‘For God’s sake stop it. You almost make me believe what you say is true. I tell you mother would go mad. Her greatest friend is the Duchesse Tonnerre Château-Herault . . . ’
‘Well!’ Tietjens said. ‘Your greatest friends are the Med . . . Med . . . the Austrian officers you take chocolates and flowers to. That there was all the row about . . . We’re at war with them and you haven’t gone mad!’
‘I don’t know,’ Sylvia said. ‘Sometimes I think I am going mad!’ She drooped. Tietjens, his face very strained, was looking at the tablecloth. He muttered: ‘Med . . . Met . . . Kos . . . ’ Sylvia said:
‘Do you know a poem called Somewhere? It begins: “Somewhere or other there must surely be . . . "’
Tietjens said:
‘I’m sorry. No! I haven’t been able to get up my poetry again.’
Sylvia said:
‘Don’t!’ She added: ‘You’ve got to be at the War Office at 4.15, haven’t you? What’s the time now?’ She extremely wanted to give him her bad news before he went; she extremely wanted to put off giving it as long as she could. She wanted to reflect on the matter first; she wanted also to keep up a desultory conversation, or he might leave the room. She didn’t want to have to say to him: ‘Wait a minute, I’ve something to say to you!’ for he might not, at that moment, be in the mood. He said it was not yet two. He could give her an hour and a half more.
To keep the conversation going, she said:
‘I suppose the Wannop girl is making bandages or being a Waac. Something forceful.’
Tietjens said:
‘No; she’s a pacifist. As pacifist as you. Not so impulsive; but, on the other hand, she has more arguments. I should say she’ll be in prison before the war’s over . . . ’
‘A nice time you must have between the two of us,’ Sylvia said. The memory of her interview with the great lady nicknamed Glorvina—though it was not at all a good nickname—was coming over her forcibly.
She said:
‘I suppose you’re always talking it over with her? You see her every day.’
She imagined that that might keep him occupied for a minute or two. He said—she caught the sense of it only—and quite indifferently that he had tea with Mrs Wannop every day. She had moved to a place called Bedford Park, which was near his office: not three minutes’ walk. The War Office had put up a lot of huts on some public green in that neighbourhood. He only saw the daughter once a week, at most. They never talked about the war; it was too disagreeable a subject for the young woman. Or rather, too painful . . . His talk gradually drifted into unfinished sentences . . .
They played that comedy occasionally, for it is impossible for two people to live in the same house and not have some common meeting ground. So they would each talk: sometimes talking at great length and with politeness, each thinking his or her thoughts till they drifted into silence.
And, since she had acquired the habit of going into retreat—with an Anglican sisterhood in order to annoy Tietjens, who hated convents and considered that the communions should not mix—Sylvia had acquired also the habit of losing herself almost completely in reveries. Thus she was now vaguely conscious that a greyish lump, Tietjens, sat at the head of a whitish expanse: the lunch-table. There were also books . . . actually she was seeing a quite different figure and other books—the books of Glorvina’s husband, for the great lady had received Sylvia in that statesman’s library.
Glorvina, who was the mother of two of Sylvia’s absolutely most intimate friends, had sent for Sylvia. She wished, kindly and even wittily, to remonstrate with Sylvia because of her complete abstention from any patriotic activity. She offered Sylvia the address of a place in the city where she could buy wholesale and ready-made diapers for babies which Sylvia could present to some charity or other as being her own work. Sylvia said she would do nothing of the sort, and Glorvina said she would present the idea to poor Mrs Pilsenhauser. She Glorvina—said she spent some time every day thinking out acts of patriotism for the distressed rich with foreign names, accents or antecedents . . .
Glorvina was a fiftyish lady with a pointed, grey face and a hard aspect; but when she was inclined to be witty or to plead earnestly she had a kind manner. The room in which they were was over a Belgravia back garden. It was lit by a skylight, and the shadows from above deepened the lines of her face, accentuating the rather dusty grey of the hair as well as both the hardness and the kind manner. This very much impressed Sylvia, who was used to seeing the lady by artificial light . . .
She said, however:
‘You don’t suggest, Glorvina, that I’m the distressed rich with a foreign name!’
The great lady had said:
‘My dear Sylvia; it isn’t so much you as your husband. Your last exploit with the Esterhazys and Metternichs has pretty well done for him. You forget that the present powers that be are not logical . . . ’
Sylvia remembered that she had sprung up from her leather saddle-back chair, exclaiming:
‘You mean to say that those unspeakable swine think that I’m . . . ’
Glorvina said patiently:
‘My dear Sylvia, I’ve already said it’s not you. It’s your husband that suffers. He appears to be too good a fellow to suffer. Mr Waterhouse says so. I don’t know him myself, well.’
Sylvia remembered that she had said:
‘And who in the world is Mr Waterhouse?’ and hearing that Mr Waterhouse was a late Liberal Minister, had lost interest. She couldn’t, indeed, remember any of the further words of her hostess, as words. The sense of them had too much overwhelmed her . . .
She stood now, looking at Tietjens and only occasionally seeing him, her mind completely occupied with the effort to recapture Glorvina’s own words in the desire for exactness. Usually she remembered conversations pretty well; but on this occasion her mad fury, her feeling of nausea, the pain of her own nails in her palms, an unrecoverable sequence of emotions, had overwhelmed her.
She looked at Tietjens now with a sort of gloating curiosity. How was it possible that the most honourable man she knew should be so overwhelmed by foul and baseless rumours? It made you suspect that honour had, in itself, a quality of the evil eye . . .
Tietjens, his face pallid, was fingering a piece of toast. He muttered:
‘Met . . . Met . . . It’s Met . . . ’ He wiped his brow with a table-napkin, looked at it with a start, threw it on the floor and pulled out a handkerchief . . . He muttered: ‘Mett . . . Metter . . . ’ His face illuminated itself like the face of a child listening at a shell.
Sylvia screamed with a passion of hatred:
‘For God’s sake say Metternich . . . you’re driving me mad!’
When she looked at him again his face had cleared and he was walking quickly to the telephone in the corner of the room. He asked her to excuse him and gave a number at Ealing. He said after a moment:
‘Mrs Wannop? Oh! My wife has just reminded me that Metternich was the evil genius of the Congress of Vienna . . . ’ He said: ‘Yes! Yes!’ and listened. After a time he said: ‘Oh, you could put it stronger than that. You could put it that the Tory determination to ruin Napoleon at all costs was one of those pieces of party imbecility that, etc . . . Yes; Castlereagh. And of course Wellington . . . I’m very sorry, I must ring off . . . Yes; to-morrow at 8.3o from Waterloo . . . No; I shan’t be seeing her again . . . No; she’s made a mistake . . . Yes; give her my love . . . good-bye.’ He was reversing the earpiece to hang it up, but a high-pitched series of yelps from the instrument forced it back to his ear: ‘Oh! War babies!’ he exclaimed. ‘I’ve already sent the statistics off to you! No! there isn’t a marked increase of the illegitimacy rate,