Her mother had lately written and even found a publisher for a book—and the book had showed no signs of failing powers. On the contrary, having been perforce stopped off the perpetual journalism that had dissipated her energies, Mrs. Wannop had turned out something that Valentine knew was sound, sane and well done. Abstractions of failing attention to the outside world are not necessarily in a writer signs of failing, as a writer. It may mean merely that she is giving so much thought to her work that her outside contacts suffer. If that is the case her work will gain. That this might be the case with her mother was Valentine’s great and secret hope. Her mother was barely sixty: many great works have been written by writers aged between sixty and seventy. …
And the crowding of youngish men round the old lady had given Valentine a little confirmation of that hope. The book naturally, in the maelstrom flux and reflux of the time, had attracted no attention, and poor Mrs. Wannop had not succeeded in extracting a penny for it from her adamantine publisher: she hadn’t, indeed, made a penny for several months, and they existed almost at starvation point in their little den of a villa—on Valentine’s earnings as athletic teacher. … But that little bit of attention in that semi-public place had seemed, at least, as a confirmation to Valentine: there probably was something sound, sane and well done in her mother’s work. That was almost all she asked of life.
And, indeed, whilst she stood by her mother’s chair, thinking with a little bitter pathos that if Edith Ethel had left the three or four young men to her mother the three or four might have done her poor mother a little good, with innocent puffs and the like—and heaven knew they needed that little good badly enough!—a very thin and untidy young man did drift back to Mrs. Wannop and asked, precisely, if he might make a note or two for publication as to what Mrs. Wannop was doing. “Her book,” he said, “had attracted so much attention. They hadn’t known that they had still writers among them …”
A singular, triangular drive had begun through the chairs from the fireplace. That was how it had seemed to Valentine! Mrs. Tietjens had looked at them, had asked Christopher a question and, immediately, as if she were coming through waist-high surf, had borne down Macmaster and Mrs. Duchemin, flanking her obsequiously, setting aside chairs and their occupants, Tietjens and the two, rather bashfully following staff officers, broadening out the wedge.
Sylvia, her long arm held out from a yard or so away, was stretching out her hand to Valentine’s mother. With her clear, high, unembarrassed voice she exclaimed, also from a yard or so away, so as to be heard by everyone in the room:
“You’re Mrs. Wannop. The great writer! I’m Christopher Tietjens’ wife.”
The old lady, with her dim eyes, looked up at the younger woman towering above her.
“You’re Christopher’s wife!” she said. “I must kiss you for all the kindness he has shown me.”
Valentine felt her eyes filling with tears. She saw her mother stand up, place both her hands on the other woman’s shoulders. She heard her mother say:
“You’re a most beautiful creature. I’m sure you’re good!”
Sylvia stood, smiling faintly, bending a little to accept the embrace. Behind the Macmasters, Tietjens and the staff officers, a little crowd of goggle eyes had ranged itself.
Valentine was crying. She slipped back behind the tea-urns, though she could hardly feel the way. Beautiful! The most beautiful woman she had ever seen! And good! Kind! You could see it in the lovely way she had given her cheek to that poor old woman’s lips. … And to live all day, forever, beside him … she, Valentine, ought to be ready to lay down her life for Sylvia Tietjens. …
The voice of Tietjens said, just above her head:
“Your mother seems to be having a regular triumph,” and, with his good-natured cynicism, he added, “it seems to have upset some applecarts!” They were confronted with the spectacle of Macmaster conducting the young celebrity from her deserted armchair across the room to be lost in the horseshoe of crowd that surrounded Mrs. Wannop.
Valentine said:
“You’re quite gay today. Your voice is different. I suppose you’re better?” She did not look at him. His voice came:
“Yes! I’m relatively gay!” It went on: “I thought you might like to know. A little of my mathematical brain seems to have come to life again. I’ve worked out two or three silly problems …”
She said:
“Mrs. Tietjens will be pleased.”
“Oh!” the answer came. “Mathematics don’t interest her any more than cockfighting.” With immense swiftness, between word and word, Valentine read into that a hope! This splendid creature did not sympathise with her husband’s activities. But he crushed it heavily by saying: “Why should she? She’s so many occupations of her own that she’s unrivalled at!”
He began to tell her, rather minutely, of a calculation he had made only that day at lunch. He had gone into the Department of Statistics and had had rather a row with Lord Ingleby of Lincoln. A pretty title the fellow had taken! They had wanted him to ask to be seconded to his old department for a certain job. But he had said he’d be damned if he would. He detested and despised the work they were doing.
Valentine, for the first time in her life, hardly listened to what he said. Did the fact that
