Valentine said:
“You mean … Mrs. Christopher Tietjens …”
Mrs. Duchemin went on:
“My husband insists that I should ask you. But I will not. I simply will not. I invented for you the excuse of the frock. Of course we could have given you a frock if that man is so mean or so penniless as not to keep you decent. But I repeat, with our official position we cannot—we cannot; it would be madness!—connive at this intrigue. And all the more as the wife appears likely to be friendly with us. She has been once: she may well come again.” She paused and went on solemnly: “And I warn you, if the split comes—as it must, for what woman could stand it!—it is Mrs. Tietjens we shall support. She will always find a home here.”
An extraordinary picture of Sylvia Tietjens standing beside Edith Ethel and dwarfing her as a giraffe dwarfs an emu, came into Valentine’s head. She said:
“Ethel! Have I gone mad? Or is it you? Upon my word I can’t understand …”
Mrs. Duchemin exclaimed:
“For God’s sake hold your tongue, you shameless thing! You’ve had a child by the man, haven’t you?”
Valentine saw suddenly the tall silver candlesticks, the dark polished panels of the rectory and Edith Ethel’s mad face and mad hair whirling before them.
She said:
“No! I certainly haven’t. Can you get that into your head? I certainly haven’t.” She made a further effort over immense fatigue. “I assure you—I beg you to believe if it will give you any ease—that Mr. Tietjens has never addressed a word of love to me in his life. Nor have I to him. We have hardly talked to each other in all the time we have known each other.”
Mrs. Duchemin said in a harsh voice:
“Seven people in the last five weeks have told me you have had a child by that brute beast: he’s ruined because he has to keep you and your mother and the child. You won’t deny that he has a child somewhere hidden away? …”
Valentine exclaimed suddenly:
“Oh, Ethel, you mustn’t … you mustn’t be jealous of me! If you only knew you wouldn’t be jealous of me. … I suppose the child you were going to have was by Christopher? Men are like that. … But not of me! You need never, never. I’ve been the best friend you can ever have had …”
Mrs. Duchemin exclaimed harshly, as if she were being strangled:
“A sort of blackmail! I knew it would come to that! It always does with your sort. Then do your damnedest, you harlot. You never set foot in this house again! Go you and rot …” Her face suddenly expressed extreme fear and with great swiftness she ran up the room. Immediately afterwards she was tenderly bending over a great bowl of roses beneath the lustre. The voice of Vincent Macmaster from the door had said:
“Come in, old man. Of course I’ve got ten minutes. The book’s in here somewhere …”
Macmaster was beside her, rubbing his hands, bending with his curious, rather abject manner, and surveying her agonisedly with his eyeglass, which enormously magnified his lashes, his red lower lid and the veins on his cornea.
“Valentine!” he said, “my dear Valentine. … You’ve heard? We’ve decided to make it public. … Guggums will have invited you to our little feast. And there will be a surprise I believe …”
Edith Ethel looked, as she bent, lamentably and sharply, over her shoulder at Valentine.
“Yes,” she said bravely, aiming her voice at Edith Ethel, “Ethel has invited me. I’ll try to come …”
“Oh, but you must,” Macmaster said, “just you and Christopher, who’ve been so kind to us. For old time’s sake. You could not …”
Christopher Tietjens was ballooning slowly from the door, his hand tentatively held out to her. As they practically never shook hands at home it was easy to avoid his hand. She said to herself: “Oh! How is it possible! How could he have …” And the terrible situation poured itself over her mind: the miserable little husband, the desperately nonchalant lover—and Edith Ethel mad with jealousy! A doomed household. She hoped Edith Ethel had seen her refuse her hand to Christopher.
But Edith Ethel, bent over her rose bowl, was burying her beautiful face in flower after flower. She was accustomed to do this for many minutes on end: she thought that, so, she resembled a picture by the subject of her husband’s first little monograph. And so, Valentine thought, she did. She was trying to tell Macmaster that Friday evenings were difficult times for her to get away. But her throat ached too much. That, she knew, was her last sight of Edith Ethel, whom she had loved very much. That also, she hoped, would be her last sight of Christopher Tietjens—whom also she had loved very much. … He was browsing along a bookshelf, very big and very clumsy.
Macmaster pursued her into the stony hall with clamorous repetitions of his invitation. She couldn’t speak. At the great iron-lined door he held her hand for an eternity, gazing lamentably, his face close up against hers. He exclaimed in accents of great fear:
“Has Guggums? … She hasn’t …” His face, which when you saw it so closely was a little blotched, distorted itself with anxiety: he glanced aside with panic at the drawing-room door.
Valentine burst a voice through her agonised throat.
“Ethel,” she said, “has told me she’s to be Lady Macmaster. I’m so glad. I’m so truly glad for you. You’ve got what you wanted, haven’t you?”
His relief let him get out distractedly, yet as if he were too tired to be any more agitated:
“Yes! yes! … It’s, of course, a secret. … I don’t want him told till Friday next … so as to be a sort of bonne bouche … He’s practically certain to go out again on Saturday. … They’re sending out a great batch of them … for the big push …” At that she tried to draw her hand from his: she missed what he was saying. It was something to the effect that he would give it all for a happy little party.
