Macmaster exclaimed: ‘Good God!’ He had just gathered from the telegram that Tietjens meant to go to Germany on Tuesday. As if at Macmaster’s ejaculation Tietjens said:
‘Yes. It is unbearable. If you don’t stop those swine, General, I shall.’
The General sibilated low, between his teeth:
‘Wait a minute… . Wait a minute… . Perhaps that other fellow will.’
The man with the black oily hair said:
‘If Budapest’s the place for the girls you say it is, old pal, with the Turkish baths and all, we’ll paint the old town red all right, next month,’ and he winked at Tietjens. His friend, with his head down, seemed to make internal rumblings, looking apprehensively beneath his blotched forehead at the General.
‘Not,’ the other continued argumentatively, ‘that I don’t love my old woman. She’s all right. And then there’s Gertie. ’Ot stuff, but the real thing. But I say a man wants …’ He ejaculated, ‘Oh!’
The General, his hands in his pockets, very tall, thin, red-cheeked, his white hair combed forward in a fringe, sauntered towards the other table. It was not two yards, but it seemed a long saunter. He stood right over them, they looking up, open-eyed, like schoolboys at a balloon. He said:
‘I’m glad you’re enjoying our links, gentlemen.’
The bald man said: ‘We are! We are! First-class. A treat!’
‘But,’ the General said, ‘it isn’t wise to discuss one’s … eh … domestic circumstances … at … at mess, you know, or in a golf house. People might hear.’
The gentleman with the oily hair half rose and exclaimed:
‘Oo, the …’ The other man mumbled: ‘Shut up, Briggs.’
The General said:
‘I’m the president of the club, you know. It’s my duty to see that the majority of the club and its visitors are pleased. I hope you don’t mind.’
The General came back to his seat. He was trembling with vexation.
‘It makes one as beastly a bounder as themselves,’ he said. ‘But what the devil else was one to do?’ The two city men had ambled hastily into the dressing-rooms; the dire silence fell. Macmaster realised that, for these Tories at least, this was really the end of the world. The last of England! He returned, with panic in his heart, to Tietjens’ telegram… . Tietjens was going to Germany on Tuesday. He offered to throw over the department. These were unthinkable things. You couldn’t imagine them!
He began to read the telegram all over again. A shadow fell upon the flimsy sheets. The Rt. Hon. Mr. Waterhouse was between the head of the table and the windows. He said:
‘We’re much obliged, General. It was impossible to hear ourselves speak for those obscene fellows’ smut. It’s fellows like that that make our friends the suffragettes! That warrants them… .’ He added: ‘Hullo! Sandbach! Enjoying your rest?’
The General said:
‘I was hoping you’d take on the job of telling these fellows off.’
Mr. Sandbach, his bull-dog jaw sticking out, the short black hair on his scalp appearing to rise, barked:
‘Hullo, Waterslop. Enjoying your plunder?’
Mr. Waterhouse, tall, slouching and untidy-haired, lifted the flaps of his coat. It was so ragged that it appeared as if straws stuck out of the elbows.
‘All that the suffragettes have left of me,’ he said, laughingly. ‘Isn’t one of you fellows a genius called Tietjens?’ He was looking at Macmaster. The General said:
‘Tietjens … Macmaster …’ The Minister went on very friendly:
‘Oh, it’s you? … I just wanted to take the opportunity of thanking you.’
Tietjens said:
‘Good God! What for?’
‘You know!’ the Minister said. ‘We couldn’t have got the Bill before the House till next session without your figures… .’ He said slyly: ‘Could we, Sandbach?’ and added to Tietjens: ‘Ingleby told me… .’
Tietjens was chalk-white and stiffened. He stuttered:
‘I can’t take any credit… . I consider …’
Macmaster exclaimed:
‘Tietjens … you …’ he didn’t know what he was going to say.
‘Oh, you’re too modest,’ Mr. Waterhouse overwhelmed Tietjens. ‘We know whom we’ve to thank… .’ His eyes drifted to Sandbach a little absently. Then his face lit up.
