The Father said:
‘That’s enough, woman. I’ll hear no more.’
Sylvia said:
‘You will then. Listen here . . . I’ve always got this to look forward to: I’ll settle down by that man’s side. I’ll be as virtuous as any woman. I’ve made up my mind to it and I’ll be it. And I’ll be bored stiff for the rest of my life. Except for one thing. I can torment that man. And I’ll do it. Do you understand how I’ll do it? There are many ways. But if the worst comes to the worst I can always drive him silly . . . by corrupting the child!’ She was panting a little, and round her brown eyes the whites showed. ‘I’ll get even with him. I can. I know how, you see. And with you, through him, for tormenting me. I’ve come all the way from Brittany without stopping. I haven’t slept . . . But I can . . . ’
Father Consett put his hand beneath the tail of his coat.
‘Sylvia Tietjens,’ he said, ‘in my pistol pocket I’ve a little bottle of holy water which I carry for such occasions. What if I was to throw two drops of it over you and cry: Exorcizo to Ashtaroth in nomine? . . .
She erected her body above her skirts on the sofa, stiffened like a snake’s neck above its coils. Her face was quite pallid, her eyes staring out.
‘You . . . you daren’t,’ she said. ‘To me . . . an outrage!’ Her feet slid slowly to the floor; she measured the distance to the doorway with her eyes. ‘You daren’t,’ she said again; ‘I’d denounce you to the Bishop . . . ’
‘It’s little the Bishop would help you with them burning into your skin,’ the priest said. ‘Go away, I bid you, and say a Hail Mary or two. Ye need them. Ye’ll not talk of corrupting a little child before me again.’
‘I won’t,’ Sylvia said. ‘I shouldn’t have . . . ’
Her black figure showed in silhouette against the open doorway.
When the door was closed upon them, Mrs Satterthwaite said:
Was it necessary to threaten her with that? You know best, of course. It seems rather strong to me.’
‘It’s a hair from the dog that’s bit her,’ the priest said. ‘She’s a silly girl. She’s been playing at black masses along with that Mrs Profumo and the fellow whose name I can’t remember. You could tell that. They cut the throat of a white kid and splash its blood about . . . That was at the back of her mind . . . It’s not very serious. A parcel of silly, idle girls. It’s not much more than palmistry or fortune-telling to them if one has to weigh it, for all its ugliness, as a sin. As far as their volition goes, and it’s volition that’s the essence of prayer, black or white . . . But it was at the back of her mind, and she won’t forget to-night.’
‘Of course, that’s your affair, Father,’ Mrs Satterthwaite said lazily. ‘You hit her pretty hard. I don’t suppose she’s ever been hit so hard. What was it you wouldn’t tell her?’
‘Only,’ the priest said, ‘I wouldn’t tell her because the thought’s best not put in her head . . . But her hell on earth will come when her husband goes running, blind, head down, mad after another woman.’
Mrs Satterthwaite looked at nothing; then she nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said; ‘I hadn’t thought of it . . . But will he? He is a very sound fellow, isn’t he?’
‘What’s to stop it?’ the priest asked. ’What in the world but the grace of our blessed Lord, which he hasn’t got and doesn’t ask for? And then . . . He’s a young man, full-blooded, and they won’t be living . . . maritalement. Not if I know him. And then . . . Then she’ll tear the house down. The world will echo with her wrongs.’
‘Do you mean to say,’ Mrs Satterthwaite said, ‘that Sylvia would do anything vulgar?’
‘Doesn’t every woman who’s had a man to torture for years when she loses him?’ the priest asked. ‘The more she’s made an occupation of torturing him, the less right she thinks she has to lose him.’
Mrs Satterthwaite looked gloomily into the dusk.
‘That poor devil . . . ’ she said. ‘Will he get any peace anywhere? . . . What’s the matter, Father?’
The Father said:
‘I’ve just remembered she gave me tea and cream and I drank it. Now I can’t take mass for Father Reinhardt. I’ll have to go and knock up his curate, who lives away in the forest.’
At the door, holding the candle, he said:
‘I’d have you not get up to-day nor yet to-morrow, if ye can stand it. Have a headache and let Sylvia nurse you . . . You’ll have to tell how she nursed you when you get back to London. And I’d rather ye didn’t lie more out and out than ye need, if it’s to please me . . . Besides, if ye watch Sylvia nursing you, you might hit on a characteristic touch to make it seem more truthful . . . How her sleeves brushed the medicine bottles and irritated you, maybe . . . or—you’ll know! If we can save scandal to the congregation, we may as well.’
He ran downstairs.
3
At the slight creaking made by Macmaster in pushing open his door, Tietjens started violently. He was sitting in a smoking-jacket, playing patience engrossedly in a sort of garret bedroom. It had a sloping roof outlined by black oak beams, which cut into squares the cream-coloured patent distemper of the walls. The room contained also a four-post bedstead, a corner cupboard in black oak, and many rush mats on a polished oak floor of very irregular planking. Tietjens, who hated these disinterred and waxed relics of the past, sat in the centre of the room at a flimsy card-table beneath a white-shaded electric light of a brilliance that, in these surroundings, appeared unreasonable. This was one of those restored old groups of cottages that it was at that date the fashion to convert into hostelries. To it Macmaster, who was in search of the inspiration of the past, had preferred to come. Tietjens, not desiring to interfere with his friend’s culture, had accepted the quarters, though he would have preferred to go to a comfortable modern hotel as being less affected and cheaper. Accustomed to what he called the grown-oldness of a morose, rambling Yorkshire manor house, he disliked being among collected and rather pitiful bits which, he said, made him feel ridiculous, as if he were trying to behave seriously at a fancy-dress ball. Macmaster, on the other hand, with gratification and a serious air, would run his finger tips along the bevellings of a darkened piece of furniture, and would declare it ‘genuine Chippendale’ or ‘Jacobean oak,’ as the case might be. And he seemed to gain an added seriousness and weight of manner with each piece of ancient furniture that down the years he thus touched. But Tietj ens would declare that you could tell the beastly thing was a fake by just cocking an eye at it and, if the matter happened to fall under the test of professional dealers in old furniture, Tietjens was the more often in the right of it, and Macmaster, sighing slightly, would prepare to proceed still further along the difficult road to connoisseurship. Eventually, by conscientious study, he got so far as at times to be called in by Somerset House to value great properties for probate—an occupation at once distinguished and highly profitable.
Tietjens swore with the extreme vehemence of a man who has been made, but who much dislikes being seen, to start.
Macmaster—in evening dress he looked extremely miniature!—said:
‘I’m sorry, old man, I know how much you dislike being interrupted. But the General is in a terrible temper.’
Tietjens rose stiffly, lurched over to an eighteenth-century rosewood folding washstand, took from its top a glass of flat whisky and soda, and gulped down a large quantity. He looked about uncertainly,