Mark had listened to his brother during all this with indulgence and even with pleasure. If a Tietjens contemplated going into trade he might at least contemplate an amusing trade carried on in a spirited manner. And what Christopher humorously projected was at least more dignified than stock-broking or bill-discounting. And he was pretty well convinced by this time that his brother was completely reconciled to him and to Groby.
It was about then and when he had again begun to introduce the topic of Groby that Christopher got up from the chair at the bedside and having taken his brother’s wrist in his cool fingers remarked:
“Your temperature’s pretty well down. Don’t you think it is about time that you set about marrying Charlotte? I suppose you mean to marry her before this bout is finished and you might have a relapse.”
Mark remembered that speech perfectly well with the addition that if he, Christopher, hurried about it they might get the job done that night. It must therefore then have been about one o’clock of a day about three weeks before the 11th November, 1918.
Mark replied that he would be much obliged to Christopher, and Christopher, having aroused Marie Léonie and told her that he would be back in time to let her have a good night’s rest, disappeared saying that he was going straight to Lambeth. In those days, supposing you could command thirty pounds or so there was no difficulty in getting married at the shortest possible notice and Christopher had promoted too many last minute marriages amongst his men not to know the ropes.
Mark viewed the transaction with a good deal of contentment. It had needed no arguing: if the proceeding had the approval of the heir-presumptive to Groby there was nothing more to be said against it. And Mark took the view that if he agreed to a proceeding that Christopher could only have counselled as heir-presumptive that was an additional reason for Mark’s expecting that Christopher would eventually consent to administer Groby himself.
VI
THAT would have been three weeks before the 11th of November. His head boggled a little at computing what the actual date in October must have been. With his then pneumonia his mind had not much registered dates; days had gone by in fever and boredom. Still, a man ought to remember the date of his wedding. Say it had been the 20th of October, 1918. The 20th of October had been his father’s birthday. When he came to think of it he could remember hazily that it was queer that he should be going out of life on. the date his father had entered it. It made a sort of full stop. And it made a full stop that, practically on that day Papists entered into their own in Groby. He had, that is to say, made up his mind to the fact that Christopher’s son would have Groby as a home even if Christopher didn’t. And the boy was by now a full-fledged Papist, pickled and oiled and wafered and all. Sylvia had rubbed the fact in about a week ago by sending him a card for his nephew’s provisional baptism and first communion about a week before. It had astonished him that he had not felt more bitter.
He had not any doubt that the fact had reconciled him to his marriage with Marie Léonie. He had told his brother a year or so ago that he would never marry her because she was a Papist, but he was aware that then he was only chipping at Spelden, the fellow that wrote Spelden on Sacrilege, a book that predicted all sorts of disaster for families who owned former Papist Church lands or who had displaced Papists. When he had told Christopher that he would never marry Charlotte — he had called her Charlotte for reasons of camouflage before the marriage — he had been quite aware that he was chipping at Spelden’s ghost — for Spelden must have been dead a hundred years or so. As it were, he had been saying grimly if pleasantly to that bogey:
“Eh, old ’un. You see. You may prophesy disaster to Groby because a Tietjens was given it over the head of one of your fellows in Dutch William’s time. But you can’t frighten me into making an honest woman — let alone a Lady of Groby — out of a Papist.”
And he hadn’t. He would swear that no idea of disaster to Groby had entered his head at the date of the marriage. Now, he would not say; but of what he felt then he was certain. He remembered thinking whilst the ceremony was going on of the words of Fraser of Lovat before they executed him in the ‘Forty Five. They had told him on the scaffold that if he would make some sort of submission to George II they would spare his body from being exhibited in quarters on the spikes of the buildings in Edinburgh. And Fraser had answered: “An the King will have my heid I care not what he may do with my ——” naming a part of a gentleman that is not now mentioned in drawing-rooms. So, if a Papist was to inhabit Groby House it mattered precious little if the first Lady Tietjens of Groby were Papist or Heathen.
A man as a rule does not marry his mistress whilst he has any kick in him. If he still aims at a career it might hinder him supposing she were known to have been his mistress, or of course a fellow who wants to make a career might want to help himself on by making a good marriage. Even if a man does not want to make a career he may think that a woman who has been his mistress as like as not may cuckold him after marriage, for, if she has gone wrong with him she would be more apt to go wrong elsewhere as well. But if a fellow is practically finished, those considerations disappear and he remembers that you go to hell if you seduce virgins. It is as well at one time or another to make your peace with your Creator. For ever is a long word and God is said to disapprove of unconsecrated unions.
Besides it would very likely please Marie Léonie, though she had never said a word about it and it would certainly dish Sylvia who was no doubt counting on being the first Lady Tietjens of Groby. And then, too, it would undoubtedly make Marie Léonie safer. In one way and another he had given his mistress quite a number of things that might well be desirable to that bitch, and neither his nor Christopher’s lives were worth much, whilst Chancery can be a very expensive affair if you get into it.
And he was aware that he had always had a soft spot in his heart for Marie Léonie, otherwise he would not have provided her with the name of Charlotte for public consumption. A man gives his mistress another name if there is any chance of his marrying her so that it may look as if he were marrying someone else when he does it. Marie Léonie Riotor looks different from a casual Charlotte. It gives her a better chance in the world outside.
So it had been well enough. The world was changing and there was no particular reason why he should not change with it…. And he had not been able to conceal from himself that he was getting on the way. Time lengthened out. When he had come in drenched from one of the potty local meetings that they had to fall back on during the war he had known that something was coming to him because after Marie Léonie had tucked him up in bed he could not remember the strain of the winner of some handicap of no importance. Marie Léonie had given him a goodish tot of rum with butter in it and that might have made him hazy — but all the same that had never happened to him in his life before, rum or no rum. And by now he had forgotten even the name of the winner and the meeting….