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 Gosingeaux 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 emphasized comma to affairs.”‘
‘That means,’ Mrs Satterthwaite said, ‘that he doesn’t mean to reproach her. Emphasized 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 help–meet?’
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 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 you 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.’