Some Do Not . . ._ A Novel - Ford Madox Ford [130]
The voice of Tietjens said, just above her head:
'Your mother seems to be having a regular triumph,' and, with his good-natured cynicism, he added, 'it seems to have upset some apple-carts!' They were confronted with the spectacle of Macmaster conducting the young celebrity from her deserted arm-chair across the room to be lost in the horseshoe of crowd that surrounded Mrs Wannop.
Valentine said:
'You're quite gay to-day. Your voice is different. I suppose you're better?' She did not look at him. His voice came:
'Yes! I'm relatively gay!' It went on: 'I thought you might like to know. A little of my mathematical brain seems to have come to life again. I've worked out two or three silly problems...
She said:
'Mrs Tietjens will be pleased.'
'Oh!' the answer came. 'Mathematics don't interest her any more than cock-fighting.' With immense swiftness, between word and word, Valentine read into that a hope! This splendid creature did not sympathise with her husband's activities. But he crushed it heavily by saying: 'Why should she? She's so many occupations of her own that she's unrivalled at!'
He began to tell her, rather minutely, of a calculation he had made only that day at lunch. He had gone into the Department of Statistics and had had rather a row with Lord Ingleby of Lincoln. A pretty title the fellow had taken! They had wanted him to ask to be seconded to his old department for a certain job. But he had said he'd be damned if he would. He detested and despised the work they were doing.
Valentine, for the first time in her life, hardly listened to what he said. Did the fact that Sylvia Tietjens had so many occupations of her own mean that Tietjens found her unsympathetic? Of their relationships she knew nothing. Sylvia had been so much of a mystery as hardly to exist as a problem hitherto. Macmaster, Valentine knew, hated her. She knew that through Mrs Duchemin; she had heard it ages ago, but she didn't know why. She had never come to the Macmasters' afternoons; but that was natural. Macmaster passed for a bachelor, and it was excusable for a young woman of the highest fashion not to come to bachelor teas of literary and artistic people. On the other hand, Macmaster dined at the Tietjens' quite often enough to make it public that he was a friend of that family. Sylvia, too, had never come down to see Mrs Wannop. But then it would, in the old days, have been a long way to come for a lady of fashion with no especial literary interests. And no one, in mercy, could have been expected to call on poor them in their dog-kennel in an outer suburb. They had had to sell almost all their pretty things.
Tietjens was saying that after his tempestuous interview with Lord Ingleby of Lincoln--she wished he would not be so rude to powerful people!--he had dropped in on Macmaster in his private room, and finding him puzzled over a lot of figures had, in the merest spirit of bravado, taken Macmaster and his papers out to lunch. And, he said, chancing to look, without any hope at all, at the figures, he had suddenly worked out an ingenious mystification. It had just come!
His voice had been so gay and triumphant that she hadn't been able to resist looking up at him. His cheeks were fresh coloured, his hair shining; his blue eyes had a little of their old arrogance--and tenderness! Her heart seemed to sing with joy! He was, she felt, her man. She imagined the arms of his mind stretching out to enfold her.
He went on explaining. He had rather, in his recovered self-confidence, gibed at Macmaster. Between themselves, wasn't it easy to do what the Department, under orders, wanted done? They had wanted to rub into our allies that their losses by devastation had been nothing to write home about--so as to avoid sending reinforcements to their lines! Well, if you took just the bricks and mortar of the devastated districts, you could prove that the loss in bricks, tiles, woodwork, and the rest didn't--and the figures with a little manipulation would prove it I--amount to more than a normal year's dilapidation spread over the whole country in peace time...House repairs in a normal year had cost several million sterling. The enemy had only destroyed just about so many million sterling in bricks and mortar. And what was a mere year's dilapidations in house property! You just neglected to do them and did them next year.