Complete Works of Ford Madox Ford, page 559
She said:
‘Tietjens shall not resign from your beastly club. He shall not! Your committee will request him formally to withdraw his resignation. You understand? He will withdraw it. Then he will resign for good. He is too good to mix with people like you...’ She paused, her chest working fast. ‘Do you understand what you’ve got to do?’ she asked.
An appalling shadow of a thought went through Tietjens’ mind: he would not let it come into words.
‘I don’t know...’ the banker said. ‘I don’t know that I can get the committee...’
‘You’ve got to,’ Sylvia answered. ‘I’ll tell you why...Christopher was never overdrawn. Last Thursday I instructed your people to pay a thousand pounds to my husband’s account. I repeated the instruction by letter, and I kept a copy of the letter, witnessed by my confidential maid. I also registered the letter and have the receipt for it...You can see them.’
Port Scatho mumbled from over the letter:
‘It’s to Brownlie...Yes, a receipt for a letter to Brown-lie...? She examined the little green slip on both sides. He said: ‘Last Thursday...To-day’s Monday...An instruction to sell North-Western stock to the amount of one thousand pounds and place to the account of...Then...’
Sylvia said:
‘That’ll do...You can’t angle for time any more...Your nephew has been in an affair of this sort before...I’ll tell you. Last Thursday at lunch your nephew told me that Christopher’s brother’s solicitors had withdrawn all the permissions for overdrafts on the books of the Groby estate. There were several to members of the family. Your nephew said that he intended to catch Christopher on the hop — that’s his own expression — and dishonour the next cheque of his that came in. He said he had been waiting for the chance ever since the war and the brother’s withdrawal had given it him. I begged him not to...’
‘But, good God,’ the banker said, ‘this is unheard of...’
‘It isn’t,’ Sylvia said. ‘Christopher has had five snotty, little, miserable subalterns to defend at courts-martial for exactly similar cases. One was an exact reproduction of this...’
‘But, good God,’ the banker exclaimed again, ‘men giving their lives for their country...Do you mean to say Brownlie did this out of revenge for Tietjens’ defending at courts-martial...And then...your thousand pounds is not shown in your husband’s pass-book...’
‘Of course it’s not,’ Sylvia said. ‘It has never been paid in. On Friday I had a formal letter from your people pointing out that North-Westerns were likely to rise and asked me to reconsider my position. The same day I sent an express telling them explicitly to do as I said...Ever since then your nephew has been on the ‘phone begging me not to save my husband. He was there, just now, when I went out of the room. He was also beseeching me to fly with him.’
Tietjens said:
‘Isn’t that enough, Sylvia? It’s rather torturing.’
‘Let them be tortured,’ Sylvia said. ‘But it appears to be enough.’
Port Scatho had covered his face with both his pink hands. He had exclaimed:
‘Oh, my God! Brownlie again...’
Tietjens’ brother Mark was in the room. He was smaller, browner, and harder than Tietjens and his blue eyes protruded more. He had in one hand a bowler hat, in the other an umbrella, wore a pepper-and-salt suit and had race-glasses slung across him. He disliked Port Scatho, who detested him. He had lately been knighted. He said:
‘Hullo, Port Scatho,’ neglecting to salute his sister-in-law. His eyes, whilst he stood motionless, rolled a look round the room and rested on a miniature bureau that stood on a writing-table, in a recess, under and between bookshelves.
‘I see you’ve still got that cabinet,’ he said to Tietjens. Tietjens said:
‘I haven’t. I’ve sold it to Sir John Robertson. He’s waiting to take it away till he has room in his collection.’
Port Scatho walked, rather unsteadily, round the lunch-table and stood looking down from one of the long windows. Sylvia sat down on her chair beside the fireplace. The two brothers stood facing each other, Christopher suggesting wheat-sacks, Mark carved wood. All round them, except for the mirror that reflected bluenesses, the gilt backs of books. Hullo Central was clearing the table.
‘I hear you’re going out again to-morrow,’ Mark said. ‘I want to settle some things with you.’
