“That’s no good as an identification of the party,” Tietjens said. “Macmaster gives a party every Friday, not Saturday. He has for years. Mrs. Macmaster goes there every Friday. To act as hostess. She has for years. Miss Wannop goes there every Friday after she has done work for her mother. To support Mrs. Macmaster….”
“She has for years!” Sylvia mocked him. “And you go there every Friday! to croodle over Miss Wannop. Oh, Christopher!” — she adopted a mock pathetic voice — “I never did have much opinion of your taste… but not that! Don’t let it be that. Put her back. She’s too young for you….”
“All the geniuses in London,” Tietjens continued equably, “go to Macmaster’s every Friday. He has been trusted with the job of giving away Royal Literary Bounty money: that’s why they go. They go: that’s why he was given his C.B.”
“I should not have thought they counted,” Sylvia said.
“Of course they count,” Tietjens said. “They write for the Press. They can get anybody anything… except themselves!”
“Like you!” Sylvia said; “exactly like you! They’re a lot of bribed squits.”
“Oh, no,” Tietjens said. “It isn’t done obviously or discreditably. Don’t believe that Macmaster distributes forty-pounders yearly of bounty on condition that he gets advancement. He hasnt, himself, the least idea of how it works, except by his atmosphere.”
“I never knew a beastlier atmosphere,” Sylvia said. “It reeked of rabbit’s food.”
“You’re quite mistaken,” Tietjens said; “that is the Russian leather of the backs of the specially bound presentation copies in the large bookcase.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sylvia said. “What are presentation copies? I should have thought you’d had enough of the beastly Russian smells Kiev stunk of.”
Tietjens considered for a moment.
“No! I don’t remember it,” he said. “Kiev?… Oh, it’s where we were…”
“You put half your mother’s money,” Sylvia said, “into the Government of Kiev 12½ per cent. City Tramways….”
At that Tietjens certainly winced, a type of wincing that Sylvia hadn’t wanted.
“You’re not fit to go out to-morrow,” she said. “I shall wire to old Campion.”
“Mrs. Duchemin,” Tietjens said woodenly. “Mrs. Macmaster that is, also used to burn a little incense in the room before the parties…. Those Chinese stinks… what do they call them? Well, it doesn’t matter”; he added that resignedly. Then he went on: “Don’t you make any mistake. Mrs. Macmaster is a very superior woman. Enormously efficient! Tremendously respected. I shouldn’t advise even you to come up against her, now she’s in the saddle.”
Mrs. Tietjens said:
“That sort of woman!”
Tietjens said:
“I don’t say you ever will come up against her. Your spheres differ. But, if you do, don’t… I say it because you seem to have got your knife into her.”
“I don’t like that sort of thing going on under my windows,” Sylvia said.
Tietjens said:
“What sort of thing?… I was trying to tell you a little about Mrs. Macmaster… she’s like the woman who was the mistress of the man who burned the other fellow’s horrid book…. I can’t remember the names.”
Sylvia said quickly:
“Don’t try!” In a slower tone she added: “I don’t in the least want to know….”
“Well, she was an Egeria!” Tietjens said. “An inspiration to the distinguished. Mrs. Macmaster is all that. The geniuses swarm round her, and with the really select ones she corresponds. She writes superior letters, about the Higher Morality usually; very delicate in feeling. Scotch naturally. When they go abroad she sends them snatches of London literary happenings; well done, mind you! And then, every now and then, she slips in something she wants Macmaster to have. But with great delicacy…. Say it’s this C.B…. she transfuses into the minds of Genius One, Two and Three the idea of a C.B. for Macmaster…. Genius No. One lunches with the Deputy Sub-Patronage Secretary, who looks after literary honours and lunches with geniuses to get the gossip….”
“Why,” Sylvia said, “did you lend Macmaster all that money?” Sylvia asked….
“Mind you,” Tietjens continued his own speech, “it’s perfectly proper. That’s the way patronage is distributed in this country; it’s the way it should be. The only clean way. Mrs. Duchemin backs Macmaster because he’s a first-class fellow for his job. And she is an influence over the geniuses because she’s a first-class person for hers…. She represents the higher, nicer morality for really nice Scots. Before long she will be getting tickets stopped from being sent to people for the Academy soireés. She already does it for the Royal Bounty dinners. A little later, when Macmaster is knighted for bashing the French in the eye, she’ll have a tiny share in auguster assemblies…. Those people have to ask somebody for advice. Well, one day you’ll want to present some débutante. And you won’t get a ticket….”
“Then I’m glad,” Sylvia exclaimed, “that I wrote to Brownie’s uncle about the woman. I was a little sorry this morning because, from what Glorvina told me, you’re in such a devil of a hole….”
“Who’s Brownie’s uncle?” Tietjens asked. “Lord… Lord… The banker! I know Brownie’s in his uncle’s bank.”
“Port Scatho!” Sylvia said. “I wish you wouldn’t act forgetting people’s names. You overdo it.”
Tietjens’ face went a shade whiter….
“Port Scatho,” he said, “is the chairman of the Inn Billeting Committees, of course. And you wrote to him?”
“I’m sorry,” Sylvia said. “I mean I’m sorry I said that about your forgetting…. I wrote to him and said that as a resident of the Inn I objected to your mistress — he knows the relationship, of course! — creeping in every Friday under a heavy veil and creeping out every Saturday at four in the morning.”
“Lord Port Scatho knows about my relationship,” Tietjens began.
“He saw her in your arms in the train,” Sylvia said. “It upset Brownie so much he offered to shut down your overdraft and return any cheques you had out marked R.D.”
“To please you?” Tietjens asked. “Do bankers do that sort of thing? It’s a new light on British society.”
“I suppose bankers try to please their women friends, like other men,” Sylvia said. “I told him very emphatically it wouldn’t please me… But…” She hesitated: “I wouldn’t give him a chance to get back on you. I don’t want to interfere in your affairs. But Brownie doesn’t like you….”
“He wants you to divorce me and marry him?” Tietjens asked.
“How did you know?” Sylvia asked indifferently. “I let him give me lunch now and then because it’s convenient to have him manage my affairs, you being away…. But of course he hates you for being in the army. All the men who aren’t hate all the men that are. And, of course, when there’s a woman between them the men who aren’t do all they can to do the others in. When they’re bankers they have a pretty good pull….”
“I suppose they have,” Tietjens said, vaguely; “of course they would have….”
Sylvia abandoned the blind-cord on which she had been dragging with one hand. In order that light might fall on her face and give more impressiveness to her words, for, in a minute or two, when she felt brave enough, she meant really to let him have her bad news! — she drifted to the fireplace. He followed her round, turning on his chair to give her his face.