Parade's End (116 page)

Lord Fittleworth, in a square, hard hat, sat on an immense, coffin-headed dapple-grey. He had bristling, close-cropped moustaches and sat like a limpet. He waved his crop in the direction of Mark – they were such old friends – and went on talking to Gunning, who was at his stirrup. The coffin-headed beast started forward and reared a foot or so; a wild, brazen, yelping sound had disturbed it. The boy was more and more scarlet and as emotion grew on him, more and more like Christopher on that beastly day… . Christopher with a piece of furniture under his arm, in Marie Léonie’s room, his eyes goggling out at the foot of the bed.

Mark swore painfully to himself. He hated to be reminded of that day. Now this lad and that infernal bugle
that
the younger children of Cramp had got hold of from their bugler-brother, had put it back damnably in his mind. It went on. At intervals. One child had another try, then another. Obviously then Cramp, the eldest, took it. It blared out… . Ta… . Ta… . Ta… . Ta, ti … ta-ta-ti… . Ta… . The Last Post. The B—y infernal Last Post… . Well, Christopher, as that day Mark had predicted, had got himself, with his raw sensibilities, into a pretty bloody infernal mess while some drunken ass had played the Last Post under the window… . Mark meant that whilst that farewell was being played he had had that foresight. And he hated the bugle for reminding him of it. He hated it more than he had imagined. He could not have imagined himself using profanity even to himself. He must have been profoundly moved. Deucedly and profoundly moved at that beastly noise. It had come over the day like a disaster. He saw every detail of Marie Léonie’s room as it was on that day. There was, on the marble mantel-shelf under an immense engraving of the Sistine Madonna a feeding-cup over a night-light in which Marie Léonie had been keeping some sort of pap warm for him. Probably the last food to which he had ever helped himself… .

V

BUT NO … THAT
must have been about twelve or earlier or later on that infernal day. In any case he could not remember any subsequent meal he had had then; but he remembered an almost infinitely long period of intense vexation. Of mortification insofar as he could accuse himself of ever having felt mortified. He could still remember the fierce intaking of his breath through his nostrils that had come when Christopher had announced what had seemed to him then his ruinous intentions… . It had not been till probably four in the morning that Lord Wolstonemark had rung him up to ask him to countermand the transport that was to have gone out from Harwich… . At four in the morning, the idiotic brutes. His substitute had disappeared in the rejoicings and Lord Wolstonemark had wanted to know what code they used for Harwich because transport must at all costs be stopped. There was
going
to be no advance into Germany… . He had never spoken after that!

His brother was done for; the country finished; he was as good as down and out, as the phrase was, himself. Already in his deep mortification – yes – mortification! – he had said to Christopher that morning – the 11th November, 1918 – that he would never speak to him again. He hadn’t at that moment meant to say that he would never speak to Christopher at all again – merely that he was never going to speak to him about the affairs of Groby! Christopher might take that immense, far-spreading, grey, bothersome house and the tree and the well and the moors and all the John Peel outfit. Or he might leave them. He, Mark, was never going to speak about the matter any more.

He remembered thinking that Christopher might have taken him to mean that he intended to withdraw, for what it was worth, the light of his countenance from the Christopher Tietjens
ménage
. Nothing had been further from his thoughts. He had a soft corner in his heart for Valentine Wannop. He had had it ever since sitting, feeling like a fool, in the ante-room of the War Office, beside her – gnawing at the handle of his umbrella. But, then, he had recommended her to become Christopher’s mistress; he had at any rate begged her to look after his mutton chops and his buttons. So that it wasn’t likely that when, a year or so later, Christopher announced that he really was at last going to take up with the young woman and to chance what came of it – it wasn’t likely that he intended to dissociate himself from the two of them.

The idea had worried him so much that he had written a rough note – the last time that his hand had ever held a pen – to Christopher. He had said that a brother’s backing was not of great use to a woman, but in the special circumstances of the case, he being Tietjens of Groby for what it was worth, and Lady Tietjens – Marie Léonie – being perfectly willing to be seen on all occasions with Valentine and her man it might be worth something, at any rate with tenantry and such like.

