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of course, tell Tietjens about my maid’s love affairs or what the fish costs every day.’
Tietjens said:
‘You’d better sit down.’ He added on an impulse of kindness: ‘As a matter of fact, I was just clearing up things for Sylvia to take over . . . this command.’ It was part of the disagreeableness of his mental disadvantages that upon occasion he could not think of other than military phrases. He felt intense annoyance. Lord Port Scatho affected him with some of the slight nausea that in those days you felt at contact with the civilian who knew none of your thoughts, phrases or preoccupations. He added, nevertheless equably:
‘One has to clear up. I’m going out.’
Lord Port Scatho said hastily:
‘Yes; yes, I won’t keep you. One has so many engagements in spite of the war . . . ’ His eyes wandered in bewilderment. Tietjens could see them at last fixing themselves on the oil stains that Sylvia’s salad dressing had left on his collar and green tabs. He said to himself that he must remember to change his tunic before he went to the War Office. He must not forget. Lord Port Scatho’s bewilderment at these oil stains was such that he had lost himself in the desire to account for them . . . You could see the slow thoughts moving inside his square, polished brown forehead. Tietjens wanted very much to help him. He wanted to say: ‘It’s about Sylvia’s letter that you’ve got in your hand, isn’t it?’ But Lord Port Scatho had entered the room with the stiffness, with the odd, high-collared sort of gait that on formal and unpleasant occasions Englishmen use when they approach each other; braced up, a little like strange dogs meeting in the street. In view of that, Tietjens couldn’t say ‘Sylvia.’ . . . But it would add to the formality and unpleasantness if he said again ‘Mrs Tietjens!’ That wouldn’t help Port Scatho . . .
Sylvia said suddenly:
‘You don’t understand, apparently. My husband is going out to the front line. To-morrow morning. It’s for the second time.’
Lord Port Scatho sat down suddenly on a chair beside the table. With his fresh face and brown eyes suddenly anguished he exclaimed:
‘But, my dear fellow! You! Good God!’ and then to Sylvia: ‘I beg your pardon!’ To clear his mind he said again to Tietjens: ’You! Going out to-morrow!’ And, when the idea was really there, his face suddenly cleared. He looked with a swift, averted glance at Sylvia’s face and then for a fixed moment at Tietjens’ oil-stained tunic. Tietjens could see him explaining to himself with immense enlightenment that that explained both Sylvia’s tears and the oil on the tunic. For Port Scatho might well imagine that officers went to the conflict in their oldest clothes . . .
But, if his puzzled brain cleared, his distressed mind became suddenly distressed doubly. He had to add to the distress he had felt on entering the room and finding himself in the midst of what he took to be a highly emotional family parting. And Tietjens knew that during the whole war Port Scatho had never witnessed a family parting at all. Those that were not inevitable he would avoid like the plague, and his own nephew and all his wife’s nephews were in the bank. That was quite proper, for if the ennobled family of Brownlie were not of the Ruling Class—who had to go!—they were of the Administrative Class, who were privileged to stay. So he had seen no partings.
Of his embarrassed hatred of them he gave immediate evidence. For he first began several sentences of praise of Tietj ens’ heroism which he was unable to finish and then, getting quickly out of his chair, exclaimed:
‘In the circumstances then . . . the little matter I came about . . . I couldn’t of course think . . .
Tietjens said:
‘No; don’t go. The matter you came about—I know all about it of course—had better be settled.’
Port Scatho sat down again: his jaw fell slowly: under his bronzed complexion his skin became a shade paler. He said at last:
‘You know what I came about? But then . . .
His ingenuous and kindly mind could be seen to be working with reluctance: his athletic figure drooped. He pushed the letter that he still held along the tablecloth towards Tietjens. He said, in the voice of one awaiting a reprieve:
‘But you can’t be . . . aware . . . Not of this letter . . .
Tietjens left the letter on the cloth, from there he could read the large handwriting on the blue-grey paper:
‘Mrs Christopher Tietjens presents her compliments to Lord Port Scatho and the Honourable Court of Benchers of the Inn . . . 2 He wondered where Sylvia had got hold of that phraseology: he imagined it to be fantastically wrong. He said:
‘I have already told you that I know about this letter, as I have already told you that I know—and I will add that I approve!—of all Mrs Tietjens’ actions . . . ’ With his hard blue eyes he looked browbeatingly into Port Scatho’s soft brown orbs, knowing that he was sending the message: ‘Think what you please and be damned to you!’
The gentle brown things remained on his face; then they filled with an expression of deep pain. Port Scatho cried:
‘But good God! Then . . . ’
He looked at Tietjens again. His mind, which took refuge from life in the affairs of the Low Church, of Divorce Law Reform and of Sports for the People, became a sea of pain at the contemplation of strong situations. His eyes said:
‘For heaven’s sake do not tell me that Mrs Duchemin, the mistress of your dearest friend, is the mistress of yourself, and that you take this means of wreaking a vulgar spite on them.’
Tietjens, leaning heavily forward, made his eyes as enigmatic as he could; he said very slowly and very clearly:
‘Mrs Tietjens is, of course, not aware of all the circumstances.’
Port Scatho threw himself back in his chair.
‘I don’t understand!’ he said. ‘I do not understand. How am I to act? You do not wish me to act on this letter? You can’t!’
Tietjens, who found himself, said:
‘You had better talk to Mrs Tietjens about that. I will say something myself later. In the meantime let me say that Mrs Tietjens would seem to me to be quite within her rights. A lady, heavily veiled, comes here every Friday and remains until four on the Saturday morning . . . If you are prepared to palliate the proceeding you had better do so to Mrs Tietjens . . . ’
Port Scatho turned agitatedly on Sylvia.
‘I can’t, of course, palliate,’ he said. ‘God forbid . . . But, my dear Sylvia . . . my dear Mrs Tietjens. In the case of two people so much esteemed! . . . We have, of course, argued the matter of principle. It is a part of a subject I have very much at heart: the granting of divorce . . . civil divorce, at least . . . in cases in which one of the parties to the marriage is in a lunatic asylum. I have sent you the pamphlets of E. S. P. Haynes that we publish. I know that as a Roman Catholic you hold strong views . . . I do not, I assure you, stand for latitude . . . ’ He became then simply eloquent: he really had the matter at heart, one of his sisters having been for many years married to a lunatic. He expatiated on the agonies of this situation all the more eloquently in that it was the only form of human distress which he had personally witnessed.
Sylvia took a long look at Tietjens: he imagined for counsel. He looked at her steadily for a moment, then at Port Scatho, who was earnestly turned to her, then back at her. He was trying to say:
‘Listen to Port Scatho for a minute. I need time to think of my course of action!’
He needed, for the first time in his life, time to think of his course of action.
He had been thinking with his under mind ever since Sylvia had told him that she had written her letter to the benchers denouncing Macmaster and his woman; ever since Sylvia had reminded him that Mrs Duchemin in the Edinburgh to London express of the day before the war had been in his arms he had seen, with extraordinary clearness, a great many north country scenes