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 thereisanything 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.
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. Tietjensmustdivorce 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 wasno oneelse, 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 insavoir 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: "NottheMr. 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 ofcourseyou 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 proprietarily responsible for Mrs. Duchemin: quitepour 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 to-morrow 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 blonde, the other had black hair, remarkably oiled and shiny; both were forty-fivish. 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 blonde 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 apity! 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. . . .
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. Itisunbearable. 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 themajorityof 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?"
"Youknow!" the Minister said, "we couldn't have got the Bill before the House till next session without your figures. . . ." He said slily: "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 B 7. Tietjens, who had been working on one called H 19—for his own instruction—had persuaded himself that H 19 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 x 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 x 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 disappointing air of the regular officer. "I don't like to hear of rudeness to a superior. Inanyservice."
"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 job—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:
"GoodGod!"
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 over-persuade 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 bum all the farm-houses 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 whatthatmeans. 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."
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 reallysentthat 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 alittlebeggar!" He added: "He's not much class, is he?"
Tietjens looked down his nose.
"Oh, aboutourclass!" 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 Middlebrough, 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 brow-beating the fellow. But he stipulated that they should visit three different and, if possible, unknown courses every week-end 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 club-house 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 . . . ."
Noises existed. Sandbach, from beyond the low garden wall fifty yards away, was yelping, just like a dog: "Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi!" and gesticulating. His little caddy, entangled in his golf-bag, was trying to scramble over the wall. On top of a high sandhill stood the policeman: he waved his arms like a windmill and shouted. Beside him and behind, slowly rising, were the heads of the General, Macmaster and their two boys. Further along, in completion were appearing the figures of Mr. Waterhouse, his two companions andtheirthree boys. The Minister was waving his driver and shouting. They all shouted.
"A regular rat-hunt," the girl said; she was counting. "Eleven and two more caddies!" She exhibited satisfaction. "I headed them all off except two beasts. They couldn't run. But neither can Gertie . . ."
She said urgently:
"Come along! You aren't going to leave Gertie to those beasts! They're drunk. . . ."
Tietjens said:
"Cut away then. I'll look after Gertie." He picked up his bag.
"No, I'll come with you," the girl said.
Tietjens answered: "Oh, you don't want to go to gaol. Clear out!"
She said:
"Nonsense. I've put up with worse than that. Nine months as a slavey. . . . Comealong!"
Tietjens started to run—rather like a rhinoceros seeing purple. He had been violently spurred, for he had been pierced by a shrill, faint scream. The girl ran beside him.
"You . . . can . . . run!" she panted, "put on a spurt."
Screams protesting against physical violence were at that date rare things in England. Tietjens had never heard the like. It upset him frightfully, though he was aware only of an expanse of open country. The policeman, whose buttons made him noteworthy, was descending his conical sandhill, diagonally, with caution. There is something grotesque about a town policeman, silvered helmet and all, in the open country. It was so clear and still in the air; Tietjens felt as if he were in a light museum looking at specimens. . . .
A little young woman, engrossed, like a hunted rat, came round the corner of a green mound. "This is an assaulted female!" the mind of Tietjens said to him. She had a black skirt covered with sand, for she had just rolled down the sandhill; she had a striped grey and black silk blouse, one shoulder torn completely off, so that a white camisole showed. Over the shoulder of the sandhill came the two city men, flushed with triumph and panting; their red knitted waistcoats moved like bellows. The black-haired one, his eyes lurid and obscene, brandished aloft a fragment of black and grey stuff. He shouted hilariously:
"Strip the bitch naked! . . . Ugh . . . Strip the bitch stark naked!" and jumped down the little hill. He cannoned into Tietjens, who roared at the top of his voice:
"You infernal swine. I'll knock your head off if you move!"
Behind Tietjens' back the girl said:
"Come along, Gertie. . . . It's only to there . . ."
A voice panted in answer:
"I . . . can't. . . . My heart . . ."
Tietjens kept his eye upon the city man. His jaw had fallen down, his eyes stared! It was as if the bottom of his assured world, where all men desire in their hearts to bash women, had fallen out. He panted:
"Ergle! Ergle!"
Another scream, a little further than the last voices from behind his back, caused in Tietjens a feeling of intense weariness. What did beastly women want to scream for? He swung round, bag and all. The policeman, his face scarlet like a lobster just boiled, was lumbering unenthusiastically towards the two girls who were trotting towards the dyke. One of his hands, scarlet also, was extended. He was not a yard from Tietjens.