Well, he hadn’t gone back on that!

But once the idea had come into his head it had grown and grown, on top of his mortification and his weariness. Because he could not conceal from himself that he was
weary
to death – of the office, of the nation, of the world and people… . People … he was tired of them! And of the streets, and the grass, and the sky and the moors! He had done his job. That was before Wolstonemark had telephoned and he still thought that he had done his job of getting things here and there about the world to some purpose.

A man is in the world to do his duty by his nation and his family… . By his own people first. Well, he had to acknowledge that he had let his own people down pretty badly – beginning with Christopher. Chiefly Christopher; but that reacted on the tenantry.

He had always been tired of the tenantry and Groby. He had been born tired of them. That happens. It happens particularly in old and prominent families. It was odd that Groby and the whole Groby business should so tire him; he supposed he had been born with some kink. All the Tietjenses were born with some sort of kink. It came from the solitude maybe, on the moors, the hard climate, the rough neighbours – possibly even from the fact that Groby Great Tree overshadowed the house. You could not look out of the school-room windows at all for its great, ragged trunk and all the children’s wing was darkened by its branches. Black … funeral plumes. The Hapsburgs were said to hate their palaces – that was no doubt why so many of them, beginning with Juan Ort, had come muckers. At any rate they had chucked the royalty business.

And at a very early age he had decided that he would chuck the country-gentleman business. He didn’t see that he was the one to bother with those confounded, hard-headed beggars or with those confounded wind-swept moors and valley bottoms. One owed the blighters a duty, but one did not have to live among them or see that they aired their bedrooms. It had been mostly swank that, always; and since the Corn Laws it had been almost entirely swank. Still, it is obvious that a landlord owes something to the estate from which he and his fathers have drawn their income for generations and generations.

Well, he had never intended to do it because he had been born tired of it. He liked racing and talking about racing to fellows who liked racing. He had intended to do that to the end.

He hadn’t been able to.

He had intended to go on living between the office, his chambers, Marie Léonie’s and week-ends with racehorse owners of good family until his eyes closed… . Of course God disposes in the end, even of the Tietjenses of Groby! He had intended to give over Groby, on the death of his father, to whichever of his brothers had heirs and seemed likely to run the estate well. That for a long time had seemed quite satisfactory. Ted, his next brother, had had his head screwed on all right. If he had had children he would have filled the bill. So would the next brother… . But neither of them had had children and both had managed to get killed in Gallipoli. Even sister Mary who was actually, next to him, a
maîtresse femme
if ever there was one, had managed to get killed as a Red Cross matron.
She
would have run Groby well enough – the great, blowsy, grey woman with a bit of a moustache.

Thus God had let him down with a bump on Christopher… . Well, Christopher would have run Groby well enough. But he wouldn’t. Wouldn’t own a yard of Groby land; wouldn’t touch a penny of Groby money. He was suffering for it now.

They were both, in effect, suffering, for Mark could not see what was to become of either Christopher or the estate.

Until his father’s death Mark had bothered precious little about the fellow. He was by fourteen years the younger: there had been ten children altogether, three of his own mother’s children having died young and one having been soft. So Christopher had been still a baby when Mark had left Groby for good – for good except for visits when he had brought his umbrella and seen Christopher mooning at the schoolroom door or in his own mother’s sitting-room. So he had hardly known the boy.

And at Christopher’s wedding he had definitely decided that he would not see him again – a mug who had got trepanned into marrying a whore. He wished his brother no ill, but the thought of him made Mark sickish. And then, for years, he had heard the worst possible rumours about Christopher. In a way they had rather consoled Mark. God knows, he cared little enough about the Tietjens family – particularly for the children by that
soft
saint. But he would rather have any brother of his be a wrong ’un than a mug.

