Father Consett said:
‘I saw it in the rack myself. I misdoubted it.’ He added: ‘Oh dear, oh dear! After all we’ve talked about it; now it’s come.’
Mrs. Satterthwaite said:
‘I’ve been a wicked woman myself as these things are measured; but …’
Father Consett said:
‘Ye have! It’s no doubt from you she gets it, for your husband was a good man. But one wicked woman is enough for my contemplation at a time. I’m no St. Anthony… . The young man says he will take her back?’
‘On conditions,’ Mrs. Satterthwaite said. ‘He is coming here to have an interview.’
The priest said:
‘Heaven knows, Mrs. Satterthwaite, there are times when to a poor priest the rule of the Church as regards marriage seems bitter hard and he almost doubts her inscrutable wisdom. He doesn’t mind you. But at times I wish that that young man would take what advantage – it’s all there is! – that he can of being a Protestant and divorce Sylvia. For I tell you, there are bitter things to see amongst my flock over there… .’ He made a vague gesture towards the infinite. ‘And bitter things I’ve seen, for the heart of man is a wicked place. But never a bitterer than this young man’s lot.’
‘As you say,’ Mrs. Satterthwaite said, ‘my husband was a good man. I hated him, but that was as much my fault as his. More! And the only reason I don’t wish Christopher to divorce Sylvia is that it would bring disgrace on my husband’s name. At the same time, Father …’
The priest said:
‘I’ve heard near enough.’
‘There’s this to be said for Sylvia,’ Mrs. Satterthwaite went on. ‘There are times when a woman hates a man – as Sylvia hates her husband… . I tell you I’ve walked behind a man’s back and nearly screamed because of the desire to put my nails into the veins of his neck. It was a fascination. And it’s worse with Sylvia. It’s a natural antipathy.’
‘Woman!’ Father Consett fulminated, ‘I’ve no patience wid ye! If the woman, as the Church directs, would have children by her husband and live decent, she would have no such feelings. It’s unnatural living and unnatural practices that cause these complexes. Don’t think I’m an ignoramus, priest if I am.’
Mrs. Satterthwaite said:
‘But Sylvia’s had a child.’
Father Consett swung round like a man that has been shot at.
‘Whose?’ he asked, and he pointed a dirty finger at his interlocutress. ‘It was that blackguard Drake’s, wasn’t it? I’ve long suspected that.’
‘It was probably Drake’s,’ Mrs. Satterthwaite said.
‘Then,’ the priest said, ‘in the face of the pains of the hereafter, how could you let that decent lad in the hotness of his sin …?’
‘Indeed,’ Mrs. Satterthwaite said, ‘I shiver sometimes when I think of it. Don’t believe that I had anything to do with trepanning him. But I couldn’t hinder it. Sylvia’s my daughter, and dog doesn’t eat dog.’
‘There are times when it should,’ Father Consett said contemptuously.
‘You don’t seriously,’ Mrs. Satterthwaite said, ‘say that I, a mother, if an indifferent one, with my daughter appearing in trouble, as the kitchenmaids say, by a married man – that I should step in and stop a marriage that was a Godsend… .’
‘Don’t,’ the priest said, ‘introduce the sacred name into an affair of Piccadilly bad girls… .’ He stopped. ‘Heaven help me,’ he said again, ‘don’t ask me to answer the question of what you should or shouldn’t have done. You know I loved your husband like a brother, and you know I’ve loved you and Sylvia ever since she was tiny. And I thank God that I am not your spiritual adviser, but only your friend in God. For if I had to answer your question I could answer it only in one way.’ He broke off to ask: ‘Where is that woman?’
Mrs. Satterthwaite called:
‘Sylvia! Sylvia! come here!’
A door in the shadows opened and light shone from another room behind a tall figure leaning one hand on the handle of the door. A very deep voice said:
‘I can’t understand, mother, why you live in rooms like a sergeants’ mess.’ And Sylvia Tietjens wavered into the room. She added: ‘I suppose it doesn’t matter. I’m bored.’
Father Consett groaned:
‘Heaven help us, she’s like a picture of Our Lady by Fra Angelico.’