Tietjens was exhausted, beyond thinking or shouting. He slipped his clubs off his shoulder and, as if he were pitching his kit-bag into a luggage van, threw the whole lot between the policeman's running legs. The man, who had no impetus to speak of, pitched forward on to his hands and knees. His helmet over his eyes, he seemed to reflect for a moment; then he removed his helmet and with great deliberation rolled round and sat on the turf. His face was completely without emotion, long, sandy-moustached and rather shrewd. He mopped his brow with a carmine handkerchief that had white spots.
Tietjens walked up to him.
"Clumsy of me!" he said. "I hope you're not hurt." He drew from his breast pocket a curved silver flask. The policeman said nothing. His world, too, contained uncertainties and he was profoundly glad to be able to sit still without discredit. He muttered:
"Shaken. A bit! Anybody would be!"
That let him out and he fell to examining with attention the bayonet catch of the flask top. Tietjens opened it for him. The two girls, advancing at a fatigued trot, were near the dyke side. The fair girl, as they trotted, was trying to adjust her companion's hat; attached by pins to the back of her hair it flapped on her shoulder.
All the rest of the posse were advancing at a very slow walk, in a converging semi-circle. Two little caddies were running, but Tietjens saw them check, hesitate and stop. And there floated to Tietjens' ears the words:
"Stop, you little devils. She'll knock your heads off."
Rt. Hon. Mr. Waterhouse must have found an admirable voice trainer somewhere. The drab girl was balancing tremulously over a plank on the dyke; the other took it at a jump: up in the air—down on her feet; perfectly business-like. And, as soon as the other girl was off the plank, she was down on her knees before it, pulling it towards her, the other girl trotting away over the vast marsh field.
The girl dropped the plank on the grass. Then she looked up and faced the men and boys who stood in a row on the road. She called in a shrill, high voice, like a young cockerel's:
"Seventeen to two! The usual male odds! You'llhaveto go round by Camber railway bridge, and we'll be in Folkestone by then. We've got bicycles!" She was half going when she checked and, searching out Tietjens to address, exclaimed: "I'm sorry I said that. Because some of you didn't want to catch us. But some of youdid. And youwereseventeen to two." She addressed Mr. Waterhouse:
"Whydon'tyou give women the vote?" she said. "You'll find it will interfere a good deal with your indispensable golf if you don't. Then what becomes of the nation's health?"
Mr. Waterhouse said:
"If you'll come and discuss it quietly . . ."
She said:
"Oh, tell that to the marines," and turned away, the men in a row watching her figure disappear into the distance of the flat land. Not one of them was inclined to risk that jump: there was nine foot of mud in the bottom of the dyke. It was quite true that, the plank being removed, to go after the women they would have had to go several miles round. It had been a well thought out raid. Mr. Waterhouse said that girl was a ripping girl: the others found her just ordinary. Mr. Sandbach, who had only lately ceased to shout: "Hi!" wanted to know what they were going to do about catching the women, but Mr. Waterhouse said: "Oh, chuck it, Sandy," and went off.
Mr. Sandbach refused to continue his match with Tietjens. He said that Tietjens was the sort of fellow who was the ruin of England. He said he had a good mind to issue a warrant for the arrest of Tietjens—for obstructing the course of justice. Tietjens pointed out that Sandbach wasn't a borough magistrate and so couldn't. And Sandbach went off, dot and carry one, and began a furious row with the two city men who had retreated to a distance. He said they were the sort of men who were the ruin of England. They bleated like rams. . . .
Tietjens wandered slowly up the course, found his ball, made his shot with care and found that the ball deviated several feet less to the right of a straight line than he had expected. He tried the shot again, obtained the same result and tabulated his observations in his notebook. He sauntered slowly back towards the club-house. He was content.
He felt himself to be content for the first time in four months. His pulse beat calmly; the heat of the sun all over him appeared to be a beneficent flood. On the flanks of the older and larger sandhills he observed the minute herbage, mixed with little purple aromatic plants. To these the constant nibbling of sheep had imparted a protective tininess. He wandered, content, round the sandhills to the small, silted harbour mouth. After reflecting for some time on the wave-curves in the sloping mud of the water sides he had a long conversation, mostly in signs, with a Finn who hung over the side of a tarred, stump-masted, battered vessel that had a gaping, splintered hole where the anchor should have hung. She came from Archangel; was of several hundred tons burthen, was knocked together anyhow, of soft wood, for about ninety pounds, and launched, sink or swim, in the timber trade. Beside her, taut, glistening with brass work, was a new fishing boat, just built there for the Lowestoft fleet. Ascertaining her price from a man who was finishing her painting, Tietjens reckoned that you could have built three of the Archangel timber ships for the cost of that boat, and that the Archangel vessel would earn about twice as much per hour per ton. . . .
