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 race-horse 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 minister’s 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 no 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.
At any rate, at the first word that they had had about the heirship to Groby after their father’s death, Christopher had declared that he, Mark, might take his money to the devil and the ownership of Groby with it. He proposed never to forgive either his father or Mark. He had only consented to take Mark by the hand at the urgent solicitation of Valentine Wannop….