‘I’m going at nine from Waterloo,’ Christopher said. ‘I’ve not much time. You can walk with me to the War Office if you like.’
Mark’s eyes followed the black and white of the maid round the table. She went out with the tray. Christopher suddenly was reminded of Valentine Wannop clearing the table in her mother’s cottage. Hullo Central was no faster about it. Mark said:
‘Port Scatho! As you’re there we may as well finish one point. I have cancelled my father’s security for my brother’s overdraft.’
Port Scatho said, to the window, but loud enough: ‘We all know it. To our cost.’
‘I wish you, however,’ Mark Tietjens went on, ‘to make over from my own account a thousand a year to my brother as he needs it. Not more than a thousand in any one year.’
Port Scatho said:
‘Write a letter to the bank. I don’t look after clients’ accounts on social occasions.’
‘I don’t see why you don’t,’ Mark Tietjens said. ‘It’s the way you make your bread and butter, isn’t it?’ Tietjens said:
‘You may save yourself all this trouble, Mark. I am closing my account, in any case.’
Port Scatho spun round on his heel.
‘I beg that you won’t,’ he exclaimed. ‘I beg that we...that we may have the honour of continuing to have you draw upon us.’ He had the trick of convulsively working jaws: his head against the light was like the top of a rounded gatepost. He said to Mark Tietjens: ‘You may tell your friend, Mr Ruggles, that your brother is empowered by me to draw on my private account...on my personal and private account up to any amount he needs. I say that to show my estimate of your brother; because I know he will incur no obligations he cannot discharge.’
Mark Tietjens stood motionless; leaning slightly on the crook of his umbrella on the one side; on the other displaying, at arm’s length, the white silk lining of his bowler hat, the lining being the brightest object in the room.
‘That’s your affair,’ he said to Port Scatho. ‘All I’m concerned with is to have a thousand a year paid to my brother’s account till further notice.’
Christopher Tietjens spoke, with what he knew was a sentimental voice, to Port Scatho. He was very touched; it appeared to him that with the spontaneous appearance of several names in his memory, and with this estimate of himself from the banker, his tide was turning and that this day might indeed be marked by a red stone:
‘Of course, Port Scatho, I won’t withdraw my wretched little account from you if you want to keep it. It flatters me that you should.’ He stopped and added: ‘I only wanted to avoid these...these family complications. But I suppose you can stop my brother’s money being paid into my account. I don’t want his money.’
He said to Sylvia:
‘You had better settle the other matter with Port Scatho.’ To Port Scatho:
‘I’m intensely obliged to you, Port Scatho...You’ll get Lady Port Scatho round to Macmaster’s this evening if only for a minute; before eleven...’ And to his brother:
‘Come along, Mark. I’m going down to the War Office. We can talk as we walk.’
Sylvia said very nearly with timidity — and again a dark thought went over Tietjens’ mind:
‘Do we meet again then?...I know you’re very busy...’
Tietjens said:
‘Yes. I’ll come and pick you out from Lady Job’s, if they don’t keep me too long at the War Office. I’m dining, as you know, at Macmaster’s; I don’t suppose I shall stop late.’
‘I’d come,’ Sylvia said, ‘to Macmaster’s, if you thought it was appropriate. I’d bring Claudine Sandbach and General Wade. We’re only going to the Russian dancers. We’d cut off early.’
Tietjens could settle that sort of thought very quickly. ‘Yes, do,’ he said hurriedly. ‘It would be appreciated.’ He got to the door: he came back: his brother was nearly through. He said to Sylvia, and for him the occasion was a very joyful one:
‘I’ve worried out some of the words of that song. It runs:
“Somewhere or other there must surely be
The face not seen: the voice not heard...”
Probably it’s “the voice not ever heard” to make up the metre...I don’t know the writer’s name. But I hope I’ll worry it all out during the day.’
Sylvia had gone absolutely white.
