Nowadays the heir apparently consulted the owner as to whether the tenant who was taking the ancestral home furnished might not cut down trees in order to suit the sanitary ideas of the day. … An American day! Well, why not? Those people could not be expected to know how picturesque a contrast the tree would make against the roofs of Groby Great House when seen from Peel’s Moorside. They would never hear of Peel’s Moorside, or John Peel, or the coat so grey. …
Apparently that was the meaning of the visit of that young colt and Mrs. de Bray Pape. They had come to ask his, Mark’s, sanction as owner to cut down Groby Great Tree. And then they had funked it and bolted. At any rate the boy was still talking earnestly to the woman in white over the hedge. As to where Mrs. de Bray Pape was, he had no means of knowing; she might be among the potato rows studying the potatoes of the poor for all he knew. He hoped she would not come upon Marie Léonie, because Marie Léonie would make short work of Mrs. de Bray Pape and be annoyed on top of it.
But they were wrong to funk talking to him about cutting down Groby Great Tree. He cared nothing about it. Mrs. de Bray Pape might just as well have come and said cheerfully: “Hullo, old cock, we’re going to cut down your bally old tree and let some light into the house. …” if that was the way Americans talked when they were cheerful; he had no means of knowing. He never remembered to have talked to an American. … Oh, yes, to Cammy Fittleworth! She had certainly been a dreadfully slangy young woman before her husband came into the title. But then Fittleworth was confoundedly slangy too. They said he had to give up in the middle of a speech he tried to make in the House of Lords because he could not do without the word “toppin,” which upset the Lord Chancellor. … So there was no knowing what Mrs. de Bray Pape might not have said if she had not thought she was addressing a syphilitic member of an effete aristocracy mad about an old cedar tree. But she might just as well have cheerfully announced it. He did not care. Groby Great Tree had never seemed to like him. It never seemed to like anybody. They say it never forgave the Tietjenses for transplanting it from nice warm Sardinia to that lugubrious climate. … That was what the servants said to the children and the children whispered to each other in the dark corridors.
But poor old Christopher! He was going to go mad if the suggestion were made to him. The barest hint! Poor old Christopher, who was now probably at that very minute in one of those beastly machines overhead, coming back from Groby. … If Christopher had to buy a beastly South Country show-cottage, Mark wished he would not have bought it so near a confounded air-station. However, he expected, probably, that beastly Americans would come flying in the beastly machines to buy the beastly old junk. They did indeed do so—sent by Mr. Schatzweiler, who was certainly efficient except in the sending of cheques.
Christopher had nearly jumped out of his skin—that is to say, he had sat as still as a lump of white marble—when he had gathered that Sylvia and, still more his own heir, wanted to let Groby furnished. He had said to Mark, over Sylvia’s first letter: “You won’t let ’em?” and Mark knew the agony that was behind his tallowy mask and goggle eyes. … Perfectly white around the nostrils he went—that was the sign!
And it had been as near to an appeal as he had ever come—unless the request for a loan on Armistice Day could be regarded as an appeal. But Mark did not think that that could be regarded as a score. In their game neither of them had yet made a real score. Probably neither of them ever would; they were a stout pair of North Countrymen whatever else could be said against them.
No: it hadn’t been a score when Christopher had said: “You won’t let ’em let Groby?” the day before yesterday: Christopher had been in an agony, but he was not asking Mark not to let Groby be let; he was only seeking information as to how far Mark would let the degradation of the old place go. Mark had let him pretty well know that Groby might be pulled down and replaced by a terra-cotta hotel before he would stir a finger. On the other hand, Christopher had only to stir a finger and not a blade of grass between the cobbles in the Stillroom Yard could be grubbed up. … But by the rules of the game neither of them could give an order. Neither. Mark said to Christopher: “Groby’s yours!” Christopher said to Mark: “Groby’s yours!” With perfect good-humour and coldness. So probably the old place would fall to pieces or Sylvia would turn it into a bawdyhouse. … It was a good joke! A good, grim Yorkshire joke!
It was impossible to know which of them suffered more. Christopher, it is true, was having his heart broken because the house suffered—but, damn it, wasn’t Mark himself pretty well heartbroken because Christopher refused to accept the house from him? … It was impossible to know which!
Yes, his confounded heart had been broken on Armistice Day in the morning—between the morning and the