‘Oh! Look here, Sandbach,’ he said. ‘Come here, will you?’ He walked a pace or two away, calling to one of his young men: ‘Oh, Sanderson, give the bobbie a drink. A good stiff one.’ Sandbach jerked himself awkwardly out of his chair and limped to the Minister.
Tietjens burst out:
‘Me too modest! Me! … The swine… . The unspeakable swine!’
The General said:
‘What’s it all about, Chrissie? You probably are too modest.’
Tietjens said:
‘Damn it. It’s a serious matter. It’s driving me out of the unspeakable office I’m in.’
Macmaster said:
‘No! No! You’re wrong. It’s a wrong view you take.’ And with a good deal of real passion he began to explain to the General. It was an affair that had already given him a great deal of pain. The Government had asked the statistical department for figures illuminating a number of schedules that they desired to use in presenting their new Bill to the Commons. Mr. Waterhouse was to present it.
Mr. Waterhouse at the moment was slapping Mr. Sandbach on the back, tossing the hair out of his eyes and laughing like a hysterical schoolgirl. He looked suddenly tired. A police constable, his buttons shining, appeared, drinking from a pewter-pot outside the glazed door. The two city men ran across the angle from the dressing-room to the same door, buttoning their clothes. The Minister said loudly:
‘Make it guineas!’
It seemed to Macmaster painfully wrong that Tietjens should call anyone so genial and unaffected an unspeakable swine. It was unjust. He went on with his explanation to the General.
The Government had wanted a set of figures based on a calculation called B7. Tietjens, who had been working on one called H19 – for his own instruction – had persuaded himself that H19 was the lowest figure that was actuarially sound.
The General said pleasantly: ‘All this is Greek to me.’
‘Oh, no, it needn’t be,’ Macmaster heard himself say. ‘It amounts to this. Chrissie was asked by the Government – by Sir Reginald Ingleby – to work out what 3 × 3 comes to: it was that sort of thing in principle. He said that the only figure that would not ruin the country was nine times nine… .’
‘The Government wanted to shovel money into the working man’s pockets, in fact,’ the General said. ‘Money for nothing – or votes, I suppose.’
‘But that isn’t the point, sir,’ Macmaster ventured to say. ‘All that Chrissie was asked to do was to say what 3 × 3 was.’
‘Well, he appears to have done it and earned no end of kudos,’ the General said. ‘That’s all right. We’ve all, always, believed in Chrissie’s ability. But he’s a strong-tempered beggar.’
‘He was extraordinarily rude to Sir Reginald over it,’ Macmaster went on.
The General said:
‘Oh dear! Oh dear!’ He shook his head at Tietjens and assumed with care the blank, slightly disapproving air of the regular officer. ‘I don’t like to hear of rudeness to a superior. In any service.’
‘I don’t think,’ Tietjens said with extreme mildness, ‘that Macmaster is quite fair to me. Of course he’s a right to his opinion as to what the discipline of a service demands. I certainly told Ingleby that I’d rather resign than do that beastly job… .’
‘You shouldn’t have,’ the General said. ‘What would become of the services if everyone did as you did?’
Sandbach came back laughing and dropped painfully into his low arm-chair.
‘That fellow …’ he began.
The General slightly raised his hand.
‘A minute!’ he said. ‘I was about to tell Chrissie, here, that if I am offered the j
ob – of course it’s an order really – of suppressing the Ulster Volunteers … I’d rather cut my throat than do it… .’
Sandbach said:
‘Of course you would, old chap. They’re our brothers. You’d see the beastly, lying Government damned first.’
‘I was going to say that I should accept,’ the General said, ‘I shouldn’t resign my commission.’
Sandbach said:
‘Good God!’
Tietjens said:
‘Well, I didn’t.’
Sandbach exclaimed:
‘General! You! After all Claudine and I have said… .’
