He had sat still for quite a time; Marie Léonie also had said nothing. He remembered that he had finished his chops, but had not eaten his apple-pie. He had finished his claret.
By that time he had come to the conclusion that his father had probably committed suicide, and that he—he, Mark Tietjens—was probably responsible for his father’s having done that. He had got up, then, told Marie Léonie to get herself some mourning, and had taken the night train to Groby. There had been no doubt about it when he got there. His father had committed suicide. His father was not the man unadvisedly to crawl through a quicken-hedge with his gun at full-cock behind him, after rabbits. … It had been purposed.
There was, then, something soft about the Tietjens stock—for there had been no real and sufficient cause for the suicide. Obviously his father had had griefs. He had never got over the death of his second wife; that was soft for a Yorkshireman. He had lost two sons and an only daughter in the war; other men had done that and got over it. He had heard through him, Mark, that his youngest son—Christopher—was a bad hat. But plenty of men had sons who were bad hats. … Something soft then about the stock! Christopher certainly was soft. But that came from the mother. Mark’s stepmother had been from the south of Yorkshire. Soft people down there! a soft woman. Christopher had been her ewe-lamb and she had died of grief when Sylvia had run away from him! …
The boy with a voice had got himself into view towards the bottom of the bed, near Mrs. de Bray Pape … a tallish slip of a boy, with slightly chawbacony cheeks, high-coloured, lightish hair, brown eyes. Upstanding but softish. Mark seemed to know him, but could not place him. The boy asked to be forgiven for the intrusion, saying that he knew it was not the thing.
Mrs. de Bray Pape was talking improbably about Marie Antoinette, whom she very decidedly disliked. She said that Marie Antoinette had behaved with great ingratitude to Madame de Maintenon—which must have been difficult. Apparently, according to Mrs. de Bray Pape, when Marie Antoinette had been a neglected little girl about the Court of France, Madame de Maintenon had befriended her, lending her frocks, jewels and perfumes. Later Marie Antoinette had persecuted her benefactor. From that had arisen all the woes of France and the Old World in general.
That appeared to Mark to be to mix history, but he was not very certain. Mrs. de Bray Pape said, however, that she had those little-known facts from Mr. Reginald Weiler, the celebrated professor of social economy at one of the Western Universities.
Mark returned to the consideration of the softness of the Tietjens stock, whilst the boy gazed at him with eyes that might have been imploring or that might have been merely moonstruck. Mark could not see what the boy could have to be imploring about, so it was probably just stupidity. His breeches, however, were very nicely cut. Very nicely, indeed; Mark recognized, indeed, the tailor—a man in Conduit Street. If that fellow had the sense to get his riding breeches from that man, he could not be quite an ass. …
That Christopher was soft because his mother did not come from the north of Yorkshire or Durham might be true enough—but that was not enough to account for the race dying out. His, Mark’s, father had no descendants by his sons. The two brothers who had been killed had been childless. He himself had none. Christopher … Well, that was debateable!
That he, Mark, had practically killed his own father he was ready to acknowledge. One made mistakes; that was one. If one made mistakes, one should try to repair them; otherwise, one must, as it were, cut one’s losses. He could not bring his father back to life; he hadn’t, equally, been able to do anything for Christopher. … Not much, certainly. The fellow had refused his brass. … He couldn’t really blame him.
The boy was asking him if he would not speak to them. He said he was Mark’s nephew, Mark Tietjens junior.
Mark took credit to himself because he did not stir a hair. He had so made up his mind, he found, that Christopher’s son was not his son that he had almost forgotten the cub’s existence. But he ought not to have made up his mind so quickly: he was astonished to find from the automatic working of his mind that he so had. There were too many factors to be considered that he had never bothered really to consider. Christopher had determined that this boy should have Groby: that had been enough for him, Mark. He did not care who had Groby.
But the actual sight of this lad whom he had never seen before presented the problem to him as something that needed solution. It came as a challenge. When he came to think of it, it was a challenge to him to make up his mind finally as to the nature of Woman. He imagined that he had never bothered his head about that branch of the animal kingdom. But he found that, lying there, he must have spent quite a disproportionate amount of his time in thinking about the motives of Sylvia.
He had never spoken much with any but men—and then mostly with men of his own class and type. Naturally you addressed a few polite words to your weekend hostess. If you found yourself in the rose-garden of a Sunday before church with a young or old woman who knew anything about horses, you talked about horses, or Goodwood, or Ascot to her for long enough to show politeness to your hostess’s guests. If she knew nothing about horses you talked about the roses or the irises, or the weather last
