“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, bui 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 gate-post. 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 said, 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 some day 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 almost the only laconic being in the world. He suddenly remembered with discomfort — but also with satisfaction — that his brother was his brother.