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.’
‘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 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