Parade's End

every detail of Marie Leonie’s room as it was on that day. There was, on the marble mantel-shelf under an immense engraving of the Sistine Madonna a feeding-cup over a night-light in which Marie Leonie had been keeping some sort of pap warm for him. Probably the last food to which he had ever helped himself….

V

But no… that must have been about twelve or earlier or later on that infernal day. In any case he could not remember any subsequent meal he had had then; but he remembered an almost infinitely long period of intense vexation. Of mortification insofar as he could accuse himself of ever having felt mortified. He could still remember the fierce intaking of his breath through his nostrils that had come when Christopher had announced what had seemed to him then his ruinous intentions…. It had not been till probably four in the morning that Lord Wolstonemark had rung him up to ask him to countermand the transport that was to have gone out from Harwich…. At four in the morning, the idiotic brutes. His substitute had disappeared in the rejoicings in the sy and Lord Wolstonemark had wanted to know what code they used for Harwich because transport must at all costs be stopped. There was going to be no advance into Germany…. He had never spoken after that!

His brother was done for; the country finished; he was as good as down and out, as the phrase was, himself. Already in his deep mortification — yes — mortification! — he had said to Christopher that morning — the 11th November, 1918 — that he would never speak to him again. He hadn’t at that moment meant to say that he would never speak to Christopher at all again — merely that he was never going to speak to him about the affairs of Groby! Christopher might take that immense, far-spreading, grey, bothersome house and the tree and the well and the moors and all the John Peel outfit. Or he might leave them. He, Mark, was never going to speak about the matter any more.

He remembered thinking that Christopher might have taken him to mean that he intended to withdraw, for what it was worth, the light of his countenance from the Christopher Tietjens menage. Nothing had been further from his thoughts. He had a soft corner in his heart for Valentine Wannop. He had had it ever since sitting, feeling like a fool, in the ante-room of the War Office, beside her — gnawing at the handle of his umbrella. But, then, he had recommended her to become Christopher’s mistress; he had at any rate begged her to look after his mutton chops and his buttons. So that it wasn’t likely that when, a year or so later, Christopher announced that he really was at last going to take up with the young woman and to chance what came of it — it wasn’t likely that he intended to dissociate himself from the two of them.

The idea had worried him so much that he had written a rough note — the last time that his hand had ever held a pen — to Christopher. He had said that a brother’s backing was not of great use to a woman, but in the special circumstances of the case, he being Tietjens of Groby for what it was worth, and Lady Tietjens — Marie Leonie — being perfectly willing to be seen on all occasions with Valentine and her man it might be worth something, at any rate with tenantry and such like.

Well, he hadn’t gone back on that!

But once the idea had come into his head it had grown and grown, on top of his mortification and his weariness. Because he could not conceal from himself that he was weary to death — of the office, of the nation, of the world and people…. People… he was tired of them! And of the streets, and the grass, and the sky and the moors! He had done his job. That was before Wolstonemark had telephoned and he still thought that he had done his job of getting things here and there about the world to some purpose.

A man is in the world to do his duty by his nation and his family…. By his own people first. Well, he had to acknowledge that he had let his own people down pretty badly — beginning with Christopher. Chiefly Christopher; but that reacted on the tenantry.

He had always been tired of the tenantry and Groby. He had been born tired of them. That happens. It happens particularly in old and prominent families. It was odd that Groby and the whole Groby business should so tire him; he supposed he had been born with some kink. All the Tietjenses were born with some sort of kink. It came from the solitude maybe, on the moors, the hard climate, the rough neighbours — possibly even from the fact that Groby Great Tree overshadowed the house. You could not look out of the schoolroom windows at all for its great, ragged trunk and all the children’s wing was darkened by its branches. Black… funeral plumes. The Hapsburgs were said to hate their palaces — that was no doubt why so many of them, beginning with Juan Ort, had come muckers. At any rate they had chucked the royalty business.

And at a very early age he had decided that he would chuck the country-gentleman business. He didn’t see that he was the one to bother with those confounded, hardheaded beggars or with those confounded wind-swept moors and valley bottoms. One owed the blighters a duty, but one did not have to live among them or see that they aired their bedrooms. It had been mostly swank that, always; and since the Corn Laws it had been almost entirely swank. Still, it is obvious that a landlord owes something to the estate from which he and his fathers have drawn their income for generations and generations.

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 Leonie’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 maitresse 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