His father’s … companion might have been looking out. He would have fainted. …
His father was a good sort of man. But he, too, must be … like Mother. If what they said was true. Ruined by dissolute living. But a good, grey man. The sort of man to be tormented by Mother. Great spatulate fingers. But no one had ever tied flies like Father. Some he had tied years ago were the best he, Mark Tietjens junior of Groby, had yet. And Father loved the wine-coloured moor. How could he stifle under these boughs! A house overhung by trees is unsanitary. Italians say that. …
But what a lovely glimpse under the trees! Sweet-williams along the path. Light filtered by boughs. Shadow. Gleams in the little windowpanes. Wall-stones all lichen. That’s England. If he could spend a while here with Father. …
Father had been matchless with horses. Women, too. … What an inheritance was his, Mark Tietjens, junior’s! If he could spend a while here. … But his Father slept with … If she came out of the door. … She must be beautiful. … No they said she was not a patch on mother. He had overheard that at Fittleworth’s. Or Helen Lowther. … But his father had had his pick? … If he chose then to sleep with …
If she came out of the door he would faint. … Like the Venus of Botti … A crooked smile. … No, Helen Lowther would protect. … He might fall in love with his Father’s … What do you know of what will happen to you when you come in contact with the Bad Woman. … Of advanced views. … They said she was of Advanced Views. And a Latinist. … He was a Latinist. Loved it!
Or his father might with Hel … Hot jealousy filled him. His father was the sort of man … She might … Why did over … People like mother and father beget children?
He kept his eyes fascinatedly fixed on the stone porch of the cottage whilst he stumbled up the great stone slabs to the path. The path led to Uncle Mark’s wall-less thatched hut. … No form filled the porch. What was to become of him? He had great wealth; terrific temptation would be his. His mother was no guide. His father might have been better. … Well, there was Marxian-Communism. They all looked to that now, in his set at Cambridge. Monty, the Prime Minister’s son, with black eyes; Dobles, Campion’s nephew, lean as a rat; Porter, with a pig’s snout, but witty as hell. Fat ass.
IV
Mark Tietjens thought that a cow or a hog must have got into the orchard, there was such a rushing in the grass. He said to himself that that damn Gunning was always boasting about his prowess as a hedger; he might see that his confounded hedges kept out the beasts from the Common. An unusual voice—unusual in its intonation—remarked:
“Oh, Sir Mark Tietjens, this is dreadful!”
It appeared to be dreadful. A lady in a long skirt—an apparently elderly Di Vernon out of Waverley, which was one of the few novels Mark had ever read—was making dreadful havoc with the standing grass. The beautiful, proud heads swayed and went down as she rushed knee-deep amongst it; stopped, rushed again across his view and then stopped apparently to wring her hands and once more explain that it was dreadful. A tiny rabbit, scared out by her approach, scuttered out under his bed and presumably down into the vegetable beds. Marie Léonie’s Mistigris would probably get it and, since it was Friday, Marie Léonie would be perturbed.
The lady pushed through the remaining tall grass that stood between them and had the air of rising up at his bed-foot. She was rather a faint figure—like the hedge-sparrow. In grey, with a grey short coat and a waistcoat with small round buttons and a three-cornered hat. A tired, thin face. … Well, she must be tired, pushing through that long grass with a long skirt. She had a switch of green shagreen. The hen-tomtit that lived in the old shoe they had tucked on purpose under his thatch uttered long warning cries. The hen-tomtit did not like the aspect of this apparition.
She was devouring his face with her not disagreeable eyes and muttering:
“Dreadful! Dreadful!” An aeroplane was passing close overhead. She looked up and remarked almost tearfully:
“Hasn’t it struck you that but for the sins of your youth you might be doing stunts round these good-looking hills? Now!”
Mark considered the matter, fixedly returning her glance. For an Englishman the phrase, “the sins of your youth,” as applied to a gentleman’s physical immobility implies only one thing. It never had occurred to him that that implication might be tacked on to him. But of course it might. It was an implication of a disagreeable, or at least a discrediting, kind, because in his class they had been accustomed to consider that the disability was incurred by consorting with public women of a cheap kind. He had never consorted with any woman in his life but Marie Léonie, who was health exaggerated. But if he had had to do with women he would have gone in for the most expensive sort. And taken precautions! A gentleman owes that to his fellows!
The lady was continuing:
“I may as well tell you at once that I am Mrs. Millicent de Bray Pape. And hasn’t it struck you that but for his depravity—unbridled depravity—your brother might today be operating in Capel Court instead of peddling old furniture at the end of the world?”
She added disconcertingly:
“It’s nervousness that makes me talk like this. I have always been shy in the presence of notorious libertines. That is my education.”
Her name conveyed to him that this lady was going to occupy Groby. He saw no objection to it. She had, indeed, written to ask him if he saw any objection to it. It had been a queerly written letter, in hieroglyphs of a straggling and convoluted kind. … “I am the lady who is going to rent your mansion, Groby,
