men wrote to the Under-Secretary to say that if their screw wasn’t raised to two bob they’d vote solid against him at the next election….”
Miss Wannop said: “Well then!”
“So,” Tietjens said: “The Under-Secretary had the seven hundred men at eighteenpence fired and took on seven hundred women at tenpence. What good did the vote do the seven hundred men? What good did a vote ever do anyone?”
Miss Wannop checked at that and Tietjens prevented her exposure of his fallacy by saying quickly:
“Now, if the seven hundred women, backed by all the other ill-used, sweated women of the country, had threatened the Under-Secretary, burned the pillar-boxes, and cut up all the golf greens round his country-house, they’d have had their wages raised to half-a-crown next week. That’s the only straight method. It’s the feudal system at work.”
“Oh, but we couldn’t cut up
Tietjens groaned:
“It’s maddening,” he said, “to find women, as soon as they get in Council, as muddleheaded and as afraid to face straight issues as men!…”
“You won’t, by-the-by,” the girl interrupted, “be able to sell our horse to-morrow. You’ve forgotten that it will be Sunday.”
“I shall have to on Monday, then,” Tietjens said. “The point about the feudal system…”
Just after lunch — and it was an admirable lunch of the cold lamb, new potatoes and mint-sauce variety, the mint-sauce made with white wine vinegar and as soft as kisses, the claret perfectly drinkable and the port much more than that, Mrs. Wannop having gone back to the late professor’s wine merchants — Miss Wannop herself went to answer the telephone.
The cottage had no doubt been a cheap one, for it was old, roomy and comfortable; but effort had no doubt, too, been lavished on its low rooms. The dining-room had windows on each side and a beam across; the dining silver had been picked up at sales, the tumblers were old cut glass; on each side of the ingle was a grandfather’s chair. The garden had red brick paths, sunflowers, hollyhocks and scarlet gladioli. There was nothing to it all, but the garden-gate was well hung.
To Tietjens all this meant effort. Here was a woman who, a few years ago, was penniless, in the most miserable of circumstances, supporting life with the most exiguous of all implements. What effort hadn’t it meant! and what effort didn’t it mean? There was a boy at Eton… a senseless, but a gallant effort.
Mrs. Wannop sat opposite him in the other grandfather’s chair; an admirable hostess, an admirable lady. Full of spirit in dashes, but tired. As an old horse is tired that, taking three men to harness it in the stable yard, starts out like a stallion, but soon drops to a jog-trot. The face tired, really; scarlet-cheeked with the good air, but seamed downward. She could sit there at case, the plump hands covered with a black lace shawl, and descending on each side of her lap, as much at ease as any other Victorian great lady. But at lunch she had let drop that she had written for eight hours every day for the last four years — till that day – without missing a day. To-day being Saturday, she had no leader to write:
“And, my darling boy,” she had said to him. “I’m giving it to you. I’d give it to no other soul but your father’s son. Not even to —” And she had named the name that she most respected. “And that’s the truth,” she had added. Nevertheless, even over lunch, she had fallen into abstractions, heavily and deeply, and made fantastic misstatements, mostly about public affairs. It all meant a tremendous record.
And there he sat, his coffee and port on a little table beside him; the house belonging to him.
She said:
“My dearest boy… you’ve so much to do. Do you think you ought really to drive the girls to Plimsoll to-night? They’re young and inconsiderate; work comes first.”
Tietjens said:
“It isn’t the distance…”
“You’ll find that it is,” she answered humorously. “It’s twenty miles beyond Tenterden. If you don’t start till ten when the moon sets, you won’t be back till five, even if you’ve no accidents…. The horse is all right, though…”
Tietjens said:
“Mrs. Wannop, I ought to tell you that your daughter and I are being talked about. Uglily!”
She turned her head to him, rather stiffly. But she was only coming out of an abstraction.
“Eh?” she said, and then: “Oh! About the golf-links episode…. It must have looked suspicious. I daresay you made a fuss, too, with the police, to head them off her.” She remained pondering for a moment, heavily, like an old pope:
“Oh, you’ll live it down,” she said.
“I ought to tell you,” he persisted, “that it’s more serious than you think. I fancy I ought not to be here.”
“Not here!” she exclaimed. “Why, where else in the world should you be? You don’t get on with your wife; I know. She’s a regular wrong ’un. Who else could look after you as well as Valentine and I.”
In the acuteness of that pang, for, after all, Tietjens cared more for his wife’s reputation than for any other factor in a complicated world, Tietjens asked rather sharply why Mrs. Wannop had called Sylvia a wrong ’un. She said in rather a protesting, sleepy way:
“My dear boy, nothing! I’ve guessed that there are differences between you; give me credit for some perception. Then, as you’re perfectly obviously a right ’un, she must be a wrong ’un. That’s all, I assure you.”
In his relief Tietjens’ obstinacy revived. He liked this house; he liked this atmosphere; he liked the frugality, the choice of furniture, the way the light fell from window to window; the weariness after hard work; the affection of mother and daughter; the affection, indeed, that they both had for himself, and he was determined, if he could help it, not to damage the reputation of the daughter of the house.
Decent men, he held, don’t do such things, and he recounted with some care the heads of the conversation he had had with General Campion in the dressing-room. He seemed to see the cracked washbowls in their scrubbed oak settings. Mrs. Wannop’s face seemed to grow greyer, more aquiline; a little resentful! She nodded from time to time; either to denote attention or else in sheer drowsiness.
“My dear boy,” she said at last, “it’s pretty damnable to have such things said about you. I can see that. But I seem to have lived in a bath of scandal all my life. Every woman who has reached my age has that feeling… Now it doesn’t seem to matter.” She really nodded nearly off: then she started. “I don’t see… I really don’t see how I can help you as to your reputation. I’d do it if I could, believe me…. But I’ve other things to think of…. I’ve this house to keep going and the children to keep fed and at school. I can’t give all the thought I ought to to other people’s troubles…”
She started into wakefulness and right out of her chair.
“But what a beast I am!” she said, with a sudden intonation that was exactly that of her daughter; and, drifting with a Victorian majesty of shawl and long skirt behind Tietjens’ high-backed chair, she leaned over it and stroked the hair on his right temple:
“My dear boy,” she said. “Life’s a bitter thing. I’m an old novelist and know it. There you are working yourself to death to save the nation with a wilderness of cats and monkeys howling and squalling your personal reputation away…. It was Dizzy himself said these words to me at one of our receptions. ‘Here I am, Mrs. Wannop,’ he said… And…” she drifted for a moment. But she made another effort: “My dear boy,” she whispered, bending down her head to get it near his ear, “my dear boy; it doesn’t matter; it doesn’t really matter. You’ll live it down. The only thing that matters is to do good work. Believe an old woman that has lived very hard; ‘Hard lying money’ as they call it in the navy. It sounds like cant, but it’s the only real truth…. You’ll find consolation in that. And you’ll live it all down. Or perhaps you won’t; that’s for God in His mercy to settle. But it won’t matter; believe me, as thy day so shall thy strength be.” She drifted into other thoughts; she was much perturbed over the plot of a new novel and much wanted to get back to the consideration of it. She stood gazing at the photograph, very faded, of her husband in side-whiskers and an immense shirt-front, but she continued to stroke Tietjens’ temple with a subliminal tenderness.
This kept Tietjens sitting there. He was quite aware that he had tears in his eyes; this was almost too much tenderness to bear, and, at bottom his was a perfectly direct, simple, and sentimental soul. He always had
