Then Macmaster said to her:
“You come from Edinburgh? You’ll know the Fifeshire coast then.”
“Do I not?” she said. His hand remained in hers. He began to talk of the whins on the links and the sanderlings along the flats, with such a Scots voice and in phrases so vivid that she saw her childhood again, and had in her eyes a wetness of a happier order. She released his cool hand after a long gentle pressure. But when it was gone it was as if much of her life went. She said: “You’ll be knowing Kingussie House, just outside your town. It was there I spent my holidays as a child.”
He answered:
“Maybe I played round it a barefoot lad and you in your grandeur within.”
She said:
“Oh, no! Hardly! There would be the difference of our ages! And… And indeed there arc other things I will tell you.”
She addressed herself to Tictjens, with all her heroic armour of charm buckled on again:
“Only think! I find Mr. Macmaster and I almost played together in our youths.”
He looked at her, she knew, with a commiseration that she hated:
“Then you’re an older friend than I,” he asked, “though I’ve known him since I was fourteen, and I don’t believe you could be a better. He’s a good fellow….”
She hated him for his condescension towards a better man and for his warning — she
Mrs. Wannop gave a distinct, but not an alarming scream. Mr. Horsley had been talking to her about an unusual fish that used to inhabit the Moselle in Roman times. The
“No,” he shouted, “it’s been said to be the roach. But there are no roach in the river now.
Mrs. Wannop’s scream and her wide gesture: her hand, indeed, was nearly over his mouth and her trailing sleeve across his plate! — were enough to interrupt him.
“
She pushed her daughter out of her seat and, moving round beside the young man, she overwhelmed him with vociferous love. As Tietjens had turned to speak to Mrs. Duchemin she had recognized his aquiline half-profile as exactly that of his father at her own wedding-breakfast. To the table that knew it by heart — though Tietjens himself didn’t! — she recited the story of how his father had saved her life, and was her mascot. And she offered the son — for to the father she had never been allowed to make any return — her house, her purse, her heart, her time, her all. She was so completely sincere that, as the party broke up, she just nodded to Macmaster and, catching Tietjens forcibly by the arm, said perfunctorily to the critic:
“Sorry I can’t help you any more with the article. But my dear Chrissie must have the books he wants. At once! This very minute!”
She moved off, Tietjens grappled to her, her daughter following as a young swan follows its parents. In her gracious manner Mrs. Duchemin had received the thanks of her guests for her wonderful breakfast, and had hoped that now that they had found their ways there….
The echoes of the dispersed festival seemed to whisper in the room. Macmaster and Mrs. Duchemin faced each other, their eyes wary — and longing.
He said:
“It’s dreadful to have to go now. But I have an engagement.”
She said:
“Yes! I know! With your great friends.”
He answered:
“Oh, only with Mr. Waterhouse and General Campion… and Mr. Sandbach, of course….”
She had a moment of fierce pleasure at the thought that Tietjens was not to be of the company:
“I don’t want you to be mistaken about Kingussie House. It was just a holiday school. Not a grand place.”
“It was very costly,” he said, and she seemed to waver on her feet.
“Yes! yes!” she said, nearly in a whisper. “But you’re so grand now. I was only the child of very poor bodies. Johnstons of Midlothian. But very poor bodies…. I… He bought me, you might say. You know…. Put me to very rich schools: when I was fourteen… my people were glad…. But I think if my mother had known when I married…” She writhed her whole body. “Oh, dreadful! dreadful!” she exclaimed. “I want you to know…”
His hands were shaking as if he had been in a jolting cart….
Their lips met in a passion of pity and tears. He removed his mouth to say: “I must see you this evening…. I shall be mad with anxiety about you.” She whispered: “Yes! yes!… In the yew walk.” Her eyes were closed, she pressed her body fiercely into his. “You are the… first… man…” she breathed.
“I will be the only one for ever,” he said.
He began to see himself: in the tall room, with the long curtains: a round, eagle mirror reflected them gleaming: like a bejewelled picture with great depths: the entwined figures.
They drew apart to gaze at each other, holding hands…. The voice of Tietjens said:
“Macmaster! You’re to dine at Mrs. Wannop’s to-night. Don’t dress; I shan’t.” He was looking at them without any expression, as if he had interrupted a game of cards; large, grey, fresh-featured, the white patch glistening on the side of his grizzling hair.
Macmaster said:
“All right. It’s near here, isn’t it?… I’ve got an engagement just after…” Tietjens said that that would be all right: he would be working himself. All night probably. For Waterhouse…
Mrs. Duchemin said with swift jealousy:
“You let him order you about…” Tietjens was gone.
Macmaster said absently:
“Who? Chrissie? Yes! Sometimes I him, sometimes he me…. We make engagements. My best friend. The most brilliant man in England, of the best stock too. Tietjens of Groby….” Feeling that she didn’t appreciate his friend he was abstractly piling on commendations: “He’s making calculations now. For the Government that no other man in England could make. But he’s going…”
An extreme languor had settled on him, he felt weakened but yet triumphant with the cessation of her grasp. It occurred to him numbly that he would be seeing less of Tietjens. A grief. He heard himself quote:
“‘Since when we stand side by side!’” His voice trembled.
“Ah yes!” came in her deep tones: “The beautiful lines… They’re true. We must part. In this world…” They seemed to her lovely and mournful words to say; heavenly to have them to say, vi-bratingly, arousing all sorts of images. Macmaster, mournfully too, said:
“We must wait.” He added fiercely: “But to-night, at dusk!” He imagined the dusk, under the yew hedge. A shining motor drew up in the sunlight under the window.
“Yes! yes!” she said. “There’s a little white gate from the lane.” She imagined their interview of passion and mournfulness amongst dim objects half seen. So much of glamour she could allow herself.
Afterwards he must come to the house to ask after her health and they would walk side by side on the lawn, publicly, in the warm light, talking of indifferent but beautiful poetries, a little wearily, but with what currents electrifying and passing between their flesh…. And then: long, circumspect years….
Macmaster went down the tall steps to the car that gleamed in the summer sun. The roses shone over the supremely levelled turf. His heel met the stones with the hard tread of a conqueror. He could have shouted aloud!
VI
