Some Do Not … · Part I · Chapter 1 2 (1/3)

II

Mrs. Satterthwaite, with her French maid, her priest, and her disreputable young man, Mr. Bayliss, were at Lobscheid, an unknown and little-frequented air resort amongst the pinewoods of the Taunus. Mrs. Satterthwaite was ultra-fashionable and consummately indifferent⁠—she only really lost her temper if at her table and under her nose you consumed her famous Black Hamburg grapes without taking their skin and all. Father Consett was out to have an uproarious good time during his three weeks’ holiday from the slums of Liverpool; Mr. Bayliss, thin like a skeleton in tight blue serge, golden haired and pink, was so nearly dead of tuberculosis, was so dead penniless, and of tastes so costly that he was ready to keep stone quiet, drink six pints of milk a day and behave himself. On the face of it he was there to write the letters of Mrs. Satterthwaite, but the lady never let him enter her private rooms for fear of infection. He had to content himself with nursing a growing adoration for Father Consett. This priest, with an enormous mouth, high cheekbones, untidy black hair, a broad face that never looked too clean and waving hands that always looked too dirty, never kept still for a moment, and had a brogue such as is seldom heard outside old-fashioned English novels of Irish life. He had a perpetual laugh, like the noise made by a steam roundabout. He was, in short, a saint, and Mr. Bayliss knew it, though he didn’t know how. Ultimately, and with the financial assistance of Mrs. Satterthwaite, Mr. Bayliss became almoner to Father Consett, adopted the rule of St. Vincent de Paul and wrote some very admirable, if decorative, devotional verse.

They proved thus a very happy, innocent party. For Mrs. Satterthwaite interested herself⁠—it was the only interest she had⁠—in handsome, thin and horribly disreputable young men. She would wait for them, or send her car to wait for them, at the gaol gates. She would bring their usually admirable wardrobes up to date and give them enough money to have a good time. When contrary to all expectations⁠—but it happened more often than not!⁠—they turned out well, she was lazily pleased. Sometimes she sent them away to a gay spot with a priest who needed a holiday; sometimes she had them down to her place in the west of England.

So they were a pleasant company and all very happy. Lobscheid contained one empty hotel with large verandahs and several square farmhouses, white with grey beams, painted in the gables with bouquets of blue and yellow flowers or with scarlet huntsmen shooting at purple stags. They were like gay cardboard boxes set down in fields of long grass; then the pinewoods commenced and ran, solemn, brown and geometric for miles up and down hill. The peasant girls wore black velvet waistcoats, white bodices, innumerable petticoats and absurd parti-coloured headdresses of the shape and size of halfpenny buns. They walked about in rows of four to six abreast, with a slow step, protruding white-stockinged feet in dancing pumps, their headdresses nodding solemnly; young men in blue blouses, knee-breeches and, on Sundays, in three-cornered hats, followed behind singing part-songs.

The French maid⁠—whom Mrs. Satterthwaite had borrowed from the Duchesse de Carbon Châteaulherault in exchange for her own maid⁠—was at first inclined to find the place maussade. But getting up a tremendous love affair with a fine, tall, blonde young fellow, who included a gun, a gold-mounted hunting knife as long as his arm, a light, grey-green uniform, with gilt badges and buttons, she was reconciled to her lot. When the young Förster tried to shoot her⁠—“et pour cause,” as she said⁠—she was ravished and Mrs. Satterthwaite lazily amused.

They were sitting playing bridge in the large, shadowy dining-hall of the hotel: Mrs. Satterthwaite, Father Consett, Mr. Bayliss. A young blonde sublieutenant of great obsequiousness who was there as a last chance for his right lung and his career, and the bearded Kur-doctor cut in. Father Consett, breathing heavily and looking frequently at his watch, played very fast, exclaiming: “Hurry up now; it’s nearly twelve. Hurry up wid ye.” Mr. Bayliss being dummy, the Father exclaimed: “Three, no trumps; I’ve to make. Get me a whisky and soda quick, and don’t drown it as ye did the last.” He played his hand with extreme rapidity, threw down his last three cards, exclaimed: “Ach! Botheranouns an’ all; I’m two down and I’ve revoked on the top av it,” swallowed down his whisky and soda, looked at his watch and exclaimed: “Done it to the minute! Here, doctor, take my hand and finish the rubber.” He was to take the mass next day for the local priest, and mass must be said fasting from midnight, and without cards played. Bridge was his only passion; a fortnight every year was what, in his worn-out life, he got of it. On his holiday he rose at ten. At eleven it was: “A four for the Father.” From two to four they walked in the forest. At five it was: “A four for the Father.” At nine it was: “Father, aren’t you coming to your bridge?” And Father Consett grinned all over his face and said: “It’s good ye are to a poor ould soggart. It will be paid back to you in Heaven.”

