‘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 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 hellfire; 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 to-night. 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 fortunetellers at the Earl’s 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 hair-brush 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 to-morrow 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 week-end . . . ’
‘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 mid-week 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