you won’t mind,’ although Tietjens was sitting at a little table with General Campion and his brother-in-law, the Hon. Paul Sandbach, Conservative member for the division and husband of Lady Claudine. The General said pleasantly to Tietjens:
‘Breakfast! With Duchemin! You go, my boy! You’ll get the best breakfast you ever had in your life.’
He added to his brother-in-law: ‘Not the eternal mock kedgeree Claudine gives us every morning.’
Sandbach grunted:
‘It’s not for want of trying to steal their cook. Claudine has a shy at it every time we come down here.’
The General said pleasantly to Macmaster – he spoke always pleasantly, with a half smile and a slight sibilance:
‘My brother-in-law isn’t serious, you understand. My sister wouldn’t think of stealing a cook. Let alone from Duchemin. She’d be frightened to.’
Sandbach grunted:
‘Who wouldn’t?’
Both these gentlemen were very lame: Mr. Sandbach from birth and the General as the result of a slight but neglected motor accident. He had practically only one vanity, the belief that he was qualified to act as his own chauffeur, and since he was both inexpert and very careless, he met with frequent accidents. Mr. Sandbach had a dark, round, bull-dog face and a violent manner. He had twice been suspended from his Parliamentary duties for applying to the then Chancellor of the Exchequer the epithet ‘lying attorney’, and he was at that moment still suspended.
Macmaster then became unpleasantly perturbed. With his sensitiveness he was perfectly aware of an unpleasant chill in the air. There was also a stiffness about Tietjens’ eyes. He was looking straight before him; there was a silence too. Behind Tietjens’ back were two men with bright green coats, red knitted waistcoats and florid faces. One was bald and blond, the other had black hair, remarkably oiled and shiny; both were forty-fiveish. They were regarding the occupants of the Tietjens table with both their mouths slightly open. They were undisguisedly listening. In front of each were three empty sloe-gin glasses and one half-filled tumbler of brandy and soda. Macmaster understood why the General had explained that his sister had not tried to steal Mrs. Duchemin’s cook.
Tietjens said:
‘Drink up your tea quickly and let’s get started.’ He was drawing from his pocket a number of telegraph forms which he began arranging. The General said:
‘Don’t burn your mouth. We can’t start off before all … all these other gentlemen. We’re too slow.’
‘No; we’re beastly well stuck,’ Sandbach said.
Tietjens handed the telegraph forms over to Macmaster.
‘You’d better take a look at these,’ he said. ‘I mayn’t see you again to-day after the match. You’re dining up at Mountby. The General will run you up. Lady Claude will excuse me. I’ve got work to do.’
This was already matter for dismay for Macmaster. He was aware that Tietjens would have disliked dining up at Mountby with the Sandbachs, who would have a crowd, extremely smart, but more than usually unintelligent. Tietjens called this crowd, indeed, the plague-spot of the party – meaning of Toryism. But Macmaster couldn’t help thinking that a disagreeable dinner would be better for his friend than brooding in solitude in the black shadows of the huddled town. Then Tietjens said:
‘I’m going to have a word with that swine!’ He pointed his square chin rather rigidly before him, and looking past the two brandy drinkers, Macmaster saw one of those faces that frequent caricature made familiar and yet strange. Macmaster couldn’t, at the moment, put a name to it. It must be a politician, probably a Minister. But which? His mind was already in a dreadful state. In the glimpse he had caught of the telegraph form now in his hand he had perceived that it was addressed to Sylvia Tietjens and began with the word ‘agreed’. He said swiftly:
‘Has that been sent or is it only a draft?’
Tietjens said:
‘That fellow is the Rt. Hon. Stephen Fenwick Waterhouse. He’s chairman of the Funded Debt Commission. He’s the swine who made us fake that return in the office.’
That moment was the worst Macmaster had ever known. A worse came. Tietjens said:
‘I’m going to have a word with him. That’s why I’m not dining at Mountby. It’s a duty to the country.’
Macmaster’s mind simply
stopped. He was in a space, all windows. There was sunlight outside. And clouds. Pink and white. Woolly! Some ships. And two men: one dark and oily, the other rather blotchy on a blond baldness. They were talking, but their words made no impression on Macmaster. The dark, oily man said that he was not going to take Gertie to Budapest. Not half! He winked like a nightmare. Beyond were two young men and a preposterous face… . It was all so like a nightmare that the Cabinet Minister’s features were distorted for Macmaster. Like an enormous mask of pantomime: shiny, with an immense nose and elongated, Chinese eyes.
Yet not unpleasant! Macmaster was a Whig by conviction, by nation, by temperament. He thought that public servants should abstain from political activity. Nevertheless, he couldn’t be expected to think a Liberal Cabinet Minister ugly. On the contrary, Mr. Waterhouse appeared to have a frank, humorous, kindly expression. He listened deferentially to one of his secretaries, resting his hand on the young man’s shoulder, smiling a little, rather sleepily. No doubt he was overworked. And then, letting himself go in a side-shaking laugh. Putting on flesh!
What a pity! What a pity! Macmaster was reading a string of incomprehensible words in Tietjens’ heavily scored writing. Not entertain … flat not house … child remain at sister… . His eyes went backwards and forwards over the phrases. He could not connect the words without stops. The man with the oily hair said in a sickly voice that Gertie was hot stuff, but not the one for Budapest with all the Gitana girls you were telling me of! Why, he’d kept Gertie for five years now. More like the real thing! His friend’s voice was like a result of indigestion. Tietjens, Sandbach, and the General were stiff, like pokers.
What a pity! Macmaster thought.
He ought to have been sitting… . It would have been pleasant and right to be sitting with the pleasant Minister. In the ordinary course he, Macmaster, would have been. The best golfer in the place was usually set to play with distinguished visitors, and there was next to no one in the south of England who ordinarily could beat him. He had begun at four, playing with a miniature cleek and a found shilling ball over the municipal links. Going to the poor school every morning and back to dinner; and back to school and back to bed! Over the cold, rushy, sandy links, beside the grey sea. Both shoes full of sand. The found shilling ball had lasted him three years… .