PART TWO 4 страница

“Good God! What for? ”

“You know! ” the Minister said, “we couldn't have got the Bill before the House till next session without your figures…” He said slyly: “Could we, Sandbach? ” and added to Tietjens: “Ingleby told me…”

Tietjens was chalk-white and stiffened. He stuttered: “I can't take any credit… I consider…”

Macmaster exclaimed:

“Tietjens… you…” he didn't know what he was going to say.

“Oh, you're too modest, ” Mr Waterhouse overwhelmed Tietjens. “We know whom we've to thank…” His eyes drifted to Sandbach a little absently. Then his face lit up.

“Oh! Look here, Sandbach, ” he said…”Come here, will you? ” He walked a pace or two away, calling to one of his young men: “Oh, Sanderson, give the bobbie a drink. A good stiff one. ” Sandbach jerked himself awkwardly out of his chair and limped to the Minister.

Tietjens burst out:

“Me too modest! Me! … The swine… The unspeakable swine! ”

The General said:

“What's it all about, Chrissie? You probably are too modest. ”

Tietjens said:

“Damn it. It's a serious matter. It's driving me out of the unspeakable office I'm in. ”

Macmaster said:

“No! No! You're wrong. It's a wrong view you take. ” And with a good deal of real passion he began to explain to the General. It was an affair that had already given him a great deal of pain. The Government had asked the statistical department for figures illuminating a number of schedules that they desired to use in presenting their new Bill to the Commons. Mr Waterhouse was to present it.

Mr Waterhouse at the moment was slapping Mr Sandbach on the back, tossing the hair out of his eyes and laughing like an hysterical schoolgirl. He looked suddenly tired. A police constable, his buttons shining, appeared, drinking from a pewter-pot outside the glazed door. The two city men ran across the angle from the dressing-room to the same door, buttoning their clothes. The Minister said loudly:

“Make it guineas! ”

It seemed to Macmaster painfully wrong that Tietjens should call anyone so genial and unaffected an unspeakable swine. It was unjust. He went on with his explanation to the General.

The Government had wanted a set of figures based on a calculation called B7. Tietjens, who had been working on one called H19—for his own instruction—had persuaded himself that H19 was the lowest figure that was actuarially sound.

The General said pleasantly: “All this is Greek to me. ”

“Oh no, it needn't be, ” Macmaster heard himself say. “It amounts to this. Chrissie was asked by the Government—by Sir Reginald Ingleby—to work out what 3 x 3 comes to: it was that sort of thing in principle. He said that the only figure that would not ruin the country was nine times nine…”

“The Government wanted to shovel money into the working man's pockets, in fact, ” the General said. “Money for nothing… or votes, I suppose. ”

“But that isn't the point, sir, ” Macmaster ventured to say. “All that Chrissie was asked to do was to say what 3 X 3 was. ”

“Well, he appears to have done it and earned no end of kudos, ” the General said. “That's all right. We've all, always, believed in Chrissie's ability. But he's a strong-tempered beggar. ”

“He was extraordinarily rude to Sir Reginald over it, ” Macmaster went on.

The General said:

“Oh dear! Oh dear! ” He shook his head at Tietjens and assumed with care the blank, slightly disappointing air of the regular officer. “I don't like to hear of rudeness to a superior. In any service. ”

“I don't think, ” Tietjens said with extreme mildness, “that Macmaster is quite fair to me. Of course he's a right to his opinion as to what the discipline of a service demands. I certainly told Ingleby that I'd rather resign than do that beastly job…”

“You shouldn't have, ” the General said. “What would become of the services if everyone did as you did? ”

Sandbach came back laughing and dropped painfully into his low arm-chair.

“That fellow…” he began.

The General slightly raised his hand.