It was in that way his mind worked when he was fit: it picked up little pieces of definite, workmanlike information. When it had enough it classified them: not for any purpose, but because to know things was agreeable and gave a feeling of strength, of having in reserve something that the other fellow would not suspect. . . . He passed a long, quiet, abstracted afternoon.
In the dressing-room he found the General, among lockers, old coats, and stoneware, washing basins set in scrubbed wood. The General leaned back against a row of these things.
"You are the ruddylimit!" he exclaimed.
Tietjens said:
"Where's Macmaster?"
The General said he had sent Macmaster off with Sandbach in the two-seater. Macmaster had to dress before going up to Mountby. He added: "Theruddylimit!" again.
"Because I knocked the bobbie over?" Tietjens asked. "He liked it."
The General said:
"Knocked the bobbie over . . . I didn't see that."
"He didn't want to catch the girls," Tietjens said, "you could see him—oh, yearning not to."
"I don't want to know anything about that," the General said. "I shall hear enough about it from Paul Sandbach. Give the bobbie a quid and let's hear no more of it. I'm a magistrate."
"Then what have I done?" Tietjens said. "I helped those girls to get off.Youdidn't want to catch them; Waterhouse didn't, the policeman didn't. No one did except the swine. Then what's the matter?"
"Damn it all!" the General said, "don't you remember that you're a young married man?"
With the respect for the General's superior age and achievements, Tietjens stopped himself laughing.
"If you're really serious, sir," he said, "I always remember it very carefully. I don't suppose you're suggesting that I've ever shown want of respect for Sylvia."
The General shook his head.
"I don't know," he said. "And damn it all I'm worried. I'm . . . Hang it, I'm your father's oldest friend." The General looked indeed worn and saddened in the light of the sand-drifted, ground glass windows. He said: "Was that skirt a . . . a friend of yours? Had you arranged it with her?"
Tietjens said:
"Wouldn't it be better, Sir, if you said what you had on your mind? . . ."
The old General blushed a little.
"I don't like to," he said straightforwardly. "You brilliant fellows. . . . I only want, my dear boy, to hint that. . ."
Tietjens said, a little more stiffly:
"I'd prefer you to get it out, sir. . . . I acknowledge your right as my father's oldest friend."
"Then," the General burst out, "who was the skirt you were lolloping up Pall Mall with? On the last day they trooped the colours? . . . I didn't see her myself. . . . Was it this same one? Paul said she looked like a cook maid."
Tietjens made himself a little more rigid.
"She was, as a matter of fact, a bookmaker's secretary," Tietjens said. "I imagine I have the right to walk where I like, with whom I like. And no one has the right to question it. . . . I don't mean you, sir. But no one else."
The General said puzzledly:
"It's youbrilliantfellows. . . . They all say you're brilliant. . . ."
Tietjens said:
"You might let your rooted distrust of intelligence . . . It's natural of course; but you might let it allow you to be just to me. I assure you there was nothing discreditable."
The General interrupted:
"If you were a stupid young subaltern and told me you were showing your mother's new cook the way to the Piccadilly tube I'd believe you. . . . But, then, no young subaltern would do such a damn, blasted, tomfool thing! Paul said you walked beside her like the king in his glory! Through the crush outside the Haymarket, of all places in the world!"
"I'm obliged to Sandbach for his commendation. . . ." Tietjens said. He thought a moment. Then he said:
"I was trying to get that young woman. . . . I was taking her out to lunch from her office at the bottom of the Haymarket. . . . To get her off a friend's back. That is, of course, between ourselves."
He said this with great reluctance because he didn't want to cast reflection on Macmaster's taste, for the young lady had been by no means one to be seen walking with a really circumspect public official. But he had said nothing to indicate Macmaster, and he had other friends.
The General choked.
"Upon my soul," he said, "what do you take me for?" He repeated the words as if he were amazed. "If," he said, "my G.S.O. II.—who's the stupidest ass I know—told me such a damn-fool lie as that I'd have him broke to-morrow." He went on expostulatorily: "Damn it all, it's the first duty of a soldier—it's the first duty of all Englishmen—to be able to tell a good lie in answer to a charge. But a lie like that . . ."