Tietjens interrupted:
‘Excuse me, Sandbach. I’m receiving this reprimand for the moment. I wasn’t, then, rude to Ingleby. If I’d expressed contempt for what he said or for himself, that would have been rude. I didn’t. He wasn’t in the least offended. He looked like a cockatoo, but he wasn’t offended. And I let him overpersuade me. He was right, really. He pointed out that, if I didn’t do the job, those swine would put on one of our little competition wallah head clerks and get all the schedules faked, as well as starting off with false premises!’
‘That’s the view I take,’ the General said, ‘if I don’t take the Ulster job the Government will put on a fellow who’ll burn all the farmhouses and rape all the women in the three counties. They’ve got him up their sleeve. He only asks for the Connaught Rangers to go through the north with. And you know what that means. All the same …’ he looked at Tietjens: ‘one should not be rude to one’s superiors.’
‘I tell you I wasn’t rude,’ Tietjens exclaimed. ‘Damn your nice, paternal old eyes. Get that into your mind!’
The General shook his head:
‘You brilliant fellows!’ he said. ‘The country, or the army, or anything, could not be run by you. It takes stupid fools like me and Sandbach, along with sound, moderate heads like our friend here.’ He indicated Macmaster and, rising, went on: ‘Come along. You’re playing me, Macmaster. They say you’re hot stuff. Chrissie’s no good. He can take Sandbach on.’
He walked off with Macmaster towards the dressing-room.
Sandbach, wriggling awkwardly out of his chair, shouted:
‘Save the country… . Damn it… .’ He stood on his feet. ‘I and Campion … look at what the country’s come to. What with swine like these two in our club-houses! And policemen to go round the links with Ministers to protect them from the wild women… . By God! I’d like to have the flaying of the skin off some of their backs. I would. By God I would.’
He added:
‘That fellow Waterslops is a bit of a sportsman. I haven’t been able to tell you about our bet, you’ve been making such a noise… . Is your friend really plus one at North Berwick? What are you like?’
‘Macmaster is a good plus two anywhere when he’s in practice.’
Sandbach said:
‘Good Lord… . A stout fellow… .’
‘As for me,’ Tietjens said, ‘I loathe the beastly game.’
‘So do I,’ Sandbach answered. ‘We’ll just lollop along behind them.’
IV
THEY CAME OUT into the bright open where all the distances under the tall sky showed with distinct prismatic outlines. They made a little group of seven – for Tietjens would not have a caddy – waiting on the flat, first teeing ground. Macmaster walked up to Tietjens and said under his voice:
‘You’ve really sent that wire?’
Tietjens said:
‘It’ll be in Germany by now!’
Mr. Sandbach hobbled from one to the other explaining the terms of his wager with Mr. Waterhouse. Mr. Waterhouse had backed one of the young men playing with him to drive into and hit twice in the eighteen holes the two city men who would be playing ahead of them. As the Minister had taken rather short odds, Mr. Sandbach considered him a good sport.
A long way down the first hole Mr. Waterhouse and his two companions were approaching the first green. They had high sandhills to the right and, to their left, a road that was fringed with rushes and a narrow dyke. Ahead of the Cabinet Minister the two city men and their two caddies stood on the edge of the dyke or poked downwards into the rushes. Two girls appeared and disappeared on the tops of the sandhills. The policeman was strolling along the road, level with Mr. Waterhouse. The General said:
‘I think we could go now.’
Sandbach said:
‘Waterslops will get a hit at them from the next tee. They’re in the dyke.’
The General drove a straight, goodish ball. Just as Macmaster was in his swing Sandbach shouted:
‘By God! He nearly did it. See that fellow jump!’
Macmaster looked round over his shoulder and hissed with vexation between his teeth:
‘Don’t you know that you don’t shout while a man is driving? Or haven’t you played golf?’ He hurried fussily after his ball.
Sandbach said to Tietjens:
‘Golly! That chap’s got a temper!’
Tietjens said:
‘Only over this game. You deserved what you got.’
Sandbach said:
‘I did… . But I didn’t spoil his shot. He’s outdriven the General twenty yards.’
Tietjens said:
‘It would have been sixty but for you.’