“A minute! ” he said. “I was about to tell Chrissie, here, that if I am offered the job—of course it's an order really—of suppressing the Ulster Volunteers… I'd rather cut my throat than do it…”

Sandbach said:

“Of course you would, old chap. They're our brothers. You'd see the beastly, lying Government damned first. ”

“I was going to say that I should accept, ” the General said, “I shouldn't resign my commission. ”

Sandbach said:

“Good God! ”

Tietjens said:

“Well, I didn't. ”

Sandbach exclaimed:

“General! You! After all Claudine and I have said…” Tietjens interrupted:

“Excuse me, Sandbach. I'm receiving this reprimand for the moment. I wasn't, then, rude to Ingleby. If I'd expressed contempt for what he said or for himself, that would have been rude. I didn't. He wasn't in the least offended. He looked like a cockatoo, but he wasn't offended. And I let him over-persuade me. He was right, really. He pointed out that, if I didn't do the job, those swine would put on one of our little competition wallah head clerks and get all the schedules faked, as well as starting off with false premises! ”

“That's the view I take, ” the General said, “if I don't take the Ulster job the Government will put on a fellow who'll burn all the farm-houses and rape all the women in the three counties. They've got him up their sleeve. He only asks for the Connaught Rangers to go through the north with. And you know what that means. All the same…” He looked at Tietjens: “One should not be rude to one's superiors. ”

“I tell you I wasn't rude, ” Tietjens exclaimed. “Damn your nice, paternal old eyes. Get that into your mind! ” The General shook his head:

“You brilliant fellows! ” he said. “The country, or the army, or anything, could not be run by you. It takes stupid fools like me and Sandbach, along with sound moderate heads like our friend here. ” He indicated Macmaster and, rising, went on: “Come along. You're playing me, Macmaster. They say you're hot stuff. Chrissie's no good. He can take Sandbach on. ”

He walked off with Macmaster towards the dressing-room.

Sandbach, wriggling awkwardly out of his chair, shouted:

“Save the country… Damn it…” He stood on his feet. “I and Campion… Look at what the country's come to… What with swine like these two in our club houses! And policemen to go round the links with Ministers to protect them from the wild women… By God! I'd like to have the flaying of the skin off some of their backs I would. My God I would. ”

He added:

“That fellow Waterslops is a bit of a sportsman. I haven't been able to tell you about our bet, you've been making such a noise… Is your friend really plus one at North Berwick? What are you like? ”

“Macmaster is a good plus two anywhere when he's in practice. ”

Sandbach said:

“Good Lord… A stout fellow…”

“As for me, ” Tietjens said, “I loathe the beastly game. ” “So do I, ” Sandbach answered. “We'll just lollop along behind them. ”

They came out into the bright open where all the distances under the tall sky showed with distinct prismatic outlines. They made a little group of seven—for Tietjens would not have a caddy—waiting on the flat, first teeing ground. Macmaster walked up to Tietjens and said under his voice:

“You've really sent that wire? …”

Tietjens said:

“It'll be in Germany by now! ”

Mr Sandbach hobbled from one to the other explaining the terms of his wager with Mr Waterhouse. Mr Waterhouse had backed one of the young men playing with him to drive into and hit twice in the eighteen holes the two city men who would be playing ahead of them. As the Minister had taken rather short odds, Mr Sandbach considered him a good sport.

A long way down the first hole Mr Waterhouse and his two companions were approaching the first green. They had high sandhills to the right and, to their left, a road that was fringed with rushes and a narrow dyke. Ahead of the Cabinet Minister the two city men and their two caddies stood on the edge of the dyke or poked downwards into the rushes. Two girls appeared and disappeared on the tops of the sandhills. The policeman was strolling along the road, level with Mr Waterhouse. The General said:

“I think we could go now. ”

Sandbach said:

“Waterslops will get a hit at them from the next tee. They're in the dyke. ”

The General drove a straight, goodish ball. Just as Macmaster was in his swing Sandbach shouted:

“By God! He nearly did it. See that fellow jump! ” Macmaster looked round over his shoulder and hissed with vexation between his teeth:

“Don't you know that you don't shout while a man is driving? Or haven't you played golf? ” He hurried fussily after his ball.

Sandbach said to Tietjens:

“Golly! That chap's got a temper! ”

Tietjens said:

“Only over this game. You deserved what you got. ” Sandbach said:

“I did… But I didn't spoil his shot. He's outdriven the General twenty yards. ”

Tietjens said:

“It would have been sixty but for you. ”

They loitered about on the tee waiting for the others to get their distance. Sandbach said:

“By Jove, your friend is on with his second… You wouldn't believe it of such a little beggar! ” He added: “He's not much class, is he? ”

Tietjens looked down his nose.

“Oh, about our class! ” he said. “He wouldn't take a bet about driving into the couple ahead. ”

Sandbach hated Tietjens for being a Tietjens of Groby: Tietjens was enraged by the existence of Sandbach, who was the son of an ennobled mayor of Middlesbrough, seven miles or so from Groby. The feuds between the Cleveland landowners and the Cleveland plutocrats are very bitter. Sandbach said:

“Ah, I suppose he gets you out of scrapes with girls and the Treasury, and you take him about in return. It's a practical combination. ”

“Like Pottle Mills and Stanton, ” Tietjens said. The financial operations connected with the amalgamating of these two steelworks had earned Sandbach's father a good deal of odium in the Cleveland district… Sandbach said:

“Look here, Tietjens…” But he changed his mind and said:

“We'd better go now. ” He drove off with an awkward action but not without skill. He certainly outplayed Tietjens.

Playing very slowly, for both were desultory and Sandbach very lame, they lost sight of the others behind some coastguard cottages and dunes before they had left the third tee. Because of his game leg Sandbach sliced a good deal. On this occasion he sliced right into the gardens of the cottages and went with his boy to look for his ball among potato-haulms, beyond a low wall. Tietjens patted his own ball lazily up the fairway and, dragging his bag behind him by the strap, he sauntered on.

Although Tietjens hated golf as he hated any occupation that was of a competitive nature, he could engross himself in the mathematics of trajectories when he accompanied Macmaster in one of his expeditions for practice. He accompanied Macmaster because he liked there to be one pursuit at which his friend undisputably excelled himself, for it was a bore always brow-beating the fellow. But he stipulated that they should visit three different and, if possible, unknown courses every week-end when they golfed. He interested himself then in the way the courses were laid out, acquiring thus an extraordinary connoisseurship in golf architecture, and he made abstruse calculations as to the flight of balls off sloped club-faces, as to the foot-poundals of energy exercised by one muscle or the other, and as to theories of spin. As often as not he palmed Macmaster off as a fair, average player on some other unfortunate fair, average stranger. Then he passed the afternoon in the club-house studying the pedigrees and forms of racehorses, for every club-house contained a copy of Ruff's Guide. In the spring he would hunt for and examine the nests of soft-billed birds, for he was interested in the domestic affairs of the cuckoo, though he hated natural history and field botany.

On this occasion he had just examined some notes of other mashie shots, had put the notebook back in his pocket, and had addressed his ball with a niblick that had an unusually roughened face and a head like a hatchet. Meticulously, when he had taken his grip he removed his little and third fingers from the leather of the shaft. He was thanking heaven that Sandbach seemed to be accounted for for ten minutes at least, for Sandbach was miserly over lost balls and, very slowly, he was raising his mashie to half cock for a sighting shot.

He was aware that someone, breathing a little heavily from small lungs, was standing close to him and watching him: he could indeed, beneath his cap-rim, perceive the tips of a pair of boy's white sand-shoes. It in no way perturbed him to be watched, since he was avid of no personal glory when making his shots. A voice said:

“I say…” He continued to look at his ball.

“Sorry to spoil your shot, ” the voice said. “But…”

Tietjens dropped his club altogether and straightened his back. A fair young woman with a fixed scowl was looking at him intently. She had a short skirt and was panting a little.

“I say, ” she said, “go and see they don't hurt Gertie. I've lost her…” She pointed back to the sandhills. “There looked to be some beasts among them. ”

She seemed a perfectly negligible girl except for the frown: her eyes blue, her hair no doubt fair under a white canvas hat. She had a striped cotton blouse, but her fawn tweed skirt was well hung.