Then gradually from the gossip that went abroad he had come to think that Christopher was a very bad wrong ’un indeed. He could account for it easily enough. Christopher had a soft streak and what a woman can do to deteriorate a fellow with a soft streak is beyond belief. And the woman Christopher had got hold of – who had got hold of him – passed belief too. Mark did not hold any great opinion of women at all; if they were a little plump, healthy, a little loyal and not noticeable in their dress that was enough for him… . But Sylvia was as thin as an eel, as full of vice as a mare that’s a wrong ’un, completely disloyal, and dressed like any Paris cocotte. Christopher, as he saw it, had had to keep that harlot to the tune of six or seven thousand a year, in a society of Jewish or Liberal cabinet ministers’ wives, all wrong ’uns too – and on an income of at most two… . Plenty for a younger son. But naturally he had had to go wrong to get the money.

So it had seemed to him … and it had seemed to matter precious little. He gave a thought to his brother perhaps twice a year. But then one day – just after the two brothers had been killed – their father had come up from Groby to say to Mark at the Club:

‘Has it occurred to you that, since those two boys are killed that fellow Christopher is practically heir to Groby? You have no legitimate children have you?’ Mark replied that he hadn’t any bastards either and that he was certainly not going to marry.

At that date it had seemed to him certain that he was not going to marry Marie Léonie Riotor and certainly he was not going to marry anyone else. So Christopher – or at any rate Christopher’s heir – must surely come in to Groby. It had not really, hitherto, occurred to him. But when it was thus put forcibly into his mind he saw instantly that it upset the whole scheme of his life. As he saw Christopher then, the fellow was the last person in the world to have charge of Groby – for you had to regard that as to some extent a cure of souls. And he himself would not be much better. He was hopelessly out of touch with the estate and, even though his father’s land-steward was a quite efficient fellow, he himself at that date was so hopelessly immersed in the affairs of the then war that he
would
hardly have a moment of time to learn anything about the property.

There was therefore a breakdown in his scheme of life. That was already a pretty shaking sort of affair. Mark was accustomed to regard himself as master of his fate – as being so limited in his ambitions and so entrenched behind his habits and his wealth that, if circumstances need not of necessity bend to his will, fate could hardly touch him.

And it was one thing for a Tietjens younger son to be a bold sort of law-breaker – or at any rate that he should be contemptuous of restraint. It was quite another that the heir to Groby should be a soft sort bad hat whose distasteful bunglings led his reputation to stink in the nostrils of all his own class. If a younger son can be said to have a class! … At any rate in the class to which his father and eldest brother belonged. Tietjens was said to have sold his wife to her cousin the Duke at so contemptible a price that he was obviously penniless even after that transaction. He had sold her to other rich men – to bank managers, for instance. Yet even after that he was reduced to giving worthless cheques. If a man sold his soul to the devil he should at least insist on a good price. Similar transactions were said to distinguish the social set in which that bitch moved – but most of the men who, according to Ruggles, sold their wives to members of the government, obtained millions by governmental financial tips – or peerages. Not infrequently they obtained both peerages and millions. But Christopher was such a confounded ass that he had got neither the one nor the other. His cheques were turned down for twopences. And he was such a bungler that he must needs seduce the daughter of their father’s oldest friend, must needs get her with child and let the fact be known to the whole world… .

This information he had from Ruggles – and it killed their father. Well, he, Mark was absolutely to blame: that was that. But – infinitely worse – it had made Christopher fiercely determined not to accept a single penny of the money that had become Mark’s and that had been his father’s. And Christopher was as obstinate as a hog. For that Mark did not blame him. It was a Tietjens job to be obstinate as a hog.

He couldn’t, however, disabuse his mind of the idea that Christopher’s refusal of Groby and all that came from Groby was as much a manifestation of the confounded saintliness that he got from his soft mother as of a spirit of resentment. Christopher
wanted
to rid himself of his great possessions. The fact that his father and brother had believed him to be what Marie Léonie would have called
maquereau
and had thus insulted him he had merely grasped at with eagerness as an excuse. He wanted to be out of the world. That was it. He wanted to be out of a disgustingly inefficient and venial world just as he, Mark, also wanted to be out of a world that he found almost more fusionless and dishonest than Christopher found it.