Some Do Not … · Part II · Chapter 2 3 (1/4)

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 rosebushes 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 not 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 horsehair 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 smoking-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’ coattails 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 hardheaded 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 roommate’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 depot 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 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.”