A pretty muck Sylvia might have made of the place—if her mother had let her. Well, they would know pretty soon. Christopher would be back if the machine did not break his obstinate neck. … What, then, was this woman doing here? She probably represented a new turn of the screw that that unspeakable woman was administering to Christopher.
His sister-in-law Sylvia represented for him unceasing, unsleeping activities of a fantastic kind. She wanted, he presumed, his brother to go back and sleep with her. So much hatred could have no other motive. … There could be no other motive for sending this American lady here.
The American lady was telling him that she intended to keep up at Groby a semi-regal state—of course with due democratic modesty. Apparently she saw her way to squaring that circle! … Probably there are ways. There must be quite a lot of deucedly rich fellows in that country! How did they reconcile doing themselves well with democracy? Did their valets sit down to meals with them, for instance? That would be bad for discipline. But perhaps they did not care about discipline. There was no knowing.
Mrs. de Bray Pape apparently approved of having footmen in powder and the children of the tenants kneeling down when she drove out in his father’s coach and six. Because she intended to use his father’s coach and six when she drove over the moors to Redcar or Scarborough. That, Mrs. de Bray Pape had been told by Sylvia, was what his father had done. And it was true enough. That queer old josser his father had always had out that monstrosity when he went justicing or to the Assizes. That was to keep up his state. He didn’t see why Mrs. de Bray Pape shouldn’t keep up hers if she wanted to. But he did not see the tenants’ children kneeling to the lady! Imagine old Scutt’s children at it, or Long Tom o’ th’ Clough’s! … Their grandchildren, of course. They had called his father “Tietjens”—some of them even “Auld Mark!” to his face. He himself had always been “Young Mark” to them. Very likely he was still. These things do not change any more than the heather on the moors. He wondered what the tenants would call her. She would have a tough time of it. They weren’t her tenants; they were his and they jolly well knew it. These fellows who took houses and castles furnished thought they jolly well hired the family. There had been before the war a fellow from Frankfurt-on-the-Main took Lindisfarne or Holy Island or some such place and hired a bagpiper to play round the table while they ate. And closed his eyes whilst the fellow played reels. As if it had been a holy occasion. … Friend of Sylvia’s friends in the Government. To do her credit she would not stop with Jews. The only credit she had to her tail!
Mrs. de Bray Pape was telling him that it was not undemocratic to have your tenants’ children kneel down when you passed.
A boy’s voice said:
“Uncle Mark!” Who the devil could that be? Probably the son of one of the people he had weekended with. Bowlby’s maybe; or Teddy Hope’s. He had always liked children and they liked him.
Mrs. de Bray Pape was saying that, yes, it was good for the tenants’ children. The Rev. Dr. Slocombe, the distinguished educationalist, said that these touching old rites should be preserved in the interests of the young. He said that to see the Prince of Wales at the Coronation kneeling before his father and swearing fealty had been most touching. And she had seen pictures of the Maintenon having it done when she walked out. She was now the Maintenon, therefore it must be right. But for Marie Antoinette …
The boy’s voice said:
“I hope you will excuse. … I know it isn’t the thing. …”
He couldn’t see the boy without turning his head on the pillow and he was not going to turn his head. He had a sense of someone a yard or so away at his off-shoulder. The boy at least had not come through the standing hay.
He did not imagine that the son of anyone he had ever weekended with would ever walk through standing hay. The young generation were a pretty useless lot, but he could hardly believe they would have come to that yet. Their sons might. … He saw visions of tall dining-rooms lit up, with tall pictures, and dresses, and the sunset through high windows over tall grasses in the parks. He was done with that. If any tenants’ children ever knelt to him it would be when he took his ride in his wooden coat to the little church over the Moors. … Where his father had shot himself.
That had been a queer go. He remembered getting the news. He had been dining at Marie Léonie’s. …
The boy’s voice was, precisely, apologizing for the fact that that lady had walked through the grass. At the same time, Mrs. de Bray Pape was saying things to the discredit of Marie Antoinette, whom apparently she disliked. He could not imagine why anyone should dislike Marie Antoinette. Yet very likely she was dislikeable. The French, who were sensible people, had cut her head off, so they presumably disliked her. …
He had been dining at Marie Léonie’s, she standing, her hands folded before her, hanging down, watching him eat his mutton chops and boiled potatoes, when the porter from his Club had phoned through that there was a wire for him. Marie Léonie had answered the telephone. He had told her to tell the porter to open the telegram and read it to her. That was a not unusual proceeding. Telegrams that came to him at the Club usually announced the results of races that he had not attended. He hated to get up from the dinner-table. She had come back slowly, and
