And that is exactly what had happened.
The Duke — who must have kept a register of his remotest cousins —had, shortly before their return to London, heard that this young couple had parted with every prospect of a large and disagreeable scandal. He had approached Mrs. Satterthwaite — for whom he had a gloomy affection — and he had been pleased to hear that the rumour was a gross libel. So that, when the young couple actually turned up again — from Russia! — Rugeley, who perceived that they were not only together, but to all appearances quite united, was determined not only to make it up to them, but to show, in order to abash their libellers as signal a mark of his favour as he could without inconvenience to himself. He, therefore, twice — being a widower — invited Mrs. Satterthwaite to entertain for him, Sylvia to invite the guests, and then had Mrs. Tietjens’ name placed on the roll of those who could have the Rugeley box at the opera, on application at the Rugeley estate office, when it wasn’t wanted. This was a very great privilege and Sylvia had known how to make the most of it.
On the other hand, on the occasion of their conversation at Lobscheid, Tietjens had prophesied what at the time seemed to her a lot of tosh. It had been two or three years before, but Tietjens had said that about the time grouse-shooting began, in 1914, a European conflagration would take place which would shut up half the houses in Mayfair and beggar their inhabitants. He had patiently supported his prophecy with financial statistics as to the approaching bankruptcy of various European powers and the growingly acquisitive skill and rapacity of the inhabitants of Great Britain. She had listened to that with some attention: it had seemed to her rather like the usual nonsense talked in country houses — where, irritatingly, he never talked. But she liked to be able to have a picturesque fact or two with which to support herself when she too, to hold attention, wanted to issue moving statements as to revolutions, anarchies and strife in the offing. And she had noticed that when she magpied Tietjens’ conversations more serious men in responsible positions were apt to argue with her and to pay her more attention than before….
And now, walking along the table with her plate in her hand, she could not but acknowledge that, triumphantly — and very comfortably for her! — Tietjens had been right! In the third year of the war it was very convenient to have a dwelling, cheap, comfortable, almost august and so easy to work that you could have, at a pinch, run it with one maid, though the faithful Hullo Central had not let it come to that yet….
Being near Tietjens she lifted her plate, which contained two cold cutlets in aspic and several leaves of salad; she wavered a little to one side and, with a circular motion of her hand, let the whole contents fly at Tietjens’ head. She placed the plate on the table and drifted slowly towards the enormous mirror over the fireplace.
“I’m bored,” she said. “Bored! Bored!”
Tietjens had moved slightly as she had thrown. The cutlets and most of the salad leaves had gone over his shoulder. But one, couched, very green leaf was on his shoulder-strap, and the oil and vinegar from the plate — Sylvia knew that she took too much of all condiments — had splashed from the revers of his tunic to his green staff-badges. She was glad that she had hit him as much as that: it meant that her marksmanship had not been quite rotten. She was glad, too, that she had missed him. She was also supremely indifferent. It had occurred to her to do it and she had done it. Of that she was glad!
She looked at herself for some time in the mirror of bluish depths. She pressed her immense bandeaux with both hands on to her ears. She was all right: high-featured; alabaster complexion — but that was mostly the mirror’s doing — beautiful, long, cool hands — what man’s forehead wouldn’t long for them?… And that hair! What man wouldn’t think of it, unloosed on white shoulders!… Well, Tietjens wouldn’t! Or, perhaps, he did… she hoped he did, curse him, for he never saw that sight. Obviously sometimes, at night, with a little whiskey taken he must want to!
She rang the bell and bade Hullo Central sweep the plateful from the carpet; Hullo Central, tall and dark, looking with wide-open eyes, motionlessly at nothing.
Sylvia went along the bookshelves, pausing over a book back, “Vitae Hominum Notiss…” in gilt, irregular capitals pressed deep into the old leather. At the first long window she supported herself by the blind-cord. She looked out and back into the room.
“There’s that veiled woman!” she said, “going into eleven… It’s two o’clock, of course….”
She looked at her husband’s back hard, the clumsy khaki back that was getting round-shouldered now. Hard! She wasn’t going to miss a motion or a stiffening.
“I’ve found out who it is!” she said, “and who she goes to. I got it out of the porter.” She waited. Then she added:
“It’s the woman you travelled down from Bishop’s Auckland with. On the day war was declared.”
Tietjens turned solidly round in his chair. She knew he would do that out of stiff politeness, so it meant nothing.
His face was whitish in the pale light, but it was always whitish since he had come back from France and passed his day in a tin hut among dust heaps. He said:
“So you saw me!” But that, too, was mere politeness.
She said:
“Of course the whole crowd of us from Claudine’s saw you! It was old Campion who said she was a Mrs…. I’ve forgotten the name.”
Tietjens said:
“I imagined he would know her. I saw him looking in from, the corridor!”
She said:
“Is she your mistress, or only Macmaster’s, or the mistress of both of you? It would be like you to have a mistress in common…. She’s got a mad husband, hasn’t she? A clergyman.”
Tietjens said:
“She hasn’t!”
Sylvia checked suddenly in her next questions, and Tietjens, who in these discussions never manoeuvred for position, said:
“She has been Mrs. Macmaster over six months.”
Sylvia said:
“She married him then the day after her husband’s death.”
She drew a long breath and added:
“I don’t care…. She has been coming here every Friday for three years…. I tell you I shall expose her unless that little beast pays you to-morrow the money he owes you…. God knows you need it!” She said then hurriedly, for she didn’t know how Tietjens might take that proposition:
“Mrs. Wannop rang up this morning to know who was… oh!… the evil genius of the Congress of Vienna. Who, by the by, is Mrs. Wannop’s secretary? She wants to see you this afternoon. About war babies!”
Tietjens said:
“Mrs. Wannop hasn’t got a secretary. It’s her daughter who does her ringing-up.”
“The girl,” Sylvia said, “you were so potty about at that horrible afternoon Macmaster gave. Has she had a war baby by you? They all say she’s your mistress.”
Tietjens said:
“No, Miss Wannop isn’t my mistress. Her mother has had a commission to write an article about war babies. I told her yesterday there weren’t any war babies to speak of, and she’s upset because she won’t be able to make a sensational article. She wants to try and make me change my mind.”
Sylvia said:
“It was Miss Wannop at that beastly affair of your friend’s?” Sylvia asked. “And I suppose the woman who received was Mrs. What’s-er-name: your other mistress. An unpleasant show. I don’t think much of your taste. The one where all the horrible geniuses in London were? There was a man like a rabbit talked to me about how to write poetry.”