What would have justified Sylvia, no matter what she did, would have been if she had succeeded in having another child by his brother. She hadn’t. The breed of Tietjens was not enriched. Then she was just a nuisance. …
An infernal nuisance. … For what was she up to now? It was perfectly obvious that both Mrs. de Bray Pape and this boy were here because she had had another outbreak of … practically Sadism. They were here so that Christopher might be hurt some more and she not forgotten. What, then, was it? What the deuce was it?
The boy had been silent for some time. He was gazing at Mark with the goggle-eyed gasping that had been so irritating in his father—particularly on Armistice Day. … Well, he, Mark, was apparently now conceding that this boy was probably his brother’s son. A real Tietjens after all was to reign over the enormously long, grey house behind the fantastic cedar. The tallest cedar in Yorkshire. In England. In the Empire. … He didn’t care. He who lets a tree overhang his roof calls the doctor in daily. … The boy’s lips began to move. No sound came out. He was presumably in a great state!
He was undoubtedly like his father. Darker … Brown hair, brown eyes, high-coloured cheeks all flushed now. Straight nose; marked brown eyebrows. A sort of … scared, puzzled … what was it? … expression. Well, Sylvia was fair; Christopher was dark-haired with silver streaks, but fair-complexioned. … Damn it: this boy was more attractive than Christopher had been at his age and earlier. … Christopher hanging round the schoolroom door in Groby, puzzled over the mathematical theory of waves. He, Mark, hadn’t been able to stand him or, indeed, any of the other children. There was sister Effie—born to be a curate’s wife. … Puzzled! That was it! … That bothering woman, his father’s second wife—the Saint!—had introduced the puzzlement strain into the Tietjenses. … This was Christopher’s boy, saintly strain and all. Christopher was probably born to be a rural dean in a fat living writing treatises on the integral calculus all the time except on Saturday afternoons. With a great reputation for saintliness. Well, he wasn’t the one and hadn’t the other. He was an old furniture dealer, who made a stink in virtuous nostrils. … Provvy works in a mysterious way. The boy was saying now:
“The tree … the great tree. … It darkens the windows. …”
Mark said: “Oha!” to himself. Groby Great Tree was the symbol of Tietjens. For thirty miles round Groby they made their marriage vows by Groby Great Tree. In the other Ridings they said that Groby Tree and Groby well were equal in height and depth one to the other. When they were really imaginatively drunk Cleveland villagers would declare—would knock you down if you denied—that Groby Great Tree was 365 foot high and Groby well 365 feet deep. A foot for every day of the year. … On special occasions—he could not himself be bothered to remember what—they would ask permission to hang rags and things from the boughs. Christopher said that one of the chief indictments against Joan of Arc had been that she and the other village girls of Domrémy had hung rags and trinkets from the boughs of a cedar. Offerings to fairies. … Christopher set great store by the tree. He was a romantic ass. Probably he set more store by the tree than by anything else at Groby. He would pull the house down if he thought it incommoded the tree.
Young Mark was bleating, positively bleating:
“The Italians have a proverb. … He who lets a tree overhang his house invites a daily call from the doctor. … I agree myself. … In principle, of course. …”
Well, that was that! Sylvia, then, was proposing to threaten to ask to have Groby Great Tree cut down. Only to threaten to ask. But that would be enough to agonize the miserable Christopher. You couldn’t cut down Groby Great Tree. But the thought that the tree was under the guardianship of unsympathetic people would be enough to drive Christopher almost dotty—for years and years.
“Mrs. de Bray Pape,” the boy was stammering, “is extremely keen on the tree’s being … I agree in principle. … My mother wished you to see that—oh, in modern days—a house is practically unlettable if … So she got Mrs. de Bray Pape … She hasn’t had the courage though she swore she had. …”
He continued to stammer. Then he started and stopped, crimson. A woman’s voice had called:
“Mr. Tietjens. … Mr. Mark. … Hi … hup!”
A small woman, all in white, white breeches, white coat, white wide-awake, was slipping down from a tall bay with a white star on the forehead—a bay with large nostrils and an intelligent head. She waved her hand obviously at the boy and then caressed the horse’s nostrils. Obviously at the boy … for it was obviously unlikely that Mark Senior would know a woman who could make a sound like “Hi, hup!” to attract his attention.
Lord Fittleworth, in a square, hard hat, sat on an immense, coffin-headed dapple-grey. He had bristling, close-cropped moustaches and sat like a limpet. He waved his crop in the direction of Mark and went on talking to Gunning, who was at his stirrup. The coffin-headed beast started forward and reared a foot or so; a wild, brazen, yelping sound had disturbed it. The boy was more and more scarlet and, as emotion grew on him, more and more like Christopher on that beastly day. … Christopher with a piece of furniture under his arm, in Marie Léonie’s room, his eyes goggling out at the foot of the bed.
Mark swore painfully to himself. He hated to be reminded of that day. Now this lad and that infernal bugle that the younger children of Cramp had got hold of from their bugler-brother had put it back damnably in his mind. It went on. At intervals. One child
