Some Do Not... — Part 2, Chapter 3, Section 1

III

The two brothers walked twenty steps from the door along the empty Inn pavements without speaking.

Each was completely expressionless.

To Christopher it seemed like Yorkshire.

He had a vision of Mark, standing on the lawn at Groby, in his bowler hat and with his umbrella, whilst the shooters walked over the lawn, and up the hill to the butts.

Mark probably never had done that; but it was so that his image always presented itself to his brother.

Mark was considering that one of the folds of his umbrella was disarranged.

He seriously debated with himself whether he should unfold it at once and refold it--which was a great deal of trouble to take!

--or whether he should leave it till he got to his club, where he would tell the porter to have it done at once.

That would mean that he would have to walk for a mile and a quarter through London with a disarranged umbrella, which was disagreeable.

He said: "If I were you I wouldn't let that banker fellow go about giving you testimonials of that sort."

Christopher said: "Ah!"

He considered that, with a third of his brain in action, he was over a match for Mark, but he was tired of discussions.

He supposed that some unpleasant construction would be put by his brother's friend, Ruggles, on the friendship of Port Scatho for himself.

But he had no curiosity.

Mark felt a vague discomfort.

He said: "You had a cheque dishonoured at the club this morning?"

Christopher said: "Yes."

Mark waited for explanations.

Christopher was pleased at the speed with which the news had travelled: it confirmed what he had said to Port Scatho.

He viewed his case from outside.

It was like looking at the smooth working of a mechanical model.

Mark was more troubled.

Used as he had been for thirty years to the vociferous south he had forgotten that there were taciturnities still.

If at his Ministry he laconically accused a transport clerk of remissness, or if he accused his French mistress--just as laconically--of putting too many condiments on his nightly mutton-chop, or too much salt in the water in which she boiled his potatoes, he was used to hearing a great many excuses or negations, uttered with energy and continued for long.

So he had got into the habit of considering himself almost the only laconic being in the world.

He suddenly remembered with discomfort--but also with satisfaction--that his brother was his brother.

He knew nothing about Christopher, for himself.

He had seemed to look at his little brother down avenues, from a distance, the child misbehaving himself.

Not a true Tietjens: born very late: a mother's child, therefore, rather than a father's. The mother an admirable woman, but from the South Riding.

Soft, therefore, and ample.

The elder Tietjens' children, when they had experienced failures, had been wont to blame their father for not marrying a woman of their own Riding.

So, for himself, he knew nothing of this boy.

He was said to be brilliant: an un-Tietjens-like quality.

Akin to talkativeness!

.

.

.

Well, he wasn't talkative.

Mark said: "What have you done with all the brass our mother left you?

Twenty thousand, wasn't it?"

They were just passing through a narrow way between Georgian houses.

In the next quadrangle Tietjens stopped and looked at his brother.

Mark stood still to be looked at.

Christopher said to himself: "This man has the right to ask these questions!"

It was as if a queer slip had taken place in a moving-picture.

This fellow had become the head of the house: he, Christopher, was the heir.

At that moment, their father, in the grave four months now, was for the first time dead.

Christopher remembered a queer incident.

After the funeral, when they had come back from the churchyard and had lunched, Mark--and Tietjens could now see the wooden gesture--had taken out his cigar-case and, selecting one cigar for himself, had passed the rest round the table.

It was as if people's hearts had stopped beating.

Groby had never, till that day, been smoked in: the father had had his twelve pipes filled and put in the rose-bushes in the drive.

.

.

.

It had been regarded merely as a disagreeable incident: a piece of bad taste.

.

.

.

Christopher, himself, only just back from France, would not even have known it as such, his mind was so blank, only the parson had whispered to him: "And Groby never smoked in till this day."

But now!

It appeared a symbol, and an absolutely right symbol.

Whether they liked it or not, here were the head of the house and the heir.

The head of the house must make his arrangements, the heir agree or disagree; but the elder brother had the right to have his enquiries answered.

Christopher said: "Half the money was settled at once on my child.

I lost seven thousand in Russian securities.

The rest I spent.

.

.

."

Mark said: "Ah!"

They had just passed under the arch that leads into Holborn.

Mark, in turn, stopped and looked at his brother and Christopher stood still to be inspected, looking into his brother's eyes.

Mark said to himself: "The fellow isn't at least afraid to look at you!"

He had been convinced that Christopher would be.

He said: "You spent it on women?

Or where do you get the money that you spend on women?"

Christopher said: "I never spent a penny on a woman in my life."

Mark said: "Ah!"

They crossed Holborn and went by the backways towards Fleet Street.

Christopher said: "When I say 'woman' I'm using the word in the ordinary sense.

