bald man said: ‘We are! We are! First–class. A treat!’
‘But,’ the General said, ‘it isn’t wise to discuss one’s…eh…domestic circumstances…at…at mess, you know, or in a golf house. People might hear.’
The gentleman with the oily hair half rose and exclaimed:
‘0°, the…’ The other man mumbled: ‘Shut up, Briggs.’
The General said:
‘I’m the president of the club, you know. It’s my duty to see that the majority of the club and its visitors are pleased. I hope you don’t mind.’
The General came back to his seat. He was trembling with vexation.
‘It makes one as beastly a bounder as themselves,’ he said. ‘But what the devil else was one to do?’ The two city men had ambled hastily into the dressing–rooms; the dire silence fell. Macmaster realised that, for these Tories at least, this was really the end of the world. The last of England! He returned, with panic in his heart, to Tietjens’ telegram…Tietjens was going to Germany on Tuesday. He offered to throw over the department…These were unthinkable things. You couldn’t imagine them!
He began to read the telegram all over again. A shadow fell upon the flimsy sheets. The Rt. Hon. Mr Waterhouse was between the head of the table and the windows. He said:
‘We’re much obliged, General. It was impossible to hear ourselves speak for those obscene fellows’ smut. It’s fellows like that make our friends the suffragettes! That warrants them…’ He added: ‘Hullo! Sandbach! Enjoying your rest?’
The General said:
‘I was hoping you’d take on the job of telling these fellows off.’
Mr Sandbach, his bull–dog jaw sticking out, the short black hair on his scalp appearing to rise, barked: ‘Hullo, Waterslop! Enjoying your plunder?’
Mr Waterhouse, tall, slouching and untidy–haired, lifted the flaps of his coat. It was so ragged that it appeared as if straws stuck out of the elbows.
‘All that the suffragettes have left of me,’ he said laughingly. ‘Isn’t one of you fellows a genius called Tietjens?’ He was looking at Macmaster. The General said:
‘Tietjens Macmaster…’ The Minister went on very friendly:
‘Oh, it’s you?…I just wanted to take the opportunity of thanking you.’
Tietjens said:
‘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 I 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