Immensely tall, slight, and slow in her movements, Sylvia Tietjens wore her reddish, very fair hair in great bandeaux right down over her ears. Her very oval, regular face had an expression of virginal lack of interest such as used to be worn by fashionable Paris courtesans a decade before that time. Sylvia Tietjens considered that, being privileged to go everywhere where one went and to have all men at her feet, she had no need to change her expression or to infuse into it the greater animation that marked the more common beauties of the early twentieth century. She moved slowly from the door and sat languidly on the sofa against the wall.
‘There you are, Father,’ she said. ‘I’ll not ask you to shake hands with me. You probably wouldn’t.’
‘As I am a priest,’ Father Consett answered, ‘I could not refuse. But I’d rather not.’
‘This,’ Sylvia repeated, ‘appears to be a boring place.’
‘You won’t say so to-morrow,’ the priest said. ‘There’s two young fellows… . And a sort of policeman to trepan away from your mother’s maid!’
‘That,’ Sylvia answered, ‘is meant to be bitter. But it doesn’t hurt. I am done with men.’ She added suddenly: ‘Mother, didn’t you one day, while you were still young, say that you had done with men? Firmly! And mean it?’
Mrs. Satterthwaite said:
‘I did.’
‘And did you keep to it?’ Sylvia asked.
Mrs. Satterthwaite said:
‘I did.’
‘And shall I, do you imagine?’
Mrs. Satterthwaite said:
‘I imagine you will.’
Sylvia said:
‘Oh dear!’
The priest said:
‘I’d be willing to see your husband’s telegram. It makes a difference to see the words on paper.’
Sylvia rose effortlessly.
‘I don’t see why you shouldn’t,’ she said. ‘It will give you no pleasure.’ She drifted towards the door.
‘If it would give me pleasure,’ the priest said, ‘you would not show it me.’
‘I would not,’ she said.
A silhouette in the doorway, she halted, drooping, and looked over her shoulder.
‘Both you and mother,’ she said, ‘sit there scheming to make life bearable for the Ox. I call my husband the Ox. He’s repulsive: like a swollen animal. Well … you can’t do it.’ The lighted doorway was vacant. Father Consett sighed.
‘I told you this was an evil place,’ he said. ‘In the deep forests. She’d not have such evil thoughts in another place.’
Mrs. Satterthwaite said:
‘I’d rather you didn’t say that, Father. Sylvia would have evil thoughts in any place.’
‘Sometimes,’ the priest said, ‘at night I think I hear the claws of evil things scratching on the shutters. This was the last place in Europe to be christianised. Perhaps it wasn’t ever even christianised and they’re here yet.’
Mrs. Satterthwaite said:
‘It’s all very well to talk like that in the day-time. It makes the place seem romantic. But it must be near one at night. And things are bad enough as it is.’
‘They are,’ Father Consett said. ‘The devil’s at work.’
Sylvia drifted back into the room with a telegram of several sheets. Father Consett held it close to one of the candles to read, for he was short-sighted.
‘All men are repulsive,’ Sylvia said; ‘don’t you think so, mother?’
Mrs. Satterthwaite said:
‘I do not. Only a heartless woman would say so.’
‘Mrs. Vanderdecken,’ Sylvia went on, ‘says all men are repulsive and it’s woman’s
disgusting task to live beside them.’
‘You’ve been seeing that foul creature?’ Mrs. Satterthwaite said. ‘She’s a Russian agent. And worse!’
‘She was at Gosingeux all the time we were,’ Sylvia said. ‘You needn’t groan. She won’t split on us. She’s the soul of honour.’
‘It wasn’t because of that I groaned, if I did,’ Mrs. Satterthwaite answered.
The priest, from over his telegram, exclaimed:
‘Mrs. Vanderdecken! God forbid.’
Sylvia’s face, as she sat on the sofa, expressed languid and incredulous amusement.
‘What do you know of her?’ she asked the Father.
‘I know what you know,’ he answered, ‘and that’s enough.’
‘Father Consett,’ Sylvia said to her mother, ‘has been renewing his social circle.’
‘It’s not,’ Father Consett said, ‘amongst the dregs of the people that you must live if you don’t want to hear of the dregs of society.’
Sylvia stood up. She said:
‘You’ll keep your tongue off my best friends if you want me to stop and be lectured. But for Mrs. Vanderdecken I should not be here, returned to the fold!’
Father Consett exclaimed:
‘Don’t say it, child. I’d rather, heaven help me, you had gone on living in open sin.’
Sylvia sat down again, her hands listlessly in her lap.
‘Have it your own way,’ she said, and the Father returned to the fourth sheet of the telegram.
‘What does this mean?’ he asked. He had returned to the first sheet. ‘This here: “Accept resumption yoke”?’ he read, breathlessly.
‘Sylvia,’ Mrs. Satterthwaite said, ‘go and light the spirit lamp for some tea. We shall want it.’
‘You’d think I was a district messenger boy,’ Sylvia said as she rose. ‘Why don’t you keep your maid up? … It’s a way we had of referring to our … union,’ she explained to the Father.
‘There was sympathy enough between you and him then,’ he said, ‘to have bywords for things. It was that I wanted to know. I understood the words.’
‘They were pretty bitter bywords, as you call them,’ Sylvia said. ‘More like curses than kisses.’
‘It was you that used them then,’ Mrs. Satterthwaite said. ‘Christopher never said a bitter thing to you.’
An expression like a grin came slowly over Sylvia’s face as she turned back to the priest.
‘That’s mother’s tragedy,’ she said. ‘My husband’s one of her best boys. She adores him. And he can’t bear her.’ She drifted behind the wall of the next room and they heard her tinkling the tea-things as the Father read on again beside the candle. His immense shadow began at the centre and ran along the pitchpine ceiling, down the wall and across the floor to join his splay feet in their clumsy boots.
‘It’s bad,’ he muttered. He made a sound like ‘Umbleumbleumble… . Worse than I feared … umbleumble… . “accept resumption yoke but on rigid conditions”. What’s this: “esoecially”; it ought to be a “p”, “especially regards child reduce establishment ridiculous our position remake settlements in child’s sole interests flat not house entertaining minimum am prepared resign office settle Yorkshire but imagine this not suit you child remain sister Effie open visits both wire if this rough outline provisionally acceptable in that case will express draft general position Monday for you and mother reflect upon follow self Tuesday arrive Thursday Lobscheid go Wiesbaden fortnight on social task discussion Thursday limited solely comma emphasised comma to affairs.”’
‘That means,’ Mrs. Satterthwaite said, ‘that he doesn’t mean to reproach her. Emphasised applies to the word solely… .’
‘Why d’you take it …’ Father Consett asked, ‘did he spend an immense lot of money on this telegram? Did he imagine you were in such trepidation… .’ He broke off. Walking slowly, her long arms extended to carry the tea-tray, over which her wonderfully moving face had a rapt expression of indescribable mystery, Sylvia was coming through the door.
‘Oh, child,’ the Father exclaimed, ‘whether it’s St. Martha or that Mary that made the bitter choice, not one of them ever looked more virtuous than you. Why aren’t ye born to be a good man’s helpmeet?’
A little tinkle sounded from the tea-tray and three pieces of sugar fell on to the floor. Mrs. Tietjens hissed with vexation.
‘I knew that damned thing would slide off the tea-cups,’ she said. She dropped the tray from an inch or so of height on to the carpeted table. ‘I’d made it a matter of luck between myself and myself,’ she said. Then she faced the priest.
‘I’ll tell you,’ she said, ‘why he sent the telegram. It’s because of that dull display of the English gentleman that I detested. He gives himself the solemn airs of the Foreign Minister, but he’s only a youngest son at the best. That is why I loathe him.’
Mrs. Satterthwaite said:
‘That isn’t the reason why he sent the telegram.’
Her daughter had a gesture of amused, lazy tolerance.
‘Of course it isn’t,’ she said. ‘He sent it out of consideration: the lordly, full dress consideration that drives me distracted. As he would say: He’d imagine I’d find it convenient to have ample time for reflection. It’s like being addressed as if one were a monument and by a herald according to protocol. And partly because he’s the soul of truth like a stiff Dutch doll. He wouldn’t write a letter because he couldn’t without beginning it “Dear Sylvia” and ending it “Yours sincerely” or “truly” or “affectionately”. He’s that sort of precise imbecile. I tell you he’s so formal he can’t do without all the conventions there are and so truthful he can’t use half of them.’
‘Then,’ Father Consett said, ‘if ye know him so well, Sylvia Satterthwaite, how is it ye can’t get on with him better? They say: Tout savoir c’est tout pardonner.’
‘It isn’t,’ Sylvia said. ‘To know everything about a person is to be bored … bored … bored!’
‘And how are ye going to answer this telegram of his?’ the Father asked. ‘Or have ye answered it already?’
‘I shall wait until Monday night to keep him as bothered as I can to know whether he’s to start on Tuesday. He fusses like a hen over his packings and the exact hours of his movements. On Monday I shall telegraph: “Righto” and nothing else.’
‘And why,’ the Father asked, ‘will ye telegraph him a vulgar word that you never use, for your language is the one thing about you that isn’t vulgar?’
Sylvia said:
‘Thanks!’ She curled her legs up under her on the sofa and laid her head back against the wall so that her Gothic arch of a chinbone pointed at the ceiling. She admired her own neck, which was very long and white.
‘I know!’ Father Consett said. ‘You’re a beautiful woman. Some men would say it was a lucky fellow that lived with you. I don’t ignore the fact in my cogitation. He’d imagine all sorts of delights to lurk in the shadow of your beautiful hair. And they wouldn’t.’
Sylvia brought her gaze down from the ceiling and fixed her brown eyes for a moment on the priest, speculatively.
‘It’s a great handicap we suffer from,’ he said.
‘I don’t know why I selected that word,’ Sylvia said, ‘it’s one word, so it costs only fifty pfennigs. I couldn’t hope really to give a jerk to his pompous self-sufficiency.’
‘It’s great handicaps we priests suffer from,’ the Father repeated. ‘However much a priest may be a man of the world – and he has to be to fight the world… .’
Mrs. Satterthwaite said:
‘Have a cup of tea, Father, while it’s just right. I believe Sylvia is the only person in Germany who knows how to make tea.’
‘There’s always behind him the Roman collar and the silk bib, and you don’t believe in him,’ Father Consett went on, ‘yet he knows ten – a thousand times! – more of human nature than ever you can.’
‘I don’t see,’ Sylvia said placably, ‘how you can learn in your sl
ums anything about the nature of Eunice Vanderdecken, or Elizabeth B., or Queenie James, or any of my set.’ She was on her feet pouring cream into the Father’s tea. ‘I’ll admit for the moment that you aren’t giving me pi-jaw.’
‘I’m glad,’ the priest said, ‘that ye remember enough of yer schooldays to use the old term.’
Sylvia wavered backwards to her sofa and sank down again.
‘There you are,’ she said, ‘you can’t really get away from preachments. Me for the pyore young girl is always at the back of it.’
‘It isn’t,’ the Father said. ‘I’m not one to cry for the moon.’
‘You don’t want me to be a pure young girl,’ Sylvia asked with lazy incredulity.
‘I do not!’ the Father said, ‘but I’d wish that at times ye’d remember you once were.’
‘I don’t believe I ever was,’ Sylvia said, ‘if the nuns had known I’d have been expelled from the Holy Child.’
‘You would not,’ the Father said. ‘Do stop your boasting. The nuns have too much sense… . Anyhow, it isn’t a pure young girl I’d have you or behaving like a Protestant deaconess for the craven fear of hell. I’d have ye be a physically healthy, decently honest-with-yourself young devil of a married woman. It’s them that are the plague and the salvation of the world.’
‘You admire mother?’ Mrs. Tietjens asked suddenly. She added in parenthesis: ‘You see you can’t get away from salvation.’
‘I mean keeping bread and butter in their husbands’ stomachs,’ the priest said. ‘Of course I admire your mother.’
Mrs. Satterthwaite moved a hand slightly.
‘You’re at any rate in league with her against me,’ Sylvia said. She asked with more interest: ‘Then would you have me model myself on her and do good works to escape hell fire? She wears a hair shirt in Lent.’
Mrs. Satterthwaite started from her doze on the edge of her chair. She had been trusting the Father’s wit to give her daughter’s insolence a run for its money, and she imagined that if the priest hit hard enough he might, at least, make Sylvia think a little about some of her ways.
‘Hang it, no, Sylvia,’ she exclaimed more suddenly. ‘I may not be much, but I’m a sportsman. I’m afraid of hell fire; horribly, I’ll admit. But I don’t bargain with the Almighty. I hope He’ll let me through; but I’d go on trying to pick men out of the dirt – I suppose that’s what you and Father Consett mean – if I were as certain of going to hell as I am of going to bed to-night. So that’s that!’