Of course I've given women of our own class tea or lunch and paid for their cabs.

Perhaps I'd better put it that I've never--either before or after marriage--had connection with any woman other than my wife."

Mark said: "Ah!"

He said to himself: "Then Ruggles must be a liar."

This neither distressed nor astonished him.

For twenty years he and Ruggles had shared a floor of a large and rather gloomy building in Mayfair.

They were accustomed to converse whilst shaving in a joint toilet-room, otherwise they did not often meet except at the club.

Ruggles was attached to the Royal Court in some capacity, possibly as sub-deputy gold-stick-in-waiting.

Or he might have been promoted in the twenty years.

Mark Tietjens had never taken the trouble to enquire.

Enormously proud and shut in on himself, he was without curiosity of any sort.

He lived in London because it was immense, solitary, administrative and apparently without curiosity as to its own citizens.

If he could have found, in the north, a city as vast and as distinguished by the other characteristics, he would have preferred it.

Of Ruggles he thought little or nothing.

He had once heard the phrase "agreeable rattle," and he regarded Ruggles as an agreeable rattle, though he did not know what the phrase meant.

Whilst they shaved Ruggles gave out the scandal of the day.

He never, that is to say, mentioned a woman whose virtue was not purchasable, or a man who would no: sell his wife for advancement.

This matched with Mark's ideas of the south.

When Ruggles aspersed the fame of a man of family from the north, Mark would stop him with: "Oh, no. That's not true.

He's a Craister of Wantley Fells," or another name, as the case might be.

Half Scotchman, half Jew, Ruggles was very tall and resembled a magpie, having his head almost always on one side.

Had he been English Mark would never have shared his rooms with him: he knew indeed few Englishmen of sufficient birth and position to have that privilege, and, on the other hand, few Englishmen of birth and position would have consented to share rooms so grim and uncomfortable, so furnished with horse-hair seated mahogany, or so lit with ground-glass skylights.

Coming up to town at the age of twenty-five, Mark had taken these rooms with a man called Peebles, long since dead, and he had never troubled to make any change, though Ruggles had taken the place of Peebles.

The remote similarity of the names had been less disturbing to Mark Tietjens than would have been the case had the names been more different.

It would have been very disagreeable, Mark often thought, to share with a man called, say.

Granger.

As it was he still often called Ruggles Peebles, and no harm was done.

Mark knew nothing of Ruggles' origins, then--so that, in a remote way, their union resembled that of Christopher with Macmaster.

But whereas Christopher would have given his satellite the shirt off his back, Mark would not have lent Ruggles more than a five pound note, and would have turned him out of their rooms if it had not been returned by the end of the quarter.

But, since Ruggles never had asked to borrow anything at all, Mark considered him an entirely honourable man.

Occasionally Ruggles would talk of his determination to marry some widow or other with money, or of his influence with people in exalted stations, but, when he talked like that, Mark would not listen to him and he soon returned to stories of purchasable women and venial men.

About five months ago Mark had said one morning to Ruggles: "You might pick up what you can about my youngest brother Christopher and let me know."

The evening before that Mark's father had called Mark to him from over the other side of the smooking-room and had said: "You might find out what you can about Christopher.

He may be in want of money.

Has it occurred to you that he's the heir to the estate!

After you, of course."

Mr. Tietjens had aged a good deal after the deaths of his children.

He said: "I suppose you won't marry?"

and Mark had answered: "No; I shan't marry.

But I suppose I'm a better life than Christopher.

He appears to have been a good deal knocked about out there."

Armed then with this commission Mr. Ruggles appears to have displayed extraordinary activity in preparing a Christopher Tietjens dossier.

It is not often that an inveterate gossip gets a chance at a man whilst being at the same time practically shielded against the law of libel.

And Ruggles disliked Christopher Tietjens with the inveterate dislike of the man who revels in gossip for the man who never gossips.

And Christopher Tietjens had displayed more than his usual insolence to Ruggles.

So Ruggles' coat-tails flashed round an unusual number of doors and his top-hat gleamed before an unusual number of tall portals during the next week.

Amongst others he had visited the lady known as Glorvina.

There is said to be a book, kept in a holy of holies, in which bad marks are set down against men of family and position in England.

In this book Mark Tietjens and his father--in common with a great number of hard-headed Englishmen of county rank--implicitly believed.

Christopher Tietjens didn't: he imagined that the activities of gentlemen like Ruggles were sufficient to stop the careers of people whom they disliked.

On the other hand, Mark and his father looked abroad upon English society and saw fellows, apparently with every qualification for successful careers in one service or the other; and these fellows got no advancements, orders, titles or preferments of any kind.

Just, rather mysteriously, they didn't make their marks.

This they put down to the workings of the book.

Ruggles, too, not only believed in the existence of that compilation of the suspect and doomed, but believed that his hand had a considerable influence over the inscriptions in its pages.

He believed that if, with more moderation and with more grounds than usual, he uttered denigrations of certain men before certain personages, it would at least do those men a great deal of harm.

And, quite steadily and with, indeed, real belief in much of what he said, Ruggles had denigrated Tietjens before these personages.

Ruggles could not see why Christopher had taken Sylvia back after her elopement with Perowne: he could not see why Christopher had, indeed, married Sylvia at all when she was with child by a man called Drake--just as he wasn't going to believe that Christopher could get a testimonial out of Lord Port Scatho except by the sale of Sylvia to the banker.

He couldn't see anything but money or jobs at the bottom of these things: he couldn't see how Tietjens otherwise got the money to support Mrs. Wannop, Miss Wannop and her child, and to maintain Mrs. Duchemin and Macmaster in the style they affected, Mrs. Duchemin being the mistress of Christopher.

He simply could see no other solution.

It is, in fact, asking for trouble if you are more altruist than the society that surrounds you.

Ruggles, however, hadn't any pointers as to whether or no or to what degree he had really damaged his room-mate's brother.

He had talked in what he considered to be the right quarters, but he hadn't any evidence that what he had said had got through.

It was to ascertain that that he had called on the great lady, for if anybody knew, she would.

He hadn't definitely ascertained anything, for the great lady was--and he knew it--a great deal cleverer than himself.

The great lady, he was allowed to discover, had a real affection for Sylvia, her daughter's close friend, and she expressed real concern to hear that Christopher Tietjens wasn't getting on.

Ruggles had gone to visit her quite openly to ask whether something better couldn't be done for the brother of the man with whom he lived.

Christopher had, it was admitted, great abilities; yet neither in his office--in which he would surely have remained had he been satisfied with his prospects--nor in the army did he occupy anything but a very subordinate position.

Couldn't, he asked, Glorvina do anything for him?

And he added: "It's almost as if he had a bad mark against him.

.

.

."

The great lady had said, with a great deal of energy, that she could not do anything at all.

The energy was meant to show how absolutely her party had been downed, outed and jumped on by the party in power, so that she had no influence of any sort anywhere.

That was an exaggeration; but it did Christopher Tietjens no good, since Ruggles chose to take it to mean that Glorvina said she could do nothing because there _was_ a black mark against Tietjens in the book of the inner circle to which--if anyone had--the great lady must have had access.

Glorvina, on the other hand, had been awakened to concern for Tietjens.

In the existence of a book she didn't believe: she had never seen it.

But that a black mark of a metaphorical nature might have been scored against him she was perfectly ready to believe and, when occasion served, during the next five months, she made enquiries about Tietjens.

She came upon a Major Drake, an intelligence officer, who had access to the central depôt of confidential reports upon officers, and Major Drake showed her, with a great deal of readiness, as a specimen, the report on Tietjens.

It was of a most discouraging sort and peppered over with hieroglyphics, the main point being Tietjens' impecuniosity and his predilection for the French; and apparently for the French Royalists.

There being at that date and with that Government a great deal of friction with our Allies this characteristic which earlier had earned him a certain number of soft jobs had latterly done him a good deal of harm.

Glorvina carried away the definite information that Tietjens had been seconded to the French artillery as a liaison officer and had remained with them for some time, but, having been shell-shocked, had been sent back.

After that a mark had been added against him: "Not to be employed as liaison officer again."

On the other hand, Sylvia's visits to Austrian officer-prisoners had also been noted to Tietjens' account and a final note added: "Not to be entrusted with any confidential work."

To what extent Major Drake himself compiled these records the great lady didn't know and didn't want to know.

She was acquainted with the relationships of the parties and was aware that in certain dark, full-blooded men the passion for sexual revenge is very lasting, and she let it go at that.

She discovered, however, from Mr. Waterhouse--now also in retreat--that he had a very high opinion of Tietjens' character and abilities, and that just before Waterhouse's retirement he had especially recommended Tietjens for very high promotion.

That alone, in the then state of Ministerial friendships and enmities, Glorvina knew to be sufficient to ruin any man within range of Governmental influence.

She had, therefore, sent for Sylvia and had put all these matters before her, for she had too much wisdom to believe that, even supposing there should be differences between the young people of which she had no evidence at all, Sylvia could wish to do anything but promote her husband's material interests.

Moreover, sincerely benevolent as the great lady was towards this couple, she also saw that here was a possibility of damaging, at least, individuals of the party in power.

