A pretty muck Sylvia might have made of the place by now — if her mother had let her. Well, they would know pretty soon. Christopher would be back, if the machine did not break his obstinate neck…. What, then, was this woman doing here? She probably represented a new turn of the screw that that unspeakable woman was administering to Christopher.
His sister-in-law Sylvia represented for him unceasing, unsleeping activities of a fantastic kind. She wanted, he presumed, his brother to go back and sleep with her. So much hatred could have no other motive…. There could be no other motive for sending this American lady here.
The American lady was telling him that she intended to keep up at Groby a semi-regal state — of course with due domestic modesty. Apparently she saw her way to squaring that circle!… Probably there are ways. There must be quite a lot of deucedly rich fellows in that country! How did they reconcile doing themselves well with democracy? Did their valets sit down to meals with them, for instance? That would be bad for discipline. But perhaps they did not care about discipline. There was no knowing.
Mrs. de Bray Pape apparently approved of having footmen in powder and the children of the tenants kneeling down when she drove out in his father’s coach and six. Because she intended to use his father’s coach and six when she drove over the moors to Redcar or Scarboro’. That, Mrs. de Bray Pape had been told by Sylvia, was what his father had done. And it was true enough. That queer old josser, his father, had always had out that monstrosity when he went justicing or to the Assizes. That was to keep up his state. He didn’t see why Mrs. de Bray Pape shouldn’t keep up hers if she wanted to. But he did not see the tenant’s children kneeling to the lady! Imagine old Scot’s children at it or Long Tom o’ th’ Clough’s;… Their grandchildren of course. They had called his father “Tietjens” — some of them even “Auld Mark!” to his face. He himself had always been “Young Mark” to them. Very likely he was still. These things do not change any more than the heather on the moors. He wondered what the tenants would call her. She would have a tough time of it. They weren’t her tenants; they were his and they jolly well knew it. These fellows who took houses and castles furnished thought they jolly well hired descent from the family. There had been before the war a fellow from Frankfort-on-the-Main took Lindisfarne or Holy Island or some such place and hired a bagpiper to play round the table while they ate. And closed his eyes whilst the fellow played reels. As if it had been a holy occasion… Friend of Sylvia’s friends in the Government. To do her credit she would not stop with Jews. The only credit she had to her tail!
Mrs. de Bray Pape was telling him that it was not undemocratic to have your tenants’ children kneel down when you passed.
A boy’s voice said:
“Uncle Mark!” Who the devil could that be? Probably the son of the people he had week-ended with. Bowlby’s maybe; or Teddy Hope’s. He had always liked children and they liked him.
Mrs. de Bray Pape was saying that, yes, it was good for the tenants’ children. The Rev. Dr. Slocombe, the distinguished educationalist, said that these touching old rites should be preserved in the interests of the young. He said that to see the Prince of Wales at the Coronation kneeling before his father and swearing fealty had been most touching. And she had seen pictures of the Maintenon having it done when she walked out. She was now the Maintenon, therefore it must be right. But for Marie Antoinette…
The boy’s voice said:
“I hope you will excuse… I know it isn’t the thing…”
He couldn’t see the boy without turning his head on the pillow and he was not going to turn his head. He had a sense of someone a yard or so away at his off-shoulder. The boy at least had not come through the standing hay.
He did not imagine that the son of anyone he had ever week-ended with would ever walk through standing hay. The young generation were a pretty useless lot, but he could hardly believe they would have come to that yet. Their sons might…. He saw visions of tall dining-rooms lit up, with tall pictures, and dresses, and the sunset through high windows over tall grasses in the parks. He was done with that. If any tenants’ children ever knelt to him it would be when he took his ride in his wooden coat to the little church over the moors…. Where his father had shot himself.
That had been a queer go. He remembered getting the news. He had been dining, at Marie Léonie’s….
The boy’s voice was, precisely, apologising for the fact that that lady had walked through the grass. At the same time Mrs. de Bray Pape was saying things to the discredit of Marie Antoinette whom apparently she disliked. He could not imagine why anyone should dislike Marie Antoinette. Yet very likely she was dislikable. The French who were sensible people had cut her head off, so they presumably disliked her….
He had been dining at Marie Léonie’s, she standing, her hands folded before her, hanging down, watching him eat his mutton chops and boiled potatoes when the porter from his Club had phoned through that there was a wire for him. Marie Léonie had answered the telephone. He had told her to tell the porter to open the telegram and read it to her. That was a not unusual proceeding. Telegrams that came to him at the Club usually announced the results of races that he had not attended. He hated to get up from the dinner-table. She had come back slowly and said still more slowly that she had bad news for him; there had been an accident; his father had been found shot dead.
He had sat still for quite a time; Marie Léonie also had said nothing. He remembered that he had finished his chops, but had not eaten his apple-pie. He had finished his claret.
By that time he had come to the conclusion that his father had probably committed suicide and that he — he, Mark Tietjens — was probably responsible for his father’s having done that. He had got up, then, told Marie Léonie to get herself some mourning and had taken the night train to Groby. There had been no doubt about it when he got there. His father had committed suicide. His father was not the man, unadvisedly, to crawl through a quicken-hedge with his gun at full-cock behind him, after rabbits…. It had been proposed.
There was, then, something soft about the Tietjens’ stock — for there had been no real and sufficient cause for the suicide. Obviously his father had had griefs. He had never got over the death of his second wife: that was soft for a Yorkshireman. He had lost two sons and an only daughter in the war: other men had done that and got over it. He had heard through him, Mark, that his youngest son — Christopher — was a bad hat. But plenty of men had sons who were bad hats…. Something soft then about the stock! Christopher certainly was soft. But that came from the mother. Mark’s step-mother had been from the south of Yorkshire. Soft people down there; a soft woman. Christopher had been her ewe lamb and she had died of grief when Sylvia had run away from him!…
The boy with a voice had got himself into view towards the bottom of the bed, near Mrs. de Bray Pape…. A tallish slip of a boy, with slightly chawbacony cheeks, high-coloured, lightish hair, brown eyes. Upstanding, but softish. Mark seemed to know him, but could not place him. He asked to be forgiven for the intrusion, saying that he knew it was not the thing.
Mrs. de Bray Pape was talking improbably about Marie Antoinette, whom she very decidedly disliked. She said that Marie Antoinette had behaved with great ingratitude to Madame de Maintenon — which must have been difficult. Apparently, according to Mrs. de Bray Pape, when Marie Antoinette had been a neglected little girl about the Court of France Madame de Maintenon had befriended her, lending her frocks, jewels, and perfumes. Later Marie Antoinette had persecuted her benefactor. From that had arisen all the woes of France and the Old World in general.