The Last Post

worse before they could grow better. With the dreadful condition of ruin at home and foreign discredit to which the country must almost immediately emerge under the conduct of the Scotch grocers, Frankfurt financiers, Welsh pettifoggers, Midland armament manufacturers and South Country incompetents who during the later years of the war had intrigued themselves into office⁠—with that dreadful condition staring it in the face, the country must return to something like its old standards of North Country common sense and English probity. The old governing class to which he and his belonged might never return to power, but, whatever revolutions took place⁠—and he did not care!⁠—the country must reawaken to the necessity for exacting of whoever might be its governing class some semblance of personal probity and public honouring of pledges. He obviously was out of it, or he would be out of it with the end of the war, for even from his bed he had taken no small part in the directing of affairs at his Office.⁠ ⁠… A state of war obviously favoured the coming to the top of all kinds of devious stormy petrels; that was inevitable and could not be helped. But in normal times a country⁠—every country⁠—was true to itself.

Nevertheless, he was very content that his brother should, in the interim, have no share in affairs. Let him secure his mutton chop, his pint of claret, his woman and his umbrella, and it mattered not into what obscurity he retired. But how was that to be secured? There had seemed to be several ways.

He was aware, for instance, that Christopher was both a mathematician of no mean order and a Churchman. He might perfectly well take orders, assume the charge of one of the three family livings that Mark had in his gift, and, whilst competently discharging the duties of his cure, pursue whatever are the occupations of a well-cared-for mathematician.

Christopher, however, whilst avowing his predilection for such a life⁠—which, as Mark saw it, was exactly fitted to his asceticism, his softness in general and his private tastes⁠—Christopher admitted that there was an obstacle to his assuming such a cure of souls⁠—an obstacle of an insuperable nature. Mark at once asked him if he were, in fact, living with Miss Wannop. But Christopher answered that he had not seen Miss Wannop since the day of his second proceeding to the front. They had then agreed that they were not the sort of persons to begin a hidden intrigue, and the affair had proceeded no further.

Mark was, however, aware that a person of Christopher’s way of thinking might well feel inhibited from taking on a cure of souls if, in spite of the fact that he had abstained from seducing a young woman, he nevertheless privately desired to enter into illicit relations with her, and that that was sufficient to justify him in saying that an insuperable obstacle existed. He did not know that he himself agreed, but it was not his business to interfere between any man and his conscience in a matter of the Church. He was himself no very good Christian, at any rate as regards the relationships of men and women. Nevertheless, the Church of England was the Church of England. No doubt, had Christopher been a Papist he could have had the young woman for his housekeeper and no one would have bothered.

But what the devil, then, was his brother to do? He had been offered, as a sop in the pan, and to keep him quiet, no doubt, over the affair of the Department of Statistics, a vice-consulate in some Mediterranean port⁠—Toulon or Leghorn, or something of the sort. That might have done well enough. It was absurd to think of a Tietjens, heir to Groby, being under the necessity of making a living. It was fantastic, but if Christopher was in a fantastic mood there was nothing to be done about it. A vice-consulate is a potty sort of job. You attend to ships’ manifests, get members of crews out of jail, give old lady tourists the addresses of boardinghouses kept by English or half-castes, or provide the vice-admirals of visiting British squadrons with the names of local residents who should be invited to entertainments given on the flagship. It was a potty job; innocuous too, if it could be regarded as a sort of marking time.⁠ ⁠… And at that moment Mark thought that Christopher was still holding out for some sort of concession on Mark’s part before definitely assuming the charge of Groby, its tenants and its mineral rights.⁠ ⁠… But there were insuperable objections to even the vice-consulate. In the first place, the job would have been in the public service, a fact to which, as has been said, Mark strongly objected. Then the job was offered as a sort of a bribe. And, in addition, the consular service exacts from everyone who occupies a consular or vice-consular post the deposit of a sum of four hundred pounds sterling, and Christopher did not possess even so much as four hundred shillings.⁠ ⁠… And, in addition, as Mark was well aware, Miss Wannop might again afford an obstacle. A British vice-consul might possibly keep a Maltese or Levantine in a back street and no harm done, but he probably could not live with an English young woman of family and position without causing so much scandal as to make him lose his job.⁠ ⁠…

It was at this point that Mark again, but for the last time, asked his brother why he did not divorce Sylvia.

By that time Marie Léonie had retired to get some rest. She was pretty worn out. Mark’s illness had been long and serious; she had nursed him with such care that during the whole time she had not been out into the streets except once or twice to go across the road to the Catholic church, where she would offer a candle or so for his recovery, and once or twice to remonstrate with the butcher as