The other four played on solemnly. The Father sat himself down behind Mrs. Satterthwaite, his chin in the nape of her neck. At excruciating moments he gripped her shoulders, exclaimed: “Play the queen, woman!” and breathed hard down her back. Mrs. Satterthwaite would play the two of diamonds, and the Father, throwing himself back, would groan. She said over her shoulder:

“I want to talk to you tonight, Father,” took the last trick of the rubber, collected 17 marks 50 from the doctor and 8 marks from the unter-leutnant. The doctor exclaimed:

“You gan’t dake that immense sum from us and then ko off. Now we shall be ropped py Herr Payliss at gutt-throat!”

She drifted, all shadowy black silk, across the shadows of the dining-hall, dropping her winnings into her black satin vanity bag and attended by the priest. Outside the door, beneath the antlers of a royal stag, in an atmosphere of paraffin lamps and varnished pitch-pine, she said:

“Come up to my sitting-room. The prodigal’s returned. Sylvia’s here.”

The Father said:

“I thought I saw her out of the corner of my eye in the bus after dinner. She’ll be going back to her husband. It’s a poor world.”

“She’s a wicked devil!” Mrs. Satterthwaite said.

“I’ve known her myself since she was nine,” Father Consett said, “and it’s little I’ve seen in her to hold up to the commendation of my flock.” He added: “But maybe I’m made unjust by the shock of it.”

They climbed the stairs slowly.

Mrs. Satterthwaite sat herself on the edge of a cane chair. She said:

“Well!”

She wore a black hat like a cartwheel and her dresses appeared always to consist of a great many squares of silk that might have been thrown on to her. Since she considered that her complexion, which was mat white, had gone slightly violet from twenty years of makeup, when she was not made up⁠—as she never was at Lobscheid⁠—she wore bits of puce-coloured satin ribbon stuck here and there, partly to counteract the violet of her complexion, partly to show she was not in mourning. She was very tall and extremely emaciated; her dark eyes that had beneath them dark brown thumbmarks were very tired or very indifferent by turns.

Father Consett walked backwards and forwards, his hands behind his back, his head bent, over the not too well polished floor. There were two candles, lit but dim, in imitation pewter nouvel art candlesticks, rather dingy; a sofa of cheap mahogany with red plush cushions and rests, a table covered with a cheap carpet and an American roll-top desk that had thrown into it a great many papers in scrolls or flat. Mrs. Satterthwaite was extremely indifferent to her surroundings, but she insisted on having a piece of furniture for her papers. She liked also to have a profusion of hothouse, not garden, flowers, but as there were none of these at Lobscheid she did without them. She insisted also, as a rule, on a comfortable chaise longue which she rarely, if ever, used; but the German Empire of those days did not contain a comfortable chair, so she did without it, lying down on her bed when she was really tired. The walls of the large room were completely covered with pictures of animals in death agonies: capercailzies giving up the ghost with gouts of scarlet blood on the snow; deer dying with their heads back and eyes glazing, gouts of red blood on their necks; foxes dying with scarlet blood on green grass. These pictures were frame to frame, representing sport, the hotel having been a former Grand Ducal hunting-box, freshened to suit the taste of the day with varnished pitch-pine, bathrooms, verandahs, and excessively modern but noisy lavatory arrangements which had been put in for the delight of possible English guests.

Mrs. Satterthwaite sat on the edge of her chair; she had always the air of being just about to go out somewhere or of having just come in and being on the point of going to take her things off. She said:

“There’s been a telegram waiting for her all the afternoon. I knew she was coming.”

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 a 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 a 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 tomorrow,” 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 her 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: