And, indeed, his wife’s flight had left him almost completely without emotions that he could realise, and he had not spoken more than twenty words at most about the event. Those had been mostly to his father, who, very tall, very largely built, silver-haired and erect, had drifted, as it were, into Macmaster’s drawing-room in Gray’s Inn, and after five minutes of silence had said:
“You will divorce?”
Christopher had answered:
“No! No one but a blackguard would ever submit a woman to the ordeal of divorce.”
Mr. Tietjens had suggested that, and after an interval had asked:
“You will permit her to divorce you?”
He had answered:
“If she wishes it. There’s the child to be considered.”
Mr. Tietjens said:
“You will get her settlement transferred to the child?”
Christopher answered:
“If it can be done without friction.”
Mr. Tietjens had commented only:
“Ah!” Some minutes later he had said:
“Your mother’s very well.” Then: “That motor-plough didn’t answer,” and then: “I shall be dining at the club.”
Christopher said:
“May I bring Macmaster in, sir? You said you would put him up.”
Mr. Tietjens answered:
“Yes, do. Old General ffolliott will be there. He’ll second him. He’d better make his acquaintance.” He had gone away.
Tietjens considered that his relationship with his father was an almost perfect one. They were like two men in the club — the only club; thinking so alike that there was no need to talk. His father had spent a great deal of time abroad before succeeding to the estate. When, over the moors, he went into the industrial town that he owned, he drove always in a coach-and-four. Tobacco smoke had never been known inside Groby Halclass="underline" Mr. Tietjens had twelve pipes filled every morning by his head gardener and placed in rose bushes down the drive. These he smoked during the day. He farmed a good deal of his own land; had sat for Holdernesse from 1876 to 1881, but had not presented himself for election after the redistribution of seats; he was patron of eleven livings; rode to hounds every now and then, and shot fairly regularly. He had three other sons and two daughters, and was now sixty-one.
To his sister Effie, on the day after his wife’s elopement, Christopher had said over the telephone:
“Will you take Tommie for an indefinite period? Marchant will come with him. She offers to take charge of your two youngest as well, so you’ll save a maid, and I’ll pay their board and a bit over.”
The voice of his sister — from Yorkshire — had answered:
“Certainly, Christopher.” She was the wife of a vicar, near Groby, and she had several children.
To Macmaster Tietjens had said:
“Sylvia has left me with that fellow Perowne.”
Macmaster had answered only: “Ah!”
Tietjens had continued:
“I’m letting the house and warehousing the furniture. Tommie is going to my sister Effie. Marchant is going with him.”
Macmaster had said:
“Then you’ll be wanting your old rooms.” Macmaster occupied a very large storey of the Gray’s Inn buildings. After Tietjens had left him on his marriage he had continued to enjoy solitude, except that his man had moved down from the attic to the bedroom formerly occupied by Tietjens.
Tietjens said:
“I’ll come in to-morrow night if I may. That will give Ferens time to get back into his attic.”
That morning, at breakfast, four months having passed, Tietjens had received a letter from his wife. She asked, without any contrition at all, to be taken back. She was fed up with Perowne and Brittany.
Tietjens looked up at Macmaster. Macmaster was already half out of his chair, looking at him with enlarged, steel-blue eyes, his beard quivering. By the time Tietjens spoke Macmaster had his hand on the neck of the cut-glass brandy decanter in the brown wood tantalus.
Tietjens said:
“Sylvia asks me to take her back.”
Macmaster said:
“Have a little of this!”
Tietjens was about to say: “No,” automatically. He changed that to:
“Yes. Perhaps. A liqueur glass.”
He noticed that the lip of the decanter agitated, tinkling on the glass. Macmaster must be trembling.
Macmaster, with his back still turned, said:
“Shall you take her back?”
Tietjens answered:
“I imagine so.” The brandy warmed his chest in its descent. Macmaster said:
“Better have another.”
Tietjens answered:
“Yes. Thanks.”
Macmaster went on with his breakfast and his letters. So did Tietjens. Ferens came in, removed the bacon plates and set on the table a silver water-heated dish that contained poached eggs and haddock. A long time afterwards Tietjens said:
“Yes, in principle I’m determined to. But I shall take three days to think out the details.”
He seemed to have no feelings about the matter. Certain insolent phrases in Sylvia’s letter hung in his mind. He preferred a letter like that. The brandy made no difference to his mentality, but it seemed to keep him from shivering.
Macmaster said:
“Suppose we go down to Rye by the 11.40. We could get a round after tea now the days are long. I want to call on a parson near there. He has helped me with my book.”
Tietjens said:
“Did your poet know parsons? But of course he did. Duchemin is the name, isn’t it?”
Macmaster said:
“We could call about two-thirty. That will be all right in the country. We stay till four with a cab outside. We can be on the first tee at five. If we like the course we’ll stay next day: then Tuesday at Hythe and Wednesday at Sandwich. Or we could stay at Rye all your three days.”
“It will probably suit me better to keep moving,” Tietjens said. “There are those British Columbia figures of yours. If we took a cab now I could finish them for you in an hour and twelve minutes. Then British North America can go to the printers. It’s only 8.30 now.”
Macmaster said, with some concern:
“Oh, but you couldn’t. I can make our going all right with Sir Reginald.”
Tietjens said:
“Oh, yes I can. Ingleby will be pleased if you tell him they’re finished. I’ll have them ready for you to give him when he comes at ten.”
Macmaster said:
“What an extraordinary fellow you are, Chrissie. Almost a genius!”
“Oh,” Tietjens answered. “I was looking at your papers yesterday after you’d left and I’ve got most of the totals in my head. I was thinking about them before I went to sleep. I think you make a mistake in overestimating the pull of Klondyke this year on the population. The passes are open, but relatively no one is going through. I’ll add a note to that effect.”
In the cab he said:
“I’m sorry to bother you with my beastly affairs. But how will it affect you and the office?”
“The office,” Macmaster said, “not at all. It is supposed that Sylvia is nursing Mrs. Satterthwaite abroad. As for me, I wish…” — he closed his small, strong teeth — “I wish you would drag the woman through the mud. By God I do! Why should she mangle you for the rest of your life? She’s done enough!”
Tietjens gazed out over the flap of the cab.
That explained a question. Some days before, a young man, a friend of his wife’s rather than of his own, had approached him in the club and had said that he hoped Mrs. Satterthwaite — his wife’s mother — was better. He said now:
“I see. Mrs. Satterthwaite has probably gone abroad to cover up Sylvia’s retreat. She’s a sensible woman, if a bitch.”