He broke off breathless, then he began again:
"Hang it all, I told that lie to my grandmother and my grandfather told it tohisgrandfather. And they call you brilliant! . . ." He paused and then asked reproachfully:
"Or do you think I'm in a state of senile decay?"
Tietjens said:
"I know you, sir, to be the smartest general of division in the British Army. I leave you to draw your own conclusions as to why I said what I did. . . ." He had told the exact truth, but he was not sorry to be disbelieved.
The General said:
"Then I'll take it that you tell me a lie meaning me to know that it's a lie. That's quite proper. I take it you mean to keep the woman officially out of it. But look here, Chrissie"—his tone took a deeper seriousness—"if the woman that's come between you and Sylvia—that's broken up your home, damn it, for that's what it is!—is little Miss Wannop . . ."
"Her name was Julia Mandelstein," Tietjens said.
The General said:
"Yes! Yes! Of course! . . . But if itisthe little Wannop girl and it's not gone too far . . . Put her back . . . Put her back, as you used to be a good boy! It would be too hard on the mother. . . ."
Tietjens said:
"General! I give you my word . . ."
The General said:
"I'm not asking any questions, my boy; I'm talking now. You've told me the story you want told and it's the story I'll tell for you! But that little piece is . . . she used to be! . . . as straight as a die. I daresay you know better than I. Of course when they get among the wild women there's no knowing what happens to them. They say they're all whores. . . . I beg your pardon, if you like the girl . . ."
"Is Miss Wannop," Tietjens asked, "the girl who demonstrates?"
"Sandbach said," the General went on, "that he couldn't see from where he was whether that girl was the same as the one in the Haymarket. But he thought it was . . . He was pretty certain."
"As he's married your sister," Tietjens said, "one can't impugn his taste in women."
"I say again, I'm not asking," the General said. "But I do say again too: put her back. Her father was a great friend of your father's: or your father was a great admirer of his. They say he was the most brilliant brain of the party."
"Of course I know who Professor Wannop was," Tietjens said. "There's nothing you could tell me about him."
"I daresay not," the General said drily. "Then you know that he didn't leave a farthing when he died and the rotten Liberal Government wouldn't put his wife and children on the Civil List because he'd sometimes written for a Tory paper. And you know that the mother has had a deuced hard row to hoe and has only just turned the corner. If she can be said to have turned it. I know Claudine takes them all the peaches she can cadge out of Paul's gardener."
Tietjens was about to say that Mrs. Wannop, the mother, had written the only novel worth reading since the eighteenth century. . . . But the General went on:
"Listen to me, my boy. . . . If you can't get on without women . . . I should have thought Sylvia was good enough. But I know what we men are. . . . I don't set up to be a saint. I heard a woman in the promenade of the Empire say once that it was the likes of them that saved the lives and figures of all the virtuous women of the country. And I daresay it's true. . . . But choose a girl that you can set up in a tobacco shop and do your courting in the back parlour. Not in the Haymarket. . . . Heaven knows if you can afford it. That's your affair. You appear to have been sold up. And from what Sylvia's let drop to Claudine . . ."
"I don't believe," Tietjens said, "that Sylvia's said anything to Lady Claudine . . . She's too straight."
"I didn't say 'said,'" the General exclaimed, "I particularly said 'let drop.' And perhaps I oughtn't to have said as much as that, but you know what devils for ferreting out women are. And Claudine's worse than any woman I ever knew. . . ."
"And, of course, she's had Sandbach to help," Tietjens said.
"Oh, that fellow's worse than any woman," the General exclaimed.
"Then what does the whole indictment amount to?" Tietjens asked.
"Oh, hang it," the General brought out, "I'm not a beastly detective, I only want a plausible story to tell Claudine. Or not even plausible. An obvious lie as long as it shows you're not flying in the face of society—as walking up the Haymarket with the little Wannop when your wife's left you because of her would be."
"What does it amount to?" Tietjens said patiently: "What Sylvia 'let drop'?"
