immorality you talk about in your husband . . . I’ve never noticed it. I saw a good deal of him when I stayed with you for the week before your child was born. I talked with him a great deal. Except in the matter of the two communions—and even in these I don’t know that we differed so much—I found him perfectly sound.’
‘Sound.’ Mrs Satterthwaite said with sudden emphasis; ‘of course he’s sound. It isn’t even the word. He’s the best ever. There was your father, for a good man . . . and him. That’s an end of it.’
‘Ah,’ Sylvia said, ‘you don’t know . . . Look here. Try and be just. Suppose I’m looking at The Times at breakfast and say, not having spoken to him for a week: “It’s wonderful what the doctors are doing. Have you seen the latest?” And at once he’ll be on his high-horse—he knows everything!—and he’ll prove . . . prove . . . that all unhealthy children must be lethal-chambered or the world will go to pieces. And it’s like being hypnotised; you can’t think of what to answer him. Or he’ll reduce you to speechless rage by proving that murderers ought not to be executed. And then I’ll ask, casually, if children ought to be lethal-chambered for being constipated. Because Marchant—that’s the nurse—is always whining that the child’s bowels aren’t regular and the dreadful diseases that leads to. Of course that hurts him. For he’s perfectly soppy about that child, though he half knows it isn’t his own . . . But that’s what I mean by immorality. He’ll profess that murderers ought to be preserved in order to breed from because they’re bold fellows, and innocent little children executed because they’re sick . . . And he’ll almost make you believe it, though you’re on the point of retching at the ideas.’
‘You wouldn’t now,’ Father Consett began, and almost coaxingly, ‘think of going into retreat for a month or two.’ ‘I wouldn’t,’ Sylvia said. ‘How could I?’
‘There’s a convent of female Premonstratensians near Birkenhead, many ladies go there,’ the Father went on. ‘They cook very well, and you can have your own furniture and your own maid if ye don’t like nuns to wait on you.’
‘It can’t be done,’ Sylvia said, ‘you can see for yourself. It would make people smell a rat at once. Christopher wouldn’t hear of it . . . ’
‘No, I’m afraid it can’t be done, Father,’ Mrs Satterthwaite interrupted finally. ‘I’ve hidden here for four months to cover Sylvia’s tracks. I’ve got Wateman’s to look after. My new land steward’s coming in next week.’
‘Still,’ the Father urged, with a sort of tremulous eagerness, ‘if only for a month . . . If only for a fortnight . . . So many Catholic ladies do it . . . Ye might think of it.’
‘I see what you’re aiming at,’ Sylvia said with sudden anger; ‘you’re revolted at the idea of my going straight from one man’s arms to another.’
‘I’d be better pleased if there could be an interval,’ the Father said. ‘It’s what’s called bad form.’
Sylvia became electrically rigid on her sofa.
‘Bad form!’ she exclaimed. ‘You accuse me of bad form.’ The Father slightly bowed his head like a man facing a wind.
‘I do,’ he said. ‘It’s disgraceful. It’s unnatural. I’d travel a bit at least.’
She placed her hand on her long throat.
‘I know what you mean,’ she said,’ ‘you want to spare Christopher . . . the humiliation. The . . . the nausea. No doubt he’ll feel nauseated. I’ve reckoned on that. It will give me a little of my own back.’
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.’