Tietjens said:

“You've been demonstrating. ”

She said:

“Of course we have, and of course you object on principle. But you won't let a girl be man-handled. Don't wait to tell me, I know it…”

Noises existed. Sandbach, from beyond the low garden wall fifty yards away, was yelping, just like a dog: “Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi! ” and gesticulating. His little caddy, entangled in his golfbag, was trying to scramble over the wall. On top of a high sandhill stood the policeman: he waved his arms like a windmill and shouted. Beside him and behind, slowly rising, were the heads of the General, Macmaster and their two boys. Farther along, in completion, were appearing the figures of Mr Waterhouse, his two companions and their three boys. The Minister was waving his driver and shouting. They all shouted.

“A regular rat-hunt, ” the girl said; she was counting. “Eleven and two more caddies! ” She exhibited satisfaction. “I headed them all off except two beasts. They couldn't run. But neither can Genie…”

She said urgently:

“Come along! You aren't going to leave Gertie to those beasts They're drunk…”

Tietjens said:

“Cut away then. I'll look after Gertie. ” He picked up his bag.

“No, I'll come with you, ” the girl said.

Tietjens answered: “Oh, you don't want to go to gaol. Clear out! ”

She said:

“Nonsense. I've put up with worse than that. Nine months as a slavey… Come along! ”

Tietjens started to run—rather like a rhinoceros seeing purple. He had been violently spurred, for he had been pierced by a shrill, faint scream. The girl ran beside him.

“You… can… run! ” she panted, “put on a spurt. ”

Screams protesting against physical violence were at that date rare things in England. Tietjens had never heard the like. It upset him frightfully, though he was aware only of an expanse of open country. The policeman, whose buttons made him noteworthy, was descending his conical sand-hill, diagonally, with caution. There is something grotesque about a town policeman, silvered helmet and all, in the open country. It was so clear and still in the air; Tietjens felt as if he were in a light museum looking at specimens…

A little young woman, engrossed, like a hunted rat, came round the corner of a green mound. “This is an assaulted female! ” the mind of Tietjens said to him. She had a black skirt covered with sand, for she had just rolled down the sandhill; she had a striped grey and black silk blouse, one shoulder torn completely off, so that a white camisole showed. Over the shoulder of the sandhill came the two city men, flushed with triumph and panting; their red knitted waistcoats moved like bellows. The black-haired one, his eyes lurid and obscene, brandished aloft a fragment of black and grey stuff. He shouted hilariously:

“Strip the bitch naked! … Ugh… Strip the bitch stark naked! ” and jumped down the little hill. He cannoned into Tietjens, who roared at the top of his voice:

“You infernal swine. I'll knock your head off if you move! ”

Behind Tietjens' back the girl said:

“Come along, Gertie… It's only to there…”

A voice panted in answer:

“I… can't… My heart…”

Tietjens kept his eye upon the city man. His jaw had fallen down, his eyes stared! It was as if the bottom of his assured world, where all men desire in their hearts to bash women, had fallen out. He panted:

“Ergle! Ergle! ”

Another scream, a little farther than the last voices from behind his back, caused in Tietjens a feeling of intense weariness. What did beastly women want to scream for? He swung round, bag and all. The policeman, his face scarlet like a lobster just boiled, was lumbering unenthusiastically towards the two girls who were trotting towards the dyke. One of his hands, scarlet also, was extended. He was not a yard from Tietjens.

Tietjens was exhausted, beyond thinking or shouting. He slipped his clubs off his shoulder and, as if he were pitching his kit-bag into a luggage van, threw the whole lot between the policeman's running legs. The man, who had no impetus to speak of, pitched forward on to his hands and knees. His helmet over his eyes, he seemed to reflect for a moment; then he removed his helmet and with great deliberation rolled round and sat on the turf. His face was completely without emotion, long, sandy-moustached and rather shrewd. He mopped his brow with a carmine handkerchief that had white spots.

Tietjens walked up to him.

“Clumsy of me! ” he said. “I hope you're not hurt. ” He drew from his breast pocket a curved silver flask. The policeman said nothing. His world, too, contained uncertainties, and he was profoundly glad to be able to sit still without discredit. He muttered:

“Shaken. A bit! Anybody would be! ”

That let him out and he fell to examining with attention the bayonet catch of the flask top. Tietjens opened it for him. The two girls, advancing at a fatigued trot, were near the dyke side. The fair girl, as they trotted, was trying to adjust her companion's hat; attached by pins to the back of her hair it flapped on her shoulder.

