“It’s perhaps too… untidy…”
She had said:
“Yes! Yes… Ugly… Too… oh… private!”
He said, he remembered:
“But… for ever…”
She said, in a great hurry:
“But when you come back…. Permanently. And… oh, as if it were in public.”… “I don’t know,” she had added. “Ought we?… I’d be ready….” She added: “I will be ready for anything you ask.”
He had said at some time: “But obviously…. Not under this roof….” And he had added: “We’re the sort that… do not!”
She had answered, quickly too:
“Yes — that’s it. We’re that sort!” And then she had asked: “And Ethel’s party? Was it a great success?” It hadn’t, she knew, been an inconsequence. He had answered:
“Ah… That’s permanent…. That’s public…. There was Rugeley. The Duke… Sylvia brought him. She’ll be a great friend!… And the President of the Local Government Board, I think… and a Belgian… equivalent to Lord Chief Justice… and, of course, Claudine Sanbach…. Two hundred and seventy; all of the best, the modestly-elated Guggumses said as I left! And Mr. Ruggles… Yes!… They’re established…. No place for me!”
“Nor for me!” she had answered. She added: “But I’m glad!”
Patches of silence ran between them. They hadn’t yet got out of the habit of thinking they had to hold up the drunken brother. That had seemed to last for a thousand painful months…. Long enough to acquire a habit. The brother seemed to roar: “Haw — Haw — Kuryasch….” And after two minutes: “Haw — Haw — Kuryasch….” Hungarian, no doubt!
He said:
“It was splendid to see Vincent standing beside the Duke. Showing him a first edition! Not of course quite the thing for a, after all, wedding party! But how was Rugeley to know that?… And Vincent not in the least servile! He even corrected cousin Rugeley over the meaning of the word colophon! The first time he ever corrected a superior!… Established, you see!… And practically cousin Rugeley…. Dear Sylvia Tietjens’ cousin, so the next to nearest thing! Wife of Lady Macmaster’s oldest friend…. Sylvia going to them in their — quite modest! — little place in Surrey…. As for us,” he had concluded “they also serve who only stand and wait….”
She said:
“I suppose the rooms looked lovely.”
He had answered:
“Lovely…. They’d got all the pictures by that beastly fellow up from the rectory study in the dining-room on dark oak panelling…. A fair blaze of bosoms and nipples and lips and pomegranates…. The tallest silver candlesticks of course…. You remember, silver candlesticks and dark oak….”
She said:
“Oh, my dear… Don’t… Don’t!”
He had just touched the rim of his helmet with his folded gloves.
“So we just wash out!” he had said.
She said:
“Would you take this bit of parchment…. I got a little Jew girl to write on it in Hebrew: It’s “God bless you and keep you: God watch over you at your goings out and at…”
He tucked it into his breast pocket.
“The talismanic passage,” he said. “Of course I’ll wear it….”
She said:
“If we could wash out this afternoon…. It would make it easier to bear…. Your poor mother, you know, she was dying when we last…”
He said:
“You remember that… Even then you… And if I hadn’t gone to Lobscheid….”
She said:
“From the first moment I set eyes on you….”
He said:
“And I… from the first moment… I’ll tell you… if I looked out of a door… it was all like sand…. But to the half left a little bubbling up of water. That could be trusted. To keep on for ever…. You, perhaps, won’t understand.”
She said:
“Yes! I know!”
They were seeing landscapes…. sand dunes; close-cropped…. Some negligible shipping; a stump-masted brig from Archangel….”
“From the first moment,” he repeated.
She said:
“If we could wash out…”
He said, and for the first moment felt grand, tender, protective:
“Yes, you can,” he said. “You cut out from this afternoon, just before 4.58 it was when I said that to you and you consented… I heard the Horse Guards clock…. To now…. Cut it out; and join time up…. It can be done…. You know they do it surgically; for some illness; cut out a great length of the bowel and join the tube up…. For colitis, I think….”
She said:
“But I wouldn’t cut it out…. It was the first spoken sign.”
He said:
“No it wasn’t…. From the very beginning… with every word….”
She exclaimed:
“You felt that too!… We’ve been pushed, as in a carpenter’s vice…. We couldn’t have got away….”
He said: “By God! That’s it….”
He suddenly saw a weeping willow in St. James’s Park; 4.59! He had just said: “Will you be my mistress to-night?” She had gone away, half left, her hands to her face…. A small fountain; half left. That could be trusted to keep on for ever….
Along the lake side, sauntering, swinging his crooked stick, his incredibly shiny top-hat perched sideways, his claw-hammer coat tails, very long, flapping out behind, in dusty sunlight, his magpie pince-nez gleaming, had come, naturally, Mr. Ruggles. He had looked at the girl; then down at Tietjens, sprawled on his bench. He had just touched the brim of his shiny hat. He said:
“Dining at the club to-night?…”
Tietjens said: “No; I’ve resigned.”
With the aspect of a long-billed bird chewing a bit of putridity, Ruggles said:
“Oh, but we’ve had an emergency meeting of the committee… the committee was sitting… and sent you a letter asking you to reconsider….”
Tietjens said:
“I know…. I shall withdraw my resignation to-night. And resign again to-morrow morning.”
Ruggles’ muscles had relaxed for a quick second, then they stiffened.
“Oh, I say!” he had said. “Not that…. You couldn’t do that…. Not to the club!… It’s never been done…. It’s an insult….”
“It’s meant to be,” Tietjens said. “Gentlemen shouldn’t be expected to belong to a club that has certain members on its committee.”
Ruggles’ deepish voice suddenly grew very high.
“Eh, I say, you know!” he squeaked.
Tietjens had said:
“I’m not vindictive…. But I am deadly tired: of all old women and their chatter.”
Ruggles had said:
“I don’t…” His face had become suddenly dark brown, scarlet, and then brownish purple. He stood droopingly looking at Tietjens’ boots.
“Oh! Ah! Well!” he said at last. “See you at Macmaster’s to-night…. A great thing his knighthood. First-class man….”
That had been the first Tietjens had heard of Macmaster’s knighthood; he had missed looking at the honours’ list of that morning. Afterwards, dining alone with Sir Vincent and Lady Macmaster, he had seen, pinned up, a back view of the Sovereign doing something to Vincent; a photo for next morning’s papers. From Macmaster’s embarrassed hushings of Edith Ethel’s explanation that the honour was for special services of a specific kind Tietjens guessed both the nature of Macmaster’s service and the fact that the little man hadn’t told Edith Ethel who, originally, had done the work. And — just like his girl — Tietjens had let it go at that. He didn’t see why poor Vincent shouldn’t have that little bit of prestige at home — under all the monuments! But he hadn’t — though through all the evening Macmaster, with the solicitude and affection of a cringing Italian greyhound, had hastened from celebrity to celebrity to hang over Tietjens, and although Tietjens knew that his friend was grieved and appalled, like any woman, at his, Tietjens’, going out again to France — Tietjens hadn’t been able to look Macmaster again in the face…. He had felt ashamed. He had felt, for the first time in his life, ashamed!