"Only," the General answered, "that you are—that your views are—immoral. Of course they often puzzle me. And, of course, if you have views that aren't the same as other people's, and don't keep them to yourself, other people will suspect you of immorality. That's what put Paul Sandbach on your track! . . . and that you're extravagant. . . . Oh, hang it. . . . Eternal hansoms, and taxis and telegrams. . . . You know, my boy, times aren't what they were when your father and I married. We used to say you could do it on five hundred a year as a younger son. . . . And then this girl too. . . ." His voice took on a more agitated note of shyness—pain. . . . "It probably hadn't occurred to you. . . . But, of course, Sylvia has an income of her own. . . . And, don't you see . . . if you outrun the constable and . . . In short, you're spending Sylvia's money on the other girl, and that's what people can't stand." He added quickly: "I'm bound to say that Mrs. Satterthwaite backs you through thick and thin. Thick and thin! Claudine wrote to her. But you know what women are with a handsome son-in-law that's always polite to them. But I may tell you that but for your mother-in-law, Claudine would have cut you out of her visiting list months ago. And you'd have been cut out of some others too. . . ."
Tietjens said:
"Thanks. I think that's enough to go on with. . . . Give me a couple of minutes to reflect on what you've said . . ."
"I'll wash my hands and change my coat," the General said with intense relief.
At the end of two minutes Tietjens said:
"No; I don't see that there is anything I want to say."
The General exclaimed with enthusiasm:
"That's my good lad! Open confession is next to reform. . . . And . . . and try to be more respectful to your superiors. . . . Damn it; they say you're brilliant. But I thank heaven I haven't got you in my command. . . . Though I believe you're a good lad. But you're the sort of fellow to set a whole division by the ears. . . . A regular . . . what's 'is name? A regular Dreyfus!"
"Did you think Dreyfus was guilty?" Tietjens asked.
"Hang it," the General said, "he was worse than guilty—the sort of fellow you couldn't believe in and yet couldn't prove anything against. The curse of the world. . . ."
Tietjens said:
"Ah."
"Well, they are," the General said: "fellows like thatunsettlesociety. You don't know where you are. You can't judge. They make you uncomfortable. . . . A brilliant fellow too! I believe he's a brigadier-general by now. . . ." He put his arm round Tietjens' shoulders.
"There, there, my dear boy," he said, "come and have a sloe gin. That's the real answer to all beastly problems."
It was some time before Tietjens could get to think of his own problems. The fly that took them back went with the slow pomp of a procession over the winding marsh road in front of the absurdly picturesque red pyramid of the very old town. Tietjens had to listen to the General suggesting that it would be better if he didn't come to the golf-club till Monday. He would get Macmaster some good games. A good, sound fellow that Macmaster now. It was a pity Tietjens hadn't some of his soundness!
The two city men had approached the General on the course and had used some violent invectives against Tietjens: they had objected to being called ruddy swine to their faces: they were going to the police. The General said that he had told them himself, slowly and distinctly, that theywereruddy swine and that they would never get another ticket at that club after Monday. But till Monday, apparently, they had the right to be there and the club wouldn't want scenes. Sandbach, too, was infuriated about Tietjens.
Tietjens said that the fault lay with the times that permitted the introduction into gentlemen's company of such social swipes as Sandbach. One acted perfectly correctly and then a dirty little beggar like that put dirty little constructions on it and ran about and bleated. He added that he knew Sandbach was the General's brother-in-law, but he couldn't help it. That was the truth. . . . The General said: "I know, my boy: I know. . . ." But one had to take society as one found it. Claudine had to be provided for and Sandbach made a very good husband, careful, sober, and on the right side in politics. A bit of a rip; but they couldn't ask for everything! And Claudine was using all the influence she had with the other side—which was not a little, women were so wonderful!—to get him a diplomatic job in Turkey, so as to get him out of the way of Mrs. Crundall! Mrs. Crundall was the leading Anti-Suffragette of the little town. That was what made Sandbach so bitter against Tietjens. He told Tietjens so that Tietjens might understand.
Tietjens had hitherto flattered himself that he could examine a subject swiftly and put it away in his mind. To the General he hardly listened. The allegations against himself were beastly; but he could usually ignore allegations against himself and he imagined that if he said no more about them he would himself hear no more. If there were, in clubs and places where men talk, unpleasant rumours as to himself he preferred it to be thought that he was the rip, not his wife the strumpet. That was normal, male vanity: the preference of the English gentleman! Had it been a matter of Sylvia spotless and himself as spotless as he was—for in all these things he knew himself to be spotless!—he would certainly have defended himself, at least, to the General. But he had acted practically in not defending himself more vigorously. For he imagined that, had he really tried, he could have made the General believe him. But he had behaved rightly! It was not mere vanity. There was the child up at his sister Effie's. It was better for a boy to have a rip of a father than a whore for mother!
