Some Do Not . . ._ A Novel - Ford Madox Ford [11]
They proved thus a very happy, innocent party. For Mrs Satterthwaite interested herself--it was the only interest she had--in handsome, thin and horribly disreputable young men. She would wait for them, or send her car to wait for them, at the gaol gates. She would bring their usually admirable wardrobes up to date and give them enough money to have a good time. When contrary to all expectations--but it happened more often than not!--they turned out well, she was lazily pleased. Sometimes she sent them away to a gay spot with a priest who needed a holiday; sometimes she had them down to her place in the west of England.
So they were a pleasant company and all very happy. Lobscheid contained one empty hotel with large verandahs and several square farmhouses, white with grey beams, painted in the gables with bouquets of blue and yellow flowers or with scarlet huntsmen shooting at purple stags. They were like gay cardboard boxes set down in fields of long grass; then the pinewoods commenced and ran, solemn, brown and geometric for miles up and down hill. The peasant girls wore black velvet waistcoats, white bodices, innumerable petticoats and absurd parti-coloured headdresses of the shape and size of halfpenny buns. They walked about in rows of four to six abreast; with a slow step, protruding white-stockinged feet in dancing pumps, their headdresses nodding solemnly; young men in blue blouses, knee-breeches and, on Sundays, in three-cornered hats, followed behind singing part-songs.
The French maid--whom Mrs Satterthwaite had borrowed from the Duchesse de Carbon Château-Herault in exchange for her own maid--was at first inclined to find the place maussade. But getting up a tremendous love affair with a fine, tall, blond young fellow, who included a gun, a gold-mounted hunting knife as long as his arm, a light, grey-green uniform, with gilt badges and buttons, she was reconciled to her lot. When the young Förster tried to shoot her--'et pour cause,' as she said--she was ravished and Mrs Satterthwaite lazily amused.
They were sitting playing bridge in the large, shadowy dining-hall of the hotel: Mrs Satterthwaite, Father Consett, Mr Bayliss. A young blond sub-lieutenant of great obsequiousness who was there as a last chance for his right lung and his career, and the bearded Kur-doctor cut in. Father Consett, breathing heavily and looking frequently at his watch, played very fast, exclaiming: 'Hurry up now; it's nearly twelve. Hurry up wid ye.' Mr Bayliss being dummy, the Father exclaimed: 'Three no trumps; I've to make. Get me a whisky and soda quick, and don't drown it as ye did the last.' He played his hand with extreme rapidity, threw down his last three cards, exclaimed: 'Ach! Botheranouns an' all; I'm two down and I've revoked on the top av it,' swallowed down his whisky and soda, looked at his watch and exclaimed: 'Done it to the minute! Here, doctor, take my hand and finish the rubber.' He was to take the mass next day for the local priest, and mass must be said fasting from midnight, and without cards played. Bridge was his only passion; a fortnight every year was what, in his worn-out life, he got of it. On his holiday he rose at ten. At eleven it was: 'A four for the Father.' From two to four they walked in the forest. At five it was: 'A four for the Father.' At nine it was: 'Father, aren't you coming to your bridge?' And Father Consett grinned all over his face and said: 'It's good ye are to a poor ould soggart. It will be paid back to you in Heaven.'
The other four played on solemnly. The Father sat himself down behind Mrs Satterthwaite, his chin in the nape of her neck. At excruciating moments he gripped her shoulders, exclaimed: 'Play the queen, woman!' and breathed hard down her back. Mrs Satterthwaite would play the two of diamonds, and the Father, throwing himself back, would groan. She said over her shoulder:
'I want to talk to you to-night, Father,' took the last trick of the rubber, collected 17 marks 50 from the doctor and 8 marks from the unter-leutnant. The doctor exclaimed:
'You gan't dake that immense sum from us and then ko off. Now we shall pe ropped py Herr Payliss at gutt-throat.'