A

person in a relatively unimportant official position can sometimes make a very nasty stink if he is unjustly used, has determination and a small amount of powerful backing.

This Sylvia, at least, certainly had.

And Sylvia had received the great lady's news with so much emotion that no one could have doubted that she was utterly devoted to her husband and would tell him all about it.

This Sylvia had not as yet managed to do.

Ruggles in the meantime had collected a very full budget of news and inferences to present to Mark Tietjens whilst shaving.

Mark had been neither surprised nor indignant.

He had been accustomed to call all his father's children, except the brother immediately next him, "the whelps," and their concerns had been no concerns of his.

They would marry, beget unimportant children who would form collateral lines of Tietjens and disappear as is the fate of sons of younger sons.

And the deaths of the intermediate brothers had been so recent that Mark was not yet used to thinking of Christopher as anything but a whelp, a person whose actions might be disagreeable but couldn't matter.

He said to Ruggles: "You had better talk to my father about this.

I don't know that I could keep all these particulars accurately in my head."

Ruggles had been only too pleased to, and--with to give him weight, his intimacy with the eldest son, who certified to his reliability in money matters and his qualifications for amassing details as to personalities, acts and promotions--that day, at tea at the club, in a tranquil corner, Ruggles had told Mr. Tietjens senior that Christopher's wife had been with child when he had married her; he had hushed up her elopement with Perowne and connived at other love affairs of hers to his own dishonour, and was suspected in high places of being a French agent, thus being marked down as suspect in the great book.

.

.

.

All this in order to obtain money for the support of Miss Wannop, by whom he had had a child, and to maintain Macmaster and Mrs. Duchemin on a scale unsuited to their means, Mrs. Duchemin being his mistress.

The story that Tietjens had had a child by Miss Wannop was first suggested, and then supported, by the fact that in Yorkshire he certainly had a son who never appeared in Gray's Inn.

Mr. Tietjens was a reasonable man: not reasonable enough to doubt Ruggles' circumstantial history.

He believed implicitly in the great book--which has been believed in by several generations of country gentlemen: he perceived that his brilliant son had made no advancement commensurate with either his brilliance or his influence: he suspected that brilliance was synonymous with reprehensible tendencies.

Moreover, his old friend, General ffolliott, had definitely told him some days before that he ought to enquire into the goings on of Christopher.

On being pressed ffolliott had, also definitely, stated that Christopher was suspected of very dishonourable dealings, both in money and women.

Ruggles' allegations came, therefore, as a definite confirmation of suspicions that appeared only too well backed up.

He bitterly regretted that, knowing Christopher to be brilliant, he had turned the boy--as is the usual portion of younger sons--adrift, with what of a competence could be got together, to sink or swim.

He had, he said to himself, always wished to keep at home and under his own eyes this boy for whom he had had especial promptings of tenderness.

His wife, to whom he had been absolutely attached by a passionate devotion, had been unusually wrapped up in Christopher, because Christopher had been her youngest son, born very late.

And, since his wife's death, Christopher had been especially dear to him, as if he had carried about his presence some of the radiance and illumination that had seemed to attach to his mother.

Indeed, after his wife's death, Mr. Tietjens had very nearly asked Christopher and his wife to come and keep house for him at Groby, making, of course, special testamentary provision for Christopher in order to atone for his giving up his career at the Department of Statistics.

His sense of justice to his other children had prevented him doing this.

What broke his heart was that Christopher should not only have seduced but should have had a child by Valentine Wannop.

Very grand seigneur in his habits, Mr. Tietjens had always believed in his duty to patronise the arts and, if he had actually done little in this direction beyond purchasing some chocolate-coloured pictures of the French historic school, he had for long prided himself on what he had done for the widow and children of his old friend.

Professor Wannop.

He considered, and with justice, that he had made Mrs. Wannop a novelist, and he considered her to be a very great novelist.

And his conviction of the guilt of Christopher was strengthened by a slight tinge of jealousy of his son: a feeling that he would not have acknowledged to himself.

For, since Christopher, he didn't know how, for he had given his son no introduction, had become an intimate of the Wannop household, Mrs. Wannop had completely given up asking him, Mr. Tietjens, clamourously and constantly for advice.

In return she had sung the praises of Christopher in almost extravagant terms.

She had, indeed, said that if Christopher had not been almost daily in the house or at any rate at the end of the 'phone she would hardly have been able to keep on working at full pressure.

This had not overpleased Mr. Tietjens.

Mr. Tietjens entertained for Valentine Wannop an affection of the very deepest, the same qualities appealing to the father as appealed to the son.