They loitered about on the tee waiting for the others to get their distance. Sandbach said:
‘By Jove, your friend is on with his second … You wouldn’t believe it of such a little beggar!’ He added: ‘He’s not much class, is he?’
Tietjens looked down his nose.
‘Oh, about our class!’ he said. ‘He wouldn’t take a bet about driving into the couple ahead.’
Sandbach hated Tietjens for being a Tietjens of Groby: Tietjens was enraged by the existence of Sandbach, who was the son of an ennobled mayor of Middlesbrough, seven miles or so from Groby. The feuds between the Cleveland landowners and the Cleveland plutocrats are very bitter. Sandbach said:
‘Ah, I suppose he gets you out of scrapes with girls and the Treasury, and you take him about in return. It’s a practical combination.’
‘Like Pottle Mills and Stanton,’ Tietjens said. The financial operations connected with the amalgamating of these two steelworks had earned Sandbach’s father a good deal of odium in the Cleveland district… . Sandbach said:
‘Look here, Tietjens… .’ But he changed his mind and said:
‘We’d better go now.’ He drove off with an awkward action but not without skill. He certainly outplayed Tietjens.
Playing very slowly, for both were desultory and Sandbach very lame, they lost sight of the others behind some coastguard cottages and dunes before they had left the third tee. Because of his game leg, Sandbach sliced a good deal. On this occasion he sliced right into the gardens of the cottages and went with his boy to look for his ball among potato-haulms, beyond a low wall. Tietjens patted his own ball lazily up the fairway and, dragging his bag behind him by the strap, he sauntered on.
Although Tietjens hated golf as he hated any occupation that was of a competitive nature, he could engross himself in the mathematics of trajectories when he accompanied Macmaster in one of his expeditions for practice. He accompanied Macmaster because he liked there to be one pursuit at which his friend undisputably excelled himself, for it was a bore always browbeating the fellow. But he stipulated that they should visit three different and, if possible, unknown courses every weekend when they golfed. He interested himself then in the way the courses were laid out, acquiring thus an extraordinary connoisseurship in golf architecture, and he made abstruse calculations as to the flight of balls off sloped club-faces, as to the foot-poundals of energy exercised by one muscle or the other, and as to theories of spin. As often as not he palmed Macmaster off as a fair, average player on some other unfortunate fair, average stranger. Then he passed the afternoon in the club-house studying the pedigrees and forms of racehorses, for every clubhouse contained a copy of Ruff’s guide. In the spring he
would hunt for and examine the nests of soft-billed birds, for he was interested in the domestic affairs of the cuckoo, though he hated natural history and field botany.
On this occasion he had just examined some notes of other mashie shots, had put the notebook back in his pocket, and had addressed his ball with a niblick that had an unusually roughened face and a head like a hatchet. Meticulously, when he had taken his grip he removed his little and third fingers from the leather of the shaft. He was thanking heaven that Sandbach seemed to be accounted for for ten minutes at least, for Sandbach was miserly over lost balls and, very slowly, he was raising his mashie to half cock for a sighting shot.
He was aware that someone, breathing a little heavily from small lungs, was standing close to him and watching him: he could indeed, beneath his cap-rim, perceive the tips of a pair of boy’s white sand-shoes. It in no way perturbed him to be watched since he was avid of no personal glory when making his shots. A voice said:
‘I say …’ He continued to look at his ball.
‘Sorry to spoil your shot,’ the voice said. ‘But …’
Tietjens dropped his club altogether and straightened his back. A fair young woman with a fixed scowl was looking at him intently. She had a short skirt and was panting a little.
‘I say,’ she said, ‘go and see they don’t hurt Gertie. I’ve lost her …’ She pointed back to the sandhills. ‘There looked to be some beasts among them.’
She seemed a perfectly negligible girl except for the frown: her eyes blue, her hair no doubt fair under a white canvas hat. She had a striped cotton blouse, but her fawn tweed skirt was well hung.
Tietjens said:
‘You’ve been demonstrating.’
She said:
‘Of course we have, and of course you object on principle. But you won’t let a girl be man-handled. Don’t wait to tell me, I know it… .’