needs. I say that to show my estimate of your brother; because I know he will incur no obligations he cannot discharge.”
Mark Tietjens stood motionless, leaning slightly on the crook of his umbrella on the one side, on the other displaying, at arm’s length, the white silk lining of his bowler hat, the lining being the brightest object in the room.
“That’s your affair,” he said to Port Scatho. “All I’m concerned with is to have a thousand a year paid to my brother’s account till further notice.”
Christopher Tietjens said, with what he knew was a sentimental voice, to Port Scatho. He was very touched; it appeared to him that with the spontaneous appearance of several names in his memory, and with this estimate of himself from the banker, his tide was turning and that this day might indeed be marked by a red stone:
“Of course, Port Scatho, I won’t withdraw my wretched little account from you if you want to keep it. It flatters me that you should.” He stopped and added: “I only wanted to avoid these… these family complications. But I suppose you can stop my brother’s money being paid into my account. I don’t want his money.”
He said to Sylvia:
“You had better settle the other matter with Port Scatho.”
To Port Scatho:
“I’m intensely obliged to you, Port Scatho…. You’ll get Lady Port Scatho round to Macmaster’s this evening if only for a minute; before eleven….” And to his brother:
“Come along, Mark. I’m going down to the War Office. We can talk as we walk.”
Sylvia said very nearly with timidity — and again a dark thought went over Tietjens’ mind:
“Do we meet again then?… I know you’re very busy….”
Tietjens said:
“Yes. I’ll come and pick you out from Lady Job’s, if they don’t keep me too long at the War Office. I’m dining, as you know, at Macmaster’s; I don’t suppose I shall stop late.”
“I’d come,” Sylvia said, “to Macmaster’s, if you thought it was appropriate. I’d bring Claudine Sandbach and General Wade. We’re only going to the Russian dancers. We’d cut off early.”
Tietjens could settle that sort of thought very quickly.
“Yes, do,” he said hurriedly. “It would be appreciated.”
He got to the door. He came back; his brother was nearly through. He said to Sylvia, and for him the occasion was a very joyful one:
“I’ve worried out some of the words of that song. It runs:
‘Somewhere or other there must surely be
The face not seen: the voice not heard…’
Probably it’s ‘the voice not ever heard’ to make up the metre…. I don’t know the writer’s name. But I hope I’ll worry it all out during the day.”
Sylvia had gone absolutely white.
“Don’t!” she said. “Oh…
She had heard the song at a charity concert and had cried as she heard it. She had read, afterwards, the words in the programme and had almost cried again. But she had lost the programme and had never come across the words again. The echo of them remained with her like something terrible and alluring: like a knife she would some day take out and with which she would stab herself.
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
