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 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:
“Ah!”
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-stick-in-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 the 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 Scotchman, 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.”
The evening before that Mark’s father had called Mark to him from over the other side of the smoking-room and had said:
“You might find out what you can about Christopher. He may be in want of money. Has it occurred to you that he’s the heir to the estate! After you, of course.” Mr. Tietjens had aged a good deal after the deaths of his children. He said: “I suppose you won’t marry?” and Mark had answered:
“No; I shan’t marry. But I suppose I’m a better life than Christopher. He appears to have been a good deal knocked about out there.”
Armed then with this commission Mr. Ruggles appears to have displayed extraordinary activity in preparing a Christopher Tietjens dossier. It is not often that an inveterate gossip gets a chance at a man whilst being at the same time practically shielded against the law of libel. And Ruggles disliked Christopher Tietjens with the inveterate dislike of the man who revels in gossip for the man who never gossips. And Christopher Tietjens had displayed more than his usual insolence to Ruggles. So Ruggles’ coat-tails flashed round an unusual number of doors and his top-hat gleamed before an unusual number of tall portals during the next week.