‘Don’t!’ she said. ‘Oh...don’t.’ She added coldly: ‘Don’t take the trouble,’ and wiped her tiny handkerchief across her lips as Tietjens went away.
She had heard the song at a charity concert and had cried as she heard it. She had read, afterwards, the words in the programme and had almost cried again. But she had lost the programme and had never come across the words again. The echo of them remained with her like something terrible and alluring: like a knife she would someday take out and with which she would stab herself.
III
The two brothers walked twenty steps from the door along the empty Inn pavements without speaking. Each was completely expressionless. To Christopher it seemed like Yorkshire. He had a vision of Mark, standing on the lawn at Groby, in his bowler hat and with his umbrella, whilst the shooters walked over the lawn, and up the hill to the butts. Mark probably never had done that; but it was so that his image always presented itself to his brother. Mark was considering that one of the folds of his umbrella was disarranged. He seriously debated with himself whether he should unfold it at once and refold it — which was a great deal of trouble to take! — or whether he should leave it till he got to his club, where he would tell the porter to have it done at once. That would mean that he would have to walk for a mile and a quarter through London with a disarranged umbrella, which was disagreeable.
He said:
‘If I were you I wouldn’t let that banker fellow go about giving you testimonials of that sort.’
Christopher said:
‘Ah!’
He considered that, with a third of his brain in action, he was over a match for Mark, but he was tired of discussions. He supposed that some unpleasant construction would be put by his brother’s friend, Ruggles, on the friendship of Port Scatho for himself. But he had no curiosity. Mark felt a vague discomfort. He said:
‘You had a cheque dishonoured at the club this morning?’
Christopher said:
‘Yes.’
Mark waited for explanations. Christopher was pleased at the speed with which the news had travelled: it confirmed what he had said to Port Scatho. He viewed his case from outside. It was like looking at the smooth working of a mechanical model.
Mark was more troubled. Used as he had been for thirty years to the vociferous south, he had forgotten that there were taciturnities still. If at his Ministry he laconically accused a transport clerk of remissness, or if he accused his French mistress — just as laconically — of putting too many condiments on his nightly mutton chop, or too much salt in the water in which she boiled his potatoes, he was used to hearing a great many excuses or negations, uttered with energy and continued for long. So he had got into the habit of considering himself the only laconic being in the world. He suddenly remembered with discomfort — but also with satisfaction — that his brother was his brother.
He knew nothing about Christopher, for himself. He had seemed to look at his little brother down avenues from a distance, the child misbehaving himself. Not a true Tietjens: born very late: a mother’s child, therefore, rather than a father’s. The mother an admirable woman, but from the South Riding. Soft, therefore, and ample. The elder Tietjens’ children, when they had experienced failures, had been wont to blame their father for not marrying a woman of their own Riding. So, for himself, he knew nothing of this boy. He was said to be brilliant: an un-Tietjens-like quality. Akin to talkativeness!...Well, he wasn’t talkative. Mark said:
‘What have you done with all the brass our mother left you? Twenty thousand, wasn’t it?’
They were just passing through a narrow way between Georgian houses. In the next quadrangle Tietjens stopped and looked at his brother. Mark stood still to be looked at. Christopher said to himself:
‘This man has the right to ask these questions!’
It was as if a queer slip had taken place in a moving-picture. This fellow had become the head of the house: he, Christopher, was the heir. At that moment, their father, in the grave four months now, was for the first time dead.
Christopher remembered a queer incident. After the funeral, when they had come back from the churchyard and had lunched, Mark — and Tietjens could now see the wooden gesture — had taken out his cigar-case and, selecting one cigar for himself, had passed the rest round the table. It was as if people’s hearts had stopped beating. Groby had never, till that day, been smoked in: the father had his twelve pipes filled and put in the rose-bushes in the drive...
It had been regarded merely as a disagreeable incident: a piece of bad taste...Christopher, himself, only just back from France, would not even have known it as such, his mind was so blank, only the parson had whispered to him: ‘And Groby never smoked in till this day.’