The General was expatiating on the solidity of a squat castle, like a pile of draughts, away to the left, in the sun, on the flatness. He was saying that we didn't build like that nowadays.
Tietjens said:
"You're perfectly wrong, General. All the castles that Henry VIII. built in 1543 along this coast are mere monuments of jerry-building. . . . 'In 1543 jactat castra Delis, Sandgatto, Reia, Hastingas Henricus Rex' . . . That means he chucked them down . . ."
The General laughed:
"You are an incorrigible fellow. . . . If ever there's any known, certain fact . . ."
"But go andlookat the beastly things," Tietjens said. "You'll see they've got just a facing of Caen stone that they tide-floated here, and the fillings-up are just rubble, any rubbish. . . . Look here! It's a known certain fact, isn't it, that your eighteen-pounders are better than the French seventy-fives. They tell us so in the House, on the hustings, in the papers: the public believes it. . . . But would you put one of your tin-pot things firing—what is it?—four shells a minute?—with the little bent pins in their tails to stop the recoil—against their seventy-fives with the compressed-air cylinders. . . ."
The General sat stiffly upon his cushions:
"That's different," he said. "How the devil do you get to know these things?"
"It isn't different," Tietjens said, "it's the same muddle-headed frame of mind that sees good building in Henry VIII. as lets us into wars with hopelessly antiquated field guns and rottenly inferior ammunition. You'd fire any fellow on your staff who said we could stand up for a minute against the French."
"Well, anyhow," the General said, "I thank heaven you're not on my staff for you'd talk my hind leg off in a week. It's perfectly true that the public . . ."
But Tietjens was not listening. He was considering that it was natural for an unborn fellow like Sandbach to betray the solidarity that should exist between men. And it was natural for a childless woman like Lady Claudine Sandbach with a notoriously, a flagrantly unfaithful husband to believe in the unfaithfulness of the husbands of other women!
The General was saying:
"Who did you hear that stuff from about the French field gun?"
Tietjens said:
"From you. Three weeks ago!"
And all the other society women with unfaithful husbands. . . . They must do their best to down and out a man. They would cut him off their visiting lists! Let them. The barren harlots mated to faithless eunuchs! . . . Suddenly he thought that he didn't know for certain that he was the father of his child and he groaned.
"Well, what have I said wrong now?" the General asked. "Surely you don't maintain that pheasants do eat mangolds. . . ."
Tietjens proved his reputation for sanity with:
"No! I was just groaning at the thought of the Chancellor! That's sound enough for you, isn't it?" But it gave him a nasty turn. He hadn't been able to pigeonhole and padlock his disagreeable reflections. He had been as good as talking to himself. . . .
In the bow-window of another hostelry than his own he caught the eye of Mr. Waterhouse, who was looking at the view over the marshes. The great man beckoned to him and he went in. Mr. Waterhouse was anxious that Tietjens—whom he assumed to be a man of sense—should get any pursuit of the two girls stopped off. He couldn't move in the matter himself, but a five pound note and possibly a police promotion or so might be handed round if no advertisement were given to the mad women on account of their raid of that afternoon.
It was not a very difficult matter: for where the great man was to be found in the club lounge, there, in the bar, the mayor, the town clerk, the local head of the police, the doctors and solicitors would be found drinking together. And after it was arranged the great man himself came into the bar, had a drink and pleased them all immensely by his affability. . . .
Tietjens himself, dining alone with the Minister to whom he wanted to talk about his Labour Finance Act, didn't find him a disagreeable fellow: not really foolish, not sly except in his humour, tired obviously, but livening up after a couple of whiskies, and certainly not as yet plutocratic; with tastes for apple-pie and cream of a fourteen-year-old boy. And, even as regards his famous Act, which was then shaking the country to its political foundations, once you accepted its fundamental unsuitedness to the temperament and needs of the English working-class, you could see that Mr. Waterhouse didn't want to be dishonest. He accepted with gratitude several of Tietjens' emendations in the actuarial schedules. . . . And over their port they agreed on two fundamental legislative ideals: every working man to have a minimum of four hundred a year and every beastly manufacturer who wanted to pay less to be hung. That, it appeared, was the High Toryism of Tietjens as it was the extreme Radicalism of the extreme Left of the Left. . . .