All the rest of the posse were advancing at a very slow walk, in a converging semi-circle. Two little caddies were running, but Tietjens saw them check, hesitate and stop. And there floated to Tietjens' ears the words:

“Stop, you little devils. She'll knock your heads off. ”

The Rt. Hon. Mr Waterhouse must have found an admirable voice trainer somewhere. The drab girl was balancing tremulously over a plank on the dyke; the other took it at a jump; up in the air—down on her feet; perfectly business-like. And, as soon as the other girl was off the plank, she was down on her knees before it, pulling it towards her, the other girl trotting away over the vast marsh field.

The girl dropped the plank on the grass. Then she looked up and faced the men and boys who stood in a row on the road. She called in a shrill, high voice, like a young cockerel's:

“Seventeen to two! The usual male odds! You'll have to go round by Camber railway bridge, and we'll be in Folkestone by then. We've got bicycles! ” She was half going when she checked and, searching out Tietjens to address, exclaimed: “I'm sorry I said that. Because some of you didn't want to catch us. But some of you did. And you were seventeen to two. ” She addressed Mr Waterhouse:

“Why don't you give women the vote? ” she said. “You'll find it will interfere a good deal with your indispensable golf if you don't. Then what becomes of the nation's health? ”

Mr Waterhouse said:

“If you'll come and discuss it quietly…”

She said:

“Oh, tell that to the marines, ” and turned away, the men in a row watching her figure disappear into the distance of the flat land. Not one of them was inclined to risk that jump: there was nine foot of mud in the bottom of the dyke. It was quite true that, the plank being removed, to go after the women they would have had to go several miles round. It had been a well-thought-out raid. Mr Waterhouse said that girl was a ripping girl: the others found her just ordinary. Mr Sandbach, who had only lately ceased to shout: “Hi! ” wanted to know what they were going to do about catching the women, but Mr Waterhouse said: “Oh, chuck it, Sandy, ” and went off.

Mr Sandbach refused to continue his match with Tietjens. He said that Tietjens was the sort of fellow who was the ruin of England. He said he had a good mind to issue a warrant for the arrest of Tietjens—for obstructing the course of justice. Tietjens pointed out that Sandbach wasn't a borough magistrate and so couldn't. And Sandbach went off, dot and carry one, and began a furious row with the two city men who had retreated to a distance. He said they were the sort of men who were the ruin of England. They bleated like rams…

Tietjens wandered slowly up the course, found his ball, made his shot with care and found that the ball deviated several feet less to the right of a straight line than he had expected. He tried the shot again, obtained the same result and tabulated his observations in his notebook. He sauntered slowly back towards the club-house. He was content.

He felt himself to be content for the first time in four months. His pulse beat calmly; the heat of the sun all over him appeared to be a beneficent flood. On the flanks of the older and larger sandhills he observed the minute herbage, mixed with little purple aromatic plants. To these the constant nibbling of sheep had imparted a protective tininess. He wandered, content, round the sand-hills to the small, silted harbour mouth. After reflecting for some time on the wave-curves in the sloping mud of the water sides, he had a long conversation, mostly in signs, with a Finn who hung over the side of a tarred, stump-masted, battered vessel that had a gaping, splintered hole where the anchor should have hung. She came from Archangel; was of several hundred tons burthen, was knocked together anyhow, of soft wood, for about ninety pounds, and launched, sink or swim, in the timber trade. Beside her, taut, glistening with brasswork, was a new fishing boat, just built here for the Lowestoft fleet. Ascertaining her price from a man who was finishing her painting, Tietjens reckoned that you could have built three of the Archangel timber ships for the cost of that boat, and that the Archangel vessel would earn about twice as much per hour per ton…

It was in that way his mind worked when he was fit: it picked up little pieces of definite, workmanlike information. When it had enough it classified them: not for any purpose, but because to know things was agreeable and gave a feeling of strength, of having in reserve something that the other fellow would not suspect… He passed a long, quiet, abstracted afternoon.

