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