Sylvia screamed piercingly:
“Stop! stop! stop!” She clutched at the mantelpiece to hold herself up. “Your father died of a broken heart,” she said, “because your brother’s best friend, Ruggles, told him you were a squit who lived on women’s money and had got the daughter of his oldest friend with child….”
Tietjens said:
“Ohl Ah! Yes!… I suspected that. I knew it, really. I suppose the poor dear knows better now. Or perhaps he doesn’t…. It doesn’t matter.”
II
IT has been remarked that the peculiarly English habit of self-suppression in matters of the emotions puts the Englishman at a great disadvantage in moments of unusual stresses. In the smaller matters of the general run of life he will be impeccable and not to be moved; but in sudden confrontations of anything but physical dangers he is apt — he is, indeed, almost certain – to go to pieces very badly. This, at least, was the view of Christopher Tietjens, and he very much dreaded his interview with Lord Port Scatho — because he feared that he must be near breaking point.
In electing to be peculiarly English in habits and in as much of his temperament as he could control — for, though no man can choose the land of, his birth or his ancestry, he can, if he have industry and determination, so watch over himself as materially to modify his automatic habits — Tietjens had quite advisedly and of set purpose adopted a habit of behaviour that he considered to be the best in the world for the normal life. If every day and all day long you chatter at high pitch and with the logic and lucidity of the Frenchman; if you shout in self-assertion, with your hat on your stomach, bowing from a stiff spine and by implication threaten all day long to shoot your interlocutor, like the Prussian; if you are as lachrymally emotional as the Italian, or as drily and epigrammaticaly imbecile over unessentials as the American, you will have a noisy, troublesome, and thoughtless society without any of the surface calm that should distinguish the atmosphere of men when they are together. You will never have deep arm-chairs in which to sit for hours in clubs thinking of nothing at all — or of the off-theory in bowling. On the other hand, in the face of death — except at sea, by fire, railway accident or accidental drowning in rivers; in the face of madness, passion, dishonour or — and particularly — prolonged mental strain, you will have all the disadvantage of the beginner at any game and may come off very badly indeed. Fortunately death, love, public dishonour and the like are rare occurrences in the life of the average man, so that the great advantage would seem to have lain with English society; at any rate before the later months of the year 1914. Death for man came but once: the danger of death so seldom as to be practically negligible; love of a distracting kind was a disease merely of the weak; public dishonour for persons of position, so great was the hushing up power of the ruling class, and the power of absorption of the remoter Colonies, was practically unknown.
Tietjens found himself now faced by all these things, coming upon him cumulatively and rather suddenly, and he had before him an interview that might cover them all and with a man whom he much respected and very much desired not to hurt. He had to face these, moreover, with a brain two-thirds of which felt numb. It was exactly like that.
It was not so much that he couldn’t use what brain he had as trenchantly as ever: it was that there were whole regions of fact upon which he could no longer call in support of his argument. His knowledge of history was still practically negligible: he knew nothing whatever of the humaner letters and, what was far worse, nothing at all of the higher and more sensuous phases of mathematics. And the comings back of these things was much slower than he had confessed to Sylvia. It was with these disadvantages that he had to face Lord Port Scatho.
Lord Port Scatho was the first man of whom Sylvia Tietjens had thought when she had been considering of men who were absolutely honourable, entirely benevolent… and rather lacking in constructive intelligence. He had inherited the management of one of the most respected of the great London banks, so that his commercial and social influences were very extended; he was extremely interested in promoting Low Church interests, the reform of the divorce laws and sports for the people, and he had a great affection for Sylvia Tietjens. He was forty-five, beginning to put on weight, but by no means obese; he had a large, quite round head, very high-coloured cheeks that shone as if with frequent ablutions, and uncropped, dark moustache, dark, very cropped, smooth hair, brown eyes, a very new grey tweed suit, a very new grey Trilby hat, a black tie in a gold ring and very new patent leather boots that had white calf tops. He had a wife almost the spit of himself in face, figure, probity, kindliness, and interests, except that for his interest in sports for the people she substituted that for maternity hospitals. His heir was his nephew, Mr. Brownlie, known as Brownie, who would also be physically the exact spit of his uncle, except that, not having put on flesh, he appeared to be taller and that his moustache and hair were both a little longer and more fair. This gentleman entertained for Sylvia Tietjens a gloomy and deep passion that he considered to be perfectly honourable because he desired to marry her after she had divorced her husband. Tietjens he desired to ruin because he wished to marry Mrs. Tietjens and partly because he considered Tietjens to be an undesirable person of no great means. Of this passion Lord Port Scatho was ignorant.
He now came into the Tietjens’ dining-room, behind the servant, holding an open letter; he walked rather stiffly because he was very much worried. He observed that Sylvia had been crying and was still wiping her eyes. He looked round the room to see if he could see in it anything to account for Sylvia’s crying. Tietjens was still sitting at the head of the lunch-table. Sylvia was rising from a chair beside the fireplace.
Lord Port Scatho said:
“I want to see you, Tietjens, for a minute on business.”
Tietjens said:
“I can give you ten minutes….”
Lord Port Scatho said:
“Mrs. Tietjens perhaps…”
He waved the open letter towards Mrs. Tietjens. Tietjens said:
“No! Mrs. Tietjens will remain.” He desired to say something more friendly. He said: “Sit down.”
Lord Port Scatho said:
“I shan’t be stopping a minute. But really…” and he moved the letter, but not with so wide a gesture, towards Sylvia.
“I have no secrets from Mrs. Tietjens,” Tietjens said. “Absolutely none…”
Lord Port Scatho said:
“No… No, of course not… But…”
Tietjens said:
“Similarly, Mrs. Tietjens has no secrets from me. Again absolutely none.”
Sylvia said:
“I don’t, of course, tell Tietjens about my maid’s love affairs or what the fish costs every day.”
Tietjens said:
“You’d better sit down.” He added on an impulse of kindness: “As a matter of fact I was just clearing up things for Sylvia to take over… this command.” It was part of the disagreeableness of his mental disadvantages that upon occasion he could not think of other than military phrases. He felt intense annoyance. Lord Port Scatho affected him with some of the slight nausea that in those days you felt at contact with the civilian who knew none of your thoughts, phrases, or preoccupations. He added, nevertheless equably:
“One has to clear up. I’m going out.”
Lord Port Scatho said hastily:
“Yes; yes. I won’t keep you. One has so many engagements in spite of the war….” His eyes wandered in bewilderment. Tietjens could see them at last fixing themselves on the oil stains that Sylvia’s salad dressing had left on his collar and green tabs. He said to himself that he must remember to change his tunic before he went to the War Office. He must not forget. Lord Port Scatho’s bewilderment at these oil stains was such that he had lost himself in the desire to account for them…. You could see the slow thoughts moving inside his square, polished brown forehead. Tietjens wanted very much to help him. He wanted to say: “It’s about Sylvia’s letter that you’ve got in your hand, isn’t it?” But Lord Port Scatho had entered the room with the stiffness, with the odd, high-collared sort of gait that on formal and unpleasant occasions Englishmen use when they approach each other; braced up, a little like strange dogs meeting in the street. In view of that, Tietjens couldn’t say “Sylvia.”… But it would add to the
