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 you
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 to
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 it
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 use 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