He had even, in spite of his sixty odd years, seriously entertained the idea of marrying the girl.

She was a lady: she would have managed Groby very well; and, although the entail on the property was very strict indeed, he would, at least, have been able to put her beyond the reach of want after his death.

He had thus no doubt of his son's guilt, and he had to undergo the additional humiliation of thinking that not only had his son betrayed this radiant personality, but he had done it so clumsily as to give the girl a child and let it be known.

That was unpardonable want of management in the son of a gentleman.

And now this boy was his heir with a misbegotten brat to follow.

Irrevocably!

All his four tall sons, then, were down.

His eldest tied for good to--a quite admirable!

--trollops: his two next dead: his youngest worse than dead: his wife dead of a broken heart.

A soberly but deeply religious man, Mr. Tietjens' very religion made him believe in Christopher's guilt.

He knew that it is as difficult for a rich man to go to heaven as it is for a camel to go through the gate in Jerusalem called the Needle's Eye.

He humbly hoped that his Maker would receive him amongst the pardoned.

Then, since he was a rich--an enormously rich--man, his sufferings on this earth must be very great.

.

.

.

From tea-time that day until it was time to catch the midnight train for Bishop's Auckland he had been occupied with his son Mark in the writing-room of the club.

They had made many notes.

He had seen his son Christopher, in uniform, looking broken and rather bloated, the result, no doubt, of debauch.

Christopher had passed through the other end of the room and Mr. Tietjens had avoided his eye.

He had caught the train and reached Groby, travelling alone.

Towards dusk he had taken out a gun.

He was found dead next morning, a couple of rabbits beside his body, just over the hedge from the little churchyard.

He appeared to have crawled through the hedge, dragging his loaded gun, muzzle forwards, after him.

Hundreds of men, mostly farmers, die from that cause every year in England.

.

.

.

With these things in his mind--or as much of them as he could keep at once--Mark was now investigating his brother's affairs.

He would have let things go on longer, for his father's estate was by no means wound up, but that morning Ruggles had told him that the club had had a cheque of his brother's returned and that his brother was going out to France next day.

It was five months exactly since the death of their father.

That had happened in March, it was now August: a bright, untidy day in narrow, high courts.

Mark arranged his thoughts.

"How much of an income," he said, "do you need to live in comfort?

If a thousand isn't enough, how much?

Two?"

Christopher said that he needed no money and didn't intend to live in comfort.

Mark said: "I am to let you have three thousand, if you'll live abroad.

I'm only carrying out our father's instructions.

You could cut a hell of a splash on three thousand in France."

Christopher did not answer.

Mark began again: "The remaining three thousand then: that was over from our mother's money.

Did you settle it on your girl, or just spend it on her?"

Christopher repeated with patience that he hadn't got a girl.

Mark said: "The girl who had a child by you.

I'm instructed, if you haven't settled anything already--but father took it that you would have--I was to let her have enough to live in comfort.

How much do you suppose she'll need to live in comfort?

I allow Charlotte four hundred.

Would four hundred be enough?

I suppose you want to go on keeping her?

Three thousand isn't a great lot for her to live on with a child."

Christopher said: "Hadn't you better mention names?"

Mark said: "No!

I never mention names.

I mean a woman writer and her daughter.

I

suppose the girl is father's daughter, isn't she?"

Christopher said: "No. She couldn't be.

I've thought of it.

She's twenty-seven.

We were all in Dijon for the two years before she was born.

Father didn't come into the estate till next year.

The Wannops were also in Canada at the time.

Professor Wannop was principal of a university there.

I forget the name."

Mark said: "So we were.

In Dijon!

For my French!"

He added: "Then she can't be father's daughter.

It's a good thing.

I thought, as he wanted to settle money on them, they were very likely his children.

There's a son, too.

He's to have a thousand.

What's he doing?"

"The son," Tietjens said, "is a conscientious objector.

He's on a mine-sweeper.

A bluejacket.

His idea is that picking up mines is saving life, not taking it."

"Then he won't want the brass yet," Mark said, "it's to start him in any business.

What's the full name and address of your girl?

Where do you keep her?"

They were in an open space, dusty, with half-timber buildings whose demolition had been interrupted.

Christopher halted close to a post that had once been a cannon; up against this he felt that his brother could lean in order to assimilate ideas.

He said slowly and patiently: "If you're consulting with me as to how to carry out our father's intentions, and as there's money in it you had better make an attempt to get hold of the facts.

I wouldn't bother you if it wasn't a matter of money.

In the first place, no money is wanted at this end.

I can live on my pay.

My wife is a rich woman, relatively.

Her mother is a very rich woman.

.