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

“It’s all very well to talk like that in the daytime. 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 shortsighted.

“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 pitch-pine 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 teacups,” 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 con’t get on with him better? They say: Tout savoir ç’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 slums 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 husband’s 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 tonight. So that’s that!”

“ ‘And lo! Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest!’ ” Sylvia jeered softly. “All the same I bet you wouldn’t bother to reclaim men if you could not find the young, good-looking, interestingly vicious sort.”

“I wouldn’t,” Mrs. Satterthwaite said. “If they didn’t interest me, why should I?”

Sylvia looked at Father Consett.

“If you’re going to trounce me any more,” she said, “get a move on. It’s late, I’ve been travelling for thirty-six hours.”

“I will,” Father Consett said. “It’s a good maxim that if you swat flies enough some of them stick to the wall. I’m only trying to make a little mark on your common sense. Don’t you see what you’re going to?”

“What?” Sylvia said indifferently. “Hell?”

“No,” the Father said, “I’m talking of this life. Your confessor must talk to you about the next. But I’ll not tell you what you’re going to. I’ve changed my mind. I’ll tell your mother after you’re gone.”

“Tell me,” Sylvia said.

“I’ll not,” Father Consett answered. “Go to the fortune-tellers at the Earls Court exhibition; they’ll tell ye all about the fair woman you’re to beware of.”

“There’s some of them said to be rather good,” Sylvia said. “Di Wilson’s told me about one. She said she was going to have a baby.⁠ ⁠… You don’t mean that, Father? For I swear I never will.⁠ ⁠…”

“I daresay not,” the priest said. “But let’s talk about men.”

“There’s nothing you can tell me I don’t know,” Sylvia said.

“I daresay not,” the priest answered. “But let’s rehearse what you do know. Now suppose you could elope with a new man every week and no questions asked? Or how often would you want to?”

Sylvia said:

“Just a moment, Father,” and she addressed Mrs. Satterthwaite: “I suppose I shall have to put myself to bed.”

“You will,” Mrs. Satterthwaite said. “I’ll not have any maid kept up after ten in a holiday resort. What’s she to do in a place like this? Except listen for the bogies it’s full of?”

“Always considerate!” Mrs. Tietjens gibed. “And perhaps it’s just as well. I’d probably beat that Marie of yours’ arms to pieces with a hairbrush if she came near me.” She added: “You were talking about men, Father.⁠ ⁠…” And then began with sudden animation to her mother:

“I’ve changed my mind about that telegram. The first thing tomorrow I shall wire: ‘Agreed entirely but arrange bring Hullo Central with you.’ ”

She addressed the priest again:

“I call my maid Hullo Central because she’s got a tinny voice like a telephone. I say: ‘Hullo Central’⁠—when she answers ‘Yes, modd’m,’ you’d swear it was the Exchange speaking.⁠ ⁠… But you were telling me about men.”

“I was reminding you!” the Father said. “But I needn’t go on. You’ve caught the drift of my remarks. That is why you are pretending not to listen.”

“I assure you, no,” Mrs. Tietjens said. “It is simply that if a thing comes into my head I have to say it.⁠ ⁠… You were saying that if one went away with a different man for every weekend⁠ ⁠…”

“You’ve shortened the period already,” the priest said. “I gave a full week to every man.”

“But, of course, one would have to have a home,” Sylvia said, “an address. One would have to fill one’s midweek engagements. Really it comes to it that one has to have a husband and a place to store one’s maid in. Hullo Central’s been on board-wages all the time. But I don’t believe she likes it.⁠ ⁠… Let’s agree that if I had a different man every week I’d be bored with the arrangement. That’s what you’re getting at, isn’t it?”

“You’d find,” the priest said, “that it whittled down until the only divvy moment was when you stood waiting in the booking-office for the young man to take the tickets.⁠ ⁠… And then gradually that wouldn’t be divvy any more.⁠ ⁠… And you’d yawn and long to go back to your husband.”

“Look here,” Mrs. Tietjens said, “you’re abusing the secrets of the confessional. That’s exactly what Tottie Charles said. She tried it for three months while Freddie Charles was in Madeira. It’s exactly what she said down to the yawn and the booking-office. And the ‘divvy.’ It’s only Tottie Charles who uses it every two words. Most of us prefer ripping! It is more sensible.”

“Of course I haven’t been abusing the secrets of the confessional,” Father Consett said mildly.

“Of course you haven’t,” Sylvia said with affection. “You’re a good old stick and no end of a mimic, and you know us all to the bottom of our hearts.”

“Not all that much,” the priest said, “there’s probably a good deal of good at the bottom of your hearts.”

Sylvia said:

“Thanks.” She asked suddenly: “Look here. Was it what you saw of us⁠—the future mothers of England, you know, and all⁠—at Miss Lampeter’s⁠—that made you take to the slums? Out of disgust and despair?”

“Oh, let’s not make melodrama out of it,” the priest answered. “Let’s say I wanted a change. I couldn’t see that I was doing any good.”

“You did us all the good there was done,” Sylvia said. “What with Miss Lampeter always drugged to the world, and all the French mistresses as wicked as hell.”

“I’ve heard you say all this before,” Mrs. Satterthwaite said. “But it was supposed to be the best finishing school in England. I know it cost enough!”

“Well, say it was we who were a rotten lot,” Sylvia concluded; and then to the Father: “We were a lot of rotters, weren’t we?”

The priest answered: