Some Do Not . . ._ A Novel - Ford Madox Ford [10]
A tall, white-haired, white-moustached, red-cheeked fellow limped after Tietjens, who was getting his immense bag out of the guard's van. He clapped the young man on the shoulder and said:
'Hullo! How's your mother-in-law? Lady Claude wants to know. She says come up and pick a bone tonight if you're going to Rye.' He had extraordinarily blue, innocent eyes.
Tietjens said:
'Hullo, General,' and added: 'I believe she's much better. Quite restored. This is Macmaster. I think I shall be going over to bring my wife back in a day or two. They're both at Lobscheid...a German spa.'
The General said:
'Quite right. It isn't good for a young man to be alone. Kiss Sylvia's finger-tips for me. She's the real thing, you lucky beggar.' He added, a little anxiously: 'What about a foursome to-morrow? Paul Sandbach is down. He's as crooked as me. We can't do a full round at singles.'
'It's your own fault,' Tietjens said. 'You ought to have gone to my bone-setter. Settle it with Macmaster, will you?' He jumped into the twilight of the guard's van.
The General looked at Macmaster, a quick penetrating scrutiny:
'You're the Macmaster,' he said. 'You would be if you're with Chrissie.'
A high voice called:
'General! General!'
'I want a word with you,' the General said, 'about the figures in that article you wrote about Pondoland. Figures are all right. But we shall lose the beastly country if...But we'll talk about it after dinner to-night. You'll come up to Lady Claudine's...?
Macmaster congratulated himself again on his appearance. It was all very well for Tietjens to look like a sweep; he was of these people. He, Macmaster, wasn't. He had, if anything, to be an authority, and authorities wear gold tie-rings and broadcloth. General Lord Edward Campion had a son, a permanent head of the Treasury department that regulated increases of salaries and promotions in all the public offices. Tietjens only caught the Rye train by running alongside it, pitching his enormous kit-bag through the carriage window and swinging on the footboard. Macmaster reflected that if he had done that half the' station would have been yelling, 'Stand away there.'
As it was Tietjens a stationmaster was galloping after him to open the carriage door and grinningly to part:
'Well caught, sir!' for it was a cricketing county.
'Truly,' Macmaster quoted to himself.
'"The gods to each ascribe a differing lot:
Some enter at the portal. Some do not!"'
II
Mrs Satterthwaite with her French maid, her priest, and her disreputable young man, Mr Bayliss, were at Lobscheid, an unknown and little-frequented air resort amongst the pinewoods of the Taunus. Mrs Satterthwaite was ultrafashionable and consummately indifferent--she only really lost her temper if at her table and under her nose you consumed her famous Black Hamburg grapes without taking their skin and all. Father Consett was out to have an uproarious good time during his three weeks' holiday from the slums of Liverpool; Mr Bayliss, thin like a skeleton in tight blue serge, golden haired and pink, was so nearly dead of tuberculosis, was so dead penniless, and of tastes so costly that he was ready to keep stone quiet, drink six pints of milk a day and behave himself. On the face of it, he was there to write the letters of Mrs Satterthwaite, but the lady never let him enter her private rooms for fear of infection. He had to content himself with nursing a growing adoration for Father Consett. This priest, with an enormous mouth, high cheek bones, untidy black hair, a broad face that never looked too clean and waving hands that always looked too dirty, never kept still for a moment, and had a brogue such as is seldom heard outside old-fashioned English novels of Irish life. He had a perpetual laugh, like the noise made by a steam round-about. He was, in short, a saint, and Mr Bayliss knew it, though he didn't know how. Ultimately, and with the financial assistance of Mrs Satterthwaite, Mr Bayliss became almoner to Father Consett, adopted the rule of St. Vincent de Paul and wrote some very admirable, if decorative, devotional verse.