In the dressing-room he found the General, among lockers, old coats and stoneware washing-basins set in scrubbed wood. The General leaned back against a row of these things.

“You are the ruddy limit! ” he exclaimed.

Tietjens said:

“Where's Macmaster? ”

The General said he had sent Macmaster off with Sandbach in the two-seater. Macmaster had to dress before going up to Mountby. He added: “The ruddy limit! ” again.

“Because I knocked the bobbie over? ” Tietjens asked. “He liked it. ”

The General said:

“Knocked the bobble over… I didn't see that. ”

“He didn't want to catch the girls, ” Tietjens said, “you could see him—oh, yearning not to. ”

“I don't want to know anything about that, ” the General said. “I shall hear enough about it from Paul Sandbach. Give the bobbie a quid and let's hear no more of it. I'm a magistrate. ”

“Then what have I done? ” Tietjens said. “I helped those girls to get off. You didn't want to catch them; Waterhouse didn't, the policeman didn't. No one did except the swine. Then what's the matter? ”

“Damn it all! ” the General said, “don't you remember that you're a young married man? ”

With the respect for the General's superior age and achievements, Tietjens stopped himself laughing.

“If you're really serious, sir, ” he said, “I always remember it very carefully. I don't suppose you're suggesting that I've ever shown want of respect for Sylvia. ”

The General shook his head.

“I don't know, ” he said. “And, damn it all, I'm worried. I'm… Hang it all, I'm your father's oldest friend. ” The General looked indeed worn and saddened in the light of the sand-drifted, ground-glass windows. He said: “Was that skirt a… a friend of yours? Had you arranged it with her? ”

Tietjens said:

“Wouldn't it be better, sir, if you said what you had on your mind? …”

The old General blushed a little.

“I don't like to, ” he said straightforwardly. “You brilliant fellow… I only want, my dear boy, to hint that…”

Tietjens said, a little more stiffly:

“I'd prefer you to get it out, sir… I acknowledge your right as my father's oldest friend. ”

“Then, ” the General burst out, “who was the skirt you were lolloping up Pall Mall with? On the last day they Trooped the Colour? … I didn't see her myself… Was it this same one? Paul said she looked like a cook maid. ”

Tietjens made himself a little more rigid.

“She was, as a matter of fact, a bookmaker's secretary, ” Tietjens said. “I imagine I have the right to walk where I like, with whom I like. And no one has the right to question it… I don't mean you, sir. But no one else. ”

The General said puzzledly:

“It's you brilliant fellows… They all say you're brilliant…”

Tietjens said:

“You might let your rooted distrust of intelligence… It's natural of course; but you might let it allow you to be just to me. I assure you there was nothing discreditable. ”

The General interrupted:

“If you were a stupid young subaltern and told me you were showing your mother's new cook the way to the Piccadilly tube, I'd believe you… But, then, no young subaltern would do such a damn, blasted, tomfool thing! Paul said you walked beside her like the king in his glory! Through the crush outside the Haymarket, of all places in the world! ”

“I'm obliged to Sandbach for his commendation…” Tietjens said. He thought for a moment. Then he said:

“I was trying to get that young woman… I was taking her out to lunch from her office at the bottom of the Haymarket… To get her off a friend's back. That is, of course, between ourselves. ”

He said this with great reluctance because he didn't want to cast reflection on Macmaster's taste, for the young lady had been by no means one to be seen walking with a really circumspect public official. But he had said nothing to indicate Macmaster and he had other friends.

The General choked.

“Upon my soul, ” he said, “what do you take me for? ” He repeated the words as if he were amazed. “If, ” he said, “my G. S. O. —who's the stupidest ass I know—told me such a damn-fool lie as that I'd have him broke to-morrow. ” He went on expostulatorily: “Damn it all, it's the first duty of a soldier—it's the first duty of all Englishmen—to be able to tell a good lie in answer to a charge. But a lie like that…”

He broke off breathless, then he began again:

“Hang it all, I told that lie to my grandmother and my grandfather told it to his grandfather. And they call you brilliant! …” He paused and then asked reproachfully: “Or do you think I'm in a state of senile decay? ”

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