But now! It appeared a symbol, and an absolutely right symbol. Whether they liked it or not, here were the head of the house and the heir. The head of the house must make his arrangements, the heir agree or disagree; but the elder brother had the right to have his enquiries answered.
Christopher said:
‘Half the money was settled at once on my child. I lost seven thousand in Russian securities. The rest I spent...Mark said:
They had just passed under the arch that leads into Holborn. Mark, in turn, stopped and looked at his brother, and Christopher stood still to be inspected, looking into his brother’s eyes. Mark said to himself:
‘The fellow isn’t, at least, afraid to look at you!’ He had been convinced that Christopher would be. He said:
‘You spent it on women? Or where do you get the money that you spend on women?’
Christopher said:
‘I never spent a penny on a woman in my life.’
Mark said:
‘Ah!’
They crossed Holborn and went by the backways towards Fleet Street.
Christopher said:
‘When I say “woman” I’m using the word in the ordinary sense. Of course I’ve given women of our own class tea or lunch and paid for their cabs. Perhaps I’d better put it that I’ve never — either before or after marriage — had connection with any woman other than my wife.’
Mark said:
‘Ah!’
He said to himself:
‘Then Ruggles must be a liar.’ This neither distressed nor astonished him. For twenty years he and Ruggles had shared a floor of a large and rather gloomy building in Mayfair. They were accustomed to converse whilst shaving in a joint toilet-room, otherwise they did not often meet except at the club. Ruggles was attached to the Royal Court in some capacity, possibly as sub-deputy gold-stickin-waiting. Or he might have been promoted in the twenty years. Mark Tietjens had never taken the trouble to enquire. Enormously proud and shut in on himself, he was without curiosity of any sort. He lived in London because it was immense, solitary, administrative and apparently without curiosity as to its own citizens. If he could have found, in the north, a city as vast and as distinguished by the other characteristics, he would have preferred it.
Of Ruggles he thought little or nothing. He had once heard a phrase ‘agreeable rattle,’ and he regarded Ruggles as an agreeable rattle, though he did not know what the phrase meant. Whilst they shaved Ruggles gave out the scandal of the day. He never, that is to say, mentioned a woman whose virtue was not purchasable, or a man who would not sell his wife for advancement. This matched with Mark’s ideas of the south. When Ruggles aspersed the fame of a man of family from the north, Mark would stop him with:
‘Oh, no. That’s not true. He’s a Craister of Wantley Fells,’ or another name, as the case might be. Half Scotch-man, half Jew, Ruggles was very tall and resembled a magpie, having his head almost always on one side. Had he been English Mark would never have shared his rooms with him: he knew indeed few Englishmen of sufficient birth and position to have that privilege, and, on the other hand, few Englishmen of birth and position would have consented to share rooms so grim and uncomfortable, so furnished with horse-hair-seated mahogany, or so lit with ground-glass skylights. Coming up to town at the age of twenty-five, Mark had taken these rooms with a man called Peebles, long since dead, and he had never troubled to make any change, though Ruggles had taken the place of Peebles. The remote similarity of the names had been less disturbing to Mark Tietjens than would have been the case had the names been more different. It would have been very disagreeable, Mark often thought, to share with a man called, say, Granger. As it was, he still often called Ruggles Peebles, and no harm was done. Mark knew nothing of Ruggles’ origins, then — so that, in a remote way, their union resembled that of Christopher with Macmaster. But whereas Christopher would have given his satellite the shirt off his back, Mark would not have lent Ruggles more than a five-pound note, and would have turned him out of their rooms if it had not been returned by the end of the quarter. But, since Ruggles never had asked to borrow anything at all, Mark considered him an entirely honourable man. Occasionally Ruggles would talk of his determination to marry some widow or other with money, or of his influence with people in exalted stations, but, when he talked like that, Mark would not listen to him and he soon returned to stories of purchasable women and venial men.
About five months ago Mark had said one morning to Ruggles:
‘You might pick up what you can about my youngest brother Christopher and let me know.’
